What Will I Get Out of Enlightenment?

To be enlightened. How does it feel like?

Feels good.

I mean, I need to know what I'm doing, you know. So I think I have to go through the mental process of understanding this. And what will I get out of this?

The motivation to seek enlightenment, or can be of various kinds. Some work better than others. There's a danger that the search for enlightenment is ego motivated. That can easily happen. The ego feels a sense, which is quite normal, of lack or dissatisfaction with the things it either the things it has or the things it has already achieved and didn't fulfill it. And then it went on to something else and that wasn't quite that fulfilling either. And then it reads or hears something about the possibility of achieving a state of enlightenment. Well, that sounds much better than all the things I've been looking for so far, because those things haven't satisfied me. So I'm going to go for that. And then the ego creates, of course, a. A goal. I want to reach that goal in the same way that before it created other goals that it either reached or did not reach. Either way it wasn't satisfying. You might have heard the saying, there are two ways of being unhappy. One is not getting what you want, the other is getting what you want. That's when the ego operates. That's the case. So either it achieved already what it wanted and it didn't satisfy it, or it couldn't achieve it and now it's looking for something else that maybe it could achieve. And enlightenment seems a good option because the Ferrari didn't satisfy me. And then I tried the Lamborghini and that didn't satisfy me. And then I tried whatever else didn't satisfy me but enlightenment. That's it. I want to go for that. And then of course it wants to know, okay, but what exactly does that mean? I want to know what I'm striving towards because it might be the wrong thing. Maybe when I achieve it, I won't be there anymore. Or maybe the only way to achieve it is for me to dissolve. I don't know if I want it anymore. I think I'm going to ask Eka that question. So what I can tell you, in addition to what I've already said, is enlightenment will not satisfy your ego. Sorry about that. Ego needs to be recognized as an illusion, an ultimate fiction in your mind for something else to emerge. And in that sense one can say nobody actually becomes enlightened. You don't become enlightened, but when you get out of the way, there it is. So enlightenment is not something you can actually achieve. And I have no feeling that I achieved anything or that I am enlightened. I said it feels good because just the present moment feels good. That's all I know. So just even to make that claim I am enlightened is ultimately cannot be correct. Because who is saying that? Who is making that claim? So in ultimate terms, you cannot be enlightened. But if you, the person, recognize its ephemeral nature and you no longer see your sense of self there, then something else is suddenly there that has always been there, but you just didn't know, was obscured. It was continuously overlooked. The presence of consciousness was continuously overlooked in every experience. You could have been conscious of it at any moment, but it was overlooked because the hypnotic nature of the sensory world, and especially of the mind, was so overpowering that you overlooked something more, more essential in you that has always been there, is always there, will always be there. So, and therefore, if the motivation to seek so called enlightenment comes from that place of seeking some permanent fulfillment, then it's not going to work. And there are spiritual practitioners without knowing it, they spend years and years looking for that thing. And they are mentally projected into this place called future, which by the way only exists as a thought, but has no reality as such. There is no future except as a thought in your head. Nobody has seen future, touched it, been there, you can't, it's not there. Life is now, always, there is no future. So if you seek a future state, it's misleading. And if you seek enlightenment in the future, that very search is the obstacle. So however, there can be another motivation for seeking enlightenment. But then I would suggest a different word for it, and not enlightenment, but liberation. And that motivation can be not to find some greater fulfillment, but that motivation can be to become free of suffering. So that can be another motivation for seeking enlightenment. But although I would prefer the term liberation here or in Christian terminology, a related word that's used in Christian terminology is salvation. So if, if the suffering in your life gets too much, and then realizing that there is a way beyond suffering and wanting to know more about that, that is a better motivation for finding liberation than seeing what can I get out of it when I finally get enlightened. And of course the answer is the one that's asking that question won't be even there to experience.