This article was written by my friend and mentor, Leslie Temple-Thurston of http://www.corelight.org. It is the best description of a confusion I encounter daily in my work, that I have ever read. I hope it serves you well! Blessings! -Mary (Nalini) http://www.delphicwave.com
“Many of my students are moving into advanced spiritual studies and making good, sound progress towards advanced states that bring the resolution to this long journey we have been making together. Because of this I feel the need to address something that I have wanted to talk about for quite sometime. It has to do with the way in which we all seem to interchange the words “awakening” and “enlightenment.” There is a difference between the states that these two words represent—a rather large difference in fact, and I would like to discuss this with you now so that we can all get clear on it and find a deeper understanding at this crucial time in our evolution.
Awakening is a term that is used a lot now, much more than the term enlightenment. I can only hazard a guess as to why this is—maybe it’s because “awakenings” are happening every day to lots of people and enlightenment is not! And maybe it is just a more up-to-date term for the kind of movement that many people are making these days, who knows! It seems there are many different kinds of movements towards awakening nowadays! However, there does seem to be some confusion happening here and it is time to clarify this. Essentially, it appears we are talking about two different states of consciousness—in the same ballpark, but in outcome and reach, actually different. Defining the difference between them is what I would like to do now.
I, like most people have used the term “awakening” as well, and I know that in my mind I have a precise sense of what I mean by that, just as using the term enlightenment is also clearly defined in my mind. But I don’t think that the differences the language conveys are necessarily observed by others or even understood. The two terms are being used inter-changeably, which is something that I would not do. So I would like to get a bit clearer about this with all of you, so that we can all be on the same page with what we each mean about where we are going.
Let’s start with the way I see and define the word “awakening” and then move on to the other one. Awakening seems to denote moments of sudden “ah ha’s” in our lives where we suddenly and unexpectedly have big breakthroughs in our understanding of reality, and cognize the resulting shifts in consciousness that are taking place in us. This all leads us towards a broader perspective on the ultimate Truth of life and who we are. These shifts come non–stop when one is an enthusiastic student seeking liberation from the old, structured 3D ego states. But these are openings of various sorts on the journey, not the attainment of the final destination—that of knowing the ultimate Truth of who you truly are.The road to enlightenment is marked by many of these awakenings of the kind that are taking you in a certain direction—to Oneness and the knowledge of who you truly are!
I suppose to someone on a slower path, an awakening of the sort I am speaking of would seem like “The Awakening”—and that someone could choose to see themselves as “The Awakened One”. However, I am sure you can see that this would be a mistake on their part, and I am not sure that too many people are that naive any more.
What really happens on the journey to enlightenment is that someone must experience repeated changes and breakthroughs of a certain particular kind, in order to move specifically towards enlightenment—even if they do it at breakneck speed (which is certainly increasingly possible in today’s climate for change.)
There are other options of course that cultivate breakthroughs that are not taking someone towards enlightenment. One could be consciously seeking a level of shamanic insight and have many breakthroughs along the way. The goal is simply not the same however as the path to enlightenment. There are many examples I could offer here, but let’s take just one here. One can have shamanic experiences that are also helpful along the way to enlightenment! But without seeking the specific goal of “enlightenment” one will not be able to move into that state—and no matter how many awakenings one has, something else will happen. It is possible to accumulate knowledge about many different spheres of reality—all very interesting, even useful in one’s life, but not necessarily being the state of enlightenment.
Enlightenment is the moment of ultimate Truth when all the cumulative shifts come together to produce a state of realization like no other—a realization that opens awareness way beyond the personal, small self and into knowing clearly what the nature of Divine Reality is, as well as One’s Own True Nature. It is pure consciousness realizing the Ultimate Truth about non-duality, about yourself really being the Oneness. No longer being able to see the state of separation of the human as true or real. This shift is a quantum leap into a completely different mode of perception. Gone is the perception of duality, the world, how one perceives life, or the dualistic perception of god from the ego’s point of view, and everything else one can think of, as being real.
The birth of non-dual consciousness in someone who has lived in duality all their lives results in a vast sea-change in everything about the one who experiences this. One’s perception of life changes (for the better), and an entirely new phase of one’s journey begins within the context of the knowledge of non-duality. One is no longer awakened or awakening, one is simply something else, Oneness.
Enlightenment is a completely new state that comes in after one has had many, many small and big awakenings of a specific ego-dissolving nature, over the course of linear time! So, enlightenment is the cumulative effect of someone’s consciousness changing in a certain specific direction, mostly by returning to its non-egoic state sufficiently often, to where the cumulative effect of all the changes create one major change in the perception of Truth and who one is within that Truth, before one can see it as the completion of one’s work. This may sound intimidating, but it must have been your experience thus far, so don’t worry. Many of you are entering the most interesting phase now!
Enlightenment only comes after a structured journey of many, many awakenings. And it has a fairly defined appearance, one that is common to most people who have reached it. This new state is so different in its manifestation that it has the effect of ending one’s old life-perception in all ways except the physical. In other words the journey from dualistic reality to non-dual reality is so different, one cannot conceive of it with the dualistic mind. One gets to keep the body with enlightenment, but all the rest, the ego stories and states of consciousness of the old way of perceiving and living, have gone away. One is in a state of unity consciousness, seeing Oneness everywhere, and no longer relating in the same way to the duality of the relative world, and all that this implies.
I believe that the word “awakening” is a way of describing the journey to another reality and there are other realities besides the enlightened state, such as the shamanic one I described earlier. These other options can also have stages of working through the dualities and finding some unity in some places yet also still dealing with places in oneself that are still battling with old ego habits that keep us in separations still and holding some dualities still to be dealt with—all very similar to what the path to enlightenment feels to many of you right now. But I think the question is where do you choose to stop? Are you willing to put in the time and go all the way home?
Enlightenment is a huge doorway out of ego and into full realization of who one truly is –in its totality—a new paradigm in being something entirely different than one’s ego capacity seemed to be, and a graduation into another world. A world of total balance, total seeing, total insight into the what’s, why’s, and wherefore’s about human ego, life, death and who we REALLY ARE once we escape the disguise of the limited ego self. So enlightenment is knowing the truth of existence, that it means being beyond ego, no limited person there—only voidness, vast yet totally intelligent, coherent voidness—the birth of the luminous, golden void after you have made the laborious journey through the illusion of the dark void of the shadow ego and come home into the luminous, golden void. One has become “the One without a second”. Yet You/It still can appear to play in the fields of the illusion as “Oneness in service to humanity”, but Your Awareness is clear that there is no such thing as ego, no person doing anything, no “real” world, not really, just the Truth of Divine Intelligence as Light, playing by creating virtual realities for its own joy.
If you have come so far as to be reading this, be aware that this lifetime is truly a defining lifetime for you. Make no mistake about the fact that you are doing a study of enlightenment rather than making a more tentative movement towards higher consciousness. It means that your soul has seen that it is ready to make the big leap forward. No matter if you don’t make it into full and complete enlightenment in the next two and a half years, you will be able to reach a much clearer connection to your own Oneness, such that this time will constitute a huge surge forward in your evolution.
It is certainly worth a massive effort to get as far along as you can, with the energy currents right now supplying “the wind beneath your wings”! This opportunity will make all the difference in the end. It’s a not-to-be-missed experience. Simply to give it all you’ve got now!
I will see you there.”
©2010 Leslie Temple-Thurston, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Website:
http://www.delphicwave.com/the-difference-between-awakening-and-enlightenment/
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