When identification with a ‘me’ drops away, the physical body literally relaxes. It’s not tensed up, holding a story about what This expression is or isn’t. The story can still be there chattering away, but there is ‘no one’ to possess it; the animator is gone, so the story has no relevance in Living. Sometimes when a big chunk of the story falls away in one’s identified living, it can feel very liberating, very freeing, very ‘enlightening.’ But if one has a sense they are enlightened, STOP, and ask the question, “Where is this arising from?” If there is a ‘someone’ there analyzing the experience, then another (albeit subtler) story or state has come in to support an egoic movement of a person living an ‘enlightened’ life. You already are Life expressing . . . stop There.

“There is no such thing as enlightenment. The appreciation of this fact is itself enlightenment.” –Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Realization is nothing to be gained anew…. Realization consists of getting rid of the false idea that one is not realized.” –Ramana Maharshi

“Stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.” –Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Awakening doesn’t mean that you awaken. It means that there is only awakening. There is no you who is awake, there is only awakeness. As long as you identify with a ‘you’ who either is or is not awake, you are still dreaming. Awakening is awakening from the dream of a separate you to simply Being Awakeness….The word enlightenment points to who you are. Who you are is not a state that can be gained or lost. It is not a spiritual experience. All states and experiences come and go. Who you are is the permanence existing right now regardless of states and experiences.” –Adyashanti

“The freedom that’s discovered isn’t, ‘I have attained enlightenment.’ The freedom is, ‘My God, there is nobody here to be enlightened. Therefore, there is nobody there to be unenlightened.’ That’s the light. Only the concept ‘me’ thinks it needs enlightenment, freedom, liberation, and emancipation….This whole thing has been a fiction.” –Adyashanti

“Awakening in its essence is simply being here.” –Jon Bernie

“Maybe we have some big spiritual experience, maybe we dissolve and merge into the One, maybe our consciousness expands infinitely across the universe and beyond, maybe we have a kundalini light show. Each time the tendency is to think, ‘This is it.’ Of course, truth is that which does not come (which should have been a big clue—it only took me fifteen years to catch on) and does not go. All of those experiences came, had a life span, and went away. The tendency of mind is to think, ‘If I could just grasp on to that experience, extend it infinitely through time, then that must be what enlightenment is.’ Of course, the truth is so compassionately ruthless it keeps saying, ‘No, no, no my dear, that’s not it.’” –Adyashanti

“There is no reaching the Self. If the Self were to be reached, it would mean that the Self is not here and now, but that it has yet to be obtained. What is got afresh will also be lost…You are the Self; you are already That.” –Ramana Maharshi

“I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled Enlightenment.” –The Buddha

“Disregard this checklist for enlightenment. It is only the mind’s concoction to cheat you out of the peace you already are.” –Mooji

Namaste, Steve and Bec