'Spiritual enlightenment' — Personal experience, clarifications, tips

Introduction

For most people, crossing the threshold of enlightenment is something extremely elusive to achieve*. At the same time it's very difficult for those who've crossed this important threshold to effectively describe their discovery of the fundamental 'mind-essence' and their then continuously experiencing this as their own true nature and identity, in meaningful terms to others. I'm therefore offering my own experience in the hope that it will give some additional pointers for those people aspiring to enlightenment or self-actualization and clear out some well-nigh universal confusions on the subject.

One great advantage of this particular account for many people will be its freedom from a religious or 'spirituality' viewpoint or belief system and from esotericism, and being based fully on personal experience and much rigorous self-scrutiny in gaining understandings from all that experience. There's nothing esoteric, nor indeed 'spiritual' about enlightenment — though you'd hardly think so from the tomes upon tomes of esoterica that have been written about and around it. Enlightenment isn't about 'spirituality', nor having supposed 'spiritual' perceptions, but about simply being open to 'What Is', whatever that is!

No one person's experience is exactly the same as any other's, and indeed the context of my own direct recognition of my innermost nature (which is what enlightenment really is) could be seen as highly anomalous. However, I caution against all the standard Buddhist and other teachings and tracts on the subject because virtually all of them, however widely accepted and highly regarded, relate to a very unbalanced view of the significance of enlightenment for us and how it needs to be achieved.

I give below a certain amount of personal information about myself. This is simply to put the real subject of this account into a meaningful living context, primarily to enable the reader to understand how anomalous my own experience is and to make allowances in their using my experience to direct themselves towards that inner recognition that marks the beginning of their overt enlightened state.

This account / exposé isn't intended as an autobiography and thus omits many, many things that you'd reasonably expect to find in one. I don't want people falling into the trap of getting fascinated with me or my personal details. These are best set aside and forgotten once the important points are taken on board. Think of me in my story simply as a demonstration model. The importance of this report, if any, for you the reader is any information you manage to extract that may help you in your process of self-actualization; anything else is sheer distraction.

 

Part 1: The Background

Roller-coaster sleep-walking towards enlightenment

My early life

I was born in 1942 in North-West Greater London suburban area. That was in the Second World War. I have few war-related memories. My prime memories remaining from those early years — up to the age of six — are of the tormenting and often electrifyingly frightening inner world that I lived in whenever my eyes were closed or I was in the dark. This was no ordinary fantasy world, however, not least because, as in a dream, it wasn't directed by my own will-power.

In that world I was incessantly on the move, desperately searching for I knew not what, though warmth, love and peaceful stability were undoubtedly a major part of the object of that quest, which was never in any way fulfilled. With devilish constancy I was pursued by a weird variety of animated versions of normally inanimate objects that filled me with an unspeakable terror, even though none of the various 'things' ever did anything more than hiss at me or perhaps make a slight hum or ticking noise, or in one case, came heavily clomping up the stairs. One particular such experience is recorded in a poem of mine — There's Nothing To Be Frightened Of.

I don't remember ever feeling physical pain in that 'world', but the emotions of fear — indeed abject terror — and intense blends of grief, loneliness and various longings, were always with me, often overpoweringly so. There was a drabness of colours: a general impression of greyness, often tinged with a dingy rather dark green when the loneliness and longings were uppermost, giving an extremely dreary effect.

Although in this tormented world I could effortlessly fly (despite having no wings), my ability to do so seemed to be dictated by something other than my own will, so it often gave me no escape just when I most needed it, as I frantically put my back to the wall, facing one of the variety of sproses and sprouses that were after me, or the doot that was coming down from the ceiling and hissing at me…

I'd frequently find myself in great dark pits like lift shafts, which I called thunder holes, in which I'd rise up or down like a lift, in dread of coming to rest at a level where there were things ready to 'get' me. Another common element, when terror wasn't uppermost, was the running water that I often encountered, like very dirty washing-up water but with a horrifying sense of sliminess, decomposition and corruption. But above all, in whatever context, I had a longish greyish muzzle like a wolf.

This was absolutely consistent, and at no time in that world did I consider myself to be a human. By the time I was five and started at school (I didn't go to nursery prior to that), I'd become a little bit puzzled as I realized that in that world of the night I was clearly an animal, yet clearly I was a human in 'ordinary' life.

Despite the tremendous terror and anguish I suffered, I never could tell anyone about these experiences, though towards the end of that period I think I did talk to my younger brother fleetingly of some of the things that chased me, though without giving any hint of the power, magnitude and unremittingness of the experiences, and in junior school the one 'gold star' I ever earned was in an English lesson for writing a fairly light-hearted and partly fictitious account of a dream involving sproses and sprouses, two of the objects of my early dread. I never had any impression that I could find emotional support in my family or surroundings generally, so it was all an extremely lonely situation.

I think it highly significant that at that time there was no family pet, and in the 'other world' I never thought of myself as a dog or any particular type of animal, so it's extremely unlikely that in my first, say, three years of life I'd already acquainted myself with a dog and identified myself with it. In any case, even if I'd identified with a dog, how would an infant so young translate that experience into that of actually having a dog- or wolf-like head and constantly seeing the front of its muzzle through the inner corner of its eyes? That would take quite a lot of brain processing for one so young!

These 'other-world' experiences were definitely not dreams. Dreams, when I remembered them, themselves were troubled, and could contain elements of that tormented world, but were less consequential and didn't have that tremendous and unremitting power. This 'other world' emerged more or less the moment my eyes were closed or I was in the dark, and crystallized out of the visual 'noise' of the seething mass of minor flickerings and somewhat luminous clouds of dancing images that I or presumably anyone would see in the dark or indeed against any dark background.

Then, if I remember correctly I was at the age of six when the Eagle comic first appeared. After the second or third issue came out there was a memorable night when my mind was filled with hero fantasies all spilling out from the Dan Dare serial in the comic. End of my tormented world. No phasing out: Dan Dare fantasies had come to the rescue, and that was it! My awareness was grounded in this world.

One nocturnal fantasy that quite often came to me in those years was of my being a king and having many people coming and bowing and prostrating themselves to me; I'd keep telling them they need not do that, and wanted them to feel that we were all equals; I wanted my kingdom to be one of universal love — though as a young child I had little detailed idea of what the latter meant or involved.

And why do I mention these things at all here? Well, for one thing all that torment was just the start of a life with a lot of inner suffering that gave me a very strong motivation to free myself. And then, if I came into this life with a strong feeling of loneliness and lack of love in my surroundings, can you be surprised that I moved with strong motivation and great dedication towards the ultimate 'homecoming'! So those who look at me as extremely virtuous or in some way superior or elitist in having travelled as far as I have in terms of enlightenment and self-actualization in this life are missing the point!

Trying to make sense of life in my childhood

Religion — Christianity — was rammed down my throat by my mother, albeit not in such an authoritarian way that comes from many religious parents. It was enforced Sunday School for me, which I always hated, and then, in my early teens, enforced attendance with my mother at church Evensong. It was prayers, hymns and belief mumbo-jumbo at school. They talked of peace and loving kindness and all that, but for the most part in an unkind, moralistic way. I longed for the real thing but saw very little of it anywhere. People tried blackmailing me with all this 'if you don't Believe you won't please God and won't go to heaven', etc.

The biblical Jesus said and did the odd things that made powerful sense and filled me with longing, and yet much of the biblical account of him didn't add up and I was sure had to be untrue*. I knew of nobody to inspire me and be a focus of my love and longing for a sense of connectedness. I was left particularly confused because it seemed to me that if I and other people aspired to all the noblest aspects of humanity, that must be our true nature. Why, then, were we, on the surface, falling so short of that?

Presumably connecting with the early fantasies about being a king, I had lurking at the back of my mind an idea that seemed preposterous, and therefore I never, until a little after I became enlightened, seriously entertained it or spoke of it to anyone, and it always remained quietly, patiently, waiting there in the background, and remained with me undulled over the decades.

It was this: my main purpose in this life is to be a spiritual teacher, even leader*, to spread the way of universal love. Note particularly that this wasn't like an ambition ('I want to be a train driver; I want to be Prime Minister; I want to be Pope'), but rather a simple recognition of who I really was. That for decades I was superficially accepting the ubiquitous worldly messages of denial of that inner sense of reality was one of the many causes of my suffering. I suspect that very many other people have similarly been sitting upon an unexpressed and unrevealed deep aspiration or self-recognition of this sort and thereby denying their true and deeply expansive nature.

Sometime before the age of ten I occasionally agonized about the nature of death, not being able to accept the Christian notion of going to heaven (or hell) afterwards at the whim of a personal, father-figure God. The very idea of ceasing to exist seemed horrifying and incomprehensible, yet I'd apparently come into this world out of nothing. I looked within my 'mind' trying to understand how mind could possibly come into being out of nothing and disappear into nothing at the end.

Looking into the beginning of my life experience like that, I was puzzled, for all I could perceive beyond the earliest memories wasn't really nothing but rather, naked awareness, which seemed to have no beginning nor, presumably, end. I had nobody about me who could point out to me the immense significance of that observation, so I just had to note it as an apparently insoluble mystery of existence.

A little later I tried to make sense out of all that by privately speculating that perhaps we're born again over and over, reliving the same life! — How incredibly boring and pointless — the thought hardly cheered me up! This did link, however, with an important private speculation of mine: that all my life experience had surely arisen out of and was the product of consciousness and thus the notion of an external concrete reality could be incorrect.

That certainly kept the door open for the acceptance of a greater reality than what we usually refer to as the material world. Anyway, I'd never heard theories of reincarnation then, and an evolutionary progression through different incarnations didn't occur to me, and it came as quite a surprise when I eventually learnt that some eastern religions believed in such a process.

