What Is Spiritual Enlightenment
By Spiritual Now Editors
The three stages of enlightenment
Spiritual enlightenment is the basic goal of any spiritual
practice that you undertake. Spiritual enlightenment marks the
culminating point of your practices: when one attains spiritual
enlightenment, one feels the unity of soul with everything and
all the mental and physical engagements are left aside.
Spiritual enlightenment is the possession of highly evolved
souls, and great spiritual masters of the whole world propagate
the fundamentals that they experience through spiritual
enlightenment.
As it seems, spiritual enlightenment is often categorized into
levels for practical purposes. Highest stage of spiritual
enlightenment marks the attainment of God, but still there are
certain levels through which the individual needs to evolve. It
is like rising from the levels of animality to which we often
tend to degrade ourselves. From the levels of animality, we rise
to the level of humanity, which constitutes our true nature. And
further from humanity to divinity, where we merge back in the
source from where we have come. Let us, for our practical
purpose, put them in stages and analyze the state of being in
each stage:
The first stage of spiritual enlightenment
At the very first level of spiritual enlightenment, the
individual starts experiencing the reality as it is. It means
that your mind ceases to interfere with what you are
experiencing. Quite often, we are engaged in continuous talk,
gossip, analyzing the environment around us, planning about
future, and so on. However, when spiritual enlightenment dawns
on your being, you take everything as it is.
The second stage of spiritual enlightenment
At the second stage of spiritual enlightenment, you feel
yourself in almost everything around you. You feel that you have
some connection to every object and every individual in the
world. It is like losing your own individuality. Spiritual
enlightenment has its culmination at merging the soul in Supreme
Soul, and this is where you start experiencing it. You feel that
you are not individual anymore and not separate from anything.
You feel that you are in everything and everything is just a
part of the Supreme Soul from where you also have emerged.
The third stage of spiritual enlightenment
At the third stage of spiritual enlightenment, you no longer
feel connected to everything but realize you are everything.
Because spiritual enlightenment gives you the experience of
oneness with God, you feel that you are not separate from
anything. You are not merely the body, sense, mind, and faculty
of intellect: you are what everything else is. This stage of
spiritual enlightenment imparts the direct experience of
oneness.
Spiritual enlightenment is the fruit that sets you free, as you
lose all wants and wishes to receive the fruits of your actions.
You feel the bliss of completeness through spiritual
enlightenment. At first it gives you the feeling that you need
"Light". At the next stage, you feel that you are merging in
"Light". At the culminating stage, you feel that you are no more
separated from "Light"—you and "Light" are one.
About the Author: Spiritual Now is a comprehensive guide to
spiritual enlightenment and online community to share ideas on
spirituality. Includes articles and interviews from spiritual
teachers on practicing meditation, having compassion and living
a moral life through understanding. http://www.spiritualnow.com
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