Words Matter: Language and Enlightenment
Language and spiritual enlightenment, terms that are not often seen together. This is funny, because the only tool we can use to communicate what we believe about spiritual enlightenment is by the facility of the words we use within the language(s) we speak. I think it’s safe to say that spiritual enlightenment somehow goes beyond words, and I think it’s just as safe to say that spiritual enlightenment can be prevented by words. What might surprise some is to consider as a fact that many of the words which people believe are the most helpful on the path to spiritual enlightenment are in truth, the most powerfully preventative of them all.
Take for instance, the word “transcend.” It evokes ideas of being above, somehow more “knowing,” and subsequently, significantly better than before the event that’s suggested by the word. Spiritual enlightenment is often described by this word and the entailments it fosters, and the concept is really at the core of what people believe spiritual enlightenment is about.
Unfortunately, the result can be a kind of continuous distraction from what is always present within the field of human awareness. If you’re not “above” your own experience in an exalted condition, how can you be spiritually enlightened? In this way, the expectation about what spiritual enlightenment is like as a known experience, that it will be an experience of transcendence, becomes something that distracts from the reality that is always present and available for attentional recognition at any time.
Also insidiously distracting is the idea of higher consciousness, understood to be a special, much more desireable state of consciousness. Like the concept of transcendence, the entailments of the idea ensnare people to believe that spiritual enlightenment will be an entirely different experience than what they already know within the context of their ordinary awareness. This is an utterly false, yet almost universally believed notion within the purview of spiritual enlightenment culture. Again, the preventative power is by way of the distraction fomented by the expectation you’ll be rendered a significantly different being with an instantly better life by the emergence of spiritual enlightenment within your awareness.
Basically, any word or concept used to describe spiritual enlightenment that puts it above, beyond, deeper, or more than what you are right now, is distracting you. Did you see what I did there? I just described almost the entirety of spiritual enlightenment culture, which is what I call the set of products produced by those who have and are currently making their living by being spiritual teachers.
The sad truth of all this is that the words which are the most preventative are also words that can convey hope in the improvement of the conditions of one’s life, words that can actually help people to feel better when they believe in them. In other words, the words and concepts “describing” spiritual enlightenment are the same words that can foster happiness when applied imaginally, and so, they remain embedded as the primary memes of spiritual enlightenment culture, all the while also preventing it—perpetually.
In one of nature’s more cynical transactions, this works out great for the teachers. Since their words are likely helping to prevent their students from knowing the experience they seek, the students have a reason to keep paying for the teaching, which keeps the words embedded in spiritual enlightenment culture. And thus, the wheel turns.
