Confusion Caused By the Early Stage of Enlightenment

    “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV

 What I did not know to expect when enlightenment occurs is the years-long overlap of Spirit and ego in consciousness while ego slowly falls away. This means there is a long stage in which the mind having the experience does not fully understand what is occurring. This early stage of enlightenment is much like the much earlier stage of spiritual awareness that I call dawning, when one first becomes aware of the real world in consciousness or Reality (God) beyond consciousness through a mystical experience or experiences. You see amazing things, but not clearly. The difference is, after the dawning experience, your experience of existence goes on as usual, as ego is still the center of your consciousness, although you feel changed. And enlightenment means a very different experience of existence, as it is now Spirit. Spirit has come to stay in your conscious awareness, knocking ego off the center of your consciousness. But at the start, ego has only just begun to wind down, so it is still powerful. It is a long while before it moves out of the way enough for Spirit to emerge and for you to see more clearly that a new world has come and what that world is.

Confusion over cause and effect and enlightenment persists because many teachers who have shifted consciousness do not yet understand that they are in a new consciousness, a new world, a new context. So, they try to teach the effects of enlightenment as causes of enlightenment. They teach experiences what now come naturally in their new state as practices to reach that state. For example, some teachers who have shifted consciousness have the experience of feeling emotions with great intensity, which is followed by a sense of joy or liberation. This can be a natural effect in the early enlightenment process. It is not a practice; the one experiencing it does not make it happen. The intensity of the emotion is a sign of ego dying off, which is why joy and a sense of liberation follow. It is not the case that deliberately feeling things to the fullest leads to liberation from ego. Yet, many teachers having this early experience will teach that if you just feel your emotions fully, you will find liberation behind them.  And this will not happen for someone who has not shifted consciousness. It may still be good practice to fully allow feelings and not deny them. It may help them pass more quickly. But it will not lead to liberation from ego. You cannot think or meditate or desire or practice your way to enlightenment.

As well as mistakenly trying to teach how to cause enlightenment, there is a great deal of misleading teaching by teachers early in the enlightenment process who have not yet realized that they are in a completely different consciousness than they were before, and that the “laws” are not the same and cannot be applied to the consciousness (ego) that is falling away. A classic example of this is the “law of attraction.” In Spirit-consciousness, what you need in the world shows up (“manifests”) effortlessly. Sometimes, this happens after something needed has been coming to the teacher’s mind, and perhaps has even been pictured vividly. The idea, the imaging, and the manifestation are effects of an expanded consciousness that is now in touch with the whole of consciousness. Manifesting cannot be caused by learning some trickery of mind in ego-consciousness, like focusing on what you want to make it show up. The teacher didn’t focus, anyway. The images came to them. The picture of the needed object or situation was naturally in their mind because it was going to show up.

Ego misshapes much of the early part of the enlightenment experience, just as it does in the much earlier dawning experience. Ego interprets the experience of Spirit rising to conscious awareness as something for itself, so it takes the sense of Power rising to conscious awareness for itself. It may feel like it can do anything in, and make anything it wants of, consciousness, and life can briefly feel very exciting. This is a period of intense spiritualized ego, where ego takes what is true for Spirit, and tries to apply it to itself and consciousness. For me, this took the shape of a new holy relationship, which baffled me, as I didn’t expect another singular expression of the holy relationship. (My first was during the dawning experience 34 years before.) And, indeed, it did turn out that the holy relationship was not an expression of a new life that had come but was in fact an expression of the ending of the old experience of existence, of ego. It was, in essence, ego’s last gasp to try to seem real.

The enlightenment experience requires a great deal of looking inward, discernment, honesty, and time to understand what is occurring, even if one is prepared. It is never what one expects. And it is hard to not jump to conclusions too soon. So many of ego’s treasured illusions about God and reality must come apart, and that takes time. You discover that everything you thought, believed, or felt you knew had been shaped by ego, had been seen only from ego’s perspective. Ego was the god here, the arbiter of reality, and it had it all wrong. Until it is understood that ego is still causing miss-seeing, a teacher who has shifted consciousness will misteach and mislead.

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