I remember there were a few months, I think in my very early teens, when I actually tried believing in the personal God of Christianity (primarily because some family friends who at that time seemed particularly nice and friendly people were urging me to). Briefly I managed to kid myself that it was bringing some relief to my inner misery, but I knew all along really that this was a nonsense: God either was or wasn't there, regardless of whether I believed or not, and no compassionate God that I'd want to know would turn away from me just because I didn't hold a belief in 'Him' and praise 'Him' every day. Even the sun doesn't require me to hold a belief in it and praise it for it to continue to shine upon and nourish me!

One day when I was in the sixth form in the grammar school we had a visiting speaker on Buddhism. I didn't remember anything much that she said, or follow it up, but it had struck me at the time that what she said of Buddhism made a lot more sense than the theistic religions.

My only reason for not following it up at that time was my general unwillingness by then to be seen to be associated with anything that might be called religion or to depart at all from scientifically verified 'reality' (I thought of myself as very science-oriented), and I felt a little nervous about getting into something that seemed a bit exotic and strange, for paradoxically I found I'd become distinctly afraid of the idea of letting go altogether of the idea of a personal God* (apparently preferring the 'devil' I knew…! [ouch!]).

Finding my way in adulthood

Beyond homosexuality — beyond sexuality

I became more and more troubled and stressed by the contradiction between what I still sensed of my inner self and my external conditioning. The loneliness of not finding anyone really on my wavelength became increasingly oppressive, this all being exacerbated by fear about the homosexuality I was concealing — and of course, masturbation. Eventually, at the age of 29 I 'came out' about the homosexuality, not always with exemplary tact!

After a few pathetic little attempts to interact with other 'gay' men (the contents of my short story A Monastic Weekend, which you can read in my volume of collected short stories, describes part of one such attempt) I quickly came to an important decision — never again to seek to meet anyone on the basis of their sexual orientation or even gender. I'd realized that despite all my fantasies, my and presumably other people's true nature transcended such mundane things; the fantasies had been unmasked as pure, naked self-deception. Naturally I got accused of being 'unnatural' and even 'fascistic' in making such a choice.

This didn't mean, however, as various people imagined, that I was rejecting or suppressing my sexuality or sexual feelings. Sex itself wasn't the issue; it was the manipulative behaviour of people that surrounded sex; it was our old enemies desire and attachment and the wielding of power over each other rather than anything much to do with love. To so many people, sexual 'love' was primarily about exerting willpower (or submitting to somebody else's) and a grasping for self-gratification, even when they sought to justify their behaviour by preaching about the beauty and sacredness of the experience.

I considered it better to keep to myself and masturbate privately rather than get entangled with people who persistently wanted me to be less than myself and indulge in emotional ego-trip role-play in the name of 'love'. This was certainly not what I'd call an ideal situation, but I was handling it in the best way I knew. I always kept my options open for loving 'physical' relationships with men or women, but realized that to seek them or get entangled with people who were seeking them with me would only bring more problems and stress.

That dreaded weed — learning from cannabis experience

A serendipitous introduction to 'recreational' cannabis use led me through a sequence of immensely educational experiences, which led me to make a clean break from all that — emerging with a seething fistful of cautions, which latter were much later in my life to become red warnings…

My (non-sexual) encounter with one particular 'gay' man in a naive and doomed-to-failure attempt to find a homosexually oriented companion or partner had a particularly important spin-off: he introduced me to smoking cannabis. Let me be clear that I don't recommend the use of any mind-affecting drug AT ALL, and indeed I know various people for whom long-term regular use of cannabis is having a seriously harmful effect, but it does appear that there's a very small minority of people who are able to use particular drug experiences to open their minds in a highly constructive way*.

Such people don't keep using the particular drug but incorporate their resultant enhanced vision and outlook into their everyday lives and very soon turn their back on the drug altogether. I turned out to be one of those people.

One evening's overpoweringly vivid cannabis experience (my first experience of it) opened my mind to a whole new way of experiencing life, as well as apparently opening up a fair bit of my mental creativity. For the first time I had the experience of standing aside from my restrictive and negative feelings and beginning to see things, even if fleetingly, in a joyful, non-judgmental way.

Subsequently over the next two years I very occasionally had a smoke of the weed, on a couple of occasions alone in the countryside; a hint of that experience is captured in my poem Smoking Grass on Pewley Down. Significantly, despite the happy glow and wonderful displays of mental images that I experienced, I got increasingly bored with the effects, intuitively knowing that my task was to make all the positive aspects of such experiences manifest in my life generally, as the drug effects had simply pointed out to me qualities and abilities that were already innate in me.

Even that 'happy glow' soon lost its appeal, for it obviously wasn't genuinely my own happiness but rather, more like a cardboard cut-out replica of it, which was inviting me to try to live my life drifting around in that goofy state without real life purpose or genuine cause to be happy! That other people automatically did just that with their ongoing cannabis use didn't mean that it made sense for me to do so as well. Not being a 'sheep', I found it a simple matter to follow my own good sense on the basis of rational appraisal of the situation.

Indeed in 1974 I decided to cease using all mind-affecting / habit-forming substances altogether, including such socially acceptable ones as caffeine and alcohol (soon afterwards, adding to the list confectionery and sugary 'food' and drinks), as part of a drive towards clearing myself of habitual tendencies and any perceived need for emotional 'props' — but here I'm jumping ahead of my story…

 

Enter Re-Evaluation Counselling — a real curate's egg!

How my 'salvation' from a life crisis eventually turned upon me, apparently to betray me…

By mid-1972, a year after my 'coming out' about the homosexuality, I was feeling all my hurt feelings inside so intensely that it seemed that at some point I'd burst into tears at any moment, even in public, and somehow fall into some hellish pit of mental self-destruction; an intense grief continuously manifested as a physical ache in all my limb joints.

This terrified me, for I'd picked up the pernicious 'men don't cry' belief that so plagues and dehumanizes our culture. I'd simply never been told and didn't know that crying was a natural healing process and needed to be allowed. Yet the very thought of submitting myself for 'treatment' of any kind, or indeed of regarding myself or being regarded by others as mentally ill in any way, was completely alien to me.

To take prescribed tranquillizers or other drugs to make me more comfortable wasn't an option I ever seriously considered, and it filled me with horror (it still does!) that so many other people were so ready to allow their senses and experience of life to be dulled thus and their brains to be possibly damaged by such medication.

Then through a really freakishly-timed set of coincidences I got pointed to one of the first groups in the country to be practising Re-Evaluation Counselling, a very powerful and purposeful type of co-counselling. They were actually in Guildford, where I was living at the time.

The prime aim in Re-evaluation Counselling was to unblock the functioning of the rational, loving, dynamically peaceful and happy mind by enabling crying, trembling and laughter as well as certain other emotional discharges or releases to occur freely. Over a few years I estimated I must have cried about 500 hours* — so much for my don't cry belief! And on top of that was a similar amount of time spent with trembling and laughing.

A tremendous amount of inner healing occurred during those processes, and I quickly accumulated important insights into the irrational behaviour of people around me (and of course into my own remaining irrational behaviour and emotional patterns), which gradually made it possible for me to be less hurt by other people and likewise more understanding towards them.

Over the years, within the Re-evaluation Counselling community an increasing emphasis was put on the contradiction and breaking of rigid patterns of feeling and behaviour. This was certainly an important advance, but it tended to be done rather unawarely, often using one rigidity to contradict another, so its effectiveness was very variable and despite its successes this approach quite often created new problems.

Re-evaluation Counselling theory didn't postulate any particular broader, non-physical aspect to human experience, but it was clear that the practice could eventually lead to full liberation of one's innermost nature, whatever that might imply. The sticking point for me was that the co-counselling process depended on one's counselling partner having sufficient awareness to be able to support one's opening up without the partner's own hurts and rigid behaviour patterns getting restimulated by the 'client material' and getting in the way.

There was no general understanding of the need to recognise and set aside the feelings and compulsions of one's ordinary mind when in the counsellor role, so I sometimes had very disagreeable and upsetting experiences when I got landed with people with strong and manipulative patterns as counselling partners*, and although I was often a very effective counselling partner for some people, I'm sure there were times when my own anxiety to gain status made me over-zealous and pushy, so causing particular people difficult experiences.

In any case, as I sought to work at deeper and deeper levels, and was so strongly motivated towards liberation, other people increasingly took fright. At age 38, after seven years in the Re-evaluation Counselling community, I was quietly ejected from the Re-evaluation Counselling group in Exeter because almost all the members felt so threatened by where I was at, and they preferred to continue colluding together in maintaining their own level of unawareness. So much for the loving commitment to each other's 'emergence' that was supposed to be such a hallmark of the Re-evaluation Counselling community!

How mountains were mirrors

For a number of years then I felt deeply hurt and betrayed by that very section of humanity that I'd thought was to be my salvation. But meanwhile I was developing in other ways. For one thing I made a regular practice of doing long and often remote hard single-day hikes (typically 18–21 miles or 29–34km, with some 1,000–1,500 metres of ascent), especially on Dartmoor and those parts of the coast path that were within reasonably easy reach from Exeter (hitch-hiking out and back).

I also established an annual spring visit to Fort William to walk on mountains and wilderness in the Scottish highlands; over the years I also got in a number of mountain walking trips to various parts of the Alps. My walking was usually solo, though I also enjoyed the company of others when I had the opportunity. I never felt any loneliness out there on my own in the wilds. The sense of oneness, unbounded space and transcendent peace was always with me up in the mountains, and I knew it was something very special and important that was really needed by everybody even if they were quite unaware of it.

Little did I know then, however, just how important was that experience! Little did I realize that what I was actually looking at in that experience was my fundamental nature — that of enlightenment itself — and if at that point I'd recognised it for what it was I could have permanently transcended the very nature of suffering there and then!

