Reflection 226

Welcome!


Enlightenment

What, after all, is Awakening, Enlightenment, Realisation? Awakening from what? Enlightenment as to what? Realisation of what?

It is waking up from all your dreams and imaginings and preconceptions, becoming enlightened as to the given facts, realising what you clearly are in your first-hand experience right now. It is being perfectly honest to yourself about yourself, at last. It is having the courage and effrontery, even the idiocy - to go by what you see, instead of by what you are told. It is questioning all mental habits and conventional assumptions, however common-sensible or sanctified. It is total open-mindedness, transparency, simplicity, and taking nothing for granted. In one word, it is discovery.

What is to be discovered is your own nature. Who are you? Only you are in a position to find out, because everyone else is elsewhere, off-centre. Only you can investigate what it is to be you. (Douglas Harding. Article: Thirty Questions.)