Spiritual enlightenment is revealed when we crack open the illusion of Ego

To summarize, spiritual enlightenment is the end of suffering. Most people think of themselves and think, “I am a pretty happy and content person, I wouldn’t say that I suffer.” But speak to someone who has experienced spiritual enlightenment and they will agree that nearly all people are in fact in a state suffering , but that they just don’t realize it. So to talk about enlightenment, we need to first deal with the question of suffering.

Much has been written about suffering in literature related to meditation. This is because the essential purpose of meditation is to rid the individual of his or her suffering. Suffering is often described as having its roots in the grasping of the mind, in the identification of the ego, or a person’s sense of a separate self.

It arises from the way we react when we see ourselves as disconnected. Although we may be temporarily happy from time to time, lasting happiness can occur only when we have seen the ego as an illusion of the mind.

The End of Ego

This ego is not to be confused with the ego discussed in psychiatry, because there are important differences. In psychoanalysis, the term applied to that part of the structure of the human mind from which conscious urges and desires arise. In terms of spirituality, on the other hand, the ego we are talking about here is the idea in my mind that I am distinct entity that interacts with and is acted upon by a world full of other distinct forms.

Upon first glance this is true, this may seem obviously true. There are categories that we use to distinguish between objects in the physical world. This is a person, this is a building, this is an animal, etc.

This is the same way an enlightened person would view the physical world, but there is also a second lens to their perspective. This is where we get back to the feelings of Oneness or Unity that people who have undergone enlightenment experiences often describe.

This idea of oneness means that fundamentally, all of the things we experience with the senses are in fact, made up of the same basic stuff. Quantum mechanics and subatomic study has confirmed this from the scientific point of view. They tell us that we are all essentially made of the same stuff, and that even this stuff doesn’t really exist!

It’s one thing to get into the science, and totally another thing to understand true reality by seeing it directly for ourselves. This is what we are doing in our meditation. By steadfastly resolving to crack the ego we will someday see what lies beyond the limitations of the ordinary mind!