Creativity beginning to flower

Following a request from a very young niece, in 1980 I started writing short stories, some of which left me quite awestruck at the depth of awareness of the content that emerged as though channelled from a 'higher' source* (try reading A Squoggle Comes Home to Roost, for example, to see what I mean).

Also, I did a lot of nature photography and, using the transparencies so produced, gave adult education classes and one-off slide talks on natural history and hiking.

Enter, the Alexander Technique

In 1990 I started getting clicks and aching in my neck. Already for a decade I'd had lower back grumblings with occasional very troublesome flare-ups.

By the end of 1992 my neck was so troublesome that I was feeling a new fear and desperation as the attentions of the medics, physiotherapist and osteopath all proved to be to no avail. Once again, enter a spot of seemingly divinely timed coincidence: an acquaintance strongly recommended the Alexander Technique, and just then I'd got enough money to cover the cost of a course of lessons, which I normally didn't have as I was very long-term unemployed.

It was almost Christmas, and I couldn't start lessons for about 4 weeks, but I did buy what appeared to be the best of the available books on the technique, and drank in its contents as though I'd found the one oasis in a boundless hot desert. It all made sense and related clearly to the theory of Re-evaluation Counselling, but it was from a different viewpoint, which put emphasis on learning simply to let go of habitual tendencies in one's use of the body rather than to dwell on emotional release.

I realized that release of those habitual tendencies that were locked up in the body must release their counterparts in the mind, so, apparently, freeing two prisoners with one key.

With nothing to lose, although it was reckoned that virtually nobody could learn the technique from a book without personal one-to-one lessons, I at once experimented with the lie-downs that are the central thing that one takes time for (during which the mind is constantly applying itself to letting go of physical tensions and distortions). After a week of lie-downs (at that time some 12 to 14 per day!), a major chronic tension released in my lower back, and simultaneously I was aware that I had been relieved of a heavy chunk of deep and probably lifelong anxiety.

Although my neck didn't exhibit major release of its chronic tensions until some 9 months later, because my spine overall was getting into a better state of alignment and I was learning better use of the neck, the neck pain was at once reduced to a much lesser level, and because I now knew I was in control, what pain I still had was no longer the cause of fear and mental suffering, and thus was much more bearable. By the time I was getting noticeable major release in my neck it was normally out of pain altogether.

With the AT I learnt a looser, less stressful mode of walking, and indeed the technique benefited every part of my life — apart from a few physical problems that to this day remain apparently intractable. The AT integrated 100% into my everyday life, so that at all times I maintained awareness of my state of balance, poise and alignment and how I was carrying out my body movements, and I was able to interrupt and let go of the habitual distortions and reactions as and when they arose.

This also worked on the purely mental level, proving to be a much more efficient way of freeing and opening up parts of the mind than by spending hours on end crying. I could still cry over something that arose in my mind, but I'd keep my attention on the letting-go aspect, so that the 'physical' emotional release process was brief and my outlook kept positive.

Increasingly, especially while I was walking, even just in Exeter High Street, I was aware not only of a healthy and powerful sense of continuity and lengthening in my spine, but it seemed that the spine, in a powerful yet diffuse sort of way extended through my head and opened out into an unimaginable sort of space, which seemed almost to be a silvery or blue-silvery light yet wasn't a light in any ordinary sense*; there was something very uplifting, fine and noble about it, yet I didn't really know what it was.

I tentatively assumed it must be some form of growing 'spiritual awareness', and left it at that. Eventually I'd notice it sometimes during one of my lie-downs, and when I did, I felt this amazing peaceful warmth radiate from that boundless space and fill my body. I didn't dwell on this, however, for my intuition counselled against allowing myself to get fascinated or absorbed by such an experience.

The trail hots up

About the time I took up the AT a friend introduced me to an important book called Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten. For the first time in my life the historical 'Jesus' began to look like a great spiritual teacher* who was real, as distinct from the moralistic and largely fabricated Jesus of the Bible, the Church or 'Jesus freaks'.

I learnt from that book as well as others subsequently that 'Jesus' had been teaching true spirituality, not religion, whether or not he called it that. He'd been teaching about individual responsibility, karma and reincarnation. He'd been telling people to turn away from the temples and the scriptures and to look within themselves to gain deep understanding. He didn't die to absolve anyone of their sins; indeed he survived the crucifixion, thanks to a covert operation by some of his closest supporters (which scenario is actually pointed to in a lot of very odd details in the biblical accounts of him, which all the religious people turn a complete blind eye to).

I was also introduced to Ian Stevenson's book Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, which presents a seemingly quite overwhelming case for the occurrence of reincarnation, at least in some form or other.

Taking that as well as accounts of other overwhelming evidence for reincarnation, I now considered it highly likely that my apparently wolf-like identity in my early childhood 'fantasy' world indicated that I'd been such an animal in my last lifetime — though I found that transmigration of 'souls' between human and animal realms appeared not to be widely accepted in mystical traditions outside Buddhism, and subsequently I've come up with a much more plausible explanation for my experience.*

Not only the historical 'Jesus' but Buddhism too had at last started gathering real meaning in and possible connection with my life. I was still not in any way drawn towards Christianity, and even then I didn't rush out and immediately investigate Buddhism, because I was greatly put off by what I felt was all the Eastern cultural baggage that appeared to go with it.

Also by the time I took up the AT, for two years I'd been writing crazy and challenging novels with a powerful undercurrent of deep awareness that many people would regard as 'spiritual', which seemed always to be channelled into them from some deeper source without my bidding. Then in 1995, at last — at last! — a slight upgrade of my computer system enabled me to break through the musical literacy block that had prevented me from realizing any of the powerful music that had been in my mind from my teens onwards.

By the end of 1996 I was composing my 6th Symphony, a quite monumental and turbulent work, at that time entitled K2 — A Song of Enlightenment*. Its focus was a remembrance of Alison Hargreaves' demise on the mountain K2 in the light of a celebration of human endeavour and the supposed 'journey' towards enlightenment. The final movement — a celebration of enlightenment after all the toil and strife — was a partly choral one, and although the music was all working out of its own volition, I had no words to fit the choir's sections.

It was a strange thing that although I'd often previously been rather awestruck by what had emerged from my compositional tinkerings, this time I wasn't only awestruck but had this inexplicable feeling that somehow what I was composing then was leading me to something unimaginably wonderful in my own life.

My sceptical tendency did its best to sneer Oh yes, that's what they call wishful thinking!, but I was still haunted by this strange feeling as I had a poke around in bookshops for books that might have Buddhist texts that I could use for those choral bits. At that point I also thought to look for a book that might introduce me to the fundamentals of Buddhism without all the cultural baggage that had made me previously keep my distance. And what did I find? The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying — truly the answer to my 'prayers'*.

Three days into reading that book, there came that memorable New Year evening. The electricity of the last movement of my 6th Symphony, which I was composing just at that point, became, in addition to all its 'official' meanings and connotations, a celebration of my very own enlightenment!

Having read that according to the Dzogchen teachings our true nature is that of the Buddha, which went even beyond the 'goodness' that I'd already understood to be at the core of everybody, I sat aside from my computer and, with no preconceptions or any sense of trying (the latter being something that my AT training had taught me not to do), I looked within my own mindspace, and…

Part 2: Ambushed by Enlightenment!

I must first point out something extremely atypical about this event. I'd never done formal sitting meditation, and, despite my use of the AT, my mind was still incredibly active and 'noisy', seething with mostly uncontrolled thoughts, images and feelings. I claim, only half in jest, that I must have had one of the noisiest minds in history for one who crosses this particular threshold…

So what I didn't do when I turned away from the computer was to meditate and achieve some phenomenal quietude. On the contrary, I was feeling an uncanny crescendo of some inner excitement and awe, as though I knew that something momentous was about to happen. The following account, then, is of what I'd call an active contemplation rather than what most people would think of as meditation.

I assumed from what I'd read so far in the book that I'd not recognise my innermost nature, because Sogyal Rinpoche said that this couldn't happen without years of meditation and the guidance and pointing-out from a qualified 'master'. So it wasn't in my mind that this could or even might happen at this stage and neither was I aiming for it — and this was in no way a formal 'session' at all; I was simply doing what I was doing and making sense at that point!

When I sat aside from the computer and the music at that point, it was simply to look within my mind, in an imagining and inquiring sort of way, to see if I could see my inner goodness as this perfect 'buddha nature' of which Sogyal Rinpoche had so eloquently written, with its unbounded 'compassionate'* love and untainted and untaintable qualities. It all unfolded from that.

I don't remember the exact order in which the different aspects of 'the View' came to me, and in any case some of the aspects that I've listed sequentially actually came together. Basically all that happened was that I took up the various fundamental points made in the book and simply checked them within my own mind. I was aware of no psychic phenomena, no angels singing (nor for that matter demon trumpets!) nor funny lights; indeed you could even say that virtually nothing happened! What had actually happened was nothing more than a change in viewpoint.

Crossing the threshold that the book said I couldn't

The buddha nature; love and compassion

Quite disconcertingly, the moment I looked within myself I was immediately aware of myself filled with that very love that the book said distinguishes what it called the buddha nature (i.e., one's underlying enlightened state).

'Love' as is normally meant is a grasping and conditional sort of thing, which is directed to individuals (or maybe particular groups) to the exclusion of others, and is to do with desire and attachment, pleasure and displeasure, and tends to be coloured by compulsions rooted in our own individual sets of disturbing and actually negative emotions.

On the other hand this love and compassion that was uncovered now was like a radiation, shining out without fear or favour on all beings, objects and phenomena. It was completely outgoing and unconditional and making no demands; it transcended anything I'd previously known as love or compassion.

Compassion here wasn't a separate thing from love but simply one of the inherent qualities of love. It was clearly timeless and unceasing. It must have been faint glimpses of this that I'd felt during the preceding year when I'd seemed to be opening up some sort of spiritual awareness. As I turned my mind to successive aspects of 'the View'*, this timeless love never left me, nor could it, because I now knew that I was that love and that love was me.

