When I was eighteen, I had this shift in consciousness that I like to refer to as the start of my ‘spiritual awakening’. I started to look differently at the world, at myself, at my experience on Earth.
I became much more interested in self-reflection, personal growth, meditation, finding purpose, and the higher powers of the universe (i.e. synchronicity, the law of attraction, etc.).
I felt like I was now on a path that truly reflected my own sense of truth, I felt a sense of belonging that I hadn’t felt before.
I studied up on topics that I had come across before, through my mother when I was very young, but had now come to understand at a completely different level.

As a young kid, I had always found it fun to draw the occasional tarot card with her, have her teach me some reiki, or even meditate a couple times. She introduced me to crystals, and gave me some of my own. I adopted my mom’s truth as my own, but eventually in my teenage years, grew out of these habits and kind of forgot they existed.

So when I encountered my own spiritual awakening, and re-familiarized myself with the knowledge, I also adopted the philosophy that I should only ever take on the truths that I felt resounded with my own core essence.

Now, I have talked about this before, about finding your own truth, and throughout this article, it will be one of the main points I’m trying to make, because I truly feel that it is the most important.

I believe that we all are one with the universe, with each other, the planet, the animals, the trees and all of that. However, this does not negate the fact that we are all here having a human experience, with unique human brains, all with their own perspectives and their own truths.
No matter the differences between these truths, from the individual’s perspective, all can be equally true.

It is important that we understand the existence of these differences, and respect them.
But, this does bring me to my next point.

Deviating from the idea of achieving spiritual enlightenment

All walks of life have their own culture, as does the community of people that practice the type of spirituality that I write about.
Of course, the philosophy behind spiritualism stems from Buddhism, and therefore it is important to refer to the Buddhist definition of spiritual enlightenment, before I continue.

Enlightenment in Buddhism can have many definitions, as there are many words to describe it. But to be ‘enlightened’ would mean, in general, the complete knowledge of something.
Achieving spiritual enlightenment would mean that one has learned all of the earthly lessons that we are here to learn, has let go of all emotional, material and any other type of attachments, and is no longer affected by the good and evil of the world. There is nothing left to achieve in this life because all has been learned.

As spiritual apprentices, we are to work toward achieving this goal. We are looking for the reason we were put here on Earth, in this time, and we learn that the reason is to learn enough lessons that we can achieve enlightenment, or be reincarnated until we do.

Being in Damanhur in 2016, I was striving towards this goal.
I was learning every day, practicing mindfulness and gratitude, meditating, working with my hands. We learned about the eight steps to enlightenment, which include learning how to take action, how to become aware, how to embrace change. The steps align greatly with the seven chakras, as unblocking them would cause the energy to flow freely throughout your body, allowing you to break free of what was holding you back in life.

All of the things I have experienced in my time there were amazing, and I still to this day am grateful to have been there. I still carry these lessons with me in my day to day life.
One thing I did state while being there, still rings very true to me to this day.
We were working on the feminine aspects of our being at the time, we had meditated in the woods, and were now gathered to discuss our findings of the day. We had been talking about letting go.
When it was my turn to speak, I told my teacher and peers: ‘I understand that achieving spiritual enlightenment means letting go of earthly possessions, and relationships to loved ones, but I also understand that at this point in my life, I am not ready to do that. And I think that is totally okay.’

At this point, like I said, I was still chasing the idea of achieving spiritual enlightenment in my lifetime. I have however, since then, let go of this idea.

I’ve come to the understanding within myself, that the reason that I’m so desperate to find, my life’s purpose, is not to achieve enlightenment.
Allow me to explain.

Finding purpose

The million dollar question to many a human’s life is: ‘What is the reason for my existence?’ or ‘What is my life’s purpose?’
This has also fascinated me endlessly. Not only fascinated, it’s kept me up at night, it’s put me through misery because I was chasing goals that were not meant for me, it’s even played a role when my suicidal feelings were still present.

I’ve thought about my goal to help people, to make their lives better, maybe being my purpose. And trying to live up to that has caused me to completely eradicate my own wants and needs. It caused me to consider myself a side character for years, until I finally learned that I had bodily autonomy, that I was ‘allowed’ to have an opinion, if I allowed myself to have one. (I still find myself amazed at this finding from time to time. It’s been a great experience so far, guys!)

I’ve thought about gaining enlightenment as a life purpose. And while I do not believe that trying to achieve this in itself, is harmful, I do believe that it is not the end-goal of most human lives.
To further explain this, I do believe I’m going to have to take one final step back to shed light on something else.

Stoicism and duality

To understand this life, is to know that we live in a world of duality. Light cannot exist without darkness, happiness cannot exist without misery, and so on.
The duality of life is a fascinating thing. You can philosophize your brains out, if you so wish.
I know I’ve done so many a time.

The duality exists on every scale, from the biggest macro scale, to the tiniest micro scale.
It exists within our world, where there’s good and evil forces at work, shown for example through activism, war, politics, and it exists within ourselves in the same way. As much as I can argue myself to be a lazy person, I can argue to be equally as productive. As much as I can be considerate, I can be rude. I can be all of those people, and still be truly myself.

We like to think that there is a big difference between us ‘good people’, and the people who for example can commit murder. But the truth is, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that the mass murderer of all those kids, was also a devoted husband, a loving father, a good son to their mother.
We all have good and evil within us, though the balance can shift from time to time, and from person to person.

Now, achieving enlightenment has much to do with stoicism. To rise above the ‘trivial’ problems of the human race, is to rise above our feelings and emotions, our attachments to earthly things such as possessions, but also people.
Achieving the ultimate stoicism would be to defeat the duality.
I think this is also why Buddhist monks cease to exist in their human bodily form when they achieve rainbow body. Their existence can only continue on a plane of non-duality.

But the duality is the entire foundation of our existence.
Our world, our lives couldn’t exist without the duality.
And that is exactly why I think it is not our main goal to achieve spiritual enlightenment.

I think we want to achieve it because we think it is the best thing that could happen. But it being the best would make it part of the duality. And it can’t be. It defeats the point.

Embracing duality

Say we want to achieve a world without evil. Most of us do. It is not for no reason that we list world peace as the number one thing we would wish for if wishes could come true.

As humans, it is very easy to succumb to the fear of evil, because there is a lot of it in the world.
We want to contain this evil, would love to defeat it.

But I think learning how to live a successful, purposeful human life, means learning how to exist on the plane of duality, not try to negate it or rise above.
For it is impossible to have a human experience without the contrast of black and white, good and evil, right and wrong.

Maybe the purpose of a human life, is to learn how to embrace the bad with the good. To acknowledge the existence of both, to allow both. To come to terms with the light and the darkness.
Because we know we wouldn’t be able to experience life on earth without the duality.