Is Enlightenment An Experience Inside The Body Or Outside?

Is enlightenment an experience inside the body or outside? This session starts with a short discourse on the topic of Enlightenment and the Body along with 20 min guided meditation to experience awareness beyond the body.

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Each session is unique, starts with a 5-10 min discourse, followed by 20 min Guided Meditation.

Transcript

A very warm welcome to all of you in this meditation session with me,

Dhyansay.

We meet every morning,

7 am,

Central European Time,

To take a few minutes to contemplate,

To meditate together.

Every day,

We pick up a new topic,

We touch a different aspect of life,

And go through these aspects in these meditative moments together,

And really go deep and not just remain on the surface,

Remain in the words of things,

And rather go into our own being and feeling those topics,

Those aspects of life,

Which otherwise remain untouched.

So I invite you to join me in these sessions wherever you are,

Whenever you're watching,

At best,

Sit with me live,

But otherwise you can also watch the recordings on all my social media channels,

On YouTube,

Facebook,

Twitter,

Etc.

,

Or listen to these as podcasts later as well.

For today's session,

I would like to very briefly touch upon a heavy topic,

The topic of enlightenment,

Because there was a question from one of my meditators,

Asking about enlightenment and the body.

Let's see what this meditator has to say,

And what does this mean for us for this session in the next minutes.

The meditator asks,

One question is about the body.

I am reading the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle,

And there he says that we do not experience enlightenment outside the body,

And it is best that we should always be connected to it.

But your meditations are also about letting go of the body.

Now I wonder,

In everyday life,

Or only in meditation,

Or in general,

When it makes sense to let go of your body,

Or when it makes sense to feel your body from within,

And whether you think you can find enlightenment outside of your body,

Or whether you think that you are not your body,

Or whether you are also your body,

Or how you feel about your body.

Lots of things have to be understood with respect to the body and enlightenment.

But first,

Let me just say that spirituality is not an objective science.

When someone says something in the realm of spirituality,

He or she is trying to tell you not facts,

He is trying to take you from where you are to a place where you should be.

And he does whatever to make that happen.

He tells you stories,

He tells you concepts,

He tells you different contexts,

And the only purpose of all that information is so that you move towards more truth,

You move out of how you have perceived things so far.

Same applies here.

When Eckhart Tolle says that you should always be connected to the body,

And you can't find enlightenment outside the body,

I believe what he is trying to say is that you should always be in the present moment.

His emphasis is not on enlightenment,

His emphasis is on being in the moment,

Being in the present moment,

Looking not for things outside,

Looking for things within.

That's what I believe Eckhart Tolle might be referring to,

Pointing to,

But again,

It's the context.

I don't know what the context was in which he was mentioning,

But that's what I feel that he is trying to pull you in the present moment by saying that you should look for enlightenment,

Not outside the body.

Second thing,

Very briefly,

Let us understand what is enlightenment.

Such a misunderstood term,

Misunderstood topic.

So it's important when you brought the topic up,

Let's take a look at what it is.

In my view,

Enlightenment is just a metaphor.

It's a metaphor to say that your consciousness is pure.

Consciousness by nature is like light.

And when you say enlightenment,

It only means that the consciousness is pure.

It's at its purest form.

Otherwise,

Consciousness is always entangled in the body,

In the mind,

In everything else that we call ourselves as this manifestation,

As our being,

As who we are.

Only when the consciousness is pure,

Only when it's detangled from the body,

It's detangled from the mind,

It's detangled from all the other energies which are always pulling it to its attention,

Only then,

Consciousness is pure and a state of enlightenment is experienced.

Having said that,

There is no experience outside the body.

That's why Eckhart Tolle says that enlightenment cannot be experienced outside the body.

Now this sounds contradictory,

But when you say enlightenment,

It's not a metaphor.

When you meditate and when you purify your consciousness,

When you detangle your consciousness from the body,

From the mind,

And all the energies,

You come to this point where you are just consciousness,

Where you're pure awareness.

In a way,

There is no experience of pure awareness,

There is an experience of pure consciousness.

In a way,

There is no experience.

I'll let the topic of enlightenment stay right there and we'll discuss this more in upcoming sessions.

But a couple of more points in your question for us before we sit for meditation.

You also say that should I be letting go of the body in everyday life or in only meditation?

For now,

My suggestion would be to learn to let go of the body in meditation,

To learn to detangle yourself from the body.

And what that means is to not always be identified with the body.

Once in the moments of meditation,

You experience,

You feel this dis-identification of the body brings such deep inner peace,

Such deep inner relaxation,

Then you can take this to your daily life as well.

