The Top 10 Causes of Enlightenment 

(and how to transcend ANY experience of suffering)

Written by Jafree Ozwald
www.EnlightenedBeings.com

"Enlightenment is the moment when the wave realizes that it is water." ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Enlightenment is not something that can be given to you. Whatever that has been given to you, can also be taken away from you. You must find this great spiritual liberation within yourself, and learn how to cultivate it's presence in your life, as you are the master of it all in the end. Your enlightenment is destined to find you in this lifetime or the next.  It is on it's way, you simply need to get out of the way and understand how to receive it. When the mind stops all searching in the outer for fulfillment and finally comes to relax home in your very core, the realization is discovered that enlightenment was always there, just buried deep within your being.

We all experience suffering in life because of one little thing...ignorance. If you take the word "ignore" and add a little dance to it, you get ignorance!  When we ignore the Truth of our infinite being, our ignorance expands and soon transfers us onto the path of suffering. To transcend your ignorance and find spiritual freedom in your life again, the intention for a deeper awareness is needed. We must welcome the most profound state of consciousness we can imagine. By simply opening up to our own consciousness, we can release anything instantly that would make us suffer. Nothing more than pure awareness is needed to transcend this illusion and re-discover the liberating truth of who we are.

Each moment of our lives has the potentiality to become the most liberating healing enlightening experience we can handle. The more open, ready and willing we are to receive something magnificent, the easier and faster the magic comes flooding in. When you are ready for enlightenment, it will find you. You don't have to strive for it.  In fact, the harder you work for it, the further it moves away from you. Just make it your priority to totally relax and enjoy your life. Fully surrender to your real self. Explore who you truly are, what you really want, and what your purpose on Earth actually is on a spiritual level.

 The following information is deeply transforming when applied daily to your life.  Using these suggestions each day will take you closer to tasting the awesome experience of spiritual enlightenment. This great enlightened experience is a massive shift in consciousness, so go easy on yourself. You may have been trying to wake up for a really long time, possibly lifetimes, and the great awakening can come suddenly, like a bolt of lightening in the most unexpected time, place and way.

"Life is wild. Love is wild, and God is absolutely wild.
Those who are wild always reach enlightenment." ~Osho

To get the most out of this article, breathe each one of these 10 bold messages below into your heart. Inhale the feeling of information so that it spreads out into every cell in your body. Let it sink deep into your being so that it becomes a way of exploring the world. You can make an affirmation out of it and make firm to yourself that this (or better) is now true for me in this moment of my life.  Enjoy!

10. Be open to the new and release your ego's need to be right about anything.  

Being right can be the hardest ego trip to get off of, and yet causes a major amount of suffering. If the ego believes it is wrong about any one little thing, it starts feeling insecure that you basically could be WRONG about everything in your entire life! Whatever the mind believes is true, always becomes our reality in that moment. The colored lens you perceive your world with today, becomes how the world tends to appear for you tomorrow.  If everyone around you from birth to death says that Life is this hard, painful and unfair experience, and you believe them, then how will you ever learn how to relax, let go, trust and enjoy living in this amazing Universe?

If we think we must fight to get what we want in life, we end up manifesting a very serious challenging ride. To experience love, enlightenment and freedom we must step over our ego and be open to a completely new experience of life in each moment. Your inner and outer world is one massive playground. Learn how to be free, and have fun within your life. Think of each new day as your chance to step on a very interesting and comical life stage. You can choose any hat to wear, lens to see through, or fascinating role you desire to play!


9. Let go of doing and practice simply being. 

 It has become abnormal for people to just relax, sit still, be silent and alone. "Do-a-holics" have become the societal norm. Many people avoid meditation because they think it is boring, don't have time for it, or feel they have failed at it, trying to quiet their mind after a few random attempts. When we realize that ALL of our suffering, chaos and illness in life is caused by our inability to quiet the mind, we will spend more time practicing being present and less invested in doing something thinking it will take us somewhere better than being here. 