Oneness with the enlightened ones

As I thought of the historical Buddha, his very presence and countenance seemed to be in that radiation of compassionate love. I directed my focus to other enlightened masters of the past: Padmasambhava, Avalokiteshvara, for example, and masters of the present day. Whoever I thought of was in that light that wasn't a light.

I thought of the historical man who became known as 'Jesus'. His presence was at once recognisable here within me. But no, that's not correct, to say that each of these presences appeared within me. Rather, that the light of love was Jesus and was me; it was Buddha and was me. We were neither different nor the same; indeed, the concept of 'we' was meaningless here; the duality of everyday conceptual thinking was now transcended.

…and with the great wrongdoers too

How compassion seared the heart* as Adolf Hitler and all manner of tormented deluded beings who had wreaked havoc in this world were also seen to be one with me! This was an awareness that had been in my mind in a mundane conceptual form over about the last year.

See the divine essence of these beings and understand with heart-rending compassion the enormity of the torment and suffering that their delusions and the effects of their past behaviour have been wreaking upon them and could well do so in the future! It was now possible to see directly that in essence I was no lesser than Buddha nor Jesus and no greater than Messrs Hitler nor Nero — nor indeed the drunk who last asked me for some money 'to buy a cup of tea'. What an inspiring leveller!

The Vows!

(This one's really cringe-worthy-comical for me to look back upon!)

An overpowering compassion filled my heart, and from within, with a wild fury of positive energy, came a vow that I silently made to myself and indeed the Cosmos: that from that point on, every thought, word or deed of mine was dedicated to the spread of love and compassion in all other beings — for the rest of this life and for whatever follows beyond. Towards this end, a subsidiary vow — the basic bodhisattva vow — similarly emerged: that I was from now on dedicated to attaining 'full enlightenment' for the benefit of all beings. Externally I cried and trembled a bit as the energy of the vows emerged as though out of some great trumpet into the Cosmos.

The glory of impermanence

From this viewpoint I saw in unprecedented, albeit far from total, fullness the impermanence of everything, no matter what its apparent solidity.

I saw all objects, all experiences in my consciousness, my life, to be like waves on a boundless ocean within the boundless expanse of this indefinable space that was 'my' awareness. I was staggered that whereas previously — indeed right up to that very day — impermanence had bugged and troubled me, now this fuller, liberating, view of impermanence filled me with compassion* and joy!

Death, where is thy sting?

This life of mine of course was part of that display of impermanence. I could see, breathtakingly clearly, that this awareness or underlying consciousness that was the true 'me' was unborn and undying; this life was just one wave upon the ocean, each experience within it being just a transient wavelet upon the bigger wave. My fear of death dissolved; I even saw imaginary chains falling away into the waves as I was released from that deception.

Although I couldn't directly see any past lives of mine*, from this viewpoint past lives seemed beyond doubt as they were a logical conclusion of this whole system of interacting cause and effect that brought all phenomena into and out of 'existence'; if this life were a wave upon the ocean, then it was presumably preceded by countless others.

I now had an unshakable conviction that went beyond belief, that death would simply be the end of one part of the show I was observing, and would usher in another stage. Indeed, by the time this period of contemplation had finished it seemed to me that I'd 'died' during that very hour and transcended the 'death' that would mark the end of my present life — if that makes sense to anyone! How sweet the kiss of death!

Me? — Who or what am I anyway?

I observed all the thoughts, memories and feelings that had, up to that evening, seemed to be 'me', and I looked for a 'thing' that I could really identify as 'me'. I couldn't fault Sogyal Rinpoche's account of the illusory character of the so-called ego… From this viewpoint it was clear that the real 'I' was none other than this indefinable and indescribable awareness that was observing all the motley collection of arisings in the mind (i.e., thoughts, memories, feelings and all that seemed to be information from the sense organs) that I'd previously regarded as 'me'. And as I contemplated that deception falling away, another element of the teachings* was getting underlined…

Severing the connection to the source of suffering

In Dzogchen meditation, and in maintaining 'the View' (i.e., the 'enlightened' perception) in everyday life, Sogyal Rinpoche tells us, our aim isn't to suppress or judge the thoughts and feelings that appear in the mind, but to allow whatever arises to follow its course in the mind without accepting or rejecting it or following it up; you could also say we neither identify the arisings as being 'me' nor as 'not me'.

This was just what was happening here for me. Despite the accelerating increase in my positivity over the years I'd still been holding many angry and resentful feelings to my bosom concerning a number of things in my life. As I let go of the ego-identification with these things stored in the mind, they were all welling up into view. The vast ocean of worldly mind was boiling up in a tumult of waves full of negativities and feelings of attachment and aversion.

For the first time, instead of looking at the negativities with discomfort and rejecting them, I observed all these arisings with that unconditional love still shining upon everything without exception. Each of the thoughts and feelings rose up and gracefully fell back, dissolving into the wild, wild sea. Among them I repeatedly saw the chains of broken shackles falling away. The word 'ridiculous' (said in a condemnatory tone), which had riddled so many of the negative thoughts kept glinting in the dissolving fragments as they fell away.

As all this was going on, I also saw that it was that illusory image of 'I' that had gathered all the hurts of my life and indeed any previous lives of mine. The naked awareness that was the true 'I' had nothing in it to get hurt! I saw at once that in everyday life henceforth, each time any hurt feeling arose I just needed to look into the essence of the feeling and of the real 'me', that is, the naked awareness, and the hurt feeling would fall away and dissolve*, just as this mass of arisings in the mind was doing right now.

The ultimate aloneness, yet the end of all loneliness!

I'd gone through life up to this point bearing a deep and intractable loneliness, which was repeatedly reinforced by the isolation that this life had forced upon me in all manner of ways. Now that I perceived that at the level of absolute truth there was no being, no consciousness, outside this one that was me, surely I should have been seared by loneliness! But on the contrary, feelings of loneliness now presented themselves as just more of those arisings of old self-delusion that I could observe falling away, no longer controlling me.

True that in a sense this was the ultimate aloneness, but it was so merely through perceiving the ultimate oneness of everything, and that there was nothing outside that oneness. But as that oneness itself encompassed everything including all beings, I couldn't possibly be lonely any more, for however alone I might be at times at the worldly level I wasn't separated, and never could be, from all the beings and all the love in the Cosmos.

Surely all this couldn't mean that I've become enlightened myself…

Repeatedly I interrupted the contemplation to consult 'that book', for I was aware that it was almost as though I'd hit the jackpot that I hadn't for a moment thought even worth looking for at this stage as a non-meditator and complete newcomer to Buddhism or overt spirituality. I checked and rechecked to try to find something to help me eliminate the ridiculous (sic) idea that this could have happened to me. But all my attempts to eliminate it from my inquiries just helped to confirm that this must indeed have happened.

A spaciousness in everything

One of the qualities of this 'mind essence' or naked awareness is its space-like character. After all, it is, figuratively speaking, the space within which all phenomena, both internal and external, manifest, including our whole universe, so we're talking of some universe-dwarfing infinity!

Simply allowing a sense of spaciousness in everything that arose in my mind helped me maintain my alignment with the naked awareness. Sogyal Rinpoche exhorts people in everyday life to 'think spaciously' all the time for this very reason.

This is absurd: it's not even new — I'd been looking at it all along!

As Sogyal Rinpoche said in the book, one of the reasons why people have so much difficulty in recognising their true, enlightened, nature, is that it's so simple and so ordinary! — For it's been staring them in the face all along, only they've assumed they had to look for something beyond and much more tangible and spectacular.

It's as if they've been searching for the elephant's footprints in the forest when actually they've got the elephant locked up in their own basement!

I remembered again that early time in my childhood when I'd sometimes agonized about the nature of death, looking within my mind to try to identify some sort of beginning to my life experience. Now I knew without a shadow of doubt that the naked awareness I'd perceived then was the selfsame 'thing' that I'd at last recognised as my true nature. Would that I'd had an enlightened person there and then to make sense of it!

Because at that time I'd had no intimations from anyone of the true nature of mind or of reality, even though I'd perceived it clearly and directly I hadn't recognised it for what it was and had continued to live a life of suffering. I now realized that, like most people, I'd had glimpses of this pure awareness on many, many occasions, sometimes with transient experiences of peacefulness or euphoria, but without any inkling that I'd been directly seeing enlightenment itself winking at me!

I've arrived — and I didn't even know I was coming!

As the multitude of implications of my new viewpoint steadily gathered around me and began to 'sink in', so another tremendous sense of relief was emerging — the sure knowledge that I'd finally arrived. That is, my life quest was over, successfully completed; there was nothing more that I had to seek or to do to fulfil myself*.

This seemed incredible, because despite having been purposefully moving towards liberation from limiting habitual tendencies and negative emotions, I'd had no idea that I was heading for such a sublime goal, and up to that point had still felt painfully lacking in a life direction and was plagued by a feeling of unfulfilment despite all my creative work — and now, suddenly I'd hit the fulfilment that my life had all along really been pointing to, without even trying!

But even that wasn't the end of my astonishment about this aspect, for I also saw that because my true nature was perfect and unchanging, my whole life quest that had brought me to this point had in fact been illusory; in reality all that suffering, and even the very concept of a spiritual path had been self-delusion — a lot of old balls! In reality I'd travelled simply from here to here but yet it had seemed to be such a big and tortuous journey! How amazing!

I should perhaps clarify one thing here: paradoxically, having 'finally arrived' didn't mean there was nothing further for me to do in this life, because it was and still is up to me to use the rest of this life to develop towards complete enlightenment and to benefit others. But now at last I had a rock-solid foundation for my further development and activities, and indeed a sound and far-reaching purpose in life*.

