In This Episode…

​​“The practice of Direct Awakening is always only about this moment. It’s always only about awakening in this moment of practice. So we need to come to our practice with the full optimism and audacity that this moment is the moment that I awaken. There’s nothing that could get in my way.” —Craig Hamilton

In this episode, Craig sheds light on an often-overlooked aspect of meditation—the mindset we bring to the practice.

While technique gives us the structure, it’s the mindset that brings energy and direction to our meditation. Most of us focus on getting the technique right, asking questions like, “Am I doing this correctly?” But the attitudes and mental dispositions we bring to each session are equally essential.

Craig explores two powerful meditation mindsets: audacious optimism and intentionality. These aren’t just subtle refinements—they’re transformative forces that can unlock greater depth, clarity, and alignment in your practice. By embracing these mindsets, you can infuse your meditation with a dynamic energy that accelerates your spiritual growth.

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

I want to talk a little bit about what I would call “practice mindsets.”

I’ve never really used the word mindset before. I’ve talked about our attitudes, character traits, qualities, and things we bring to our practice, but it occurred to me as I was creating this session that mindset is actually a good name for the things I want to talk about here.

There are a few inner foundations that will support us to get the most out of this practice, and the first one is what I would call “cultivating an audacious optimism.”

Mindset #1: Audacious Optimism

Spiritual awakening is the most radical thing we could give ourselves to. It’s the biggest leap a human being can make. It is the highest potential we could ever aspire to. It’s the breaking of all the unconscious momentum — not just of our personal past, but of our entire human past, and even our animal past. It’s a profound shift in consciousness to open to the sacred depth of our true nature and then allow that to begin to live our life.

This process is all about awakening to that deeper dimension of who we are and learning to live from it, so that literally our entire life becomes an expression of our very highest potential. It is such a radical thing to do that it requires us to approach the process with audacious innocence and audacious optimism.

In other words, in order to even have a shot at this — to even be able to give yourself to this process consistently — you have to believe it’s possible, and that it’s possible for you. And as you practice, you have to believe it’s possible for you right now.

The reason for this is because the nature of this practice is not about getting better at something in the future. Often when we engage in any kind of practice in our life, the purpose is to get better at something with time. We practice our musical instruments so that we become better at playing them, and so when it comes time to perform or record, we’re at the top of our game. Or we practice a form of sport — our tennis swing or our golf swing, our skiing form, or whatever our sport is — to get better at the game, or to use the sports metaphor, to win the game.

But spiritual practice, particularly the spiritual practice I teach, The Practice of Direct Awakening, is always only about this moment. It’s always only about awakening in this very moment of practice. The practice only works if we give up the idea of time, of a future I’m trying to prepare for or perfect myself for. Since awakening is always only a right-now event, this is what enables the practice to work. Therefore, we need to come to our practice with the full optimism and audacity of believing this moment is the moment that I awaken. “This moment, it is fully possible for me. I can do this, there’s nothing in my way. There’s nothing that could get in my way.”

Persevering Through Our Voices of Limitation

That sounds simple, but you can probably also feel how part of you could try to say yes in a superficial sort of way: “Oh, okay. I’m just going to say a big, ‘Yes.’ Yes, I’m here to do this. I believe this.” But you could feel that, deep down, maybe you don’t really believe it. You’re not sure how to do it. You don’t know that it’s really possible. You don’t really have that audacious optimism.

So when I talk about cultivating this mindset, I mean genuinely reflecting and cutting through your own beliefs and limitations that say, “It’s not really possible. Maybe it’s possible for that person, but not for me. I don’t have what it takes. I don’t have this or that. I’m not disciplined enough. I haven’t done enough practice. I’m not sure I’m the right type for this.”

We need to be willing to face into and persevere through all the limiting voices that exist inside of us, that are constantly commentating about the possibility of awakening and about ourselves. Ultimately we can cut through them completely so that we can be in this audacious optimism that’s required to really awaken.

Two Levels of Mindset

Some of the mindsets I’m talking about have two levels. There’s a level you can invoke or get rooted in, right before you practice. You sit down and remind yourself that you’re going all the way, right now, and there’s no preparation involved. You’re ready. Right before you practice, you get on the right footing for practice.

