It’s easy to be enlightened when we feel enlightened. But how can we live our lives as an expression of higher consciousness even when we aren’t in the midst of a profound spiritual experience? In this 6-minute audio from a Facebook Q&A session, Craig answers a question about how to live from our highest, most enlightened selves, even when we don’t feel connected. In doing so, he illustrates how we can use direct awakening practices to bring enlightened consciousness into every moment of our lives.

Below the audio, we’ve also included a transcript of the talk, if you’d prefer to engage the content in that way.

Click here to download an MP3 version.

TRANSCRIPT

Craig Hamilton: Amy says, “Why do I keep forgetting I’m part of universal consciousness, and how do I get past the fear of loving unconditionally?” So, two questions, and they’re certainly related, but they’re also different.

When you talk about forgetting that you’re part of universal consciousness, we could frame that in many different ways. Each of us might not use those exact words, but we each have our own version of that, don’t we? It often aligns with something along the lines of, “There are higher potentials that I’ve discovered. I have tasted higher consciousness. I have glimpsed a different way of living. I know myself to be something other than the mind and ego. I have discovered who I am beyond that.” We’ve all had peak experiences, epiphanies, or awakenings. It’s different for each of us, but we all have our own version of having tasted something profound, something we find challenging to live in alignment with all the time. I find it hard to really stay there, to live from that place.

To some degree, we could say that some people will tell you that’s just how it is. There are peak experiences where we discover higher possibilities, and then there’s the rest of life, which is definitely not a peak experience. That’s just how life works. All we can ever hope for are those peaks, where we catch glimpses of the sublime. Life will never be like that all the time because those moments are just peak experiences.

But I live in the opposite of that paradigm. What’s really true is that those glimpses, those peak experiences, and those sublime discoveries are moments when the veil falls away. In those moments, we come to know something that is always true about life and about ourselves. We are having a brief glimpse of something fundamentally true—something that can be our ongoing lived experience.

The point of life is not to just have momentary peak experiences followed by long valleys of mediocrity and unenlightenment. The purpose of life, and I think this is inherent in any experience of spiritual awakening, is to recognize that this is how it’s supposed to be, that in fact, this is how it always is. Therefore, I don’t have to forget this. I don’t have to turn away from this. I can live my whole life like this because this is who I really am.

If we’re willing to take that stand and anchor ourselves in that truth, it opens an inquiry into, “Well, why am I not?” and “How am I obscuring that?” What are the habits I’m living out daily? What are the habitual ways of relating to my experience that obscure this truth? At the end of the day, it’s all just habits of unenlightenment, habits of unconsciousness that we participate in because they have a lot of momentum. That’s what obscures our true nature.

That’s why I’m so excited about the Practice of Direct Awakening. We take the position that universal consciousness is always here, and it’s who you already are. We now know practices that align with these natural ways of being—ways that can help us step into that consciousness and invite it into our lives.

In every meditation session and throughout our daily lives, we’re not putting it outside ourselves or waiting for it to come back, even if we’ve had a profound experience of it before. We’re not practicing now to try to get back to that profound experience; we’re practicing now to align with the truth of our own experience. We’re practicing to live into and live from that profound consciousness.

This approach takes time out of the equation and removes that distance. We’re not saying, “Oh, it’s up there. I know it, and then I forget it.” You don’t really forget it. You know it because you ask this question. But are you willing to plant your stake in it?

Let’s practice it and live it without waiting to rediscover it again. That’s the fundamental shift that I would invite us all into.