I’ve been ruminating on briefly talking about Enlightenment/Awakening and what it can mean in our lives. I mean, how we engage with this process. I think I’ve been wanting to talk just a little bit about it because I think it is a natural process that can happen when we’re learning how to “get out of our own way” and live more from the heart.

It’s easier for me to describe how I would not want to react to these shifts than how I would. Hang tight please. I get to the how I would not engage with the kind of awakening/enlightment shifts a little later on. I feel some shifts are like initiations. I feel initiations are a kind recognition of the personal work accomplished than something given to anyone. They can signify accomplishment at the same time the threshold of another beginning.

I never sought “Enlightment” or “Awakening”. These were words I suppose I only really became familiar with in my late-twenties after a kind of awakening (as I would begin to realize was happening some time after the initial happenings).

I’ll be turning thirty six years old this summer. The last seven years have been so full. They have been extremely challenging and rewarding.

I want to talk about Enlightenment/Awakening from my perception of my own process. Now, a bit later in my life, I’ve heard different teachers speak about how such things can happen outside of some initiatic tradition/spiritual systems. They can happen in what seems like a “spontaneous” way (as in my experience). However close the word spontaneous may come to trying to define such experiences, it’s my impression that work has been going on for a long time before such spontaneous awakenings. Some may call it fate. Some could call it fate and some deeper will of a soul (whether it is even barely conscious of its efforts towards realization before waking up). It could be realized as the fruit of loving labour. A spontaneous awakening can feel overwhelming for some time, yet it is just another beginning that takes us more clearly down our path/process.

I kind of avoid saying the words enlightenment and awakening because they feel quite overused and sought, and such things cannot be “used” or “had”. They are processes of realization. This is why I almost always use the word “realization”. For the sake of this post I am using the words enlightenment and awakening to help the audience know better what I’m referring to.

The goal of this post is to hopefully inspire the reader to open more fully to their experiences and brave the “undoing/realizing”, regardless of how gradual or spontaneous such things may seem. I may describe more of how I would not try to traverse these more heightened and transformative times of our life. I encourage you to whole-heartedly engage with yourself and discern what you believe is most helpful for you at any moment. This is one of the greatest purposes we can develop from engaging in realization and it’s the way we can create and feel great meaning in our lives. If you’re like me, you’ll learn through trial by fire, haha. “Well shit, that didn’t work out like I hoped.” (I lick my wounds and then look at what that taught me).

More context of my perspective comes by telling you I grew up in the Christian tradition and in several different “tightnesses” of the tradition. From baptist to progressive/affirming churches. Kind of sad I have to describe Progressive as just an option for a kind of church. What are the other churches doing then? Telling themselves they have it “right”? It’s hard to wake up when we’re clinging to a worldview/reality that affirms our beliefs while we are not even willing to explore, experience, and learn in a more embodied and genuine way. We can’t do much learning, growing, and contributing when we believe we are no good and the world is “going to hell in a hand basket”….and while we’re willing to knock down anything we feel threatened by (it happens to be a lot when we’re insecure and afraid). We can’t really begin to wake up until we are willing to let go. Ya know, like being willing to lay down our attachments and things we love, even unto a kind of death….cough cough…. Anyways, I wrote and led worship music for a number of years. I was consistently involved in Christian circles in different capacities until my late twenties. I’m grateful for the community and support I found through some folks while I was navigating these initial quite challenging shifts.

It wasn’t in attending church and doing things that I was seeking so much a kind of meaning. These outward actions were more an expression of what I call (in hindsight) a “holy longing”. They were also an expression of my posture of devotion. Devotion wasn’t even a thing on my mind. I didn’t do those things because I “thought I should” or that I would be spared an angry god… It is just who I am. I would describe the first three decades of my life as a creative/expressive/sincere longing for something. Sometimes I was more conscious of this longing than other times. I’m saying in looking back I see it. I didn’t have ideas of what I was longing for or looking for, but the Christian tradition and my “relationship” with Jesus was one way I could connect with and find inspiration of unconditional love and service (even if at that time I was really struggling to love myself).

I think it is very good to not believe there is some kind of solid destination, arrival, or hold some idea of what a kind of experience will look or feel like. This kind of process is not about an arrival of some kind, but for me a study of the way things more truly are. It is our work to make room. Such things cannot be grasped through thought (the way we’ve been used to operating). True love is an act of surrendering. We have to sacrifice something of the old way, and this is the only way to open an initial kind of door. Experience is the true teacher.

I’m grateful for my own awakening process. In not knowing what it could mean, be, or what I’m going through exactly or towards, I am able to relate more directly with my experiences and learn from them…rather than waste more time and energy measuring/judging myself. I am obviously still learning and going through this, but for the purpose of this post I’m often talking in past tense to convey the first couple years.

The first couple years felt very scary and confusing at times, yet I realized more about myself/gifts than I could have ever imagined or knew I could be capable of. These things were happening not because I tried, but because I kept doing my best at letting go. I felt quite lost at times, and then at other times felt so amazingly alive and in tune with my life that I didn’t question I was on my path. In these first few years I couldn’t comprehend how events and people were aligning with me because I was just doing that day. Only in retrospect could I be even more wowwed. I was just doing my best to navigate the upsets to the way I used to experience myself/life and I was finding the courage to help myself and make changes. One of the harder things about the first couple years was continually deciding that the path I was on was true and good even though it didn’t offer the certainty of certain communities/beliefs/work I was used to…even though it didn’t fit in a framework and no one was patting me on the back. Walking one’s path can feel lonely at times, but when we stay true our quality of being increases and we are able to recognize those qualities in certain events/individuals/occupations that may present themselves in our lives. We learn to identify what is worth our energy and attention and what is not.

The digital age continually becomes a reality of constant bombardment of information and ideas. It’s easy to get lost in and consumed by it. We are very good at and accustomed to living in our heads (at least I am!), but I think we can be quite unaware of how our mind works and what the mind really is. Anything we can do to learn how to still our minds/meditate will help us have some kind of foundation and “place” to return when the energy coming through us has us feeling rattled.

It’s hard to slow down enough to find some kind of stillness to begin to feel more in our bodies and “hear” what it is we are really about. I have felt for a very long time that part of my purpose (at least my own will) is to do my own work and in vulnerability hold space for others navigating their own growth/transformation.

I’ve spoken a little bit about what I don’t think is helpful. I’ve said that believing we already know gets in the way of us really beginning to know. Alternatively, we can succumb to genuine experience to gain understanding. We have to be willing to change (in a sense). Transformation begins with beginning to observe and recognize the habits of the mind. It is unhelpful and more painful to cling. Why do I mention clinging now? Because I think it is so endemic of culture that we accept it as normal, and even go as far as accusing lovers of not loving us when they don’t cling back. We are not so good at being what we long for, Free. It freaks us out… We cling to people and call our attachments love. We cling to what we have determined should make us happy so we never really get to enjoy the happiness of the present moment. The present moment is where really good work can happen. Sometimes we just need a little help finding it. Our goal can be to find a way to be in the moment and experience our range of experiences. From here we study and realize how we work, what that teaches us about what/who we are, so we may more consciously embody who we are. This manifests in purpose and a meaning-filled life.

If what I am writing resonates with you, maybe you’ve been feeling what I call the holy longing. Sometimes it is right there when we’re feeling incomplete. Sometimes it gives us hope and curiosity and drive. I wonder if it is what we are calling to and what is calling us, like a lover. Maybe it is Calling us closer to something we have believed could maybe one day help us feel whole.