There’s another level that’s an ongoing reflection and contemplation process, where you are asking, “Do I really believe it’s possible for me to go this far?” If not, let’s look at those limiting beliefs and deconstruct them, see through them, and get to the place where you are congruent with this sense of possibility.

I want to give you a moment now to sit with yourself and your own sense of “possibility consciousness,” your own sense of audacious optimism.

Sense the part of yourself that has that audacity, and that believes that possibility. And also notice any part of yourself that doesn’t — the doubts, the limiting voices. Just take a moment to sit with where you are on that spectrum, with all the complexity within you around this ultimate possibility.

Mindset #2: Your Intention To Awaken

The second spiritual mindset I want to talk about is our intention to awaken, which also includes our motivation to practice. Our ability to practice consistently, and what we bring to our practice, have a lot to do with our motivation. People say, “I don’t feel motivated to practice, and I don’t feel like practicing.” Or we sit down and practice, but we’re not really compelled to meditate. We have the mindset of, “It’s on my list. I know I’m supposed to do it so I’m sitting down to do it. I know it’s good for me, so I’m doing it.”

Hopefully, we’ve also all had the experience of feeling a very powerful spiritual motivation propelling us to practice. We have this yearning, this longing to be free, this sense of possibility that is pulling us toward it. Or, we have a sense of the unconsciousness of the human race, our own unconsciousness. We still act out habits that we know we want to get beyond, and we sometimes speak or behave in ways that feel out of alignment with our higher potential. And that’s propelling us in a way, but there’s also something more that’s driving us to take spiritual practice seriously.

That’s the motivation I’m speaking about. This motivation can be fueled by a powerful spiritual intention to practice that we can cultivate.

Intention is a big word. What I really mean here is simply wanting it—wanting it for the right reasons and wanting it deeply enough to bring it into reality.

Working with the Paradox of Spiritual Intention

One of the paradoxes of meditation practice is that, to some degree, we’re being asked to want nothing. We’re being asked not to try to change anything, not to have any opinion about how things should be, and to just allow the moment to unfold without an agenda. And at the same time, we’re being asked to want spiritual awakening more than we’ve ever wanted anything in our lives.

The Indian sage Ramana Maharshi said, “You have to want enlightenment like a drowning person wants air.” We need this powerful motive, this powerful intent. And at the same time, the intent is to go beyond our own limited or egoic world of intentions, our world of motives, our world of wants, needs and fears.

It’s a paradox. We don’t need to undo this paradox as much as we need to work both sides of it until it ultimately resolves itself in our experience.

Priming Your Practice & Reflecting on Your Intention

The other piece of context for this discussion of motivation and intention relates to how many of us often have the experience of being distracted when we’re meditating. We’re sitting there, meditating, but we keep getting involved in the mind, stories, planning, or this and that. Or we fall asleep, or daydream. Whatever it is, we find that we’re not really showing up for our practice the whole time. This also can happen because we don’t have a powerful enough motive or intent.

Before you meditate, you can spend a little time with your motivation and your intention by reflecting on, “Why am I meditating? Why does this matter?” Remind yourself of that reason. Maybe you come to meditation during a busy day and you pause and reflect, “Okay, wait, there’s all that going on, but there’s this practice also. What am I here to do?”

I’m bringing this up because we might often be coming to our meditation looking for some relief from the stress of our day, right? If we have a motivation to meditate, it might very often be, “Ah, I just want to relax. I just want to let go of the day. I just want that peaceful, quiet feeling for a little while. My life’s chaotic. I just want the peace of meditating.”

It’s not bad to want some peace in your day. It’s not bad to want a little break from the swirl and the chaos. But it’s not going to be adequate. That motivation is not going to be adequate to propel real spiritual awakening because there are times when it’s going to be uncomfortable, and if all you want to do is feel good and peaceful, then you’re not going to persevere through that discomfort to the clarity and illumination on the other side. We need to find a reason to practice and to meditate that is bigger than, “I want to feel some contentment and peace right now.”

Contemplations To Build Your Intention

I’m going to invite you to contemplate some things on an ongoing basis in your life to build a more profound intention for awakening. You can also contemplate on these things briefly every time before you begin to practice. This has to do with relating more closely to why awakening is important, why it is significant, and why it really matters, and letting that become a living part of your consciousness. “I must awaken. Humanity must awaken.” Let that contemplation become a living force within you.

