The Myth of Instant Enlightenment
Events and Process
We’ve all been there…
We went to a plant ceremony, breathwork session, meditation retreat or just learned something new that opened us to something we hadn’t seen before.
We feel open, expansive - invincible!
We think things will never be the same and we are full of the joy of life.
Then hours, days or weeks later it fades and we find ourselves in the same old reactive patterns and habits.
‘What happened?’ ‘How did I lose it?’
We guilt trip ourselves, telling ourselves we were deluded or that we did something wrong. We may even try to deny that it’s faded and plaster on a happy face, maintaining a façade. But deep down we know the moment has passed and life goes on - much as it did before.
“But why? Things were so clear. I was certain that things were never going to be the same again.”
Fantasies
There’s a pervasive fantasy that exists in our culture.
I call it the Instant Enlightenment Fantasy.
Whether you realise it or not, chances are you’ve been infected by this way of holding change, healing, transformation and learning. Whether we’re talking about miracle cures (pharmaceutical medicine, dietary dogmas, superfood-culture), transformational practices or or enlightenment itself, this idea of an instant and permanent shift in our experience is widespread and can be very toxic and have a defeating effect.
Even though I’ve believed this to be a myth for over ten years I was still living as if all my problems would wash away in a flash, once some miraculous event occurred - once I finally arrived at some fantasy location. Waiting for a miracle moment when all pain and suffering would be removed from my life.
The marketplace is geared around taking advantage of this disposition - politics is rife with it, especially in recent years.
I have had several such events, whether they be from psychedelics, meditation or deep contemplative work. I have had sudden shifts in consciousness which radically changed my context and viewpoint, and, consequently my state.
Here’s the thing though - a state is always temporary - by definition. And even though a state-shift may corelate with the event of becoming conscious of the truth of some matter, the two are distinct events. One is true, the other is passing. Something true does not change - it remains the same, regardless of the state we find ourselves in.
The pain and suffering comes from conflating the two.
Spiritual teachers rarely speak of the process that follows such events, probably because of how personal and individual it is. Either that or they never went through it!
Not to mention that communicating the gruelling process of unbecoming-false doesn’t sell books, products or workshops!
“Wait a minute,” I hear you say, “I’ve read books where teachers talk about a distinct moment where they experienced a permanent shift in consciousness.”
While I agree that a breakthrough happens instantly and can be radically life-transformative, the problem arises when we hold it that that’s an end. When, in my experience, it’s only the beginning.
Some of the Zen guys at least play lip service to this phenomena, as do teachers like Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie.
A Cellular Process
The assumption that all our problems can be resolved in a flash negates the personal responsibility necessary to produce deep and lasting change on a systems level.
Tissues in the body need time to adapt. Old beliefs, assumptions and dispositions need time to be composted in the light of our new consciousness.
We find ourselves compelled to reprogram our nervous systems to align to the newly-discovered reality.
This stuff takes time and running off to the next BIG EXPERIENCE is just more avoidance of the uncomfortable work of getting real.
Distinctions
If you want to elevate yourself from spiritual-pacifist to becoming an active participant in your own, unique transformation, you’re going to need to make some effective distinctions. There’s an night-and-day difference between those that chase phenomena and states and those that make existential distinctions and work to align their body-mind to those distinctions.
There are many distinctions that are helpful in this respect, but for today I just want to focus on: events and process.
- Events, in this case, are sudden revelations of something we hadn’t “seen” before - something new - a breakthrough into a more honest and direct relationship with an aspect of reality.
- Whereas process happens over time as we align to that reality through the gradual casting away of everything we’re participating in that is not in alignment with that reality.
Essentially, one is instantaneous and one unfolds over time.
Process is hard, which is why most people avoid it. Everyone’s process is different because we all have different wiring and different conditioning.
- The bad news (for some) is - no one teacher, model or practice can help you with your process - you’re kinda on your own.
- The good news is that all teachers, models or practices are now up for consideration. Which one will unlock the door you find yourself stuck behind in this moment?
A good teacher’s job is to help ignite your own journey by modelling what it’s like on the other side of the river you intend to cross.
They may share the tools and models that worked for them - or they may create more effective ones - but it’s not the tools or models that get you there - it’s YOU!
Whether we’re talking about a breakthrough in our experience of:
- our body
- our health
- the nature of self,
- mind,
- reality
- ultimate truth (there’s a LOT of enlightenments to be had!)
…slipping back into old ways of being and relating is inevitable when you consider the overwhelming momentum of decades of past habits.
Becoming conscious of the truth happens in an instant - aligning the body-mind to that reality can take years.
Here’s an analogy/ metaphor thingy (everybody loves one of those, right?):
I was just out playing on my slackline. And it occurred to me that balance is not a technique - it’s a skill (an effective way of relating). It is the alignment to a certain reality - one we all participate in, whether we acknowledge it or not - the reality of being a body relating to gravity, ground and space.
