Introducing Awakening

So I'm Michael Chalskelson and I want to talk about awakening.

I'm going to start by introducing myself a very little bit,

Then we'll talk about what I mean by awakening,

Why it's important,

Practices that can lead to it and a bunch of related content.

I'll start by saying a little bit about myself.

So I'm a mindfulness teacher and a management consultant and a business school professor and I come to all of that from a long history in Buddhist practice.

So in the mid-1970s I got engaged in Buddhist practice,

Very full-time and wholeheartedly,

Doing long retreats,

Long solitary retreats,

Long periods of practice.

But just to reassure people who may be beginning to get a little anxious at this point,

This is not a Buddhist take on awakening.

I'm not here to talk about Buddhism,

In fact I want to avoid that altogether.

What I want to talk about today is what awakening is as it were in principle,

What it is as it were psychologically or if you like in spiritual terms but non-religious terms.

So I want to talk about spirituality apart from religion and especially though I want to talk about the psychological and neurological components to this really,

Really radical and interesting mode of mind,

A very different mode of mind,

A very different way of being in the world.

So what we're talking about here is a way of being in the world which is non-self-centered or non-self-referential.

To some extent you could say in the experience of awakening the self,

The ego dissolves away and what you're left with is a sense of an experience unfolding without an experiencer at its center,

Just experience unfolding.

And it's a delightful way of being in the world,

It's sometimes blissful,

Loving,

A feeling of deep connection with the rest of life all around you.

Well in a sense you could say not connection because of course there's no sense of a self that would be connected to that which is around it,

There's just experience unfolding,

Life unfolding,

Stuff going on,

Very,

Very lovely.

And this is spoken about in definitely religious circles.

So Buddhists talk about this as awakening,

Enlightenment,

Various different terms the Buddhists have for it.

Christians may talk about it as the kingdom of heaven.

Other religions will have their own language around this.

But I think what they're they're all talking about one way or another is the way the mind comes to work under certain conditions.

That's what we're talking about here,

The way the mind comes to work under certain conditions.

What those conditions might be we'll discuss in a moment.

And what's interesting about this is that if what we're talking about is simply the way the mind comes to work under certain conditions then we're talking about a natural and not a supernatural state.

And if this is a natural state then the natural sciences might have something to say about it.

And what they might have to say is hugely interesting today.

Natural sciences have begun to explore different aspects of the mind,

The brain,

The mind itself,

In ways that are unprecedented.

And we have new knowledge,

Exciting knowledge,

About how the mind works and how it can be encouraged to work in ways that are really,

Really benign,

Desirable.

And that's what we'll be talking about.