The Light of Enlightenment 6

An Experience of Enlightenment

Years ago, as I was listening to my spiritual director talk about the universe, I suddenly saw the universe inside her heart.  Like Wordsworth, who saw the world in a grain of sand, I saw the universe as the size of a fist.

In that moment, I understood that time and space don’t really exist, that the universe is immensely vast, but incredibly small at the same time.  If we could comprehend this and learn to work with the energies that existed, we could cross to where star number 090423 exploded. In 2009, the light from this star reached the space-based Swift satellite. Using redshift analysis, scientists concluded that GRB (gamma-ray burst) 090423 occurred about 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 700,000 years old. For a universe, that’s young.

Awe, Mystery, and the Universe

So I was sitting in my spiritual director’s office, not really listening to what she was saying because I was so amazed at what I saw, and I realized we could go there, where that star exploded.  Just take one step, and there we’d be.  Of course, we’d have to be careful.  We wouldn’t want to fall into a black hole or land in the middle of a nova. After all, the universe is not a safe place.  Composed mostly of emptiness and this thing we don’t understand called “dark matter,” the universe still contains enough moving, exploding, colliding objects that we’d want to watch where we were walking.  Or soaring, as in some astral body.  Some people say they can do this.  Since time and space are so fluid, maybe it’s possible.

So I’ve had my moment of enlightenment.  Actually, I’ve had a few moments of enlightenment.  And I’ve heard incredible stories of bliss and instant wisdom from others.  Some of those stories were from people who are now active in their addiction.  And that’s part of the point.  Just because we’ve had these moments of insight, just because we saw the light and felt transformed, doesn’t mean we’re going to stay transformed.

The Practice of Enlightenment

To stay transformed, we have to do the daily work. We need a regular spiritual practice.

It is said, “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.  After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”  Our lives don’t really change.  We still go to work and pay bills.  We still experience pain.  After all, we dwell in bodies; we have minds.  We are finite.  This world may be an illusion, but we still live in it.

And part of living in the world means, not only pain, but suffering.  No matter how much light I’ve seen, or prayers I do, or meditative walks I take, sometimes I suffer.  The difference for me now is that I notice when I’m suffering, and I can bring myself out of it.  I can stop spinning that story about why the situation is messed up, why the other person was wrong, or why I shouldn’t have to go through this. I can stop trying to change what is happening.  Instead, I can notice.  Ah, frustration.  Hello, sadness.  Or, as the Buddha suggests, I can say to myself, “So this is suffering.”

The light of enlightenment can be as simple as a gamma-ray burst from some distant star that reminds us how small we are and how vast in time and space is this universe.  It can come as some internal understanding that appears to arise from nothing.  Buddha talked about a lamp within us that carries the truth; Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God or Heaven which is inside us all the time.  All we need to do is develop the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

The Light of Grace

At other times, the light comes from outside of us, like grace, or God’s love, or the support of our community.

Regardless of where it comes from, we can all find that light.  Generally, it takes years of a consistent spiritual practice, of working a program, of being open before a shift occurs that changes our life.  But not always.  A touch, a phrase spoken just right, the sight of the trees at dusk, a sense of being loved exactly as we are, a tragedy that tears us apart and leaves a wound through which the light can shine . . .

Sometimes the light just flashes, like that burst from that far-distant star in 2009, and then we don’t see it again.  But even though we don’t see the light, it never disappears.  The light from star 090423 has traveled 13 billion light-years and is traveling still.  We may not see it all the time; we may not feel it all the time.  And once we find the light, it never goes away again.  Even when we feel alone or scared or furious or broken-hearted, the light is there, streaming into eternity, our soul on its back.

In faith and fondness,
Barbara
October 2012