Personal Development and Enlightenment. What's the difference?

Most of the work we do on a spiritual path is the work to  improve the character, what we call personal development.  We step on what we perceive as a spiritual path out of dissatisfaction with ourselves and life as it going for us. We start with trying to change others for some years, then we move to another long period of time when we start to fix ourselves. We do all kinds of personal development workshops and we go through tons of self help books. We move into the world of chakras, yoga and we become vegetarians. After some years we move into more hard core stuff like serious meditation, retreats or some shamanic practices of strong mind altering herbal medicines, and etc. 

The whole spiritual search  is based on dissatisfaction with what we are and how we feel at the moment, and we seek a relief, we seek resolution. We secretly feel that the resolution will be what we call an enlightenment. We don't really know what enlightenment is, but we think it is something that will fix all our dissatisfaction, and we reach for it. We strive on the path, trying to accumulate more and more knowledge, insights and trying to become less reactive and more mindful. We think that the more spiritual practices we will do, more knowledge we get - more chances we will arrive to that place where enlightenment is. 

If we look at the phrase "personal development", we see that it is some work that pertains to the person. Person is a dream character that works on him/herself in a dream that Consciousness dreams into existence. Enlightenment is realizing that there is no person, that the world, inner and outer is a projection, there is nothing to strive for in a future, it's already is all complete as it can be.

Of cause, for the dream character personal development is the only what he can do to try to relief the discomfort that he feels. Enlightenment in a dream won't fix our discontent, it would be dream state enlightenment, and as any dream, it is imaginary. Personal development and personal enlightenment are some of the possibilities of Consciousness to mask itself as a dream to explore itself in endless varieties. 

There is no chance for a dream character to become enlightened. Enlightenment is a disappearance of the dream character by waking up from the dream completely. There is no one even to wake up. The dream just stops projecting itself, and the enlightenment, Consciousness itself is revealed to itself. 

After a while the dream constructs itself again, and the dream character continue to exist, but the dream become lucid. The dream character and all its adventures and troubles  are not taken seriously anymore. The striving for personal development falls away. The striving for improving oneself or fixing the circumstances falls away. The striving for spiritual experiences, insights, revelations, and enlightenment itself falls away. What is left and what is driving the dream to continue is a joy of exploration. 

Imagine you wake up lucid in a dream. Would you be devastated to loose your job there or your house to a fire? 

Lucidity in a dream gives a different perspective. It is not less or more suffering, it is no suffering. Pain can be a part of the dream if you stepped on the nail there, if you lost your loved one; suffering is only part of the dream if the dream is unconscious, and one totally identifies oneself with a dream character and a pain. 

Lucidity is the ability of Consciousness to participate in a dream as a dream character and at the same time know itself as a dreamer, the dream itself. 

Lucidity is enlightenment, and it is not the property of the person, a dream character,  it is a property of Consciousness itself. When Consciousness is ready to peek through the character, we get some insights into true nature of being. When Consciousness ready to stare through the character, we get revelations and spiritual states that open up the new perception. 

There is nothing really to strive for. We do not exist apart from Consciousness, and we are Consciousness itself. To realize this nothing needed from our part, only continue to live as we are, doing tons of personal development or none of it. When the time is ripe, the dream reveal itself before it's own eyes...

I am not ready!

Sometimes I would be asked to help with inquiry to realize selflessness, but I would feel that this was a misplaced asking. I would probe if this person is really ready for realization of no self, because they are totally exhausted of the spiritual search, or they are looking for improving their quality of life.

Several years ago I received a letter from a professional golfer who was saying that his life is, in most part, what he dreamed of: family, relationship, career. He does what he likes the most: plays golf, and gets paid for it. The only issue in his life that made him write to me, was his teenager son. He was having much stress from communication with his son. The golfer asked to be guided to see no self, expecting it to fix this problem. 

"This inquiry leads to total shift of perception, and there is no garantee that what feels good in life now, existing structures that are working well, will stay for you to feel good, and what is not working, will be fixed", I wrote to him. I asked if he is ready to dive into unknown, trusting life to re-arrange itself. I received the shortest email I ever got from anyone: "No". "Wow, that was easy", I thought. I appreciated the clear evidence of the example of  Consciousness not ready to see itself yet, it's enjoying the game of being hidden, enjoying exploring itself in a way of a life it's living.

