Here is the thing: if you require LARGE experiences to feel alive, you are stupid. Coarse. Undeveloped. The goal is this sort of thing every day. Just feeling good, feeling alive, feeling connected to life, and not even necessarily in any lasting way to anyone. Just life. Your life: they only one you have right now, as far as any of us can tell (I’ve had some odd experiences, but not getting into that right now, possibly ever).
All the hippies were chasing big thrills, big highs, big Samadhi’s. As George Harrison put it, presumably referring to a personal LSD or other drug experience, “feeling every atom in your body alive”.
I have no complaint with this. But how do you reintegrate that into ordinary life? Is it not smarter, wiser, and more practical in every way to gradually move your life, your ordinary life, in that direction? You get a lot more special moments.
This whole focus on “enlightenment” is really silly, I think. There are countless enlightenments, and none of us are smart enough to really be able gauge the caliber and depth of any claimed enlightenment on the part of anyone else.
Particularly superficial, in this regard, in my own view, are the many Zen stories where someone was sitting next to a stream or something and “achieved Enlightenment”. No, they just upgraded a qualitative level. That’s good, but that’s not the end of any story I personally want to hear.
Tantra just says that God is everywhere. You can’t look anywhere and not see God. You can’t feel anything and not feel it in God. Or creation. Or reality. The terminology doesn’t really matter. You go out to God through where you are.
The alternative is for God and “enlightenment” to be Out There, somewhere. Over some mountain. At the end of some endless path.
Why not reach out and arrive home, right where you sit? That’s my vote.