Q: What is enlightenment?
John: Consciousness opened into a greater spectrum of reality than what can be perceived and known from within one’s self, enabling the self and the experience of the self to have a context that doesn’t come from that self, giving enough perspective within that self for the self to more easily rest because of the so much more that carries it.
Being enlightened doesn’t mean that one is home. It means that there is knowing and seeing as awareness that is far beyond what’s common in this world; a knowing and a seeing that balances all other seeing.
Coming into enlightenment greatly changes your experience of reality, and that doesn’t mean that you are then, as awareness, in full response to all you know. It doesn’t mean that you are one with all you know. It doesn’t mean that you’re home, that you are at rest in your heart in what you know.
Your evolution as awareness isn’t dependent on enlightenment; it is dependent on you being all-weather home. You will evolve as awareness much more in being in complete response to the little bit that you do know in your heart in the midst of every kind of internal weather system, than to be enlightened and in large response to what you know, but not complete.
Full response to the little you know evolves you more than great response to the much of enlightenment. If great isn’t full, you fool your self.
Being enlightened does not mean that there is no ego, no spiritual ego, lurking in its shadow. When you are home in your heart, home in what you know, there is no ego in all of the shadows. Should the light come on in any dark corner, there is response to what is known and no shrinking away, no wishing for the protection of a shadow.
Being enlightened means that the light within is significantly brighter than what’s common. You’re better off being completely at home in the cold and in the dark than to be almost completely home within all the bright light.
You’ll also evolve more as awareness to be at home within endarkenment than to be at home within enlightenment, unless, of course, you are home in enlightenment and in a life of extraordinary difficulty.
If you become enlightened, at the end of your life you’ll not bow to your enlightenment. You will softly bow because of the knowledge of how beautifully indebted you are to all of the difficulties in your life.
597 – The Person, the Self and the Being: Identifying the Many Levels of You (Part 1)
Person, self, being … what’s the difference and what is real? Using different analogies, John explains how our different levels connect and shares the code to being what we really are.
596 – Beyond Sadness and Pain: Happy Without a Reason
John reveals the source of the deep well of sadness and pain this person carries, and shares how she can reconnect with her original happiness.
595 – When a Crumb of Truth in Your Heart is Your Home
John responds to a spiritual dilemma: a desperate longing for realization, coupled with the fear of nothingness that seems to come with it.
594 – Fully Present in Your Body, Fully Present in Your Heart
Closing down to the experience of vulnerability can mean dissociating from the body. John shares a simple way to become more present however uncomfortable we feel.
593 – Honest to the Way of Your Heart
An exploration of how honesty and an open, soft heart are connected, taking us ever deeper into the unseen roots we could remain in forever.
591 – The Truth About Compassion
When is compassion self-centred, when is it real, and how can we tell? An exploration of what it means to be truly compassionate.
“My sole purpose is to be, in life, what we are after we’ve died. Through openness and softness of heart and core-splitting honesty at any personal cost, I live as that while actualizing the same in others I meet. I am available as a resource for anyone who recognizes and values this way of being.”
– John de Ruiter
