Shift

Greg Goode has given about as fine an explanation of enlightenment as I have ever come across. Which I will now promptly screw up, through paraphrasing. In essence, enlightenment is establishing the non-difference between enlightenment and non-enlightenment.

Now this might seem like semantic chuff, but it actually encapsulates the whole enchilada from a non-dual perspective. To whit:

Wanting to be enlightened presupposes that you are not. Two states. You are unenlightened, and somebody else is enlightened. You want to move from your state to their state. Thing is, there is only one state.

This can be realized through the realization of truth through pointers:

-You are not your body (you exist in sleep without bodily perceptions per se)
-You are not your mind (you exist in dreamless sleep without mind perceptions)
- All non (non-dual) experiences revolve around self and an other:

This can manifest in happiness (feeling of non separation) and unhappiness (feeling of separation). In either case, there is a subtle duality, which will inevitably lead to suffering. (Happiness based on duality is set-up to fail by its very nature; unhappiness based on duality is, well, suffering and unhappiness).

In duality:

When you are depressed, you want to feel a different way (duality).
When you are angry, you are propelled to feel another way (duality)
When you are happy, you have moved from one feeling to another (duality)

So it can all be boiled down to this: realize what you are not. when it is seen, then realized, that there is no separation, all relative happiness and unhappiness dissolves. you are left as that which is. Awareness, the big fabric without thread count or edge, out of which everything arises from and fades back into.

Which is why Yogananda's prayer of a multi-jetted flame (one flame, split into hundreds of little flames through a stove burner) was such an affecting metaphor.

Which is why the picture I have of space reversed is such an affecting metaphor. (No space between individuals. Negative space, like in drawing. Draw what is not, and the picture appears. See the space between individuals as non-space, and you have a connectedness that we all poke up through. My picture, however weak, is like an eternally large piece of dental-dam, with shapes appearing in and then returning to it).

So. That is enlightenment. Initially you are motivated to find out what is 'wrong' - which points to a world of duality, which needs to be integrated. Non-dual realization identifies this seeming duality, and integrates them. Thing is, after integration, a survey indicates that they were never separated in the first place. Thus, it is seen that there is no difference between enlightenment and non-enlightenment. When this seeing becomes a realization, one is rooted in the absolute, and free. Which was the case all along, right?