What is "Enlightenment"? | What is a direct experience? | What is an Enlightenment Intensive? | What is so intense about it? | What is a retreat? | Can you really get enlightened in just three days? | Do I have to change or be perfect to be enlightened? | What do people go through on the way to enlightenment? | Why do it? | What are some of the benefits and side effects? Some general concerns.
What is Enlightenment? Enlightenment refers to a conscious, direct experience of the Truth (truth in the absolute sense, i.e. that which actually exists apart from how we sense, perceive, think, feel, describe, or learn about it). The objective of the Enlightenment Intensive is to directly experience the Truth of self, life, and another. When one of these fundamental Truths are experienced directly, it is referred to as an enlightenment experience. It always occurs in a timeless instant, always in the present moment, beyond any doubt, and always changes one's state of being into a more enlightened or awakened state of consciousness. See "What do people go through on the way to enlightenment?" below.
What is a direct experience?
Words can not describe a direct experience because it is beyond words, symbols or conceptualization. It is beyond all the indirect methods we commonly depend on for knowing; sensing, thinking, believing, deciding, reasoning, or feeling. And yet, when a direct experience happens, it is self evident beyond certainty and doubt. Again, enlightenment is a direct experience of the absolute Truth and the Truth is that which exists apart from our perception or conception of it. In the case of self enlightenment gained from using the question, "Who am I?" it means that you are in direct contact with the truth of your "I." The previous sentence seems to suggest that there are two of you: you and your "I." This is a result of the duality in our language and not the case in actuality. In the case of self enlightenment you are at one with your "I" in the sense of being your true "I" consciously. In the state of direct experience (enlightenment), there is no mental dichotomy, no subject-object duality but an at-one-ness with your self. People who have achieved a direct experience of self speak from their deepest or highest source. They no longer identify themselves as only being their body, emotions, thoughts, mind or the roles they may play in life. Such people speak from themselves without having to refer to their past thoughts or the thoughts of others. A person who has had a direct experience of self increasingly sees each moment in life as a new and unique experience and does not tend to be stuck in a limited way of seeing things.
What is an Enlightenment Intensive?
An Enlightenment Intensive is a three (or more) day fully residential retreat designed to maximize the probability that participants will have an enlightenment experience while contemplating one of the following questions: Who Am I? What Am I? What Is Life? What Is Another? What is Love? Again, the goal of participating in an Enlightenment Intensive is not just to answer these questions intellectually, but to experience them directly. The questions are used in a dyad in which two participants face each other sitting on chairs or cushions while they take turns contemplating their questions and communicating the results of their contemplation.
What is so intense about it?
Enlightenment Intensive Retreats are fully residential and a minimum of three days long (some have been as long as six weeks). They start on the evening before the three days begin with an introductory and preparatory lecture. In the sample daily schedule below, the Dyad is the forty minute period where the contemplation-communication takes place between the pairs of participants. Participants work with a different partner each time. Here is an example of a typical Enlightenment Intensive Retreat Daily Schedule
6:00-6:15 Arise and dress
6:15-7:00 Opening talk by the facilitator on the first day or a Dyad
7:00-7:30 Physical exercise & tea
7:30-8:15 Dyad
8:15-8:45 Breakfast (vitamins)
8:45-9:30 Dyad
9:30-10:15 Dyad
10:15-11:15 Walking contemplation
11:15-12:00 Dyad
12:00-12:45 Lunch
12:45-1:30 Dyad
1:30-2:15 Talk
2:15-2:45 Sitting Contemplation
2:45-3:30 Dyad
3:30-3:45 Snack
3:45-4:30 Working contemplation or dyad
4:30-5:30 Rest
5:30-6:15 Dyad
6:15-7:00 Dinner
7:00-7:45 Dyad
7:45-8:30 Walking contemplation
8:30-9:15 Dyad
9:15-9:30 Breathing exercises/snack
9:30-10:15 Dyad
10:15-10:30 Prepare for bed
10:30-6:00 Sleeping contemplation/optional sitting
Is that intense or what?
What is a retreat?
- To remove oneself from everyday life in order to rest, recuperate or contemplate.
- Enlightenment Intensives are done in the classical way as taught by Charles Berner and use the five minute bells to signal change-overs while Enlightenment Intensive Retreats use the communication cycle change-overs as developed by Lawrence Noyes (one bell each forty minute dyad).
- Enlightenment Intensive Retreats have been presented all over the western world in every climate and in all kinds of venues.
Yes. Over the last thirty years we have confirmed over and over again that it is the same experience that people have attained using other forms of meditation taking from two weeks to ten years. To say that a person can gain enlightenment in just three days, however, is not entirely accurate. All the work that a person has already done toward finding the truth may be rewarded in an instant during the three day Intensive. Many report having enlightenment experiences on the way home or in the days or weeks following the intensive.
Do I have to change or be perfect to be enlightened?
