Episode 141
Enlightenment in 2 Minutes: How Micro-Moments Can Transform Your Life
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What if enlightenment isn’t about hours of meditation or decades of study, but tiny moments of awareness you can practice anywhere, anytime? After paralysis, heartbreak, and a battle with intrusive thoughts, Steven Webb discovered that awakening thrives in life’s margins—in stolen seconds between tasks, breaths during chaos, and pauses before reactions. In this episode, he shares:
- How to turn traffic jams, work stress, and even arguments into portals of peace
- Why 2-minute practices work better than marathon meditation sessions (and how to start)
- The science-backed power of "enlightened micro-moments" to rewire your brain
Why This Episode Will Help You
- ⏱️ "Enlightenment for the time-poor" – Transform洗碗, commuting, or waiting in line into spiritual practice
- 🧠 Neuroplasticity hack – How micro-moments of awareness compound into lasting change
- 🚫 No altar/incense required – Stephen’s "30-second reset" for panic attacks, overwhelm, or decision fatigue
- 💥 Breakthrough for meditation quitters – Why short bursts beat "perfect" sessions (and how to avoid self-judgment)
- 🌱 Grow peace incrementally – Trackable daily wins vs. vague spiritual goals
Key Quotes from the Episode
- “You don’t need 30 minutes—steal 30 seconds. A deep breath while the microwave spins? That’s a revolution.”
- “I’m dyslexic, paralyzed, and once thought enlightenment was for gurus. Now I find it staring at my ceiling fan.”
- “An enlightened moment isn’t when you stop feeling anger—it’s the half-second where you notice you’re angry. That’s the crack where light gets in.”
- “Ten 2-minute practices scattered through your day? That’s 20 minutes of awareness—without sitting cross-legged once.”
- “I didn’t change my life in a cave. I changed it waiting for caregivers, between sips of tea, in the silence after a text notification.”
Transcript
Enlightenment is awakening to the ultimate truth, liberating one from suffering, ignorance and the cycle of rebirth culminating in a profound inner peace and unity with all existence.
Speaker A:I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms.
Speaker A:And on today's show, I'm going to break down what that is and I'm going to just check in to see what some other teachers and famous Zen masters and people like that, what their interpretation of enlightenment is.
Speaker A:And I'm going to talk about what I think it is and how it can help us in the present moment in the world and how it can reduce our suffering.
Speaker A:So welcome to today's show.
Speaker A:Firstly, just before I go any further, I just like to say thank you for those that have signed up to the weekly Calm newsletter.
Speaker A:It's getting slightly more closer to being weekly, about one every fortnight at the moment.
Speaker A:And to all those that subscribe and like the podcast, favorite it and all those other things, you guys are awesome.
Speaker A:You make a real big difference.
Speaker A:And the ones that donate a coffee, the help to keep it free with no adverts.
Speaker A:You are awesome.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Huge shout out to each one of you and let's get on with today's show.
Speaker A:So enlightenment.
Speaker A:When I hit my rock bottom at the age of 40, I knew what I thought enlightenment was.
Speaker A:I thought enlightenment was some kind of experience that you get to when you're like, I don't know, 50 years old and you're a wise teacher and you're happy than ever ever after and you're just cheerful and you, you know, you literally float on water and you're this magic human that has everything.
Speaker A:I never.
Speaker A:Okay, let's be honest, I never really thought about it.
Speaker A:But when I hit rock bottom at the age of 40, I found myself single.
Speaker A:I found myself not feeling anything.
Speaker A:And it was probably the roughest and most.
Speaker A:One of the most horrible times in my life.
Speaker A:And I can say that with confidence when I've broke my neck and I've been bankrupt, I've lost businesses and everything.
Speaker A:But this particular time was different because all of my dreams and happiness have been ripped away from me.
Speaker A:I had a dream that I was going to live happily in a relationship.
Speaker A:All these other things, all that.
Speaker A:And that got ripped away from me completely unexpected.
Speaker A:And it literally knocked me for sex.
Speaker A:And it's a real tale of don't put your happiness in other people's hands because the only person you can trust with your happiness is yourself.
Speaker A:But that's a slightly different subject.
