We use the word enlightenment all the time in spirituality.

But it might actually be one of the most misleading words in the entire field.

It suggests a climactic transformation, a final state, something rare and special.

Yet the lived experience of awakening is usually quieter, slower, and far more ordinary.

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Perhaps 1% or fewer practitioners reach late-stage meditation, where awakening has permanently altered one’s perception.

Late stage says: “There is no centre for awakening to happen to.”

This is a snippet from my episode from Wednesday 11/3, The Three Stages of Meditation.

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Mid-stage practitioners constitute perhaps 5–10% of meditators. This is the stage where awakening begins to stabilise.

A core feature of this stage is that thoughts lose their unquestioned authority. They are still present, but they are no longer automatically taken as reality. Thoughts are seen as appearances rather than truths: as thoughts, nothing more, nothing less.

This is a snippet from my episode The Three Stages of Insight Work from the 4th of March.

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At the early stage, meditation is something you do. It is an activity during the day, set apart from life, distinct from the rest.

Awakening is imagined as a future event: a breakthrough, a shift, a permanent state waiting at the end of sufficient effort.

This is a snippet from my episode on Wednesday 4th March, The Three Stages of Meditation & Spiritual Insight.

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We tend to see meditation as a single spiritual practice experienced equally by all. It seems meditators sit, practice their technique, attend retreats and accumulate hours.

What’s missing is the developmental dimension of meditation. This practice unfolds in recognisable developmental stages.

These are not rigid categories, but shifts in identity, perception and relationship to experience. What changes is not just depth of calm — it is the structure of self.

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Meaning, meaningnless and ameaningful are three different words. Meaning and meaninglessness imply one another.

Questioning the meaning of life is not a symptom of meaninglessness. We are obsessed with meaning, and yet life could be ameaningful.

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The question "What Is The Meaning of Life?" is fraught with difficulties and blindspots. It's so tempting to overcomplicate it, to oversimplify it, or to blindly rely on others to tell you the answer.

This is an extract from my latest episode "What Is The Meaning Of Life?"

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Why are you here? How does personal meaning work? What questions can we ask to get to the core of our personal meaning structure?

This is a snippet from my episode "What Is The Meaning Of Life?" from 25th Feb.

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What is the meaning of life? When we get down to it, why are we here as individuals? Why does life itself exist? What is all this for?

I round off this month's theme of deep questions with the mother of all existential questions.

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When we deconstruct paradigms like self and other, it's tempting to dismiss it outright. But self-other consciousness serves a clear function, and without it you would be lost. We want not to lose it, but to see through it.

This is a snippet from last Wednesday's episode on Do Other People Exist?

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