Much like the pictures we were given to complete as a child, the painting of your soul-your enlightenment-first arrives as a sheet with a bunch of dots on it. However, unlike the more simplistic versions we were given as children that also included numbers, this grand “connect the dots” painting that is your life and enlightenment has no numbers or directions to speak of. At least not yet. Hopefully this book can start by providing you with a general map and area to start looking, helping you learn to how to connect the dots and see the picture of your enlightenment.
Probably one of the more difficult pieces of this concept to grasp is to understand that many, if not all of the experiences that will wake you up to the realization that you are enlightened have already happened. The concept of time is what makes this so, but as you loosen the fixed hold that time has on your mind, you will begin to see the beauty of it. Let me take it back to my story to help this make sense.
My first moment of awakening, my Unknown Awakening, happened (as best as I can tell at this moment in time) when that child looked out the car window. What gave me the inspiration for this book was the day, at the age of thirty-three, that I realized that the “person” I thought might be watching my life was actually me, the true me, the highest part of me. I had the information from that experience all along, it just took my mind being in the right state, decades later after years of meditative practice in order to gain some modicum of control over the thoughts that go through this mind.
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
-Buddhist proverb
Some of the oldest sayings hold some of the deepest truths, if only you are able to look from the right perspective. And this gets to the main premise of this book: the experiences you have had in your life paired with the intuitive things you have always done hold all the answers and keys that you need to discover your soul and see your enlightenment.
Macro vs. Micro
It is said that true intelligence is the ability to see things from a different perspective. From the time we are born we see the world from our selfish, self-centered perception. If you think about it, we are just this blank slate with no definitions for anything, and then we begin the process of gathering information from the best level of awareness that we have, and collecting information and perspectives from those around us, who could all be considered our teachers.
We grow, we go to school, we test the knowledge and thoughts that we have, we invest in and expand some things, while letting others fall away. For most people, at some point the journey expands from a selfish one to one of contemplation of our self in relation to others. You begin to learn how your actions affect those around you, thus gaining a new perspective.
A roommate and I once took a trip to Virginia City, Nevada in search of paranormal experiences. It turned out for that for me one of the most impactful things was as far from paranormal as you can get. In fact, it was the epitome of normal: a conversation that we had with a bartender. The wise bartender revealed the biggest truth that he had come to know at that point on his journey, a point that is embedded in this paragraph itself: life is about conversations. They are our conversations with others that allow us the opportunity to gain a new perspective, completely foreign to what we might normally think or say, adding to our intelligence and overall enlightenment. It’s one thing to experience deep philosophical thought or moments of profound insight, but something changes when you share it with another person, say it out loud, and hear yourself say it. This change leads to reflection on whether or not we actually believe that thing. Not only that, but the thought or idea bounces off that other person and they mull it over from their perspective and present it in a new, modified form-a third entity, if you will. Like the process of evolution, giving two people, each with their unique perspective, a single idea to think through, will allow them to combine their collective knowledge to produce a polished/evolved thought distinct from what they might have arrived at separately.
As you go through life you have many experiences and conversations about those experiences. You grow, you reflect, and you integrate new knowledge gained from these conversations into your being, and the understandings gleaned from such conversations become how you operate in the world. But something else happens alongside this.
While you are growing and evolving as a person, applying your knowledge to the new things that life throws at you, you also have periods in which you reflect back on those past experiences that remain pertinent in your mind. And sure, many of these thoughts will fall to good times and pleasant memories, but far too often it seems that the thoughts that arise relate to a negative experience or something that (to put it generally) does not make us happy.
But why do these thoughts arise and remain, sometimes frequently rehashed in our minds? Perhaps a change in perspective is in order. A good trick that I have learned to help discover the “enlightenment” to be gained from a life experience is to think about it from a micro perspective and a macro perspective.
