Enlightenment is an idea — nothing and no one can be enlightened

Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering

If we consider the word, the noun “enlightenment” we find that it is no more than an idea. Of course, the word suggests something wonderful, mysterious, and lofty, but when we look closer at what it suggests we find nothing at all.

The sense of self, that is who we call me, I, the persona, the egoic self, a person, the mask to the world, etc., is created out of psychological conditioning from culture, parents, teachers, authority figures, religion, society, and so on. We take these influences inward, psychologically, and create an image of who we are. So we are not who we take ourselves to be. Rather, we are amalgams of thought, which are images.

The self is mired in fear and desire because it seeks security. Never able to get or find security, because it believes itself to be apart from all else, the self constantly bounces from pleasure-seeking to trying to eliminate pain. This is its full-time preoccupation and it goes through elaborate schemes to get what it thinks it needs and to convince itself that it has the power to make itself happy “if only…”

The self cannot be enlightened because it is an accretion of thoughts and therefore a mirage or illusion. A mirage cannot be enlightened. Having removed the self from the equation, what is left? The answer is: the totality of consciousness. And consciousness cannot be enlightened because it is already the totality, already whole. It already contains the totality of knowledge and information, so what is there to be enlightened? Nothing can be enlightened; the word only represents an idea of being awake.

Enlightenment, as an idea, points to a state in which one is awake — awakened to what the self actually is and that it can be dissolved as the primary response, and window, to the world. And the world is actually within you as the capacity to hold it; and all that you see and sense is actually a reflection of you as the self and as consciousness, as well as physically, down to the atomic structure.

The emotional and mental pain that we experience is caused only by the self. It suffers because it cannot find wholeness, security, love, happiness, stability, etc. It suffers because it has created an unrealistic image of itself and of all else that is in its world. It makes suffering for itself and for others. To fully be awake means that you see this, not intellectually, but as a full realization of how things really are. And in this state you are not the pain, but rather that which is aware of the pain of others and the pain of the self.

This is my personal experience, so I would urge you to find out for yourself if this is true. The way to do this is to persistently observe the self to the greatest detail.