Otherwise,

In your daily life,

You're fully identified with your body.

But only in meditative moments,

When you experience the value of dis-identification with the body,

And always having this awareness which is above the body,

Then you can bring this into your daily life as well.

Then you ask whether you think that you're not your body or whether you're also your body.

You're both.

You're not your body and you also have a body.

This once again is referring back to the experience of yourself as consciousness.

When you experience yourself as pure awareness,

You understand that you are only the witness of the body,

Of the mind,

And it is possible for you to put yourself in that state where you're absolutely unconcerned,

Unidentified with the body,

With the mind,

And all of your other energies.

But something is there.

You are there as awareness.

Or in other words,

There's only awareness.

You have the experience of pure awareness.

And yes,

You are also the body.

You also have this body.

And with meditation,

Once you learn to dis-identify,

To create a distance from your body,

That's what allows you to live this body as something that you have and not what you are.

I hope that answers some of your dilemmas,

Some of your dilemmas about body enlightenment.

And when we will experience more today in meditation,

It'll become clearer what I mean by having a distance from the body,

Having this identification from the body.

Another thing which I want to tell you is you have been asking a lot about the body.

My feeling is that you are deeply identified with your body.

It could be that you had some issues with your body in childhood or otherwise.

If that would not be the case,

This question,

This strong feeling of what to do with the body would not arise.

So my recommendation to you is to actually work on dis-identifying yourself with the body and trying to bring your awareness to that state where you are above the body,

Where your awareness has less to do with what the body is feeling,

What is going on in the mind.

So try to do meditations which take you to this open awareness with this pure awareness,

This pure consciousness,

And not enhance your body awareness which brings you more and more into the body.

For today's meditation,

What I would like us to do is to do this in two steps.

The first step is to bring our awareness to our third eye center,

Which is,

In other words,

To say that focus the awareness in between the eyebrows at the third eye chakra,

Which allows our awareness to really gather energy from all different directions,

Bring it to a focus that is strong,

That gives you that centeredness,

That gives you that awareness which can move beyond the body,

Which can move beyond the mind.

And as the next step,

I would invite you to take this awareness further slightly above the body.

In the yogic system,

They call this as the seventh chakra,

The sahasraar.

You don't have to believe in chakras to perform this meditation.

All you can do is to then shift your awareness slightly above your head and start to be aware of the moment from that perspective,

From that point of view,

From that center.

When you are in deep silence,

It happens on its own.

But here,

We practice it just to get a taste of what this could mean,

To get an understanding of how this works.

And over time,

With practice,

It becomes a natural phenomenon,

It happens on its own.

So with that,

I invite you to sit with me for the next 20 minutes in meditation.

For the meditation,

You can take any position which is allowing your back to be upright.

You could sit in a cross-legged posture or you could sit on the couch with your legs straight,

As it is comfortable for you.

Close your eyes.

Take a nice deep breath.

Inhale from the nose.

And then,

Exhale from the nose.

And then,

Exhale from the nose.

And then,

Exhale from the nose.

Allowing your body to settle.

Allowing your mind to settle.

As your breath finds rest,

As your body finds rest,

As your mind finds rest,

Shift your awareness to the third eye center,

To the area in between your eyebrows,

On your forehead.

If it helps,

Imagine that there is an energy center in between your eyebrows.

And take all your attention and awareness to your third eye center.

You may feel slight sensations at your third eye center,

Your awareness growing,

Focusing more on the third eye center.

You may feel slight sensations at your third eye center.

Hold your awareness inwards towards your third eye center.

You may feel slight sensations at your third eye center.

As you feel the energy alive and pulsating at your third eye center,

Shift your awareness further up,

A few inches or centimeters above your head.

This is the crown chakra,

The space above your head.

Awareness above your head,

On the Sahasraara chakra.

You may feel the energy in your eyes,

The space above your head,

On the Sahasraara chakra.

In these moments,

Let go of the body,

Let go of the mind,

And all your awareness on the Sahasraara chakra,

A few inches or centimeters above your head.

You may feel the energy in your eyes,

The space above your head,

And all your awareness on the Sahasraara chakra.

Now let go of all effort and simply remain silent and aware.

You may feel the energy in your eyes,

The space above your head,

And all your awareness on the Sahasraara chakra.

Maintain this silent awareness,

Another couple of minutes.

You may feel the energy in your eyes,

The space above your head,

And very gently bring your awareness back to your breath.

Back to your body.

And slowly and gently,

You may open your eyes,

And maintain this sense of silence,

Of awareness,

As you move into your day.

Thank you very much.

Namaste and have a nice day.

Reviews

Thank you for a thoughtful talk and practice 🙏