You may have expected that enlightenment would come like zap! Instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first "aha" experience, it can be thought of as the thinning of a layer of clouds.
—Ram Dass
Who cares if you're enlightened forever? Can you just get it in this moment, now?
—Byron Katie
Enlightenment is not an attainment; it is a realization. When you wake up, everything changes and nothing changes. If a blind man realizes that he can see, has the world changed?
—Dan Millman
A person who says, "I'm enlightened," probably isn't.
—Ram Dass
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
—Thomas Mann
Freedom in not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.
—Henry Steele Commager in Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent
Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.
—Adyashanti