Most weekdays, my friend Beth and I walk a couple of miles in the morning. Although physical fitness is our primary goal, we’ve found mental fitness benefits, too. I love exploring new ideas around spirituality, and Beth is a gracious guinea pig. Our conversation helps develop and clarify my thinking.

Something she said about “enlightenment” caused me to reflect on what it means. For many people the word creates an impression of something far away, intangible, and attainable only by a select few.

Curious, I looked up the definition of enlightenment in both the Merriam-Webster and Collins English dictionaries, they said:

The state of having knowledge or understanding

In Buddhism it is the awakening to ultimate truth by which man is freed from the endless cycle of personal reincarnations to which all men are otherwise subject

In Hinduism it is a state of transcendent divine experience represented by Vishnu: regarded as a goal of all religion.

As I suspected, spiritual enlightenment suggests a future state and attainment out of reach of mere mortals.

Spiritual enlightenment, in my experience, is an everyday decision. Whenever I consciously choose love over fear I am awakening to truth and transcending the ego. I am literally turning on the light within me. I am asking for help to dispel darkness and ignorance, a condition of my fear-based beliefs. The practice of A Course in Miracles is about our willingness to make the choice for love in every situation, with every person, so that the pain and suffering which comes from fear dissolves.

Living consciously requires awareness of what we think and believe, and open-mindedness to question those beliefs so we can awaken. There are those who experience spiritual enlightenment overnight with revelations that shatter their egos completely. Two contemporaries that come to mind are Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie. For most of us, however, the ego is overcome one belief at a time. When we dismantle our ego-based beliefs we free ourselves from the cycle of fear, even if just for an instant, and we attain enlightenment. A Course in Miracles calls this the “holy instant.”

We have access to spiritual knowledge NOW. It is not a future state; it can be an everyday phenomenon if we choose. As the Course says, “Love waits not on time, it waits on our asking” and it is ours for the asking all day, every day.

While I long to be a steady beacon of light always shining on the world, my reality is more like a firefly. According to Scientific American “a firefly controls the beginning and end of the chemical reaction, and thus the start and stop of its light emission.” In moments of clarity I choose love and my light shines and then goes out again as I forget, and am back in the grips of ego and my unquestioned beliefs. The light goes on and the light goes off and just like the firefly, I control the switch. The choice is mine. Thank God! I wouldn’t want it any other way.