What is Enlightenment For?

Enlightenment can actually be a selfish goal based on pursuing a spiritual path solely for the benefit of ‘me’. The ego is more than happy to become a ‘spiritualised ego’ so that it can feel superior to all those who are not yet consciously on their spiritual path. But a spiritualised ego is still a separate illusory self that thinks that it can attain the ultimate prize of ‘personal enlightenment’. In reality there is no such prize as personal enlightenment, since true enlightenment involves complete transcendence of the illusory, separated, personality self that we call ‘me’.The spiritual quest can sound very noble, but it is sometimes purely narcissistic. ‘I am determined to reach enlightenment, so that I can be blissfully happy, but I will bury my head in the sand about all the terrible world problems that surround me. After all they are just an illusion, so why should I bother to try to help solve them?’ This is self-delusion at best and total selfishness at worst. The world desperately needs positive, radiant, spiritually empowered leaders who can inspire others to come together to solve a range of almost intractable world problems, such as famine, AIDS, terrorism and environmental issues.

I strongly believe that a modern spiritual seeker should not aim to retreat from the world to a high remote mountaintop. He/she should commit to assisting to raise mass consciousness and thus contribute to the healing of the whole world. This may sound like rather grandiose goal, but I am convinced that this is what spiritual practitioners should be aiming for in the 21st century, if humankind is to stand any chance of long-term survival and fulfilment.

As Radiant Spiritual Warriors, we cannot just sit tight and do nothing for all our suffering brothers and sisters. We have to find a way to give some hope to humanity. Spiritual practitioners should accomplish something positive in this world, whether they do it on a small scale or a grand scale, loudly or quietly. It is so blissful to connect to the light and illuminate our individual consciousness. Advanced meditators can easily bliss themselves out in the light for several hours a day, but what does this really achieve? Of course we can ease our own discomfort, and transcend our own personal suffering, by connecting to the light on a daily basis, but eventually, all genuine spiritual practitioners have to go beyond an egoic concern for their own personality-self and go out to assist others in the world.
After some time on our healing and awakening path, we can no longer afford to luxuriate in our continuing petty personal problems, hurts and pain. Nor can we afford to heal ourselves through our spiritual practices without a concern for the continuing suffering of others. We need to develop a much wider perspective on the advanced spiritual path, one that embraces the whole of human suffering.
When we first begin our spiritual journey, our focus will inevitably be on our own awakening and healing. In fact, it is essential for us to heal as much of our own inner pain as possible before attempting to heal others, or we will just be unhealed ‘healers’ making a mess! But there is healing our personal pain, and then there is indulging in our own pain. Eventually, we all have to transcend our concern with our own pain and suffering, to focus our efforts on liberating others. Otherwise, the whole spiritual journey will have been a waste of time and effort. We will simply become another spiritualised, self-satisfied, egotistical practitioner who is no real use to the world whatsoever. The self-healing path is not for the faint hearted. It usually takes several years of courageous and compassionate effort to heal ourselves, and to allow the light to shine away most if not all of our deepest inner darkness. This in itself is no mean feat. But we are not being called to awake and heal for ourselves alone. We are also being called to heal all our brothers and sisters.

To start with, as you become ready to serve others, you do not have to be a Bob Geldof, Mother Theresa or Thich Nhat Hanh. You do not have to try and solve a huge problem like hunger in Africa. But you do have to do something, perhaps on a very small scale to begin with, to assist others in some way or another. Don’t concentrate on ‘you’ so much. Do your best to see a bigger picture, and then commit to following an active path of compassionate service. Your suffering and the suffering of all of humankind is basically the same, and the more you awake, the more your heart will break as you witness the enormity of humanity’s collective suffering. Your soul will weep as it feels the collective pain of the world. Your true self wants only to heal this collective pain, and so you will pray from your compassionate, open heart, ‘Use me’.

As you reach the stage on your spiritual path when you are called upon to help humanity, you have to throw away all false humility and call upon a mighty power to assist you. Do not play small and say to yourself, ‘Who am I to save the world?’ Do not indulge your ego in this way. Do not allow your ego to sabotage your part in God’s plan for salvation. The ego will always convince you to focus on your own childish grievances and personal desires rather than to address the suffering of the whole world. But whether in a big way or a small way, you have volunteered to assist the whole world to heal and awake.

When you are called upon to do your bit for the world, do not be petty and say, ‘I do not have enough money to help at the moment’, or ‘ I am too shy to go out into the world to heal or teach others’. This is actually a type of narcissism. Simply commit to doing your very best to ease someone else’s suffering, even though you know that in reality you can really never fix anyone or anything except your own mind.
Sometimes spiritual principles can be too lofty. Saying that the whole world is just a temporary illusion and therefore all the suffering in the world is not such a big deal is a pathetic excuse for doing nothing to help those in desperate need of assistance. Whenever you get an opportunity to serve your brothers and sisters, say ‘Yes’ and I promise you that you will become one of the most fulfilled human beings on the planet.