Speaker A:So going back to enlightenment, I virtually went through the dark night of the soul.
Speaker A:I didn't know what that was.
Speaker A:But that's basically when the ego gives up and says, do you know, I got nothing left, Steven.
Speaker A:You're on your own.
Speaker A:And for about two weeks, I never felt anything.
Speaker A:I was just existing.
Speaker A:The carers would come in and get me out of bed.
Speaker A:I would eat what they put in front of me.
Speaker A:I would barely talk.
Speaker A:I didn't want to exist because the minute I existed, thoughts would come through my head, and they were the most painful, horrible thoughts.
Speaker A:So the ego just wasn't there.
Speaker A:I was basically.
Speaker A:My heart was beating, I was breathing, but I was just awareness, didn't feel anything.
Speaker A:And then you start coming out of it, and then you start suffering, and it's really horrible.
Speaker A:And all I wanted to do was reduce my suffering.
Speaker A:All I wanted to do was feel better.
Speaker A:I wanted to stop the thoughts, the intrusive thoughts that were relentless, the things that were keeping me awake.
Speaker A:And I was getting to the point where I was asking my carers to give me, like, a glass of Southern Comfort.
Speaker A:And then it was a larger glass of Southern Comfort, and then it was two glasses of Southern Comfort, just so I would go sleep.
Speaker A:It didn't last long.
Speaker A:It would last about an hour and a half, two hours, and I'd be awake.
Speaker A:And I don't drink.
Speaker A:And here I was, paralyzed, asking carers to give me a drink just so I could go sleep, just so I could silence those thoughts.
Speaker A:Really, Did I want sleep?
Speaker A:Did I want anything?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:I just wanted to suffer less.
Speaker A:And then I ended up reading a book called As a Man Thinketh.
Speaker A:It's a book about 120 years old, and basically, it told me, you are.
Speaker A:You're not your thoughts.
Speaker A:And it just absolutely hit me like, you know, I have thoughts, but I'm not my thoughts.
Speaker A:And suddenly, for the very first time, I was separate to my thoughts, and I couldn't go back.
Speaker A:So what does that mean?
Speaker A:Well, when you recognize your thoughts and you can see your thought when it arrives.
Speaker A:Ah, thinking.
Speaker A:Ah, there's a thought that's not very productive.
Speaker A:I'll just leave that one go.
Speaker A:Suddenly you have all this control.
Speaker A:You're separated from your subconscious mind that you thought you were for so long.
Speaker A:Did all my suffering vanish overnight?
Speaker A:No, far from it.
Speaker A:But as more and more time went on, the more and more I recognized my thoughts, and I recognized the pattern in thoughts, and I choose which ones to get on.
Speaker A:But it wasn't easy.
Speaker A:And the one thing that was frustrating was every book I picked up and read it.
Speaker A:Said, you've got to meditate every single time.
Speaker A:And I wasn't a reader.
Speaker A:I used to, if I read a chapter, I've got to read it six times because I don't take in what I'm reading.
Speaker A:I was labeled dyslexic at school, and that was back in the late seventies.
Speaker A:Mrs.
Speaker A:Hoban, incredible teacher.
Speaker A:I met her a couple of years ago.
Speaker A:Just one of my most amazing teachers in my life.
Speaker A:And I hadn't seen her since school.
Speaker A:But when I become mayor, she reached out and said, I'd love to meet up.
Speaker A:And she diagnosed me with dyslexia.
Speaker A:But she didn't really know what it was at the time either.
Speaker A:She just heard about it from a friend in London some four hours away, 500 miles away.
Speaker A:So they didn't know what to do with it, but they gave me more help in school.
Speaker A:And my form of dyslexia is if I read something, I don't take it in while I'm reading because it takes all my effort to read it.
Speaker A:So I would literally write.
Speaker A:They would write stuff on the board and ask us to write down the book.
Speaker A:And I would never write what was on the board.
Speaker A:And it was just gobbledygook compared to what.
Speaker A:And she thought, there's something not right here.
Speaker A:Long story short, it wasn't until the age of 40, because I faked everything, that I actually started reading.
