Meditation Changes Everything

Most of us come to meditation because we want something—peace, clarity, or even awakening itself. While natural, this approach can carry a subtle trap: meditation becomes another project of the separate self, another way of trying to get something for “me.”

But true awakening isn’t about fixing or improving the self. It’s about loosening our identification with the self altogether.

In this episode, Craig invites us into a guided medi...

“The goal of spiritual life is to have a fluid mind, a mind like water, a mind that doesn't cling on to concepts in order to give us a sense of security rooted in the belief that we know something. An awakened mind is a mind that's ever open, receptive and agile, and available for what's new.” —Craig Hamilton

What does it really mean to let go of the mind?

Many of us have heard that the goal of meditation is ...

When we hear about spiritual awakening, it can often sound lofty or out of reach. We imagine it will take decades of practice, or that it belongs only to rare, extraordinary people.

But what if the very thing we’ve been seeking has never been absent?

In this episode, Craig turns our attention to something we almost always overlook. Every moment of life is filled with thoughts, sensations, and emotions—yet we rarely notice the conscio...

Many of us come to meditation with subtle expectations—hoping for stillness, clarity, or a familiar sense of calm. When our experience doesn’t match those hopes, we often assume something is missing or that we’re doing it wrong.

In this episode, Craig offers a meditative exploration of what it means to meet the moment as it is. Rather than trying to fix or improve our experience, he invites us to try on a simple but radical stance: ...

In this episode, Craig turns our attention to an often-overlooked dimension of meditation practice: our emotional lives.

We’re often taught that the biggest obstacle in meditation is our thinking mind—our thoughts, beliefs, and judgments. But strong emotions can be just as impactful, and often even more so.

When we sit to practice, we may be subtly trying to feel better, hoping meditation will deliver peace or bli...

“There’s perhaps nothing we can do that has as radical an impact on our consciousness as the meditation practice of completely letting go of the mind. Something extraordinary happens when we’re willing to still for a period of time every day and have no involvement with our thoughts. severing our identification with the mind. Because we don't have to do anything when we're meditating, it gives us a rare opportunity to sim...

Surrender is central to every spiritual tradition. But what does it actually mean to surrender—and how do we begin to practice it in a real and grounded way?

In this episode, Craig invites us into a direct exploration of that question. Rather than approaching surrender as a lofty ideal, he points us toward a lived experience—something we can discover for ourselves through conscious attention. 

The episode includes a short g...

Meditation can lead us into some extraordinary states of consciousness—moments of stillness, spaciousness, or bliss that feel like a doorway has opened inside us. These states can be deeply nourishing, offering glimpses of something beyond the ordinary mind. But over time, even these expansive experiences can start to feel familiar. When meditation begins to drop us into the same place again and again, it’s worth asking: Are these ...

“Authentic spiritual awakening is not about getting to a place where we’re above all the pains and tragedies of life. The transformation I’m pointing to is one where we’re able to stay rooted in the direct knowledge of the sacred essence of reality that is the truth of every moment. It’s the fundamental truth that is immutable in every moment. It never changes, even when our own life may be difficult. The goal is to get to a place ...

In Beyond the Story of Self, Craig guides a series of meditations that gently loosen the structures that define who we think we are. 

Most of us move through life with an unspoken assumption—that we are someone, somewhere, located within the edges of our skin. We assume there’s a boundary between “me” and everything else. 

But in meditation, a different possibility begins to reveal itself. The edges soften. The se...

“Many of us begin the spiritual path because we simply want to feel better. And this desire to feel good can take us some distance on the path. It will get you meditating daily, it will get you into workshops and retreats, and you’ll start to grow and change and evolve as a result. But, ultimately, spiritual awakening requires much more from us. It requires us to let go of the need to feel any particular way. It’s not possible to t...

“Meditation is ultimately about getting out of the way so that a greater intelligence and a higher set of capacities can begin to show up within us. We meditate so that we can unlock a deeper care, a deeper strength, a deeper willingness to trust and ultimately a completely different order of consciousness than anything we can cause through our willful effort. As we awaken, this higher consciousness then begins to express itself in...

In a world where uncertainty, conflict, and emotional triggers seem to be everywhere, staying rooted in stillness can often seem out of reach.

In Unlocking the Power of Stillness: Equanimity Meditation, Craig explores how meditation can become a powerful ally in helping us stay centered and grounded, even in the midst of life’s most difficult challenges. 

This quality of inner balance is often called equanimity. A...

“Awakened consciousness is always deeply at ease. It's very open and fluid and flexible. And that's something we can sit down and practice. We don’t have to focus on our breath or repeat a word, or try to be mindful of every little sensation. Instead, we can use our meditation as a dynamic, active experiment in consciousnesses where we are making space for spiritual awakening to happen, to reveal itself.”—Craig Hamilton

“From one point of view, spiritual practice is always a postponement of awakening, because awakening is about embracing our true nature exactly as we are right now. Yet, from another point of view, if we don’t practice with intensity, if we don’t undertake a conscious effort to embrace the truth of our inherent freedom, then awakening is probably only going to ever show up in fleeting glimpses because the habit of denying our true ...

“The reason spiritual awakening is so incredibly rare on this planet isn't that nobody wants to awaken. It's that those of us who want to awaken also want something else that's in conflict with awakening. We want security. We want to stay in control. We want to keep our self-image intact. As long as this division is in operation within us, we will not be a space within which awakening can truly occur and take root. T...

“If we want to live our lives immersed in the mystery of awakened consciousness, we need to give up the idea that we could ever know this mystery with our mind. This means we have to give up trying to know it with the mind, trying to get a handle on it in any way. If we want that extraordinary dimension to become the source of our life, we must learn to live in the innocence of a beginner’s mind.”
—Craig Hamilton

We’ve...

​​“The practice of Direct Awakening is always only about this moment. It's always only about awakening in this moment of practice. So we need to come to our practice with the full optimism and audacity that this moment is the moment that I awaken. There's nothing that could get in my way.” —Craig Hamilton

In this episode, Craig sheds light on an often-overlooked aspect of meditation—the mindset we bring to the pr...

“An awakened life is a life in which we're no longer centered in the cognitive mind, we're no longer centered in the thought stream. Ultimately, the spiritual path means trusting enough to let go of the mind and allow a deeper consciousness, a deeper wisdom, a deeper kind of guidance system to start to operate within us that isn't something you can control, and isn't something you can understand with your m...