All my courses and retreats are training you to be of real service in the world. If you genuinely ask the light to use you, a path of service will inevitably open up for you. Don’t seek so much for personal comfort or happiness. Rather commit to performing miracles on behalf of the whole of humanity. Hold light, peace, love and inspiration for the others. You are not being illuminated with infinitely powerful spiritual light just so that you can sit on your own self-centred little cloud nine. ‘My kundalini is rising!’ So what! Who cares! As you progress down the path such personal experiences should matter to you less and less. Your core goal should always be to remove as much fear and darkness from your own mind so that Christ, Buddha and other ascended masters can use you to assist others to heal and awake. Christ and Buddha have to use your body to channel healing to those who desperately call on them for help. They cannot approach them directly. They need you to channel their healing love and light down into the physical world.

At first, tuning into the collective pain of the world can seem overwhelming, but the more you can hold the light, the more you will realise that all pain and suffering is ultimately not real. Moreover, through serving others, you will witness the light working through you over and over again, until you have complete faith in its miraculous healing power. However, please do not think that ‘saving the world’ means that you have to rush about like a busy fool serving others at your own expense. Do not rush out to save the world prematurely. If you do this, you will very easily wear yourself out. Whereas, if you surrender to the light, and allow it to guide your every move, you can perform miracles effortlessly, or rather the light can perform miracles effortlessly through you. All you have to do is to put your ego on one side for a while, and listen quietly to a higher wisdom guiding your every word and deed.

If you want to be truly helpful in this world, you need to learn never to say or to do anything ‘helpful’ without first pausing to ask for guidance from a higher intelligence. Always ask a higher power, ‘What would you have me do/say?’ ‘Where would you have me go?’ Open your heart and mind, and tune into your inner intuition. Unhealed healers tend to make a mess in the world, but the genuinely spiritually empowered teacher or healer can move mountains. Don’t insist on serving humanity in a particular way or a particular place. Wait until the divine Will manifests itself very clearly in your life. If you try to serve humanity using your own petty strength and willpower, you will be like a sparrow flapping its little wings. What you really need, to be truly helpful, are to fly with the eagle’s wings of genuine spiritual empowerment.

Once you experience true spiritual strength in action through you, you will never want to go back to relying on the infinitesimally small strength of your personality-self. Those incredibly rare individuals who make a real difference in the world, such as Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela, always draw on infinite spiritual power and strength as well as their own courage and determination.

Please do not think that you have to become a martyr of any kind in order to serve others. You can serve the world selflessly and still enjoy excellent health, abundance and beautiful personal relationships. In fact, you will serve the world more effectively if your personal life is filled with joy and abundance than if your personal life is still beset with problems and lack. I cannot give you the power to move mountains. You have to cultivate it through your own diligent practice and commitment to the path. If you genuinely want to assist others, you cannot indulge in weakness or moodiness. You cannot be unfocussed or uninspired. The light is never uninspiring, and so you have to really be able to hold or embody the light before it can use you to save humanity. The light or the Holy Spirit will use you to the max, but you will never be asked to serve beyond your capacity. So the light has to wait with infinite patience until you have healed and empowered yourself enough to enlighten others.
If you really want to assist others to heal and awake, you have to be able to hold the light for them with great strength and peace, whilst they go through their own turbulent healing journey. To see people transform before your very eyes as they heal and awake is a rare miracle, but as people heal they can become irrationally angry and difficult, and so you need to prepare yourself to face the hostility of those you are asked to assist. At first, you may only be able to hold the light and your inner peace as one person shouts at you. But eventually God is asking you to hold the peace for 10,000 people in chaos. To assist 10,000 people to change their minds from dwelling in fear to dwelling in love is much harder than assisting just one person to change their mind, but the spiritual principles involved are exactly the same. You hold the light and stay connected to its peace and strength regardless of the chaos raging all around you. You do not have to follow Christ’s example and stay connected to the light as the world literally crucifies you, but, if you are serious about saving the world, you may well be asked to hold the light for others in some very challenging circumstances.

Genuine spiritual training will always push you to another level so that you can hold more light and therefore exert more spiritual power on behalf of more and more people. You do not go around zapping people with light; that is just magical thinking. But when you hold light and peace within you, you will know exactly what to do to help those brothers and sisters who come to you for assistance. In complete inner stillness, you will always discern exactly the right actions to follow. When you are truly connected to the light, your body can simply follow an inner knowing or divine guidance, and when you can listen to this guidance, miracles have to happen.

Jesus Christ learned to listen to this divine guidance and nothing else. But while your little mind is still chattering away, lost in its own tiny concerns, you will not hear a higher wisdom calling to you. Your mind has to be trained to be very clear and quiet, so that you can hear divine guidance and so that your whole person can become a servant of the light. Whilst you remain on this earth, your greatest achievement is to become a servant of the light. You then become ‘the light of the world’. But in order to attain this level of spiritual mastery, you have to forget all about your personal concerns and your egoic self-hood until you become a Saint or a Bodhisattva. Ultimately, this is what all genuine spiritual training is designed to produce—Saints and Bodhisattvas!