enlightenment - one description

I found this on Yeshe's website http://www.iyeshe.com .  Thank you for finding this, Helen. I am reposting it here.

This bijou exerpt from "Enlightenment reframed", by Walter Truett Anderson in Psychotherapy Networker describes the difference between "flow experiences" and elightenment  experiences:

"In flow experiences, the concept of self slips below the threshold of awareness, but the person is usually unconscious of this change. What happens in enlightenment experiences is that the person knows that the "I" that we normally take to be the experiencer isn't present. There's an awareness that things are happening, but without an awareness that they're happening to anyone in particular or because of any individual's volition."

And then, in the very next paragraph, no less, he goes on to explain enlightenment in a most enlightening fashion:

"This restructuring of consciousness is the core of enlightenment. It can explode into the mind in one blinding flash of insight, or it can arrive in gentler installments that become the framework for an ongoing re-visioning of everything in life. This mental shift is the source of all the other perceptual, emotional, and cognitive phenomena that are commonly found in the enlightenment complex: the immersion in the present, the lessening of attachment, the palpable presence of love--love without a lover or even a loved one--the sharpening of sensory perceptions, the sense of amazement at the ordinary, and the discovery that everyday, I-centered cognition is only one way to organize experience."