We are interchangeable. You would rather I be much more than you. I am you, yet I am God fulfilled. You are still in the making. You are in the making of your own awareness. All that is lacking is awareness. I do not mean thoughts. I mean awareness.
Thoughts are a dime a dozen. Thoughts grow on trees. Thoughts come fast, one after the other, hand over fist. Your awareness seems to come in bits and snatches. Your awareness withdraws, comes again, withdraws. You will become aware for keeps.
Become aware because I ask you to. Become aware so that you can lift the world higher. Desire awareness as a gift you wish to give to the world.
Anything you wish for yourself specifically lags behind awareness. Enlightenment desired for yourself is not enlightenment. And when you become aware, you are aware. Do not say you are awakened. No one has to know you are but you. Awareness is not for you alone, and yet you don’t announce that you are awakened or enlightened or any of the words you use. This you keep to yourself.
When you have the awareness of enlightenment, there is no need to announce it. There is no need to think about it.
Of course, there is the sense in which everyone is enlightened, only they don’t know it. Not knowing that you are enlightened is like sleeping through a movie. You were in the theater. The movie played, and yet you were not awake. You do not have to declare that you slept anymore than you need declare that you were awake during the whole movie.
Enlightenment is not an ending, as you do seem to think of it. It is not a conclusion. It is not an assessment for you to make. Enlightenment is not a door prize. It is not an attainment. It is not something for you to take credit for. It is not a medal. It is simply where you are.
As you drive along in your car, you do not say: “I am at the corner of State and Main. I am at the corner of Jefferson and 2nd Street. I am at the corner of this street or that.” In the world, you are always somewhere.
Just as there is no need for you to proclaim your perceived lacks, there is no need to proclaim your perceived advances.
Once you were in second grade, and now you are in third, or fourth, or tenth, or graduated. It is a gradation. It is gradual. Or the sought-after breakthrough may seemingly come all at once.
There is no arrival. There is always arriving. You are always getting closer. And yet you do not pass Go. Or, when you pass Go, it is natural and nothing need be said about it.
Even if you are the most enlightened person in the whole world, there is no reason to announce that you are. There is no need to say: “Look at me. I won!”
Pride does not enter into the field of enlightenment. The joy is enlightenment, not the saying you have reached it.
When you were a child and learned long division, it was important to you to tell someone what you have learned, yet long division is not in the telling.
There is no need to advertise your state of consciousness. There is need to be it. There is need for you to emanate it. That’s all you have to do. And nothing can stop your emanation. Whatever your state of consciousness, you are emanating it.