Visit www.BrianMarc.com/blog for full transcript, videos and quotes related to this episode. Welcome everyone. It’s Brian Marc Zimberg, number one best-selling author of “Stop Smile Breathe Be” and creator of Access Points - The Modern-Life Meditation Plan”. Welcome to episode one of “Awake Life”. In today's video, we're going to take a look at the Big “E” word in spirituality, and that's “Enlightenment”. What is it really? Why are you interested in enlightenment? In fact, why is it important for you to be interested, if you're not interested in enlightenment. Odds are, if you're watching this video right now, you're already on a self-help journey of wanting to be better and improve yourself. And then you’ve probably gotten to a point where that was exhausting, and you're on the spiritual journey, where you want more peace and more happiness in your life. So this show is called Awake Life and we're going to explore what is it to “awaken”, and what is it to live an “awake life”. So many of you probably have already gotten to the point, or maybe you're at the point right now, where “you think you’ve had enough of this life, then hang on, (singing) because everybody hurts” - excuse my bad voice - but you know that's the truth of it, you know? Life can be a grind, life can be a struggle, and odds are to get to the place of awakening, spiritual awakening, or interest in enlightenment, you first usually come to a place where you're ready to just give up. You know, Buddha said “life is suffering” because basically, all our desires lead to a temporary fulfillment. So let's look at the context of your modern day life, because I'm really interested in the practical understanding of what is in enlightenment in a modern context? You see we live in a modern world, I mean, if you are desiring enlightenment because you want to run off and be a guru, and live off, and be a monk in a mountain somewhere? Because you can do that, right? But no. Odds are you have a life, you have a family, you're in the context of this world. So Buddha said that desire leads us to things that are “temporary fulfillment”. So if we look at that in the context of our modern life, we achieve things. We’re told our whole life we can go get something and achieve it. So we learn how to be achievers, and when we achieve something, how does it feel? Think of something you've achieved in your life. It's temporary. We have a temporary moment of achievement and it feels good, and we can be excited, exhilarated, and other people around us can be excited for us, but it slowly fades away. Right? The fulfillment, that happiness, fades away. When you have a relationship and you get “love love love love love” and all the sudden you're whole, and you’re complete by another, it tends to… fade away. We can learn the skill of relation and sustaining this love, but understand that everything you grasp in the outer world... fades away. That happiness doesn't last. You buy a nice car that you want so bad and it makes you feel great in the beginning, right? It’s like when you buy a cellphone, you take care of it good, and it becomes, whatever it gets chipped and it’s like OK… who cares? Because it gives us this temporary fulfillment, and we realize that that gives us temporary happiness. And at some point, that material, you know, illusion, becomes not enough. And we get to this point where we have this disillusionment, right? We either start feeling frustrated, or we realize there's something more to life. We feel this sense of pain, or meaninglessness, or what the hell is the point of all this already? And a warning along the journey, you should know, if you're in that space right now, is that there's this existential funk that can happen there. You know this, what's the point? And it's, I feel like giving up. I want to quit. And when it goes even deeper, that's really where depression and even suicide can ensue. Where it literally seems pointless and meaningless. And I’m sure many people out there have felt this way, kind of like… I give up. What's the point? Or, am I screwing up my children? Or, I can't hold it all together. I'm sick of the holding it all together. Let's be honest with each other here. It's exhausting. Life can be exhausting trying to keep it up, and keep it together, based on what you've been told it's supposed to be about. (sigh) When you realize that - it's key. It's a key disillusionment, and if you've already been on the journey and you’ve realized this… “Amen”! If not, it's coming for you. That's why you're here. There's no mistaking in our meeting right now. So first off, it is not pointless and meaningless, it's actually full of a point. The point is that emptiness is not meaningless, but is actually fullness. It’s fulfillment, and when we discover enlightenment truly, we discover true fulfillment. We discover fullness. Endlessness. We