Speaker A:And I read this as a man thinker, just to fall asleep.
Speaker A:And I used to read it because if I just kept reading, kept reading, eventually I would fall asleep.
Speaker A:And it was better than alcohol, certainly better for me.
Speaker A:I didn't like the taste of alcohol.
Speaker A:So I was eventually introduced to different books about, like.
Speaker A:I read Eckhart Tolle's Paranel.
Speaker A:I didn't understand the damn word of it.
Speaker A:Not because of my dyslexia, but because it was bar me.
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:You're not in the now, you're not present, you're not.
Speaker A:What are you talking about?
Speaker A:So I struggle with that one.
Speaker A:I think I got to about 30% of the way through and gave up.
Speaker A:I'm really a 33% book reader.
Speaker A:I think they give most of their awesome stuff in the first 33%, they fluff it out with the next 40%.
Speaker A:And the rest of it is just telling you where to go next.
Speaker A:Every now and again I gotta take a breath and rest because I'm still exhausted over this cough and cold.
Speaker A:So every book that I read, every time I turn over a page, it said You've got to meditate.
Speaker A:And I know I couldn't meditate because when I tried it when I was 27, because I thought it'd be really cool, and I thought it might get me a girlfriend, I sat down to meditate for about four seconds, and my mind went, no, don't want any of that.
Speaker A:And I thought at the time, meditation was silence.
Speaker A:The mind sit there in utter bliss, you know, until you start levitating off the floor and you're sitting in guru land and everything's beautiful.
Speaker A:And it wasn't until I actually started meditating that I realized that, yeah, you're right, I cannot meditate.
Speaker A:I still cannot meditate in the conventional sense of what we're told meditation is, or what we think meditation is.
Speaker A:I know we talked about enlightenment, but we got to get there.
Speaker A:So I started to meditate and I started to persevere with it.
Speaker A:Persevere with it.
Speaker A:Because if one book tells you something, you go, okay.
Speaker A:If two books tell you something, okay, there might be something.
Speaker A:But if 10 books, if every book is telling you, look, even if you cannot meditate, you need to meditate, and this is what it'll do.
Speaker A:At some point you've got to go, okay, you know, this must be some truth here.
Speaker A:It's like you're locked in a room with no windows and doors, and 10 people walk in, and nine of them walk in and say, it's raining.
Speaker A:And one person goes, nice, beautiful sunshine.
Speaker A:You know, what are you going to do?
Speaker A:You're going to grab a coat.
Speaker A:Any sensible person, unless you're a conspiracy theorist, you go, ah, but the nine could be all lying to me.
Speaker A:I'm not stupid.
Speaker A:I know what's going on here.
Speaker A:You're not going to pull the wool over my eyes.
Speaker A:I'm going to go outside and, yeah, anyway, that's the opposite to enlightenment.
Speaker A:It's like, no, I'm going to bleed my thoughts because they're my thoughts and they're in my head, so they must be true.
Speaker A:So I started meditating.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:Over time, I still meditate.
Speaker A:Now I still.
Speaker A:I do little and often now I just sit down for two, three minutes very regularly and just take time out, become aware of my breath, become aware of my thoughts.
Speaker A:And whether I'm on the way to a meeting or whether I'm just in the back of the car or something like that, I'll always stop and just.
Speaker A:What's going on right now?
Speaker A:Sometimes 10, 20, 30 minutes, sometimes just 30 seconds.
Speaker A:What's going on right now?
Speaker A:And I Just allow whatever arises.
Speaker A:So this leads me to what enlightenment is now.
Speaker A:Then it's got no definite answer.
Speaker A:And what it says here, Enlightenment is awakened to the ultimate truth.
Speaker A:So what is the ultimate truth?
Speaker A:The ultimate truth is I'm a atom based, carbon based machine of some kind that's evolved over years and I happen to be here.
Speaker A:And every thought is just a chemical thought.
Speaker A:Thoughts come from my past and based on all kinds of experiences.
Speaker A:And they happen before I'm even aware of it.
Speaker A:If a sound happens, it goes into my head and my head interprets it, then tells me what it is.
Speaker A:I am not in.
