I do think that it is possible to have moments of instant enlightenment, but I think these things happen despite ourselves. I had a moment of “instant enlightenment” once, about 20 years ago, when while I was haphazardly listening to a sermon in church. Words were said but I cannot remember exactly what they were. The words themselves were meaningless really. But something clicked inside which resulted in a cascade of recognition and realization. Looking back on the event, I now know that it turned out to be a pivotal realization in my life, but if I tried to explain it to you it would probably seem trivial and obvious to you. Intellectually it seems like common sense, but spiritual insight is experiential on personality levels; it’s not intellectual. I’ve tried to explain this occurrence to others in the past, but I’ve never been successful. It never has the impact on others that it had on me.
As it turns out, the soil necessary for that moment of enlightenment had been cultivated over some time within my mind. I had been searching deep and long and hard for answers to a particular problem. I’m talking years and years of searching, and at the time of this momentary enlightenment, I was not thinking about that problem at all. I was thinking about what I was going to make for lunch. Little did I know that the buildup inside of me was so close to eruption and that a few words spoken by another person on the a different topic, the topic of war, triggered a complete blow-out of debris from my mind. I can say that I almost started laughing out loud during that sermon, which was rather solemn, because I suddenly realized the simplicity of the answer which removed all the weight from years of inner struggle.
The person who spoke those words never knew that they had such a profound effect on me. I couldn’t tell him because I was never sure what exact words they were. I know that the meaning of those words is what struck deep in my soul and the meaning had something to do with the simple truth that I needed to make war no more. But the war I understood was a war between my true self and the self I thought I was, along with the misconception that I needed to defend that self. Bingo! Big lightbulb went on. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it had nothing to do with the exact words spoken, but rather with the deepest desires of my soul. And it wasn’t a miracle, it was the result of many many years of suffering and searching and a persistent yearning for the answer. But then again, a miracle is what you make it out to be.
That being said, I don’t think there is such a thing as an end to enlightenment. Spiritual insight is usually a slowly growing progression. Sometimes there are periods of sudden illumination; but for the most part, the process is unconscious and hardly perceptible. I don’t think we are capable of evaluating ourselves when it comes to these things.
