#22 - Spiritual awakening (part 4)
The 7 steps towards enlightenment
In this last part of my series about spiritual awakening, I will summarize the 7 steps towards enlightenment as Chrisitan Meyer describes them in his book “Erleuchtung kann jeder”. While my first three posts provided the background and a number of fundamental concepts, this one gives you clear steps and practical guidelines on how to become more lively and authentic so that enlightenment can happen.
As discussed previously, enlightenment cannot be forced—it is a gift that happens when we let go totally und enter a state of doing nothing. Everyone starts their journey from a different place, but we all have to practice in order to lay the foundation.
Step 1: Understanding our deepest desires and intentions
In order to fully awakening spiritually, we have to know who we are. Only if we know that, can we understand what is really important to us, the individual meaning of our life and our priorities.
Unfulfilled wishes (conscious or unconscious) hinder our development—they keep us stuck in a certain place in life and create unpleasant feelings of which we often times don’t even know where they come from. In order to understand those desires and ultimately heal them, Christian Meyer suggests to take an honest look at our lives—almost like an inventory—and take the time to note down the answers to the following questions in a table:
What am I spending my time on, what are my projects?
What is the content and the goal of each project?
What do I want to achieve with the project? What are the (hidden) desires?
What would happen to me and others if I stopped the project immediately?
Are some of these projects in conflict with each other?
Which feeling does each answer trigger in me?
I have tried this and it made me realize which “projects” are really important, which ones are nothing more than old habits that can be stopped in order to make time for new ones. Or where there are conflicts between certain goals and projects.
Now that we have looked at our desires and intentions this way, it is time to ask ourselves honestly: How important is enlightenment to me? It has to become our biggest desire in life for it to happen.
That doesn’t mean we have to abandon our familes or our projects. To the contrary, our relationships will become more free and our projects more fulfilling if we constantly ask ourselves “am I acting in harmony with my goal of receiving enlightenment?”.
Step 2: Feeling without doing anything
There is a fundamental difference between dissociating ourselves from our constant stream of thoughts and feelings on one hand and completely feeling them without doing anything on the other hand. Only the second approach can lead to success.
We need to become still, turn inwards and truly feel what is going on. And we need to give room to what we find, even if it is scary and unpleasant. When we feel totally without doing anything, the feelings become weaker and ultimately disappear after a few minutes. We have now transformed ourselves and stillness takes over.
Christian describes a practical awareness exercise that allows us to enter a state of openness and to begin to feel what wants to be revealed:
Sit down in meditation and ask yourself: “What am I aware of in this moment?”
Be aware of your breath, how it comes and goes. Feel and sink deeper.
Stop and ask yourself: “What am I aware of now?”
Continue with the awareness exercise and continue sinking deeper.
Don’t force or expect anything.
Christian mentions in his book that during his retreats people have found spontaneous enlightenment while doing this excercise.
Step 3: Becoming an observer, a witness
When we take a step back and look at our life from the outside, we realize that we can detach from our constant drama while still being around—we are not the drama with which we identify so strongly. Here is a slightly amended version of the awareness exercise:
Sit down in meditation and witness everything that comes up: thoughts, feelings, images and ideas.
Look at them as an outside witness without identifying with them, and let them pass.
Don’t interfere or suppress anything, don’t judge—just let it happen.
When we learn to become observers, witnesses of our own lives, we understand that we are pure, empty, borderless and timeless consciousness. Enlightenment can happen in that moment.
Step 4: Understanding our behaviours
We seek enlightenment because we understand that there must be more to life beneath the surface—a deeper meaning underneath our often superficial thoughts and emotions. However, before we can transcend, we need to realize and understand what is happening on the surface.
According to Christian Meyer, each of us has nine fundamental qualities: 1) purity, 2) goodness, 3) love, 4) happiness, 5) peace, 6) emptiness, 7) immersion, 8) cosmic power and 9) consciousness. He believes that one of these qualities is particularly strong in each of us—our essence that we were born to give the world.
When we are fearful (of death) and focused on our ego desires, these qualities can turn into passions: 1) anger, 2) pride, 3) deception, 4) envy, 5) greed, 6) doubt, 7) insatiability, 8) lust and 9) laziness. We turn our essence into passions.
By becoming more aware through meditation and the practices explained above, we realize our internal blockages and can free ourselves from harmful behaviors.
Step 5: Liberating the body and the breathing
Body and mind are deeply connected. Our feelings activate the body—our breathing, heart rate, muscle tone etc. Typically, this process works as follows:
A negative feeling surfaces as an interpretation of a certain situation
We react to the feeling (“I don’t want this” or “I will suppress it”)
An impuls to fight the perceived danger emerges
An action, a reaction, follows
We process our reaction (“I am happy, because I did that well” or “I am angry with myself, because I screwed up”)
The steps of this chain are often times unconscious, and it is important to learn to distinguish between feelings and impulses: feelings are always right (“I am angry!”) and should not be suppressed. However, we cannot always follow our impulses and react to the feelings the way we want (“I am angry, therefore I slap you!”). In order to progess spiritually, we need to become clear about the difference between the mode of doing (follow the impulse) and the mode of letting happen (let the feeling happen and just observe).
