Are you your thoughts, feelings, actions? No. You are that which experiences those objects. That which experiences the varieties of the body-mind is the essential subject, and that subject is beyond those things. The subject is awareness. Realizing that you are the subject, awareness, is enlightenment.
Enlightenment may seem personal as it frees the body-mind from identification with the body-mind. But, enlightenment is not ultimately personal, as awareness is impersonal. We all take our existence via awareness without ever realizing it. Waking up, or realization, adds nothing to awareness, but it frees us from the body-mind. Enlightenment is simply the knowledge that we are awareness, and not the body-mind we mistakenly identified with. Enlightenment is the knowledge that frees us from attachment to the body-mind.
The body-mind remains, but it no longer takes itself to be real. It is only an appearance in awareness. That freedom from attachment brings a lightness to our being, a loss of fear, and a loss of suffering. It becomes clear that the body suffers and dies, but awareness does not. It simply changes form.
Awareness is simple. It is obvious. It is pervasive. It is all there is. But this doesn't mean that the realization is easy, or that anyone can have it at will. There has to be a burning desire for freedom, and there has to be a search for knowledge rather than experience. Experience may follow, and the enlightened may change, but it is knowledge that is the vehicle.
For the knowledge to take place, there needs to be a means, and the means is Vedanta. Thousands of years of teaching Vedanta has revealed that certain qualifications in a person are necessary to absorb the teaching. James Swartz in his teaching provides these qualifications.
1. You need a burning desire for freedom.
2. You need to be open to being taught.
3. You need to have come to the conclusion that life is a zero sum game.
4. You need to see that joy is not in the object.
5. You need to realize that you need knowledge of who you are, not more experience.
6. You need to be willing to practice discrimination.
Once you have come to the end of your rope, and your ego has been softened up enough to have a little humility, you may find yourself in agreement with these qualifications. You will realize that it is not another experience you need to set you free. It is understanding that you need. Understanding that comes from knowledge. And that knowledge comes from being taught. Enlightenment is not an experience. It is understanding produced by knowledge. And the knowledge is that you are awareness, nothing more, nothing less.
When you are ready to hear this, you will know that it is true. And when you know that this is true, the teacher will appear. Before this point, you learned a lot, but you weren't ready for the true teacher. But when you have these qualifications, the right teacher will be obvious.
