The First Step to Living as an Enlightened Master

Most people live inside realities they never consciously chose.

Ideas about who they are, what they’re capable of, what they deserve, what’s possible for their life.

And over time, those realities start feeling like the truth.

In this talk, I explore the difference between truth and reality and why that distinction changes everything. I explain how human beings unconsciously endorse realities about themselves, then spend their lives defending or fighting against them.

But what if you could simply stop endorsing the realities that diminish you?

This conversation moves beyond philosophy into something deeply practical and spiritual. I share how meditation, love, light, and direct spiritual experience can create entirely new ways of being in the world.

Not as performance. Not as self-improvement. But as a lived experience of grace.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
◻️ Why reality and truth are not the same thing
◻️ How human beings unconsciously create and endorse realities
◻️ Why arguing against disempowering beliefs keeps them alive
◻️ The hidden power in withdrawing your endorsement from limiting identities
◻️ What it means to experience yourself as light, love, or source
◻️ How your presence, voice, touch, and attention can become expressions of grace

The realities you endorse shape the life you experience.

The question is whether you are willing to choose them consciously.

👉 Join the Awakening Weekends:
https://theawakeningweekend.com

If you’re ready to move beyond understanding this intellectually and actually live it, the Awakening Weekends are where that happens. It’s a space to experience what it means to show up differently and leave a completely different impact on the people around you.

👉 Watch David’s free video on ending self-criticism:
https://endingselfcriticism.com

If this message resonates, this is the best place to go deeper. It will shift how you relate to yourself and everything else builds from there.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone, I'm David Cunningham. The life of an enlightened master, it's something that most of us consider out of reach, something reserved for people who have somehow the opportunity of years of study, years of spiritual development. They get to then live the life of an enlightened master, or maybe somebody that is born with special gifts. I'd like us to consider, and I'd like to make available to you, that the life of an enlightened master is for all of us. It's right here. We can live that life. It takes a couple very specific transformational conversations and some very specific spiritual experiences, but it's something that's available to all of us. Let's talk about the transformational conversations first. The essential conversation, the most essential one, is to be able to distinguish between reality and truth. Realities are created by someone speaking and someone listening. It can be ourselves speaking and ourselves listening, by the way, or someone speaking and somebody else listening. So my parents said my name is David, and then people listened to that and endorsed it. So my name became David. We live like this is the United States of America. People spoke that at first, people didn't agree. But then at some point the whole world agreed, okay, they endorsed the reality that this land is the United States of America. Similar to that this is Wednesday. Somebody spoke that into existence and then the whole world agreed on it. That's how realities are created. The mistake is we confuse reality with the truth. In other words, we relate to my name is David as if it's true. We relate to that this is the United States of America as if it's true. We relate to that this is Wednesday as if it's the truth. I invite you to take yourself out of the business of the truth. I'm not sure what's true. I don't debate it. I don't find it useful to debate. I wonder about it maybe, but it's not what I occupy myself with. What I occupy myself with is the realities I live in and the impact those have on my life. Why is that critical? Because the realities we live in, we have a say about. We get to endorse them or not endorse them. Our reality is created, you and I hear something, we then have a choice right there. Do I endorse the reality that just got suggested or do I not? So that one group of human beings is less than another group of human beings. Ah, somebody could say that, I could hear that, but my power is to refuse to endorse that as a reality. So our power as a human being is to listen, and then we have a choice do we endorse or not endorse the reality that just got suggested? The most important part of this is the reality of who we are. There's a reality we live in about who we are. It gets pointed to every time we use the word I or me. Think about it. When you say, I'm home, I'm here, who are you referring to? What's the entity you're referring to with the word I? Or if you call somebody on the phone and simply say it's me, who are you referring to with the use of the word me? Whoever you're referring to, that I or me, you live like it's the truth. I promise. I'd like you to consider maybe it's not the truth, but for sure it's a reality that you live in that you endorse, wittingly or unwittingly. But if a reality is something you have a choice about whether you endorse it or not, at any point in life, having endorsed a reality, you can withdraw your endorsement. So there are some realities you and I live in, like we are this body, and that we have a certain power as human beings. Those are realities. We don't know what's true, but I invite you to look everywhere. You have a disempowering reality you live in. Find the top three to five at least. I hear many people say, I'm not powerful enough, or I'm not effective enough, or I'm not beautiful. Find those. You've been relating to those as if they're true. And then the best you can do is try and debate it. I am effective, no, I'm not effective, I am effective, no, I'm not effective, I am lazy, no, I'm not lazy, I am lazy, no, I'm not lazy, I am attractive, no, I'm not attractive. You can debate it back and forth for centuries, quite frankly. With realities, you don't debate. You just choose do you endorse them or not? And what you consider is the impact on your life of endorsing them. First, essential transformational conversation is to distinguish between reality and truth so that you have a choice about the reality you live in, about who you are. And identifying the disempowering realities you've lived in about who you are gives you the opportunity to choose to no longer endorse those. And if you don't endorse those realities, then there's a space, a space in which new realities can get created that you can choose to endorse. That's when it's time now to have some really beautiful spiritual experiences. In whatever style of meditation you choose to experience light, to experience source, to experience love. By the way, I use all those terms synonymously. Light, source, love, prana, life force, life energy, meditation, guided or on your own, listening to chanting, chanting yourself. Those experiences give you the opportunity to experience light, source, love at a profound level. People talk about the light within. What I'm suggesting is one more step. As you experience that light, that love, that source, that you actually claim that as who you are. See the light within, and then go, that's me. I see myself. There I am. I am that light. That is true or false, I'm not sure. But for sure it's a reality you could endorse, and it will give you extraordinary power. Then you can actually direct that light. You can actually direct that to your hands and say, I'm directing that light to my hands, so I have hands that heal. I'm directing that light to my eyes, so I have eyes that bestow grace. I'm directing that light to my voice, so my voice itself bestows grace. Whoever I see, whoever I touch, whoever I talk to experiences grace. And there you have the beginning of a life of an enlightened master. Somebody who walks in the world and with their hands, their eyes, their voice bestows grace on whoever they see. You have that power. It takes a fundamental understanding that truth and reality are two different things, and you get to choose which reality to endorse or not. And creating a new reality as you experience light, source, love in your meditations, etc., that you endorse a reality that you are the light. You are the love, you are source. Direct it to your hands, your eyes, your voice, your heart, and there you are. Walk in the world, bestowing grace on whoever you see, whoever you touch, whoever you talk to, wherever you take into your heart. Love living your life, love being you. Live the life of an enlightened master.