A growing number of people is searching for deeper meaning in life—beyond material and superfacial objects and relationships. We want answers to fundamental questions like “who am I really?”, “what happens to me when I die?” or “how can I find my full potential?”.
My personal search started at the age of 15 when I first read Herman Hesse’s Siddharta, which left a deep impression on me. Over the past years, I dove into the teachings of Jesus as well as eastern mystics like Osho, practiced breathwork, meditation, zen and yoga. All with the one big goal: to understand the true nature of life and death.
A while ago, I stumbled across an amazing book that has proven to be of great help and a source of deep wisdom. It was written in German language by well-known coach Christian Meyer and it is titled “Erleuchtung kann jeder”, which means “Enlightenment is possible for everyone”.
Amazingly, the book offers a concrete guide on how to achieve enlightenment, and it presents plenty of exercises and practical guidance for seekers. As it is currently not available in English and I find its conclusions to be extremely profound, I decided to write a four-part series of articles providing an english summary of the most important aspects as well as my personal interpretations.
Who is Christian Meyer
Born in 1952, Christian Meyer is a spiritual teacher and psychologist who was shaped by the '68 movement and driven by one question: What are the limits of human development? What is human potential?
He initially studied social and economic sciences as well as psychology. Along the way, he explored various psychological paths to growth, including psychology, bodywork, trance work, and especially “Gestalt therapy”. This was followed by several years of teaching at various universities and offering therapeutic support to individuals.
His search came to an end in 1998 when he met his spiritual teacher Eli Jaxon-Bear and he recognized his true nature. Since then, Christian has been working as a spiritual teacher in many cities across Germany and abroad. His most important goal in life became to not just to talk about enlightenment, but to support people in actually realizing it.
What is enlightenment?
This is how Christian describes his own moment of enlightenment: After a beautiful ten-day retreat at Lago Maggiore had come to an end, he sat down on his veranda in order to relax. As the state of relaxation became deeper, his breath started to slow down and he was overcome by a feeling of sinking deeper and deeper into a state of total peace. Until—suddenly—the fall stopped and he started floating calmly. There was nothing left but infinite emptiness as his mind had stopped working, and he felt peace, happines, bliss and endless love!
Christian describes enlightenment as a sudden experience, a change that completely transformed his whole being. His mind became completely still and the illusion of the ego disappeared.
I find his description to be extremely fascinating, as I had experiences like this during meditation or other peaceful moments. However, in my case the feeling always ended after a while and my ego took over again.
Why would we want to be enlightened?
According to Christian Meyer, there are three main reasons why people seek enlightenment:
The desire to end our suffering: We suffer from our limitations as human beings, our weaknesses and fears—in particular our fear of death. The latter one is so deeply rooted that we avoid relaxation, keep busy all the time and thus never achieve a state of deep meditation so that we don’t have to face it. In order to overcome this blockade, we need to embrace death as a gift and must even be willing to die at any given moment. We will only truly begin to live once we learn this.
The desire to become whole and to be happy: We all have a deep desire to live a happy life, to feel bliss and to become whole. While we feel in rare moments that we carry a devine potential in us, we typically ignore or even suppress it. We try to find happiness in the objects of the external world instead—through money, status, power etc.—without understanding this cannot work.
The desire for truth: The questions “who am I?”, “why am I here?” and “what happens after I die?” are fundamental and form the basis of all religions.
These desires drive us to explore life, our true nature and our spiritual potential—and some of us will find the answers in the gift of enlightenment.
The preparation
Enlightment is a gift that we may or may not receive—it is nothing we can force!
However, it can only happen after having gone through a process of spiritual transformation. The first step is the decision to make awakening and becoming enlightened the most important goal in life—everything else is less important. In addition, we need to believe that enlightenment is possible.
Once we have made this decision, we need to work on our personal spiritual transformation to become more loving, peaceful and willing to let go of our egos. This process is different for everybody as we all start from a different place. In my previous article "#4 - We are all works in progress", I describe certain practices that have helped me on my way. Most importantly, we need to accept what is and let go of our egos. Sounds hard? I think it really is!
It is my personal conviction that we are blessed to live in a world in which we have access to many different teachings and techniques. We should therefore not limit ourselves and rather experiment and find out which methods work best for us individually.
Life after enlightenment
After full awakening has occured, life is completey different according to Christian Meyer. However, it is important to note that the process doesn’t stop. Enlightened humans still face problems and can still feel negative emotions—they even feel them more intensely. The difference is that those moments pass quickly, just like a thunderstorm, and stillness returns.
Because the ego has disappeared post enlightenment, we exist in a state of complete presence, which means pure experience and eternity beyond time. Together with timelessness, we experience an existence without bounderies. The enlightened existence is characterized by four deep inner experiences:
Emptiness: This form of emptiness is alive and vibrant as everything new is being created out of it
Peace: The experience of endless peace which is deeper than anything ever felt before
Love: A kind of love that has no object
Bliss: A deeply felt happiness without any cause—just overflowing bliss
Christian describes the first days post enligthenment as fully characterized by this new way of living and these deep experiences. After a while though, our worldly reality starts capturing our lives again and we have two options to react to it:
Our ego slowly returns as our fears and wordly desires grow stronger again
The awakening gets even deeper and becomes integrated in all aspects of our lives
In the next episode, I will dive into the “three fundamental principles” that help us on our path to awakening.
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