The Direct Way: Thirty Practices to Evoke Awakening

It is the experience of waking up from the dream of the separate “me” and the way it experiences life, to the reality of universal Being and non-separation.

Awakened awareness practices focus on dis-identifying with the conceptual mind, specifically the false self or ego that we imagine ourselves to be. To call the ego a “false self” is not to disparage it or even judge it. It is to name it as what it is: a psychological process with which we have become overly accustomed to identifying. The false self

Awakening to this aspect of Being happens when awareness spontaneously dis-identifies from the content within awareness and becomes conscious of itself, as our own self nature. In other words, awareness is not something that we do, it is that which we are.

Awareness is not something you can see, touch, or taste. Awareness sees but cannot be seen. Awareness hears but cannot be heard. All your thoughts, ideas, judgments, and images about yourself are arising within and being witnessed by awareness.

In other words, your relationship with a current experience will determine how the next moment unfolds. It’s a way of removing or taking back a projection, so that we’re not making people responsible for how we feel, we’re not making life responsible for how we feel. Instead, we’re noticing that it’s our relationship with any moment that determines

human capacity to embody the infinite in our human lives. Since there is no end to this process, there is, as the Zen saying goes, “No anxiety about imperfection,” and, I might add, no egocentric orientation toward achievement or final goal. We are always and already complete Buddhas in our absolute Ground and constantly becoming Buddhas in our hum

Practice Twenty-Two •Today, simply notice how your relationship with a given experience, or even with your mind, determines your quality of being. •Pay attention to how your relationship with your experience is changeable. You can be upset that your mind is racing at a hundred miles an hour or you can acknowledge, “Okay, my mind’s racing right now.

These are pathways through which insight can move into us, be embodied in our humanity, and then acted in the world of time and space. This is what spiritual awakening is all about. This is what enlightenment is about. It’s not about having big experiences. That’s part of the process and those experiences can be life-changing, but at some point it

You may feel hesitant about this, or fearful. You’ll encounter different emotions each time, so let them arise; open your heart to those too. Open your heart to your fear, open your heart to your anxiety, open your heart to old thought patterns that insist you have to protect your heart at all times. This is important, because being in a state wher