Enlightenment is the main key to happiness

 I liken being a human being to something like an animal being stuck in the mud waiting to die because the animal cannot get to water or food to stay alive. This is how I at least have compassion for all humans and other living beings by seeing them all sort of like an animal stuck in the mud waiting to die.

However, then if you are thinking while being stuck in the mud you might see a branch nearby that either is just there or that someone breaks off and reaches this branch of survival out to you. You might reach out and grab this branch being offered to you and then you struggle and pull yourself up out of the mud.

You are very grateful to be saved from death and you might cry and thank the person or persons helping you out of the mud. You vow never to accidentally fall into the mud and potentially die that way again while being very grateful to the person or persons who saved your life.

In some ways this is enlightenment.

I think I reached higher and higher states of enlightenment starting in my late 20s and really getting there by my early 30s. Before about 25 years of age I had given up hope and was preparing to die. Then my girlfriend got pregnant and we got married and I had a son. The enlightenment for me was realizing I was now responsible for a little child who needed me. This was all I needed to get my act together to get jobs and start businesses to take care of my wife and child. A few years later because my then wife was really too young to be a successful mother then, I became a single father for a few years until I married again. Being a single father enlightened me even more about myself and my son and all life in general.

So, enlightenment for me came from being what is called "A Householder Yogi" which means my discipline to enlightenment came from being a father and a husband. Now at 75 I have 3 biological children and one adopted daughter and God daughters too that I watch out for in my life. 

My personal enlightenment came directly by choosing to take care of my children along the way.

By God's Grace