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"**Summary: Realistic Path to Enlightenment and Mindfulness**\n\n- **Concept of Realistic Enlightenment**: The speaker discusses a practical approach to achieving enlightenment through mindfulness, as opposed to unrealistic goals like perpetual bliss or extended retreats.\n- **Mindfulness Practice**: Emphasizes the importance of consistent meditation and mindfulness practice, likening it to building momentum and strength in mindfulness over time.\n- **Reframing Success**: Suggests redefining success in mindfulness as being able to have moments of presence and awareness throughout the day, rather than achieving permanent enlightenment.\n- **Sam Harris Story**: Shares an anecdote from Sam Harris about realizing mindfulness in everyday situations, such as pausing during a hectic moment to be present.\n- **Value of Simple Tasks**: Highlights everyday activities like washing dishes or driving as opportunities to practice mindfulness due to their engaging but not overly demanding nature.\n\n**Notable Quotes:**\n- \"You can string together a few moments of peace so that at least for a few moments each day, your mind rests where your feet are.\"\n- \"Being distracted by thoughts is the same as being dreaming but not being asleep.\"\n- \"Stringing together a sequence of mindful moments seems so much more attainable.\"\n\n**Names Mentioned:**\n- Sam Harris: Referenced for his insights on mindfulness and a personal story.\n- Jed McKenna: Mentioned as a super enlightened spiritual teacher.\n\n**Links:**\n- [Live Momentous](https:\/\/livemomentous.com\/modernwisdom) for sleep supplements\n\n**Actionable Takeaways:**\n1. **Practice Consistently**: Engage in regular meditation sessions to build momentum in mindfulness.\n2. **Reframe Goals**: Aim for multiple daily moments of presence rather than unattainable permanent enlightenment.\n3. **Embrace Simple Tasks**: Use everyday activities like washing dishes or driving as opportunities for mindfulness.\n4. **Recognize Presence**: Notice and appreciate when your mind and body are in the same place, even if just for moments.\n5. **Learn from Distractions**: Understand that being lost in thought is akin to dreaming; use this awareness to return to the present.\n6. **Use Stories for Insight**: Reflect on personal stories, like Sam Harris's, to find practical applications of mindfulness.\n7. **Explore Mindfulness Resources**: Consider using tools like Momentous sleep supplements to support overall well-being and mindfulness practice."
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talking about a realistic path to difficult things, I came up with this idea about a realistic path to enlightenment. So, as much as moving to a cave in the woods, spending a decade in silent retreat might be great for your spirit, it's not going to be doable
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by pretty much anyone. And if you've meditated enough, you know that you accumulate momentum in mindfulness, kind of like a swell moving underwater.
And after enough time, there's a force and power to your ability to drop into the
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present moment. And sometimes even waves of little bits of genuine calm insight break above the surface.
And it's lovely. But if you're anything like me, it doesn't result in an extended self-perpetuating enlightenment.
Doesn't
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even really work on its own where your mindfulness sneaks up on you and you're in the present moment without realizing. And I've done 2,000 sessions of meditation over the last seven years.
So consistent meditation and a focus on mindfulness strengthens strengthens the
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thinking muscle that you use to wrangle your mind to actually exist right now. You learn to punctuate your day with instances where your mind finally settles into the moment and then it's gone.
But then you can get it back later
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in the day. And as far as I can tell, this is a much more realist realistic path to enlightenment.
You are never going to become fully blissed out in perpetual nondual astral realm synchronicity, right? But you can string
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together a few moments of peace so that at least for a few moments each day, your mind rests where your feet are. And I always used to think that this was a failure.
That if I can achieve
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mindfulness but not permanently, if I achieve it and lose it, it's not persistent enlightenment. So I failed.
And instead, I think it's smart to reframe the goal that if you can just have your mind and your feet in the same location five or 10 times a day, that's
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five or 10 times when you were literally awake. As Sam Harris refers to it, being distracted by thoughts is the same as being dreaming but but not being asleep.
That you're lost in the mind and you haven't realized. In the same way as
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when you're in a dream, you are lost in the dream and you haven't realized. The only difference being that your eyes are open and you're kind of conscious.
You're also kind of not conscious at all. If you can spend five or 10 times, even for just like 10 seconds going, "Huh,
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I'm really here. Holy [ __ ] I'm alive.
And I can feel the floor beneath my feet. And I can smell whatever it is that's coming into my nose." And [ __ ] like, this is where I am.
that is so much further ahead than almost anybody else. And then maybe you
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can push it to 15 or 20 or 100. And the reason I love this as an idea and as a goal for mindfulness is that it seems important and attainable and really useful.
You
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know, just finding these moments where you can catch yourself. And it did Sam actually on the episode I did with him a few years ago.
He gave this wonderful story where he said he was late coming to the podcast and he hates being late and he was rushing around the house and his wife was leaving at the same time as him and he's putting his shoes on and
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and grabbing his stuff and all the rest of it. And then he caught himself, realized that he was rushing, realized that he was sort of think he would been stressing about being late.
What's Chris going to think? I'm going to have to apologize.
What about the traffic? He stopped, caught himself, scooped his wife up,
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gave her a kiss, put it down, and left. You know, that's a 10second punctuation of whatever obsessive minations you've got going on in your mind that you're currently captured by until you stop and you look and you realize where you are
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and your mind and your feet are in the same location and you do something with so much more intentionality and presence and then you move on with your day. Stringing a sequence of these kinds of moments
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together to me seems so much more attainable, so much more realistic. And I think that's what I'm aiming for.
Maybe that's me just selling myself short. Maybe I should be, you know, permanent blissed out, non-dual abiding awareness is what I should be going for.
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But my fledgling Jed McKenna, who's this super enlightened spiritual teacher, um, maybe that's me. Yeah, being cucked and and leaving it on the table.
But again, you know that expectations and happiness
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thing for expectations is the only time that you can be satisfied. Uh I have put some work in to get to a mindfulness level where I feel it.
But if I have abiding non-dual awareness, it's not going to happen for pretty much anybody. So you're perpetually going to be dissatisfied with your own mindfulness
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practice. Whereas, I think this seems to work.
And I know that I can do it. And I know that pretty much every single person listening to this who's ever tried mindfulness knows what it feels like.
You're washing the dishes and you catch yourself and you actually feel the
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water hitting your hands. You're like, "Holy fuck." Like, "This is me.
I'm alive. This is crazy." or when I'm driving, like one of the saddest things in the world is that driving is maybe like probably top three opportunities to
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be mindful. Uh I guess flying in a plane is another one too, but driving even more so active.
I guess if you're the pilot of a plane perhaps. Uh but there's nothing else that you can really be too distracted by, but you're not sufficiently engaged that it's taking up
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all of your mind share. I think this is why I I'll make an admission.
I really love doing the washing up. Washing the dishes to me is one of the best parts of my day.
And uh it just captures the front of your mind
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enough. It's engaging enough to be to stop you from being distracted or bored and nowhere near sufficiently engaging to actually capture most of your brain.
Um, but yeah, I think stringing together a bunch of these seems pretty [ __ ]
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enlightened to me. So anyway, that's my realistic path to enlightenment.
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The full episode is available right here. [Music]