How to reach enlightenment, by David Hawkins

People wonder, "How does one reach this state of awareness?" I can only share my own experience, and note that few follow the steps because they are so simple.

First, my desire to reach that state was intense.

Then began the discipline to act with constant and universal forgiveness and gentleness, without exception. One has to be compassionate towards everything, including one's own self and thoughts.

Next came a willingness to hold desires in abeyance and surrender personal will at every moment. As each thought, feeling, desire or deed was surrendered to God, the mind became increasingly silent. At first, I turned over whole stories and paragraphs, then ideas and concepts. As one lets go of wanting to own these thoughts, they no longer reach such elaboration, and begin to fragment while only half formed. Finally, I could turn over the energy behind thought itself, before it even became thought.

The task of constant and unrelenting fixity of focus, allowing not even a moment of distraction from meditation, continued while doing ordinary activities. At first this seemed very difficult, but as time went on, it became habitual, automatic, requiring less and less effort, and finally effortless.

The process is like a rocket leaving earth. At first, it requires enormous power, then less and less as it leaves the earth's gravitational field, and finally it moves through space under its own momentum.