Enlightenment is absolute clarity. Simplicity. Emptiness. It is looking at what has always been in front of you with fresh, accepting eyes. It is when the torrent in the head stops and there is space for silence — when one can finally take things as they are and see the world for what it is.

If enlightenment involves insight into the world at all, then it cannot be something esoteric, obscure, or hidden, because the world is not esoteric but present and vivid and real and whole — full of hidden depths and plain flowers one can simply reach out and smell, and these are the same, equally meaningful, equally essential to be intimate with. Enlightenment cannot be gnosis.

Enlightenment is simple, unimpressive, expected. You were in pain and one day it stopped. You were in your own head and one day you left it. Everything else people want enlightenment to be is an experience, an encounter, an event; but enlightenment is how you approach events, not an event to be encountered.

Awakening is the beginning — the first flash that sets one on the path. Enlightenment is the direction one walks. Not the end, since there are no ends, but the Wending itself.

Enlightenment is a process, not a destination.