The promise of enlightenment has become the latest in a string of experiential obsessions to hit the western world.

This workshop, that teacher, this crystal, that meditation, this holy spot, that mantra ... Always the promise is that if we DO SOMETHING then that which we seek will become available to us.

Yet where in Truth do you and I begin and end?

If consciousness is all there is, consciousness knows of no such thing as enlightenment. Consciousness is itself perfectly aware and has no need whatever of evolution.

The promise of enlightenment as it is so frequently touted, is rooted entirely in the idea of separation - that there is a ‘me' who is separate from consciousness, who is separate from the workshop, teacher, crystal, meditation (ad nauseum), that there is a ‘me' who can become enlightened.

Yet when we truthfully, rigorously and unrelentingly enquire into this ‘me' what do we find?

Ultimately, it seems, the discovery is made that all that can be described, all that can be experienced, all that is phenomenal is transient. Including the me that I have been imagining myself to be.

And if it is transient, can it really be said to be true?

Surely what is absolutely true is immutable, unchangeable, never begins, never ends?

"Enlightenment' then is not some final resting place, it is not even the beginning of a resting place. Enlightenment is not a noun, but a verb.

Enlightenment is the absolute dynamism of life as expressed through all things.

As such, there is no place and no time and no thing that is not already enlightening enlightened enlightenment.

The promise of enlightenment is a false promise - how can you not be that which you already are?

There is no process required to know yourself as awareness. Right now, simply stop, for just one moment, and ask yourself: "who am I?"

In the moment that you recognise the false idol of identity you will know true and complete liberation. What need is there of an ‘enlightenment process' then?

There is nowhere that the light of Truth does not touch.

Giving one's life back to Life can seem like a grand, sweeping, passionate and intoxicating moment, as the recognition that I am not in control can feel grand, sweeping, passionate and intoxicating.

Yet this moment is a moment only, one that appears to come with the exultation of Liberation.

More often than not though, it seems, this Liberation is not the final Liberation, but merely a preview of coming attractions.

To awaken to the Truth of who one is rarely, if ever, seems to be enough.

Following upon this, whether after days, weeks, months or years of blissful awareness of one's self as Awareness, comes a moment of profound disillusionment - what some might call a fall from Grace.

Disillusionment is not required, of course, yet it seems to come anyway.

Chopping wood and carrying water just doesn't seem the same to the mind after the revelation that you are mightier than the gods, because you are the space in which all of their activity takes place.

And so, it seems, there is work to be done.

As Jack Kornfield put it so succinctly in the title of his book - After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.

The idea that - post-‘enlightenment' - Life simply continues as it does - is far from appealing to the ego. The newly awakened ‘spiritual ego' has all sorts of ideas about how Life is supposed to be at this point - blissful, divinely inspired, clear skies, green lights, unconditionally loving relationships, easy money, perfect health.

Unfortunately for us, expectations, by their very nature, are impossible to be perfectly met.