Your true nature, a state of full consciousness, it is within your grasp, you just do not know it. You see, your true nature is not an organ or a particular thing that you can call your soul. True consciousness, enlightenment, is a state of being. You could almost call it feeling an emotion or a mood.
To be enlightened is just to be in a different mood but that mood is permanent and so very different than any other mood you can imagine. I am just trying to put it in words for you to understand.
When you understand your true nature and what enlightenment is, you are there. But it is not so easy to understand. In fact it is impossible to understand, you can only know it by experiencing it. Everyone asks how they can experience it. Here is a very good way to momentarily experience that enlightened state.
First you must know what prevents you from being enlightened. That is your personality, your concept of who you are, culture, country, religion, profession etc. Everything that defines you also separates you from other people and separates you from being enlightened.
The exercise is to be someone else as often as you can. When you are out socially or for a walk, or go shopping, be someone different to whoever you meet. In fact you may even try starting conversations with strangers just to do this exercise.
Be from another country, religion, atheist, profession etc. Whatever comes to mind at the moment, just say whatever you think of right then and play it as your conversation develops. A customer I was serving in my store called Atlantis asked me where I was from. It was clear that he was prejudice against who he thought I was, so I responded that I was from Atlantis. We entered into a conversation in which I got him to believe that I was in fact from the last remaining part of Atlantis, a small island in the Indian Ocean. We discussed politics, language, medical care, education, all topics and he had a wonderful time even asking if he could bring his wife to meet me. No harm was done, everyone had a good time, and his mind was greatly opened in the process.
This way you will always be someone new, ever changing and evolving, never becoming static and fixed in stone. Keep changing who you think you are into someone else, believe and live that, forgetting about who you are at work or at home, but to really become this new person at that moment, only to change again in the next moment when you say goodbye to them and hello to someone else. You will eventually break your fixed mental image of who you think you are and perhaps discover who you really are.
Once that fixed image is broken, a taste of enlightenment is just around the corner. Even if enlightenment is not your interest, this practice will make your entire life much more fun and eliminate many negative emotions.
You get upset because things do not go your way. Your way is the way you have learnt things should be done. If you are changing, then your view of how things should go will also change and many things will not bother you any more. For example, if you are a cactus, you want a dry climate, but if you are a willow, you want lots of water. Both are plants but each think that the right way is the opposite of the other.
You can certainly find this in people. Many couples will be able to identify with this, especially as they are breaking up. You each want something a different way, yet in the beginning of the relationship you had many more similar views. You are both human, but something is different now. When one of you is unhappy with what you are doing, the other is happy. Imagine if no matter what the situation, you where always happy.
This is clearly possible since someone is always happy with anything, they are just a different person to the unhappy one. When you are not fixed on anything, you are truly free and then you will really start to live and enjoy life. This is not to give up your values, but rather to expand your values to encompass a far greater range of experiences and pleasures.
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