It is achieved in two stages. The first stage is finding out who we are and what we want from life. This can only be done by thought, lots of it. We need to spend time alone in peaceful environments and allow ourselves to think about things slowly, without forcing our thoughts in any direction. Meditation.

There are many ways of meditating. Some prefer to just sit and think, but we must find what suits us best. Gardening, fishing and walking are all good ways of allowing the mind time to contemplate life. It can’t be done by sitting down and thinking about enlightenment, we must let enlightenment come to us, we can’t go to it.

In the east a mantra is often used to concentrate the mind. In Hinduism the chant Om is used as a mantra. Pronounced aum it covers the whole range of sound vibrations, so it is said that he who chants om mentally repeats the sacred book of the whole universe. The western equivalent is Amen and the Moslems call it Amin. It represents truth or existence, drives away all worldly thoughts and removes distractions.

That is the idea anyway, but reaching that mental state takes years of practice and most of us will never get there. Whether we use a mantra or not is unimportant, but contemplation and concentrated thought is the way to learn about ourselves and give ourselves a chance of finding out who we are and what we want from life.

It is very easy to make ourselves think we are something we are not, something we would like to be, even something like someone else that we admire. But we must avoid this and let our thoughts come to us.

The second stage is being the person we are. We must be who we are. It is easy to try to be something we would like to be, even when in reality we cannot possibly be that way.

It is also easy to believe that what you want is reliant on someone else. This can never work because no two people have the same agenda. That is not to say you can’t share your life with someone you love, that is the first prize, but it takes compromise and understanding.

Just as we must be who we are, we must allow others to be who they are. Trying to change someone into what we want them to be is futile and damaging to both.