Experience of Enlightenment: I'm not going to tell you that I'm enlightened. To do so is pointless and arrogant. I will, however, share with you what I have experienced and how it has come to define what I believe enlightenment is.
There are three aspects to your life. Three is a popular number in spirituality. The first and least of them is the form. Form is a representation of the idea. If you think of life like a screen play, fate is like the script, the mind is like the audience and the recorded film is the form. The images playing on your television are really just a representation of what has already been scripted. Just as your life, in it's form, is a representation of what was already written.
The second aspect is the mind or ego. This is the part of you that believes it is you. The part of you that is 'making the choices' and 'experiencing the form'. When a person reads a book or watches a movie and gets very involved, they experience the thoughts and emotions of the characters. That is precisely what the human mind or ego is. It's not a trick, not an accident, not something you can or should bother trying to 'destroy' or 'avoid'. It is there and will always be there. A projection of yourself into a role. The result of god or the void watching itself, watching the stories that make up it's being.
The final aspect is god, the void, the all, the flame, the sun. It's everything that ever was and ever will be. The details don't matter. All that matters is you understand NOTHING is separate from this. If you are a character in the story, the eternal flame is the book, the story, the author, the character and the reader. All in one. This aspect, the god aspect, is experiencing one fragment of itself through the story you perceive as you.
To summarize, you have the form, the mind which observes the form, and then god who observes the mind. Nothing observes god because nothing is separate from it.
What is enlightenment then? Enlightenment is tricky. People make it sound like an awakening but I no longer believe that's what it is. If it is an awakening, it is a scripted one. You see, because everything is already written ( fate ) and already exists ( god ) there is nothing to awaken from or to. Whatever is happening to you, whatever you experience, yourself, it's all as it is meant to be. So how can we stop being ourself? How can we let go of ego when our ego is as much a part of god as our thoughts are a part of us? The truth, at least my version of it, is a dual nature.
Enlightenment is comparable to a character in a story who realizes he or she is a character in a story. As you read the words "And he finally realized, he was nothing more than a character in a book. Playing out his fate as it was intended, unable to escape destiny. Everything he thought, believed, desired. It was only what he was written to think, written to believe, written to desire. There was no real 'him'. Nothing separating him from the story except the perception of you, the reader. But when he realized this, it made no difference, for even in this realization, he was only what he was written to be." What do you do with that? Imagine if right now I told you that everything you would ever think, feel and experience was already written. Including your awareness that everything you are experiencing is fated. Imagine that you knew for certain I was telling the truth. What could you do with this information? Nothing. Because you are nothing. I am nothing. We are nothing. There is no "aha!" moment where you break free from the bonds of illusion. You are the illusion, an infinite unavoidable illusion. A self-aware character in a book, who, no matter how hard he tries, can not stop doing or thinking what was written.
For a long time this will play games with you. You will feel as though there is a you above it all. A you that has one up on fate because you see it coming. But fate is always one step ahead, because every time you think you see past it, you are only seeing past yourself, precisely as fate intended.
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