When I am effectively aligned to these components and forces it’s called balance. I can have moments of balance, where I am totally relaxed and relating to the environment effectively - these can be seen as our events (insights, breakthroughs or enlightenment experiences). But it’s through process (consistently fluctuating between balance and off-balance) that the body learns to rest in a dynamically-aligned relationship to said components and forces. By experiencing the difference in feeling between balance and off-balance, I learn to create the feeling of balance in order to create the experience of balance. Over time I learn to live as a “balanced person”.
Events show us what’s possible, but it’s in our commitment to living in alignment with the reality we see as possible that we learn to live as that truth.
An event may blow away the cobwebs, but unless we are vigilant with our feather duster those spiders will creep back in no time - spinning their webs of delusion and distortion - obscuring our view of the truth.
But here’s the thing.
Half the battle is creating the possibility of a new experience. Most people, although they believe something is possible in general, don’t live as it’s possible for them.
In those moments of clarity you saw something new. You’re already enlightened to that reality.
So you know something new is possible - half the battle is won!
But…
Doing the same technique that got you there will not lead to the same breakthrough, because it wasn’t the technique (drug/ model/ philosophy) that saw the truth, it was you.
Now that you’ve seen the truth its time to learn to BE that. And we do that by negating everything that is NOT that.
That’s how you create a solid foundation for your next leap into the unknown.
Without this step, further leaps are baseless - and possibly even harmful.
Remember this - there is no one enlightenment. There are many, many, many, many enlightenments to be had.
Siddhartha didn’t settle for his first enlightenment experience, he kept going. Why? Because he had a clear and specific goal - to free himself from the cycle of life, death and rebirth. And he saw that each of his enlightenment experiences were not the full realisation of that goal.
If you had a breakthrough, stay on it. If you let it go, notice that - don’t waste time beating yourself up - simply notice what it was that obscured it. It is 100% something you’re doing right now.
Not making this distinction in my own life has held me back countless times. This happens on the micro and the macro.
Let’s take for example the distinction of Openness.
Openness
Openness is a state; one we can create. I recall when I was at a four-week contemplation workshop with Peter Ralston. I had been working hard to have a “direct consciousness” of space. I was sitting on the front doorstep of the dojo, looking down the path and just taking in the trees and scenery, when suddenly it hit me. I experienced that space was something I was making up; that there was no distance between me and “experience”.
I didn’t know what to do with this at the time, but I knew I had had a breakthrough into a fundamental aspect of reality. Later on during the workshop I began opening into this experience more and more. My mind was no longer solely fixated on objects, but was now beginning to include the space in which they were held. I was walking in the woods when suddenly it was as if my entire experience flipped inside out. “I” became the “space” in which objects appeared. I became the context to the content of reality.
This was a mind-blowing experience that opened up a portl into a new way of being in the world.
That was in 2017. I did virtually nothing with that until 2020, when I began to have a series of breakthroughs into the same distinction. I won’t go into all the details but I had two or three big-whammy experiences that blew my mind. But no sooner had they appeared, they vanished.
What I realised was that the conditions in which they arose were when I was
- intending to know the truth,
- focusing on my direct experience,
- open to seeing something I wasn’t already seeing (not-knowing),
- in a state of questioning
(take note of those four words in bold - they are not arbitrary)
What I’ve come to see is that these four components are what make up contemplation, and in an attitude of contemplation the truth reveals itself directly.
My peak experiences into openness were only mind-blowing from a closed state - what I’ve come to understand as a narrow focus - a way of focusing that is fixated on the objective world.
Over time I have learned to train the opposite - Open-focus - and to be able to be flexible in how I transition between these two types of focus.
This has led to a massive reduction in stress and overwhelm, and greater access to the most basic and fundamental experience of life.
Reps
Everything is like a muscle.
I could have an insight or revelation into the nature of self, mind, being a body, money, social-survival, polarity or any other distinction in my awareness. But we have to do the reps to fully stabilise and inhabit that reality.
My job is not to tell you what to do or how to do it. My job is to show you what’s true and let you find your way out of your own unique maze.
Conclusion
Seeing the truth is only the beginning of the journey towards mastery of a domain of our experience.
The good news is that just in making the distinction between an event and the process of aligning to the truth you saw therein, puts you in an advantageous position towards meeting with all the challenges you must face in that process. No longer are you running on the hamster wheel of seeking the next spiritual high, but actually stepping out and meeting with your own unique process.
We must seek the truth and then seek to fill in the gaps of our abiding awareness of that truth.
So before you go running off for your next dose of high-fructose psychedelic-syrup for your next breakthrough (event), consider whether you’re using it as a distraction from the real work of going through your own, unique, process.