Christian considers yoga to be valuable in order to release physical tensions and to keep the body healthy and flexible. Therefore, it plays an important role in his retreats. However, he doesn’t see yoga as a vehicle for enlightenment, as breathwork and the Asanas are controlled movements.
In order to release inner tension and to let go, he recommends a certain type of breathwork, which he calls “melting-breath”:
Lay down and close your eyes. Feel your body from within, be aware of tensions or other blockages.
Breathe in through the nose and visualize how your breath flows into those areas and how it melts those ailments.
Breathe out through the mouth with a sound and imagine that the tensions exit your body
Move through the entire body, and when you are done, let the breath flow though your entire body and melt all tensions. Breathe out and let everything flow out. Afterwards, stay laying down and just feel.
In addition, he recommends an exercise that he has developed himself, which is helpful to learn how to let go. It is called the “sound exercise”:
Stand up and ask yourself “what do I feel right now?”.
Come up with a sound that corresponds to the feeling. Make the sound in order to get deeper into the feeling. Notice how the sound changes.
Now let the feeling speak a sentence (“I am so happy!” or “It hurts so much!”). Repeat the sentence five times.
Notice how the feeling fades away. Notice the next feeling that comes up. When there are no feeling left, observe the silence. It has a sound too.
Let the sound of silence phase out after 10-20 minutes, lay down and sink into your existence.
Step 6: Ending the past and the future
In order to find enlightenment, we need to “exit” time. This happens, as soon as we stop thinking about the future and stop picturing it. At the same time, our past will disappear as well.
This becomes easier when we bring our open issues to a close. Those issues want to be resolved and the more relevant they are to our self-perception, the more they need to be addressed. However, there are so many of them that we cannot address each of them—it would take too long. Therefore, Christian recommends the following exercise:
Close your eyes and envision an empty stage on which you see your entire life unfolding. It starts at birth, and the older you get, the more details you will remember.
There are beautiful memories as well as bad ones, some of which may still bother you today and cause the body to be in a state of alarm.
Go through your entire life until you reach the present day. Look at your life and say to yourself: “Everything was okay the way it was, exactly how it was. And everything is okay the way it is, exactly how it is.”
How does that feel? There maybe aspects of your life, where this statement still doesn’t feel right. Take a closer look at these and write down a list of what should have been different in your view. Take a look at the list and ask yourself: “How do I know that things would be better today had things been different?” If you still believe that it should have been different, ask yourself “can I imagine a scenario that would have even been worse?”
This is how we can bring an open, hurting issue to a close:
Go back in time when the particular event happened and envision the person that played the key role in the event.
Now write a letter to the person, addressing them at the age when the event happened. Write how you love that person and how the event stopped the love from flowing.
When the letter is finished, envision sitting opposite the person and tell him or her what the letter says. Ask yourself, whether the person truly heard what you were saying. If not, chose different words until it is very clear.
Then take the place of the other person and answer to what you have said.
Switch back to your place and continue the dialogue until you feel that all issues have been resolved and both of you are at peace.
In my view, this is such important work, and it can lead to a deep peace, relaxation and openness for receiving a better life.
Step 7: Facing the fear of death
The last of the seven steps is about facing the fear of death, which is the one fear that is behind all others. That means we can heal all those other fears by addressing the fear of death. Christian Meyer describes four helpful exercises:
Imagine you have been bitten by a snake, and you only have 30 minutes left to live. Feel all feelings that come up in this half hour: anger, not accepting, regret, sadness, pain, fear, etc. Until you finally accept it and find peace with your death.
Imagine you are dead, and you write your own eulogy which a friend then reads out loud. You only get up again when you know what you want to live for from that moment on.
Imagine what will be the inscription on your gravestone. What do you want it to be?
Imagine death personified sitting opposite you. Start talking to him and telling him what is on your mind. Then take the position of death. This conversation can go back and forth several times, and after a while your attitude towards death may change. Then look at yourself as a third person and discuss with yourself how your attitude towards death has changed.
The Christian mystics talk about the mystic or inner death—dying in the moment, sinking deeply into it without worrying about the past or the future. When we face death without any fear, we start sinking and we discover infinity. We die in the moment and the mind becomes completely still. The acceptance of death gives us the gift of being truly alive!
Awakening
We have reached the end of my series on enlightenment. As I wrote in the first part, Christian Meyers book “Erleuchtung kann jeder” is an amazing guide on the way to full spiritual awakening—explaining fundamental concepts and providing concrete exercises for everyone. I find it to be incredible, and I am certainly going to use it as a guide going forward. I hope my summary was helpful to all of you!
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