My personal ambitions

What folly, that I'd been tormenting myself worrying my head about getting money and fame from my literary and musical creativity! Not that there was anything wrong about making a living from them, but as there were clearly obstacles to the acceptance of my work and I could very likely spend the rest of my life struggling against the odds for recognition and getting nowhere, my previous ambitions fell away and I felt a great relief.

Now I could happily turn my back on the whole lot and go off to devote the rest of my life to spiritual practice!* But I knew that in practice (sic) I'd not do so for the time being or even at all, for it didn't take much thought to understand that my literary and musical work had much in it to broaden and deepen people's awareness and therefore was a gift to humanity which it was my part of my life's 'higher' purpose to produce and use reasonable measures to seek to disseminate.

I decided there and then to make all my literary works available on the Internet at an early stage and to stop bothering about getting accepted by publishers or agents. Disseminating my music would be more problematical for various practical reasons, but while I had inspiring music emanating from deep within me, it had to be part of my life task to channel it into new compositions for the benefit of others, regardless of whether it would bring me any money or personal fame.

Clearly some sort of sense was now emerging with respect to that deepest and long-secreted 'life task' awareness of mine: that my real purpose in this life was to be a spiritual teacher*. This didn't mean, of course, that I necessarily had to emulate Jesus or the Buddha and become some super powerful big name; there would be so many ways that I could be a positive force (or perhaps one should say, a channel for such positive force).

Anyone who seeks always to be true to himself and touches other people positively in ways that open or widen the doors of spiritual awareness in their minds is effectively a spiritual teacher or leader of sorts, even without being publicly regarded as such and gathering a circle of overt disciples.

In my case my creative work was clearly one of my vehicles for such positive touching of others, and no doubt other means would emerge as I developed further. I had no doubt that whenever I reincarnated in the future I'd be some sort of spiritual teacher, presumably more advanced than in this life — the important thing being positive effects, not my perceived status!

I no longer need music! Nor mountains!

My attachment to all things of this life was dissolving throughout the contemplation. Again the imaginary image was of broken shackles falling away into the waves of that vast ocean of the mind. The great 'loves' of my life, music and mountains, were no exception. I no longer needed these things. Note, however, that needed is the operative word here, and meant in the absolute sense — i.e., I could live without them, but I could still put them to great use in my life.

That didn't mean that where there'd been wonderful things in my mind and life before, there would henceforth just be pointless blank; I wasn't rejecting them. Far from it — but from now on I could freely choose whether and when to involve myself with music, and similarly for going on mountains, and I could leave all these wonderful things behind with equanimity at the time of death or in the event of changed life circumstances that pointed me in other directions.

I saw that when I went on mountains in the future it wouldn't be out of a sense of need but as a celebration and a glorious type of meditation in which I'd transcend every worldly emotion that arose; I'd experience oneness with the spacious grandeur of the mountains and wilderness, and radiate that inspiring peace and nobility into the Cosmos and quietly into the heart and spirit of all beings (i.e., via that innermost level of consciousness within which we're all one).*

I saw how most people's unaware motivation for going walking up mountains and out in wilderness areas was to 'see' the reflection of their true nature that their surroundings presented to them; even apparently relatively unaware people were intuitively seeking such connections and engagements with Nature which could open up little chinks in their unawareness. But in the short term few people indeed would immediately recognise the underlying nature (sic) of what they were experiencing up on the mountains, so to a large extent they'd fall back into their habitual ways and thought patterns upon returning to 'ordinary life'.

The paradox of transcending joy

Even as I felt wave upon wave of joy, the like of which I'd previously experienced only briefly up on the mountains, I perceived that I was observing this emotion from a viewpoint beyond. I could now feel the joy, although sort of wonderful, to have a certain unsatisfactory quality because it was still a worldly emotion that was transient and linked to at least the possibility of suffering, whereas the peaceful radiation of compassionate love that emanated from the naked awareness was constant and was beyond all such emotions.

I correctly guessed that I'd be filled almost continuously with this great joy for several days (it was actually two whole weeks, and felt almost as hilariously incongruous as going around with a continuous erection for all that time!), and then the joy would subside, leaving it easier and less distracting for me to keep my attention within the enlightened essence. As I was now observing joy from beyond, I knew I wasn't going to fall into the common trap of thinking that the joy itself equals enlightenment or even anything particularly positive or helpful, and go trying to dwell on it and seek it out again when it went away.

---

Part 3: Post-mortem

Was my experience enlightenment?

This is a double-edged question. The strict answer is 'no', but not in the way that most people would mean. The experience was just a passing experience, albeit a wonderful and important one. Enlightenment isn't in itself an experience but more like gaining a particular viewpoint, a perspective, upon our experiences. So, to answer what most people would really mean by that question, we have to rephrase it:

Had I become enlightened when I had that experience?

Notwithstanding what any Buddhist 'authority' would claim, I'd say without reservation that I had become enlightened at that point. Becoming enlightened is a radical and sudden change of viewpoint — a sort of virtually permanent 'phase shift' in your life experience. That's a lasting change, and is something completely independent of whatever experience accompanies or is triggered by that change.

The Tibetan Buddhist teachings confuse 'self-realization' and enlightenment. What they're calling full enlightenment or even just enlightenment is actually not enlightenment but full self-realization / self-actualization (though it does include enlightenment). They tend to call the crossing of the enlightenment threshold 'recognition of the nature of mind', which isn't actually wrong but is greatly misleading in the context in which it's normally used.

So, they regard the real enlightenment as not enlightenment but simply as an important step towards 'enlightenment' (i.e., full self-actualization, which, as I've already explained, is actually a wrong and harmful goal, because optimal self-actualization — a healthily balanced state — is really what we need to be aiming for).

However, although thus it looks superficially as though they're pointed in the right direction, even though in a rather confused way, actually their notion of what constitutes 'self-realization' (and thus what they're calling 'enlightenment'), although looking sort-of correct, contains distortions whose effect would be to divert most people into various illusory realities, including facsimiles of enlightened and self-actualized states, and thus away from true self-realization / self-actualization, and indeed into the clutches of the garbage.

This confusion and apparent downgrading of the significance of actual enlightenment can be seen to be part of an overall patten of control agenda and personal status issues revolving around the so-called 'masters' and their hierarchy of priests (okay, lamas — it's all the same really!).

If they were really free of garbage influence they wouldn't be calling themselves masters nor gurus, nor having ongoing circles of dependent students, and would be actively seeking to empower people in finding their own unique expression as self-actualized individuals, instead of cultivating the 'sheep' mentality — forever following, following, following, and swallowing teachings, teachings, teachings! (which is all garbage-sourced control agenda and nothing wholesome).

Actually, even in the writings of quite a number of Tibetan Buddhist 'masters' that I read, it was clear that their outlook was very inconsistent as to whether 'recognition of the nature of mind' was or wasn't in itself enlightenment, because the prime emphasis was actually still being put on 'recognition of the nature of mind' as representing the most radical change that could happen to your awareness.

And in various parts of their writings they did refer to individuals as being 'enlightened', when actually the latter individuals were clearly not fully self-actualized, and that implies that the 'masters' did really regard 'recognition of the nature of mind' as having been the true enlightenment.

I'm sure all this comes down to an overall strategy to make enlightenment appear to be as inaccessible as possible to anyone who isn't being led and controlled by these 'masters', or at least the Buddhist 'Establishment'. My own finding was that enlightenment is MUCH more accessible and easy to gain than such traditions would have us believe, and the healthy place for enlightenment is through individual self-actualization 'process' right out of the way of 'masters','gurus' and other potentially controlling influences.

The difference between naked awareness and what emanates from it

An exceedingly common confusion arises from people expecting one's core essence or fundamental consciousness to be visible in some way, and therefore assuming they are seeing it when they're really 'seeing' experiences that have arisen out of it or indeed are simply being given such experiences by the garbage with intent to mislead. Ultimately all phenomena and objects, whether apparently in the mind or external, have arisen from that naked awareness…

Even those wonderful qualities and emanations that I've described, such as the constant emanation of unconditional love and empathy, are not themselves fundamental consciousness, but rather, they're aspects of its emanations, just as what we experience when we look at the sun isn't the sun itself, but is the light that shines from it.

The truth here (as far as anything at all can be called 'truth'!) is that there's no need at all to be trying to dwell in one's underlying naked awareness at the expense of our physical life experience. The whole approach of Tibetan Buddhism, and indeed to varying extents all Buddhist traditions of which I'm aware, is distorted and leads people into an unbalanced and highly problematical sort of 'self-realization'.

If you use genuine self-actualization methods and cultivate a healthy grounded state in your everyday life, then your enlightened state opens out naturally without your having to make an issue of it at all!

What is a beneficial ongoing practice in everyday life is simply allowing yourself to be peaceful, non-judgemental observer of all that you experience, whether seemingly pleasant or unpleasant — seeing everything that you experience as existing or arising within your mindspace and not being external to it. Indeed, the need is to go one step further and recognise through direct perception, that you are your awareness / consciousness (including your entire mindspace) rather than being anything that possesses it or exists within it. That's all there is to it — so simple!

Naked, non-dual awareness, thus, is an extremely subtle thing to seek to perceive or observe in any way. According to the Tibetan 'masters', once you've 'recognised the nature of mind' (i.e., become enlightened) you need to constantly increase the extent to which you're perceiving your non-dual aspect directly — BUT that's a horrendously unbalancing thing to be doing, and points one towards a seriously unbalanced and depleted sort of self-actualization.

My understanding so far is that you don't need to consciously perceive your non-duality as such AT ALL! —There, how's that for heresy! Indeed, it's generally most helpful not to apply one's mind in that sort of way at all. The point here is that when you try to perceive 'it', you simply distort your (actually perfectly natural) perception of it by unawarely identifying it with particular concepts — looking for something that's like 'this' or 'that'.

