Spiritual enlightenment is one of the most elusive ideas in our lives. Nobody actually knows what it is, apart from a few people who are indeed enlightened. We don’t know who they are, as we don’t know what enlightenment is, and whether those people are honest or not, after all. If they are truly enlightened, they don’t talk about it, as there is no need for that, or it’s simply indescribable.

We could even say that every attempt to explain enlightenment or talk about it is rude or presumptuous. Maybe it is, but sometimes we simply are too curious and bold to do such things.

​Nonetheless, if we want to talk about enlightenment, we have to define it in the first place. It’s not an easy task, however, and in this article I will use two sources: enlightenment as considered by some of the eastern spiritual traditions (as western traditions can have a completely different understanding of this term), and spiritual symbolism that can be found in modern physics.

​Eastern Traditions

The idea of spiritual enlightenment is present in all of the eastern spiritual traditions. The main four of them are Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Jainism, which offer these terms:
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• Hinduism (including Vedanta and Yoga): Liberation (moksha, mukti), Self-realization (jnana)
• Buddhism (Theravada and Mahayana, including Zen and Vajrayana): Liberation, Awakening (nirvāṇa, bodhi, kensho, satori)
• Taoism: Illumination (hsüan-t’ung, ming)
• Jainism: Absolute Knowledge (kevala ṇāṇa)

​Although differing greatly in their views on enlightenment and one’s supposed path to it, these ancient spiritual traditions seem to agree upon this: enlightenment is a permanent, irreversible state of highest happiness, perfect stillness, inner freedom, liberation from suffering and rebirth, and realization of the highest truth. 

Stages of Becoming Enlightened

In my opinion, it is not possible to distinguish any levels of enlightenment itself, as it is the final stage of awakening, the absolute liberation (whatever that means) and as such unequivocal and definite.
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However, as there are many paths leading to it, there are numerous stages leading to that state, too. For example, in Theravada Buddhism,[1] there are four stages of enlightenment. In this case, I would re-formulate this overview as the stages to enlightenment, except the fourth stage, which refers to the attributes of an enlightened human being.

1. A Stream-enterer (Sotapanna) is free from:
   • Identity view
   • Attachment to rites and rituals
   • Doubt about the teachings
2. A Once-returner (Sakadagami) has greatly reduced:
   • Sensual desire
   • Ill will
3. A Non-returner (Anāgāmi) is free from:
   • Sensual desire
   • Ill will
4. An Arahant is free from all of the five lower fetters and the five higher fetters, which are:
   • Craving for prosperity in the material world
   • Craving for existence in the ideal world (heaven)
   • Conceit
   • Restlessness
   • Ignorance

These stages represent signposts on the gradual path of expansion of consciousness that leads toward the final goal, liberation.

Some spiritual traditions, however, like Zen Buddhism or Dzogchen, have a rapid or sudden approach to attaining enlightenment. Through their practices, they are trying to swiftly leave the mind behind and realize the Truth. While that approach is simpler and seemingly faster, it has its traps and may easily lead to a false sense of enlightenment.

[1] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_enlightenment

There are also people, for whom the spiritual work is not necessary for achieving the final liberation. These relatively rare individuals apparently have mysterious inherent abilities and pre-conditions for attaining enlightenment. They usually achieve liberation suddenly, with little or no effort at all.
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Here is an amazing story of Eckhart Tolle’s awakening:

“One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. (…) ‘I cannot live with myself any longer.’ This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. ‘Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.’ ‘Maybe,’ I thought, ‘only one of them is real.’ I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words ‘resist nothing,’ as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.

I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all. That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.

“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.” ― Alexandra K. Trenfor

If we want to talk about discerning genuine spiritual teachers from the false ones, we must first define what a spiritual teacher is. Generally speaking, it is a vague term and may cover a broad range of spiritual masters, coaches, mentors, or advisers. 

