Pointers to Awakening

There are thousands of ways to write about awakening, but ultimately, all of them are mere pointers to what it really is. We don't have words for it, just relatively pale descriptions of what the process of awakening is like.

It is something one must experience directly, and by grace or with proper guidance most people can get, at the very least, an initial taste of it to begin their journey.

Awakening, at a deep level, is a profound state of being where one is a living presence, a living awareness, in a human body, experiencing life.

Awakening is not an abstract experience, it's actually more real than what we've been experiencing as everyday "real life."

It's more real because in an awake state we are not saddled with identification with our story — that repetitive ego narration of a limited version of ourselves that we’ve been conditioned to believes ourselves to be.

Most people walk around with an underlying belief that there is something wrong with them.

Hungry or starving for love and fearful of being seen or judged, there is often great psychological and emotional suffering, which can eventually manifest as physical illness.

And so much of the tension in life comes from unconsciously looking at everything through the stress-generating question, "Is this an opportunity (to get love, security) or a threat (to my survival or to getting or keeping love)?"

In one's natural state of presence, identification with the mind-made sense of self — its limiting beliefs and suffering life — dissolves.

In that state, there is no fear around survival. Instead, there is a sense of love for all life.

A recognition that all life, every life, is sacred and worth cherishing. There is no emotional neediness or grasping for love, no fear of not having enough.

Rather, there is a state of ever-present unconditional love, wholeness and abundance.

There is a felt sense of being one with all that is, and simultaneously an awareness of being a unique individuated expression.

This is our natural state of being.

For the vast majority of us, being in a state of conscious presence comes and goes. When we’re in that space, we’re filled with light.

When we’re not, we generally suffer to some degree. But only because we’ve temporarily forgotten who and what we really are.

Awakening is available to everyone. And while there is no way to force it to happen, there are ways of nurturing the seeds of awakening ever present within each of us.