I agree, Dan, but who is the ‘you’ that’s Enlightened?
Most people don’t seem to understand that it’s not the psychological ‘you’ that becomes Enlightened. The psychological ‘you’ (false identity or ego) can never be Enlightened because it doesn’t exist outside the human mind. In other words, the dream character is not that which wakes up. How can the dream character enter the ‘real’ world? It can’t.
What happens is, as the a person begins to Awake, the psychological self/ego - like the dream character - dissolves and the dreamer, which has been there all the time, comes into focus. It’s in this shift of consciousness that one realizes that he has always been the dreamer playing the part of the dream character.
It’s important to remember because when a person has a genuine Awakening experience and falls back ‘asleep’ again into this mundane world, the psychological self (dream character) assumes that it had the experience when in actual fact, the psychological identity/ego was absent.
If the psychological self/ego believes it had the experience then trying to reexperience it again is going to be in vain. The psychological self/ego cannot experience its own absence but what it will do is create imaginary states of mind or mystical experiences and claim them to be Enlightenment.
Mystical experiences – as beautiful and profound as they often are – are not Enlightenment. Enlightenment is hyper clarity… hyper transparency… emptiness… no-thingness… spaciousness. To the mind, Enlightenment appears bland and boring. Mystical experiences, on the other hand, are drenched with emotion, meaning and awe. The psychological self/ego thrives on this.
You probably know this already Dan, I hope I don’t sound like I’m lecturing; I just want to clarify it so others don’t confuse Enlightenment with all the other imaginary or mystical states. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with those experiences if you’re aware of what they truly are.