Speaker A:I'm not in the loop of how my brain thinks until my brain decides to tell me.
Speaker A:It's much like having kids.
Speaker A:Your kids are organizing something.
Speaker A:And when they come to tell you what they've organized and what they're going to do, they'll then come and tell you that's what your subconscious mind is doing.
Speaker A:So what is enlightenment?
Speaker A:Enlightenment is knowing that truth.
Speaker A:I'm not in control.
Speaker A:I cannot control my thoughts.
Speaker A:They come into my head and I can choose what to do with them technically, but that's getting really deep.
Speaker A:Am I really choosing different story and then liberating one from suffering?
Speaker A:So when you see this, you go, you just suffer less.
Speaker A:So what meditation does?
Speaker A:You end up seeing your thoughts, you see in your feelings.
Speaker A:I have feelings, but I'm not those feelings.
Speaker A:I have thoughts, but I'm not those thoughts.
Speaker A:And the more you do this, you separate yourself from what's really going on.
Speaker A:You know, there's suffering over there, but I'm not actually part of that.
Speaker A:And I can choose to go and join it.
Speaker A:There's thinking over there, I can be aware of it and watch it.
Speaker A:There's feelings arising, I can observe the feelings.
Speaker A:I don't have to be part of it.
Speaker A:So therefore you ultimately suffer less.
Speaker A:And I use the analogy of a train station.
Speaker A:So imagine sitting in a train station.
Speaker A:You're on a bench and trains are coming in and trains are thought.
Speaker A:You'll see what I'm doing now.
Speaker A:And each trains a different thought.
Speaker A:A good, bad, happy, sad, a organizing thought, a to do thought, a reminiscent memory thought.
Speaker A:Whatever thought it is, we label them.
Speaker A:There's no good and bad thought.
Speaker A:They're just what we label them.
Speaker A:You can choose whether to get on the thought or not.
Speaker A:You don't have to get on it.
Speaker A:And the more thoughts you get on, the more your subconscious mind will give you more of those thoughts.
Speaker A:So if you tend to ignore the thoughts about Something that you're not interested in or that are painful and just go, there they are, but do nothing with them instantly.
Speaker A:This or not instantly, but the subconscious mind over time will give you less of those thoughts.
Speaker A:How beautiful.
Speaker A:Less thoughts, less suffering.
Speaker A:And you're seeing the whole procedure here.
Speaker A:And then, and then they go on to say, and the cycle of rebirth, well, you can look at that as life and rebirth.
Speaker A:I don't believe in reincarnation, personally.
Speaker A:It may be because I haven't gone deep enough.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:In Buddhism they do believe in there's no birth and death.
Speaker A:We're always been here, always will be here.
Speaker A:But just awareness comes and goes.
Speaker A:I agree with the awareness comes and goes, but I don't think I was born 13.7 billion years ago.
Speaker A:I don't think I was born until my body was here.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:My thoughts may not be right, but there's a cycle in everything.
Speaker A:A cycle in a thought, a cycle in awareness.
Speaker A:It all comes and goes.
Speaker A:Suffering comes and goes, Loneliness comes and goes.
Speaker A:Anger comes and goes.
Speaker A:You tell me which emotion is permanent.
Speaker A:We'll say we're depressed or we'll say I'm lonely.
Speaker A:Well, you can't be lonely.
Speaker A:If loneliness comes and goes.
Speaker A:You can say I'm a human being.
Speaker A:Human doesn't come and go.
Speaker A:You don't wake up one morning and you're a rabbit.
Speaker A:No, I'm human.
Speaker A:But you cannot say I'm angry.
Speaker A:You can say I'm feeling angry.
Speaker A:I'm currently angry.
Speaker A:I'm currently experiencing anger.
Speaker A:And this is another thing of seeing the cycle of things arise and fall off and then it culminating in a profound inner peace and unity of all existence.
Speaker A:So you instantly suffer less.
Speaker A:And when you see this within yourself, you stop taking yourself quite so seriously.
Speaker A:And then ultimately you see the world and you stop taking the world quite so seriously.
Speaker A:Does it mean there's horrible bad and suffering things happening?
Speaker A:Of course those things are still happening.
