Why you can't become enlightened
""If Spirit has any meaning, it must be omnipresent, or all-pervading and
all-encompassing. There can't be a place where Spirit is not, or it wouldn't
be infinite. Therefore, Spirit has to be completely present, right here, right
now, in your own awareness. That is, your own present awareness,
precisely as it is, without changing it or altering it in any way, is perfectly
and completely permeated by Spirit._
"Furthermore, it is not that Spirit is present but you need to be
enlightened in order to see it. It is not that you are one with Spirit but
just don't know it yet. Because that would also imply that there is some
place Spirit is not. No, according to Dzogchen, you are always already one
with Spirit, and that awareness is always already fully present, right now.
You are looking directly at Spirit, with Spirit, in every act of awareness.
There is nowhere Spirit is not.
"Further, if Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or
without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would
be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means,
as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened.
You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then
that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true
enlightenment._ _
"Rather, Spirit, and enlightenment, has to be something that you are fully
aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now. We
are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don't recognize it. We
have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition."
- Ken Wilber, *Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death
of Treya Killam Wilber*"
all-encompassing. There can't be a place where Spirit is not, or it wouldn't
be infinite. Therefore, Spirit has to be completely present, right here, right
now, in your own awareness. That is, your own present awareness,
precisely as it is, without changing it or altering it in any way, is perfectly
and completely permeated by Spirit._
"Furthermore, it is not that Spirit is present but you need to be
enlightened in order to see it. It is not that you are one with Spirit but
just don't know it yet. Because that would also imply that there is some
place Spirit is not. No, according to Dzogchen, you are always already one
with Spirit, and that awareness is always already fully present, right now.
You are looking directly at Spirit, with Spirit, in every act of awareness.
There is nowhere Spirit is not.
"Further, if Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or
without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would
be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means,
as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened.
You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then
that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true
enlightenment._ _
"Rather, Spirit, and enlightenment, has to be something that you are fully
aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now. We
are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don't recognize it. We
have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition."
- Ken Wilber, *Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death
of Treya Killam Wilber*"