Enlightenment or non-enlightenment

Enlightenment or non-enlightenment. What’s the difference?

I’m often asked this question and each time I respond, my answer is always a little different. Here is my latest reply. It seems a big part of the work I now do is to offer clarity, transparency and honesty about the Path and the enlightened condition. I hope this article sheds some light on what can be a confusing and myth-bound topic.

“Anne, in your experience how would you best compare the non-enlightened state of existence with the enlightened state of existence?”

Although I use the word enlightenment frequently, I have an ambivalent relationship with it, especially in reference to myself. I just don’t see myself or describe myself that way … and yet something happened many years ago that changed pretty much everything and continues to do so.

Until around twenty years ago, I was a lost soul. Despite decades of committed spiritual work, I had no idea who I truly was. I was anxious, lonely and unhappy. I had cobbled together an artificial social mask to get by, but it was exhausting to maintain and mostly I chose to remain alone.

When the breakdown/breakthrough finally came, most of that very personal suffering disappeared. I couldn’t believe it. My 25-year identity as a seeker also disappeared and that was extremely disorienting – it was a long time before I stopped trying to locate it or believing that something was wrong because it was absent.

What arrived in place of these things was spaciousness, peace and a quiet joy – our natural state. And indeed it felt very natural – as though I had been upside down all those years and now here I was, the right way up.

I certainly didn’t think I’d become enlightened.

Since then, the qualities of this new state have continued to evolve. My sense of personal control — over my life, my purpose, even my expression — has disappeared. I’ve come to recognise that this isn’t something for me, but something life uses through me for its own purposes. (Which can be quite frustrating.)

I seem to have been given access when required to insights and understandings that can be of benefit to others. I feel absolutely rooted and in no way separate from all-that-is (and from all-that-isn’t – the more universal or cosmic dimensions). The sense of belonging and at-oneness is extremely rewarding.

I still suffer with the challenges of life, and deeply entrenched early psychological scarring occasionally raises its head. Most of the time this condition feels more like servitude and less like the ‘freedom’ I had always imagined, but within the servitude there is freedom. And a profound peace and inner integration and wholeness.