Demystifying Awakening: A Buddhist Path of Realization, Embodiment, and Freedom

Innate Goodness Practice › Close your eyes. Seating yourself in a comfortable position, place your hands in your lap or high on your thighs. Take a few deep belly breaths inhaling and exhaling as thoroughly as possible. Feel your feet on the ground while noticing the support of the floor in the building you are in. See if you can feel the support o

One of the most useful approaches to integrate your realization is to observe and monitor your behavior. It is the honest self-examination of whether you are walking your talk. I have used, and recommend to students, a spiritual journal to record daily occurrences of incongruence. The incongruences are opportunities to recognize and change our unwh

Breath Awareness Practice › Close your eyes. Seating yourself in a comfortable position, place your hands in your lap or high on your thighs. Take a few deep belly breaths inhaling and exhaling as thoroughly as possible. Feel your feet on the ground while noticing the support of the floor in the building you are in. See if you can feel the support

In short, the Awakening was a series of realizations that (1) I was not a me, (2) no one was a me, and (3) everything and everyone is an undivided expression of the wholeness of pure unconditioned love and innate goodness. These realizations were my true identity! This was the base reality of all life-forms.

and relax. When you notice your awareness has shifted away from awareness of the breath, gently and kindly return it without criticism or self-judgment.

this direct experience of true reality, opened to a further realization: everything and everyone is made of pure, connected, unified, unconditioned love and innate goodness. This brought tears of unsurpassed joy, relief, and profound trust in the benevolence of the universe.

Breath awareness meditation is quite simple in its instruction: “Breathe, and know you are breathing, right now, in the region between the nostrils and upper lip.”

While our inner foundation can shift in a big First Awakening, it then takes rigorous investigation to uncover what in us is incongruent with the truth revealed in a First Awakening.

I had a teacher suggest that I maintain an 80/20 rule. This means that I maintain 80 percent of my awareness on my inner processing and experiences and place, at most, 20 percent of my awareness on the person I am interacting with or other external interactions.

Whichever kind of concentration meditation you practice, you start by focusing on one meditative object to the exclusion of all else, and you begin to witness the functioning of your personality. Your mind shares with you all the things you need to feel comfort and have ease in the meditation.