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How do you know if you're spiritually awakened? You can find tons of articles and videos about this topic online. But unfortunately many of them can be misleading or only partially correct because they're based on a new age view of spirituality versus being grounded in time proven and tested tradition. So in this episode of the karmic warrior podcast, we'll go straight to an ancient text that's been used by Yogi's for 1000s of years to guide them on their journey of spiritual awakening. So stay tuned.
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Hi, there Yogi's and karmic warriors, welcome to the karmic warrior podcast where we talk about living an extra ordinary life by practicing time proven and tested teachings of yoga wisdom traditions. I am your host, Lisa Engles Witter. And the goal of this podcast is really quite simple is to make it easier than ever before, for anyone to find happiness and fulfillment in their everyday life by using the wisdom teachings that have already been passed down to us for millennia. And occasionally, I'll dispel some popular myths, especially in that realm of New Age spirituality, which can hold us back without our even knowing. So be sure to subscribe to this podcast here on YouTube and anywhere that you find podcasts. Now, maybe one of the biggest challenges that my clients come to me with is that they find themselves repeating the same lessons stuck repeating those same lessons over and over again in life, and most of them are frustrated, they're at a loss. Because they've already done years of the work, they've already done therapy coaching, they're on a spiritual path, yet they still seem to struggle with the same, maybe unhealthy relationships or they feel like they should be further along in their spiritual awakening than they are personally and also professionally. So if you can relate to that, then I invite you to head on over to www dot Carmack dash warrior.com to grab my free report on why you keep getting handed that one lesson in life. Even though you've spent years doing the work. This free report reveals the secret about harnessing the law of karma to finally break free of that one lesson so that you can live a freer, fuller life right now. And I put the link in the description below on YouTube. So let's begin with defining what spiritual awakening is. There is a ton of stuff out there on the internet that you can find and I think it can be confusing sometimes. So we're gonna Of course, look at that term spiritual awakening through the view of yoga wisdom. So in this view, and awakened person is simply someone who has realized their true self whose identity is grounded in knowing what their true nature is. And in yoga tradition, it said that our true nature is consciousness is also referred to as awareness or Buddha nature or essence, nature, these are all the same terms for what yoga refers to as the true self. So an awakened person from this view is self realized. This is what self realization is. And because they're awakened their view of reality, and therefore their experience of reality is radically different from 99.9% of the rest of us living here, in this lifetime, in any other lifetime, right? Because an awakened person is continually connected to this. This never ending really, they're tapped into this, this endless maybe that's a better word to say this endless reservoir of
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awareness, consciousness, joy, bliss, also called a Nanda. No matter what is happening in their outside world, anything could be happening at all of the challenges of life can be thrown at them and they're still able to be grounded in their true nature. So they experience a raft Medical freedom from all of the challenges of life, even while they're actively participating day to day in all of their life activities, whether that's work or their family, or you know any of their relationships. So again, in yoga wisdom tradition, this is what self realization is referred to. And so while many people maybe even you have indeed experienced moments of awakening is Buddhist teacher, Adi Shanti, says, It doesn't matter. If you had a moment or a few minutes or a day or a few days of awakening in the past. What matters is are you awake right now? And of course, for most of us, the answer to that question is no, we're not. Yeah, maybe maybe you had some experience some awakening experience in the past. And again, it lasted a day or two or a week. But are you grounded in that awakening? Right now, in this moment? Are you awake right now. Now, we'd like to think that because we've had these types of awakening experiences or mystical experiences, or because we can intuitively see things and feel things, or we had some type of powerful meditation that were awakened. But any good spiritual teacher will tell you do not get attached to these signs of awakening, it can be very dangerous, they can, if we become too focused on them, we get distracted, they just become distractions. And they actually take us away from the goal of awakening from the goal of Self Realization. So if you do become attached to them, which many people do, they think, Oh, my gosh, I've had this awakening, I'm totally awakened. And now I can feel things and