Written by: Alexis Knight, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Enlightenment is everything, everywhere, all at once. There is only Enlightenment. It is Unconditional Love, and boundlessly free, it is beyond all limitations such as time, space, and experience.
This message exposes and illuminates the nature of that which is most longed for.
The individual
Almost every single human being seems to feel a sense of being real and being separate from everything, this is a felt sense of individuality, it is suggested that energy is contracted and local in the human body that experiences the world, other people, nature, and even thoughts, feelings and sensations as something happening ‘to me’. All of this content is felt as ‘my’ content, that which ‘I am aware of’.
Because it is aware of the content, there is a separate experience seemingly taking place, it is duality that takes place in an artificial reality called the subject-object world. Suddenly from the point of contracted energy in the body, it seems as though someone is looking out through the windows of the 5 senses, otherwise known as the ‘doors of perception’. Thoughts, feelings, and sensations too seem to be viewed or witnessed by someone.
The dissatisfaction of separation
Somehow, this experience of contracted energy in the body leads to feelings and thoughts of dis-ease, dissatisfaction, and agitation, and these feelings are deemed unpleasant and usually unwanted. Out of this dis-ease grows a desire to find something that seems to be lost. The apparent individual longs for something better than what is, it feels separate and so longs for wholeness, to feel complete, connected, or united.
Seeking enlightenment
Depending on the cultural context, usually, a search begins for the individual in material things and sensual pleasures. The substances that induce a state of relaxation in the body seem to mask or hide the underlying agitation of separation, the drug, the car, the job, etc. provide some temporary relief for the seeker. But of course, this wears off, and sooner or later the agitation and feeling separate comes back with a vengeance.
After some or many sincere efforts to find lasting happiness in the material world have fallen short, the individual may look elsewhere, in therapy, religion, or spirituality. The individual may hear from practitioners, teachers, priests, gurus, yogis, etc. of something called ‘enlightenment’, ‘the kingdom of heaven’, or ‘union with the divine’.
Since all attempts to get happiness in the material world seem to require an effort, it seems to the seeker that surely effort must be applied in the so-called spiritual world to move steadily on a path towards liberation or wholeness.
Stories may develop of a particular path such as ‘if I clear my chakras, I’ll be in tune with or connected to God or The Divine again.’ or ‘If I follow meditation, prayer, mantras, etc. I’ll become enlightened and transcend all worldly pleasures and suffering’. These stories provide hope and are full of meaning and excitement but always fail to deliver the apparent result of an eternal state of uninterrupted bliss and lasting happiness beyond space and time.
The search for that which is already
What the individual longs for, more than anything is to come home. It may have apparently painted a picture of this being fully enlightened in the lotus position, dressed in robes and looking serene, or perhaps it imagines ascending into white luminous light or some other vibrant and extraordinary story, but simply it longs for home, it longs for the end of separation, and the end of separation is wholeness revealed.
What the apparent individual never seems to recognise is enlightenment is unconditional freedom which is already everything, unconditional freedom is beyond time and space and therefore cannot be limited to an experience in the future, nor can it be limited to one body, or personal experience. There is only ever unconditional freedom. Everything that is happening is what’s longed for. It is sitting on a chair, it is reading these words, it is walking on the pavement, and a cup of coffee. It is even the seeking for itself, there is only enlightenment, it doesn’t exist in the future, it doesn’t need to be sought out and pursued, it cannot be reached for, the reaching is it too!
What you long for is already right in front of you, it is behind, above, below, inside and outside, it has never left you, it has never gone away, it has never been hidden and it can never be found because it is already what is, any step towards or away from a so-called destination is already that which is longed for, and so wholeness being unconditional is inescapably free, immediate and simple, full of wonder and totally ordinary all at once.
For the human experience, when wholeness is revealed to be all encompassingly what is, separation falls away, and what is left is what is already, boundless, limitless, timeless freedom. Enlightenment beyond limitation.
Much Love.
For more information on the nature of Radical Non-Duality, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and visit my website for more info!
Alexis Knight, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Alexis communicates Non-Duality. After recognising that all practices to get somewhere with is only perpetuating the search and the searcher, Alexis recognised that this is everything, it is already whole and complete, and the I is no longer sustained in this fullness. This is the message of Non Duality that is shared from here. Public, private and online meetings are accessed on this subject, as are videos and writings.