Speaker A:Of course we need to sort many things out.
Speaker A:But you can see birth and cycle of these things and coming up as to whether you need to do anything with them in that moment.
Speaker A:And therefore you will allow things to come and go because there's something not.
Speaker A:You cannot always do something about everything.
Speaker A:The starving children, the other side of the world, I cannot do anything about right now.
Speaker A:So as much as it's horrible and it'll pain me and if I sit in too much empathy, it will affect me, even if it affects me to the point that I am literally dying.
Speaker A:Crying is still not going to feed the kids.
Speaker A:The other side of the world.
Speaker A:And one thing, with the spiritual journey and more enlightenment, the more enlightened you are, the more into the spiritual journey you are, the deeper you go, the more you'll feel alone, the more you won't recognize people around you, the more you'll have conversations with people and they'll tell you how to think, and you'll be like, wow, I had no idea that you're.
Speaker A:You're so locked in your thoughts.
Speaker A:Because one thing about a spiritual journey is you realize you're wrong most of the time.
Speaker A:Doesn't mean to say you're wrong about everything and what's going on out there.
Speaker A:It's just.
Speaker A:You'll see that everything is connected.
Speaker A:Everything has multiple strands.
Speaker A:There's no black and white.
Speaker A:Nobody is 100% wrong, as Ken Wilbur would say.
Speaker A:And that's powerful.
Speaker A:Even if it's just their belief somewhere in there, they would have got that from somewhere.
Speaker A:And very rarely, anybody's 100% right as well.
Speaker A:And that's really interesting.
Speaker A:So I was going to talk about what some other teachers think of what enlightenment is, and Pamela Schrodran, which I actually love, a worker, she teaches that enlightenment is a gradual unfolding of awareness.
Speaker A:It means embracing life as it is, letting go of attachments, and seeing each moment with clarity.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's what we're saying.
Speaker A:It's just seeing the moment for what it is.
Speaker A:Ah, there's a thought.
Speaker A:Ah, there's a vision.
Speaker A:Ah, there's a world out there that's been projected on my brain, and my brain is making something out of it, and then it's letting me know.
Speaker A:It's very much why two people will never see the same color.
Speaker A:Because your brain is interpreted that you know, that's what it is.
Speaker A:And we all know that one because we say it as the kids.
Speaker A:When we suddenly realize that one day, well, that's an enlightened thought.
Speaker A:That we all see a different color, albeit similarities.
Speaker A:And I cannot tell you whether when I grew up saying, that's red because someone told me it's red, it may be a completely different color to you.
Speaker A:It's irrelevant, because we were told that's what it is.
Speaker A:It's an interesting one.
Speaker A:Marianne Williamson, which is, you know, I think her work's wonderful as well.
Speaker A:She defines enlightenment as a transformation shift from fear to love.
Speaker A:It is the awakening of our spirit, aligning us with higher, more loving consciousness.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:I agree with that, because the more you open up, the more you see Things for what they are, the more you accept them.
Speaker A:And I see love as acceptance.
Speaker A:If I love something, I accept it for everything it is.
Speaker A:I don't want to do anything with it.
Speaker A:I love my dog, I love my cat, I love my pizza.
Speaker A:I don't want to change any of it, you know.
Speaker A:So when you ultimately accept something that's loving it.
Speaker A:So enlightenment is accepting the present moment.
Speaker A:It's accepting what's going on.
Speaker A:Doesn't mean to say you have to.
Speaker A:Like it doesn't mean to say you have to.
Speaker A:You know, I accept the fact that I'm in the middle of a forest.
Speaker A:I'm terrified and it's not that good and things like that, and I want to get out of it.
Speaker A:That's fine.
Speaker A:But you've got to accept that you're in the forest to begin with and you're feeling terrified.
Speaker A:So Junpo, my teacher, sadly has passed away now.
Speaker A:He often teaches that enlightenment is recognizing our innate nature beyond the clutter of the mind.
Speaker A:The mind is just constantly cluttered up with this fountain of the minute.
Speaker A:You come out of awareness.
Speaker A:He always said the first awareness is caring.
