The Ultimate Secret to Enlightenment

The Search for Enlightenment

You can compare the search for enlightenment to a banana. Imagine you were a banana, but for some reason, you did not believe you were a banana. This dissociation was due to inherited beliefs, childhood trauma, or cultural programming. Now consider, due to your "Banananess" being suppressed, that you might begin to ACT like a banana.

If dissociation runs deep, you may set out on the path of Bananahood. You might collect pictures of bananas, wear banana necklaces and clothing, and even start hanging out near banana trees.

In your quest, you might be attracted to great banana teachers, mount pictures of them on your walls, share the Way of the Banana with others and reminisce on the imminent banana revelations coming from the photonic banana belt. Your dream will be complete the day you become ONE with ALL bananas and, indeed, ARE the banana.

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And then, one day, you become tired of "acting like a banana." You realize your life has become a treadmill and is going nowhere. You keep filling up the bathtub of spirituality, and it drains as fast as you pour. So you give up the search and return to everyday life. You realize you were always the banana searching for itself. You wake up and become a self-realized, truth-realized, enlightened banana.

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The search for enlightenment is born from the LIE of separation. The seeker is dissociated from herself and feels alienated from life. This is a result of feeling alienated by her parents and society. This sense of separation, of not belonging, sent her on the path to selfhood. Somewhere along the way, she was shamed, invalidated, dismissed, and maybe even taught to believe she was born in sin.

The Enlightenment Treadmill

The enlightenment treadmill is an impossible path because you cannot comb your hair by combing the mirror. When you are looking for yourself, you are reaching for something you already are. The "idealized" self can be glorious or innately flawed — both are illusions.

There's a difference between being flawed and wounded. The former is false, and the latter is true. You are more like a child of the King and Queen who has wandered away from the kingdom. But the pain of "who you are" as a wounded, alienated self doesn't feel like someone you want to be.

You are more like a child of the King and Queen who has wandered away from the kingdom.

So rather than going directly to the source of your pain (yourself), you go on an idyllic quest to find the self that is not in pain — an enlightened self. This is where ascended masters and enlightened beings become the mirrors of this imagined self. Awareness, trying to BE awareness, becomes trapped in the image of itself, which gets projected onto spiritual leaders, teachings, and paths of the invisible.

The search for enlightenment is born from the LIE of separation.

I think the puzzle with the spiritual path is the confusion between finding one's self and doing the inner work. The search for self does not end unless it is seen for what it is, an irony, an endless maze, an impossible task. The alcoholic must admit he is an alcoholic to quit drinking. That is the actual awakening. The drunk may feel enlightened just like a peak spiritual experience does, but it's an emotional high in both cases.

Profound spiritual experiences come and go. When you are on your 20th awakening, full of psycho-emotional energy moving through your body, you still have to return to earth. You never remain in that altered state — what does remain is YOU — The default self.

You will never be more spiritual than you have always been. You are THAT!

What does change when you do the inner work is your level of suffering and depth of perception. You break through your illusions, find closure, uncover levels of yourself, and become who you always were.

You are that unique child made by the universe who was driven from your inner kingdom and left in a desolate wasteland. You were stripped from your natural awareness and forced on a quest to clean up the mess, bring about world peace, and heal the tribe. When all along, it was you who needed peace, healing, and oneness.

Enlightenment is Self Realization

You cannot become what you already are even if you travel to India and sit under a master for ten years. You will become a professional seeker; if you're lucky, the guru will smack you and tell you it's time to leave. As is eloquently stated in the Zen koan:

Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

When it's time to go, it's time to go.

Ramesh Balsekar (non-duality teacher) was asked about the difference between a guru and a chela. He would say that on the outside, there is no difference. The guru expresses all the emotions, light and dark, as does the Chela. They may even smoke cigarettes, work a job, or be married. The difference is in their subjective position. They are not attached or identified any longer. They are self-realized in the sense that they have deconstructed the beliefs that were opposed to their natural self.

You can heal. You can develop new skills. You can help others. You can make positive changes in the world. You can have profound spiritual experiences. Become a great meditator. But the search for yourself is about awakening from the dream of not being yourself.

We are not the personas we created to survive the abuse. These are the aspects of ourselves that protect us from abuse. As we gently peel away the layers of non-self, much like a snake sheds its skin, the true self emerges from the dungeon in its natural enlightenment. This is the ultimate secret of enlightenment.

— Zzenn