discover emptiness that is vast, infinite. That, you are one with that which is whole. You are already, complete, now. So you know, along the road, we kind of have this dawning of “this isn't enough.” There has to be another way. There has to be something more. I want to know the truth”, right? I want to know what's real. I want to stop lying to myself. I want stop living “out of program”. I want to stop being “stuck in my mind”, and I want to live from reality. I want to live from truth. And we dawn on the idea of spiritual enlightenment. Spiritual awakening. You know first, before we can really talk about what enlightenment really is, we need to take a look at what enlightenment is not, OK? There's a lot of misconceptions, and myths, and misbeliefs, and understanding about this, and it keeps us kinda on the spiritual journey, on a hamster trail, trying to get to a destination. Often people think of enlightenment as this final permanent state, right? “When I reach enlightenment, I'm going to have, I’m going to be blissed out. I'm only going to have have positive emotions. I'm only going to feel blissed all the time. It makes me grin, you know? That’s enlightenment.” Or maybe enlightenment is that you can turn to a light body and disappear. Now I'm not saying that that can't happen, but the truth in the matter is enlightenment isn't those things. You still will be a human being. You're still, emotions will still come and go, you know? Some of the greatest sages still died of cancer, right? Osho had back pain. Paramahansa Yogananda did preserve his body and had a glowing light, but he was a yogi. So is the goal of enlightenment for us each to be a yogi? You see, there is development of our consciousness, and maybe we can be moving towards a light body, but let's get real for a moment. What is spiritual awakening? It is waking up… to reality. So let's take a look for a moment at when you have a nightmare, or you have a dream, alright? You probably can remember a time where there was someone trying to kill you in a dream. Somebody was chasing you. You were scared. Can you remember that time? Think of a bad dream you had, and then you woke up. You're like, “Oh, it was just a dream”. Now go back in the context of that dream. In the dream it was real. Right? You didn't know you were dreaming. Like, if a lion is chasing you and wants to kill you, salivating, running after you in your dream… you're going to feel fear. You're going to be running. You're going to be sweating. You're going to be... scared, right? You're going to be… suffering. But when you come out of the dream, you wake up. So it's very possible, my friends, for you to start to recognize that these atoms and molecules, that your photons are seeing me and seeing this world, that you're buying into the thoughts in your head, and you're calling that “reality”. It's creating your suffering. It's creating the struggle of your life. It's time to wake up. It's time to wake up and realize it's just a dream. [Sighs] Yes, it IS real in the context of creation, in the physical manifestation of infinity. And you, as an individual, have the divine birthright to awaken to the truth of who you are. To awaken. I mean, imagine the glory of the opportunity, through all this evolution. What is it? Billions of years going by, coming to this individuation and form. Your D.N.A., possible to turn back on its own awareness, and awaken to its truth. For life, for G-d, to awaken in the creation… at itself. You know that's the difference, of what we call, in the Hindus, Leela and Maya. Maya, the illusion of life, right? We're caught in our minds. We’re caught as an individual. We’re separate, therefore, we can be destroyed, and life as a survival. We’re a survival animal. We're stuck in that process. When we awaken, when we step out of the dream, right? When the lion isn't real, and the fear is false evidence appearing real. But not because it's a good teaching. Not because it’s a good idea, but because we really have a shift. This shift is crucial, because when you’ve awakened, which if you already had an essential experience, you’ve already awakened… then something… without a question… without a doubt, you know that you’re freedom itself. That who you are, is love itself. In the moment of spiritual awakening, if you've been there already, you know, call it an essential experience. If you had that moment, for me, it happened profoundly and deeply in Joshua Tree Desert in 1996. At the end of a mushroom journey, on the come down. I felt, like, a light hit my chest. It was beyond just that… It was clear to me that everything was One. That I was whole. That I was it. That I am it. That G-d is it. That everything is One. Everything is perfect. In this essential experience, we break through the veil of illusion. We see the wizard on the other side, and we get the cosm