Enlightenment is not a career option.

Enlightenment is not a career option. It’s not a regular path of employment with promotion opportunities, a fast track for smart people and a dead end job for those who failed their boss somehow. Enlightenment (and we’ll get to discussing what I mean by this in a moment) is very tempting to see as a job in distinction to all the other things you could be doing, an alternative form of employment- like you could be a great rock star but that would involve selling your soul to some extent (Faust lurks everywhere in the art world) so you decide to go full on for ‘becoming enlightened’. You’re not the first nor will you be the last. Think of the old hippies, giving it all up in 1965 to get their glimmer of special awareness and then waking up in the 1980s and getting a job in computers. Which is alright. I am not especially in favour of the person who got a job with IBM in 1965 and was running a division in 1985, maybe bossing the poor old hippy about. I am not trying to make that point, that seeking some kind of enlightenment is a waste of time. No way. The instinct is 100% correct. The problem, as in many things, is in the approach.

By enlightenment I mean the belief that it is possible to a have a better and clearer view of what life is about than the standard, formally accepted view that is broadcast and implied by TV journalism, advertising and a job interview. Pretty low bar eh? OK, raise it a little. By enlightenment I mean the belief that there are people out there who are more enlightened than you are, and from whom you can learn to be more enlightened. Phew- circular- but getting there. By enlightened I mean getting to a stage where you have direct, incontrovertible knowledge obtained through intuition that many of the ‘truths’ of religion and humanity over the ages (some of the obvious ones, some less obvious) are in fact truein a very useful and necessary sense and provide a key to understanding a great many mysteries about life. So- out on a limb here, I’ll keep going. By enlightened I mean being able to spend more of your time in the above state rather than the bemused and a bit confused state which, let’s face it, is quite a lot of time.

And what I don’t meanby enlightened. I don’t mean you can teach anyone to be more enlightened. I don’t mean you have inner peace all the time and walk around like a kung fu master. I don’t mean you are super successful at your worldly job.

Jobs again. Because it is something worth noting- your job, where you live and who you spend the most time with- these are the biggest influences on your life. So intuiting this we spend a great deal of time thinking about all three- hence an obsession with ‘career’, dating websites and property programs on TV. But though knowing this may be a small step towards enlightenment, thinking about enlightenment as a kind of career like being a car salesman or a children’s author is plain muddled.

Viktor Frankl had this brilliant  but slightly obscure idea that happiness, success and enlightenment were transcendental concepts. That means you couldn’t aim at them. You had to do other stuff which loosely connected in some mysterious way. Rather like trying to be helpful and useful at a kid’s party is a very good way to become popular among other mum’s, but if you aimed at popularity you’d fail. The idea of popularity contains no cluesas to what you should do. You’d be like Bart Simpson trying to imagine the Itchy and Scratchy movie in his imagination. Nothing there. You have to do other stuff which is not indicated when you directly aim for popularity or happiness. These terms don’t provide signposts. You need to look elsewhere. And that place is in giving, generosity, gratitude and service. This is why all four of these things are a major part of any religion. Of course they are then turned into something amazing and special – they aren’t- they are simply the tools you need to proceed to the next step. Which is greater awareness. Greater awareness means you are sufficiently outside your own headspace that you can see stuff coming. it’s like being on the flyover and seeing a car crash about to happen rather than in the VW that just got clobbered by a 14 wheeler truck. You have to get out of yourself a bit- and the 3Gs are the tried and tested way.

So when you seek a career seek one that allows you to pursue these things more easily rather than less easily. Also make sure there is all the other stuff- job satisfaction, ambition looked after, remuneration etc. Remember you’re a human being not an Extra-terrestrial. Humans have jobs, or careers or occupations, otherwise that get all lazy and self-centred. So get one. Get one that suits you. How do you know what will- not by asking your guru- by becoming more aware. Back to the 3Gs, plus observing what you like doing, what you are good at, what you can do that others can’t- all the usual careers advice. And don’t be in a hurry. If your goal is really enlightenment then you can afford to take your worldly career pretty easy- I don’t mean slacking, au contraire because slacking reduces awareness, I mean keeping your eye on the ball and yet being aware when you don’t need to bust a gut. (Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon- ‘when there is nothing you can do, do nothing.’ You get the picture.)

Young, and not so young people, get hung up on the ‘right career’. There could be many out there you haven’t even heard of. Go and out and find them, get out of your head a little by going someplace new (a reason why travel or pilgrimage are a part of many religions); be grateful and generous and see whether that works better for you than being ungrateful and tightfisted…And also realise that those who did not even think about enlightenment when they started out doing a regular job may well have achieved it along the way, more conventionally than you perhaps, but there are as many paths out there as there are grains of sand on the beach...