Someone in my Facebook group Nondual Wisdom in Challenging Times recently expressed concern that the definition of awakening has become so diluted that it no longer means anything. At one extreme, he points out, it‘s often idealized to refer to an imagined perfect state of ongoing bliss and transcendence that seems completely out of reach. On the other, “awakening has become more inclusive; the rules for admission to this exclusive club have been relaxed! Now anyone can be enlightened; all you have to do is give up seeking it. Just ‘be here now’ and accept how you are with all your unstable emotions, dysfunctions, addictions. It’s so simple and easy that you’re probably already awake; you just didn’t realize it!” (quoted from the article “Is Awakening Just Fake News for the Spiritually Minded?” by Jez Alborough}
What then is awakening, if not one of these two extremes? In my own experience, and in my years leading the School for Awakening, I’ve found that genuine spiritual awakening is more than just a glimpse of some altered state—be it extraordinary clarity, openness, love, or even oneness. Rather, it’s something more fundamental—not just a passing experience happening to a me, but a dropping away of the me itself. The narrative you take yourself to be—the beliefs, life experiences, accomplishments, mistakes, self-image, stories, plans, and aspirations, all of which are after all just thoughts—suddenly ceases to define you, and you recognize that your true identity is the essence or ground of Being itself, the stillness behind all activity, the silence at the heart of all sound,.
This recognition is not a thought but a fundamental shift in the locus of identity, a fully embodied realization that breaks through and transforms our accustomed way of viewing not only ourselves, but life itself.
Yes, we’re always already awake, in the sense that the one who’s always gazing out through these eyes and experiencing life through these senses is our natural state of awakened awareness. But if we don’t realize what this awakened awareness really is, awakening has not yet occurred here, and we haven’t experienced the peace and happiness that awakening brings. Though you may have had glimpses of this deeper dimension of reality, you haven’t awakened until you realize that what you’ve glimpsed is in fact what you are fundamentally.
This shift—referred to by the Sanskrit term jnana—often leads to an upheaval in consciousness that may frighten the illusory separate self, or ego, and take years to adjust to and even more years to embody. For most people it does not bring the end of suffering in one go, but it does make it easier to penetrate through the beliefs and attachments that continue to arise and reconnect with the peace and happiness that lie beneath.
In any case, awakening has nothing to do with human perfection. As the Sutra of the Third Patriarch of Zen puts it, to be enlightened is to be without anxiety about imperfection. Rather, it brings an openness and a relaxation of being that allows us to love and embrace ourselves and our circumstances just as they are.