The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way,  but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being.

Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.  However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence.  This means that is is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature.  But don't seek to grasp it with your mind.  Don't try to understand it.  You can know it only when the mind is still.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly.  Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.  To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly -- you usually don't use it at all.  It uses you.  This is the disease.  You believe that you are your mind.  This is the delusion.  The instrument has taken you over.

The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.  You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence.  You also realize that all the things that truly matter -- beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace -- arise from beyond the mond.  You begin to awaken.

In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state.  You are fully present.  It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that give life to the physical body.

Always say "yes" to the present moment.  What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is?  what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now?  Surrender to what is.  Say "yes" to life -- and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.

What you think of as they past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now.  When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace -- and you do so now.   The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind.  When the future comes, it comes as the Now.  When you think about the future, you do it now.  Past and future obviously have no reality of their own.  Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present.  Their reality is "borrowed" from the Now.

The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now -- that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality.

If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time.  You are aware of where you want to go , but you honor and give your fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment.  If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfillment, or a more complete sense of self in it, the Now is no longer honored.  It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, with no intrinsic value.  Clock time then turns into psychological time.  Your life's journey is no longer an adventure, just and obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to "make it."  You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the Now.