When I returned from Panache Desai’s immersion, “Dynamic Enlightenment,” a few weeks ago, a friend asked me if I was now “enlightened.” I didn’t know how to answer. My hesitation stemmed from the fact that I wasn’t sure “yes” was entirely accurate or conveyed the nuances involved. We humans have a tendency to mistake one step for the entire journey. Better to see process rather than destination. On the other hand, I knew I was different after that intensive week of sacred activations and ceremonies. I was in a more expansive, divinely connected place. In truth, we are already enlightened at the soul level; we just have to become aware of that. So maybe the best way to describe my experience would be that I opened to a greater awareness of my soul’s constant state of being and light. And that awareness runs through my life in a continuous stream.

In the garden this morning, everything I looked at radiated light, everywhere. That is how it is most of the time for me now. Perhaps enlightenment is not the head-trip that many people think of it as, but an alignment with the ever-present light in your soul, which then is reflected in all that you see. When I look out the window in the morning, I see the light of the sun in everything: tree leaves, dew on the grass, flower petals, car windows, broken glass on the sidewalk. When I’m walking at dusk, I notice streetlamps, house lights, the moon rising, city lights in the distance. Light in all its various forms leaps out at me now. Colors are more vivid, reflections are multidimensional. I am seeing with the eyes of my soul, which is nothing but light. Actually, the whole planet, the entire cosmos, is nothing but light. It becomes denser when it takes on physical form, but our souls, which vibrate at the same frequency as light, perceive it as the basis of everything.

So en-light-enment helps us see the true nature of the universe, of ourselves. We are light beings inhabiting heavier physical bodies, but the light at our core, our soul’s essence, never leaves us. When our awareness opens again to what it once was when we were first born, we see light everywhere, including within ourselves. The world is revealed as a magical kaleidoscope of colors and light, and we live within it and beyond it simultaneously. Other people begin to see that in us too. We become more transparent, and our inner luminosity shines through.

Today, if you asked me about enlightenment, that is what I would say. It is not one thing, either/or, yes or no. It is everything. And it is within every one of us.

“I remembered today the codes of light I carry,
Unfolding now in the splendor of the sunrise….
Each ray of sunlight awakening the wisdom at the core.
I remembered today the love from which I came.”
—Judith Bluestone Polich