We chase enlightenment as if it’s some grand destination – some final unlocking of truth that will set us free. But what if it’s just another illusion – another cleverly designed escape hatch pulling us further from what we came here to experience? We are told we must grow, evolve, transcend, but maybe that’s just another layer of conditioning – another way to keep us from realizing that we were never lost to begin with. Maybe the point isn’t to escape, but to fully be – to inhabit this messy, unpredictable, beautiful human existence without constantly seeking a way out.
. . .
From the perspective of the human being – the living man or woman – the idea of enlightenment often appears to be a form of spiritual bypassing, another mechanism of coping, or simply a misguided process of escapism. The human avatar seems to require what we call the soul – as an energy source, an etheric animator for this physical life – to exist and to experience life as this transient, temporal individuation.
Thus, it would seem to follow that the complementary ideas of integration, recapitulation, consciousness expansion, spiritual growth, and the big one – enlightenment – are simply the shedding of imposed layers, conditions, strictures, and constructs of emotions, beliefs, and materiality. They are the implementation of very particular, Earth-specific, coalescent energies necessary to live as a human being – and, critically, chosen, at least in part, by us.
Therefore, unless we are actually, genuinely, and consciously living in a fully accepting, present, and embodied way – as the glorious, messy, smelly, fickle, moody, artistic, creative, unpredictable humans that we are – we may be doomed to forever chase, seek, and quietly, desperately look for ways to escape it. Even after we “die.” Furthermore, even a fleeting glimpse beyond or outside of this material paradigm – where we might experience the Spirit’s perspective – can feel like enlightenment, a tangible and experiential lightening, an energetic liberation, and, in turn, a physical unburdening.
Don’t kid yourself. For most of us, human life is no picnic, and yet, we chose to experience it. We are testing and interrogating ourselves at every turn, through every lifetime, every divergent perspective, diving headfirst into a realm that offers the entire spectrum of psychological, emotional, and spiritual expression. So, perhaps the more we ascribe meaning to ideas and practices aimed at pulling us up and out and away from it, the more suffering and struggle we will inevitably endure, due the dramatic effects of trying to separate or dislocate powerfully and purposefully magnetized forces. We defer our power and agency to lofty – if not entirely nonsensical and misguided – notions of saviors, messiahs, and endless prayer, hoping in desperation for someone or something to remedy the ceaseless and infernal conflict and save us from ourselves.
“Please, let us know the miraculous, and let us go to the good place after all is said and done. We are mere mortals, fallible and prone to confusion, delusion, delirium, and indecisiveness.”
Maybe that’s part of this earthbound game’s design. It is far easier to go along to get along, to blend in with the noisy, fearful, and complicit crowd, to hide in plain sight. And yet, our better-knowing soul cannot abide our inauthentic expression, poking and prodding us – through both gentle and overt means – toward higher ideals and aspirations.
“Enlightenment is not a distant peak to climb, but the light already within, waiting to be recognized.”
— Walter Russell
In my view, the soul can experience this earthly, materialistic realm – this impressive reality game – only through the magnificence of our human avatar. And while Earth can certainly, from some perspectives, be considered a prison planet or even a soul trap of sorts, that is not the whole story. It is not even close. But it is an apt excuse, a convenient object onto which we project our subjective worries, pains, frustrations, and anxieties. It proliferates through media, literature, and religion – a useful something to reach for in desperation and say, “You. It’s your problem, it’s your fault. I am suffering because of you.”
Of course, this is where the lies and distortions of salvation myths and age-old paradigms of metaphysical hierarchy come from. Those in the know – perhaps the priestly caste or other ancient controlling forces who understand the human experience more intimately – and those who seek vast power and manipulative sway over humanity’s potentialities can and will use these very configurable, effective, and enforceable levels of ignorance against us.
When you are shown by example, and told from your earliest days – before you can even understand language – that you are weak, fragile, prone to disease and sickness, that you are a sinner, that you need a savior, that salvation is possible but only for a select, special few (whether by blood, ritual, or contractual agreement), that fabricated imprint is carried by your body, heart, and mind throughout your entire life. Perhaps even multiple lives.
These are all the many reasons why we must dig into and drill down to the root of the meanings of words such as Soul, Spirit, Source, Oversoul, or God – as well as delve into the comprehension of meaning, purpose, and love. To find genuine meaning in one’s life, one must know where they stand – difficult, certainly, after a lifetime of standing under, believing oneself to be something lowly and lacking, suppressing their inborn creatorship, and deferring agency and authority to the other, the object, the intercessor, the extrinsic. They must know what they are doing here. They must have a strong and foundational why.
But if you are convinced that you need to be aware, be careful, be afraid – that you had better find a way out, choose the right life script, that you have been lied to, that you have been trapped, that you need saving – then your entire life path and experience will be oriented toward a maligned or distorted version of a largely imagined kind of freedom. It will always be just out of reach.
“Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, creed, dogma, priest, or ritual.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
In truth, when you have shed enough illusory layers, interrogated and dispelled the many impositions and distortions, you may come to realize that you have never been trapped, you have never needed salvation, you have never been incomplete – and you most certainly do not need to grow, evolve, or develop into anything.
You are not here to solve anything, to save anyone, or to save the world. If that were the point of this place, then among the alleged billions of us who have existed throughout millennia, someone would have likely done something in that regard. But that is not what we find. That is not what we see at all. It is just endless repeating cycles, endlessly recombined through permutations of factors, clever fictions, obfuscations, and grand fabrications.
Ours is most certainly not the first civilization to have existed in this realm. It is more likely the 30th – at least within this particular cycle, this particular configuration of Earth, based on fragments of recorded history.
Don’t waste your energy chasing shapeshifting shadows and clever, colorful phantasms.
Whatever we grow into may, in the end, need to be discarded – as will most of the ideas, stories, and narratives we have adopted throughout our lives in our search for answers, solace, deeper understanding, or simply to cope.
You just need to live. To be wholly you.
For simply being here is the point, the reason, the justification.
And it is enough.
You’re just passing through.
Solvitur ambulando
This article is a continuation, or perhaps an addendum, to this writing.