I had enlightenment once.

It was on a meditation trip to South Korea, where we meditated all day, every day, for 2.5 months.

A big part of the stay was active meditation; unselfish work while applying the meditation method in real-life circumstances.

We worked making beds, doing laundry, serving food at the cafeteria, feeding chickens and pigs at the farm, and growing plants and leaves in greenhouses.

It was weird to do so much work as I was paying good money for the retreat. My brain would ask multiple times per day, “what the f*** am I doing here?”.

The point was to kill that voice in the mind that constantly questions everything and just do. Our ego is selfish and wants to take rather than give, so this was hard to do for a long stretch. After doing work for over two months, something broke inside me.

I was working in a greenhouse on the ground planting hundreds of seeds to grow sesame leaves. My body was stiff, so it was an uncomfortable position. The Koreans were much more flexible than me. Out of nowhere, I suddenly felt incredibly humbled by the experience. I couldn’t hold my tears back.

The realization that came was about how nature is incredible. You plant a tiny seed that seems like nothing, and it turns into a beautiful plant that can feed animals and humans. It’s so perfect!

There is a force that makes plants grow and causes nature to evolve constantly. It’s something more than we can explain with pure science. Nature is incredible, and we go through our days never thinking about it.

We complain and fight each other and forget the true beauty of nature we live in. It’s giving us everything we need, yet we’re so detached from it.

That was my enlightenment.

Here are a couple of pics from the trip: