Ross Edwards: Coach, Author, FounderThis short text is an extract from Chapter 2 of my upcoming book, The Boundless Body, published with Collective Ink Books.
Notice I have defined enlightenment not as a glimpse or momentary experience, but as the continual imbuing of your awareness with the Source levels. We tend to put a lot of stock in the powerful glimpses or awakenings that last a few minutes, hours, days or weeks. These glimpses tend to show us realities far beyond what we are currently aware of, which is a powerful mechanism of spiritual growth. They fuel us, inspire us, and break down our attachment to our current knowledge. However, though they may excite us and guide us, we must not mistake them for permanent transformation.
When I began spiritual work, I was desperate to have powerful, life-changing experiences quickly, and I tried to force it through working hard. Though I was successful to some degree, and my resulting experiences provided critical guidance and humility, I also felt impatient and unsettled. My current advice to my past self would be to work steadily and diligently, and trust in the process. You have to put the cake in the oven to bake it, but you cannot force the cake to bake more quickly just by turning up the heat. An enlightenment experience is comparable to a novice athlete being given temporary elite-level abilities, an experience which would guide the novice towards elite performance, but which does not replace it. As Shinzen Young has said, “enlightenment is a natural process”: it is our birthright, and our job is to gently and diligently nurture that potential.
In practicing the several body meditations in this book for months and years, you will slowly free yourself from exclusive identification with the Physical and Subtle levels of the body. You will fully feel these levels and re-own them, yet realise that they are not the be-all-end-all of your felt experience. In realising just how much you have been overlooking in your very own body, you will release Physical and Subtle knots and tensions, and as you do, your awareness will gradually become more sensitive, open, light and clear. Simultaneously, your sense of who you are will be altered. All the tension and energy that was bound up in the Physical and Subtle levels is released, making much more space available for awareness of the Threshold levels. The sense of being boxed inside the head will likely diminish.
After further work, you will become sensitive to the Threshold level, and consequently you will notice that body sensations truly are insubstantial. This causes even subtler levels of ingrained tension to release. You will be able to watch body sensations, including pain and difficult emotions, dissolve before your eyes: with high levels of Concentration, Sensory Clarity and Equanimity, sensations do not have time to congeal into a solid mass. At this point, you are on the threshold of Source and of rediscovering your own gorgeous boundless body, outside of which there is nothing.
If you diligently work through the modules in this book, making sure to do formal, sitting meditation, meditation in movement, and meditation in daily life, day after day, month after month, and year after year, you are greatly increasing your odds of having both glimpses of Source and an established awareness of it. Practice is the key; continuity is the secret of success. Pay heed to your goals, nurture your inspiration, and gain knowledge of this work. But put most of your attention into your practice: this is the vehicle that will take you back here – totally and completely here.