Enlightenment is Now!

Various schools of thoughts teach techniques to attain the state of enlightenment. And the assumption is that the seeker will follow the technique with devotion and faith and eventually his effort reaches fruition and the ultimate realization of truth dawns.

One has to be extremely careful when treading this path. If it is not understood carefully, this journey can become a never-ending journey and the seeker can never become free from seeking.

Ultimately the seeker needs to die. As long as the seeker is present, the seeking will continue. And seeking is always in the future. It is never now. You seek now to get something in the future. But Truth is in the Now and you miss that "Now" as you are busy seeking something in the future. This future will never come. As when the future actually becomes the Now, you are still seeking. And this becomes a never ending journey of endless seeking.

Enlightenment is Now. It is in this moment. So don't seek now; cause you have missed the Truth.

Does that mean we should drop seeking? That is also not correct. You cannot really drop seeking. As seeking is your nature. But you can drop all ideas about seeking. All ideas about Truth. And then the very process of seeking is the truth. You are no longer seeking truth in the future. But you are seeking and experiencing the truth now. As Enlightenment is Now, not tomorrow.

Effort Grace Enlightenment

Enlightenment cannot happen through effort alone. But effort is necessary for enlightenment. Because it is only through effort that we become the recipient of grace.

Enlightenment happens only through grace. It is said luck favors the brave. Similarly grace favors the one who makes effort.

You can never really Observe

It has been a notion that one can Observe one's feelings, thoughts, emotions and actions and eventually be free from them. But the truth is that one can never really observe.

Let us say that one is trying to be free from the emotional roller coaster one is going through. And this person decides to observe his or her emotions. The moment you observe the emotion ceases to exist in that moment. As the very same emotion transforms itself to be the observer. Once the observer disappears the emotion sets back in.

You are either the emotion or the observer but both can never coexist. And this coexistence is an illusion created due to thought. We may "think" that we are observing something but there is no real observation. Its just thinking. There can never be observation at the realm of the mind.

When you observe a thing or an emotion with the mind, you become that thing. Lets say I am watching TV. In the moment I am engrossed in the TV episode, my mind is the episode. It cannot stand outside of it and observe it. Once the episode is over, the mind can start thinking about it and in that moment the mind becomes the thought. But there is no real observation.

As long as the mind is present, the observer is the observed or the observed is the observer. Observer is non-different from the observed. And observer is nothing but the grand accumulation of all the things observed in the past. So they are wedded together as they are coming from the same essence.

Transformation not a factor of time

It has been conventionally believed that transformation is a factor of time. We think that by doing some action now, we can become something else tomorrow. In order to transform or change, we believe that time plays an important role and its a process in time that brings about a transformation. 

The ego is a function of time. And ego persists in time and creates this illusion of time. And all our effort has been carried out in time alone. The ego believes strongly that its effort in time can result in a transformation of itself where it ceases to exist. In short ego is trying to kill itself continuously in time.

We need to understand here that ego has a survival instinct. And it can never really kill itself as its against its own nature. It has no gains in killing itself. It thrives on its existence and affirmation of its being. And all spiritual quest has been carried out by the ego. It thinks that its going to achieve something grand, something spectacular. So in this whole process of seeking, the ego does everything else except giving up itself. 

Let me give you an example. Lets say, I tell you that ego needs to give up. And only then realization comes forth. The ego will understand this as a concept, an idea and try to implement on this. It will always ask a question...how am I supposed to do it. What should I do? Give me a task and I will get it done. Should I meditate or should I contemplate or should I try to be aware. And I just smile at these questions as they were my questions too. These are the questions of every seeker. 

And there is no clear answer. All I can say is there is nothing you can do to achieve it. Absolutely nothing. The question what should I do is meaningless. Sorry, you cannot do anything. And this understanding is enough. After that if something happens its grace. If nothing happens, who cares? There is nobody waiting for something to happen, isn't it?

Like to quote the late Allan W Anderson's poem.....

Silent as a petal’s power. Silken as the rain. Love unbinds the ancient knot. Time interlaced in vain - Allan W. Anderson

Right here, Right now..

I was surprised when it was revealed to me that the Truth is right here, right now. It was the first glimpse of the Absolute as it were. And once having been in that wonderland, it comes with a stamp of guarantee that its present always, all the time and beyond time and space. You may call it awareness or bliss but attributes are still a construct of the mind.

Once the gates of the absolute are open, there is no going back. There is no state to be experienced any more. As you are that. The mind just merges back into the source. The experiencer, the experienced and the experience all dissolve into that vast singularity that remains statically ever present. Time and Space consciousness dissolves completely and what remains is the inexpressible.

This was revealed to me on Aug 17th, 2014. All this while I was searching everywhere. I was searching the truth in logic, in reasoning and in my meditations. But in lay mans term it comes as a bummer that truth was right here, right now. Its neither inside nor outside. Its nowhere but everywhere. You can never find it as you are it.

This is just the beginning of the journey. And this journey is infinite. Its not my journey anymore. It is a journey. Its a journey of mankind. And like any other journey, this journey does not happen in time or space. It cannot be experienced. It cannot be expressed. It cannot be described. But it is; and without it nothing is.