I can see people's auras. And I can do this and that they, they just become those things. Those signs, so to speak, just become another form of unhappiness, and suffering, because those are just impermanent phenomena that come and go, they don't last. So we don't want to get focused on those things. I have had numerous my own spiritual teachers tell me over and over again, as you get deeper and deeper into your own spiritual practice. And as you go further and further on the path of spiritual awakening, you absolutely will experience these things. You will have visions, you will have flashes of light, during your meditation, you will maybe hear sounds, and all of these things I've experienced, and I have been warned over and over and over again, do not don't care about those things. It doesn't matter. They don't mean anything. So it's almost like, whatever those signs are of spiritual awakening, a true spiritual teacher will tell you ignore those, just forget about them, they're going to happen. But just ignore them don't get focused on them. So what we need to know is that awakening is the ultimate goal of the spiritual path along with liberation, but we're talking about awakening here. So awakening is really a very noble aspiration, it's worthy of commitment is worthy of focus and dedication, because what it does, is awakening promises us all the freedom from mind created suffering. So another way of saying it is that when you're awakened, you're aware that you are a direct expression of the eternal divine, that lives in you as you and through you. And that that is the essence of who you are. And that in fact, you're untouched by the challenges of life because that is your essence, nature. Right and so, as you will awaken, you are aware that everything that you experience with your five senses, right sight, sound, taste, touch, hearing, as well as your mind as well as your emotions. Everything that you experience is just phenomena that arises and subsides within an infinite field of consciousness. So all of these phenomena Munna you begin to have this understanding, they come and go, but this field, this field of consciousness, this field of awareness remains the same. And you and I, we are that very field and therefore who you really are, is untouched unscathed by by anything that is an outer circumstance by any event in our life, right. So it's a really, really profound insight. Once you've had this realization, you are changed forever, the way you understand reality, the way you understand yourself. It, it changes forever.
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And I want to say here that one of the biggest misconceptions is that when you're awakened, your life actually changes meaning the outer circumstances of your life change. And that's not necessarily true. That may or may not happen. So don't think because you've had some type of awakening, or you're, you're starting to awaken that everything in your outer circumstances are going to change, because they may, but they, more than likely won't. And this brings me to another point.
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Which is how do you tell if someone is awakened? How can you tell an awakened being from a non awakened being? And the answer to that is you can't. And if anyone tells you you can tell an awakened being from an awakened being then they, they don't know. Because awakened beings look just like you they look just like me. They don't have halos glowing around their head, they don't wear crystals, and they don't chant ohm all the time, right? So you don't know what an awakened being looks like. And I don't know, because awakening is a way of being it is who you are. And it just changes the way you interact with reality. But it doesn't change the circumstances around you. So I hope I hope that makes sense. But this is what the Scriptures teach us. So now that we've had a little bit of a discussion of what awakening is, what we can do is we can begin to look at some of the signs that you're becoming an awakened person. And for this discussion, I'm going to refer to a book that I call the original Conversations with God so not the book, by are the series of books by Neale Donald Walsch that are called the conversations with God. Not talking about those, in fact, this book, this actual conversation with God, was written over 2000 years ago, sometime between 400 BC and 200, of the Common Era, right, and it's called, you've probably heard of this before. It's called the Bhagavad Gita. So I don't expect that you know anything about the Bhagavad Gita, so I'm just going to give you like a like a two sentence review of the Bhagavad Gita. So the Bhagavad Gita is this story that takes place on a battlefield and it's a conversation between a warrior prince named our Juna and his advisor, interior tier, Lord Krishna, who also happens to be his best friend and his cousin and his, by the way, an incarnation of God. So the situation is that there's this battle between good and evil, and it's represented the battle between good and evil are represented by our Joonas family, which is the good side and then his cousin's family, which are the bad side. And so what's happening in this story is that there are mutual friends and family members fighting on both sides, in order