Do I Need to be Spiritual or Religious to Have an Enlightenment Experience?

No!

You just need to inquire into the truth of how things are. There is no difference between enlightenment and truth.

The enlightenment experience itself is direct. In other words, there is no sensory intermediary between you and what you are experiencing.

The experience, the experiencer, and the experienced are one and the same.

However, we all interpret that direct experience differently in our own minds.

Same may interpret the experience as a meeting with God or Jesus. Some may see a flash of light. Some may experience time disappearing altogether. Some might fashion a symbol, as above, to illustrate it.

Some may start a religion based on the experience.

The mind is trying to understand something, pure being, that it is unable to grasp. Therefore, it supplies its best approximation to the experiencer. That approximation is not the actual direct experience. It’s only a dramatization.

The dramatization might be helpful in helping you understand and embody pure being, but it is not pure being.

Being spiritual or religious are only thoughts that occur in our minds. They have nothing to do with enlightenment at all.

It’s like the Buddhist saying, “Don’t mistake the finger for the moon.” The best we can do with our thoughts is like a finger pointing toward the moon. The very best spiritual and religious teachings are only pointers to the real thing.

Sometimes I think of travel as a good metaphor. Let’s say I’m going to travel from Seattle to Los Angeles but I’ve never been to Los Angeles.

I have a belief that Los Angeles exists. A belief is an idea; it’s a mental construct of Los Angeles that only exists in my head based on the information I’ve gathered from books, movies, or websites or whatever. My thoughts, ideas, and beliefs about Los Angeles don’t change the actual Los Angeles.

If I didn’t believe in Los Angeles I could still experience it.

If I was agnostic about Los Angeles I could still experience it.

But I could also choose not to go to Los Angeles because I didn’t believe in it, or because I didn’t believe I deserved to go. I could choose not to inquire.

What you believe or don’t believe about yourself has nothing to do with enlightenment just as what you believe or don’t believe about Los Angeles has nothing to do with the actual Los Angeles. It’s still there, as it is, completely independent of your state of mind about it. However, your beliefs may color your experience, until you let your experience change your beliefs.

Who you are is who you are. So long as you inquire into who you are, you can experience who you are. If you don’t inquire, you’re left with beliefs of who you are. Even the best beliefs aren’t a substitute for the real thing.