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

There was no me doing anything! It felt as though my consciousness, my soul, exhaled fully all the pent-up anxiety about what I could see was strictly a concept—that I was the doer of my life. I was not the doer. There was no doer. There had never been a doer.

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.

When my awareness and intuition arrived simultaneously at the source of sound, I arrived at the intersection of each of the other senses and the four intuitive markers previously placed by me. When I went to place the fifth mental marker, I deeply saw that I was not there! I was not here! Not only was there no me directing the source of the five se

In the moment of Awakening, while my consciousness was landing more fully in the absence of a self, another realization flashed into my consciousness. Everything and everyone is without a me, a separate and distinct self.

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.

equanimity

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.

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.”

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.