To me, enlightenment sounds like a bad tragic thing; it sounds like the end of fun and joy and life, so why do so many people seem to think that spiritual enlightenment is a good thing?

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There’s a pretty useful concept I’ve been working with lately, enlightenment doesn’t actually change anything, you still think the same way before and after.

To convey this I need to build up the concept of duality. We do things we don’t think we should be doing all the time. A classic, if a bit crass, way of putting it is that of a preacher thinking of God while he’s making love to his wife, and thinking of making love to his wife while he’s praying / preaching!

A duality is when we bifurcate our perceptions and our desires. Enlightenment isn’t in changing our perceptions or our desires, but rather when you get rid of the bifurcation. When you can only make love to your wife, or only pray to God. Not kill the energy of one by jumping to the other.

Dualities manifest everywhere. The usual definition of duality is the separation of the seer from the seen. This provides for a pathway to enlightenment, the slow destruction of that separation. You are the thing that you are seeing. There’s no difference between you and these words you’re reading right now. Non-dual.

To become non-dual, you don’t destroy joy and life, you just remove the separation you have between yourself and joy and life, so that you are joy and life, all the time, endlessly, constantly.