Spiritual enlightenment is the discovery of a whole dimension of yourself hidden in plain sight that you had never experienced before: your true self.
So what does that mean? Trying to explain enlightenment with words is difficult, because words only have a meaning when we have experiential knowledge of what the word means. For example, if you have never been able to see the colour green, how would you understand what the colour green looks like?
What keeps us from seeing our true self? The answer is quite simple: it’s our mind that keeps us from seeing our true self. When we see the world our mind adds descriptions and interpretations to what we see. Most of these voices come from our ego. By the mind adding these descriptions and interpretations, we hypnotise ourselves into believing what we ‘think’ we have seen, instead of seeing the world as it is.
We live in a dream world of our own interpretations. This is sometimes called filters, false beliefs, projections, lenses or stories.
When we quiet the mind and start living in silence, we can open our eyes and see a different world. Rather than seeing a world made up of descriptions and interpretations, we can see our world consciously for what it really is.
Most of the ‘mind monkeys’ are born out of the beliefs we have invested in. Some of the big beliefs we need to eliminate have to do with our sense of self-importance. Self-importance is connected to believing that you personally are the cause or centre of what happens.
You might find that the ego uses these believes to compare us to other people. When you truly let go of the beliefs relating to your self-importance, you will have dissolved many of the stories in the mind and gone a long way towards inner-silence. Without these false beliefs filtering your perception, you can more easily see the world as it is. You will also see yourself more clearly as you really are, deeper than your usual superficiality: your true self.
If you are fortunate enough to make the journey to dissolve your self-importance, quiet your mind, and open to unconditional love, you have done the hard part. In this level of consciousness, you no longer react or feel victimized. You can live your life without fear, and be at peace within.
When you reach this point of enlightenment, it is unlikely you will hold on to it for a long period of time. The first time it may only for a few minutes but once you have experienced this point of enlightenment, you know you can experience it again. Like opening your heart, it often happens only for moments in the beginning. As you consciously practice, those moments become longer and with less time in between, until it is your normal state of being.
The five Reiki principles are a great way to start breaking this journey up into little manageable steps. Remember the mantra; ‘just for today’.
Read more about the five Reiki principles here: Is Happiness a Choice and a Skill?