“Are you enlightened yet?” my wife asks, with just enough of a smile for her dimple to show.
This is not the first time she has asked me this. It’s a little shtick we have. I attend an intensive meditation retreat or practice weekend, or finish reading a particularly dense dharma text, and she either asks this question or says, “You’re so going to be enlightened before me.”
We always laugh, of course, because we both have heard so many times from so many teachers and in so many teachings that enlightenment is not something you strive for. It’s not some end goal or supreme achievement like in a video game.
But it’s hard to cut through the idea that enlightenment is some pinnacle of spiritual achievement at which we should be aiming. Capitalism has taught us to view value in a hierarchy. The message it sends out is that those at the top deserve to be there, and getting to the top requires hard work. From a spiritual view, this is internalised as ‘If I just meditate enough, or let go enough, I’ll be the enlightened one!’
But enlightenment is not some kind of final product or ultimate top position. You can’t buy it, or grasp it, or force it. It’s not the goal and it’s not a prize.
Enlightenment is a process.
When I first began meditating, I was definitely using it like it was a tool that could ‘fix’ me. I wanted to feel sane, to not be constantly wracked with anxiety and prone to depression. I wanted to be wiser and kinder and feel more whole. I wanted to have answers and I felt like if I meditated just so, I could finally stop feeling bad.
But as I meditated more, and as I studied more and contemplated more, I began to see things differently. Sometimes this realisation was a slow burn, a flicker of an idea that shifted my perspective over months until suddenly I realised that I no longer thought of myself as broken. Other times it was one of those lightning bolt moments of wisdom dawning, instantly dropping all the struggle and confusion and clearly understanding something like: the technique is not the practice or you are your own greatest teacher.
Throughout my practice, I’ve also been watching the growth of social justice movements on the Internet. As folks previously isolated from community have found connection and a platform for their voices to be heard, the notion of being ‘woke’ began to pick up speed. Unfortunately, our capitalist leaning towards perfectionism, combined with dualism, has been carried along just as swiftly in the current of social change. Call-out culture is a byproduct of this. Just as I would watch people in dharma communities beat themselves up for not being enlightened yet, I would watch social justice communities go on the attack anytime someone demonstrated that they weren’t 100% ‘woke’.
Of course, I wasn’t the only one noticing this toxic problem. Lama Rod Owens, in a Radical Dharma webinar, expressed his concern at how a term like ‘woke’ was reinforcing ideas of perfectionism and actually hindering efforts towards collective liberation. Instead of saying he was woke, he said he much preferred to say he was ‘waking’ — on a constant path of expanding his awareness.
There is a fun trend for verbing nouns. Like anything, it can be annoying or confusing, but it can also be incredibly helpful. When I applied Lama Rod’s reflection to the concept of enlightenment, I noticed an instantaneous change in my perspective. I already knew that enlightenment wasn’t a thing, but my capitalist infused biases ran so deep that I was having a problem uprooting them. Perceiving enlightenment as a thing I can ‘get’ is a barrier, an obscuration preventing me from seeing my own wisdom. Verbing the word cuts through the unwelcome narrative I have that enlightenment is just about working hard enough at my spiritual practice. It shifts from being separate from my practice.
This is why it’s called a practice. It’s not a matter of being something or not. An athlete does not consider themselves as not an athlete if they are not the best in their field. A writer does not ‘achieve’ writer by hitting some target number of books written. A musician is not less of a musician for not having a gold record.
As practitioners, our practice is an ongoing process of waking up—that is what the teachings are for. They support us daily, in little ways, to stretch our hearts, to extend compassion to include more people, to be able to show up for the world authentically and with integrity. As long as we are cultivating awareness and applying what we learn, we are walking the walk and each step is itself the point. We are not walking the walk to ‘get’ anywhere. We are walking the walk to be right here, engaged in the present moment, so we can be of benefit.
When my wife next asked me if I was enlightened yet, I laughed. “Well, I’m enlightening every day.”
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This blog was originally published on Medium.
Visit www.KaitlynSCHatch.com to see more of my work in the world, including the podcast Everything is Workable, a collection of my artwork, and the books I’ve written.