The desire to wake up emerges from a discrepancy between daily reality and what we feel in our hearts.

There's a fundamental shift in the locus of identity that comes with awakening.

Weaving in and out of the awakened state is an essential part of the process.

This is part one of a two-part series.

Stephan Bodian is a gifted spiritual teacher whose work has brought wisdom to countless contemporary seekers in an accessible and deeply transformative way. Founder of the School for Awakening and author of several influential books—including Meditation for Dummies (with more than half a million copies sold), Wake Up Now, and Beyond Mindfulness—Bodian is widely respected for his rare ability to bridge timeless spiritual insight with modern psychological understanding. Trained as a psychotherapist, Bodian has pioneered a uniquely skillful approach that integrates self-inquiry, non-dual realization, and practical psychological insight. We recently spoke from his home in the Canary Islands about his newest book, Infinite Awakening: A Guide to Nondual Wisdom and the Pathless Path, which offers a comprehensive guide to the “pathless path” of spiritual awakening.

Mark Matousek: In the preface to your new book, the spiritual teacher Adyashanti writes that there is "a spiritual potency within each of us, a drive to awaken to our true being, or reality, or God." You go on to say that this potency seems to be hardwired into our DNA and deeply programmed into our nervous system. Can you say more?

Stephan Bodian: Yes, I totally agree with Adya on that. The Sufis say God is a hidden treasure and wants to be known. He—excuse the gender pronoun—created the world and human beings in order to know himself. I think there’s something innate about that. The mystery wants to be revealed.

We human beings are the vehicle for this process because of our advanced level of understanding and consciousness. As for how that translates personally for each of us, we experience it as a longing at the core of our being, which we often glimpse as children. We may even hang out there for a........

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