Everyday Enlightenment
Welcome!
If you're visiting this page, it's likely you are interested in topics like Meditation, Suffering, Mindfulness, and Enlightenment. Great! This website is all about reducing suffering and increasing mental clarity through meditative practices, but with an emphasis on micro-meditative tools that can be used throughout the day as part of building up a new way to experience life.
Everyday Enlightenment is intended to provide an extremely simple yet comprehensive framework for learning about Enlightenment, coupled with an extensive online toolkit that can be used by anyone, anytime, and eventually every day, all day as an approach to experiencing life.
There are thousands of schools of thought, and so many ways to approach Enlightenment. Everyday Enlightenment is just one resource and isn't intended to be all-inclusive, but it offers an approach that is rare to find. The key concepts that differentiate the approach of Everyday Enlightenment are
- No emphasis on formal meditation.
- Learn to harness pieces of your daily routine as the tools of Enlightenment.
- Use these tools all day, every day.
- As you Awaken, the practices become part of you.
At its root, enlightenment itself is about achieving a dramatic reduction in suffering, and a dramatic increase in mental clarity. Enlightenment can be found every day, all day, in everything around you, and through meditative practices, you can harness the many moments of your day in a way that becomes a path to enlightenment. If this is something you are interested in pursuing, read through this page and see where you can get started.
The Map
The Map of Everyday Enlightenment is a simple way of conceptualizing all the many different ways of pursuing meditative practices, and ultimately Enlightenment itself. All these conceptual terms were chosen to emphasize the thematic elements of The Map, in order to make it easy to navigate and think about.
What are we trying to accomplish?
Beacons provide focus and illumination of the concepts of enlightenment and the Credos give an overview of each Beacon's purpose.
Study Beacons for self-directed learning about specific enlightenment topics.
Where are we on our journey and where are we going next?
Realms organize Landmarks by difficulty and progression so that learners can effectively explore new and challenging ideas and practices.
Study Realms to understand what Landmarks indicate progression for different meditative practices.
How do we develop our practices to achieve real benefits?
Pathways are the different ways to go about learning and growing.
- Landmarks are simple lessons about applying one topic to your everyday life. Browse these if you're unsure where you want to go next.
- Trails are curated lessons made up of several Landmarks to follow all the way through to that Trail's destination, where you can look back and see what you've learned.
- Guides are articles about a particular time and place for learning (such as Walking) that contain Landmarks that highlight how to do it.
- Lenses are tied to Beacons and are articles about meditative concepts and the available Landmarks for those concepts.
Getting Started
Depending on your level of experience with topics such as mindfulness, nonduality, impermanence and meditative practices in general, you could approach this site very differently. Look over each of these types of Learners, and see which one matches where you are. Make sure you understand the purpose of this site, including how The Map works, and then dive in and start browsing through some Trails and Guides to see where you might be able to find some traction in the journey to enlightenment.
For First Timers or Beginners - Enrollment
Being within the Realm of Enrollment in the context of Everyday Enlightenment means someone is trying to find out about meditative practices and have achieved some sort of initial Awakening where they will start to observe some of the phenomenon of the mind and existence that bring us suffering and confusion. As they move past the Realm of Enrollment, they will begin to have a basic understanding of what they have observed and experienced and will likely feel a desire to continue the journey.
There are two types of Beginners, those who have never really heard much about meditation and don't really know what it's about, and those who know something about mediative practices, but haven't really started incorporating those practices into their life. Take a look at these Trails and see which one might be the best place to start.
- For First-Timers
- For Beginners (More Coming Soon)
- Learn About Non-Judgment (Under Construction)
For Intermediate Learners - Engagement
Most people that are pursuing Meditative practices daily will be in the Realm of Engagement, which simply means they learned enough foundational methods and theory and made a shift to an active and regular practice.
For Advanced Learners - Enrichment
The Realm of Enrichment represents a significant level of personal development and commitment to meditative practices and the pursuit of Enlightenment. The majority of extremely advanced practitioners would find themselves within the Realm of Enrichment. Being within this Realm means you have dramatically shifted from a life of suffering and confusion to a life of peace, joy, and mental and emotional clarity.