These days, there is so much information out there about Enlightenment and Awakening to the point that the words hardly have any functional meaning. The full enlightenment of some, is written about as the partial enlightenment or fleeting experience of another. Indeed, there are many people writing cookbooks who have not deeply tasted the food. There are stable experiential plateaus and sign-posts along the way, though they don't transpire in any kind of perfectly linear fashion. One of the many sub topics of which there seems to be much conversation is whether Enlightenment is some kind of sudden shift or a gradual unfolding. When Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was asked, he answered, “it’s a gradual switch.” In my life, the movement from the smaller egoic filter to deep oceanic Presence has been a decidedly gradual process marked by exciting peak experiences here and there. Something of the Destination has been experienced everywhere along the Path. This is so because the Destination to which we are traveling is here right now. The extent that which we can relax into the Now determines how much of the Now we are able to experience. If you think you’ve reached the floor of your possible relaxation, it’s most likely a false one. There are always more things in the heavens and the earth than in my philosophies. My short life has been filled with expansion that I imagined would take many lifetimes to experience and wonders as numberless as the stars. My own process of unfolding far from done, and for my that is a decidedly joyous state of affairs! The Now, the Source is not a finite thing. It has no boundaries and has infinite dimensions, the circle with center everywhere and circumference nowhere, there is no end to what can be Realized. Many of us, myself included, won’t notice the sign-posts of entering a new plateau of awareness until after we’ve been living in the new territory for a little while. It has not been important for me to keep track of where I am on the journey, in fact that has often slowed the process. Rather, the most important element has been attending to the Silence itself. That process became a regular and repeatable experience through meditation practice. Having peers and teachers who were solidly steeped in the Presence was also a wonderful boon, allowing me to tune in, expand, and refine my own experience of Consciousness through resonance. But the foundation was the practice, for while Enlightenment may indeed be a grace induced accident, spiritual practice can make one very accident prone indeed.