You have an old image of yourself, perhaps one handed down.

You do not know what you are capable of, and you do not know all that you have already fulfilled. You judge by the world. You think you cannot be an enlightened being because you carry around a physical body, and you equate yourself with your physical body. You think you can't be enlightened because you bite your fingernails or take the biggest piece of cake and do not always feel loving every minute. You think you can't be enlightened because you are too gregarious or too reclusive. You have a million reasons to doubt your enlightenment. You have set up incorrect parameters.

In your mind, you have been working from the bottom up. You have come from the premise that there is much you have to change before you can be enlightened. You have a long to-do and to-be list, filled with imposed regulations. And, time and time again, you don't fulfill your list, and time and time again, you feel enlightenment getting further and further away from you, as if you are on a treadmill and getting nowhere.

I would like to suggest that you start from the premise that you are already where you want to be. You are already enlightened. It is a good premise to start from. It is certainly much better than thinking you will never get there. Start from the top down. Start from where you want to be. Already enlightened, all you have to do is to recognize it. This idea alone will melt blocks you have held on to. When you stand at the mountaintop, snow melts downwards. It doesn't melt upwards. Start from the top.

Enlightenment simply isn't what you have thought. You can be an enlightened being with foibles. Being enlightened doesn't mean you are always wonderful. It doesn't mean that you are always appreciated when you are wonderful. Inner being and outer may not be aligned. They are two avenues, and, like train tracks in the distance, they will meet. They will meet.

Enlightenment happens in awareness. There is no other place where it can happen. Light may certainly be revealed in action, but actions do not of necessity indicate the light that shines within.

So long as you are in a body, you are in a body. It is only in your mental conditioning that the physical body hampers your enlightenment. There is nothing, nothing you have to be in order to be enlightened. You do not need someone to show you how. You do not have to look a certain way. You do not have to eat a certain way. You do not have to be celibate or not be celibate. Surely, enlightenment is beyond your physical propensities. Do you really think, for instance, that what you eat is more powerful than the rays of the Light of God? Do you really think your physical body has to be in perfect health for you to be enlightened? Do you think you have to have great mental prowess to be enlightened? I.Q. is a world quotient. I am talking about enlightenment. Your E.Q. is high. It reaches Heaven.

I give you permission to be the human being you are. I have not told you to be someone else. I have not told you to imitate anyone. I have not told you to force anything or to pretend anything. I have told you to aspire to greatness because that is the truth of you. Greatness is not far away from you. It is right within you. Whatever you may look like, whatever the world may think of you, even whatever you think of yourself, you are already the goldenness you aspire to. In the moment of inception of Creation, I made you so.