Enlightenment is not so much knowing as unknowing. It is not so much learning as unlearning. It is a second and chosen naïveté, without forgetting all the contradictions and complexity in between. It is more surrendering than concluding, more trusting than fixing, and all gratuitous grace, for which we can only give thanks.
We cannot get ourselves enlightened by any known program, ritual, or moral practice. This drives the religionists crazy, but, as Jesus said, the Spirit blows wherever it pleases (see John 3:8). All we can do is stay on the journey; listen to its lessons, both agony and ecstasy; and ask for that most rare and crucial of gifts: true openness, which Jesus called trust or faith. All we can really do is to keep our ego out of the way and ask that we will recognize the secret doorway that God opens for us.
—from the book From Wild Man to Wise Man: Reflections on Male Spirituality
by Richard Rohr
