u/Equivalent-Year1994

Why or why not?

I’m not here to invalidate anyone’s experience.

Please feel free to share your insight. :)

I’ve been practicing Vipassana since 2016 and have been astounded by the changes in my perception since then. I used to dive very much into theory and trying to understand the stages of enlightenment.

Over the years, I have found that eventually I’ve had to transcend the intellectual concepts entirely, because while understanding theory is important in order to learn what to expect along the way, it is ultimately a hinderance to enlightenment at a certain stage.

The Buddha had to use words to describe the stages of insight in order to provide people with a map of the path and what to expect - but the intellectual understanding of the map alone is not enlightenment.

When I stopped trying to attain stream entry, when I let go of concepts and simply observed direct experience as it is, only then had the irreversible insights of anatta, annica and dukkha arose naturally.

At that stage, the concept of “stream entry” or identifying as a “stream enterer” is dissolved, because concepts and identification with experience is ultimately a hindrance to experiencing the direct nature of reality.

All conditioned phenomenon are impermanent. Including the “attainment” of so-called “enlightenment”.

Metta. ❤️

I have found my journey to be an interesting evolution. When one experiences their first “awakening”, that is, to become self-aware of life’s suffering and how most of us have been living life on autopilot based on conditioning from the past - one typically embarks on a “spiritual path” to realize the truth of one’s own experience of reality.

Along the way, many people including myself begin developing something called a “spiritual ego”, when one identifies as an awakened being who is walking the path towards this so called enlightenment - but this is another trap of the mind. This identification is often part of the path, but I have found that this too is to be transcended.

Enlightenment isn’t a gaining of anything. Rather, it is a letting go. Letting go of all preconceived notions about experience itself, so that natural wisdom may arise. A type of wisdom that has always been there, but shrouded by identification.

One may eventually reach a stage where they have let go most of their identification and they think to themselves, “Ah, yes. I am not my thoughts, my body or my feelings. I am awareness itself!” But this too is a last attempt for the mind to grasp at identification.

“I am awareness itself” is also just another thought. Once we let go of this identification, then “enlightenment” has been reached. There is no self. All conditioned phenomenon are impermanent.