The Key to Enlightenment (You Already Have It)

Enlightenment: to understand. To see things for what they are. To see the path unfolding. All of this just means that you are living the life of your dreams, whatever those dreams may be. To hold the key to enlightenment is to be living that life. A fundamental belief I hold that allows me to be an exceptional teacher, writer, mother, friend, sister, daughter, that allows me to live the life of my dreams, is that we are all the same.

I have done things in my life that are both wonderful and awful. I have struggled and sailed. I have wallowed and risen. And yet I am told quite often, by a wide variety of people from all parts of my life that I am different. But the truth is one I need you to believe: the difference between me and you is not much. I hold the same key to enlightenment that you hold. The only difference may be that I see mine, and you haven’t seen yours yet.

The Difference Between Me and You

So, maybe you were not traumatized as a child. Perhaps your innocence was not lost at too young an age. My parents went through a brutal, excruciating divorce when I was just four, my baby sister still an infant.

One of my earliest memories is of my father and mother screaming at each other. Her with tears streaming down her face, holding my baby sister on her hip, standing in the doorway of the house we rented in Fremont. Him down on the street, at the curb, rummaging through the trunk of his car to pull out paint eating soap.

My dad was a salesman for a supply company back then.

He found what he was looking for, walked over to my mom’s car, both of them yelling and screaming the whole time, and proceeded to write on the hood of her car in big bold letters:

“CUNT”

She had to drive around town like that, with two kids in the backseat, for weeks. She was a single mother who had finally left a drug using, alcoholic, cheating husband. She couldn’t afford to just take her dark green Monte Carlo into the paint shop.

So maybe your childhood didn’t begin like that.

Or maybe it was worse.

But we all come from a place we have to grow out of. Regardless of what it is, we have to grow up and learn to make our own choices, live with our choices, and then make better choices to make our lives better. This is life.

This was the first experience in my life that taught me to always own my own power, to never live a conditional life. To find my happiness where I was, wherever I was. I would never let someone destroy me or define me, not even my parents.

Survivor

I am a survivor. I won’t say I was born this way. I was made this way. I have survived cuts and bruises both real and metaphorical, both physical and metaphysical. And with each cut I have survived, I have grown stronger.

But this is true for all of us. We grow stronger through struggle. Scars are naturally stronger, tougher than fresh flesh.

We get to decide if we say, with tears streaming down our eyes and defeat in our voices, “but look! I’m covered in scars!” Or if we stand tall, with our capes tied around our shoulders and strength in our strides, “Yes, look. I am indeed covered in scars,” before we wipe the blood from the corner of our mouths, smile, and jump back into the fray of life to take our chances again.

I survived my parents’ ugly divorce. Then I survived my mother and stepfathers ugly marriage. I survived on the streets as a runaway, bouncing from roommate to roommate. And I survived an early adulthood with no resources and no clue about life or what to do to thrive.

I Survived

“You’re so strong.” I will hear from a friend or relative. “I’m not like you.”

Oh, but you are, but you can be. You hold the key to your own strength.

And I could be weak. I could shift my story to one of victimhood. I could use my story as a reason to turn to drugs or excess alcohol. I could use my story to become an abuser, to shield my heart from love, from giving love.

“Your father was an alcoholic.” My mother in law has told my husband. “So it makes sense that you and your brothers would be alcoholics too.”

As if his destiny was written down in stone and irrevocable.

Write Your Own Destiny, and Change It As Often As You Like

Each of her sons has had problems with alcohol. And each one has had to decide how to write his own story.

The truth is that my survivor story makes me strong because I want it to. I decided to turn it into a tale of triumph. And once I got a taste of triumph, once I realized that I didn’t just have to survive, that I could in fact take that survival and turn it into something great, a story of blossoming, blooming, eruption, explosion, there was no stopping me.

I quit my corporate job, put myself through school, aligned myself with a fun and open man who also wanted to thrive, chose homeschooling for my children, chose a small tutoring center to give my skills to, and now have chosen a freelance entrepreneur career in writing with nothing but spitfire and faith.

Faith in myself, faith  in my ability to shape my own story, both past, present, and future.

Faith in my freedom to choose whatever path I want, to make any choices I want, and that I can bring to fruition any vision I have.

Because I can. Which means you can too.