We could even differentiate spiritual teachers by the levels of their spiritual awareness:

• Intellectual teachers, who teach people mostly from scriptures and various sacred texts, with very little practical knowledge; 
• Narrow-targeted teachers, who possess some practical experience that is limited to a narrow field or of spiritual work (for example, some teachers of meditation or yoga);
• Spiritual teachers in a broader sense—persons with lots of spiritual experience, capable of deep and wide-ranging guidance;
• Spiritual masters—rare individuals who are deeply enlightened and capable of offering their students subtle, but transformative guidance with no words at all, only through their mere presence; ultimately, they hand over the spiritual assistance to Divine Presence, as the only perfect spiritual master.

Setting aside the levels of teaching mentioned above, for this purpose, I will define the spiritual teacher as the person who is helping a student in their spiritual path, in a trustworthy and reliable manner. The teacher is doing that by pointing the student to the spiritual liberation, in the most suitable way for her/him.

Although these teachers themselves cannot do the spiritual work for their students, they still have an enormous responsibility for many people. They are usually in a position to be giving various practical advice and offer spiritual leadership, so if they are impostors, that could ruin the lives of their followers. And their own lives also. Unfortunately, there are too many deceivers in this field today.

The danger of misleading spiritual guidance

The most obvious motive of these impostors for deceiving others is gaining material benefit, as “spirituality” has become a huge business today. But there are certainly other reasons as well: they can temporarily satisfy their ego and vanity; they try to suppress their feeling of inferiority, or they are sometimes even split personalities.

Although their practical advice on dealing with numerous kinds of life situations can really be helpful occasionally, the subtle background of their instructions is flawed. Therefore, even if their directions were correct, people who listened to them would, at the deeper level, sense the fundamental inadequacy of their guidance and would often subconsciously undermine their own subsequent actions based on that guidance. The results are almost always unsatisfactory, sometimes even disastrous.

How to recognize genuine spiritual teachers?

Luckily, there are quite a lot of authentic spiritual leaders around. How do they behave? What are their recognizable traits?

Genuine spiritual teachers must be the best examples of their own preaching themselves. They ought to be genuinely benevolent, conscious beings, in contact with their True Nature. Hence, their spiritual messages must be stemming from that inner Truth. They can impeccably point to the direction which is just right for us.

First, they are almost always calm and peaceful. In their daily life, they are honest and humble. You can feel their benevolence and kindness, they simply radiate love. They don’t talk about themselves, never boasting about anything. They are not domineering, forceful, rude or unkind to people around them. When we are in their presence, we spontaneously become peaceful and confident.

If a person offers to be our spiritual guide, and we know nothing about their everyday lifestyle, we just have to calm down and feel their presence with our inner body. If we don’t feel an increasing inner peace or love, if we can’t relax in their presence even if they are seemingly kind to us, then they are not genuine, at least for us at that moment. We have to withdraw and find another teacher.

For example, you want to ask a spiritual teacher how to deal with a concrete problem. You are close to them and feel confident and peaceful in their presence. You feel their benevolence. That’s the sign for you to trust them. If you suddenly felt fear or anxiety in your belly while thinking of the issue itself, don’t retract. It was simply your pain, not some sensing of the teacher’s delusion. Go ahead and ask. Trust them, their directions will enable you to solve your problem.

However, don’t expect them to be absolutely perfect. If they were perfect, they couldn’t exist in this material world at all. They would apparently disappear from this material plane, as their frequency would be too high for it. Thus, they all have some imperfections, some flaws that anchor them to this world of inertia and matter. Whether held on purpose or being simply neglected, these inadequacies are typically insignificant, almost unrecognizable in the ordinary lives of those genuine people. They also have their inner struggles, but they are still completely honest and determined in their path.
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Yet, the whole responsibility for our life lies upon us. They can only point to the ways in which we take that responsibility.

Inner struggles are always reflected in the outer world

Meanwhile, we shouldn’t forget that we are the best teachers for ourselves. In fact, our everyday life is the perfect spiritual teacher. As the Holographic Principle tells us, all people around us, including all life circumstances and events we find us in, are symbolical projections of our inner being. Every suppressed trauma or emotion that needs to be resolved, every obsessive thought that needs to be overcome, every inner obstacle to the path of inner freedom—all are mirrored in our body and life circumstances. Therefore, our friends and enemies, our problems and desires—all are our genuine spiritual teachers who are showing us the path toward the final liberation.

