“Is Enlightenment the Same Thing as Being Born Again?”

Most likely.  But, this much is certain. Virtually every religious tradition has coined words and concepts to tell the story of their experience of transcendence. But, no one word or concept could ever fully capture whatever it is that happens in the human experience, the consequence of which leaves one radically and forever different. Where the world comes alive to you; where all humans, indeed all sentient beings, are suddenly sacred to you, regardless of their color, nationality, or religion; where you know and feel your own infinite worthiness; where there is profound joy, sometimes expressed as laughter, but always somewhere in the background of consciousness, a feeling of utter satisfaction with who you are and the way things are.

I love the way the Buddha himself (whose name, coincidentally means, “Awakened One”) expressed what I am saying when he was once purportedly asked, “What do you and your disciples do?”

He answered, “We sit; we walk; we eat.”

The inquirer was perplexed. “But,” he objected, “Doesn’t everybody sit, walk, and eat? What’s so different about that?”

“Yes,” replied the Buddha. “It is true we all do this. But, when we sit, we know we are sitting; when we walk, we know we are walking; when we eat, we know we are eating.”

Isn’t this what it means to be awake? Enlightened? Born again? Doesn’t it mean you know–that is, you are aware, conscious, alive to the world around you?  To be fully in the present moment?  It is. To experience the Inexpressible, to know the Unknowable, to live and walk with an awareness of the Someone who, as I prefer to call her, is God – that One who is nearer than the air you breathe. Who knows? Perhaps she IS the air we breathe, just as she is part and parcel to the other “ten thousand things” Lao Tzu called them.

Remember the man born blind to whom Jesus gave sight one unsuspecting day (John 9)?  When the authenticators of proper orthodoxy questioned the transformed man about what it was that had happened to him, the best he could say was, “I was blind, now I see.”

For those who see, that explanation is enough. For those who don’t, it’s never enough.

So, how does one become Enlightened? Awake? What is the “way” to being born again, as Christians put it?

1. First, there is no way to Enlightenment?  Enlightenment is the way.  Do not make an effort out of what is your natural state of felt oneness with the Eternal.  Deepak Chopra stated it something like the following in Why Is God Laughing? “When you stop struggling to know God, the grace of knowing dawns.”

2. Second, train yourself to be inside each moment.  But, don’t make an effort of this either.  Just know, the moment you are aware you’re not in the moment, you are in the moment.  That’s all it takes.

3. Finally, the fastest way I’ve discovered to either of the two suggestions above is to practice meditating.  Twenty minutes in the morning, and again in the evening, should be sufficient.  In meditation, do not fight the plethora of thoughts that will invade your mind, even as you attempt to free your mind of thinking.  Accept whatever your experience is like. Be content.  Expect nothing.  But, at the same time, keep practicing.  Eventually, your mind will quiet down, relax, and you will enter and emerge from a state of stillness the likes of which will be the transformation you seek.  This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Ask, and keep asking, seek, and keep seeking,” because those who do “find.”  It’s not that God is reluctant to be known or that our persistence convinces the Divine of our seriousness.  It is the discipline of asking, seeking, and knocking that prepares the mind, as a farmer does the soil, for the harvest that will come.  And, it will come.

These and other matters related to the spiritual life are discussed by Dr. McSwain in a new book (TBR in July 2010) by Smyth & Helwys Publishing entitled, The Enoch Factor: The Sacred Art of Knowing God. To read other stories or to follow his blog, visit www.stevemcswain.com/blog.