In This Episode…

“Awakened consciousness is always deeply at ease. It’s very open and fluid and flexible. And that’s something we can sit down and practice. We don’t have to focus on our breath or repeat a word, or try to be mindful of every little sensation. Instead, we can use our meditation as a dynamic, active experiment in consciousnesses where we are making space for spiritual awakening to happen, to reveal itself.”—Craig Hamilton

We’ve all had moments of deep clarity and peace—only to watch them slip away. We’re often told these glimpses are fleeting, or that lasting awakening takes years—maybe even a lifetime—of dedicated practice. But what if that’s not the whole story?

In Direct Awakening: Four Meditations to Illuminate the Way, Craig invites you to explore a different way of approaching awakening. Instead of waiting for it to happen, what if we could practice being awake right now? This question led Craig to develop The Practice of Direct Awakening—a method that transforms meditation from a passive exercise into an active engagement with awakened consciousness.

Rather than following traditional meditation techniques that focus on quieting the mind or observing thoughts, Craig shares four direct awakening practices—subtle yet powerful shifts that open the door to deeper awareness. These inner postures invite us to move beyond the idea that awakening is something distant and instead experience it as something we can cultivate moment by moment.

This episode features a 25-minute guided meditation designed to take you beyond theory and into direct experience. If possible, find a quiet, comfortable space where you can fully immerse yourself in the meditation.

If you’re interested in exploring more of Craig’s approach to meditation, you’re invited to tune in to a 90-minute online workshop Craig will be hosting called Meditation 2.0 – The Miracle of Direct Awakening.

Register for free at: FreeMeditationWorkshop.com

Discover More about Craig’s Awakened Life Membership Program

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Many of us have occasional glimpses of higher potential, where we’ve experienced a flow, an alignment, the arising of spontaneous wisdom and creativity, or an expansive sense of being beyond the narrow confines of our ego.

These days, a lot of us have had these moments through our own practice and experience. But most of us have found that these moments tend to come and go. They tend to be moments — and then they’re gone.

Two Conventional Views on Our Higher Potential

Many of us have been told that these are just peak experiences. It’s the nature of peak experiences to come and go. You can’t have a peak experience all the time, otherwise it wouldn’t be a peak experience. It’s something that comes and goes.

So we’ve heard that explanation. Or we may have heard that if there is such a thing as a consistent awakening to these higher potentials, that it takes decades, if not a lifetime of spiritual practice, to get there. These are the two paradigms out there. One is that it’s not possible, or it will take a lifetime. The other is that it’s just a peak experience, anyway.

Questioning the Status Quo

It’s always going to come and go. I certainly was told that on the path, and I believed it for a while. But then as I began to go further on the path, and began to be more of a researcher and experimenter and teacher, I really started to question this status quo, to question these two fundamental assumptions that sustained awakening isn’t possible, or that, if it is, it takes a lifetime in a monastery to get there.

I started to experiment somewhat wildly with meditation and with spiritual practice. I started to look at awakening consciousness itself and say, “Well, what would it be like if meditation wasn’t something we approached like going to the gym to try to get strong, to try to build some inner quality that would then, maybe, bring about some future moment of enlightenment?

“What if meditation could be a practice of awakening? What if we could practice enlightenment when we’re meditating?” That’s where the whole body of work that I call the Practice of Direct Awakening started to emerge. There was the recognition that enlightened consciousness relates to the world in particular ways. There are ways that this awakened self shows up, and these can be practiced.

Embodying Awakened Consciousness

1. Deeply at Ease
One of the hallmarks of how awakened consciousness relates to the world is that it is deeply at ease. It’s very open and fluid and flexible. That’s something we can sit down and practice.
2. Embracing the Unknown
Awakened consciousness also isn’t grasping after knowing. It’s not trying to be certain all the time. It’s not afraid of the unknown. That’s something we can practice. What is the attitude of that practice? If I don’t need to know, I don’t need to be running after the mind all of the time.
3. Fully Present
Awakened consciousness is fully present in this moment. It’s not holding out. It’s not trying to get somewhere else. It’s not imagining a better future when I can really be awake. We’re fully invested. That’s something we can also practice.

And there are many other essential, natural inner postures or orientations of awakened consciousness that we can practice when we sit down to meditate.

Meditation as an Active Experiment in Consciousness

I don’t have to sit down and just focus on my breath for half an hour, hoping that makes enlightenment happen, or repeating a word, or trying to be mindful of every little sensation, or a lot of the common meditation techniques. Instead, I can use this meditative time as a very dynamic, active experiment in consciousnesses, where I am making space for spiritual awakening to happen — to reveal itself.

So that’s the essence of this practice.

One way of looking at it is that we’re practicing being free or being awake. Another way of looking at it is that we’re taking up practices that break all of our egoic habits, all of our unenlightened habits of mind and ordinary consciousness.

