You can have a huge opening of the heart. You can have a profound insight into the nature of reality. You can have a cosmic expansion of your auric field. You can have an eternal moment of consciousness at rest in the still point of silence. But even though your life is never quite the same as it was, still the karmic wheel of suffering continues.

Many people come to me and ask why …. why after “awakening” does my life continue to be so painful? Why do I still struggle to find my true self in relationships, why do I still feel like a victim of life subject to the tempestuous waves of my thoughts and my feelings, why do I still yearn for a deeper fulfillment? Why is there still something missing?!

And I say this, my friend … because there are many types of awakenings. And mind-blowing experiences and heart-opening experiences and cosmic experiences are not the true awakening, but a window into a new view. Yes, a glimpse of something … but this something is not the end of the dream of self. And if awakening is to be fully realized and lived, there must first be a death of the “me” that has “experiences” … either terrible experiences or enlightened experiences.

In true awakening, the drama of hell and heaven comes to a complete stop. In true awakening, awareness comes to rest in itself. It is not the self that awakens, but that consciousness recognizes itself through the awareness in you. There is no more self “having an experience”, but that experience happens within awareness. It is not happening “to” you, but “in” you as consciousness.

There’s a world of difference here, my friend. In true awakening, there is nothing missing, nothing more to get, nowhere to go. You are here, the wheel has come to a stop. You are here as consciousness, as awareness, as silence. Yes, the dance of life continues … you cannot stop that, you cannot end the dance until it ends itself when physical form dissolves back into being-ness and all sensory portals shut down. But in true awakening — whilst sensory perception is alive — the dance is an exquisite play that does not add anything or take anything away.

You see, my friend … it is not the self that you think you are that awakens. It is the Self that has no thought that remembers itself. And in this remembrance, there is no self to ask why. The wave has recognized itself as the ocean.

It is the end of seeking any experience of awakening for the self. It is the realization that you are already awake, here and now.

• image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay

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• First published on Facebook May 2020.