to gain rule of the land. And this story begins when our junus sees that he's on the battlefield and the battle is about to be started and Arjuna looks across the battlefield and he sees all of his friends, his uncles, his cousins, his comrades on the opposing side, and he loses heart he becomes completely filled with self doubt, and he refuses to take part in this battle between because it's going to result, of course in death on both sides. So the rest of this text is this conversation with God, or Gina is having a conversation with Krishna. And in this conversation is all about what constitutes moral and ethical behavior, what is the proper understanding of the true nature of ourselves and reality and ultimately what is the meaning of life and the nature of the Divine. So all of these things are covered in the Bhagavad Gita. Now starting in chapter two of this book, what happens is that our Juna asks Krishna, well, how do how does one know if your spirits if they're spiritually awakened, like how can you identify an enlightened person? And he asks these really specific questions like, how does a spiritually enlightened person act and how do they sit? And how do they move and and these types of questions? And what happens is that Krishnan then gives a very detailed answer. So there's a lot of underlying esoteric meaning in the text, it's coated with a lot of references, as all mystical and spiritual texts are. So having a teacher who can translate to you sort of the underlying things of what's being said, and
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this is a side note for me, when I, I've read the Bhagavad Gita, six or seven times all the way through at this point with different commentaries. So one of the commentaries that I found really, really useful was the commentary of Paramahansa Yogananda. Now, I will warn you that it's an extensive commentary about 1000 pages, but it does give the esoteric meaning to what is happening in the actual text itself. So that's a side note, if that's something that you're interested in, and by no means do you need to go and read the Bhagavad Gita, I just want you to know that what we're going to discuss next is all information from the Bhagavad Gita. So I'm not coming to you saying this is what happens for an enlightened person, a spiritually awakened person. No, we're looking back at spiritual text that's been used for 1000s of years by Yogi's to guide them through their spiritual awakening. And I think that's the smartest way to do it. Honestly, when you're on the spiritual path, why not use a guide, a book, a guide book that's been around for 1000s of years, and is helped many, many 1000s, if not millions, of other enlightened beings, awakened beings on their path. Right, so let's go ahead and look at what these qualities are of an enlightened of a spiritually awakened person. And I just picked out six of them, that are directly from chapter two of the Bhagavad Gita. But the Bhagavad Gita really goes very in depth into this. So I highly recommend if this is something like you're feeling resonant with what I'm sharing here, then go get the Bhagavad Gita, give it a read. So the first thing the first sign of a spiritually awakened being is that they understand that life is a journey, from ignorance, to knowledge, it's a journey from not realizing, to realizing not realizing what to realizing what well realizing your true nature, to from not being self realized, to being self realized. So the the yogi, the spiritually awakened person, as they're moving through life, they understand I am on a journey of awakening I am on a journey from being in a contracted state of being where the the nature of who I am is concealed from me and I'm on this journey of really having my true self revealed back to me so it's not like I have to go chase something you know, I have to go get this true self I have to go get my essence nature No. The the realized or the awakened being understand that's already what I am. It's just that It's been concealed from me and so I'm going to do my practices in order to reveal the truth of who I am. So that's number one. Again that the the spiritually awakened person understand that this life is a journey from ignorance or misconception to knowledge and knowledge erases ignorance or misconception. So you'll see very much in in yoga tradition that knowledge Yana yoga is very, very important to have knowledge not conceptual knowledge, but a felt known sense knowledge. Alright, so number two, the second thing that the spiritually awakened being knows or does is that they understand that happiness can not be found in sight in our senses or sense objects. So in the Bhagavad Gita talks a lot about
