What is the Difference Between Enlightenment and Ascension?

Posted by Steve Beckow for 31 August 2012 

A listener of InLight Radio has asked to have the differences between Ascension and Enlightenment clarified. Please allow me to do that here. 

There is no difference per se between Ascension as a generic process and Enlightenment or Illumination. 

The Ascension we’re going through on Dec. 21, 2012 (or later) is an Enlightenment. However, it has some extra features about it that make it different from the generic process of Enlightenment associated with it, that persuade me to call it “Enlightenment Plus” and I’ll get to those differences below. 

By the same token, there are many levels of Enlightenment stretching all the way up to the final mergence with God. That comes to us so many lifetimes down the road that we have no conception of that event. 

In just the Third-Dimensional range, there are at least four stages of enlightenment: 

(1) spiritual awakening, which occurs when the Kundalini reaches the fourth-chakra, 
(2) Savikalpa Samadhi, when the Kundalini reaches the sixth chakra, 
(3) Brahmajnana or God-Realization, seventh chakra, and 
(4) Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi, spiritual heart or Hridayam. 

We can have each of these enlightenment experiences and still remain in the Third Dimension. But Ascension will mean that we leave the Third/Fourth Dimension of our physical and spirit lives and migrate to the Fifth Dimension. This is a difference between Enlightenment per se and our present Ascension. 

If we were on the spirit side of life, an Ascension would involve the passage from one dimension to another. So, when we pass from the Astral Plane (Fourth Dimension) to the Mental Plane (Fifth Dimension), we’re said to have ascended, because we’ll shed our astral body for our mental body. But when we pass from the Middle Summerlands of the Astral Plane to the Higher Summerlands, we’re not said to have ascended, because we retain our astral body.  Movement from one subplane to another does not involve Ascension. It is movement from one dimension to another that does involve Ascension. 

That is why Shankara would say: “When all the five coverings are removed, the pure Atman [the Self or Christ] is revealed.” (1) By successive Ascensions, we remove the five coverings or bodies associated with the previous plane or dimension until, well after the experience Shankara is referring to, all that is left is God Himself/Herself. We have uncovered or revealed God by successive Ascensions. 

In our Ascension on Dec. 21, 2012 (or later), we’ll ascend with the physical body, which is a first and new development in Ascension. Because we will, we’ll need to raise the vibrations of that body gradually as it changes from carbon-based to crystalline-based, so that it can exist in the higher vibrations of the Fifth Dimension. But in all Ascensions on the spirit side of life, we would have simply shed the previous body. 

But where our Ascension on 21/12/12 resembles all other Ascensions is that we’ll pass from one plane or dimension to another; in this case, from the Third/Fourth Dimensions associated with our usual physical and spirit lives to the Fifth Dimension. So, because it represents a dimensional shift, we call it an Ascension. 

So, yes, it does involve a process of Enlightenment. Whether that is the Enlightenment associated with the seventh chakra, which is called Brahmajnana and does not result in a permanent heart opening or liberation from rebirth or the Enlightenment associated with the spiritual heart or Hridayam, known as Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi, which does result in a permanent heart opening and liberation, I don’t know. I should probably ask Archangel Michael about that. 

That’s my understanding. There’s no difference between Ascension and Enlightenment in many respects. But our 21/12/12 Ascension is Enlightenment Plus, because in it we also get to take our physical bodies with us (renewed, of course), need not die, get to leave the Third Dimension for the Fifth (whereas in ordinary enlightenment we would not get to leave), etc.

Footnotes
(1) Shankara in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher lsherwood, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1975; c1947, 56. There are countless levels of enlightenment beyond the one Shankara is discussing here.

Connecting to your Joy and Happiness

Channeled Message from the High Council of Orion 12 April 2013 

Greetings, Dear Ones. We are the High Council of Orion. We’re here to speak to you today about a topic we’ve spoken about many times before, and that is of happiness. Many on the planet right now are wondering where happiness has gone, for they are feeling too much stress and strain and discomfort and uncertainty. 

