Friday, March 15, 2013

Enlightenment is the problem (ARTICLE)


by Jeff Foster

The enlightened 'state' is not the solution. It is the unnecessary problem.

When we seek an enlightened 'state' outside of our present experience, our search immediately becomes a rejection and denial of Now, of life exactly as it is, and this 'NO' is the origin of all violence and suffering. In the name of a future freedom and enlightenment, we go to war with ourselves and violate a sacred moment.

The mind could never understand enlightenment, and that's why it invents the mirage of the enlightened 'state', to always keep the goal at a distance, to maintain the illusion of time, to prevent the collapse into Mystery it fears so deeply, in its innocence.

Secretly, we don't seek the enlightened state, experience or person, we seek the source of it all, That which is already enlightened, That which is always and already the light, That which never needs to reach or become the light in time or space.

And so the search for the light collapses in on itself, and all that is left is light, with nobody there to claim or own it, or even to call it 'light'. This is why anyone who claims to be enlightened cannot be enlightened at all. It's the very 'claiming' mechanism, the 'person' itself, that is exposed here in the ever-present universal Light of life. All claims of enlightenment and its absence become meaningless here, and melt into a radical and loving embrace of present experience, the embrace we always sought 'out there', in people, substances and seemingly separate objects. Love is the end of seeking love in time and space.

Love, as the effortless unconditional embrace of every thought, sensation and feeling as it arises and falls in perfect awareness, is the answer to everything, however clichéd that sounds to the cynical mind.

Jeff Foster

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