I was sitting on the deck with my friend Mapacho when he challenged me to define enlightenment. The request caught me off guard because I have written about it and figured I had already answered the question. Enlightenment is waking up and realizing we are all one from the same source. While walking the strange path of this journey, many will reveal this secret and let you in on this knowledge. In a way, it’s almost cliché to the point where I laugh because enlightenment is such a letdown. I’d envision enlightenment as getting my white robe amidst a big celebration involving the bestowment of my honours in a grand ceremony! I suppose you could always play the part: wear a white dress, cultivate a relationship with beads, bathe irregularly, and not cut your hair. In truth, you just get it. Of course, we are one and completely interdependent upon everything else.
It’s a long road from knowledge to understanding. Acquiring knowledge activates this curious response where you have to tell everyone about what you know. The wise shuts the fuck up, lest he or she play the fool. Understanding is a way off, with the pitfall the innate human ability to become a storyteller; the act of storytelling stains the knowledge and prevents the full understanding of what has been revealed to you.
You see, I conceptually understood this spiritual attainment and was also shown the unity of all by the Great Goddess. Three years back, I stared into my piece of black obsidian and noticed in the reflection I couldn’t separate myself from the background. It was a simple yet powerful lesson. I got it at that moment and felt my inseparability from everything. I had asked her to give me the gift of this no self as I wanted to directly experience it. Wherever I was or looked, I was a part of the whole construct. It was so powerful to understand.
So, three years later I'm on my deck smoking away and looking at the spring time blossoming trees when I felt something profound. Not only am I a part of the whole which included the tree but I am the tree. All is energy and the energy is a continuous flow. It’s one organic system. At that moment, I realized every energetic construct I have objectified is in fact all just one organism. I looked at the tree and knew the tree is me. In essence, I let go of the self I had been clinging to in my understanding of enlightenment. I went from an ecological interdependence line of thinking to just realizing everything is the continuous manifestation of the same energy that enlivens all of us. The divine feminine and masculine doing their dance of life.
Another way to understand this is the process where daytime turns into night due to motion. Motion gives us something to measure and we call it time. We think there are distinct days and construct a calendar to mark off the passage of time. Critically examining this phenomenon, you see the division of what just is into days and nights is just a construct. Measurements lead towards objectification and is the maya that keeps us spellbound into thinking we are separate.
It’s the desire to be separate beings that creates the illusion we are autonomous. By convincing ourselves of our personal story, we create the narrative of self. We go on adventures and get a glimpse of what it’s like to be king; well, at least king over oneself. The holy man of the philosophy of non-dualism sees through the ruse, eschews desire, and subsequently fulfills his desire to collapse back into the void. The energetic potential of the void, like an atom waiting to be split, awaits the spark in order to come forth once again in an infinitesimal orgy of energetic points of light, all representative of the non-dual source. The desire for liberation is so strong it wills the energy to rise and the need to prolong the dualistic illusion for as long as possible ferments the sense perception that selectively makes us aware of our surroundings allowing this grand charade to continue. The awareness leads to consciousness, we know we know, and once cultivated we begin to see through our own facade. And here we are.
A major catalyst for the revelation that the tree is me was I had been talking to someone who had an interest in Buddhism and they had mentioned compassion in the context that it was something they could not make happen. Frankly speaking, they did not like some people and felt no compassion for them and couldn’t ever see having any of that love for them. I listened but did not provide an answer. I internally thought that if you understand we are all one then I think that makes compassion for all easier. However, lest I be branded a hypocrite, I kept quiet as it is something I struggle with as well. Fast forward an hour later and I’m sitting on my deck smoking coming to the realization that not only are we all sisters and brothers but there is no inherent separation. Sure, we are in forms that our sense perception awareness can delineate - hey that’s quite the superpower however fundamentally we are all of and are the same energetic flow. Boundaries are constructs we conjure; the energy free flows within and without us, bringing to life one entity we have labelled the universe. How could you not have compassion for all with this understanding?
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