Ep 84 – Awakening through Meditation: Finding Equanimity to Transcend Suffering in Life (and in Healthcare), with Dr. Angelo Dilullo

What this episode covers

Healthcare worker burnout has reached crisis proportions, and we must find real solutions to address the intense psychological suffering of our workforce. The seemingly endless intensity of work, the mounting death totals and the indifferent attitudes many Americans display toward COVID safety precautions has caused depression, burnout and moral injury for a growing number of physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals. For those of you out there feeling despair and pain on the frontlines of care delivery, an active meditation practice can bring you the peace and equanimity to transcend your suffering. In this week’s episode, we talk about realizing one’s unbound, undivided nature through meditation and how that can create a profound sense of liberation and enlightenment. If you are seeking a better understanding of how to experience a deeper sense of integrated realization that allows you to overcome an over-identification with ego that creates separation, isolation, and suffering, than this episode is for you! Our guest this week, Dr. Angelo Dilullo, a practicing anesthesiologist and author of the book "Awake: It's Your Turn." I’ve invited him on to the podcast to provide us with a masterclass in breaking the illusion that we are separate from life, from ourselves, from everything that is. Given the suffering that is occurring in the healthcare workforce, there is something to be learned here about how we can live moment to moment and find resilience through equanimity. In this episode, Angelo discusses the process of Awakening (which he also wrote about in his new book and talked about on the ZDoggMD show) and how non-dual awareness can be applied to the context of emotional resiliency in the healthcare workforce to overcome burnout and moral injury. Episode Bookmarks: 01:40 Eric discusses meeting Angelo during a recent 6-Day Semi-Silent Meditation Retreat and how his life has changed! 06:00 Angelo briefly discusses his Awakening journey and how he began to teach others 08:20 What Awakening is not as a starting point to understand what it is! 09:10 The end result of Awakening is the end of suffering 10:10 “Awakening is a huge reorganization in how you experience identity. It is a vast space of consciousness where one is completely at peace with one’s unbound Self.” 11:40 Awakening is the most important thing to someone once that state is fully realized. The process is self-validating. 12:30 “You didn’t realize the mental prison you were really in until you find the key, turn the key, and walk out the door.” 13:00 The paradoxical nature of Awakening and the experiential shift in spiritual insight 15:00 Thinking is a disease of the human mind that creates intense resistance to one’s true nature which, in turn, creates suffering. 17:00 Accessing the Peace and Equanimity that is already there through the elimination of incessant thinking! 19:00 You can’t fix stress and anxiety through thinking. There is a difference way to derive identity and find peace. 21:30 Feeling and experiencing as all of consciousness (instead of identification through thoughts) 22:00 Everything is “I” – a universal sense of Being 24:00 Experiencing equanimity as consciousness itself in the present moment (not through identification of past and future) 28:40 Presence is peace and equanimity at an intimate level…a complete sense of aliveness. 31:00 Awakening it is not some exalted state or spiritual enlightenment – it is a natural state of fluidity, unbound intimacy, and freedom 33:00 Anyone can wake up from the dream of separation if they are determined to find the root cause of suffering. 36:00 The mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on...

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