Speaking from my own experience, a problem with alcohol once led to a series of events that resulted in me being fired from a well paying job that I had undergone six years of college for. Of course, at the time this loss seemed like a really bad thing, and for years it continued to “haunt” me. But now, years later and the benefit of hindsight allowing me to see the path upon which I was set, I know that what was once seen as purely “bad” actual directly resulted in me sitting in my massage studio typing this book. It was exactly what needed to happen. And not only that, but losing that job was one of the factors that convinced me to stop drinking.
The moment I put all those pieces together, pieces that happened in a micro period, and saw the bigger macro manifestation that is my life, I had a “moment of enlightenment.” I understood a piece of my enlightenment puzzle, connected a few of the dots in my overall masterpiece, and saw what that experience/memory/haunting had to show me. And with that new perspective, all the angst that had surrounded that part of my past faded away like smoke in the wind.
Conversations and Perspectives
The reason you are able to experience moments of enlightenment is based on your growth and maturity, both of which I posit come, at least partially, from the conversations you have with others, the differences in perspectives that you are shown, and your ability to integrate those things into your overall being to change how you operate in the world. I had finally had enough internal reflection in conjunction with conversations with others and outward investigation about the reasons behind the incident in which I’d lost my job as a result of my relationship to alcohol, and what the incident had to show me.
And so we continue through life, having conversations and gaining new perspectives. But it is in the moments of stillness, inner reflection, and meditation when the most important conversations take place. They are the conversations with yourself that help you evolve. It is during these inner times that past problems can be given further review, and with additional perspectives. Perhaps a big life event or influential person came into your life and changed things up, and now you see that past problem as a blessing in disguise. And if upon further review your problem persists, perhaps it simply means that yet another perspective is required, and it can be tabled until another time.
This may give you a new perspective on the saying “everything happens for a reason.” Let me break it down. The meaning of life is to experience it. If everything happens for a reason, and the meaning of life is to experience, then having experiences and understanding the reason behind them is, indeed, the meaning of life itself. Or enlightenment. Thus, when you have finally gained enough perspective to review something in your life and see what little bit of life magic it had to show you, you have a moment of enlightenment. And, just perhaps, if you can do this for every moment in your life up to this now moment, then you are enlightened.
Your Masterpiece
So hopefully now you are starting to get a working framework. We go through life, generally from our micro perspective, having experiences and doing the general life thing. Some moments are of great importance and highly impactful, and many moments are simply normal, daily experiences. All the while though, there is another part of you paying attention and evolving. And it is that part of you that makes those moments important and impactful. It holds onto them, good or bad, conscious or unconscious, because it knows that further examination is required.
This is where you may need to start getting creative and working with your mind. For me, fancying myself a communication specialist, I understand a future version of me is communicating with me through time and space, giving me hints and intuitive leads to help make my journey through life a little easier. If nothing else, that version of me knows how I got there, so it can send past versions of me guideposts to keep me on track.
But whatever form you want to give your inner, highest, enlightened self, it is that part of us that beckons us to awaken. It is the part of our mind that remembers the bad break up or distressing event. It holds on to the memory, longing for the correct perspective to discover the moment of enlightenment that such experiences have to show you. And one day, after one or one thousand hours of meditation, you will take a macro step back and take a look at your life and see something magical. What was once just a bunch of random dots that made absolutely no sense will have all been connected, and a brilliant picture-the true masterpiece that is you and your enlightenment-emerges.
Exercises for Chapter 3
This is the point where you can take the timeline that you have sketched or written out and write in NOW. Here we are: the present moment! This is also where the real work of time and patience come in. Start to fill in significant moments, experiences, or realizations that you had that still carry an impact in your life. At some point it may begin to be too much, requiring a piece of paper the size of a wall to sketch out all that you start to remember, but the main point here is to begin realize these moments for what they were, as well as to begin to look at them from a new perspective.
In this NOW moment, from a conscious place, begin to ask yourself, your highest self, what you wish for, what you want to manifest going forward from this moment on in your life. If all the ‘needs for survival’ were taken care of and you had an unlimited bank account, what would you want to create? Where does your passion lie?