9 Mistakes On The Path to Enlightenment

During my years as a seeker, I stumbled into numerous spiritual traps. Each time, I thought I was on the right path, only to realize I was led astray by my own misunderstandings and desires. When I began teaching, I saw the same patterns repeat in others. I witnessed sincere seekers making the same mistakes, struggling with the same illusions.

Waiting For The Guru To Enlighten You

Enlightenment isn’t a prepacked snack that the guru can simply hand out; it’s a revelation that emerges from within.

One of the most widespread trap is the belief that enlightenment will be bestowed by some enlightened master or guru. This idea stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of awakening. True enlightenment isn’t something that can simply be given – it must arise from within your own being through direct experience.

The idea that someone else can enlighten you bypasses the essential inner work needed for true transformation. No guru can do the inner work for you; the real journey begins when you dive into the depths of your being and face your shadows, embrace your fears, and ultimately realize your true nature.

While spiritual teachers can offer valuable wisdom and guidance, the path is yours to walk, the discoveries yours to make.

Too Much Reading And Watching, Too Little Practice

In this era of millions of YouTube videos, it has become easy for spiritual seekers to fall into the trap of becoming perpetual students – devouring book after book, video after video, in an attempt to intellectually comprehend the nature of reality. While teachings can offer insightful maps, they are just maps – not the real thing.

I fell into this trap myself. At one point, my bookshelf was overflowing with spiritual texts, and I could recite teachings verbatim. But there was a disconnect. I was accumulating knowledge without practice.

An obsession with accumulating spiritual knowledge, without the practice, becomes a form of avoidance. It allows the seeker’s ego to feel spiritually superior and without actually doing the hard inner work.

True awakening is not a philosophical concept. It is a radical undoing, a shedding of every belief, identity and concept until only the vastness of the present moment remains.

Enlightenment -A Magic Cure-All

Most seekers have the concept of enlightenment as a magic pill that will instantly solve all their problems and make life a perpetual state of bliss. They fantasize that awakening will make them invulnerable to any future suffering.

Even the most enlightened masters aren’t immune to the challenges of human existence – aging, sickness, and taxes. What awakening provides is not protection against life’s challenges, but a profound openness, acceptance and spacious perspective to meet those challenges with equanimity and wisdom.

The enlightened ones have realised that suffering is an innate part of existence. True freedom lies in giving up one’s resistance against that reality, and learning to flow with what arises with unbounded compassion and clarity.

Mistaking Spiritual Glimpses for the Enlightenment

On the spiritual path, seekers encounter profound mystical experiences, visions, states of bliss and insights. These experiences can be deeply transformative and provide glimpses into the nature of reality.

However, it is a common mistake to confuse these experiences with true enlightenment. While these spiritual experiences can be powerful catalysts for growth, they are ultimately transitory. True enlightenment is not a fleeting experience but a fundamental transformation in one’s perception of reality.

Seekers also get seduced by spiritual glimpses and begin chasing after those fleeting highs. They get attached to the experience itself and essentially turn it into a new object of desire, a new drug to be craved. The search then becomes about reliving those experiences.

At some point, you must be willing to let it all go – the endless mystery cannot be contained by any experience. To cling to them is to mistake the horizon for the entire sky.

A Collection of Words is not the real thing

The word apple is not the real apple, but a label trying to capture the essence of the fruit. Just as the word fails to convey the experience of holding a real apple, so do spiritual teachings fall short of capturing the true nature of enlightenment.

Every spiritual teaching is ultimately just a finger pointing at the moon – a symbolic map trying to express the inexpressible. To mistake the finger for the moon is to become trapped in delusion. Enlightenment can never be contained or defined by any belief or conceptual framework. It is the open expanse of being.

To truly understand enlightenment, one must look beyond words and concepts, diving into the direct, experience of being.

Using Enlightenment To Escape Suffering

Some seekers view enlightenment as a way to check out, disengage and transcend the whole mess of human existence.

But this perspective completely misses the essence of true awakening, which is about fully embracing this present reality, not escaping it. Enlightenment isn’t a dissociated state of detachment from the world, but a deeper unification with the depths of existence.

So if your spiritual search is being driven by a desire to escape the sufferings and pains of this human journey, you’re actually moving away from enlightenment, not towards it.

Dismissing Material Aspect of Existence

For many seekers, there can arise a tendency to look down upon money, material possessions and worldly pursuits like careers. They start viewing such things as spiritually impure or shallow, believing that true enlightenment requires a complete renunciation of the material world.

However, this is a dualistic delusion that separates the sacred from the mundane. From an enlightened viewpoint, there is no divide between the spiritual and material realms – they are simply the same reality. Trying to completely detach from the world is just another subtle form of resistance and rejection.

Many enlightened masters have had families and participated in society and in healing humanity. The Buddha himself received patronage and gifts from wealthy householders to sustain his teachings and monastic community. Jesus worked as a carpenter to provide for himself.

Spirituality is the invitation of being fully in the world of form without being deluded by it. Its ok to engage in honest work, earn income and navigate resources, while at the same time knowing that you own nothing.

Expecting Overnight Transformation

In our culture of quick fixes and 10 second attention spans, it’s easy to bring a similar mentality to the path of enlightenment. We want the deepest realization served to us conveniently, with as little disruption as possible.

We desire instant, transformative change. but enlightenment doesn’t conform to this demand. You’re shedding lifetimes of delusion, it will not happen overnight, but might takes years. Celebrate each incremental opening, and don’t force the blooming.

Honor the natural pace of your inner evolution. Every small revelation, every moment of clarity, contributes to the greater awakening. Awakening is a profound metamorphosis that reshapes us at the core.

Attachment to Enlightenment

What could be more paradoxical than getting attached to the very notion of enlightenment and awakening itself? And yet, this is a mistake that I made in my journey. I relentlessly chased enlightenment for years. The more I chased it, the more it moved away from me.

When you get attached to the idea of enlightenment, you create a new form of ego, a “spiritual” ego, which is just as hungry, restless, and dissatisfied as the old one.

True insight comes when you drop the chase, stop grasping, and simply be. It’s in the here and now, in the midst of your daily life. It’s in doing the dishes, feeling the water, watching the sun set. It’s in the laughter of your child and the tears of a friend.

So, let go of the attachment to enlightenment. Stop making it a future goal. Instead, live each moment fully, with awareness and acceptance. In doing so, you may find that enlightenment was never something to achieve but something to realize, right here, right now. 

With love to all those who walk the path of awakening