Felt-connectedness with all things
Enlightenment occurs spontaneously when you create the right conditions in your consciousness. The foundation of this mind-set is having a sense of felt connectedness with all things in the Universe. You feel that you are intimately connected with everything else in the Universe, not separate as your egoic mind would lead you to believe.
To cultivate this awareness of connectedness, remind yourself that all entities in the Universe are temporary. They arise from the primordial source, exist for a time, and then dissolve back into the source. There are no exceptions. You and I are an expression of this underlying source and share the same destiny along with everything else.
A Physicist would say that in the Universe there is constant movement from energy to matter and back to energy. Imagine an animated Yin-Yang symbol with its spiral movement. Think of what a moving fractal looks like. These are representations of this constantly moving cycle. Our challenge is to not resist this movement. It is futile to try. We must make a virtue of necessity and embrace this movement wholeheartedly, surrendering to the flow.
Surrendering to the flow means letting go of the mental concepts that form the structures of your sense of identity. Let go of them willingly instead of clinging to them until they are taken away forcibly by the movement of time. These structures were never permanent, and you need not fear losing them. They are not the real you.
Consider the Taoist metaphor of being swimmers in the great river of life. We can go with or against the current. The river does not mind either way. Many people swim against the current as they play their various games and become exhausted without making much progress, their lifeless bodies eventually floating out to sea.
The wise among us know that we are all destined to flow into the ocean at the end of our lives, so they swim peacefully with the current, enjoying the journey and arrive at the ocean knowing that this was always their destination.
You need not worry that by swimming with the current you will arrive at the sea too soon. The river mouth in this metaphor is not a fixed point. You reach the sea when you have exhausted your life force. By swimming with the current you achieve movement while conserving you life force.
