A Personal Journey of Spiritual Enlightenment

Sometimes I find myself thinking, with youthful enthusiasm and impatience, “I want spiritual enlightenment, and I want it now!” I liken it to some great accomplishment or place within me that I will some day be. But enlightenment isn’t a video game; It doesn’t lie in some magical place at the end of my journey. I have the theory, or knowledge, that it is the journey. It’s in each and every moment. When I find, even briefly at times, that place of stillness that can only be found in the moment, in that moment, I am enlightenment.

Even with all my theories and knowledge, of which I am so very grateful, I sometimes forget that it is the experience that makes it real and true for me. The answer can only be found in the question, and once found, seems to lose its importance. But I’m okay with that – most of the time – as I’ve found, and have been saying for years now, the more I learn the less I know. The depth of one’s soul is not in having the answers, but in knowing to ask the question.

One great question I remember asking myself years ago was, completely without judgment, in a place of childlike innocence and curiosity, was “What would possess someone to become a hypnotherapist?” What was most interesting about the way in which I asked this question was, (1) It was more a feeling than spoken intellectually with words, and (2) That I cared more about the path of one’s life that brought them to that place than the decision itself.

For me, I just decided one day. It wasn’t some long, thought-out process, but was more about the path of natural healing within the body (through herbs and nutrition), and the connection with energies that I had been exploring for a number of years. It was a natural evolution for me, just as incorporating nutrition and energy work into my practice of hypnosis and meditation seems for me now, even though there was more “conscious thought” put into the latter process.

I guess, no… I feel that I have always known this was the work I would be doing. However, I had to allow the process to evolve in its own time. As Sue Monk Kidd states in her book, When the Heart Waits

The fullness of one’s soul evolves slowly. We’re asked to go within to gestate the newness God is trying to form; we’re asked to collaborate with grace. That doesn’t mean that grace isn’t a gift. Nor does it mean that the deliberate process of waiting produces grace. But waiting does provide the time and space necessary for grace to happen. Spirit needs a container to pour itself into. Grace needs an arena in which to incarnate. Waiting can be such a place, if we allow it.