Enlightenment as a Fantasy

She was a shy and docile woman and appeared peaceful and loving to everyone she met. Yet, she had that fascination with action, western and detective movies all her life. Through the aggressive hero in the movies she could experience what it means to be in control vicariously. When I gave her the advice to become more assertive in little things, she wasn't very interested. That's ok too. After all, that is why we have our entertainment industry, to give us in fantasy what we can't have in reality. 

There is one spiritual insight that our discipline has agreed on for ages: live in the now, and let the past and future be to itself. Be here now or be nowhere as they say. Fantasy is exactly the opposite of this concept, instead the motto becomes "be everywhere in your mind but the person and time you are experiencing right now". If you aspire to be enlightened, you want all your anguish to go away, you always want to be even- keeled and you hope that everything is coming your way. It is a nice stage to be in, to be sure, and it may even exist, but for you, here and now, it is unfortunately a fantasy and thus not helpful.

The only way out of the fantasy world is to face life and to try getting what you want! Try to find the way that gets you there. You will be bumping against constraints, you will have to make choices and the journey defines who you aspire to be. As a spiritual path traveler you are probably doing exactly that. You are finding your Tao that allows you to throw your psychological baggage over board. So just keep on doing what you have been doing. Just understand that whenever you are eying this elusive goal of being enlightened you are not 'here now' and thus you are unfortunately nowhere.