Enlightenment Without The Fanfare

“The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose.”

- A Course in Miracles (T-1.I.10)

There was a recent experience I want to share with you. Some may call it an awakening. Others may call it enlightenment. I will simply refer to it as an awareness.

I was having a rather peaceful week; each afternoon and evening I sat in meditation. Each sitting brought an awareness of the beauty around me. As I glanced out my living room window, the trees, the sky, the lights of the city, everything took on a beauty that felt more significant, more illumined, than I had noticed before. There was an expansive feeling to the moments.

As I sat with the awareness, on one day, my thoughts started to drift to recent events and people. As each event or person passed through my mind, I felt only beauty and love for the event or individuals involved. Whereas previous moments may have been only fleeting when experienced, these recent feelings of beauty and love remained with me for many minutes.

One of the events and people that revealed unprecedented teachings was the recent US election and Donald Trump. As I thought about the events, the election results, and Donald Trump himself, I just kept smiling and feeling only beauty and love for the event, the election results, and Donald Trump. Whereas earlier thoughts on the same may have resulted in a moment of the beauty and love, and then other fear thoughts would race in, I remained in this beauty and love for several minutes; just sitting there with only beauty and love surrounding my thoughts.

There was an awareness of the perfection of it all—the event, the election results, and Donald Trump. The awareness of the perfection of it all brought with it a most precious teaching. I humbly realized that not only did I not understand the event, the election results, or Donald Trump, but I no longer understand anything happening outside of me. I don’t know what anything outside of me is for. Furthermore, there is an awareness that it is all meaningless.

Even my inner work, all the time and energy I have seemingly spent on my spiritual growth and development, it too is not understandable. It too is meaningless. This does not mean the inner work has been without purpose. In and of itself, it is all meaningless, whether inner work, or outer work. It is only my thoughts about the unfolding that give it any meaning to me.

In my sittings, the awareness and gifts continued being offered to me. As I sat with the preceding awarenesses, there was an awareness that I no longer need to understanding anything. I no longer need to try to figure out the inner or outer world. I simply need, if anything, to witness it, and then let it go. This awareness offered me great freedom.

More important and significant than all the preceding, was the awareness to acknowledge the awareness, but to let it go and move on. Fixating on these moments in time, these windows on reality, on truth, will serve no one. The gift in these experiences, as egoic as they are, is to let them go and move beyond them. Cling to nothing.

I have had many of these types of experiences over the years. But this one is different in a significant way. I remember it! All previous illuminating experiences came and went, often without my being able to remember any of them. There would have been an awareness that something transpired, and it was a beautiful teaching, but I could not remember the details, the teaching. Sometimes I have scurried to a notepad to try and capture the teaching, but before I even got to the notepad, ‘puff!,’ it’s gone. This teaching has stuck with me weeks after the experience.

The preceding experience, the awareness, came without fanfare. There was no ‘illumination,’ no rapture. The skies did no open up. The seas did not part. It was rather subdued. Gentle. Sublime. It was like any other experience really. This one differed only in that it has brought a new way of looking at the world, my thoughts about the world, and how I choose to live within the world. There is a beautiful teaching… “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” These experiences don’t change our life, yet our life changes. Not because of the experience, but because of our awareness of the experience. It’s all egoic, afterall. All of it! Let it all go. Be grateful for the experience, but let it all go, move on and be aware in the next moment. For Robin Wall Kimmerer offers us… “Maybe there is no such thing as time; there are only moments, each with its own story.”

Robert Meagher has been ordained as an Interfaith Minister and certified as a Sacred Attention Therapy (SAT) Therapist. Robert is the Founder and Spiritual Director for Spiritual Guidance and Co-Founder of the Center for Human Awakening.