Waking UP
Waking up to truth is possible for anyone.
It has nothing to do with perceived intelligence or ignorance.
It has nothing to do with gaining more knowledge.
It is simply there for anyone who is courageous enough to destroy the illusion of self, and the letting go of everything —
and I mean EVERYTHING.
All memories, all knowledge, all identities, all beliefs are not truth — they have nothing to do with who one actually is — and in fact, need to be incinerated with the blazing sword of awareness if one was to wake up into truth. Here is the thing…..wait for it….wait for it….wait for it….
THERE IS NO SELF.
Self is the illusion. There is no higher self or lower self.
There is no self.
Go into this… What is the self? Keep going until you get to the very roots of this conundrum and see what is there — self or emptiness….
Awareness is just awareness — no self… open to all, connected to all…
Quiet and awake and whole — without self.
— -
All cultures are experimentations of ways for people to live together on the planet. Cultures are groups of people who teach, adapt, and normalize the laws, rules, beliefs, and systems of the particular culture in which they live. Culture is not truth. Culture can be full of suffering and can be full of joy — based on the construct of the belief systems. Cultures that value hierarchy and believe that humans are separate from the universe tend to be sorrowful. Cultures that value interconnectivity and wholeness and are egalitarian in nature tend to be full of joy. If one happened to live in a healthy culture of interconnectivity and wholeness, there wouldn’t be a need to wake up.
Yet, if you are looking for full blown truth, following culture is not the path.
“Suffering just means you’re having a bad dream. Happiness means you’re having a good dream. Enlightenment means getting out of the dream altogether.”
Jed McKenna
“A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part” Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.”
Maya Angelou, Caged Bird
— —
Our culture does a great job of educating our children into ignorance, into roles in which they become enslaved to without knowing it. This is why we continue down a path of suffering. We are told over and over again the wonders of capitalism, and it is the only system that works, and so we believe in it — even though, like cancer, in order to exist, it needs to grow and grow and grow on the backs of the oppressed in order to consume the world.
We are taught to follow authority, that hierarchy is normal, and that poverty and oppression are just part of life. This conditioning is both subtle and overt and is pushed into us from the moment we are born. This conditioning happens because an ignorant population keeps the system going. Waking up is the last thing our Government, institutions and organized religions want.
“Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments — and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.”
― J. Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life
Waking up is a paradox. It is easy on the one hand. With awareness, every thought, every image, every belief would be seen as not true. Simple. Easy to let go of that right? Hell no. Waking up can feel so impossible, and 99.9999 % of the people throughout history don’t wake up because letting go of who one thinks one is, is usually the last thing one wants to do. Commonly, one may go down the path of manifestation and positive thinking and spirituality — another ego game — and will keep wonderfully stuck in the realm of being somebody within a capitalistic society.
For most people, letting go of being someone into full-blown emptiness seems terrifying. Even though this someone is full of suffering and conflict and riddled with despair, they know this feeling well. In fact, this is another aspect our culture does so well. The more trauma one has, the more difficult it is to let go. The ongoing trauma that this culture produces in the individual and collectively is captured in the mind and body from a young age. The child, needing to adapt to the given family system and educational system, creates its own ways to normalize the traumas that incur, traumas that force the child away from their authenticity and sensitivity as well as their wonder and curiosity. The child, without consciously knowing it, formulates, through these experiences, ideas of who they think they are based on how others have treated them. By the time they are adults, these self-identities and ways of perceiving the world are so ingrained, that they become stuck and blind to their societal roles. And so, instead of questioning this perceived reality, sensing that the world can be different, they stay in the web of their own myopic traumatized ego, for it is secure as it is what they know.
However, this cloak of knowing - in which they believe they know who they are - is an illusion and has no real substance, and continues the traumas they endured in childhood and into adulthood.
— —
YET….
The beautiful thing about waking up is that it is for everyone, no matter whether rich or poor, black or white.
If one has the courage to stop, question, and let go of beliefs of self-knowledge, identify, and fear, then one is on the pathless path of waking up.
The question is, does one have the courage to let go truly… of EVERYTHING….?
Here, in this emptiness, this place of no self, there is a quiet that is beyond imagination, that is beyond freedom, that is beyond love, that is beyond even wholeness. But there is no way to even talk about it, for every word and symbol takes one away from its very essence. One sees that the emptiness one was terrified of, the fear of the annihilation of self, was actually not scary at all and is, in fact, a wonderful place to be in — for fear and suffering disappear like clouds. And all that is left is TRUTH….
