What is Enlightenment?
 The three key gateways to enlightenment. An article by Chris Bourne.
There are three key gateways to enlightenment. The first is the
recognition that everything in the external world is merely a
reflection of something being experienced internally. To step
through this gateway, we have to surrender the need to shape
external events. We need to realise that the key to our unfolding
is the release of energy arising within us - caused by our
attachment to external events - so that we may find internal
harmony in all circumstances.
The second gateway is the realisation deep within that there
is no separation between what is 'in here' and what is 'out
there'. In other words, as we step through the gateway we
experience unity consciousness. We become the witnesser - the
consciousness of the creator in all things. With this comes a
sublime feeling of being at one with the whole of creation, as
the apparent duality between inner subject and outer object
dissolves. There is a liberating blissful feeling when stepping
through this gateway and many think they have become enlightened,
but while we may be awakened, this is still only a reflection of
enlightenment.
The third gateway leads to total liberation. It is stepping out
of the illusionary world of experience into absoluteness beyond
all experience. It occurs in all of us from time to time, although
it is mostly missed. For example, it could be the experience of
gardening on a warm summer's day when time dissolves, and hours
later we rediscover ourselves, not realising where the time went.
It is so awesomely ordinary that we have great difficulty in
accepting that it is the objective of everything we have been
seeking and doing throughout our countless lifetimes.
The moment we are 'looking at' this experience of freedom and
liberation - a 'non experience' - is the moment we recreate 'the
witnesser', and step back out of enlightenment. We step into and
out of this third gateway many times, until finally we give up
trying to understand it. We surrender trying to experience it and
simply settle into full enlightenment. The witnesser becomes
witnessing.
The experience becomes a normal state of perception without an
inner witness seeking or trying to understand what that state of
perception is:
"To know the truth is to know the self.
to know the self is to know what the self is not.
To be at one with what the self is and is not...
in every moment,
is to be enlightened by all things.
Then there is no trace of enlightenment,
although enlightenment flows through our daily lives
endlessly."
Copyright © 2006 Chris Bourne, www.openhandweb.org
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