So many people have had awakening experiences and haven’t written a book. So many have the experience of “I had it. And then I lost it.”

In sessions and groups, I hear this over and over. Enlightenment is quite the tease it seems.

It shows up for a while, bringing the requisite peace, easy-going equanimity, the non- reactiveness, the bliss, contentment, all-abiding love.

Oh yeah! Life as it’s supposed to be lived! We shall say yes to this sweetness.

Enlightenment has arrived. And so have you, now-enlightened one.

Until just as suddenly, on its own timetable and without fan-fair, after hanging out a few moments, hours, days, months, it slips off again.

Hey where’d it go? Adios enlightenment.

And then you’re back to the same ol’ judging, dissatisfied, thought-believing life.

Only now, you have had a tantalizing taste of sugar.

What person in his right mind wouldn't want to set about trying to get that back?

Although…. you can see the potential carrot-chasing that’s instantly created, right?

There’s a better yum out there; better than the everyday fare. You had it for a while. You want it back.

Chase chase chase.

Have you noticed what happens to the present, to what is here, with that craving operating?

“I know! Let’s trash what is here and wait for /pine for /hope for the return of what isn’t.”

You can see the flawed reasoning, I hope?

We're talking about a dissatisfaction with what we have.

We’re talking about a desire for better; nicer feelings, nicer thoughts, less ego, a moratorium on judgments.

That's really just business as usual with a fancier label slapped on it.

But c’mon, it felt so great! That nice feeling, that sweet sense of peace...

It’s like a long lasting quiet sweet little orgasm.

Who wouldn’t want that back?

But… we don’t chase orgasms, trying to get back the one we (hopefully) had last week do we?  (please say no )

Besides, orgasms don’t last forever, do they.

In fact, does any good feeling stay forever?

Nah.

So if enlightenment is (or just comes with) a sweet feeling of peace, is that even supposed to last forever?

Everything on this planet comes and goes; nothing is permanent.

Why should enlightenment be any different?

Whether you consider awakening a point of view, an experience, an understanding or a feeling state, why shouldn’t it come and go like everything else?

And then, notice that sense that you- with all your study and retreats and satsangs and meditating and extra-special giftedness or whatever- you can't help thinking that you made awakening show up to begin with.

And then, you failed. You blew it. You made it leave.

Ouch.

That’s a whole lot of personal responsibility.

And a whole lot of You going on.

Oh the self-ness, the self-importance, the Self that’s reflected in “I made this happen and I made it un-happen.”

Powerful, important, all-revolves-around-you You.

And then there's all the meaning attributed to that experience arriving and leaving.

It means you did good, and then it means you did bad. It means you’re missing out on the good stuff. It means you are being denied; others get to have something and you don’t. So you are inadequate and incomplete.

So much “you” in that paragraph.

Even if it feels miserable, there’s a lot of ego involved. All that you-ing, and the reflection of a solid, correctable clearly-there (duh) object of importance, power and control.

Interesting. And handy.

So….

Is it even logical that the experience of transcending self would make a self more important, more special?

Or might such reasoning instead confirm ego, just with a new label?

It’s only a thought that says you made something happen, and you made it un-happen, and that your life is better when that enlightenmenty-happening is here.

Because the thing is, except for that thought, is it so awful- this life as it is?

Is now so awful?

Some of you reading may insist on a Yes to that question, and I hope you’ll look again. Because “My life is awful. This sucks and I can’t bear it…”; these are thoughts.

Thoughts can’t be trusted.

And I realize that might be too hard for some to see or accept right now, and that’s fine.

Either way, if enlightenment (or even just feeling better) is being chased, maybe for a moment you can see ….

you simply can't get what you're looking for that way.

So yeah, had an enlightenment experience and lost it?

Well, Ok.

Whether liked it or not, this right here…is What Is.

Right here. Right now. This.

As is.

The truth is you're powerless.

Experience comes and go as it pleases.

What would that feel like, I wonder, if it was ok to have the experience you're having now, as it is, without insistence that some other experience is better?

Could it be that in the acceptance of the present, with whatever feelings, judgments, behaviors and thoughts are here now…

that that acceptance is where what you're chasing, actually lives?

What if what you're chasing lives not in the grasping to get something else, or to get something back, and instead lives in This-is-what-is-here-now?

Because it’s also true that once something is seen it can’t be unseen. Which is yet another way of saying what you seek is already here.

Which would mean there’s nothing to do, nothing to change, nothing to seek.

That would not be business as usual, would it.

Who knows, it might even be downright EnLightening.

“You spiritual people spend so much time trying to transcend. But if you knew how much concentration it took to turn energy into matter, you would quit trying to leave here.”   -- Physicist Fred Alan Wolf