All the right knowledge is within us and the external teachers and guides are simply manifestations of our inner Truth. We must be honest with ourselves and the world outside will be honest to us. If we can recognize and admit to ourselves our mistakes and inner flaws, we will be ready for the right spiritual teacher who will sooner or later appear in our external world.

On the other hand, if we are often too proud or arrogant to see our inadequacies, if we are dishonest and prone to keeping many secrets from our friends, we will get similar people in our surroundings. Such people will unconsciously teach us (the hard way) some basic lessons of spiritual life.

We should open our hearts, be modest, honest, and open-minded. If we haven’t yet mastered these harsh lessons, we might even meet a “spiritual teacher” who will represent exactly the issues we should deal with—he or she will be full of “secrets,” ego-trips, vanity, and lies. Such a “teacher” will “help us” in getting very painful, but necessary life lessons. That would also be a vital step toward our final spiritual liberation.

​I had been trying for many years to anchor myself in the present by utilizing many methods originating from various spiritual traditions, but ultimately, to no avail. After a temporary success, there would always emerge a setback, and I would find myself at the beginning of the road again. Or it seemed so. Anyway, it was obvious that my strategy was not well-grounded.

I have learned the lesson the hard way. After many attempts and consequent failures, I have finally concluded that I must take a comprehensive approach: meditation, mindfulness and extensive inner work, concurrently. That was the cornerstone.

Why should we take a wide-ranging approach to our personal transformation?

Many inner structures in our psyche are opposing our life in the Now. Occasionally, due to their apparently cunning behavior, we could even say that they have some sort of consciousness or mind. As I said before, in many periods of my life I temporarily succeeded to anchor myself in the here and now, but it seemed that each time some unexpected event, person or inner issue expelled me out quickly from this blissful state.

Therefore, if we don’t take into account those structures, we will always be getting back to the same old troubles and behaviors. We must face them, not through fighting, but through accepting, transforming and re-integrating them into our personality.

Consequently, to get into a relatively stable state of abiding in the here and now, we should deal with these subconscious structures of our personality. Otherwise, they will continuously be preventing us in our efforts to be mindful.

How to achieve this?

• First, we must continue with our mindfulness, but preferably with a modified approach, which I’ll cover in this text.
• Second, we have to develop a habit of daily meditation sittings.
• Third, but not less important, we have to designate some time at least two or three times a week for reintegration work on those subconscious structures.

With mindfulness and meditation, we will be transforming ourselves from within, subtly changing our personality and its various parts. Whatever comes into our field of perception, we will reintegrate it through our Pure Consciousness or Presence, which has a divinely transformative effect.

With the reintegration work, we will be changing ourselves outside, by using the various mental and emotional techniques for subconscious parts’ integration into our being.

Mindfulness

An excellent method to develop the practice of everyday mindfulness is to set up triggers for it. These triggers will actually be various situations or activities that you are usually engaged in during the day, so every time the condition occurs, it will trigger you to become mindful or fully conscious of yourself and the present moment.

For example, your triggers could be: walking along a familiar path, cleaning teeth, opening or closing the door, sitting down or getting up from a chair, arriving at a specific location or even thinking a particular thought. You can actually make anything a trigger. Repeat these triggers as many times as possible, every time shifting your focus from the trigger to the present moment, until each trigger becomes habitual “launcher” of your mindfulness.

Generally, you should try to be aware (i.e., mindful) of every motion of your body, sensation, texture, sound, taste, and smell. From time to time pause and direct attention to your sense of self. Sustain that state of self-awareness during every activity. You will enjoy every task; you will become light and, in a strange way, even transparent.

Anything that distracts you, or pulls you out of mindfulness, you should accept as such, and not react to it at all (unless you are threatened somehow). Then continue with the activity, being fully conscious of it and yourself simultaneously.

Every conscious moment in the Now will gradually accumulate and make your whole life easier and abate or even prevent challenges.

Mindfulness dissolves your inner conflicts softly and almost imperceptibly. And whenever you are in that state of Presence, you will be at perfect harmony with the world; your body will move lightly and flawlessly; your mind will function impeccably whenever needed, and all your actions will be done in the most effective way.
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Meditation

Without regular meditation sittings, your mindfulness can quickly lose its foundation. So it is very recommended to practice them concurrently.

