Enlightenment is not lightning.
Not the heavens splitting open
like a theater curtain for the chosen.
Not levitation.
Not becoming fragrant with cosmic perfection
while sitting cross-legged above your unpaid bills.
It is smaller at first.
More humiliating.
Like discovering the monster under your bed
was your own coat breathing in the dark.
Awakening begins when the mind,
that frantic locksmith of suffering,
drops its ring of keys.
For one impossible second
nothing needs opened.
The river keeps moving without your permission.
The dog still barks at ghosts.
The neighbor still starts his truck at 5 a.m.
Politics still chew each other bloody on television.
Your grief still hangs in the closet
like an old winter coat smelling faintly of smoke.
But suddenly
there is space around everything.
You stop standing inside every thought
like a soldier defending a burning city.
You notice the self
is mostly narration.
A weather report mistaken for the sky.
And the strangest thing happens:
the world does not disappear.
It becomes unbearably intimate.
The coffee steam twisting upward
is no longer ordinary.
The crow on the powerline
looks ancient enough to forgive you.
Even loneliness loses some of its teeth.
You begin to understand
why saints wept at sunlight touching a table.
True awakening is not becoming special.
It is the end
of needing to be.
The great cosmic joke
is that what you sought
was the one who was seeking.
The wave spent its whole life
terrified of dying,
until one quiet morning
it noticed
it was the ocean. đ
