What is Awakening?

So,

What do we mean by awakening?

The religious traditions take this concept very seriously.

In fact,

For traditions like Buddhism,

Awakening lies at the very heart of the tradition.

It really is what the tradition is all about.

It's about the Buddha's awakening and how you can emulate that.

Other religious traditions have their own language around this and their own experience of it.

There are Hindu takes on it,

There are Christian mystical takes on it,

The kingdom of heaven.

There are Jewish mystical takes on it and no doubt Sufi takes on it and on and on and on and on.

There are many different,

For example,

Buddhist takes on it.

There is a wide variety of language,

A wide variety of descriptions.

But what we're generally talking about are really quite intense transformative experiences.

Now,

Having practiced in the Buddhist tradition myself for many,

Many years,

And having studied in this area and having then also begun to study from a psychological perspective,

From a secular mindfulness perspective and a variety of other different perspectives,

I've come to the conclusion that awakening is a natural and not a supernatural state.

It's a way of describing the way the mind,

The way a human being comes to function under certain particular conditions and as a result of certain particular behaviors over time,

Changes that emerge,

Dramatic sometimes changes that emerge,

But they are natural,

Not supernatural.

It's something,

Therefore,

That science can get interested in,

Especially cognitive science,

Neuroscience,

Evolutionary psychology,

And so on.

They all bring something to the party when we look at the question of awakening and what it means.

Now,

There's an interesting study by a guy called Steve Taylor,

Who is a psychologist working in the UK.

He asked a number of people to send him descriptions of their awakening experiences,

And he gathered together about 80.

Some of these came from people from religious backgrounds.

Some of them came from people from secular backgrounds.

They were just a wide variety of different takes,

And Steve and a student of his got down to coding these,

Analyzing them,

Looking for commonalities,

Looking for threads.

They produced a huge amount of data,

Which they then examined in great detail and came to the conclusion that you can categorize awakening experiences in three different ways.

You can talk about mild awakening experiences,

Moderate awakening experiences,

And intense awakening experiences.

Now,

There are commonalities through these intense,

Moderate,

And mild awakening experiences.

There are commonalities,

But different features emerge at different levels.

Also,

They come about from different causes.

There are different routes,

If you like,

To the awakening experience,

And they last.

They have different durations.

Now,

What he found analyzing his data is that the most common route into awakening experiences for most people was psychological turmoil as it happened.

After that came spiritual practice and reading spiritual literature.

Then a whole raft of things followed after that.

There were things like listening to music,

Being in nature,

Arts events,

Appreciating art or beauty,

Natural beauty,

Or artistic beauty.

There was sex.

There was sports,

The experience of sports,

And so on and so on.

A raft of different things,

Many of which I'm sure you can imagine,

Including,

I would include in the list and he didn't,

The use of psychedelic drugs.

So,

A whole raft of different things potentially productive of awakening experiences.

That's interesting.

Not only that,

But as I said,

The experiences have different durations.

They last for a different amount of time.

The more intense awakening experiences seem to go on to change people's lives pretty much irrevocably forever.

They describe a loss of ego identity,

Overwhelming feelings of love for all living things,

Equanimity,

Feelings of well-being,

Feelings of happiness,

Which just endure.

Fabulous.

That,

I'm afraid,

Is rather rare.

That's a rare experience.

Much more common are moderate and mild awakening experiences.

But these two have their consequences and that's what I'm really interested in.

The mild,

The moderate awakening experiences leave people changed.

They bring about really deep transformations.

People describe themselves as having a different kind of life after the experience.

They often experience themselves as less attached to their own ego identity,

More able to feel feelings of love and well-being.

It maybe tails off to some extent,

But nonetheless,

There are really enduring,

Significant,

Positive changes.

Now,

That really interests me because from where I'm sitting,

The mild,

The moderate awakening experiences are certainly possible.

I say that with some consequence because I am not particularly talented spiritual practitioner,

Have some experience of this myself.

It's that that I want to talk about next,

In the next video,

My own experience of awakening and what I take from it,

What I've learned from it.

I've had several such experiences,

But there's one in particular that I want to draw.

In conclusion,

I'd say this,

That awakening can emerge at different levels,

Mild,

Moderate,

Intense.

The experiences have different durations and different impacts.

They're hugely desirable,

Well worth going for.

There are things that you can do,

Changes that you can bring about in your own life,

Practices that you can engage in,

Ideas that you can engage with that help to promote this,

That help to bring this about.

Now,

You can't grasp for it.

You really can't.

You can't set out as an aim to get awakened,

But you can undertake certain practices and you can begin to think some things through in different ways.

If you do that,

You embark on a journey that is hugely enriching,

Really transforming.

As you begin to move on that journey,

You begin to find life often richer,

You find yourself feeling feelings of love and well-being more readily.

You find yourself better able to work with your own mind and your mental states.

You find choices and freedoms opening up for you in different ways.

Some of these roots I'll be describing in coming videos,

Some of these practices and some of these ideas,

Some of their consequences.

They all have the goal of leading ultimately towards awakening.

That's where they're going.

But let's think about the journey rather than the destination.

The destination is interesting because it gives us something to orient towards.

We can begin to move towards the destination,

But really you can't grasp for it.

You've got to actually do the journey.

And that's what I want to talk about next.