Most people picture enlightenment like it belongs on a postcard. Serene monk. Still water. Maybe a candle flickering on a cushion in some quiet corner. It’s calm. It’s tidy. It’s marketable.
But that has never been my experience. My enlightenment feels less like “serenity now” and more like trying to baptize a cat — and I’m the cat.
It’s wild. It’s disorienting. It’s sharp claws on the edge of the tub and the screech of no thank you, I’ll stay dirty, thanks. It’s resisting something you don’t even fully understand, fighting the hands that are holding you in, convinced you’ll drown — when really, what’s happening is transformation.
Because enlightenment isn’t a single moment. It’s not a clean dunk-and-rise where you come out glowing. It’s a process that swerves and sways. Some days it looks like staying in bed, staring at the ceiling, because your body or your spirit refuses to move. Other days it looks like cleaning the whole house top to bottom, suddenly possessed by the energy of clarity you didn’t know you had.
It’s hearing uncomfortable truths — the kind that rub raw against your pride and strip away the illusions you’ve been clinging to. It’s choosing not to run from them, but to let them change you.
It’s learning to honor someone else’s space even when you don’t agree with them, because enlightenment teaches you that your way isn’t the only way and that growth isn’t domination.
It’s accountability — the kind that forces you to face the harm you’ve caused, even unintentionally. And it’s forgiveness — for others, yes, but also for yourself when you realize you can’t claw your way into being perfect.
And maybe most of all, it’s continuing when you want to stop. When the water feels too cold, the grip too tight, the struggle too exhausting. Enlightenment whispers: stay in it. Accept what is real, not what you wish was true.
It doesn’t mean you’ll always choose peace. You’re human. You’ll snap, you’ll retreat, you’ll fight. But enlightenment shifts the ground beneath those choices: you recognize you have a choice. That’s the crack in the wall where grace gets in.
And none of that makes the “before” less valuable. In fact, it’s the before that informs the now. The resistance, the mistakes, the small survivals — they’re the soil out of which this messy grace grows. Enlightenment doesn’t erase your story. It drags every jagged, uneven piece of it into the light and says: this, too, belongs.
And here’s the thing — you don’t get enlightened alone. You get enlightened while bumping elbows with people you don’t understand, while trying to love those who wound you, while learning that sometimes the holiest act is keeping silent when every cell wants to shout. Enlightenment isn’t tested in candlelight; it’s tested in traffic jams, tense dinners, and awkward apologies.
Jacob walked away from his night-long wrestle with God carrying both a limp and a blessing. That’s enlightenment, too — not coming out unscarred, but coming out changed.
And believe me, I know about the limp.
Enlightenment doesn’t always hand you clarity wrapped in gold light. Sometimes it leaves you aching, slower, marked in ways that don’t go away. But the mark isn’t proof you failed. It’s proof you stayed.
So if your “awakening” doesn’t look like sitting cross-legged in bliss, if it feels more like surviving a holy dunk you never asked for — you’re not doing it wrong. You’re right in the thick of it. You’re the cat in the baptism.
And here’s the miracle: even clawing, even fighting, even screeching your resistance — you’re still held.
That’s grace. Messy. Claw-marked. Limping. Unpolished. Alive. And somehow, enough.
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