The real way to cultivate whatever level and extent of non-duality awareness is for your best interests is simply to cultivate the ongoing state of being the non-judgmental proactively peaceful observer of all that you experience, PLUS still fully engaging with the physical life experience — at least, in ways that are consistent with your enlightened non-attachment.

You do NOT need at all to try to empty your mind for this. You simply become more deeply aware of yourself as being observer of whatever thoughts and experiences arise, without attachment to them or getting into intellectual analysis of them (the latter except in the case of applying clear thought to a particular situation in order to resolve it or provide some genuine creative benefit from it).

Non-duality is an aspect of everything you experience, and it simply doesn't have to be sought for, because it's simply 'base level' of all you experience.

What the 'non-duality freaks' such as so many Tibetan Buddhist practitioners and 'masters' are doing through trying to home in on their non-dual aspect is to play a seriously harmful game of one-upmanship.

The more unbalanced and non-duality top-heavy a practitioner's life experience is, the more (s)he is looked up to by all and sundry, as though (s)he were in any sort of desirable state. It's not only unbalanced, but actually an ungrounded state, with the problem of greater openness to the astral non-reality and thus the garbage, whether or not the latter presents itself as 'entities' or visions in such a situation. By making non-duality an issue one immediately distorts or altogether loses sight of it, and also most likely more or less misses its true significance.

For this reason I no longer regard any but the most cursory application of the Dzogchen approach to self-actualization as being helpful towards a healthy and balanced self-actualized state. You deepen your non-dual awareness in a healthy way, not by focusing on it, except periodically very briefly, nor by thinking about it, but by using a grounded awareness deepening methodology that does NOT focus on it, and getting on with life! — Enter Healing and self-actualization — The safest and quickest way!

Had all my negative emotions gone for good?

No, not at all. There's a huge amount of misunderstanding about enlightenment, including the notion that when you become enlightened you lose all negative emotions. Actually ALL of what I'd call emotions (transient emotional feelings) are really 'negative' or at least problematical in nature — even what people would typically identify as positive emotions such as 'happiness' and 'joy'…

The underlying and intrinsic happiness / joyfulness is really an ongoing state or quality, without big peaks and 'troughs', and so really is different from what people call an emotion, even though it can be experienced more to the forefront at times.

What had happened as a result of my enlightenment was that the emotions that I was carrying were mostly changed in nature, because of my having become much more the peaceful observer of what I was experiencing. So, I could feel emotions without nearly so much being drawn by the feelings into reacting on the basis of the emotions.

I still had the ongoing task of clearing the various emotional traumas and stresses that I was still carrying or connected to, because they were still a limitation on my ability to enjoy life and live it to the full. That represented my primary ongoing self-actualization process.

This change proved to be a great salvation for me from late 2003 onwards, when the garbage sought to disrupt my life and indeed either take me over as some sort of puppet or completely destroy me by means of a range of attack strategies, most of them involving huge attacks with emotional trauma energies and feelings — and throughout those taxing times I still remained almost completely peaceful observer of the 'nasties' that I was feeling, which could sometimes be quite hellish.

This was all a tremendous demonstration of the strength, stability and non-attachment one can have when enlightened.

I experienced massive attacks with fear without actually being frightened; with panic, without actually being panicked; with anxiety, without being more than a little anxious at a superficial level; and even with outright terror, without being what you'd call terrified — though at that extreme level of attack I was actually experiencing a certain level of the emotional state of terror — BUT again, I was still being peaceful observer even of those brief exceptional peaks, albeit with more difficulty!

However, the severe attacks were nonetheless generally still very difficult experiences, which were considerably disruptive to my life at times. People still can have difficult experiences when they're enlightened — something that apparently not many people realize.

Because of the widespread misunderstandings of what enlightenment really is, various people, upon reading in this site about the disruptiveness of the garbage attacks upon me, and the huge amount of trauma material that was available for use in the attacks (actually not mine at all but partly belonging to parasitic lost souls that were attached to me then, and the larger part being intrinsic to the primary archetypes to which I was connected), concluded that I wasn't enlightened at all.

That was because they'd 'learnt' from multiple directions (of belief and 'received wisdom') that enlightened people were quietly spoken and humble individuals who meditated a lot and didn't have significant emotional material left — not realizing that such meditators have actually concealed rather than resolved their bigger and deeper issues, and are living impoverished, unbalanced caricatures of what a healthy enlightened life would be like.

The practical reality about my situation with the garbage interference and attacks was that it demonstrated to me in no uncertain terms that I had a quite phenomenal degree of non-attachment (a potent indicator of being enlightened).

As a result I was able not only to withstand real 'wrecking class' attacks but also to progressively gain sufficient clarity of mind to extricate myself from the garbage deceptions and find ways to get progressively clearing myself of the interferences, and eventually to find out the likely true nature of the garbage as a step towards more effective measures to weaken it and theoretically even to go some way towards bringing about its dissolution (i.e., to whatever extent, if any, that that would prove possible)*.

Without enlightenment, in the face of what the garbage was doing to me I'd presumably by now be either dead or an intractable 'case' in a psychiatric institution.

However, even without any traces left of stored emotional trauma / stresses / issues, a healthily functioning enlightened person would still experience emotions on the odd particularly stressful occasion — and this appears to be widely unrecognised because of the harmful overuse of meditation in more or less all traditions that recognise enlightenment. In this case the emotions would arise and rapidly dissipate, without significant attachment to them, and they wouldn't drive the person into dysfunctional behaviour.

Thus (yes, it's heresy time again!), even an enlightened person, very advanced in his self-actualization, could still here and there experience anger (a supposed complete contra-indicator for a person being enlightened). However, that anger would be very different from what normally manifests as anger in adult people. It's more like a brief explosion of bright — you could say, effervescent — frustration or indignation — much as Harvey Jackins described healthy anger release in Re-evaluation Counselling.

This healthy sort of anger doesn't lash out at people, nor drive a person to any negative or condemnatory behaviour, and is simply a quick, completely non-destructive release of pent-up stress energy — typically almost immediately transforming into a volley of laughter, which releases the rest of the particular stress.

Example of a really common sort of false 'enlightenment' experience

Somebody who I shall call X wrote in as follows, asking about this:

I had in 2009 an experience of something that looks like I was in Fundamental Consciousness. I was in a workshop entitled: Enlightenment Intensive in the mountains of Northern New Mexico and as I was sitting in a dyad, I was intensely looking into the eyes of the person in front of me whose turn it was to speak and express herself so I was very quiet and suddenly the periphery of my vision started to fall apart just like a movie burning from the corners, I tried to hang on to the view of the trees outside through a window but to no avail (and I wanted to experience enlightenment… LOL) so there was a fear of the unknown there. 

In a few seconds I found myself in a formless realm only with a sound of what I thought was a muted "OM" in the background, not sure though, only the feeling of everything being just fine, not having to do anything, just being remained! It lasted only a few seconds and outwardly there were no signs of me having gone anywhere since my partner kept talking non stop without noticing anything particular for me. Only the Durga (person in charge of the dyad), a friend of mine nodded when I looked at her as she was standing making the rounds.

I asked her later if that was what they meant by enlightenment and she said yes.

In fact it was clear from X's email that actually she'd become increasingly circumspect about the nature of that experience, which is why she asked me about it. She was really asking if I thought she really had been 'in fundamental consciousness' then (it should never be capitalized), but not asking if she'd become enlightened then.

But actually, not only is the experience clearly an astral realm one and thus one of the garbage's devices for diverting people away from genuine enlightenment, but also X has actually betrayed an extremely common distortion of the notion of fundamental consciousness, which is actually encouraged by our using a term for it, and the more so if one goes capitalizing that term, making something very 'special' of it.

The point here is that fundamental consciousness is the most subtle, non-dual aspect of everything we experience, including ourselves — i.e., as far as anyone could ever tell. That being the case, if you're thinking of fundamental consciousness as being something that you could be 'in' or 'out of', then you're actually unwittingly regarding it as something separate from yourself, which actually can't be fundamental consciousness (non-duality).

I'm not saying, however, that X didn't become enlightened then, because for all I know she might have (see below) — but what I can say is that what she describes there appears to me to be a clear case of a typical astral realm 'enlightenment' deception, the like of which comes two-a-penny in many spiritual traditions.

The trouble is that in so many traditions those experiences really are believed to be 'enlightenment', even by the teachers / gurus of those traditions, and so the much less spectacular / tangible genuine enlightenment isn't recognised, and people like me are then looked down upon as impostors who don't know what enlightenment really is!

In X's case the real question with regard to whether she became enlightened then is nothing to do with the experience she described, but with whether she was aware of a permanent change in the viewpoint of her perceptions as from that time. To give an idea of the nature of that change, consider this figurative description:

Before: You're in the top of a glass tower, looking around yourself at the wonderful panorama and sky all around.

After: There is no tower; you are the sky and whatever else you're perceiving, yet you're also observing your perceiving, yet not from any specific point or location. You perceive directly that, as fundamental consciousness, you are the 'metaspace' within which all phenomena and experiences arise, and which thus includes the whole Universe and any other universe(s).

This is a permanent change, although direct or indirect garbage interference could cause it to become somewhat occluded again from the conscious mind.

(Clearly also you need to get focused much more on your grounding now! )

Anything you experienced between the 'Before' and the 'After' is irrelevant and needs disregarding, no matter how 'suggestive', 'important' or compelling it may have seemed, and no matter what the number and supposed status of people telling you that it was, or represented, enlightenment.

Beware! Enlightenment, like meditation, is commonly misused

I've already pointed to this in the above sections, but it needs further emphasizing here.

In Buddhism, enlightenment, like meditation, is all too often seen as a handy escape from experiencing uncomfortable emotions. When you recognise your innermost nature you perceive the deepest level of consciousness directly and recognise it as your true nature.

