What Comes After Your First Glimpse of Awakening?

Evelyn Reed · 2026-09-15

You've had a glimpse. That moment when everything felt open, still, and strangely okay. Maybe it lasted a few seconds, maybe a few days. And then, like a tide pulling back, it slipped away. Now what? That's exactly the question at the heart of a recent conversation between host Michael Taft and meditation teacher Loch Kelly. And their answer might surprise you: the real work isn't about chasing that glimpse again. It's about learning to *live* from it. ### Waking Up vs. Waking With Most of us are familiar with "waking up." It's the recognition of openness, stillness, and the absence of a separate self. A moment of clarity where the usual chatter quiets down and you sense something bigger. But Loch Kelly points to something subtler, something he calls "waking with." Instead of just recognizing awareness, you start to see that everything appearing in your experience—thoughts, sounds, sensations—is inseparable from that awake awareness. It's what's sometimes called "one taste." The ordinary and the sacred stop feeling like two different things. Think of it like this: waking up is noticing the ocean. Waking with is realizing every wave *is* the ocean, not separate from it. ### Where Flow States Fit In The conversation also digs into flow states—those moments when you're so absorbed in what you're doing that time dissolves. Athletes call it "being in the zone." Musicians might call it "riding the groove." But Loch suggests flow isn't just a performance hack. It's a doorway. When you're in flow, the sense of a separate "you" doing the thing softens. There's just the doing. And in that softening, you get a taste of what it's like to live from awake awareness without effort. Here's the thing, though: flow states come and go. You can't force them. But you can learn to recognize the awareness that's present *even when flow fades*. That's the real shift. ### Living from the Glimpse So how do you move from a fleeting glimpse to a more stable way of being? Loch offers a few gentle pointers: - **Notice the space between thoughts.** That tiny gap? It's not empty. It's full of presence. - **Don't chase the feeling.** The glimpse isn't a high to recreate. It's a home to return to. - **Bring awareness into daily life.** Washing dishes, walking the dog, answering emails—all of it can be part of the practice. - **Let go of the goal.** The moment you try to *get* somewhere, you've already stepped out of the stillness. As Loch puts it, "You're not trying to get rid of thoughts. You're just no longer taking them personally." That shift changes everything. ### The One Taste of Ordinary Life One of the most freeing ideas in this conversation is that awakening isn't about escaping the messy, human stuff. It's about seeing it all as part of the same awareness. The frustration, the joy, the boredom, the awe—none of it is outside of wakefulness. That's the promise of "one taste." Not that life becomes perfect, but that it becomes undivided. You stop fighting against your experience and start meeting it with curiosity. And honestly? That sounds a lot like what most of us are really looking for. Not a permanent high, but a way to be here—fully, gently, and without the exhausting need to fix everything. So if you've had a glimpse and wondered what comes next, take heart. The glimpse isn't the finish line. It's an invitation. And the practice is simply learning to say yes.