Enlightenment, anyone?

Everybody wants to get enlightened but nobody wants to change.
This is the simple, daunting truth that has been staring back at me
from the eyes of countless seekers over the years.  "I really want
to get enlightened," they insist.  "But are YOU ready to CHANGE
now?" I ask.  "What?" is the inevitable response—surprised and
even slightly stunned.  And I repeat, "Are YOU ready to CHANGE
now?"  What follows is always a strange and surreal moment of
ambiguity, confusion, and backpedaling.
"But I thought you wanted to get enlightened... "    -Andrew Cohen


Andrew makes us realize here that enlightenment isn't something that we don't have to make sacrifices for.  It's not something that just hits us one day and leaves everything in our lives unchanged.  Enlightenment by its very nature is an agent of change, and unless we're willing to allow those changes in our lives, we hold on to the status quo, the way things are, and we don't allow ourselves to be the way we could be--enlightened.

When I "become" enlightened, after all, I may not be comfortable keeping my same job, or I may see just how damaging a particular relationship is to me.  Enlightenment, after all, implies a heightened awareness and a deeper understanding of life and living, and when I understand life better, I'm going to recognize problems much more readily.  And once I recognize them, it's going to be time to make some changes concerning them, isn't it?

We're comfortable in our beliefs and our fears and our habits and our traditions.  They make us feel safe and secure, for they fool us into thinking that we actually have some sort of control over life and events.  Enlightenment by its very nature has no respect for the status quo--in fact, it's about as opposed to maintaining the status quo as anything could be.  If you want to be enlightened, that means you're not currently there.  If you refuse to let go of the things and beliefs that you have now, that means that you're going to stay in your current unenlightened place.  That's simply the way it is.

Of course, none of this means that there are going to be wholesale changes on the life level if you become enlightened.  After all, one of the most famous quotations about enlightenment says, "Before enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water.  After enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water."  You can continue in your job, but you'll treat the job differently.  You can continue in your marriage, but your approach to the marriage will change.

If you desire to "be" enlightened, then you have to be ready and willing to go through and to make changes in your life, because you're not there now.  Simply put, if you're not willing to see change in your life, then you probably shouldn't be seeking enlightenment, for you're going to reject it when you find it.