Eventually, with enough time spent practicing being present to the now, we discover our real infinite nature inside. We realize we are spiritual beings and have everything we were looking for and soooo MUCH more! The greatest mystics in history all discovered enlightenment when they were simply being quiet, relaxed, and fully in the here now. When their big awakening happened, they were not trying to do anything! This is the great mystery of life, and mastery of the mind is by far the greatest achievement mankind can ever have. The experience of being here now, feeling ONE with the infinite, all-powerful and omniscient Universal-God force is enough. It is empowering and highly enlightening to re-define all those old definitions of what it means to get somewhere special in your life.

8. Being free from our family's unconscious myths and society's deep ignorant programming. 

When you were a child, what was communicated to you about enlightenment? Anything?  Did anybody have a clue what enlightenment was or how to experience an enlightened state of bliss? Did anyone ever show you how to open your chakras, meditate, or communicate with God? Most likely, everyone around you was more or less spiritually lost, and then telling you what they believed would make you happy, loved and successful in life. They wanted the best for you, yet ended up communicating to you how to be unhappy and unenlightened through their actions, belief system and behavior.

If you go back and think about your childhood, what do you remember was the typical standard story you were told, that make you feel like a failure, isolated, unloved or a sense of separation?  What belief system did you inherit from your family that created massive limits on how you feel about yourself and life today? You may have heard some messages like, "You need an education to become somebody, there just isn't enough time for that, we cannot afford that, you cannot be, do or have xyz, you are just too much of a blah blah blah!"  Naturally we are all very gullible as children, yet if we did not become identified with our family's limiting belief system we may not be here. If we didn't think like they did, they might have stopped feeding us and pushed us out of the tribe. We needed to think small, do what we were told and obey the one in charge, in order to remain accepted, loved and alive.

From the moment we were born, we all received the idea that this unenlightened state of life was the norm. You may have seen all the insane world problems on the nightly TV news, and thought that this was how the entire world operated and mass suffering was just the way things were. As we became teenagers, we either rebelled or became assimilated into the unenlightenment system, and fell deeper into the story of separation. The more we accepted or rebelled from our community, the greater our feelings of lack, isolation and struggle grew inside. Being surrounded by unenlightened people was an enormous lose-lose situation.

To make matters worse, we were forced to attend some jail like "education system" which worked about 3% of our brain's potentiality and was designed to churn once brilliant creative kids through a social formatting grinder so they become hard workers for the system. We were taught wonderful lies that everyone believed to be true, like how a human life expectancy should only be 75-100 years old, when really our DNA can last at least 300 years. We were told that we would have to work really hard to have a home, limited energy, resources, food, knowledge and power. We were never taught to rebel against authority, think freely, independently, or even consider the possibility of becoming spiritually enlightened.

The school system made it illegal to teach children how to find a deep inner connection with the Infinite Source.  It was not important to learn how to meditate, heal your body through your breath, how to make tantric love, master your mind through totally quietness and stillness, enjoy all our emotions, know the infinite truth of who we are, or how to achieve absolute inner freedom and bliss. The society all around you is still hypnotizing adults and their children to believe that success is all about achieving a higher level of status, money and career. Our poor education system is still in its infancy, and simply has never had a large dose of enlightenment so it doesn't know any better! 

There are many awakened beings in the world today who know the truth, that real success in life is defined by how liberated, spiritually rich, loving and enlightened you are as a human being. The world is slowly waking up, one person at a time.  People are beginning to see that happiness is not something you can attain from striving to achieve the right income, status, career, marriage, or diploma. Striving to reach these things will only distract you from walking your spiritual path and discover the most rewarding life experience of them all.

Remember, whatever limited ideas that you received from your family or school system were THEIR limitations and not yours.  When you stop and give back those beliefs, you can reclaim your spiritual freedom again within yourself. The limiting beliefs handed down from your family run deep in your blood and it will take every ounce of awareness inside you to see them.  Freedom will occur when they are fully seen, felt into and released from your mental/emotional body as well as your subconscious mind.