The error that people almost universally fall into then is to place such a great weight of their awareness in that subtle 'space' within which all phenomena and experiences arise, that, as in regular meditation, they let go of their awareness of emotional traumas and issues that they're carrying, with the notion that by doing so they're clearing themselves of those issues and so are in the process of becoming 'fully enlightened'*.

In fact my current understanding is that what people do by following the standard Dzogchen teachings (and probably most guru teachings) in this respect is to lose awareness of important emotional issues* that they're still carrying. Minor issues can dissolve that way, but various major issues remain in place even though awareness of them dissolves.

Such people may achieve an impressively empty mindspace (as though that were an important goal in itself) and peaceful and composed manner, but their awareness and lifestyle is constrained by the issues that they're still carrying, and through having gone into a total denial of those issues they may have committed themselves to being ensnared by the garbage and programmed into a degradational sequence of soul reincarnations* (i.e., if they were not already on that unenviable track). They'd also have completely unnecessarily greatly reduced the abundance and variety of their life experience.

On the other hand it's possible to operate in what's ultimately a healthier and more balanced enlightened mode, which doesn't seek to deny or just let go of one's emotional issues.

The smart way is, while still allowing yourself to be peaceful observer of all you experience, and maintaining a sort-of background awareness of your non-dual aspect, also to allow all thoughts and feelings to arise still, and to follow an active healing process for the various traumas — and that includes healing any past life core trauma(s), whether they're yours or belong to any attached lost souls, and, at the earliest time possible actually to clear off all attached entities and dissolving / inactivating all connections to primary archetypes.

That's most effectively done not by 'just letting go' (which can far too readily be 'going into denial by stealth'), but by allowing emotional release (crying, trembling, laughter, etc) in small measure, and, more particularly, using faster and more efficient healing methods such as I outline in Healing and self-actualization — The safest and quickest way.

Restrictive patterns of outlook and behaviour also need to be dissolved as part of the healing, and that requires what I call positive reprogramming through all aspects of one's life. True self-actualization methods progressively clear such issues and indeed all issues, and while many require some degree of awareness of one's issues so that they can be dismantled / dissolved, there are some such methods that require little or no such awareness of or confronting of specific issues. I mention again the practices pointed to in Healing and self-actualization — The safest and quickest way and various pages that that page links to.

One great thing about those methods that I give is that to varying, and in some cases a considerable, extent they progressively clear out all one's interference and influences from the garbage — absolutely essential for genuine and comprehensive self-actualization, and something that appears to be completely missing from the various Eastern 'spiritual' traditions such as Buddhism.

Virtually EVERYBODY has at least some degree of garbage interference / influence, whether or not they're aware of it, so this is a very important issue. Enlightened people are not exempt from such garbage interferences — though almost universally they believe they are, because they so readily use their enlightenment as a sort of smokescreen (sort-of 'hear no evil, speak no evil, think no evil' and all is hunky-dory — except that it's not!).

Mystical states and the old chestnut of 'enlightened bliss'

Your position sounds to me like the writings of Xxxx, who describes enlightenment as a mystical or blissful state and writes extensively about that…

How many times have I been told that sort of thing by people who are into 'spirituality' or even believe they're into 'self-realization'! And I inwardly groan each time, because almost always these people are impervious to any attempts of mine to put the record straight for them about what enlightenment really is.

One thing those people, and the authors or supposed teachers whose writings they've been reading, are NOT genuinely into is self-realization / self-actualization, and one thing that virtually NONE of those people are is enlightened, never mind that they may believe they're enlightened.

It's the garbage that has persistently interfered with these people to get them erroneously equating enlightenment or/and 'self-realization' with a mystical or blissful state.

"- But hang on! Xxxx writes at great length about his enlightened mystical experiences and the blissful state and inner knowledge that he's gained from enlightenment. You're not seriously saying that that's come from dark forces, are you?"

Yes, I am! — Well, apart from its source being the garbage, rather than any notional 'dark forces'. If he were genuinely enlightened he wouldn't have written that confused rubbish in the first place, or would have renounced or at least drastically revised what he'd written.

What that author was writing about was various illusory realities that he'd taken on board because the garbage had controlled him into believing that those illusory realities represented an enlightened and indeed self-actualized state. That's the sort of thing that so-called spirituality is about, and that's part of the reason why I give such strong warnings on this site about the menace that 'spirituality' really is for us.

As I've sought to show on this page, being enlightened is NOT in itself what one would generally call an experience, and, although I've loosely referred to it here and there as a state, it's NOT a state in the sense that people usually mean — i.e., a sort of emotional state. Rather, it's akin to a viewpoint — a way of perceiving everything.

Yes, it does make the life experience much more positive in a whole variety of ways, but it's NOT a mystical NOR blissful state. Indeed, the very notion of 'bliss' needs dropping like a red-hot brick, for that's a bit of bait inveigled by the garbage into various teachings and 'spiritual' traditions so that their supposed quest for enlightenment is distorted into a quest for an illusory reality that they interpret as peaceful and blissful, which they then take to be enlightenment. Indeed, what people commonly interpret as an experience of 'bliss' is nothing more that a particular type of attack from the garbage in order to lure and control them.

In fact, if any recognisable 'state' is to be associated with genuine enlightenment, it's clarity. By that I do NOT mean an ungrounded state of meditational or mystical so-called 'clarity', but simply clarity in all everyday experience — your being always the peaceful and insightful observer of whatever is going on for you — whatever you're experiencing — in all its precise detail.

Also, the notion that enlightenment brings you 'inner knowledge', although in a sense true, is generally misunderstood because people fail to understand what enlightenment really is, and in particular the non-dual nature of what an enlightened person perceives as the fundamental level of himself and all 'reality' (i.e., of consciousness).

The 'inner knowledge' gained from enlightenment is hardly what a non-enlightened person understands by 'inner knowledge', because that person would be thinking in conceptual terms. To a non-enlightened person, 'inner knowledge' can't help but mean some sort of repository of conceptualized information that's available only to the enlightened 'Elite' — which is one thing that enlightenment itself doesn't bring you. Indeed, 'inner knowledge', as generally meant, is very much a garbage-sourced notion and phenomenon.

However, genuine self-actualization (rather than specifically enlightenment) does progressively open you to your deeper levels of consciousness (i.e., not only the very deepest, which is non-dual and thus non-conceptual) and so, yes, it does become possible to gain conceptual information that's unavailable to ordinary people — but it's not specifically enlightenment that opens you to that (though enlightenment is an important step in that self-actualization process).

However, that sort of 'inner knowledge' generally comes complete with serious distortions caused by garbage interference, and hence the various supposedly self-actualized writers and 'teachers' coming out with distorted notions of self-actualization, enlightenment and the nature of reality (i.e., even if they aren't channelling or dowsing), which their followers and readers then take on board more or less as gospel, so reinforcing their own patterns of misunderstanding anything to do with enlightenment and self-actualization.

On this site I show how suitable people can, with great care and vigilance, use Helpfulness Testing to enable them to start gaining such information, which, when without garbage interference, is NOT esoteric nor 'spiritual' but down-to-earth and practical, and can, subject to certain serious caveats, be used to further one's self-actualization process and to consistently make healthy and life-supporting choices in one's everyday life.

One further point. If you spend time 'learning' about enlightenment, whether from books or directly from gurus, or/and discussing about it, you're not getting closer to enlightenment, and indeed almost certainly are making it more difficult than ever for you ever to become enlightened in this lifetime. In order to become enlightened, what you really need is a comprehensive genuine self-actualization process, and that means actually getting on with it!

Repeatedly reading or discussing about enlightenment or self-actualization simply helps seal your fate as a captive of the garbage because of the illusory realities that you're creating by so doing — quite apart from your lack of actual self-actualization process and thus lack of the very means by which you could otherwise become free from the garbage's interferences and attempts to control you. Is that really what you'd want for yourself?

As this wayward monkey enjoys almost saying, just…

Why only certain people can become genuinely enlightened

Please note first that a so-called 'spiritual awakening' experience is NOT in itself enlightenment!

Also — shock horror! — Only people without a soul can become genuinely enlightened. — There, that's heresy indeed for you!

It's almost universally not understood that the soul is a dysfunctional or pathological manifestation within one's consciousness resulting from a particular type of tampering from the garbage.

I explain about this in The true nature of 'the forces of darkness' and its interference and attacks. The healthy (though relatively rare) state is to have a continuum of pure consciousness between fundamental consciousness and the ordinary mind, whereas the normal state is to have a certain 'level' of that continuum adulterated with programming and beliefs, creating a block on the flow of awareness and actual communication from very deep levels of one's being, and indeed functioning as a 'cap' on the person's deepest level of conscious awareness.

It's that adulterated 'level' that defines the 'soul'. Thus a fully healthily functioning person actually has no soul, and is greatly better off for that absence (which latter is actually a maximal presence of pure and healthy consciousness).

The vast majority of people who believe they're enlightened aren't truly so, because only a quite small proportion of them are no-soul people. The rest have identified NOT with fundamental consciousness (and thus non-duality) but with their soul — that is, if they haven't been further sidetracked by getting ensnared in some illusory reality in which they believe that they've found enlightenment.

They may experience an 'awakening' to some sort of spaciousness and inner peacefulness and warmth, but are actually not consciously seated in non-duality as a genuinely enlightened person is. A high proportion of spiritual teachers and spirituality writers come into that category.

There's one exception to that general statement, in that first-time soul incarnations may in some cases, as something of a rarity, gain genuine enlightenment, but only tenuously so, and for this reason they'd easily be led astray, into false notions of what enlightenment really is, and get sidetracked into illusory realities in which they're experiencing something more tangible as supposed enlightenment.

I do know two individuals for whom this appears to be the case. One of them had got so sidetracked by the garbage that one time he pronounced to me I'm at the Second Level of Enlightenment, and I'm sorry to have to tell you, but you're not even enlightened!. A no-soul person doesn't nearly so readily fall into such deceptions and sidetracks, and finds it much easier to remain with a clear direct perception of his basis in the non-duality of fundamental consciousness.

