We spend most of our lives in an altered state, caught up in mind trips, conditioned scripts and habitual patterns. This path returns us to the unaltered state, which is known as realizing our Buddha-nature or finding enlightenment.
Enlightenment is not about exotic spiritual states, getting psychic abilities, blissing out or having transcendent experiences. Such things may or may not arise as incidental aspects of our practice – but they are not the main point. Enlightenment refers to something much more basic and primordial – much more what we are. It is not something that we have to become. It is in us as the fabric of our being and the nature of existence. It is our innate sanity: clear, present, simple, awake. It is not an altered state – it is our un-altered state; what we are beyond all the conditioned scripts, fixed-identities and mind-trips that distract us from our Buddha-nature. The path is about unraveling all the habits and conceptions that alter our experience and alienate us from our intrinsic enlightenment.
– Excerpted from public teachings by Pema Khandro