1. This Precious Opportunity
One of the things that can help us build our intention is reflecting on the precious and rare opportunity you have been given to be pursuing spiritual awakening. If you look around at this world, a large percentage of people don’t have any such opportunity or even know about such an opportunity, for various reasons. For some it’s because they’re living in poverty, scraping to get by. They’re only concerned with trying to get enough for the next meal for them or their family, and living in very primitive, basic conditions. There’s no leisure time to think, “I want to meditate and pursue spiritual awakening.” It might never occur or show up in their life.

Some people are living in war-torn conditions around the planet, which puts you in basic survival consciousness. But we have this precious opportunity to not be in survival consciousness. So, reflecting broadly on the state of the human condition and the fortunate opportunity we have — which also gives rise to the obligation that comes with being a fortunate person who can pursue such things.

If you can practice, and you have the freedom to practice, and you even recognize this potential, the sense that you must practice, then you don’t have the luxury of just living a self-centered life, or just pursuing your own comfort and happiness, or just coasting because everything is working reasonably well for me and your reasonably safe. We need to realize at a deep level that we’re helping this whole human condition to rise up. We can play this important part in awakening human consciousness.

2. The Evolutionary Significance of Spiritual Awakening
Another very powerful thing we can contemplate is the evolutionary significance of spiritual awakening for life, for consciousness, and for our planet. We look around at the devastation being wrought on our biosphere. Every couple weeks now, a new, very alarming report on the state of our climate is coming out about how rapidly climate change is accelerating. Without getting into endless details, the painful part of that is that we have the technology to address it, and we have the steps we need to take as a society, as a species, clearly mapped out. But what’s missing? The will.

The long-term, higher-order interest is being overshadowed by short-term self-interest and the pursuit of wealth, and there is a lack of will to really change, to make some sacrifices and painful moves. I’m not going to get into too much analysis. You can do your own analysis, but the point is to look at the human condition and how we’re relating to the fact that we’re wrecking our planet. Again, we reflect on this not just to feel bad about what’s happening on the planet, but to realize, “Wow, we human beings are just not very conscious yet. We’re not very mature yet. We’re really a very primitive species still, just with an enormous amount of power. It’s dangerous, and it’s frightening, and it’s kind of sad.”

Can this be a motivation for us—to be part of the solution? To be one of those waking up, not just to the need to live a more ecologically conscious life, but to something beyond that? We can evolve beyond the seeds within us, so to speak, that give rise to these pathologies. We can become non-pathological beings—humans who have risen above the pathologies of the ego, survival consciousness, self-orientation, tribalism, ethnocentrism, and other lower-order structures of consciousness.

We can become truly global citizens who genuinely care about the greater good and are willing to make sacrifices for all the right reasons—to serve the flourishing of life and consciousness. We can become the kind of exemplars of humanity we aspire to be. And in doing so, we can realize, “I need to awaken my spiritual nature for that to happen.”

3. The Potential of Awakening
I’ve given you a little bit of a riff of things to reflect upon. I think there are a lot of other things you could draw into your intention around that. But the main point—and the last piece—is to see and reflect on the potential of awakening, to the degree that you’ve tasted it, sensed it in yourself, and seen it in other people. When this sacred context, that is the foundation of everything, becomes realized, incarnated and manifest in human form, then we can begin to create a kind of heaven on Earth. Even if it’s just a few of us awakening initially, and even if it’s in smaller ways, the ripple effects of that are significant.

So I invite you to reflect on all of this for a few minutes before you meditate. It’s good to contemplate it throughout your daily life and begin to really grapple with the fact of, “Oh, yes. This is why I’m on the spiritual path. This is why I care about this. It’s not just to feel a bit better today, but because I really feel that it is a matter of ultimate significance for human life that I wake up out of the dream of ego and into the radical, liberating truth of unity, wholeness, and the higher evolutionary process that’s unfolding.

I encourage a lot of that. I encourage a lot of reflection on both of these practice mindsets: cutting through all of your limiting beliefs and coming into possibility consciousness and audacious optimism; and reflecting on the deeper question of why this matters.

If we’re all reflecting on both of those things daily, we’ll be creating a very powerful force within ourselves to compel us to practice, and when we’re doing it, to propel us deep in our practice, beyond all the distractions around and within us.