Enlightenment: The Light That Awakens the Soul

3 minute read

We sleep... so heavily and so deeply that only a desperate situation with no apparent escape occasionally sends ripples through us and makes us think about the soul, what makes it happy, God, love, destiny and everything we do not understand.

Trouble and suffering draw us closer to God and faith. Only prayer can soothe our suffering and restore our hope that life is more than routine, money, worthless things, boredom and pain.

When everything collapses around us, when the world becomes mad and hatred and evil take root nearby, the soul awakens in most of us and begins to struggle for its freedom and happiness, just as the body struggles in peaceful and carefree times. Yet while the body finds and obtains a temporary happiness, the soul finds its happiness for eternity. The body seeks happiness outside, in things that eventually bore it and leave it always wanting more, because material achievement never ends. It will always want more... and more... and will never be fulfilled. The body here means thought, because thought guides it towards actions that satisfy its needs and desires. The soul, our inner experience, has entirely different priorities. Material achievement has no value to it, because intuitively it knows what brings happiness and what produces suffering. If you value and struggle for something fleeting, your fulfilment and happiness will also be fleeting and short-lived. But when you value eternity, Divine Love, its symbols, embodiments and reflections in existence, and the creator who is at the same time one with everything that exists or does not exist - God - then the value and path before the soul offer a future the world and existence have so far known only through the voice and life of an infinitesimal part of the billions of people who have lived, perhaps even more if we count from the beginning of human evolution upon this Earth.

When you renounce existence and the principles governing body and thought, you begin the inner search and the heart becomes the instrument that guides you. Little by little, you begin to know your soul and realise that you are far more than your thinking and transient body. In this search, you may even reach enlightenment, although this state cannot be produced or obtained however much you practise, desire or struggle. It simply happens. It is like love: it appears from nothing, when you least expect it. All you can do is prepare yourself, remain upon the Path, follow the practices and prayer, and stay continually conscious and awake. You can do no more. God will do the rest if you have begun upon the Path.

Love is vitally important to the Path because it is the impulse and energy that gives you strength to struggle and faith in the soul's existence and in the divinity that is its home. In time, it becomes the guide and master that directs thought and body to listen and bring freedom to the soul.

When enlightenment happens in our lives, everything changes: both our perception of the reality of existence and our faith in God. Before enlightenment, you speak in terms such as 'others say', 'I believe', or another expression showing that you do not know and do not speak from experience. After enlightenment, certainty appears and your own experiences in the inner world begin to be reflected in your life and expression.

Enlightenment does not mean gaining powers or becoming superhuman. It means only that you have awakened from the deep sleep in which you slept and from the dreams you had during that time. Even this confirms the saying that we are made in the image and likeness of God. God is only a word attempting to contain what cannot be contained or expressed. Only the lived experience of love can offer some understanding of existence and of what makes everything that exists knowable.

Yet these are only humble thoughts trying to describe what cannot be described, only known. The lived experience of love, and understanding and accepting the existence of absolute and infinite love, are the first and most important step upon the Path, because they place within your soul the light that will always guide you along the long road towards enlightenment.

First published in Romanian on 15 June 2010. This English translation preserves the perspective of that period.

Original Romanian article: Iluminarea: lumina care trezește sufletul.