Being enlightened is a heavy burden, you know. I mean, everybody wants to know, and the instant you start to say something enlightened, all the attention swings over toward you. Like a million watts (or so it seems) of spotlighting focuses on your ‘shy’ little ego and, loving attention, your ego barges into the spotlight all loud and obnoxious. In a breath, the enlightenment is swept away.
And then it is gone.
It is gone so fast that even you do not know for sure that you ‘had it’. It is only through permanent isolation that you ever get an inkling that you are, in fact, enlightened. This may be why ascetic monks were so ascetic. It kept others away. It maintained isolation, denying attention to the voraciously attention-seeking ego. But that just made them unhappy. Worse, it defeated the purpose; the ego became the center of dark instead of bright attention. The ego was still the center.
So enlightenment becomes not a state of joy, but the opressively stuffy and overbearing presence of the ego, penetrated only by rare and faint breaths of joy, just to remind you that the air is nice—somewhere else.
It happens at parties. You feel a need to go off alone with your drink, onto a porch or patio away from the crowd. The stars. The lesser noise. Something stirs, rises. It begins to awaken, recovering from its deep sleep. It is still, watching. Present.
And then someone joins you. People do this almost instinctively. They see one separating from the group, wandering off alone, and something in them detects the possibility of enlightenment emerging from its ego-imposed opression. They are drawn to this in their soul. But also, their own egos seek to dominate that emerging enlightenment. Enlightenment anywhere is a threat to the ego everywhere.
I do not know what may happen next. I only know what has always happened everytime I have been there. The ego reasserts itself, and reality—as we know it, through our egos—resumes its disinterested opression of the limitless. Sometimes, if alcohol is being consumed for example, it takes the ego a few moments to regain control. From the interim some evidences may be remembered of what else there might be beyond what the ego allows. Finally, enlightenment is reinterred, stomped firmly down by the obnoxious ego, until some other random opportunity comes for it to emerge.
But this I know; the limitless waits. Eternally opressed and abused, it holds no grudges. It asserts itself never. It waits to be called, and it never fails to respond. That call is going out always, from somewhere deep inside, where the ego cannot go. The limitless is, really, all there is.