The Brutal Truth About Enlightenment
Suffering, Shadow Work, and the Game of Conscious Expansion
I don’t mean to open the portals to hell so often.
But enlightenment — real enlightenment — is not the gentle, blissful awakening that so many pretend it to be.
It is not found in borrowed philosophies, weekend retreats, or the empty words of self-proclaimed gurus.
True enlightenment chooses you.
And when it does, it drags you into the abyss.
It demands that you confront everything you’ve buried — every childhood wound, every suppressed emotion, every lie you’ve told yourself to make life bearable.
It is suffering, raw and relentless, until there is nothing left but truth.
Most people spend their entire lives running from this.
But I don’t. I couldn’t.
I was tossed into an initiation of sorts, a catapulting me to practice self-mastery, a game I’ve learned to play within my own mind, giving me a glimpse into what lies beyond the illusion of this physical reality.
The senses can only function in the synchronized parameters of universal laws, but when the mind has been liberated — when you’ve fought for your mental freedom and worked relentlessly to achieve a clarity that is truly objective, devoid of personal bias, fear, or the desperate interjections of an ego clinging to illusion; you experience the ultimate bodily accessible form of freedom — you become a Spectator, watching from within and without, detached yet fully immersed in everything, including yourself.
Some call this “spiritual enlightenment” or “Truth” — whatever diluted term people throw around these days.
My Issue With “Enlightenment”
The word “enlightenment” has been desecrated, its essence stripped by self-proclaimed gurus who have no concept of what it means to be chosen by it.
Enlightenment is not a choice. It chooses you.
And true enlightenment is not a serene, candlelit revelation.
It is suffering
— raw, relentless, and inescapable.
It demands the excavation of childhood wounds, the unearthing of memories long buried under layers of self-deception.
It is a descent into the gut-wrenching abyss of your own psyche.
And the instinct, of course, is to shove it down, plaster over it, convince yourself it’s over and done with.
But the Shadow never disappears.
It follows. It inhabits you.
It seeps into your reactions, your self-sabotage, your quiet discontent, manifesting as traits you mistake for personality when, in reality, it’s your inner child screaming at you to listen.
But here’s the thing:
when you surrender to the suffering, when you allow yourself to feel everything in its most unfiltered, uncomfortable, and devastating rawness; something shifts.
You endure.
The pain crests, then subsides.
And in its wake, a weight you never even knew you carried is lifted.
Your negative aspects begin to dissolve, not by force but by their own accord.
You’ll never have to face that particular level of suffering again.
Suffering. It’s a tool.
A practice that sharpens discipline, strengthens the ability to generate dopamine and serotonin, and fortifies the mind.
Always, without fail, there is a shift when pain is embraced — an odd dimensional break.
In the dimensional break it is as if, for a brief moment, my consciousness fractures the barriers of space and time, slipping past the oppressors of this 3D trap and peering into something beyond.
A parallel dimension.
I believe this is when I receive a glimpse into what’s actually real.
