Here’s one thing I learned from Heart Opening Week.
I confirmed and completed a change in my view of enlightenment, that had been a long time in coming but came into focus this week.
I’m not sure this is what the sages I read were actually saying – they probably weren’t; it’s probably what I did with what they said. Nevertheless, I came away from enlightenment studies with the impression that it was more important to focus on the differences in the stages and types of enlightenment than on the similarities.
Stream-entering was different from cosmic consciousness; that from Brahmajnana; and no one even knew much about stages past that, like Sahaja Samadhi or Vijnana or Ananda Samadhi, etc.
I now approach the subject totally differently and my life is much simpler and more enjoyable.
Rather than going from one type of consciousness to another, I now see myself as burrowing deeper and deeper into the divine quality I’ve chosen as my path – in my case, love.
Let me explain.
I moved from an almost-total lack of experience of real, true love before March 13, 2015 (the date of my heart opening) to certain knowledge of real, true love on and after that date. Given Archangel Michael’s encouragement to “go higher, go deeper, go broader and, celebrate, sweet angel,” (1) there must be further, deeper, higher experiences of love awaiting me – and all of us.
For another person it may be burrowing deeper and deeper into awareness or peace or joy. Or going higher and higher into those states. Or settling more and more into them.
And, yes, as we burrow deeper, etc., we have brief tastes of higher-dimensionality and switch on different capabilities, for a short or a long time.
But always the important part is burrowing deeper and deeper into our divine quality.
It’s just a shift in focus. Nothing else has changed.
But instead of carrying around in my head a handbook of 100 different types enlightenment experiences, how they relate to each other, and what is real gold and what is fool’s gold, I can now see matters much more simply. It’s simply a matter of burrowing deeper, soaring higher, and settling more completely into our chosen state.
In other words: Just keep going. Never stop. “Go further,” Sri Ramakrhisna would say. Always, go further. (2) Nothing else matters than going further and further until we reach a point where we know it’s best to stop. (3)
Footnotes
(1) Archangel Michael in “Activating the Well-Spring – Part 2/2,” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2016/05/08/activating-the-wellspring-part-22/
(2) From the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna:
There was a wood-cutter who led a very miserable life with the small means he could procure by daily selling a load of wood brought from a neighboring forest. Once a Sannyâsin, who was passing that way, saw him at work and advised him to go further into the forest, saying: “Move onward, my child, move onward.”
The woodcutter obeyed the injunction and proceeded onward until he came to a sandalwood-tree, and being much pleased, he took away with him as many sandal logs as he could carry, sold them in the market and derived much profit. Then he began to wonder within himself why the good Sannyâsin had not told him anything about the wood of the sandal-tree, but had simply advised him to move onward.
So the next day he went on beyond the place of the sandalwood until he came upon a copper-mine, and he took with him all the copper that he could carry, and selling it in the market, got more money by it.
Next day, without stopping at the copper-mine, he proceeded further still, as the Sâdhu had advised him to do, and he came upon a silver-mine and took with him as much of it as he could carry, sold it and got even more money, and so daily proceeding further and further, he found gold-mines and diamond-mines and at last became exceedingly rich.
Such is also the case with the man who aspires after true Knowledge. If he does not stop in his progress after attaining a few extraordinary and supernatural powers, he at last becomes really rich in the eternal knowledge of Truth. (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Chapter VIII, “FEAST AT THE GARDEN-HOUSE OF SURENDRA,” at https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/gork/gork11.htm)
(3) As lightworkers, we may, for instance, want not to go so far into enlightenment that we no longer care to remain on Earth and help with the Ascension.