What it means to be awake

Tenderfoot Yogi Podcast and Audio Blog: Perspectives and Insights for Ease in Your Awakening

What would it feel like to have a tangible definition of what it means to be awake – to be an awake person or to experience awakening? It’s a concept that we hear thrown around regularly, including here on Tenderfoot Yogi, and it can sound a little funny – to awaken. Also what is this new way of being that you hear me talk about all the time? Well, it’s a bit different for everyone. That is, how we enter into this awakening and how we move through it. But there are definitely some common attributes that we share. It occurs to me that we would all benefit from knowing what it is that we are all going through. Here is what I’m learning…

Listen to the Podcast version of this post below

Neglect

When I was introduced to my personal awakening, and subsequently began my meditation practice, I was simply looking for some peace of mind. But what I found was something much more than this. I found what it truly means to be awake, and I think this is inevitable for all of us. We become awakened because we have spent time nurturing our minds and our bodies but have neglected something else. And it’s the something else that we all long for, even if we didn’t know that we were longing for it. We may feed this longing with consumption. With education. Even with relationships. But still the something else remains.

Asleep

It may be easiest to begin putting our finger on what it means to be awake by defining what it means to be asleep. Actually, the term ‘asleep’ sounds negative and judgmental, and also not especially accurate. We are all either awake, or on the path to being awake. If you are hearing or reading these words, you’re either already awake or quite far down the path to being awake. Those with a bit further to go on the path have yet to allow their curiosity for such things to bubble. But what is this place of not yet awake? It’s a place where our thoughts determine our reality.

A thinker’s paradise

I have read that when yogic sages thought about coming to the west from India and Asia, they had concern about being engulfed by the material world of the west. The word ‘material’ again can have a negative connotation, but it’s simply a matter of factual observation. Generally speaking in the west we prioritize that which we can build with our hands and experiment with and determine with our minds. That which we can see and touch and evaluate in empirical terms rises to the forefront. In the west we are outwardly driven. Everything that is not this, namely the more subtle, invisible, I dare say spiritual aspects of our existence tend to be of secondary value. This is not per individual, it’s more of a general sense in comparison to the east.

We are all human

Regardless of where we live and in which culture we were raised, if we are human then that which wants to be awake within us exists. If you have felt a longing for love and connection with another human being, then you yourself are human. You are alive and are either awake, or long to be awake. Longing is a part of being human. The desire for peace and calm, quiet and tranquility is also part of that which wants to be awake within us. Wanting to know who we truly are and to discover our unique gifts that are meant for the world is part of it. Feeling lost, misunderstood, alone is part of it. Knowing that there is more that is meant for us, more than that which has been presented to us on the platter of life is part of it. The compassion for those in need – the desire to help and the not knowing how is part of it. Looking to the sky and feeling our feet on the Earth and feeling an ambiguous but real sense of appreciate and gratitude is part of it. There is something inside of each of us, and inside all of us together, regardless of whether we are in Mumbai or Manhattan, Jerusalem or New Jersey. It’s just the details of how we each get in touch with this deeper way of being that vary.

The awareness of thoughts

The best way that I can describe the way that I got in touch, the way that I tuned in was that I had become aware of my thoughts. It was not especially comfortable because along with the awareness came judgment. Judgment of everything about myself including my own thoughts. I made this harder than it needed to be, but this was what it took for me to wake up. It’s the primary reason I wrote my eBook ‘100 Simple Insights for Ease in your Awakening’ and why I put it out there for anyone to have for free – because I know now that waking up can be filled with much more ease than I allowed. But it really is a huge development, because once we become aware of our thoughts we can also become aware that we are more than our thoughts. Much more.

OK that’s weird

To say that we are more than our thoughts may sound about as clear as mud, and probably a bit weird. But we are – more than our thoughts. This is hugely liberating when we get into what it truly means, and it’s the foundation for being awake. Have you ever wondered about all of the little life lessons out there – the ones that sound nice but really don’t change anything? Let’s have a look at three of these, all of which make lovely little magnets for our fridge, but without deeper understanding have no practical impact on our lives.