Because the soul is inherently a state of confusion, such 'pseudo-enlightened' individuals, having read or been told about non-duality, may believe that they're experiencing it, and thus that their 'enlightenment' is confirmed — but actually the programming in their soul is fooling them into a constant failure to understand what non-duality really is, and in particular its extremely subtle and indeed indefinable nature.

Generally speaking, when a person has experienced what they regard as a spiritual awakening, that's NOT genuine enlightenment, even though the vast majority of such people regard it as such, and indeed it may mark an apparently extremely positive turnaround in the person's life.

If you look with real, deep awareness at such life turnarounds, you'd find almost invariably that they relate to 'spirituality' rather than genuine self-actualization — so in other words those life turnarounds were usually traps sprung on the particular individuals by the garbage in order to keep them well and truly sidetracked away from becoming genuinely and fully free.

Does all this mean that there's no hope for people who have souls and who want to become genuinely enlightened and self-actualized?

— Actually, no, not at all — provided that they use self-actualization methods that dissolve the garbage-sourced programming and beliefs (and other distortions) that constitute the defining principle of their soul.

Unfortunately, most supposed self-actualization methods (including meditation) don't achieve that, but the Good News is that, as far as I can ascertain, the methods that I present in Healing and self-actualization — The safest and quickest way do progressively and eventually completely dissolve the soul programming, so that the person then is in the really healthy state of being once more simply a direct incarnation of fundamental consciousness.

Then becoming genuinely enlightened would come naturally as part of one's ongoing self-actualization process.

The only catch about that is that people with such soul programming are generally programmed not to be motivated for genuine enlightenment and self-actualization in the first place, and for even those who do have some such motivation the considerable majority have sufficient programming to make them more or less ineffective in the manner in which they use any self-actualization methods.

However, all moves to weaken one's soul programming would represent very worthwhile steps for life improvement, and so are still not to be sniffed at.

"I'm coming to the conclusion that enlightenment is a real experience but that it's an illusion. It's possibly created by the garbage to keep us from looking in the right place. Do you have any input on this?"

My heart sinks when I get people coming to me saying or writing things like that. What such people are doing is seeking to dump their own confusions upon me, and generally to get some sort of endorsement or approval from me for their confused notions (because they've never troubled to read this page, at least with sufficient care and awareness) — or of course, uncharitably put but probably more realistically, simply with a conscious agenda to do their level best to wind me up!

Indeed, it's become clear that many such people have an underlying personal agenda to try to get me engaging with them so that they can then try to assert themselves over me or at least somehow to disruptively intrude into my life. I give them all short shrift or simply ignore them, so such communications are a pointless exercise. It's just one particular 'colour' of trolling — seeking to get the target person wound-up and stressed.

The above headline comment / question was actually in an email I received from somebody who said that he'd benefited considerably from this site. On that particular showing, I doubt whether he really had done so to any really significant extent.

More likely, he was trawling through my site troll-wise, looking for ammunition he could use to further his 'wind-him-up' agenda. One thing is very clear — that he shows no understanding of what genuine enlightenment actually is, and so needs to read this page carefully and awarely this time if he's really serious about gaining a better understanding. So, if you have any similar view of enlightenment, please do the same yourself, and not come to me with questions or personal opinions about it. — Thank you.

"Could you please send me instructions for doing the Dzogchen [/Trekchö] practice correctly?"

Such requests elicit from me a sort of pained, wearied groan of a chuckle, because people who ask me such things have clearly not understood properly what they've read on this site, owing to their strongly held preconceptions, and are still carrying a hopelessly troublesome misconception about the nature of enlightenment. For the most part too, they're behaving as automaton 'sheep', requiring instructions to follow, and so blocking any possibility of their gaining true understanding and actual enlightenment — very like the stupid car drivers who just follow SatNav instructions all the time, without knowing anything otherwise of the route they're taking, or where to go if the device fails, or better routes that the device doesn't offer…

In fact such people are looking for an illusory 'holy grail', because all that genuine Dzogchen or Trekchö (also known as Ati Yoga) really is, is keeping your conscious awareness to a reasonable extent in or upon your deepest, non-dual aspect (i.e., supposedly fundamental consciousness — what Tibetan Buddhists call dharmakaya or rigpa) in everyday life.

It's so simple that actually it should never have been given a posh, esoteric name or indeed a name at all, because its name, and the sense of reverence and awe bestowed upon it, has caused countless people to be led hopelessly astray, in imagining that it's a difficult and esoteric practice, whereas it's really not a practice at all any more than driving on a road with good awareness could be regarded as a special practice.

Tibetan Buddhism has confused the picture by associating all manner of preparatory practices and procedures with Dzogchen / Trekchö itself. The point is that so-called Trekchö can't occur until you've crossed the enlightenment threshold ('recognised the nature of mind' in Tibetan Buddhist parlance), because you don't directly perceive your deepest, non-dual aspect until you're enlightened.

So in Tibetan Buddhist tradition a whole lot of practices and beliefs that are used to try to get one to the point of crossing that threshold have effectively been bundled in under the (actually completely unnecessary) name, so people then think of Dzogchen / Trekchö as being something very special, for meditation 'adepts' only.

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Dzogchen is regarded as the 'highest' level of the teachings and practices, and indeed, among all their confused utterances various of the Tibetan Dzogchen-level teachers do emphasize that there's really 'nothing' to Dzogchen itself, and that all the surrounding practices are really not Dzogchen but are 'preparation for Dzogchen'.

However, they also maintain an immense and extremely harmful confusion in their supposed Dzogchen 'level' of Tibetan Buddhism, through having supposedly divided it up into genuine Dzogchen, which they call Trekchö, and a most horrendous set of visualization meditation practices that are NOTHING to do with Dzogchen, called Tögal or Thod gal.

I say 'supposedly', because there's nothing divisible about Dzogchen itself, so what had actually happened was that Tögal was simply added in, to get a whole lot of people who were either actual Dzogchen practitioners (i.e., were enlightened), or were apparently on the brink of being so, suitably diverted into a whole mass of thinly veiled DARK practice!

Undoubtedly that was for the purpose of ensnaring them in illusory realities and also, by means of their visualizations to be kindly providing the garbage with a whole lot more visualization images that it could (and indeed does) use with all manner of distortions to create a major component of all the hell (including 'night terror') imagery that assails human-type beings anywhere in the whole of 'Existence'.

I explain more about the serious iniquity of Tögal in Night terrors and hell experiences — Understanding and clearing them, but I'd re-emphasize here that the whole notion of Tögal being a part or aspect of Dzogchen is false, and it's an extremely harmful practice, which doesn't at all take one towards enlightenment, despite the beliefs of its teachers and other practitioners.

On this site I present and point to a whole set of methods for advancing your self-actualization process, and, as I've indicated in various parts of this site, it's a mistake to make enlightenment a specific goal in itself as so many in various Eastern traditions do.

Doing that creates a great imbalance and an ungrounding process that progressively disconnects you from your very reason for incarnating in the first place — quite apart from also insinuating you into subtle illusory realities in which you believe you're at least partly 'there', so to speak, and so you're strongly unmotivated to recognise that you're astray and need to get back on course again.

Enlightenment the healthy way occurs naturally at some point in a genuine comprehensive self-actualization process, without any need for trying to achieve it as an end-gaining exercise (i.e., the norm in Buddhism).

An intent for enlightenment and some degree of understanding of what it is would definitely help, but the actual striving needs to be simply promoting your self-actualization process in a balanced, grounded way, i.e., as a balanced aspect of your everyday life, and always seeking to be proactively peaceful observer of all you experience, so that you're always cultivating deeper and more extensive awareness while going about your everyday life.

So, your real instructions for 'Trekchö' are simply Drop it! — Instead, throughout your everyday life, observe and understand, and observe your observing and your understanding, and understand that too — all without getting significantly conceptual about it, while also continually observing whatever is doing the observing — all while putting most attention on diligently attending to and getting on with your everyday life!

So, let go of such troublesome labels as Trekchö and Dzogchen, with all the harmful baggage that Tibetan Buddhism has bestowed upon them — and of course that other label, 'enlightenment'!

"I'm on the threshold of spiritual enlightenment. What should I do to attain it now?"

The above was actually a search engine query that I found in my website statistics, so I'd like to think that when the person came to this page (s)he actually started learning something of what genuine enlightenment really is and what it's not — though I think it much more likely that (s)he would have been too locked into opinion and belief about enlightenment actually to change his / her views much or indeed at all and so become more open to the sordid truth that (s)he actually needed to do a lot more self-actualization work (genuine, for a change — e.g., using much better means than regular meditation or following a teacher!) before (s)he was really likely to become genuinely enlightened.

Generally, albeit with rare exceptions, if somebody believes that they're on the threshold of enlightenment, it's because they're increasingly experiencing spaciness and astral perceptions, basically because they've become weakly grounded. They may or, much more usually, may not be very close to enlightenment at that point.

Once you're genuinely enlightened it would be relatively easy to look back through your life and see whether or not you'd been anything like that close to enlightenment at any previous stage in your life — for the rather obvious reason that once you're enlightened you know what to look for in your earlier life experiences. By the same token, until it's happened to one, for the vast majority of people with such an interest it wouldn't be possible to have any idea in advance how close they really are to genuine enlightenment.

As for the desire to 'attain' enlightenment 'now', I've already written quite enough about that distorted and actually strongly counter-productive outlook further above, so won't repeat myself about that here. The important thing is just to get on with really effective genuine self-actualization methods and enjoy all the consequent positive changes in your life and simply be amusedly entertained by the changed perception of the life experience when the enlightened viewpoint does come to you (in its own good time).