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detaching from our senses. And in some ways when you're reading the Bhagavad Gita, Lifta, remember when it was written, it sounds sort of like ooh, like, I can't, I can't desire anything, I can't have pleasure. From the view of non dual Tantra, that's not the case at all is more about understanding that our senses and sense objects, which means worldly objects, whether it's money, or food, or a beautiful body, or sex, or things like a car or house or even, you know, mind related pursuits, like the pursuit to learn more, and to have a better intellect, none of those things are going to bring you happiness. Why? Well, because these, all of these things are impermanent. So an awakened being does not seek happiness in sensory pleasures. So they're not going to be like, Oh, why would be so happy, if I could just go to the spa, get a massage, right? Or I would just be so happy if I could, you know, have this special crystal and be able to go to that retreat, that's all spiritual materialism. Right? So they don't seek happiness in those sensory pleasures. Now, the number three thing, the third thing that would identify a spiritually awakened being is they're also not controlled by their mind, or their emotions. This might sound familiar to you if you're used to Buddhism, or any of the teachings in Buddhism, because this is really where the Buddhist teachings focus is on mind created suffering. And so the awakened being is not controlled by the mind or the emotions because they realize that mind, and emotions, so thoughts and feelings, those are just passing phenomena, we can't control them. And they come and go, so they're not attached to ideas, or beliefs, or thoughts or ideas or mental constructs. So it's said that the mind of an awakened being is very much like an ocean. If you think of an ocean, there might be waves at the top of the ocean that that look chaotic and stormy. But deep underneath those waves deep within the ocean, it's always calm. There's no movement happening at the, at the floor of the ocean, it is still as can be, and specifically an awakened person. You know, has that ability to maintain that calm even when the thoughts and the emotions which are like the waves at the top of the ocean are, are a flurry. Right? So here's an important concept when it comes to this piece of not being attached to to, or identified with our thoughts and our beliefs and our ideas. Whenever we're attached to something.
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It creates, you know, that leads attachment leads to desire, and when our desires aren't fulfilled, if you think about this for yourself, you can like prove that this is true to yourself when your desires are fulfilled any type of desire, right? First, there might be a little bit of frustration or disappointment. But if you still don't get what you want, what you desire, it eventually turned into anger. And when we're in a place in a state of anger, it leads to an inability to see a situation or a circumstance as it really is. So we have lack of judgment, lack of discernment, and then we take action that maybe we shouldn't take. And that type of action leads to suffering. I mean, really, what I'm, that's sort of an outline, a, you know, an outline of what karma how karma is created really? Now, but you might be saying to me, oh, yeah, well, what if my desires are fulfilled? Right? Haha, gotcha. And here's the thing is that when our desires are fulfilled, it leads oftentimes, almost always to greed. So we want more of that thing, oh, I got that money, then, you know, I'm making my whatever six figures and we're now you know, be nice to have a little bit more money than this because now, I want this and this and this. So I, you know, I think to myself of sports, because that's my background is triathlon and running. And, you know, it's always like, Okay, well, I reached that, well, yeah, I, I did that triathlon, this was, this was me back when I was in my 20s, you know, oh, I completed that distance triathlon. Now, I should maybe do a longer triathlon, and then a longer term, it's like Never Enough, enough, it has to be more and more and more. So we, that even when our desires are fulfilled, it turns into greed. And, and then that greed when we don't get, of course, what we want, it leads to disappointment, frustration, eventually to anger. Anger leads to that deluded state of mind, and a lack of discernment. So the point here is that all of this, whether it's your sensory, you know, your senses, and sense pleasures, or your mind or your emotions, if you're attached to any of them, and you think that those are the things that are going to make you happy, then you're setting yourself up for suffering. worldly pleasure always ends in pain, because it's impermanent. Alright, so let's move on to the fourth sign of an awakened being. And that is that an awakened being something that I sort of already alluded to before an awakened being is someone who is grounded in their true self, which also means that they're grounded in wisdom, and freedom, and joy, right. And now, this requires quite a bit of regular spiritual practice, that is geared towards cultivating an awareness and a knowledge of the true self, and then being able to be grounded in or have a center of gravity in the true self. So again, all of the teachings tell us that meditation is a must. And it thrills me to know that meditation is becoming so popular these days, and that so many people have hopped on board with meditation. But what I will say is, it's not just any meditation, that will do this, you can't just do you know, some meditation to your guide or meditation to relax. That's not the type of meditation that's going to lead to an awareness of your true self. So there there is required a specific type, or types of meditations and these are all taught in yoga tradition.
