What Matters/Enlightenment

Enlightenment

You may feel one with the universe.

Enlightenment refers to "full comprehension of a situation" and is a particular mental transformation that you may experience. While the specifics of each experience vary widely, they all share certain characteristics: oneness, clarity, intensity, surrender, and permanent change in some core aspect of your life. The experience can be interpreted spiritually, or secularly.

Researcher and author Andrew Newburg studies Enlightenment experiences and makes the following claims:

• “The ability to experience enlightenment, big or small, appears to be ‘wired’ into our brain and consciousness.”
• Subjects who have experienced enlightenment typically report, “a new sense of meaning and purpose in his life, feels differently about his job and relationships, and no longer fears failure or even death.”
• “When you get right down to it, Enlightenment is the implicit goal of every mystical tradition in the world: to fully surrender oneself to the unity of God, consciousness, truth, or whatever principle is core to the religious or spiritual philosophy,” and
• “Enlightenment is for anyone.”

Assignment

1. Read section three of the book How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain: The New Science of Transformation by: Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
2. Follow their guidance to seek your own enlightenment experience.

Suggestions for further reading:

• Newberg, Andrew B.; Waldman, Mark Robert (March 15, 2016). How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain: The New Science of Transformation. Avery. pp. 288. ISBN 978-1594633454.