The concept illumination comes from the idea of being able to see or understand something that was not yet clear enough, something that still remained hidden, in the dark, but then we get a clear picture and understand.
It is like the sunlight that illuminates everything during the day, to seek sustenance and to be alert to danger.
It is the light that has been the foundation of the appreciation and love to the sun as the star that is the source of life.
And as it has always been the focus of all the cycles in nature, by consequence it is also a fundamental aspect in many philosophical and mystical systems. In the same way that it has been the basis for science and development of humanity, beyond a mere worship to the sun.
Scientifically and philosophically, there is an agreement regarding the origin of the universe, at least in regards to the fact that the universe stems from unity.
Just as the big-bang theorists see the expansion from a single point, creation is born with light as a base and common source for all that exists in this universe we inhabit and that inhabits us.
Light, seen as the source of absolute power that energizes everything, that constitutes everything, is then the origin and purpose of everything.
The particles of our physical body are practically static, crystallized and with a dense energy vibration, which keep us trapped in time and space.
Our aim today is to explore how to become part of that highest vibrational state. That is what we call the birth of a new spiritual consciousness; making possible the union of what is above with what is below, symbolically speaking, the dense and material with the spiritual, which is in an energy vibration of a much higher frequency. In fact it is the light that radiates and emerges from within our hearts.
And when we start talking about achieving enlightenment, we imply becoming aware of our spiritual nature. Not as a goal in itself that can be reached with the snapping of the fingers, but as a continuous process that develops progressively, little by little.
Do you remember when Siddhartha, the Buddha, refers to this process? And how he begins saying that even though he could see a splendour of the universal light emanating from the spiritual world, he was not able to distinguish anything – neither forms nor images, nothing, because his enlightenment was not yet pure enough?
Then, later on, he could already perceive not only the light, but the different images and shapes within the light, without recognizing their meaning, because his enlightenment was not yet pure enough.
As he progressed on his path through enlightenment, he incrementally began to recognize those forms as the expression of spiritual entities without even understanding their origin. Later on, he not only understood their origin but also the actions of those spiritual entities, as well as their state of consciousness. And then, he finally understood that he himself had inhabited those realms in the past and that together, they had been part of each other as a whole, and it is in that moment that he fully conceives and achieves the purity of his enlightenment.
We have to understand that certain traditional ideological methods and systems, no matter how old or established they are in the society we inhabit, they can no longer be applied to the current state of being.
We have to understand that our own mental creations are the ones that actually set the limits of our perceptions. We have created an artificial intellectual entanglement that covers, one after another, the simplicity of universal beauty.
Einstein used to say that if you can’t explain something simply, it is because you don’t understand it well enough.
It is only when we can see everything clearly that we experience enlightenment.
Now, awareness occurs externally and internally. Externally, when we realize that something has been broken and needs to be fixed or renewed. We do question ourselves and scrutinize our own answers; we do not just swallow everything we say without questioning it. Eventually, our consciousness transcends the third dimension and vibrates synchronized with the light that awakens in our core, in the center of our microcosm. That is the internal aspect.
That is why this process is called enlightenment. Because it is that light within us, the God within us, which is our essence here and now. That Divine nature is the eternal aspect within us.
The point is that we must overcome our greatest obstacle: our own creations, the perception of the world that is based on our egocentric being, our own beliefs and conditionings, our expectations and the memories of the life we live now but of the past lives as well.
Overcoming this obstacle is a work of self-initiation. Our mind must understand and recognize this obstacle, must work on it. This self-initiation is not a simple process of just learning and understanding something. It is an inner combat, a fight between the new human being that is being born and forming under the radiant divine knowledge, under the infinite conditionings and automatisms of our behavior, which of course tries to prevent losing control of the vital gravity.
Imagine piloting a plane … did you know that a plane is off course 95% of the time, but the pilot keeps correcting the course over and over again until he reaches his destination?
It is a continuous effort, which has its cycles. We keep correcting the direction when we deviate, preparing for the next detour.
The light of our heart needs the continued support of our conscious being so it can transform those dense components and raise them into higher frequencies that can truly nourish our being as an integral part of the universe.
Truth is such a unique state that once you acquire it, once you accept it as part of your own being, you cannot go back – as it changes you, transforms you; it turns you into a different being from the one you used to be before accepting it. You become one with truth itself.
When a seeker begins his search for TRUTH, he has begun to enlighten. He has received a radiance of light, but as the Buddha said about it, it cannot be seen very clear yet because the purification of the candidate is not yet complete.
As the candidate goes through this process of transformation and purification of his being, enlightenment becomes a real fact, increasing in strength and light. The process works gradually and simultaneously. As the human being gradually reaches enlightenment, he or she acquires the ability to perceive the obstacles that his very own being provided or presented during this process of seeking and transformation. Discernment becomes increasingly clearer, brighter and enables you to identify which beings, which energies block your path, besides yourself.
Illumination is a never-ending process, moving from existing to becoming, and from becoming to ‘being’. Is this not a matter of consciousness? Seemingly so. If this process were to reach a given end, a finality, where would illumination be then? It would have changed back or again into partial seeing, into ‘space and time’. This is an enormous challenge that each inhabitant on this planet is invited to see, meet and come to grips with. This is where present and future merge into oneness.
