The spiritual path is the path of the ordinary hero, and it sees the world very differently to the outlook that is promoted by pure science. The entire spiritual journey is one in which the individual learns by degrees to see and read the world as an all-nurturing miracle of guidance in which we have a role as co-creators. It is a path that teaches us – deeply, deeply teaches us – that the state of no effort is our greatest strength, for it is also the seamlessly integrated state of Being that enables us to harmonize with the strength of the world. Eventually that teaching leads us to the understanding that the world itself is enlightened; to join the world is to die to the endarkened ego and give yourself to the supreme light of intelligence all around you. Enlightenment is not something any individual can possess, any more than someone could possess the Logos or Buddha consciousness. Spiritual enlightenment in an individual is nurtured by a profound dissolution of the anxiety that separates us from the world, so that we can at last join it, seeing and understanding “the real as the play and work of love”, as Andrew Harvey put it.

To join the enlightened world is to awaken to a place of ceaseless renewal and revelation; a place of companionship in which you are fully known in everything you do, even as you sensationally discover and serve the world in everything you do; a place in which alienation and existential isolation are seen to be creaky illusions, because in fact you know yourself to be an indivisible part of all Being, intimately and companionably sustained by it; a place in which endless gifts arise from the deep mystery that suffuses everything ordinary.
~ Philip Shepherd, ‘New Self New World’