Magnet #1: Live from your heart

When we become aware of our thoughts, we become aware of how many thoughts we have and in time, how ridiculous many of our thoughts are. It is the job of our mind to churn out thoughts. It churns out thought after thought after thought and without some training we go about our lives believing pretty much everything our mind perceives for us. And by training I do mean meditation and meditative practices that encourage mindfulness. Without some form of practice that gets us some space from our thoughts, then we have no awareness of our thought patterns, which are often negative and limiting. The only way to live from our heart is to know what is in our hearts. And it’s very difficult to know what is in our hearts if we pay attention to and follow our thought machine minds without some higher perspective.

Magnet #2: Be in the moment

We all need reminders to be in the moment. We can spend a year in a cave or in complete sensory deprivation exploring inward in deep meditation, and still we would need this reminder now and then- so don’t worry if you’re cooking something while you’re listening to this. But really how do you live in the moment? This is a reminder with no directions. The reason that we are not ‘in the moment’ is because our mind is doing it’s job of churning out thoughts and we are paying attention to those thoughts. We are in replay mode, remembering the argument from yesterday or the scene from last night’s movie. Or we are in assessment mode – thinking of all the things we would like to do differently next time. Or we are in judgment mode – judging ourselves or someone else. Or we are in planning mode – putting together our kid’s birthday party or composing an email in our mind. Or we are switching rapidly between all of these modes when really we are supposed to be paying attention to what it is we are actually doing. When we become aware of our thoughts, and subsequently the nature of our minds, we are able to recognize the nature of our thoughts and our thought patterns. Then, we can more easily and more naturally and with less effort pull ourselves back to the moments we are in.

Magnet #3: Don’t sweat the small stuff

We sweat the small stuff when we are focused on the drama of our lives. We’ve spoken of this before – the theater that is our day to day lives. This is another way that living at the surface level of our minds prevents us from truly enjoying our lives. It is really hard to fully enjoy all that life has to offer if we allow ourselves caught up in the little bits of life that don’t go perfectly. But to let these little things roll off of us takes a broader perspective. The broader perspective is that we are more than these lives that we have created for ourselves. This story that we have created and that we have going. If we are attached to every detail, every outcome in our lives, then we are sure to suffer. Our minds are beautiful and necessary things. But if it eludes us that there are deeper, bigger things within us, then it’s really easy to get caught up in the small stuff. We don’t have to do this.

Mainstream

From what I can tell, awakenings don’t happen in an instant. We do not hear choir music suddenly playing from the heavens or have God speak to us in a dream. Rather, we experience little openings that eventually lead to bigger openings. Some of us require trauma or catastrophe to wake up. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Especially now with all of the awareness that is out here for us. Meditation used to be thought of as weird. Now it’s a mainstream pursuit backed up with western scientific data. Yoga used to be practiced only in the east and by Hollywood stars who traveled there. Now there is a yoga studio in virtually any town that also has a post office. This stuff is accessible to us on every corner and online. We have support for our times of awakening literally at our fingertips.

Our heart and soul

When we sit down for meditation or begin a yoga practice, these ancient practices have wonderful effects that we begin to realize almost immediately. But these practices also have a more subtle effect that we may not notice initially. By quieting our minds, as all meditative practices do, we begin to hear that which there was previously too much noise to hear. That which longs to feed us in the way we wish to be fed. We can try to close ourselves to it, and this will work for a time. But eventually we all, each of us comes around to it. Our true self. Our higher self. We get glimpses of it, and it feels nice. And soon we come to realize that almost all of our preconceived notions about such things were false. That there really is something deeper, kinder, gentler, within us. A compassion. A love. Indeed something spiritual within us. And so we are awake.

For what it’s worth…and for the knowing that all is well.

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