Today I Choose to be Enlightened – How to be Enlightened

I remember reading the Celestine Prophecy—oh, was I hooked on reaching higher consciousness! I wanted to think I’d reached that elevated level of understanding simply because I had read someone else’s achievement of it.

I stared at the trees trying to see their light—wait, was that a glimmer? I think I see it… hmm, there? Am I communicating with that lizard? Are we on the same wavelength? LOL. I spent weeks thinking I had evolved and become enlightened.

I remember reading The Power of Now and going out to emulate Eckhart Tolle. Sitting on benches just being one with the now. Sooooo enlightened.

That was decades ago. Fast forward to two years ago, walking through Lady Bird Johnson Grove, not looking for anything, but then having it find me. When I least expected it, incredible awe filled me and brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. The sheer magnitude of feeling washed over me.

In that moment I got it. But only in that moment, because for mere humans, enlightenment is fleeting, ethereal, tiny glimpses.

Today, I choose to stop chasing enlightenment and start being present to the ordinary moments where genuine awe might actually show up.

The Enlightenment Industrial Complex

We live in an age where enlightenment has been packaged, marketed, and sold as a product you can acquire through the right books, workshops, meditation apps, or spiritual practices. This commercialization creates the illusion that elevated consciousness is something you can achieve through effort, technique, or accumulation of spiritual knowledge.

But this approach often creates exactly the opposite of what it promises—a spiritual ego that’s focused on being enlightened rather than simply being present. When you’re trying to see tree auras or communicate with lizards, you’re performing spirituality rather than experiencing it.

The irony is that the harder you chase enlightenment, the more it tends to elude you, because the chasing itself creates the very separation and self-consciousness that prevent genuine spiritual experience.

When Seeking Becomes Its Own Trap

My weeks of trying to be enlightened were actually a form of spiritual materialism—collecting experiences and insights as evidence of my evolved state rather than genuinely opening to whatever was present. I was more interested in being someone who had achieved enlightenment than in the actual experience of awakened awareness.

This kind of seeking often becomes counterproductive because it’s still fundamentally about the ego—just a spiritual version of it. Instead of wanting to be rich or famous or successful, you want to be enlightened. But the wanting itself creates the very sense of lack and separation that enlightenment supposedly dissolves.

The person sitting on benches trying to emulate Eckhart Tolle is still performing, still trying to become something other than what they are, still operating from the assumption that their current state isn’t enough.

Grace vs. Effort

The profound difference between my forced spiritual seeking and the genuine moment of awe in Lady Bird Johnson Grove illustrates something crucial about authentic spiritual experience: it tends to arrive as grace rather than achievement.

I wasn’t trying to be enlightened when I walked through those ancient trees. I wasn’t practicing any technique or attempting to achieve any particular state of consciousness. I was simply present, walking in a beautiful place, when something much larger than my personal seeking opened up and moved through me.

This suggests that genuine spiritual experience might be less about what we do to achieve it and more about what we stop doing that interferes with it. Less effort, more openness. Less seeking, more allowing.

The Humility of Fleeting Glimpses

Perhaps the most important insight from comparing these two types of experiences is recognizing that for ordinary humans, enlightenment isn’t a permanent state you achieve and then maintain forever. It’s more like brief glimpses—moments of genuine awe, connection, or clarity that arise spontaneously and then pass away.

This understanding brings tremendous relief because it releases you from the pressure to be constantly enlightened or to maintain some elevated state of consciousness. Instead, you can simply appreciate these moments of grace when they occur without trying to grasp them or make them permanent.

The person who has occasional genuine spiritual experiences mixed with plenty of ordinary human struggling is probably more authentic than someone who claims to have achieved permanent enlightenment.

Ordinary Consciousness as Sacred Ground

One of the most revolutionary insights about spirituality is recognizing that your ordinary awareness—the consciousness you have while doing dishes, sitting in traffic, or having difficult conversations—is already inherently sacred and complete.

You don’t need to achieve some special state or have dramatic experiences to access genuine spirituality. The awareness that’s reading these words right now, the consciousness that experiences your daily life, is the same awareness that occasionally opens into moments of profound awe or connection.

This perspective transforms everyday experience from a series of obstacles to spiritual achievement into opportunities for presence and appreciation.

Practical Non-Seeking

If the goal isn’t to achieve enlightenment but to be present to what’s actually here, what does that look like practically?

Drop the spiritual performance. Stop trying to be enlightened and start being genuinely curious about your actual experience in each moment.

Appreciate ordinary awareness. Notice that the consciousness experiencing your daily life is already remarkable, even when it’s not having peak experiences.

Welcome whatever arises. Instead of trying to create special states, practice being present to whatever thoughts, feelings, or experiences are actually occurring.

Expect nothing, appreciate everything. Let go of expectations about what spiritual experience should look like and remain open to whatever forms of beauty or connection naturally arise.

Trust the process. Understand that genuine spiritual opening often happens when you’re not trying to make it happen.

The Liberation of Giving Up

Perhaps the most enlightened thing you can do is give up trying to be enlightened. This doesn’t mean abandoning all spiritual interest or practice—it means releasing the goal-oriented approach that treats awakening as something to achieve rather than something to be.

When you stop trying to become someone special and start appreciating who you already are, when you stop seeking extraordinary experiences and start being present to ordinary ones, you often discover that what you were seeking was already here.

Today, I choose to abandon the pursuit of enlightenment in favor of simple presence to whatever this moment actually contains.

Because maybe the most awakened thing you can do is stop trying to wake up and start paying attention to the dream you’re already living.