3.3 What is it like to experience life on the path to the psychological stage of enlightenment?

Although each of us is born, lives and dies, the experiences of each life are unique. Similarly, although the mechanics of the path to the first enlightenment are common to all, each of us experiences the path in a different way. In our spiritually barren Western cultures, the path to the psychological enlightenment is challenging, often difficult and sometimes dangerous.

As you develop in understanding, according to your gifts and temperament, so you will seek to articulate the unfolding of reality in the terms of your worldview. You may choose to articulate your experience in the religious terms of mainstream Christianity, Judaism or Islam; or you may be inclined towards the spiritual models of the Jewish Kabbala, Islamic Sufism, Western Paganism or the higher teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism or Taoism. Equally, in our largely secular Western cultures, you may be an atheist or an agnostic.

Your belief structure determines how you understand and articulate your experience of reality. All belief structures act as a distorting mechanism on the clear understanding and experiencing of reality. This teaching of the clear setting face to face with reality offers knowledge based on experience. No belief structure is required simply practice the teachings.

Even the atheist and agnostic have belief structures, we all do. Learn to be guided not by beliefs, but by what you know and understand through direct experience. Your beliefs are an impediment on the path to understanding; what matters is that you directly experience reality.

As you experience reality directly, you will seek to articulate your understanding in the terms of a belief structure relevant to your needs. You can choose with equal validity to follow a religious or a secular path. All models of reality reflect reality according to the varying needs of the cultures, times and individuals which produce and utilise them.

Although all models of reality are valid in different ways and in different cultural environments, do not expect to find that the representatives of these models are trained to understand and deal with the issues raised in this book. Priests, ministers and rabbis are ordinary individuals trained in theological and religious matters. Their training does not, in general, provide them with a path towards understanding reality through experience.

As you experience the difficulties of the continuous emotional transformations necessarily involved, you may be tempted to turn to the medical profession for guidance and assistance during this period of uncertainty in your life. Be extremely cautious in approaching a profession which is trained to understand and treat the human body as separate parts. These people are unlikely to be trained in the skills of treating a person experiencing the transformations leading to wholeness.

Become aware of the alternative therapies available. Many of these involve inexpensive treatment of the whole person. As you become sensitive to your own needs, you will be drawn to an appropriate source of healing.

In the spiritually advanced cultures of the East, it is traditional to be taught this process of the gradual transformation of awareness directly by a living, recognised master. Our Western cultures have developed on the sound basis of the Judeo-Christian code of ethics. In the current spiritually barren cultural conditions, it is unlikely that you will be taught in the traditional face to face manner by a living teacher. In general, you will have to develop, through practice of the skills taught in this book, the ability to survive, flower and transform, in a culture which is inimical and hostile to the process of inner development.

Finally, do not anticipate understanding or help from your family or friends. It is possible that through their lack of understanding of the process you are experiencing they will react with incomprehension, hostility and fear. Through practice of the day-to-day adaptation and survival skills taught in chapter 8, you will, in time, find the living guidance, support and companionship you truly need and deserve.