By Craig Hamilton

November 23, 2020 (craighamiltonglobal.com)

By now, most of us have heard about the tremendous benefits of meditation for nearly every area of our lives.

Thanks to extensive research over the past few decades, the overwhelming scientific consensus seems to be that meditation is good for you.

But saying meditation is good for you is a bit like saying exercise is good for you. 

Just as there are literally hundreds if not thousands of different forms of exercise, there are also hundreds if not thousands of different types of meditation.

And, as with physical exercise, different types of meditation are designed to achieve very different goals.

Various forms of meditation are being taught as a means of reducing stress, improving mental concentration and focus, enhancing athletic performance, boosting creativity, improving decision-making as well as generating relaxation, emotional well-being and a host of other physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual benefits. 

Even among meditation techniques designed to bring about spiritual transformation, there are vast differences in both approach and outcome.

Given that you’re reading this email, chances are you’ve probably tried at least a few different kinds of meditation and may have already been meditating for several decades.

So, in order to begin this exploration of the approach to meditation I call “the practice of direct awakening,” I want to invite you to temporarily set aside everything you’ve already learned about meditation.

Not because I think what you’ve learned is wrong or that this approach is “better,” but simply because the approach to meditation I’m teaching may have little or nothing in common with meditation as you’ve been practicing it—other than the outer posture of sitting still for a while every day.

For most of us, meditating means silently repeating a mantra or sacred word, or following our breath, or labeling our thoughts and feelings as they arise, or trying to become a witness of our mind. 

But this practice is about something entirely different. 

It is a practice of directly recognizing our Enlightened essence or what is often referred to as “awakened awareness” or “awakened consciousness.”

In other words, the Practice of Direct Awakening is an approach to meditation designed to bring us into the immediate and direct awareness of our true nature beyond the mind and ego.

It is not a practice we do now to prepare for a future moment of Enlightenment.

It is not a practice we do now in order to get better at something or to strengthen particular capacities.

It is a practice of being Awake right now. Of being Enlightened right now.

This is possible because Enlightenment is the discovery of who we already are.

It is the discovery of our “true nature.” 

Indeed, authentic spiritual awakening is about the radical realization that our true nature is not separate from the most unimaginably sacred thing in the Universe. 

It is the discovery that in our essence, we are a luminous, breathtakingly glorious conscious awareness. That we are made of divinity. Or, as the Mahayana Buddhists would say, we have “Buddha Nature.”

The revolutionary proposition at the heart of the Practice of Direct Awakening is that we don’t have to wait for Awakening to happen to us.

We don’t have to spend a lifetime practicing various techniques in the hope that one day we will stumble upon awakened consciousness.

It’s possible to actually practice being Awake, or resting in our true nature which is always already awake. 

To do so, we practice a series of “inner postures” that are derived from the experience of Enlightened consciousness itself.

For instance, one of the most remarkable aspects of Enlightened consciousness is the profound ease and contentment we experience when we are Awake to our true nature.

When we know who we truly are, we discover that we are utterly at peace with who we are. Indeed, we are deeply at ease with reality, no matter what challenges life brings our way.

But what if this profound ease of being and contentment wasn’t just something we could “experience” spontaneously in moments of epiphany?

What if we could actually practice being content with reality as it is?

I invite you to try this little experiment as a meditation practice for five minutes sometime today. 

Simply sit still and let everything be as it is. For five minutes, be content with your experience, no matter what you are feeling, no matter what your mind is doing, and no matter what is happening in the outer circumstances of your life.

If you are able to really do this, to truly, unconditionally accept the moment as it is, you may find that a portal begins to open—a window into an unimaginable reality of sacred depth and infinite potential.

You see, when we are willing, even for a few minutes, to stop trying to change or become anything, we open the door to the profound and abiding peace that is an inherent expression of our true nature.

But this doesn’t mean that we become simply inert and passive in the face of life’s complexities.

When we learn how to embrace the depth of who and what we really are, we begin to transform into a living expression of this miraculous dimension of being. 

Our cosmic essence or supernature is freed to express itself in this world. 

When we discover this already divine essence, we are unleashed from the prison of the false and separate self. 

We discover a life of boundless freedom, unassailable joy, and overflowing fullness and love. 

What’s more, we discover that this higher spiritual self already contains most of the extraordinary abilities and capacities most of us are working so hard to develop.

When we discover this luminous, superconscious self, we find that we have access to a remarkable newfound “wisdom faculty”—an intuitive knowing that enables us to instantly  discern powerful truths and spontaneously take effective actions without premeditation. 

We are filled with a dynamic source of seemingly limitless energy to do what needs to be done in each moment. 

We find that we can tap into an infinite well of creativity, as though the creative power of the cosmos itself is coursing through us. 

We have an ability to tap into a wellspring of inner strength that gives us a remarkable steadiness and confidence in the face of life’s challenges. 

We have access to an unprecedented ability to focus our attention. 

We discover that we have become unimaginably sensitive and tuned in to the deeper needs and feelings of others and, more importantly, to the emergent, evolutionary needs of the moment. 

And what may be the most powerful capacity of our true nature is what we might call “evolvability.” 

This higher part of ourself is aligned with the impulse of evolution itself and is not resistant to change. 

So, it contains a kind of superlearning ability, enabling us to step into new potentials and abilities with remarkable ease and fluidity.

All of these capacities and many others are the natural expression of Awakened consciousness. 

And this Awakened consciousness is already our true nature or true self.

By learning to practice the natural inner postures of awakened consciousness, we can step into this extraordinary way of being right now.