You have countless varieties of meditation at your disposal. You can choose one of the modern types of “pure awareness” or “body awareness” meditations, for example like those presented by Eckhart Tolle. But, you can also stick to traditional approaches, like many Buddhist or Yoga meditations; some of them can indeed be suitable for you. Keep in mind, though, that some of these traditional methods require the practitioner to stick with all other practices within that particular system.

One example of “pure awareness” meditation technique is the following:

First, you relax, using one of the many relaxation techniques. Then ask yourself: “What will be my next thought?” Then just wait for the next thought, being curious and alert. This will easily bring you into Pure consciousness, a state of Presence. Whenever something comes into your mind and disturbs your Presence, accept it wholeheartedly and go back to your question which will return you to the Presence. After some practice, you will be able to enter the state of Pure consciousness without using any questions. The goal is merely to stay in this thoughtless state as long as possible.

It is essential to discipline yourself and have at least one, 15-minute meditation session every day. However, I would recommend creating an everyday habit of meditating twice a day, at least 15 minutes in the morning and the same duration in the evening. These sitting sessions should be scheduled for the same periods of the day, if possible.

Meditation will release huge “amounts” of inner obstacles to any of your life goals, and will gradually erase all your negative tendencies, including laziness. What’s more important, the steady meditation practice will give you extra love, health, strength, calmness, creativity, and smoothness in your life.

Reintegration of inner parts

If we really intend to achieve permanent results in our personal transformation, the work on our subconscious structures must be comprehensive and continual, always accompanied with meditation and mindfulness.

There are countless approaches to this subject also. The mainstream psychology is one of them. It is scientifically approved and confirmed, and consequently pretty safe. But it’s also very slow. On the other hand, there are many alternative methodologies, which could be much more efficient and faster but burdened with higher risk. It’s up to you to choose.

However, I will offer here one of these alternative approaches to personal transformation, the Reintegration System, which is a methodology rooted in psychology and holographic model of reality, which has proven to many people as being systematic, yet the extremely effective method of human development.

Here is the list of our personality’s aspects that we should deal with in accordance with the Reintegration System’s methodology: 
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• General aspects of personality (like Family life, Spirituality, Health, Finance, Career, Creativity, Romantic relationships, Social, Rest, Fun, etc.)
• Habits (with their habit loops: Cue – Routine – Reward)
• Beliefs (all their mental, emotional and habitual aspects)
• Decisions
• Rules (orders or prohibitions, whether they are self-imposed or externally imposed)
• Traumatic memories
• Emotions
• Aversions, including fears
• Guilt, accusations, and resentment
• Inclinations, including desires
• Various personality traits, including positive ones (which have to be harmonized)

These aspects are parts of our personality that merely need the most of our attention in our inner work. You may find that some of these parts are actually sub-sets of other, more general ones. We could classify, for example, our desires, fears, and guilt under the umbrella of ‘emotions’, or we might instead assume that emotions are only part of traumatic memories; beliefs can be habitual thoughts backed by emotions, etc. Each could be right or wrong, depending on your point of view, but for our purposes they are listed according to practical reasons.

So, what to do with all these elements of personality? In short, we should always face them, accept them wholeheartedly, and finally, transform and reintegrate them entirely into our being, using an appropriate technique. We should never fight them! All these aspects have deeply hidden genuinely positive intentions for us, but those intentions have been gradually distorted into apparently negative behavior during extended periods of time, because of numerous misconceptions, limited perception, and challenging environment.

A lot more on this you can find at www.re-integration.com, or in “Inner Peace, Outer Success”  and other Reintegration books.

Additional note on inner work

For some people, though, this three-fold work is not necessary for achieving the lasting bliss. Indeed, some relatively rare individuals have mysterious inherent abilities and preconditions for attaining the permanent happiness or Enlightenment with little or no effort at all. They have done most of their inner work probably in other incarnations.

However, we must not rely on such hopes. The determined, persistent, yet profoundly joyful effort, is definitely recommended as our final choice.
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