Dan The Man

Get your shit together first

Human life design is very efficient. Everything that is needed to sustain life and procreate life embedded in this design by very strong conditioned thoughts/believes and therefore, certain energetics. These conditions motivates one to do what one needs to do for their own survival and also for coming together, making family, building a structure around that and taking care of it. This full load of human responsibilities seems to be necessary for most of us before we step on the transcendence path. If we fully dipped our toes in a householder life, the wish for freedom arises strongly in some of us, since householder's life based on so many structures that are rigid and limiting to the human's mind possibilities. If we never tasted it in it's fullness, how we can have a wish for something else? We always will be doubting what we really want and be pulled in all the different directions with our attention. For the path of transcendence one has to be completely ready, with all the attention gathered together in all its fullness. 

Sometimes it is happens that we dip into different perception, then we are back into the world of our responsibilities. The perception change, and energetics relaxed.  Now we are back to our job, 3 kids, a wife, and a mortgage. We lost motivation for pushing forward with all that "human stuff", and life start to slip under our feet. This is exactly what is happening: ungroundness, loss of motivation, loss of interest, nihilism toward life, when one actually is not ready to release the ground yet. Our family and responsibilities: old parents that need care, young children that needs food and grown ups that needs us to pay for their college, wives that needs attention, and jobs that needs almost all our daytime time and focus - all are roots to keep us stable and going as a good householder….until our garden is fully grown, the harvest time is done well, and now we can sit by the hay bail and close the eyes...In the East people recognize these different stages in a human life, and don't really mess with them, or play unresponsively, out of curiosity.  There is a time for a family life, human responsibilities life, and there is a time when one can renounce it all and "leave to the forest". 

There was a famous teacher of Vipassana meditation in India who's life can illustrate this perfectly. Her name was Dipa Ma, she was a teacher of many, including some of known western teachers. When she married her husband she was a teenager. She always was interested in meditation, but her husband suggested to have a family first, and then she can go and learn meditation. He was supportive of her, but he was that ground that kept her stably rooted in life first. Years passed, and there she was: sitting in deep  meditation right in the middle of her kitchen between making meals, with her grandkids running around, and people from all over the world coming to see her, learn from her, and pay respect to her. 

As much as transcendence states looks alluring, they are also dangerous in a way that they take our attention and energy away from the human responsibilities. Unless one lived life fully, one needs to be careful, and not go with the hype to renounce it, and be free like someone else he admires. This renunciation will not be complete, and there will be no freedom, mostly confusion. 

Let's see our families, our jobs and our engagements in everyday life as a gift that gives us natural groundness, stability, that focuses our attention in the way it is perfectly natural at this moment. Even though mind can say to us that we want something else, but the whole weight of our being right now is in the groundness of our human engagements. Notice that weight, and instead of resisting it, thank it for keeping you on the path of beautiful human rite. This whole article comes down basically to one phrase: "First, get your shit together!". When the time is right, the weight of life engagements will be lifted, and you can fly! 

Her Beautiful Old Story

The dance was freeing, it was a celebration. Yesterday first time I returned to 5 Rhythms  with Lucia. I was dancing with Lucia every week in Brooklyn, where she and her partner started to have their own themed version of the dance that her half brother's mom Gabrielle Roth invented couple of decades ago.

The dance felt like home, like New York City, like vitality, joy and community years ago. Same Lucia, same lightness, same freedom and heart opening. Sweat was dripping from my forehead just like before. My tank top, my skirt, my bra and my panties - all familiar wet. I don’t remember I ever sweat anywhere else so profusely. The breeze from the open door touching the wet skin, the almost giving up feet travel through the dance floor, wet hair sticking  to my face, long silk skirt in the constant circular movement, and the overflowing joy in the whole being...wow...I am not sure where I am really...I am traveling through time... and space... I am spaciousness itself.

Stillness. The last of the 5 Rhythms. I slow down. I open my eyes. There is a framed picture of dancing Gabrielle and her simple chain necklace lay there. Suddenly I feel overwhelming sadness and I stop, fixed on that necklace, tears rolling down already wet face. I feel drowning. The feeling came down on me like a waive crashing the shore. The body totally open to receive slides down to the floor and melt. I am floating in the pool of my own tears. Very quietly I make it outside and in the darkness of the night, feeling safe and held by the land, I wail. The sound of deep grief merges with the sound of the ocean.

I bow to the ability and willingness of the human being to dive deep into the raw feeling to allow complete alchemy.

Last time I was dancing with Gabrielle I was with my husband, in my city, living in my house, with my son, my cat, my creek, my backyard. Walking in the darkness of Big Sur I wailed in grief and loss for my life. My house and my cat gone to the fire, my husband gone to the other woman, my city and my son I had to leave, my friends, my family as I knew it - all gone.

Life is a cinema. The movie has ended and the new one continues: a sensing woman in her late 40th in a long silk skirt walking in the darkness of the Esalen land, in freedom and clarity of the ground of her being, leaving behind her beautiful old story.

Photo from Esalen by Denae Thibault