Living enlightened in the real world, means to find your centre. To hold that centre no matter whether you are thinking in the head or feeling in the heart, the centre stays strong. That means achieving great inspiration but still having a firm grip on reality, grounded. That centre is never missing. 

For the centred person everything becomes sacred, beautiful, and whole. Whatever he or she is doing, no matter what it is, they focus their mind and take full mindfulness. Nothing is trivial. They will not say, “this is small and this is large.” This is important and this is unimportant, no, for them everything holds the same weight. An enlightened person is a balanced, centred calm person, who feels in harmony with everything. You can feel it in their touch. The great leaders of our time have been known for the power of their touch, the softness of the disposition and the power of the concentration.

A person who is centred is the same, no matter who they are with, or where they are. They have the same inner quality. When meeting a beggar they are not different from meeting a King. When on stage they are identical to offstage. When alone they are no different then when they are with friends. This is the mark of a person who has uncovered their True Nature; they are centred,
completely natural. There is no need to pretend, there is no act to present. They practice between performances. Falsehood has no place in their life because the centre is the axis around which they live their life. This includes handling discomfort and pain. Can you imagine being centred enough to welcome pain with the same loving kindness as you welcome pleasure? This is real personal harmony.

The second key to being enlightened in the real world is that the person remains balanced. Their life is balance. They are never one-sided, they never make a stand, they are never righteous because they understand that everything in this world is built in duality and therefore to stand on one side or the other breeds imbalance. A person who is imbalanced will have significant swings of emotion from infatuation to resentment, elation to depression, and attraction to repulsion. They may overeat and then starve. These same people, imbalanced, find extremes attractive and this is the source of their disharmony. 

Balanced living is neither excess nor deficiency. Neither overeating nor under eating. Never too much, never too little. The result of balanced living is obvious. A balanced person will be at ease. Whatever the situation, their relaxed attitude will not be lost. Unconditionally, the lack of tension will stay. A person who is balanced is always at ease. Even if the death of a loved one comes, and there is grief, they will be at ease: they will receive death as they receive birth. If misery comes they will receive it as they receive joy. Whatever happens it cannot dislodge this person from their place. This relaxed attitude, this ease is a consequence of being balanced.

When the Buddha was dying he asked his followers “why are you weeping? If you would have wept on another day it would have been okay, but this is the last day. Why are you weeping? Do not waste your time in weeping. Treat this day as any other day.”

The third key to enlightened in the real world is the lack of tension. Lack of tension is one of the great witnesses to the self-actualised person. They are at ease, they do not get stressed under any circumstance and take all of life in their stride. Their mood changes for nothing. Nothing disturbs them; nothing dislocates them from their home in their heart, their centeredness. To such a person you cannot add anything. You cannot take anything away, you cannot add anything, they are fulfilled. Their every breath is a fulfilled breath, silent and blissful they need nothing within. This is the ultimate freedom for everything this person will do they will do out of love, kindness and commitment. There is no hunger, no desperation, and no fear.

Buddha said, “I sit in order to be silent, but sometimes this is too easy, so I walk. But when I walk I carry the same silence within me. I sit, and inside it is the same — silent. I walk, the inside and outside are the same — silent” This is the model of a person who has found their True Nature.

We’re not talking here about a partial flowering. The great mystics of our time Jesus, Buddha Mohammed, Abraham, they were in their True Nature – totally actualised. If they had dedicated their lives to music then they would have been great musicians too. But their gift was in Spiritual-actualisation; they were in love in all circumstances. They were not commercial poets, but their words were poetry, they were not musicians but their message was music of the greatest kind. They were not trying to be specialists but were allowing themselves to simply be their True Nature and allow the beauty of their gifts to flow through their being. You can do this too.