Through thousand years of misuse, the word God has lost its real essence. The misuse is largely caused by those who have a strong conviction through blind faith. They talk as if they have all the undeniable facts.

In my humble opinion, this is caused by associating a mental image about God. When you have a mental image about God, you can become over-defensive in your belief. You will tend to put up your guard everytime you feel that your belief is being challenged.

That’s why a simple question such as “how do you know that God exists” could spark anger in you. You’re so afraid that somebody is going to replace your God. You strongly believe that your God is the best God. Your God is better than other gods.

But the fact is that NOBODY can replace or take away your God; because God is inside all of us. So if you really want to find and experience the power of God… search within instead of without. If you can truly search inside, you will find God that nobody can take away.

How do you search the power of God inside you?

First, you need to accept the notion that God is inside you. And you need to stop your normal thought pattern; meaning that you need to learn how to free your mind from thinking. When you’re searching inside, you need to learn how to use “feeling” instead of “thinking”.

My personal favorite technique for clearing out my mind is through meditation. It’s not that hard to do but it needs some practice. You can read the basic meditation technique here.

In fact, with enough practice, you can even experience meditative state (higher state of consciousness) when you’re working, talking with people, driving, etc.

Higher state of consciousness is a state where you get beyond the conditioned, “thinking” mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. It’s at this state that you can truly feel your inner body and experience inner-peace. It’s at this state that you experience the realm of God essence. The power of God is inside you!

Higher state of consciousness is also known as the enlightened state or the achievement of spiritual state where you’re free from your usual mind-pattern and attachment of time. In other words, you have found the power of God inside you; an awareness of your own natural state of being. Read this article: Path To Personal Enlightenment.

When you’re able to achieve this state, the power of God within will liberate you from any suffering or pain of your past and free you from worrying about the future. Because at this state, your past and future become irrelevant… as you’re only concerned about living the present moment with joy and peace.

When you’ve found the power of God within, you no longer worry about people trying to offend or take away your God.

In my previous article, I talked about enlightenment and some of its benefits. In this article, I would like to discuss the path to enlightenment.

According to Buddha’s teaching, enlightenment is cessation of suffering. This includes physical, emotional and mental pain. But the term ’suffering’ used here is only one translation of the Pali dukkha (the earliest Buddhist scriptures). Dukkha means a lot of things, there is simply no single English word that can neatly describe its meaning.

It’s beyond the scope of this article to describe what dukkha means. If you want, you can visit Wikipedia to learn more. Just go to wikipedia.org and search for the word ‘dukkha’.In Buddhism, the path to personal enlightenment is called the Eightfold Path. This Path consists of 1. Right View, 2. Right Intention, 3. Right Speech, 4. Right Action, 5. Right Livelihood, 6. Right Effort, 7. Right Mindfulness, 8. Right Concentration.

Again, I’m not going to discuss each step. You can go to Wikipedia to learn the details.

In this article, I will attempt to simplify the path to personal enlightenment based on my own personal experience. Here are the simplified steps you can follow and apply immediately…

Look Inside Yourself. Most of us tend to look outside for scraps of pleasure, love, security, fulfillment, etc. We don’t realize that all these things can be found within. When you look inside often enough, you’ll be able to find the true nature of yourself, inner-peace and fully alert with the world around you. You don’t need to look outside and believe in any doctrine in order to achieve an inner-peace, you just need to look within.

Stop carrying the burden of your past. If you have had pain in your past, drop it like you drop a heavy baggage. You can refer to your past when necessary only to learn from it, but not to dwell on it. If you keep clinging onto your past, you won’t be able to live in the presence. And, if you can’t live in the presence, you’ll always experience pain and suffering.

Don’t try to live in the future. Many of us worry about what they will become in the future. This not only creates pain and suffering but also stress. When you’re trying to live in the future or wanting to become somebody else, you fail to live in the presence. Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be somewhere else. It’s like being torn apart. It’s nothing wrong to have a plan or desire to live a better life in the future. But we should live and carry out our plan in the present moment for it’s the only point of access to a better future. Without a presence, there is no future.

Let me sum up, in order to achieve personal enlightenment, you need to look inside yourself and accept the present moment unconditionally without any reservation. Only by fully accepting the present moment, you can eliminate the pain in your past and stop expecting to become something in the future.

Hence, living in the PRESENCE is key to personal enlightenment. If you can’t accept and live in your presence, no holy book or sacred doctrine in the world can help you to enlightenment. You see, enlightenment is not for some superhuman accomplishment, ordinary people like you and me can also attain it as long as we’re willing to accept and live in the presence, let go the past and stop expecting prizes from future.

If we can live our present moment well, our future will surely fall into place nicely!

There is no easy way to define what is Enlightenment because there can be many. And, there are many paths to achieving the state of enlightenment.

For me personally, Enlightenment is simply an awareness of your own natural state of being. It’s a state of realizing what you truly are in the present moment; without referring to your past and worrying about what you will become in the future.

Believe it or not, everyone has had an experience or taste of Enlightenment before. It’s a state of bliss, where you feel total happiness and timeless; transcending of any problem and suffering.

Stop and think for a moment, try to recall some of the quality time you spent with your loved ones, the time when you felt total peace, the time when you felt you had total freedom, etc. The moment that made you felt clear, content, uplifted, empowered, joyful, etc.. those are the enlightened moments!

I like the Buddha’s simple definition of enlightenment as “end of suffering”.

But regardless of your religious belief; you can experience enlightenment. You can be a Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, atheist or an agnostic person, it doesn’t really matter!

Unfortunately, the enlightenment we have is often short-lived. We are not able to flourish and sustain it.

According to Buddha’s teaching, the cause of suffering is craving or clinging on things that are impermanent. We continually search for something outside ourselves to make us happy instead of looking inside. By continually seeking things that are impermanent in nature, we will never feel fulfilled, no matter how successful we are.

In the hustle and bustle world we’re living in today, can we ever achieve personal enlightenment in our lifetime?

Well, in all honesty, many of us may not be able to achieve a “full enlightened life” like the Buddha did back in over 2,500 years ago. But, how about if we can achieve a portion of it? Is it worthwhile to learn how to live an enlightened life even though if we may only achieve a fraction of it?

Well, the mind is like the body in that they need proper nutrition to flourish. Personal enlightenment is like nutritious food for your mind. The benefits of living an enlightened life are many. Inner-peace, joy, fulfillment, clarity are just some of the qualities of enlightenment.

This article simply describes the basic concept of enlightenment and its many benefits for personal growth. In the next articles, I will share with you how to practice some of the habits of enlightenment. So please stay tuned!