A Shortcut To Awakening For People In A Hurry

17 Feb 2006

How to Create Your Own Awakening Experience

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How To Experience Your Own Awakening 

There are several routes to awakening, cosmic consciousness, enlightenment or illumination. There are many names for the experience that I refer to simply as Expanded Self-Awareness. Those who have had this experience agree on many things.

• That we are all one consciousness.
• That each of us contains and operates as the whole.
• That we are already unconsciously wielding astounding power.
• That individual awakening is an element of the awakening of our species.

Before I jump in to explaining how to awaken yourself, I’d like to answer a question I’ve been asked a lot. "What is awakening?’

We have many misconceptions about awakening so let me share a short list of what awakening is NOT. It is not...

• a sudden absolute clear understanding of everything and how everything works.
• a sudden transformation to Universal Love.
• the solution to all problems or challenges in life.
• a spontaneous elevation to a high spiritual and moral plane.

And yet...there is an element of all of those in the experience of awakening, it’s just different that we imagine in our un-self aware state. So here’s a list of what awakening IS.

• a sudden (although momentary) direct experience of self as All-That-Is.
• an understanding of many answers to previous questions, with a simultaneous birth of many new questions.
• a new understanding and experience of Love, and a simultaneous realization that most of our current human notions of love are about fear.
• the birth of a memory of undeniable truth about our nature which we carry into life after awakening.

Awakening changes you. While it is a moment of astounding clarity and expanded perspective of yourself, it is followed by chaos. Everything you thought you knew is suddenly secondary to what you now KNOW from your direct personal experience. It’s very exciting, even when you begin to realize that all your previous unconscious mind activity is still functioning and is in conflict with what you  KNOW is true about you.

Confusion can result as you begin encountering and reviewing your old beliefs that supported your previous experiences. Your unconscious belief programs must be re-thought and created a-new. That’s one of the surprises that accompanies awakening. Collectively, we believe that wisdom and understanding are important elements of living a peaceful life. While there is an element of truth to that, it’s one of those beliefs that gets rearranged by an awakening experience.

One of my favorite quotes is from Lief Smith. "We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds." That expresses very well the mistaken beliefs that when we are awakened, spiritually advanced, or healed of all impurities we will experience only the calm seas of life.

Awakening is not about restricting the Universe to protected bays, sunshiny weather, nice words and money trees in every yard. It’s about recognizing yourself in the very fabric and power of the Universe - inner and outer. The Physical Universe is built by never ending explosions, eruptions, collisions and opposing forces. Planets are able to support life because of their fire and ice - producing active water so powerful it can submerge entire cities, hectares of land and, if our legends are accurate, entire continents.

Awakening is recognizing Self as all of that and seeing that it is Love. It makes us simultaneously aware of self as the powerful ocean and the sailor mastering his fear. It makes us realize that the sailor has access to the same power, and calm, expressed as the ocean. It doesn’t make us overnight master sailors. It sets us on a new journey of self discovery but hands us a lamp that lights the way. That lamp is KNOWING who we are. Faith is a feeble light in the face of KNOWING through direct experience.

Many of the gurus in India (and now in America) claim that awakening must be "given" or "passed" from another awakened human. That is kinda-sorta true but it’s the age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Our human searches are stimulated by becoming aware of something we want to search for. That search can certainly be shortened by one whose intent is to help you do that. However, once you know the basics about how the mind works you will understand that a guru can not even appear in your life until you have asked for it in some way.

Richard Bucke, in his classic book, Cosmic Consciousness, noticed some interesting patterns in recorded awakenings. One is that most awakenings occur after the individual has reached full maturity, usually in their thirties or forties, occasionally into late fifties. Another is that over 90% of awakenings that have been recorded, occurred in the First half of the year and 80% of them occurred in the Spring or early Summer. It’s a time of growth and expansion.

The rest of Richard Bucke’s list of conditions required for awakening (compiled in the late 1800's) are about lineage, high mindedness and physical strength. With the exception of physical strength, if those things were true I would not have had an awakening experience, and it could not be the evolutionary event that is occurring within our species.

Here’s what I do know about how to awaken. It’s available to anyone who desires the experience. Eventually it’s going to be a routine human "aha" and will begin occurring at younger and younger ages.

Primary Step one: Desire the experience with such force that you demand it. Combine that desire with the fullest determination and certainty of fulfillment you can manage. KNOW that you will awaken to your true self. That’s it. That’s the only step. There are many ways to give focus and energy to that step, but that one is key. Make your awakening manta, "I know how to awaken, and I do it gracefully and joyfully."

Secondary steps that can help you hold and focus your attention and energy:

• Read the writings of awakened masters. Read Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman,  and many other books containing the words of awakened gurus or masters.  You can read scriptures but the more current the awakening experience is, the clearer the description will be.  That's because each new awakening adds more information that speeds the collective awakening of our species.
• Know that you will awaken to your self and that all the steps are being taken to support that experience. Never accept that anything in your life can keep you from the experience of awakening to true or whole self.
• Attend or listen to tapes of satsungs (meetings where an awakened master answers questions).
• Attend retreats led by awakened people. These may be yoga retreats, silence retreats, or combinations of events.

That’s more than enough to get you to the experience of awakening, enlightenment, or whatever term calls you. After the Primary Step, the first two secondary steps are the only ones I gave much energy to. I attended a handful of scattered satsungs after my awakening and loved them.

I wish to make the point that there is no magic to awakening except the magic you wield unconsciously every moment - that magic of your thoughts, desires and expectations contained in Primary Step One. That step is the one and only one that produced every awakening experience that has ever occurred throughout our history, and it will produce yours if you set it in motion.

Wishing you the Awakening of your dreams.

Author: Joyce Morris. You can read more of Joyce’s articles and books at www.languageofattraction.com They cover topics focused on living consciously and purposefully.