Speaker A:And everything else on top of that builds into this funnel of just noise and spaghetti soup and everything that everybody's always piled onto it, whether it's religion, beliefs, or politics or anything.
Speaker A:The higher up you go, and the more you get stuck into your thoughts and ideology, the higher up you are in this funnel of just noise.
Speaker A:Simplify it.
Speaker A:Go back down, down, down.
Speaker A:And the deeper you go, the stiller it is.
Speaker A:You know, don't be the wave on the ocean.
Speaker A:Be like the depth of the ocean, still breathing in, calm, breathing out.
Speaker A:Relax.
Speaker A:So he says it's the direct, unmediated experience of reality without filters of conceptual mind.
Speaker A:So without all those ideologies and beliefs, it's just, ah, what is Alan Watts, which.
Speaker A:He has a wonderful way of explaining things.
Speaker A:Watts described enlightenment as the insight that the separation between self and the universe is illusionary.
Speaker A:For him, awakening is realizing that we are not isolated individuals, but integral expressions of the whole.
Speaker A:Are we really separate to everything else?
Speaker A:Am I any different to the objects in this room?
Speaker A:I made that same stuff, just a slight different variation.
Speaker A:We're all atoms.
Speaker A:We all evolved on this planet.
Speaker A:You know, none of us come from anywhere else.
Speaker A:None of us suddenly evolved in a different universe and plugged ourselves here.
Speaker A:Some of us might think we have.
Speaker A:But no, you're not that special.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker A:You know, we think we're special when we develop an ego at about 18 months old.
Speaker A:You know, wow.
Speaker A:We think we're special.
Speaker A:That's awesome.
Speaker A:It's like, hey, me, I got a name.
Speaker A:I exist.
Speaker A:Whoa.
Speaker A:Unfortunately, that's as far as most evolved humans get.
Speaker A:You know, 80 years old.
Speaker A:Yep, that's my name, and I exist, and I'll use it any way I want.
Speaker A:And that's who I am.
Speaker A:That's not enlightenment.
Speaker A:So I want to leave this podcast on one thought.
Speaker A:Don't strive to be enlightened.
Speaker A:Don't strive for any of these things.
Speaker A:Just see things for what they are.
Speaker A:Meditate often.
Speaker A:Just take yourself out of this present moment and just observe it and realize that enlightenment is moments.
Speaker A:So if you're being cut up by a car and you flip them the bird, that's not an enlightened moment.
Speaker A:But if you can see that they're your brother, they're someone that maybe they're running late or they're on a bad day or they made a mistake, because you've done all those things too.
Speaker A:In that moment, you can go, ah, just like me.
Speaker A:And you can just smile.
Speaker A:That's an enlightened moment.
Speaker A:So let's strive for just the odd enlightened moment for the moment.
Speaker A:And the more of them you have, the more enlightened you'll be.
Speaker A:But it's not somewhere you'll get to, and then you'll live happily ever after.
Speaker A:So if you have an enlightened moment once a week, you're doing well, you're doing brilliant, my friend.
Speaker A:And we gotta stop trying to strive for something that is just inherently not human.
Speaker A:We're looking for this perfect way of living.
Speaker A:And really the perfect way of living is just take away that funnel, go back to the.
Speaker A:Go back to the essence of awareness, and then just experience what comes up, but choose what to do with it.
Speaker A:So that's my podcast for this week.
Speaker A:I hope it helps in some way.
Speaker A:If it doesn't, well, I'm not sure what to say to that.
Speaker A:Thank you to all of you for donating, keeping the podcast free.
Speaker A:You are absolutely awesome.
Speaker A:You know you are.
Speaker A:And if you can leave a review on the podcast, that'd be absolutely amazing.
Speaker A:Share with your friends.
Speaker A:And if you head over to stephenweb.uk you can sign up to my weekly, nerdy weekly, weekly calm newsletter, and you can do the stillness in the storms course.
Speaker A:It's now you choose what to pay, because that fits with my heart.
Speaker A:You know, those that cannot afford it can still do it.
Speaker A:Those that can afford it helps to pay for the others that cannot.
Speaker A:So take care my friends and have a wonderful week.
Speaker A:And I love.