Another way of looking at it is that we’re putting ourselves in circumstances that can only be met by our enlightened self, by our true nature. We’re creating opportunities every day for it to show up, because these direct awakening practices are not something that our ego can do. Your ego, your conventional mind, can’t let go. It can’t be innocent. It can’t not be holding out for a better future.

So, we take up a practice that invites this other order of being and consciousness to come forth.

Guided Meditation

What I want to do now is invite us into meditation.

The basic meditation posture that we’re working with here, ideally, is sitting up straight, with our back unsupported, and not leaning back. We’re sitting on the edge of our chair, cushion, bench, or whatever we’re sitting on, in a way where our knees are a little bit below our hips. This enables us to have a natural, relaxed curve in our spine. All this really does, in my opinion, is make it less likely that we’re going to be distracted by pain because we’re seated with good, healthy posture.

It will also help keep us awake because if we’re leaning back against something, we don’t have to make any effort to sit up, and you can get a little bit more mentally relaxed. Wakefulness is really the point of the posture. Again, if you have any physical issues that prevent you from sitting in that way, then sit in a way that’s comfortable. It’s much more important that you’re comfortable.

We’re in our meditation posture. You can either have your eyes open, looking down at about a 45-degree angle, just resting somewhere in a relaxed way, or you can have your eyes closed.

1. The Practice of Allowing
The first practice that we’ll work with is the Practice of Allowing. We are just allowing this moment to be exactly the way it is. Allow everything to be as it is right now. I mean everything. Let your body feel the way it feels. Let your emotions be whatever they are. Let the world be as it is. Let your mind be doing whatever it’s doing. Just let go of any attempt to control this moment or change anything about this moment. Just be as you are, and let the moment be as it is.

The essence of this practice is having no preference. It doesn’t mean preferences won’t exert themselves. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have preferences in your daily life. It means that as we do this meditation, we step beyond all preferences. We don’t need things to be any particular way. No preference whatsoever. Just what is, is enough. Just let it be.

2. The Practice of Innocence
Now I want to invite you to move into the Practice of Innocence. This is the practice of not needing to know anything. Rest in the innocence of having no idea about anything. Not trying to understand, not trying to interpret or make meaning out of what’s happening. Leave all that behind. Leave the mind behind, with its endless need to know.

Experience the freedom of not knowing. Not knowing. No idea. Just being here, present, awake, conscious and not getting involved in the mind. You are free of the need to know.

The mind is not an obstacle to this practice. The mind can throw out as many theories as it wants to. It can present as many ideas as it can come up with. But you don’t have to engage with it. You don’t have to be interested in it. The essence of this practice is having no interest in trying to know anything. No interest in the mind, or in its theories.

3. The Practice of Awareness
I want to invite you to become aware of the space in which these thoughts and feelings and sensations are arising. Become aware of the awareness of this moment. The awareness of these words you are hearing or reading. The awareness of the thoughts arising in your mind. We’ve been practicing for a few minutes. Simply being here, present and awake and aware, without trying to know.

Now we’re bringing our attention to awareness itself, to consciousness itself. Notice your body and any physical sensations that you’re experiencing right now. Clothing against your skin, breath moving in and out, pressure, your seat against your legs and your buttocks, your feet touching the floor, or wherever they are. Just notice the body.

Now notice the awareness of the body, that which is aware of these bodily sensations. Give your attention to this awareness, which cannot be located in a particular place. It’s always here.

4. The Practice of Letting Go
I now want to invite you to stop trying to meditate at all. Just allow yourself to fall into the meditation that’s already occurring. There’s a part of us that is always in meditation. It’s always deeply at ease and at rest, uninvolved in the changes and in the comings and goings. Allow yourself to fall outside of time and into the infinite depth of your own being, which is already deep in meditation. Just let the meditation happen. Let the meditation meditate you.

Whatever way it does… you don’t need any idea of what it means to meditate. Just let yourself be carried by the meditation that’s happening.

I now want to invite you to gently let go of meditation. Allow yourself to easefully return to a more engaged relationship with life and the world and this opportunity to practice. Moving your body, stretching out any kinks. Notice the quality of your consciousness and your experience now. It’s different than it was when we started.

So, we just experimented with these four shades of Direct Awakening practice. Hopefully they give you a sense of at least how some of this works.

I really want to invite you to continue to work with these four practices in your own life and practice. You could make a practice out of this series, and I encourage you to spend more time with any particular practice that really gave you access or stood out for you. But if there were some that were confounding, don’t give up on those. Try really working with them, because it may take them a while to reveal their secrets. They each have secrets to reveal.

I am deeply convinced in the power of these Direct Awakening practices. They really work. I have seen the fruits, first in my own life, and now in thousands of people I’ve taught this to as a new step, a new opening, into another dimension of our own awakened consciousness.