When enlightenment is searched for through thought, it can easily become just a lot of talk, talk, talk. The intellect will make enlightenment into just another story of self. Granted, it’s a beautiful one, perhaps the most beautiful story, that a person can become liberated from being a separate person and know himself as the One Life. But there is no "me" or "you" to be enlightened. In that realization, the possibility of true liberation arises.
Enlightenment is so simple, so intimately close as the very life that is awake in this moment, that it is completely missed by an intellect that is complicating and searching for it. Enlightenment is waking up to the reality of now including waking up from the idea that "you" can find this other idea called "enlightenment."
In this awakeness, it is realized that the spiritual search is over. There is nothing to know. Nothing to seek. Nothing to find. There is only the watching of this dance of life. No watcher. The mind is clear, empty space. The heart is connected to all that it sees. The within is the without. The stillness "out there in the world" is the same stillness "in here, in the body/mind." There is no distinction between "out there" and "in here."
In looking at these words, there is a seeing that all ideas about enlightenment are merely measurements, attempting to measure the immeasurable. Enlightenment is the realization that only in destroying the illusory story of lack called “me” can true abundance be known. This abundance is a fullness, a gratitude, an unconditional love for the whole that could never be measured. The fullness is only realized when nothingness is seen to be our true nature. Only a true transformation beyond concepts can grasp the seemingly paradoxical nature of what was just said.
The measurements merely dance with the immeasurable. This dance between form and formlessness, between language and the truth to which it points, between thought and awareness, between matter and space, between sound and silence is so beautiful. These apparently opposite things are dancing together as One. This is the dance of love.
No word truly captures this dance of love.
To give this dance a final name such as "enlightenment" is to turn on the bright lights in the ballroom, turn the music off, and spoil all the fun by telling everyone to go home because the dance is over. The word "enlightenment" is a futile attempt to capture liberation itself. Enlightenment is a shift in the energy within the body and mind that is fully liberated from any mental conclusions about it.
What is the dance? I can come up with all sorts of fancy answers, such as it is "all that is" or "the One" or "Truth" or the "Source" or "God." But only the fire of the unknown will see the truth to which the question points. Although the question cannot be answered with any certainty without smothering the fire, the asking itself is an opening into liberation and love. This asking is the dance seeing itself.
Enlightment Is . . .