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So what happens is that when in awakened being is has their center of gravity in their true self, then they're able to remain neutral, no matter what's happening in the face of both good and evil, whereas the average person, the rest of us react to good and evil with either pleasure or pain, right? something good happens, we get excited, something bad happens, we get upset, and awakened. person is able to sort of hold equanimity and not get overly excited when something good happens and not get overly upset when something bad happens because they know that in either case, good or bad, they're impermanent, those situations are going to change. Something's going to happen. So this neutrality I want to point out isn't a heartless indifference, because they see that in its unbounded freedom and autonomy that the divine expresses itself in every imaginable way. So I'm going to say that again, because it's really critical here. An awakened being understands. And they see that it's unbounded freedom and autonomy. The Divine expresses itself in every single imaginable way. The Divine expresses itself as evil people and evil situations. And the divine also expresses itself as good people, and good situations, they're all expressions of the Divine, it's just that one expression is a concealed expression of the divine or a contracted expression of the divine in the other is a is a revealed or an expanded or completely uncontracted expression of the divine, but they're all They're all the divine. And this is how literally how an awakened being sees everything, they understand that it's our attachment to the stories in the ideas and the beliefs that some things are some people are good, and other people and other things and situations are bad. And that that's what clouds our ability to see. And to perceive as the awakened person sees and perceives the average person, you and I were controlled by our mind, we're controlled by our emotions. And therefore, we become as Paramahansa Yogananda called that we become an excitable mix of delusion, in influenced actions and reactions, right, we're just like, we're, we're just things just happen, you know, we just react in this way and that way, that's what happens to the average person, right and awakened person, they're going to live and move in a body and a mind and an external environment, just like everyone else, like I said before, they're going to look like the rest of us, but in their wisdom, they know the true nature of reality. So they're not shaken by anything that isn't real. And when I say anything that isn't real, anything that isn't permanent, right. So again, this all takes quite a bit of practice, which brings me to another quality of the awakened person, which is discernment. And sort of putting it under this category here. The the awakened person is able to know truth, from falsehood.
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There, they're able to see all situations, circumstances and events without the veils of conditioned ways of thinking, and being. So really, a key point here is that the awakened being this type of person's life and their circumstances, I'm making this like really, really want you to get this that, that it might look just like your life looks, they might have health issues, they might have financial problems, they might have any number of challenges that arise in their life. However, they're truly truly unaffected by them, they're truly able to hold a place of equanimity. In fact, many famous mystics and enlightened and awakened beings have suffered from illnesses and cancers and and they were reported to still be, you know, in divine joy and contentment despite their experience of pain, like actual physical pain. So this comes very naturally to an awakened being not so much to the rest of us that are that are on this path. So let's look at the fifth sign of an awakened being and that is that the awakened person knows this one thing and that is that everything is what I am appearing as that there's a really Famous mantra. So hum or hum so or Hong saw doesn't matter which way you say the mantra what the mantra means is I am that. So I am that same thing as everything is what I am appearing as that now, I will tell you that this is something that I hear all the time, and I feel more like it's lip service, people give lip oh, we're all one, we're all we're all one. And yet they turn around and they do. Their actions clearly indicate that they haven't, that they don't really understand that, that teaching that everything is what I am appearing as that I am that, again, this is a realization that once you have the experience of it, you can never go back, you can never not have any other experience. And in the beginning, having that experience, it requires practice, it requires specific types of meditations that will help you to have that pointing out meditations that help you to have that experience. And it requires practice, it's like building a muscle, I've used this analogy before. Which is I don't know if you remember, they're still around these, they were these, they were popular when I was in college. So that was a long time ago, over 30 years ago. And they were these drawings that like you had to look at them. And they looked two dimensional, it looks sort of just like a geometrical painting or picture. But if you looked at it, like in a certain way, the whole picture would pop out at you like a 3d type of picture. So it's like that, that once you you know, when you would look at those pictures, once you figured out how to perceive that 3d image, it was really easy. You could look at any of those, those pictures and you could see oh, there's there's the tree, there's the one that's a whale, there's the one that's a, you know, a guy playing a guitar, whatever it is, right. But if you hadn't, hadn't figured out how to perceive that, then it just looked, it didn't look like anything other than geometric shapes. And so that is like this particular
