enlightenment

The misconception about enlightenment stems from, or is at least compounded by, the fact that most of the world's recognized experts on the subject of enlightenment are not enlightened.  Some are great mystics, some are great scholars, some are both, and most are neither, but exceedingly few are awake.

    "But what about when people explore their inner selves?  Make journeys of self-discovery?  Aren't they going within to find the truth?"
    "They're just exploring the ego, making a study of the false self, which is a lifequest as valid as any other.  But you don't wake up by perfecting your dream character, you wake up by breaking free of it.  There's no truth to the ego, so no degree of mastery over it results in anything true.  Putting attention on the false self merely reinforces it."

I find that God by any name can be reduced to this sense of the eternal Presence. It defines being, and I see it as a sphere of intense light that marks the point of my origin. It is the permanent part of me, of which I am very aware, and the point to which I will return at the conclusion of this life.

Never forget the space that houses your enlightenment.

by una 

Said the river to the seeker, "Does one really have to fret about enlightenment? No matter which way I turn, I’m homeward bound."

To relate is to react. To react is to understand oneself. To understand oneself is to be enlightened. Relationships are schools for enlightenment.

One Taste is not some experience you bring about through effort; rather, it is the actual condition of all experience before you do anything to it. This uncontrived state is prior to effort, prior to grasping, prior to avoiding. It is the real world before you do anything to it, including the effort to "see it nondually".

This is the world of One Taste, with no inside and no outside, no subject and no object, no in here versus out there, without means, without path and without goal. And this, as Ramana said, is the final truth.

Hast thou attuned thyself to the suffering of humanity, O candidate for light?

Love and the self are one and the discovery of either is the realization of both.

The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way,  but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being.