Awakening: What It Is And What It Isn’t
AWAKENING TRUMPS LANGUAGE
When you find yourself changing on the inside and you don’t understand what is happening, it baffles the mind. You can feel something shifting deeply within you, your perception is changing, you no longer see things the way you used to, and now you are having difficulty describing this experience, not only to yourself, but to those around you. You might feel like you’re looking out of a brand new lens and life is appearing to reveal itself to you in a new way. Everything in your world is transforming and you have no idea how.
Shifts in consciousness are intangible and completely outside of the world of form. There is no way to measure your new way of interpreting the world around you except through your own experience. You can remember how you used to feel life around you, then subtly compare it to how you feel now. This is the only observation that you can have. There are no tests to take to see how you perceive this conditioned reality we are living in. Shifts in awareness are very private and personal to you. You can’t possibly grab ahold of something that is invisible.
The deeper your consciousness shifts, the more intangible the entire process may feel. Here is where the discrepancy lies within the mind. The ego mind is solidly based on finding solutions to every problem. It desperately seeks answers to anything it feels is unanswered. During your own awakening process you may notice just how badly your mind is wanting to figure out what exactly has shifted within you. You might start investigating every possible scenario to settle the mind. However, it will never have the answer it seeks, because it is outside of form.
WHAT AWAKENING IS NOT
Awakening is a life long process to bring us back to who we really are. Throughout this self-realization journey there are certain things within the world that may captivate you, however, do they have anything to do with awakening? For starters, awakening is not an easy process. There are many schools of thought that explain awakening as nothing but a loving, blissful, ecstatic experience. There may be moments of this, however, to say that awakening is all about love is misguiding many people. Discovering you are not what you thought you were is a difficult, often dark, and challenging experience to endure. Not including this aspect of awakening is discounting the fear hidden within all of us. This will be a major part of awakening at some point on the path.
Awakening is not a goal to be attained, an achievement you are seeking, or something you can claim ownership over. If you are striving to have a blissful experience with the Divine and you are working overtime to make this happen, it might be wise to question if the ego is involved with this venture. Some want to claim enlightenment as if they have reached some superior state of being, as if spirituality is a hierarchy. Claiming a spiritual status is often the ego talking. The ego is clever in its trickery and masterful at owning awakening. If you notice this in yourself, it can be very helpful in the process of letting it go and allowing events to unfold naturally.
Awakening is not taking a weekend workshop and becoming a master of reiki, shamanism, energy healing, or meditation. These fields have a rich history, some of them ancient. Learning skills in one weekend may be helpful tools in your life, but they do not have anything to do with waking up to who you really are beyond the body. The same is true for topics such as astrology, numerology, human design, or the gene keys which can be interesting and influential systems while you live your life. However, these are simply tools of the world and have nothing to do with going within yourself to discover the spiritual essence awaiting you. The energetic components of these traditions are fascinating to research and use in your life, but it is not the same thing as the undoing of the self.
Finally, awakening is not in your control. It is not something you can make happen. As much as you may desire liberation of mind, accepting where you are is vital. Forcing awakening is a sign the ego is slipping in again. Allowing spirit to guide the process, staying present in the moment, and understanding you are always in the right place at the right time will humble you to the reality of your current experience. Trying to jump ahead and experience something you may or may not be ready for is a slippery slope.
WHAT AWAKENING IS
The truth is awakening is no walk in the park. The deeper you are pulled the harder it gets, and eventually you’ll be wishing this never happened. When this occurs it’s probably too late to turn around and you simply must walk through the difficulty presented to you. This undoing process is peeling away the layers of the conditioned mind and everything you thought to be true will be revealed as a falsehood. Feeling these aspects of self dissolve can be devastating and extraordinarily emotional. Recognizing nothing is as it seems can be shocking and overwhelming for a period of time.
Awakening brings about subtle and radical shift in your consciousness. It is recognizing you are not a mind. Stepping out of the mind and seeing what’s behind it sparks serious inquiry and introspections within you. If you are able to observe your own thinking mind and how it behaves, what is behind the thinker? Eventually, your consciousness will shift so dramatically there will be a complete internal metamorphosis. You are experiencing life from a much larger field of awareness and everything feels different. The way in which you perceive the world around you is transformed and impossible to place language on. It is simply an experience of feeling connected to all things, both the seen and unseen.
Awakening is also filled with unsettling periods, uncertainty, and the ultimate recurring theme of the unknown. Not knowing what is happening to you or getting a glimpse of what is to come, disturbs the ego mind even more. Falling into nothingness, or the void’s absence of divinity can be a strange and surreal period of time. A sense of emptiness encompasses you, nothing is there, spirit feels missing as well as all the other aspects of self. This can be a frustrating point in the process. The mind cannot define it and you have no idea how long it will last. This point produces deep inner fear and darkness that may set in for quite some time. It is through this fear that the ultimate transformation will take place.
Awakening often presents with various stages throughout life. You may go through certain stages of change, spend a long time adjusting to that way of being, only to be met with further undoing and more layers being pulled away from you. It can be a bit of a roller coaster, walking up the steep hills just to instantly fall down again. This may go on for many years until spirit reveals itself to you. Awakening is leading you Home and as long as you remain in this world, this revelation will continue.
HELPFUL REMINDERS ON YOUR AWAKENING PATH
There can be so many pitfalls, challenges, struggles, and hardships during this transformative process it’s helpful to think of a few sensible things that may ease your mind.
You are always exactly where you need to be. You know this because you are there, and it is happening. When you think you can’t take it anymore, trust that you wouldn’t be in the situation if you couldn’t do it. All things happen as they should so relax into it as best as you can, and don’t beat yourself up when you have a day of total anger and resistance.
Remain open to the fact that there is always more undoing. If you get fixated on wanting the end to present itself, ask what side of your mind is needing an end? Just when you think it’s over and you get comfortable with this new way, may be the exact time a further shift takes place within you.
When you are in periods of uncertainty, seek silence within and just be. Empty the mind and allow for guidance to show itself to you, in whatever form that takes. Trust that the higher intelligence around you has your best interest at heart, even when it doesn’t feel like it.
Be real with the experience. If you experience heightened states of love and bliss, remind yourself you are still living in the world as a human being. Recognize not everyone around you will feel this way, and it helps to bring your awakening experience back down to earth.
Notice when you are in severe seeking mode. Notice when the ego mind will not settle until you discover what is happening to you. See this for what it is, the ego needing to be the knower of everything. Awakening is bringing you into the sea of the great unknown. Getting comfortable in the unknown journey will be incredibly helpful.