already enlightened

Many of us find ourselves seriously unhappy with what this life on Earth appears to offer us. For so long we can lose ourselves in work, family, study, partying, sex, drugs, whatever, but there comes a time when we earnestly seek revelation or insight, a deeper understanding of why we are here and what we should be doing with our lives. Over 20 years ago I had a series of epiphanies, which I will describe in future posts: these led me on a great voyage of inner discovery, which is still unfolding. For now, here are extracts from another man's eloquent account of his first epiphany (from "Underneath It All" by Mark Flaherty):

In a state of stillness and receptivity, I recognized that I was in my heart: I had consciously connected to it for the first time ever in my life... I had been looking everywhere for it without success. The instant I gave up searching, the split second I stopped trying to find it, I encountered it.

In that moment I experienced love for the very first time in my adult life. Immediately everything made sense... I saw the entire Universe, right there, inside my heart. It was beautiful beyond description. I saw the perfection of creation and recognized that the answer to every question I have ever had, and will ever have, was in my heart, always. My heart always knows what to do in every situation.
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By remaining present, by bathing in the blissful state of being, all that exists is love, and love unifies everything. Love makes everything OK. There is no need to fix anything because nothing is wrong. I just needed to love it. I just had to remember love. That's all. In love there is no struggle, no conflict. Love is love is love is love. What could be simpler?

Love showed me that there was nothing to heal, that I was perfect exactly as I was. Love removed all discord, gently and effortlessly. There were no thoughts, just a direct experience of life. I saw it for what it really is. Life is eternal. I am eternal. In this space there is no linear time. The mind creates time. When thinking stops, time disappears and eternity is revealed. I was never born and can never die. With that realization, my fear of death dissolved and I felt as light as a feather.

There is no past, there is no future. Since there is no past, there is nothing to heal. I realized that every time I think of something that I believe to be in the past, I am actually re-creating it in the moment. The only thing that exists is what I am experiencing right now. The entire universe is constantly manifesting in every moment. The world literally re-creates itself every moment.

The absence of time means that there is nothing to achieve, nothing to do, nowhere to go. There is only being. I realized that as human beings we are already enlightened, and our hearts already know this. It is simply something we are either realizing (by being in the heart) or not realizing (by being in the mind) in any one moment.

I relaxed deeply as my whole body bathed in love. It soaked it up. It had been desperate for it for so long. I cannot be separate from love because I am love. "Just look for love and you will see it everywhere," the spirits told me. "In a flower. In a smile. In music. In food. The whole world is made of pure love. Your only job is to look for it and follow where life leads you. This will take you into deeper and deeper experiences of love, if you will only relax, surrender and allow it to."
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Life is so much fun and so simple when you are in your heart. Get out of the way and life flows through you in a never-ending stream of beauty and love.

"Do not try to live life, let life live you," I heard the spirits say.