How do you deal with enlightenment?

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The first time you become enlightened, you may not survive the experience.

Non-duality is not a lighthearted thing to do all the time. Your mind has lots of places for thought to go, and enlightenment removes all the patterns keeping them from going there. You’re probably not going to, say, walk out onto the interstate, as the physical brain will (usually) intervene to keep you from directly executing a death wish.

But failing to feed yourself for weeks? That can happen. Through lack of care, you can cut your life short by decades. The ego keeps you engaged and present in the world. Enlightenment will make you want to drop out at first.

It takes many lifetimes to get the trick of having a reasonably meaningful life while you’re enlightened. When a possible answer to “what should I do today” might be “dressing up as a donkey and braying in the streets uncontrollably,” it’s hard for others to relate to you as a human being and keep wanting to shelter and protect you.

Even if you don’t go braying-in-the-streets crazy, you simply find normal things hard to do. A proper career requires a degree of identification in order to pursue properly. But non-duality is fiercely anti-identification. When I was younger, among my first jobs was in customer service. I simply could not see myself as “someone who provides customer service.” I was also in the military. I could never identify as a military guy, no way ever.

I finally found a career that was happy with me just doing things for them, software development. But it took me 10 years.

Keep in mind that this isn’t normal I-don’t-know-what-I-want-to-do-with-my-life laziness. Most people, unless they find a willing enabler, snap out of that after awhile. No, I could enable myself. I was always able to find temporary stop-gap employment whenever I needed it. I was also prepared to go homeless if it really came down to it.

Perhaps the only thing that actually allows enlightened people to exist in the world is God. I am not kidding, the number of times I’ve thrown my lot to fate in my life is staggering. It’s kind of an enlightened rite of passage. If you haven’t had the experience at least once in your life of not knowing where your next meal or rent check was coming from and not really caring, I’d say you’re not enlightened.

Eventually, you find a place in the world. You have to. It’s not like existence just stops, much as the Buddhists would have you believe. That nirvana nonsense is just propaganda that they feed you to hook you, just like the 40 virgins and Heaven. You learn to accept half-truths and false identifications and white lies. You learn to live with the fact that the world just is, and you don’t really have a role in it. You let God put you somewhere and you just do what’s required as it becomes required. You surrender even your own enlightenment.