In The Zone Of Enlightenment

“Being in the zone”. People speak of this in relation to such things as playing sports and performing music. It is a state of congruence where inner and outer make a perfect match, where there is no friction between thinking and doing, and where everything seems to flow joyfully, effortlessly, and spontaneously.

All of that sounds awfully good. Maybe good enough to be enlightenment. But is enlightenment the same as being in the zone? Not exactly.

Being in the zone is regarded as an exceptional case outside of normal, daily life. But in the enlightened experience, enlightenment is normal, daily life. It is a constant that is invulnerable to changing circumstances. If someone’s enlightenment were superseded by daily life, then that would be the exceptional case.

And the part about perfectly matching inner and outer, and no friction, and effortless flow? Yes, those attributes definitely apply to the enlightened experience. It’s just that the reason for those things happening in the zone and the reason for those things happening in enlightenment are different reasons.

Being in the zone happens because of a focused, energized awareness on performing action.

Enlightenment happens because of a reversal of perspective.

The perspective is about who you are. The reversal is that instead of being an individual in the cosmos, you are the cosmos in an individual.

Then instead of thinking of yourself as a person with a name, personality attributes, preferences, and a life story, you know yourself as eternal being.

Being eternal takes you out of time, and therefore out of daily life—life measured in days. At that point, daily life takes care of itself as you rest in eternal being. There’s no friction in that.

Perhaps you want to get to this kind of enlightened normalcy and you are wondering how long you have to wait for that to happen.

To address this, let me use the word “zone” in a different sense—the sense of “location, place, area.”

Answers From Silence says, “Everyone is on their path of enlightenment, and everything that happens in a person’s life is their path of enlightenment.”

This means that your life is an enlightenment zone. You are in that zone constantly, no matter what the changing circumstances are. All that you encounter and all that takes place has an ultimate purpose, which is to bring you to a reversal of perspective about who you are.

So take heart. Enlightenment is with you either way. Until enlightenment is your daily life, daily life is your enlightenment.

—JC