The biggest obstacle to enlightenment probably is the desire to be separate. This is the one which stop the people on spiritual journey from reaching the final point. What is it like in the enlightenment state? Ultimate bliss, just being still…? This actually scare most of pepople. People would ask what do you do in that state? Is it boring? Do you feel lonely? Will the question about existence go away in that state? Won’t people still question about the existence in that state? Thinking of these things drive most of people away and make them fall back to the cozinees of ego world. Isn’t this world wonderful? Beautiful nature. From this, you can tell most of people, like Lester Levenson says, they just want to seek good life but not the final realization.
Quote from SwamJ.com:
The waves each come to think that they have individual existence, forgetting that their truena nature is that of ocean.
Quote from Lester Levenson’s No Attachments No Aversions, p139:
"Could you image the ocean to be infinity? Well, we, the ocean of beingness, imaging little tiny circles around parts of us that we call drops; and this drop says, "I am seperate from that drop and separate from all the other drops." It’s imagined circle around part of the ocean calling itself a drop.
But actually, every drop is the ocean. It has all the qualities of the ocean: It’s wet, it’s salty, its’ H2O, and so forth. And everything that the infinity is, we are.
You see, it’s a false apparency that the drops are seperate from the ocean.
When you see the truth, only then do you understand this.
All the masters never lose sight of the onesness or allness. But they choose to play-act a game of seperateness, to help the rest of their Self that’s asleep to wake up out of the dream of seperateness.
It’s that simple. Point of view changes when you get realization - from separateness to oneness. Simple! Simple! Simple!
Befiore everything, is seperate from you. After, everything in you. Before, the world seems intensely real. After, you’ll see the panorma of life as a dream. You’ll know it’s dream texture and you’ll let the dream run.
Then, when you’re ready to leave the dream, you gather in all your forces, and with a big smile on your face, you consciously exit the body into your immortality."
From Ram Dass:
"Your ego is a set of thoughts that define your universe. Its like a familiar room built of thoughts; you see the universe through its windows. You are secure in it, but to the extent that you are afraid to venture outside, it has become a prison. Your ego has you conned. You believe you need its specific thoughts to survive. The ego controls you through your fear of loss of identiy. To give up these thoughts, it seems, would annihilate you and so you cling to them."