Hey friends,
Welcome back to the Meditation School podcast.
And in this episode,
I want to talk about what it means to live an enlightened life.
And to do that,
Maybe we have to talk a bit about what enlightenment is.
I was just on my friend Dawson Church's show,
It's called the High Energy Health Radio Show.
That should be out sometime in February,
I believe.
And he asked me this question,
What is enlightenment?
What does it mean to live an enlightened life?
And I'm actually just finishing teaching a series on this topic in meditation school.
So a couple of angles with enlightenment.
One analogy that I like for enlightenment is you walk into a room and it's like turning the light on in a dark room.
So we have this deep sea of unconsciousness,
Maybe individual and possibly collective unconsciousness.
And we have a lot of suppressed energy,
Emotion,
Memory,
Maybe even power,
Abilities,
Creativity,
All in the dark.
Some of it's in our dungeon,
Some of it's in the closet,
Some of it's in a huge Amazon warehouse of darkness.
Maybe we've been carrying around for lifetimes,
Who knows?
So enlightenment isn't just a surface level thing.
We have to really go down and go deep and turn the lights on.
And when we do,
We have the ability to see.
So enlightenment is the ability to see what was in the dark,
Not just to see it,
But also to accept it.
So enlightenment is when we're not in resistance to everything life puts us,
Puts in front of us,
Where we can have acceptance and compassion and awareness all together.
A deeper description of enlightenment might be the waking up to the big self,
Like capital S.
So we have the little self,
Which is,
You know,
My name is David.
I have this past.
I own a car.
I live in a house.
I'm from the United States.
My father has Russian accent,
All the things,
Right?
That's the little self.
And then someone criticizes us.
No,
That's not true.
I don't like that.
Why do you say that?
Rare.
Always trying to get more out of life,
Always trying to find validation,
Right?
The ego self.
And then there's the big self,
Which is perhaps the one unifying consciousness that permeates everything and takes infinite forms.
And an analogy for that might be the little self is like the wave on the ocean.
And the big self is the ocean.
And enlightenment is recognizing that you are this sea of infinite awareness,
This oneness.
And then it's taking human form.
The light of awareness is passing through this human form.
And your job is to cultivate it and share it with the world.
And however you see fit.
And that's where we get to living an enlightened life.
It's not enough just to be enlightened and sit still in peace and bliss forever.
We may have to live and share ourselves with the world.
Maybe you want to sit in a cave with your enlightenment for the rest of your lives.
That's cool.
Go for it.
Some people do that,
But maybe you want to create up,
Create art,
Or have children,
Or build a business,
Or heal,
Or teach.
And so I actually wrote a book on this topic.
That's coming out to 2222.
February 22nd,
2022 called the seven energies of the soul.
I'll pop a link in the description to it.
And I did do the audio book myself.
So if you want to hear me talk a lot,
You can listen to that.
But the premise of the book and the premise of living an enlightened life is we have this light of awareness that passes through the prism of our human form.
And it could take the direction of being a creator,
A healer,
A warrior,
A lover,
An artist,
Explorer,
A master.
It could take all these different directions,
Just like there are seven main colors in the rainbow.
And then we mix colors,
Right?
So maybe you're a creator and a healer,
A lover,
And a warrior.
At one moment,
You're a teacher and an explorer.
And maybe you're three or four or all seven at once and beyond.
But the quality of awareness that you have when you touch the world,
When you come into contact with other human beings,
When you make decisions,
When you set intentions,
When you decide to live a certain kind of life and find your purpose,
That's where the rubber hits the road.
That's what it means to live an enlightened life,
To cultivate awareness and bring it into the world.
It's not enough to be enlightened,
Sitting and meditating,
And then being a jerk when you're out in the world or being selfish,
Right?
So that's what it is for me.
We turn that light on,
Find out what's in our unconscious,
What's down in the dungeon,
What's hidden in the closet,
In the warehouse,
Reconcile that,
Heal ourselves,
And then fully show up as an authentic human being in the world.
And how do we do that?
Obviously,
One of the ways I teach is through meditation.
So we sit down,
We close our eyes,
And we start to work layer by layer.
I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of free content all over the internet.
So if you need help,
Find some from me or from any other teacher that suits you and do the work from the inside out and see what happens.
And there's this awesome quote I want to finish with from Pablo Picasso.
He says,
The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away.
I feel like part of this podcast and my teachings,
What I do is giving it away.
And I always tell anybody,
If you can't afford meditation school,
Email me,
I'll give it away.
You can have it.
No big deal.
I want everybody to be able to get whatever it is that they need.
Thanks for hanging with me.
And I hope that you go live your enlightened life and you share your light with the world and that you don't hide and you show up in a real way and make a real difference and be happy.
Enjoy yourself.
So thanks for hanging with me and I will see you next time on the meditation school podcast or somewhere else like my sleep podcast,
Or I'll see you on the street.
And you'd be like,
Hey,
David,
I meditated to you or whatever.
Love you.
See you next time.
