I Found Out How to Reach Enlightenment

A personal story of the road to enlightenment

In January 2014, I was completely lost. I was a teacher in Jeju-do, South Korea living alone. I had been abandoned by my boyfriend due to a disagreement I didn’t understand, and I felt as though I’d been thrown away. I felt worthless. I was at the lowest point I’d ever been. I spent a couple of weeks that way, barely able to function. I had no idea that such trauma was the key to finding out how to reach enlightenment.

One day, I am not sure exactly why, but I decided to start meditating for extended periods of time every day. I had always been drawn to the spiritual side of life, and I had a friend who was attending weekly gatherings at a local Won Buddhist center.

There was a very clear certainty that some other consciousness was beyond the ‘shell’ of ‘me’. ‘My’ thoughts and sense of self were always being held together by an attachment that was an illusion.

Sudden awakening

I knew from my studies of Buddhism that my goal was going to be the elimination of the self, and non-attachment to anything — even thoughts. And, after several days of this kind of disciplined meditation, I reached a higher state of being. It simply washed over me all of a sudden.

I didn’t tell a lot of people at the time. Part of its effect was that I wasn’t attached to discussing what was going on within me. (Or should I say, “Emily”. I don’t want to use the word ‘I’ because what was doing this experiencing was something beyond ‘me’.) Emily was merely an observer of life, journeying through moments and experiencing thoughts that were arising and falling around her, as well as ‘external’ experiences.

Meaning in everything

Experiences were rich and beautiful. There was a very clear certainty that some other consciousness was beyond the ‘shell’ of ‘me’. ‘My’ thoughts and sense of self were always being held together by an attachment that was an illusion.

Once I got beyond that illusion, I was in a complete state of bliss. Life was truly fun. Love, acceptance, and compassion pervaded all things. As experiences came into and out of existence, the mind flowed with it, and it felt like floating in a way. Reality included ideas, events, and love, and reality didn’t require ‘want’ and ‘need’ in order to exist.

And there was a clear feeling that it was only the beginning of the discoveries that could be made if the mind stayed on that path.

Slipping away back to attachment

That was hard to maintain. Non-attachment is clearly something that takes effort to stay with. Eventually, my boyfriend came back into my life, and on that day I committed to keeping this blissful existence. But it eventually faded away as my mind turned to distractions of attachments.

This is because attachments hold an illusion of necessity for living life. Attachments are strong distractions from the truth and the path to a blissful life.

Even if I don’t live in that mode of existence today, I can still remember what it felt like and I know what is real. There is a consciousness beyond all of our personal selves, to which we are so dearly attached.

It’s coming around again

I am writing about this today because, after six years, I finally have returned to a commitment to that path. I have not found it so easy to rid myself of attachment this time. Maybe the first time, the conditions were just right for such an event in the mind, but now it is something that requires more work.

Maybe I have more distractions in life going on now — I am a single mom trying to work a full-time job during a pandemic. I don’t think these things matter though. Anyone who is human, regardless of position in life’s journey, can achieve that state.

If I had maintained that state, I probably wouldn’t be writing this. So, perhaps there is a state of being that balances the two realms just enough for the experiencer to describe it and document it for others.

Committed to the path

However hard it will be to reclaim that state of bliss, I am already becoming aware of a level of reality I had been ignoring for years. I receive information that the universe sends me more easily, and I sense that things are shifting.

In 2020, it seems that we have such a strong choice between fear and love on a global level, and the fearful way of living isn’t sustainable. It makes us sick in so many ways. Disconnecting from love and embracing blame, fear, and isolation, individual humans generate their own physical problems. I see this so clearly now. So, I sense the transition of the consciousness around me is beginning, and we will return to spiritual and ‘self-reflective’ activities.

I want to share where this journey is going in the chance that it may help someone else who wants to know how to reach enlightenment. If you liked it, read my post on self-care as a non-attachment to the self.