We must forgive all of these people of their unenlightened programming if we are ever to be fully free. It is all karmic and nobody is to blame. They simply were not taught by their parents how to live in a constant state of wonder and amazement in their lives while doing daily tasks like changing diapers, cutting the grass, going to work, and paying their bills. When we forgive them and see how they were not raised by fully self-realized self-actualized enlightened beings, we can easily forgive ourselves for the limiting beliefs and negative feelings about ourselves that we inherited. 

7. Be outrageous and stop hiding from your spiritual power in some safe little fishbowl.  

We can often hide from our life mission and spiritual purpose in our mind. Thoughts are safe, while real life experiences "out there" seem dangerous, scary and unsafe. Life is inherently insecure because death is always potentially around the next corner. We might find it easier to not take risks, and go for our big dreams in life for fear of getting hurt or lost in the wild ocean. When we only choose to stay safe, comfy (and basically dead) inside our little comfortable fishbowls of old habits, we only do the things that once gave a sense of confidence and security, and stop growing completely.

Life is this beautiful natural chaos with a divine cosmic structure. Our lives are this daily adventurous rollercoaster ride that we need to learn how to enjoy. Life is meant to be fun because you just don't know exactly how things will turn out.  You won't know until the last second how you will respond to what someone says, or how you'll make the most important decision you need to make.  Each experience in your life is here for your spiritual growth. Each boring, exciting or normal experience is meant to expand you, help you see and feel the entire ocean around you now, and yes jump out of your safe little fishbowl and SWIM in the ocean of existence! It's easy to do, simply stop thinking about your life, and actually start enjoying the one you're living, feeling and breathing in now! 

6. Embracing and loving every fear that arises. 

The less fear we are holding in the body, the more we can relax and open ourselves up to experiencing a more expansive enlightened state of consciousness. All fears are simply emotionally contracted thoughts invented by a mind that still believes it is disconnected from the Source. It's good to know that the word F.E.A.R. actually stands for False Evidence Appearing Real.

To transcend any fear, first discover what you are deeply afraid of. You can access any fear by opening yourself up to another person intimately in conversation, letting the other peer into you. Soon you will be able to see deeper into yourself and understand exactly what you are running from in your life. Once you know what you are running away from, run towards it and welcome it into your heart with a big embrace. This approach will dissolve any fear instantly, and in time it will be completely released from your body. The more practice you have in embracing your fears, the easier it becomes to find total relaxation, so that you can access your full spiritual connection within your consciousness.

5. Stop trying to continuously improve or fix yourself.

This may seem contradictory to the previous message, yet its actually complementary. How often do you find yourself trying to replace your negative thoughts and feelings with positive ones? How much of your life has been spent trying to heal yourself or your mind? Is all the effort and energy you're putting into improving you actually making you relax into the experience that you are already divine, already sacred, deeply lovable, and already connected to the God Source? 

The result from continuously fixing, improving and healing yourself is perpetuating the feeling of, "I am not ok exactly as I am". Any unconscious self-improvement habit is just another egoic disease.  The real problem is not what it appears to be. Go to the root of the matter, which is this dualistic mind, and uproot the entire "I'm broken and need to be fixed"emotional program. Realize that WHO you are is neither these negative or positive thoughts, yet the consciousness and awareness behind them. Only through pure awareness will you be able to stop the habit of trying to change, fix and improve yourself, and instead surrender deeply into the spiritual sacred core of your being where self-realization is.

4. Enjoying the practice of quieting the incessant chattering and repetitive mind.

The mind is a limited conglomeration of ideas and beliefs about who we think we are, and what reality is. It behaves much like a computer that is un-aware of itself, and just spits out information that was programmed into it. The mind is like a machine so it is not conscious.  The mind is a horrible master and a wonderful servant.  We need to train the mind, so that we can use it instead of being used by it.  It cannot remain in the present moment. It must keep moving with ideas that engage the past and future to remain in control of you. 

