Not All Suffering Means Enlightenment

            Since I’ve shared through my memoir and recent interviews the great difficulty I passed through when consciousness shifted here, a few people have shared that they went through a rough patch of anxiety or depression at some point in their life and they wonder if that means that they are now enlightened. Others tell of leaving behind a life in middle age, as I did, and wonder if that was because they are enlightened. Some have wondered if they should welcome suffering to cause enlightenment!

By far, depression is depression, and anxiety and fear are anxiety and fear and have to do with psychology, ego, and/or chemical imbalance, and nothing at all to do with enlightenment. And by far, a mid-life upheaval of one’s life is simply an ordinary mid-life crisis.

I saw this meme on social media once: Beyond great suffering is great liberation. This does not refer to all suffering. It refers to the specific suffering experience of ego as it falls away in the enlightenment process. Ego’s suffering does not cause enlightenment; enlightenment causes the suffering that is ego to rise fully to conscious awareness as it is released.

Besides enlightenment occurring after many years, if not decades, of preparation through a growing awareness of Truth, the hallmark of en-light-en-ment is not suffering but is the Light coming to stay in your conscious awareness, while awake or asleep, no matter ego is still there. This Everpresence is characterized in various ways by those who experience It, as the Immortal, the Infinite, Divine Love, Spirit, etc.

I experience It as an Everpresent Wholeness and sometimes as the Infinite and call It simply Spirit. Leading up to The Shift, I was aware of Spirit here as a feeling of no longer being in the world, of feeling I am truly Elsewhere. I felt in a new dimension. Even in the darkest and most insane moments of ego-death, I still felt those things. I was aware of Spirit (the Everpresent Wholeness) as a surrounding Context in Which the darkness was occurring. So, as ego is suffering, do not look to suffering to recognize approaching enlightenment, but rather to the Everpresence of the Light, whatever you call It.

There are many uncomfortable stages in a true spiritual process. The dawning experience—the Period of Undoing in A Course in Miracles—may have many similarities with enlightenment. It can be both joyful and uncomfortable, especially if it involves mystical experiences. A huge shift in values occurs, disrupting your life and relationships. You may temporarily feel Spirit or a new Dimension around. But this passes, and even though you are changed, ordinary life continues, and you still feel very much a part of the world you were in before.

The Period of Sorting out was a long, hard slog for me, full of nasty ego backlashes after any kind of positive spiritual experience. I had dysthymia (chronic low-grade depression) and panic and anxiety disorder, but while ego added to these when it was threatened, these experiences were not the same as the terrible experiences ego was to have when enlightenment began. And the Period of Relinquishment was uncomfortable at first, and brought changes in my personal life, but life continued to feel the same, albeit with a new, great willingness to follow Spirit.

Despite a difficult mind and various shifts in my life, at no time did I feel in those stages that an entirely new experience of existence had come, or that I was no longer in the world, as I was to feel when enlightenment occurred.

Enlightenment is rare. Rarer still is sudden enlightenment that is not preceded by Spirit rising to conscious awareness over a long period. Many stories of sudden enlightenment out there are not enlightenment, but rather someone having the first dawning experience of Truth on their mind, which is shocking and transforming, but not a wholesale shift in consciousness.

Oh, I know—ego is awful, and you want your painful experiences to have a purpose, to perhaps cause enlightenment, or at least to mean that you are “getting somewhere”, that you are advancing spiritually, and enlightenment is close. But wishful thinking will not make it so, and it is even more painful to come out of self-deception than to face the truth in the first place. The sign of approaching enlightenment is not only an uncomfortable ego—if that were so, everyone would be on the edge of enlightenment!—but ego growing uncomfortable because Spirit has become everpresent in your awareness and ego is being pushed out as the center of your consciousness. In any case, whether enlightenment is approaching or not, the way to mitigate the pain of ego is to let it have its say and let it pass and turn your attention to Spirit.

Do not think that you are missing out if you do not experience enlightenment. It is ego that thinks enlightenment is valuable, but it is ego that falls away when it happens. Enlightenment is not necessary. It is just as much an illusion as everything else in consciousness.

 

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