I had a humbling realization a few minutes ago. It wasn’t an entirely new realization; I’ve had it before, but each time it occurs it seems brand new, as if it never had occurred to me before.

The realization I’m speaking of is this: All I’ve ever done from my own intellect has merely gotten in my own way.

This is something that must be clarified. It would be easy to contest this idea, but in the moment of Truth, it becomes quite evident that all my past intellectualizing was truly nothing more than hallucinating. In fact, I think the two words are synonyms. Intellectualizing = hallucinating.

In the state of true Awareness, what the Course calls the “real world”, and which could also be called “enlightenment”, it is clearly seen that there was no “I” or “me” to begin with. There is only an experience of an “I”, but that experience is simply the hallucinations. Therefore, anything that the “I” does to try to enlighten itself meets with failure. It is simply spinning its wheels.

The moment of enlightenment comes when the “I” simply gives up and says, “I don’t know.” Instantly, the Holy Spirit can then shine through the mind and shine away all the illusions.

I’ve had this experience many times, but the ego still attracts the mind. I think that enlightenment can occur in any moment that we choose against choosing, or decide against deciding. In that moment, the “I” that we identify with sees its own illusory nature, gives up, and the experience of enlightenment is had by the impersonal awareness.

Yet, this doesn’t mean that the person is now enlightened. I would never say that I am enlightened, because number one, that would be impossible – persons do not become enlightened… they just disappear in awareness. Secondly, until ALL of the unconscious attraction to the ego’s guilt has disappeared through the process of forgiveness, “personhood” still returns again and again.

So while “I” continue learning and enjoying books like A Course in Miracles and talking about it, I now have yet one more experience of realizing that none of it matters. It SEEMS like it’s my intellectual understanding of the Course’s nondualistic metaphysics that is what’s waking me up, but deep inside, I know that’s another illusion.  The only difference is that this illusion was a helpful one.  It was an illusion that I gave myself in order to make the awakening process less fearful.