604 – Broken Relationship: The Kindness of a Hundred-Year Perspective
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John de Ruiter Podcast 377
John de Ruiter Podcast 377
What is Enlightenment?
When: July 6, 2014 @ 2:00pm
Topics: Enlightenment & Awakening, Introductory
Enlightenment has the reputation of being the epitome of spiritual attainment. In this short talk, John opens up what enlightenment does – and doesn’t – mean.
“Your evolution as awareness isn’t dependent on enlightenment; it is dependent on you being all-weather home.”
- What is Enlightenment? 00:00
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Podcast Transcript
What is Enlightenment?
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.
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