To Get "Enlightenment," Give It Away

Do you wish to be enlightened?

Why?

If the premise behind your seeking enlightenment is because the world sucks, most likely enlightenment will elude you.

This is because “you” are not separate from your “world" and your personal self-construct was manufactured in direct interaction and engagement with that world. You are a “you” because, and only because, the world is a “world.” The world defines “you,” as you define the world. Seek to disengage with that ‘experience’ and you only reinforce the very experience you seek to disengage with...an unenlightened world that often truly sucks.

Therefore, to have “enlightenment” you must first give it to receive it. Only in that way will you realize that it is yours and that you are "enlightened." If you don't experience it in the world, you don't have it. In truth, the concepts of 'giving' and 'receiving' are collapsed, since there is no separation and what you give must be received.

Unfortunately, for the ego, to give is to lose and this is because, for the ego existence is predicated on experiencing itself separate from its experience of the world. Therefore, the ego’s plan for enlightenment is to disengage from the world through its own personal transcendence in which its experience of a “world” is somehow left behind and negated in exaltation of a transcendent ‘self.’

Problem with this faulty logic is that the ego is not separate from its world, just an experience of separation derived solely from a delusional premise of individuality.Your experience of "you" and your experience of the 'world' are both an experiential construct of the same mind.

If you wish to experience "enlightenment," then it would behoove you to first experience it as in the world. This is because you can only have what you give away and only by giving it away will you realize that you have it. There is simply no separation between your ‘self’ and your experience of a world. This is what “enlightenment” ultimately informs. Truth does not differentiate parts, but illuminates an experience of wholeness.

Yet, this brings us to a nasty dilemma since, to give the world enlightenment, you must have it first and this is can be resolved in only one way.

You do have it because you are already enlightened.

Therefore, you already have what the ego seeks to attain. Yet, you have yet to realize what you have, because you fail to extend it or give it away and this is because, for the ego, to give away is to lose and no longer have. This is why the ego seeks to 'get' enlightenment and usually has little thought as to what the world might 'get' as a result. Mostly, the ego just figures that if it gets enlightened, then the world will merely be blessed with another enlightened ego presence.

Just what the world needs. Ha!

Nevertheless, only by giving the world enlightenment, can you benefit from the knowledge that it is yours, since you are not separate from your experience of your 'world.' There is NO separation and seeking to have enlightenment for your ‘self’ merely perpetuates the delusion that you can have something separate from your world. You are IN your world and your world is IN you. See enlightenment in your world and rest assured that it is yours.

To know you are enlightened, you must give it away and because in truth there can be no separation between you and your world, what you give in extension must be retained. Yet, you can only know that you retain enlightenment, when the world is so illuminated through that retaining extension of enlightened 'self.'

So, today, see the world enlightened in the knowledge that it must be, because you ARE. The proof of your enlightenment is out there in your interior experience of an exterior world.

Otherwise, you will continue to substitute suffering for enlightenment and, in your attempts to escape what the world reflects back, you will only make it more real. In your experience of "existence," the line separating 'self' from 'world' is truly imaginary, simply because you made it up.