We would like to share with you more about reconnecting with your natural buoyant, ebullient state of internal happiness. Not from a false or externalized point of view, but from one of tapping into the deep resources of your inherent nature of joy, which expresses itself outwardly as happiness. 

Simply put, what we will say today is, if you watch young children playing with abandon, skipping, singing, lost in their own world, and you tap into and allow yourself to see them, through the eyes of your memory of when life was as simple as being fully present in your moment, where you too could skip and play, and sing to yourself and talk to yourself with un-self-conscious abandon. 

Those days were pure and joyful, for you were still fully connected with your inherent state of joy, and so what we ask you to do, as we’ve said before, is use the models of the things around you on the planet. If you are struggling with accessing joy and happiness in your life, go sit at a park and watch children play. Just allow yourself to energetically feel connected to them, and feel the joy they express as they run, as they swing on the swing, as they slide, as they meet new accomplishments, as they build a sand castle, that from an adult point of view might be slightly average, and yet their squeals of joy and enthusiasm are infectious. 

Re-connect with that energy of joy also through the animals that you have around you, if you watch dogs for example. They have a natural joy and enthusiasm that they love to share with others, they easily get fully immersed in what they are doing and experiencing, and can play ball for hours with that again wild abandon of being fully present in the moment and experiencing it. There are no worries that slow the dog down to wonder if dinner will be on the table. For it is fully engaged in the moment, just as the children are as they express their joy. 

From this place of wanting to connect with joy and happiness in the moment you connect with that fountain of unbridled energy that comes flowing into you from the universe. 

Living in the now is the place where the joy and happiness can reside, for as you are fully present to yourself in the moment connecting into your heart, you open up the pathway for the Creator energy to flow into you. For if your mind is cluttered with worry and concern, with fear and constriction and with uncertainty, it creates, if you will, a block to that natural flow. 

Does that mean live in a state of denying what might be reality in your life? Absolutely, no! But what we suggest is, in moments whenever you can, you allow yourself to set the worries aside, place them on the shelf to rest for just a few minutes, and come fully present to yourself, and allow that present moment awareness to connect in with any thought or feeling that brings you joy. 

So, that takes going to the park to watch the children and just be lost in the moment of seeing their joy. Then, we suggest, you do it. If it takes going to another park in watching the dogs play, and seeing how engrossed they can be in the moment and for some for many moments on end, with the utter abandonment of who they are to the joy of the moment, through the running, through the playing, through the chasing. 

Allow yourself those moments every day, regardless of what’s going on in your life, to just connect with the feeling of joy by setting aside the worries, allow that flow from the universe to come down into you, and as you connect through your heart with that feeling of joy, of happiness, even if it is for 30 seconds or two minutes or five minutes, it shifts your inherent resonance to allow more of that in. 

It keeps the gateways open a little bit more, if you will, and as you practice you might find yourself seeing and observing more joy, perhaps allowing things that might have brought on more frustration to just slide off you, and not bother you as much. For you are shifting your baseline resonance, as you connect with those moments of joy, allowing the joy and the happiness to seep in and become more embedded in your inherent resonance. There is much to be joyful for, regardless of what’s going on around you in your world. 

We ask you to pay attention to the things that bring you joy and literally do not pay attention to the things that do not. If you get sad and worried about the state of affairs in the world, because you need to listen to, or watch the news every day, we would suggest that you don’t. For ultimately the greatest place of power, the greatest place of change in your life in your world happens with you and many of you know this, but it requires taking different steps and different actions to bring about those different results. 

We encourage you each in the next week to spend that time connecting with joy, seeking it out, looking for it, being on the treasure hunt of finding expressions of joy, and maybe it’s just because you witnessed some people having a positive exchange and each person smiling. Perhaps it’s because you witness a parent lovingly hugging their child, allow the warmth and the good feelings to seep inside, and connect with that more than you connect with the things that might make you feel less than joyful. 

Be Blessed. 

We are the High Council of Orion. 

Author: Holly Hawkins Marwood 

www.AkashaHealingStudio.com