Awakening or Spiritual Enlightenment

A definition of spiritual enlightenment or spiritual awakening is hard to establish. This is, in part, because spiritual enlightenment and "spiritual awakening have been used in so many ways to describe so many things, similar to the way love is used to describe everything from a preference for a certain meal to divine love. And it is also because spiritual enlightenment and spiritual awakening are such rich and complex experiences that they are innately hard to define.

Some definitions are very specific and narrow. One such definition for spiritual enlightenment is the dissolution of one's identity as a separate self with no trace of the egoism remaining. This sets the stage very high and means that not all people are ready to embrace such a path to full enlightenment.

The opposite approach is to say that everyone is enlightened, and that one needs only to awaken from his/her state of unknowingness. In this view, it's only a question of whether this natural awareness has been recognized in oneself or not.

Combining perspectives on spiritual enlightenment

Perhaps there's a definition that includes both of these perspectives, which recognizes that consciousness is always awake, but the degree of wakefulness, or aware consciousness, that is present in any moment, can vary.

This definition acknowledges that there's a difference in the degree of wakefulness, or enlightened consciousness, that different people experience at different times. Enlightenment comes with soul or Self realization, with knowing who and what we are. At times we have glimpses into our intrinsic nature, but at other times our vision is obscured by attachment to the pleasures of the outer world.   

In our innermost being we are pure consciousness, or enlightened. We are infinite potential, but that potential needs to be released. Nature does its part in this release, but the process is slow. We can speed up this process by engaging in an enlightenment path, such as the philosophy of Yoga, Vedanta, Sankhya or Buddhism. These schools are available to anyone who is interested in the subject.

Defining enlightenment in many ways should makes sense, depending on what our intention is. One may use the word enlightenment to point to the state of self-realization beyond the ego or to point to the innate potential for this realization which resides in all of us.

As for differentiating between the words enlightenment and awakening, enlightenment implies a more complete and constant state of realization, while awakening has more of the active quality and therefore suggests a movement or shift in consciousness.

Awakening may be defined as a sudden increase in the overall amount of consciousness an individual is experiencing. There can be small awakenings and bigger awakenings. Not only does consciousness have unlimited potential for the amount of awareness, but it also has an unlimited potential to shift in any direction, at any moment.

Consciousness can and sometimes does shift from contracted states of fear, anger, or hurt to expanded states of peace and joy in an instant. Unfortunately, it can also shift in the other direction. Consciousness has no fixed state.

The key is, to maintain a constant state of wakefulness by internalizing ones attention. A practical way is to maintain a detached witness consciousness of inner and outer experiences and in this process realizing, that we are not the object of the experience, but the subject (soul) observing the event, the witness.

This approach takes some practice. The beauty is that this witness state can be practiced at any time and by anyone and through this practice we recognize the gradual shifts that take place in our consciousness.