When we quiet the mind, we regain control of it. The more we can practice paying attention to the stillness and silence that is behind the chattering mind, the less power the mind has over you, and the less you'll get trapped in your limited ego or identity. The word E.G.O. is really just an acronym for Excluding God's Omnipresence. Through the constant awareness of our ego we can by pass the mind and access this omnipresent divine spiritual energy inside us.  We can discover our natural enlightened state. We become aligned with the bigger Truth that we already are infinite spiritual beings, who have been given the gift of a limited physical human expression with illusionary challenges that make us grow. When the mind is quiet, we can enjoy this divine play, and find real peace with the entire dynamic.  We find full acceptance that we are both the ego and spirit, and know all is perfect as it is.

3. Releasing all attachments and aversions to everyone and everything.  

As humans we tend to get attached to (or avoid) certain thoughts and feelings we BELIEVE will make us happy or unhappy.  We get into habits of resisting life, and trying to control our experiences so that we get what we think will ONLY bring us joy, and avoid what makes us unhappy. We even create these patterns based on what others say, feel, and believe and ignore our own inner voice and connection.  This attachment and avoidance habit manifests because deep down we feel disconnected from our spiritual source. We are still trying to find some form of security by controlling our reality.  When we were young, we saw others avoiding what is painful and remaining attached to what is pleasurable, and believed this is how it should be done.

The enlightened state shows up when we listen to our heart and stop being attached to or avoiding anything.  When we understand that life is like a pendulum, designed to swing and give us both experiences of pain and pleasure, we can transcend them both. By accepting this natural pendulum swing, we become free from being the one who always needs to be in control and running the show. 

Pain and suffering are just the Universe's way of telling us to "LET GO" and trust the flow.  The purpose of feeling pain is not to create more suffering, yet for you to wake up and create an immediate new life change. This change is necessary for you to evolve and eventually drop all identity with your ego-trip so you can return to your spiritual source. By allowing yourself to let go of your mind's attachments and aversions, you can genuinely enjoy your life again.  You then start energetically communicating to the Universe that you are abundant, thankful, happy, beautiful and free!  This experience allows you to expand in consciousness and deepen your connection to your Infinite Source inside.

2. Being free from the illusion that you're separate from the Infinite Source of love, energy and connection.

Feeling separate and disconnected from our Universe is the unenlightened state.  We become enlightened when we are continuously aware how deeply and intimately connected we already are.  The illusion of separation is not an accident or coincidence, the Universe is extremely intelligent. Every feeling of separation is needed so that coming spiritually home is that much more amazing.  The polarization of separation/unification breeds a truly juicy alive and incredible experience of life. When we become enlightened, we will see the full illusion and know how to stop manifesting another experience of loss, failure or separation again.

The illusion that we are not connected to the divine is karmic.  It stems from lifetimes of our mind's attachment (and avoidance) of limiting ideas of who and what we think we are. Once we untangle ourselves from our fun sticky karmic mess, we will remember that we were always ONE energy, one sea of consciousness, and always connected with our Source. All experiences of suffering simply drop away when we pay closer attention to who we truly are. 

All suffering comes from a lack of awareness of our divinity. Once we stop forgetting our eternal abundant nature, we begin stepping forward into a life over flowing with synchronicity, ease, grace, love and knowing our divine unlimited nature. Waking up is as simple and easy as remembering that the Sun is always on, always bright, and always shining somewhere.

1. Know that who you truly are is already awake, enlightened, loving and free.

When it comes down to it, we already have everything we need inside us to experience all the love, joy and happiness we could ever desire. All efforting to get anywhere better than here, is simply divine misguidance. The Universe is already amazing. You are already amazing, and this moment is totally amazing. By sitting in awe of this amazingness that is already here now, we wake up to the spiritual immensity of our being.  We suddenly stop playing small, end all of our suffering, and continuously step into the vastness of our totality.

The pathway into enlightenment is a perpetual journey into the now. This wonderful yet treacherous journey involves getting to know ourselves very intimately, gently and spiritually. When we break free from the hard cold calculating mind, we realize who we truly are is love itself. We then find out our life's spiritual mission and soul purpose is to radiate this love everywhere we are! When we know our real nature is the Divine itself, we become desire-less, selfless, and effortlessly remember how deeply, intimately and infinitely connected we already are to the spiritual source inside it all.