The search is over. Enlightenment is ours.

The is the sixth and final part of an extended series of explorations on “enlightenment” as a human experience. The first, second, third, fourth, and fifth entries in this series may be found in the archives or accessed by clicking on the corresponding links in this column.

At the conclusion of Part One I said that the danger of this business of enlightenment is two-fold.  The first danger is thinking that there is something specific that you have to do in order go get there.  And that if you don’t do that, you can’t get there.  The second danger is thinking that your way to get there is the fastest, the best way to do it.

In Part Two I wrote of the time when Paramahansa Yogananda, or “Master” as he was called, came to America bringing a technique for “self-realization” — which was his phrase meaning “enlightenment.”  Self-realization declares that when you realize who the Self is, you become enlightened. And Master described himself as having been enlightened.  And, by the way, he was enlightened. He was enlightened because he said that he was and, I hate to break the spell that someone may be under, but to be enlightened is to say that you are.  It is quite as simple as that.

In Part Three we looked at other “Masters” and other programs leading to “awakening” or “enlightenment,” not only Paramahansa Yogananda and the Self-Realization Fellowship, but also Maharishi and Transcendental Meditation,  and, more contemporarily, Werner Erhard and the est program.  There are many programs, many approaches, many paths developed by many masters. There is a book written called Many Lives, Many Masters written by my friend Brian Weiss, and he talks about the fact that there are many ways to reach the mountaintop. Which way, then, should we recommend?  Which way, then, should we encourage others to take? And the end of Part Three I indicated that we would look next at the path that the Buddha took.

In Part Four we did just that, and then we ended with a brief look at an out-of-body experience that I had many years ago. I emerged from that experience with a two-word message: “Nothing matters.” I said to myself, “Nothing matters?? How can that be?”

In Part Five we explored the “message behind the message, which is that if nothing matters intrinsically, then I am free to declare what I choose to have matter to me.  “So,” I said in Part 5, “this is the time of your liberation. And we’ll speak more about what that looks like in our next entry here.” Here, now, is that follow-up entry…

PART SIX
You can be liberated from your life long search for enlightenment.  You can be released from any thought that you may hold that, “No, no, it has to look like this,” or, “No, no, it has to look like that…no, you have to get to it by this path, by this program, by this activity…”

You may still do those things if you choose to, but if you feel stressed about them, if you feel pressured by them, then how could they be a path to enlightenment?  So set yourself free today.

And stop working so hard on yourself, and decide that the rest of your life — every day, every moment, every word — is something that you will share with everyone whose life you touch, that they might know there is nothing they have to do, no where they have to go, no one they have to be…that they are perfect (which is, after all, what enlightenment is) just as they sit there.

Spend the rest of your life giving people back to themselves, that they might love themselves, and know that there is nothing they are lacking, nothing they are missing, nothing they need, nothing they are not.

But how can people know that, when it seems so real that they are lacking, that they are missing something, that there is much they are not?  How can you help them to see the truth?

Well, let’s see what Conversations with God has said on this subject.

That which you choose to give to another will become real in your experience of self as well.  What you wish to experience, give away.  And so the fastest way for anyone to experience that they are enlightened is to cause another to know that they are.  That’s why Namaste’ has become such a powerful exchange of energy:  The God in me, sees and recognizes and honors the God in you.

There’s nothing more to be done, if I really mean that.  Of course, if I am making that up because it sounds good, then there is much more to be done.  But if I really mean that, then the struggle is finished.  The search is over and enlightenment is ours at last.

This is the message that I bring to the world. This is the message that has been given to me in my conversations with God, and I might add, in my conversations with every master I have ever met. They all say the same thing.  And this is the message of Humanity’s Team, a grass-roots movement that I have created, which we seek place into every town and village and city in the world, and which will create teachers and message-bringers and leaders who will share, with all those whose lives they touch, the wonderful freedom of knowing that God sees your perfection, and merely waits for you to do so.

And that you will do so — you will see your perfection in yourself — in the moment that you recognize it; that is re-cognize it. That is, know it again.

So Humanity’s Team is about bringing to the earth a New Spirituality and creating the space of possibility for a new spiritual experience to emerge upon the earth. It is about creating a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a violent, angry, and vindictive God. It is about producing an Evolution Revolution through initiating the Conversation of the Century in homes across the planet, then taking what is ultimately brought to deep understanding there into real life, on the street.

(This is the final installment of this series.)