Enlightened

“But you’re a reader, Shanna. I’m not a reader.” I get this one a lot too.

Yes. I am a reader. I am a deep thinker. I am incredibly open to all possibilities.

And yes, I can thank my mom where this is concerned: she’s an avid reader, and she’s big fat hippy. Always has been. She found the Science of the Mind church when I was just five, shortly after that ugly divorce. And the concepts behind the Science of the Mind are deep ones. She brought home all this intense literature from her church, and read to me. At the age of 6, 7, 10, 12, 39!

It is essentially philosophy.

Keep It Simple

The Secret came along a few years ago and simplified many of the teachings of the Science of the Mind, and now everyone talks Law of Attraction.

But I got a very early introduction to this deep philosophical reading my mom was doing.

And while I never joined the church myself (my mom never forced anything on any of us), the ability to reach into complex ideas has stayed with me for life.

So when I was in graduate school and we were reading Derrida and Foucault, Butler and Anzaldúa, the long, winding, abstract ideas did not feel so foreign to me.

But while I personally was exposed to this way of thinking at a very young age, the human brain does not lose its ability to think, to grasp, to learn as we age. You can learn this too. You can open your mind too. You can strive to understand too.

You just have to open yourself up to it.

The key to enlightenment is as simple as that.

Teaching the Key to Enlightenment

I prove this every single day with my students. I see it manifested in grown adults all the time.

“Aha!”

“Ohhhhhhhhh!”

My daughter will say, mimicking Gru from Despicable Me: “Lightbulb.”

“I get it now.”

The trick to understanding philosophy, the Law of Attraction, Science of the Mind, heck physics, chemistry, anything really, is sticking with it.

Look at it, don’t understand it, walk away, come back, grasp a small piece, get excited, walk away, come back, grasp another small piece, and so on.

We learn big concepts in small chunks of information. I see it every single day.

My kid learned to read by first learning to sing the ABC song.

My baby learned to walk by first lifting her head off her chest.

Baby Steps

The point is to keep walking forward, to not let anything stop you, and to not tell yourself that Shanna (or anyone else) can do it because she’s special, she’s different, she’s (insert whichever thing that allows you to hold yourself back here.)

That has always been my greatest strength. If anyone else could do is, I could do it too. If anyone else had gotten to level 5, I could get to level 5, and from there aim for level 6.

I’m Not Different

Okay, I’m different. I’m different in my own individual unique story. I am different in the way that we are all beautifully wonderfully different. I am different in all the ways that make humanity great.

But I am not different in a way that can ever hold you back from doing everything I have done and will do, and more.

You will just do them in your own, different, way.

The Messiah

Last Wednesday, for my very first Wisdom Wednesday that I began sending out weekly to my subscribers, I included an extended quote from a book by Richard Bach, called Illusions.

In it, he tells this parable about a society of creatures who cling to the bottom of a river bed. That is their way of life. This is what they have always done. Until one of the creatures says to hell with it and tells the others he is going to let go.

“Fool!” They tell him. “You will die!”

He tells the others that his bigger fear is that if he doesn’t let go, he will die of boredom.

He lets go. He’s dashed on the rocks, bruised and broken, but not dead. And eventually, the river lifts him up and carries him. He flows with the river.

And he makes his way down to another group of rock clinging creatures he has never met, and they are astonished as he floats by, happy and free.

“Messiah!” They call him.

And he calls down to them “I’m no different from you! I’m not the Messiah! All you have to do is let go!”

All you have to do is let go.

Let Go

This is my story.

This is my life.

Everywhere I go people tell me I’m different. It’s different for me.

And they love me or hate me for it.

Or they shrug and say, “well sure, she can do it because she’s (insert “special” quality here).

And I want to call out “No! I’m not special! You can do this too! All you have to do is let go!”

That, and only that, is the difference between me and you. That, in a nutshell, is the key to enlightenment.

All you have to do is let go.

 

 

*if you’d enjoy further “enlightenment,” leave your information in the subscription box. You will be notified of any new essays I write, and you will receive Wisdom Wednesday in your email inbox each Wednesday morning.

Wisdom Wednesday includes an extended quote from literature and/or philosophy that is followed by a lesson or “teaching” from yours truly. It will also allow us to talk about the piece, as I encourage you to hit reply for a one on one conversation.