Awakening is the profound aim of the spiritual life. Awakening is not described as a mystical goal, we wake up to the four noble truths. We look squarely at the world and recognize that we cannot fix it, and through this clarity we realize the end of suffering. Enlightenment does not imply a separation from life, instead, it brings us to face the reality of lived experiences without resistance. Profound realization brings a deep equanimity and peace into every encounter; it is defined as the ending of greed, hatred, and delusion. Awakening is known through the result—the end of defilements, craving, and ignorance. This talk teases out the meaning of several difficult "D" words: disenchantment, dispassion, detachment. These terms do not imply an aversive response to experience, instead they play a vital role in the process of awakening. The talk explores profound spiritual experiences. It considers the danger of arrogance and conceit arising, clinging to, and corrupting enlightenment experiences. It discusses how to express, describe, and speak about our spiritual awakenings without identification.

Mindfulness brings a powerful quality of presence to our encounter with experience. By cultivating deep presence we meet life below the level of superficial concepts. We disentangle the mind from the story of self. More than charisma or social skills, deep presence implies a profound way of being which brings our momentary encounters into the immediate present.

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness provide a valuable exploration of the three characteristics—impermanence (annica), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and not self (anatta). Mindfulness practice—presence with equanimity—helps us to gain knowledge and insight that nothing can be held onto as permanent, that all experiences are ultimately unsatisfactory, and that there is no fixed self at the heart of all experience. These insights free the mind of all resistance to things being as they are.

Cultivating the faculty of wisdom is an important element for our meditation practice to deepen. Through a sincere meditation practice and understanding of the Four Noble Truths, deep presence and clarity arise enabling us to discern firsthand the causes of suffering and to engage a remedy for a beneficial resolution. Investigating Right View and Right Intention trains the mind in the development, understanding, and expression of how things actually are. Wisdom comes when the heart and mind are not clinging to nor resisting what is occurring in experience.