Spiritual Enlightenment Moment

Taking Steps to Experience A Spiritual Enlightenment Moment

I’ve had to sit with this article today and I struggled to know what to type first as I attempt to explain what has been happening for me in terms of spiritual enlightenment.

Some years ago I read The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle and it changed the way I view people, my mind and my soul forever even though I did not fully understand it at the time. What I initially gained from Tolle’s work was the idea that I wanted spiritual enlightenment as he had described.  While I cannot claim I really fully experienced ‘The Now’ as Tolle would say, I did start to witness my own thoughts and change happened as a result.

I started reading Ram Dass Be Love Now about a week ago – slowly – absorbing only when I had time to pick it up. One of the concepts in this book worked well for me. When I read about the affirmation he used “I am loving awareness” I started to use it too and focus on my heart as I said it. At first it just felt like words but as I applied it when being present and focusing on my heart, it had a more powerful impact.

Then, Ram Dass talked about being in a state of love. I was able to put myself in a state of being ‘in love’ without attaching it to anyone or anything except my own heart. I was simply in a state of love. At times the feeling was so over-whelming that I felt like I could not take it on. The feeling was immense, too big for me to cope with and I would pull myself out of this feeling. In hindsight, this was quite possibly a lead in to a spiritual enlightenment moment.

Yesterday after practicing this state of being in love and also using the “I am loving awareness” affirmation I noticed an interesting thing. I was walking my kids to school and every single person I came in contact with wished me a good day in one way or the other. I knew it was because I had opened my heart and had been trying to see people a souls. Last night I read more of Be Love Now and started silently to say Ram Ram Ram which is considered to be a powerful chant.

Then It Happened

Today as I walked with the kids to school, I felt in less of an open love state as I was more absorbed with my thoughts but there was still an awareness. On the return walk home I chanted Ram and put myself in the state of in love again. Once again, it felt powerful and I had to take myself out of it saying to myself that maybe, like the kefir water I had been making, I needed to do it in small doses; build my body up to be able to accept it more freely.

I entered the cafe to order a coffee and I had the words in my head based on Ram Dass’s book “when you are in your soul all you see are souls”. I had been chanting, I was in an ‘in love’ state and I was loving awareness. I am unsure how long I felt this but I guess for a brief  minute or so, I was in a state of soul. I did not see people, I did not judge people or wonder what people were doing. I saw souls all connected and yet separate as moving entities. I could not sense their energies or moods and their actions were nothing. They were purely souls. Toddlers, parents, elderly were all just ‘doing’ without identity. I felt like I was one with them all but it was not a love connection but was more like being on a plateau or merge with them. I felt a strong sense to burst out laughing but then to also cry.The feeling went away as I left the shop but I felt open to being love for those stranger around me.

So, was that a spiritual enlightenment moment? I am not sure I can answer that but it was like nothing I had ever experienced before in my life. It was pure, thoughtless (in that, it was not of the mind), open and calm.

I hope this is just the beginning of more spiritual enlightenment moments because I want to see how deep loving awareness is. Bring it on…with gratitude.