What is enlightenment?
If I take the phrase literally, I arrive at something simple: to be in the light. But even that raises an immediate problem. How could we ever know if we had arrived? How would we measure it? How would we verify that we had reached some final destination—especially when the human experience itself feels unfinished by design?
As with anything I write, I don’t offer this as instruction. If what follows feels meaningful to you, borrow it. Use it as a lens. If it doesn’t, move on without friction.
I’m a big believer in only carrying the mythologies, metaphors, and beliefs that feel true to you. I don’t believe any of us should tell another person how to think about the spiritual path.
That path is already lonely enough.
In Christianity, we have the concept of conversion. But I’ve often wondered how conversion differs from enlightenment—and whether the difference is more psychological than spiritual.
To me, conversion has always sounded like a vow:
I will try.
I will try to be more like Jesus. I will try to live better. I will try to love more deeply.
I will let Jesus into my heart.
I will no longer harden my heart.
I will try to always follow my heart.
But here’s the part that often gets skipped: conversion does not turn you into a good person. It doesn’t even reliably turn you into a better one—at least not right away.
What conversion really is, if we’re honest, is an agreement.
An agreement to try.
An agreement to surrender.
An agreement to begin.
The problem is that churches sometimes treat conversion like a finish line. As if the moment you raise your hand, walk the aisle, or say the prayer, you have crossed over into a new category of person—saved, changed, fixed.
But the truth is far messier.
You don’t stop being a sinner because you converted. You simply became a sinner who admitted it—and agreed to work with it. Surrender, it turns out, is not a moment. It’s a lifelong process. At least for most of us.
For me, conversion has never meant moral perfection. It has meant orientation.
Follow your heart.
I believe we are all born with an internal compass—quiet but reliable—that lets us know right from wrong long before we have language for either.
You can see this clearly in children. Ask a small child, “How did that make you feel?” after they’ve done something they know was wrong—hitting another child, stealing a toy. The response is rarely intellectual. It’s emotional. The body already knows.
But context matters.
Ask a child who struck another because they believed they were defending someone weaker, and the response is often very different. They may not cry at all. They may defend their action. They followed their heart. They acted in alignment with what they believed was right.
The same behaviors can carry a completely different moral weight depending on intention, context, and internal orientation.
That distinction has followed me into adulthood—and into my spiritual thinking.
On my own path, I use a lot of imagery. Some of it might look strange or indulgent to others.
The illustration at the top of this post is just one example. Is that what ascension literally looks like? Of course not. But that isn’t the point.
It’s not meant to show what ascension is.
It’s meant to help you feel what ascension—or even descent—might feel like.
That’s all. Nothing more.
In that sense, it isn’t very different from Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
No one believes God literally looks like that. No one thinks Adam was actually reclining on stone while a bearded deity reached down from the clouds. And yet the image endures, because it communicates something words struggle to hold.
It makes me feel how God loves His creation.
Not as command.
Not as control.
But as nearness. As invitation. As almost-touching.
Over time, I’ve found it helpful to think in colors.
Not in a rigid symbolic system, but experientially. As if the heart itself changes color as it softens toward higher energies—higher frequencies, longer wavelengths. Pink, purple, and peach clouds feel far more ethereal than mountains, rocks, and trees.
That doesn’t make mountains lesser. It just reminds me that the more delicate or wounded something is, the more care it requires.
Strength protects itself.
Fragility asks to be tended.
That’s one reason the image of a female angel resonates so strongly with me. In my imagination, she never quite makes it past fuchsia. And that matters.
Fuchsia is vivid. Alive. Passionate.
But it isn’t white. To me, that means she is still human enough to fail. Still human enough to want. Still human enough to sin.
And maybe she enjoys being a little naughty sometimes.
Maybe God is perfectly fine with that.
Because without the possibility of being hurt, there can be no healing. Without falling, there is no rising. Without descent, ascension becomes cosmetic. The angel who has never known gravity cannot truly fly.
That’s why I resist the idea of enlightenment as a fixed destination. It sounds too final. Too clean. Too much like graduation.
I don’t want only one go at this game.
I don’t want a single perfect run where the lessons are completed and the board is cleared. I want texture. Contrast.
Many attempts. Many “toys.” Many opportunities to learn something the long way around.
That’s where ascension feels different to me than enlightenment.
Ascension isn’t about arrival.
It’s about direction.
Conversion says, I will try.
Enlightenment says, I see more clearly.
Ascension says, I am willing to keep going.
And going, it turns out, is often lonely.
Not because others aren’t walking spiritual paths, but because no one can walk yours for you.
No institution can do your surrender. No belief system can automate your humility. No conversion experience exempts you from the slow, repetitive work of becoming.
Maybe that’s the real misunderstanding with conversion—not that it fails, but that we expect it to finish something it was only meant to start.
For me, I don’t feel the need to choose a single word. Ascension, enlightenment, conversion—they’re just different angles on the same movement. I don’t need a label for the destination. I just need to keep my orientation honest.
And when Miley sings “The Climb”, and Pink sings “Try,” what that means to me is simple:
Try to climb your Lone Mountain.
That is all.
