What Is Awakening?
Awakening is the radical, and experiential collapse of the sense of being a separate individual looking out at a world. It is this direct seeing that the person you took yourself to be with all its history, fears, and desires, is actually a fleeting pattern of thoughts and sensations, and not a solid entity called John, Sue or whatever name you use. This is an unmasking and the subsequent removal of an imaginary boundary, revealing that there is no central point where "you" end and "life" begins.
My first awakening happened in 2018. I woke up at 6.30 am, and sat up in bed. As I looked out at the room, it suddenly occurred to me that I wasn’t made up of my stories. My past did not need to define me, and in fact, I could not locate myself anywhere in thoughts, in the past, nor in the future. Whatever ‘I’ was, it was right here. What later followed was some very intense turmoil, emotional upheaval, and some very messy phases of upsetting people, as my inner struggles purged out.
For me, this was a profound shift, and I didn’t receive a new self to replace the old self. Instead, all concepts and personally identifiable thoughts and identities gradually dwindled into obscurity until the ever-present, indefinable reality that had been here all along was revealed. Life’s pleasant and unpleasant events continue to roll onwards, but are experienced as impersonal, energetic movements. I no longer need to struggle to protect, manage, and improve a separate self. All these coping strategies simply fall away, leaving behind a deep, inherent, and immovable peace that surpasses logic and understanding.
Initially, most people have a glimpse of this radical perspective, a momentary awakening that leaves them often in states of awe and wonder, only to re-form back into their original ideas about themselves. This was the case for me, too.
I’ve met some people who shrug these moments off, and continue to lose themselves in their story, while others will actively pursue an answer to these glimpses. For me, the insight of no-self was just too obvious and radical; there was no option but to drop everything and figure this out. But of course, I didn’t figure anything out. No special knowledge was given to me. For a long time, I bounced from boundlessness to feeling like I was the person in the story.
The real journey is in the forging of this back & forth resonance between feeling like you’ve won something (enlightenment) and loosing it all again. This resonance, while it can be extremely challenging, is the very journey itself.
It’s like a pendulum swinging between two extremes, where the trajectory of the pendulum represent a major shift in perception and identity. At one end of the extreme, you're totally boundless, at ease and free. At the other end, you’re completely identified with the individual narrative, its struggles and its life challenges.
The motion of the pendulum is the journey, but it’s not taking you to a final destination, at least not in the way you could ‘think’ about it.
The pendulum eventually arrives at a very irrational and surprising resolution. In fact, the pendulum — which is analogous to the self-concept — disappears and the discernment of swinging back and forth is no longer an issue.
That is when you know awakening.
This website contains all my notes cobbled together into a coherent user-friendly way. It also contains my personal experiences of this journey. Hopefully, someone may find my trodden path helpful in some way.
Just a warning: this is not a calming, spiritual website, so if you’re looking for those things, I would suggest leaving. Also, if you’re very sensitive, or have developmental struggles, or problems with dissociation, undergoing trauma recovery, or just generally mentally unwell, I would suggest leaving now, or else you might yourself leaving later with an anxiety attack and a crippling existential crisis.