Some people confuse the word enlightenment with a concept of becoming perfect. Enlightenment does not change one into a "perfect being" whatever that means. There is already a perfection in you that can be experienced. Enlightenment means experiencing who you are as you are right now. There is no need to change or fix anything.
What do people go through on the way to enlightenment?
No matter what method or path you follow on the way to enlightenment, you will go through the following stages in one way or another in your own time.
Stage one is giving answers. You give your partner the answers you have learned from parents, teachers, priests and friends or answers you have figured out in the past. By presenting these answers to your partner they will be cleared from your mind.
Stage two is intellectual. In this stage you will think things out logically and reasonably. If this is true, then that must be true, and so on. Sometimes in this stage you may come upon the "correct" answer. But answers, correct or otherwise, are not what we are looking for. This stage is completed when you stop trying to answer a question and begin to set about to experience it directly.
Stage three is the stage of phenomena. In this stage you will have been using your brain to such a degree that it will begin to produce unfamiliar mental and physical phenomena. Visions or hallucinations may appear. The room may appear to distort. You may see auras around people and things. You may experience hot and cold flashes or waves of emotion running through your body. You may mistake these things for enlightenment. Someone in this stage may tell me "I am a bursting sun! " I would then ask him "Who is perceiving it?"
Stage four is the void. In this stage you will find your field of consciousness empty. No thoughts occur and no progress appears to be being made. To make further progress you must stop "looking" for yourself and, instead, seek to experience yourself directly.
Stage five is the one in which you will encounter the barriers of emotion, pain, and death. You may experience feelings of fear, anger, grief, sadness, apathy, and serenity. In this stage, the states of being you have identified yourself with will come up and be expressed. These feelings are part of your character structure and keep you from feeling yourself as you actually are. They are constructs which may have, at some time, protected you from feeling something you did not want to feel and established an emotional sense of self which you have identified as being you. The feeling of death, or fear of death, arises as you dis-identify with these mental-emotional ego states. In some cases, where the enlightenment is going very deep, you must literally be willing to die in order to find out who you really are. I would like to assure any of you who go through this that no one has actually died during an Enlightenment Intensive.
Stage six is the enlightenment experience itself. Two things occur simultaneously. First you will have a direct conscious experience of yourself and, second, you will experience a release of energy and other side effects. It occurs in a timeless instant. You will know it as a definite breakthrough. There will be no doubt in your mind. You may laugh, cry, scream or feel ecstasy. Some even have an orgasm. It is different for different people and for different depths of enlightenment.
Stage seven is the glow in which you are radiating yourself as truth. You will feel totally in contact with yourself and your presence will radiate from you like a glow. This will continue until you have fully presented yourself to others. The Zen people refer to this as "the Zen stink".
Stage eight is the pure steady state. Once the energy is discharged, you will be in a steady state of being, able to present your true self to others and be in contact with it directly. The steady state will continue into your life to the degree that you continue to present the true you to others. In the pure steady state of consciousness of yourself, as you truly are, your interests will turn to life and others.
Why do it? What are some of the benefits and side effects?
As a result of participating in an enlightenment intensive retreat, you may experience some or all of the following:
You will learn to focus your intent. A major component of the training is learning how to contemplate your question (Who am I?, for example). It's pretty simple. Every time you notice that your mind is wandering, you simply bring it back into focus on your question.
You may achieve a quiet, peaceful mind. Almost all participants experience the peacefulness of a mind devoid of thought as you move through the stages from the intellectual into pure beingness. It's not that you can't think, it's just that there are no thoughts unless you consciously choose to think.
You may experience the opening of your heart. As the contact increases between you and the other participants, strangers may fall in love with each other or experience great compassion for each other and/or all living things.
You may experience an increase in your self esteem as you let go of what you think others think about you. As you begin to experience who you really are, you may love yourself more than you ever have.
You may experience a tremendous surge of life energy. While it appears that the process is a dry, intellectual pursuit, this is only true of the earliest stages. Participants often experience powerful emotions as they move through the barriers of emotion, pain and fear of death. They also may experience orgasmic sexuality, ecstasy or bliss. Uncontrollable laughter is not uncommon.
You may work through your own fear of emotion, pain and death. The key to breaking through all the barriers one may encounter on the way to the enlightenment experience is choosing to accept what is or be willing to experience anything that comes up for you and express it to another.
You may discover your own immortality. In the deeper stages of self enlightenment participants often report that what they are is without prior source and has always existed and will always exist.
General Concerns
Enlightenment Intensives and Retreats and their facilitators or masters are not an exclusive part of any organization, religious or otherwise. There is nothing to join and no one to follow. There are, however teachers, schools and groups who have added the Enlightenment Intensive dyad technique in whole or part to their practices simply because it works. Enlightenment Intensives work in any language and in any culture for truth seekers of all religious and non-religious backgrounds. END=NAM MO SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=GOLDEN LOTUS MONASTERY=AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.21/10/2013.THICH CHAN TANH.THE MIND OF ENLIGHTMENT.
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