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sign everything is what I am appearing as that. It's you can't see it without practice without you don't have that realization without a very specific type of practice. But once you have that practice, it's like Oh, my God, I get it. I see that everything is what I am I'm hearing is that is really cool. So it's again, it's simple to say, easy to have the concept in your mind. But it takes a lot of practice to realize this as a truth. And it is a sign of someone who has awakened that they they have realized this truth. So let's look at the final sign of an awakened being. So the final sign is that an awakened being takes action without attachment to the results of the action in the Bhagavad Gita. It's stated more like action without desire for the fruits of the action. This is also referred to as karma yoga. Now, as a householder, or Juna, who will remember was, you know the character of the Bhagavad Gita, the warrior prince, he was a householder, he was in the world he had to work he was a warrior he had a family to attend to. So the Bhagavad Gita gives us this teaching that we can be in the world and go through all of the necessary actions that we have to do to take care of our family to take care of our business to tend to our friendships, right. But we can be detached from the fruits of our action can be detached from the results of our actions. So again, this is referred to in the Bhagavad Gita as karma yoga. And what we're doing in this case is again, we're acting in the world, but we have an understanding or an awakened being has this understanding that this body, and this mind is simply the vehicle for the divine to express itself and interact with the world. So the awakened being has a very keen understanding that, that I am the divine, living in through an as this personality, right, I am the divine expressed through this particular body. And this body, and all of the senses of this body, in this mind in this intellect are allowing me to interact with the world around me and to experience the delight of being in contact with life. Right. So, I think that one of the most important questions that we can ask ourselves, you know, on this journey to awakening, we can ask ourselves this question everyday is what does the divine want to do? In me through me as me today? What is the divine want to do in me through me as me today? Again, the the awakened being is fully engaged with the world, but they don't depend on whatever the results are of their actions, in order to be happy in order to be fulfilled where the rest of us do, we depend on this world. And we depend, we look to the results. That's why we set goals I'm in you know,
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I need to make this much money, I need this, I need that. And we do that because we want to be fulfilled, we want to be happy. We're driven by fear, we're driven by anxiety, right? So let's recap on this. So there are six, six signs of the awakened person number one is that they understand that life is a journey from ignorance to knowledge. Number two is they don't seek for happiness, incense in their senses, or incense objects. Number three, they're unaffected by their emotions by their thoughts. Number four, they're grounded in the wisdom of their true self, they're grounded in their true self. Number five is that they have the felt experience of it I am that or everything is what I am appearing as that. And then finally, they take action without being attached to the results of their actions. So for all of the rest of us, who are on this journey on this path of spiritual awakening, these six signs are actually telltale signs of an awakened being. And they're actually pointers to us for what we can do in our spiritual practice what what our goal is, what is our aim for our spiritual practice. So if you're looking for direction and for guidance with your personal practice, then I lead to live practice meditation practices, they're free every week. And you can find out more about those on my website, www dot karmic dash warrior.com. Just look under meditation classes, and you'll find a list of my meditation classes and hopefully, you can come join. And while you're over there on my website, do you remember to pick up my free report on why you keep getting handed that one lesson in life even though you've spent years and years and years doing the work? I'd love to know what you thought of this episode. Let me know in the comments if you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like this show as well. And thank you so much for joining me today. Until next time, Namaste day
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
