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5 Myths About Enlightenment
1. Enlightenment is a long journey that takes many years, decades, or even lifetimes to achieve.
Enlightenment is realizing that what you are, have always been, and in fact cannot help but be is pure Consciousness. That you are not the “self-image” you have of yourself, nor your thoughts or even your body. Rather, your original nature, your unconditioned essence, is timeless Awareness.
Because it’s fully what you already are, you cannot “do” anything to get there. Thus, the journey to enlightenment is one of no distance. An analogy would be: How far does the ocean need to go to find water? The answer is no distance. It just needs to clearly recognize what it already is.
The reason it is so challenging to awaken to our original infinite nature is because we have been told/conditioned since birth that we are our body and/or the image we have of ourselves in our mind, i.e., our “self-image.” We are not. What are we? We are THAT which silently observes or is AWARE of everything we experience. This includes all thoughts, feelings, sensations, images and perceptions that arise within, as well as “the outside world” (in fact, we could say that we are not in the world, the world is in us!). For example, how do you know you have a body? You know because you are aware of it. How do you know you have thoughts? You know because you are aware of them. Simply put, your nature is AWARENESS itself.
2. I will be enlightened as soon as I learn how to stop my thoughts.
This is a common misconception. The reality is that you don’t need for your thoughts to stop to awaken; you just need to stop identifying with them. But this is not so easy because most of us have spent a lifetime doing just that. The key is to observe them; to silently watch them. Get some space between you and the arising thought and notice that you are present before the thought, during the thought, and after the thought, so the thought cannot be you. In fact, are you not fully present even when no thought is arising?
3. Enlightenment means I will be free of the ego.
The ego is necessary for the body’s survival and is what tells us when to run from danger or defend ourselves. However, although we rarely find ourselves in actual physical life or death situations, the ego approaches our psychological disturbances with this same fight or flight response. If someone insults us or cuts us off in traffic, the ego kicks in and feels threatened.
The key is to see that we are not our ego. By observing it as it gets triggered we can start to get some space between us and it. The more space, the less pull it has over us. Pretty soon the ego begins to feel like a spoiled child who is always whining and complaining because it wants what it wants when it wants it. The ego’s mantra is, “Me, me, me!”
Rather than get angry at “the child,” we can begin to love it and assure it that it’s safe. By not taking our ego so seriously, we literally begin to lighten up. Again, no need to get rid of the ego—clearly seeing it is not you is enough.
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2014/03/5-myths-about-enlightenment/
