What to do “after” enlightenment, asks the mind prior. Nothing different is the Answer (which, unlike the question, did not arise in time).
“Chop wood and carry water,” said Buddha, speaking practically.
One may find the body carries on and one is simply no longer seemingly subject to identification with it. I remember the very sensation of the body not being “part of me”, driving the car for a time felt like driving a hydroplane. The body is like any other mode of operation one can outside of Operation. Worry not about what to do with the body after enlightenment. If it remains, it will “do” of its own accord.
“Chop wood and carry water.” Do whatever it is that seems to need doing, and surrender the results. It’s better to do an imperfect job at the role one was born into, than a perfect job of one’s choosing. Otherwise, it is as if karma fluctuates so wildly that there is little chance of allowing any one false reality to exhaust itself, and for in its place, Knowledge of Self-Love to resume, to be recalled. In other words, if one is constantly “trying new roles”, one is but making more seeming boundaries to Self-Awareness. Instead, one may stick to one’s current role and simply testify to Awareness of Self vs consciousness of the body’s work. There is no need to make the body “go off” and “be enlightened”, “elsewhere”. It is folly to believe that Self-Love is more “here” than “there”; “wherever you go, there you are”. One sits with/accepts the current conditions as they arise and in that sense, waits until the karmic implications of believing in life in form are exhausted. Self takes the final step in the dissolution of form, and this step is so Purely Loving, there is nothing on Earth that can compare.
There is nowhere to go on the planet to “get God/Self/Love” but Within. Belief in goingness and gettingness in order to achieve happiness blocks innate Awareness of Love by projecting a view of lack onto the seemingly tangible screen where one is but meant to watch the sands of time run out. Yet the belief in lack naturally runs out when it is known that Love never left. Lack runs out, and the body may continue. Or lack runs out, and the body may fall to the dust from which it came. Either way, sit down mind’s belief that one must “go and do”, to know Self.
“Be still, and Know (I am) God (Self/Love),” said Jesus Christ, who forever rests in Self.
Darcie French 