[I put the podcast episode above ⬆️ if you prefer to listen to this piece rather than read it! My podcast ‘Conscious | Unconscious’ is here on the Substack app and also on Spotify, Apple and a few more.]
There was a moment in my yoga class during some breathwork when it felt as if the volume of reality dialled down a bit. Everything became muted and warm and I softened until it felt like all our human hearts melted together. Like being high, only with palpable, gooey love for everyone in my class. An instance of the extraordinary on an ordinary Saturday. Normal reality dialled back up during a challenging asana. I returned home to have a big breakfast and an enormous mug of hot chocolate made with weirdly healthy ingredients like prebiotics and maca powder and Reishi mushrooms.
It’s raining and cold here (the beginning of our Southern hemisphere winter), so I climbed back into bed to write, an ordinary place for the extraordinary truths I want to share now. I had to displace my ninja cat in the process and she was not impressed.
Someone recently made a note asking people to comment on why they are writing on Substack. I replied that this platform gave me an unparalleled freedom to express the things I’ve been seeing in my therapeutic work and what I’ve been thinking about about in mine and others’ awakening experiences all these years. I hadn’t really had a place to share this before. Medium was a dead-end for me. So much clickbait. It was impossible to meet with actual humans. All of my newest followers seemed to be AI accounts which existed solely for the progress of pumping out random essays to game the system, taking the notion of ‘virtual community’ to a whole new level.
There is so much creative freedom here. So much intellect and so much actual community. I feel able to say more with all of you here. It’s true that I want to write what I haven’t been able to express so succinctly on social media platforms. But as I have become engaged on Substack and started following and reading all of the quality writing, I’ve realized that I need to be more clear about why I’m writing and what my vibe/stance/approach is.
I want to demystify the mystical experience of awakening.
To normalise it.
Awakening seems so hackneyed a term, the domain of Instagram-influencer Gen Z 5D proselytisers, on the one hand. Conflated with the phenomenology of extrasensory perception and abilities and linked to Starseed lineage. In other contexts, it’s shrouded in the mystery and discipline of contemplative traditions, leaden with lexicon and lifestyles that are unobtainable for most: endless satsangs, expensive retreats, long stints at ashrams in India and so on.
Or else awakening is just too aspirational. It’s morally out of reach. It’s for the holy (or the holier-than-thou). Definitely not for highly sensitive, emotional people like me with 6 children in a blended family; a mother and stepmother and practitioner on the merry-go-round of work, shopping, cheerleading the brood, disciplining, and cat-wrangling.
Can one experience awakening when there is so much domestic load? So little time alone, or time away?
Oh, but one can.
Awakening is for everybody.
It’s not a special experience. It’s not just for some people. It doesn’t require a guru. Doesn’t require a lifestyle. Doesn’t require you to become a scholar of any particular tradition. Those things may help for some people at some times, and others take a different road.
Disclaimer: I don’t claim to be ‘awake’ or ‘enlightened’ because that’s not how it is. I’m here, in my own process, which looks different to yours, or his or hers or theirs.
On that note, I want to start with a definition - my (agonisingly considered) definition. First, what it’s NOT. For me, awakening is definitely not enlightenment. It’s not the full Buddha experience, the full Jesus experience. If you’re enlightened, you are making a choice to carry on in a body here, and usually to help others attain their englightenment. The rest of us have no choice. If you don’t have a choice to instantaneously disappear into God, without physical suicide, you are not enlightened, but you might be in some stage of awakening.1
What it IS, loosely put, is an embodied awareness of one’s True nature. Embodied, because we still have bodies, and live through them. ‘True nature’ is ultimately nondual, but that means we are both human and unlimited, all at once; not, as some would have it, proof we are nothing and nobody and instead are pure Oneness and therefore we don’t need to travel overseas with a passport. (“Oneness does not need a passport,” one non-dual non-individual once informed me on her way overseas. I’ve always wondered how that went for her.)
With awakening, as with every other essentially experiential phenomenon, there are varieties and flavours; there are different depths and there is overlapping phenomenology.
It’s not one thing, and it doesn’t belong to anyone, and not even the definitions belong to anyone (not even me). I’m sharing my point of view in order to drive home the point that you, too, are able to awaken.
On the one hand, as a first step, awakening is simply an awareness that you are more than your physical self, and more than your human identity. This awareness might then deepen into an awareness of yourself as a soul, into awareness that there was life before life, and there will be life after life. That consciousness goes on.
Then, there is often an awareness that your stories don’t define who you are. Not your pain stories (your trauma), not your accomplishments, none of it. They are part of the narrative that is you, but they are not YOU. They are the clothing you wear (or wore). A past that you remember. Emotions that have moved through you. Who you are transcends that, even it as it includes that (Ken Wilber). At this point, you can no longer believe that you are a victim of the world, and victim consciousness begins to or does disappear.
On another level, awakening is knowing your own non-dual nature — a wordless, experiential self- identification as Oneness in form. A perception beyond subject-object duality. It might be experienced as the loss (often temporary) of boundaries between yourself and other people, yourself and other objects. Boundlessness.
But please, bring your passport anyway, just in case!
Contemporary woo woo culture tends to conflate non-ordinary experiences and abilities with spiritual mastery and by extension, awakening. It’s not true.
Awakening is not phenomenology, it’s gnosis.
Most ordinary people keep their experiences close to their heart. Many have 0 extrasensory abilities. Most are humble, not in the public space, just chopping wood and carrying water, as the Zen saying goes.
Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
Again. Awakening is ordinary. And available to you.
Even if you come from a trauma background. Especially if you do, because trauma cracks you open and destroys your identity and place in the world. It might drive you into seeking the part of you that is beyond suffering, beyond the story, the part that is Whole.
Pema Chödrön talks about her marriage ending. Bonnie Greenwell of her mother dying when she was young. Sadhi Bhagawati Saraswati of her father sexually abusing her.
The material that is life oozes with the richness of Truth if only we remain vigilant to the undertow of our cherished identities — the one who suffers, the one who is a victim of life, the one who is successful.
As Charlotte Joko Beck famously wrote:
Life always gives us
exactly the teacher we need
at every moment.
This includes every mosquito,
every misfortune,
every red light,
every traffic jam,
every obnoxious supervisor (or employee),
every illness, every loss,
every moment of joy or depression,
every addiction,
every piece of garbage,
every breath.
Every moment is the guru.
In my mundane life, the cats wake us up around 3 am. My partner and I take turns feeding them. Every morning when I see my little black cat sleeping at the bottom of my bed I say, “isn’t she so cute?” Every morning my partner replies, “she just might be the cutest cat ever made.” I try to meditate before the kids turn up the volume on their morning playlist. I often get my timing wrong. Sometimes I meditate against the background doof. (Amazing, I’ve been in Australia for 25 years and only just learned that this is Australian slang for rave).
The thing is, this gnosis that is awakening is part of human evolution. It is not separate from hungry 3 am cats, the doof, or the substrate of both suffering and devotion. It is a natural to suffer, to heal, to self-reflect, to grow — and over time, to deepen into a larger, more transcendent self-concept.
It’s common to have the impression that certain traditions ‘own the path to enlightenment.’ Contemplative traditions like Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta have tried and tested means to get there for sure; but so do many other paths. Plus, you can mix and match. Personalize your practice.
What it really takes to be consciously on this path (to speed a natural evolution) is simple. It is the deep desire to known oneself in this way. From this desire, life and identity as you know it begin to unravel at a pace that matches your devotion, your readiness, mitigated by your samskaras2 and lots of other intangible unseen factors that no one can completely understand because they exist in other dimension, beyond the human capacity to see or comprehend.
In A Course in Miracles this desire is called ‘the little willingness.’
The desire and the willingness to let it come precede its coming. You prepare your mind for it only to the extent of recognizing that you want it above all else. It is not necessary that you do more; indeed, it is necessary that you realize that you cannot do more. [Chapter 18]
If you don’t have a path, a guru, a religion, or a spiritual teacher, life (and the Divine, however you conceptualise that) will guide you to the perfect next step — when you have that little willingness.
This is Grace, a decision taken beyond individual consciousness. The Infinite meets us where we’re at. It’s a collaboration.
Over 30 years, I’ve been guided to any number of groups, books, teachers, trainings, all in the right order, and all different traditions. I’m content taking what resonates from many traditions, since my relationship with God or Truth is extremely personal.
Suffering has been a great teacher of mine.
Having a sense of humour about suffering has been an even better teacher.
Compassion for self and others is another wonderful teacher, and forgiveness perhaps the best of all.
My path has been anything but simple, and I’m still here, on the path, nestled in my own little liminal stage of awakening, evolving from someone or something to someone or something else. I’ve had many dark nights of the soul, had moments of recognizing others as myself. I have travelled through the terror of emptiness and arrived at the end of fear (for now? forever?). I know myself absolutely to be both the boundless and the bound, and always, I am here, orienting myself within and between and inside both.
When my fierce black ninja cat bites my chin in the morning so that I will feed her, I am here. When I shop to feed four hungry teenagers, I am here. When friends die, I am here. When daemons of pain rise up from the abyss, I am here, and when bliss takes me in her arms, I am here, too.
I do yoga often these days. It is a lovely way to end my day. I like to get out of my domestic chaos around dinner time and go someplace quiet, where there are no external demands. It’s nice to be in an environment where I can dip into other consciousness states. Then I go home to four kids and two warring cats and live my life, which includes love given and received, which includes me losing my temper with my teenage son because he crumples up the bathmat all the time and then tells me I have OCD for wanting it flattened.
(Correct me if I’m wrong, but the function of a bathmat requires it to be flattened so that one might step on it when exiting the shower/bath, to keep the floor dry.)
In the mist of all this practical and emotional movement there is inner stillness. There is a sense of wellness that is all pervasive even when I lose my temper, even when things go wrong - and they do, often, with 6 people in the house, and my two kiddults navigating early adulthood not in the house (texting me for money and emotional support often),
and modern life,
and the world we live in.
I expect my experience will yield to greater and greater depths over time, and that I will expand and contract again and again in the human journey.
And so will yours, and so will you.
Because this is also for you. You don’t need to be anything or anyone other than exactly who you are. You are perfectly able, and your path is the perfect path.
Thank you so much for being here.
After my latest season of suffering, and having arrived at a certain peace-for-now, I have realised that more than anything else, I need to get back to writing about things that mean something to me, which might transmit to others a little bit of soul warmth.
That is why I’m here.
So each time you read something, I experience visceral gratitude and I’m pretty sure I hear angels singing.
Thank you.
*Dall-E and I have a nice little thing going and I’m enjoying it’s renditions of my ideas. Unless otherwise noted, all images are part of our AI collab.
Bonnie Greenwell writes “The difference between awakening and enlightenment is that an awakened being knows the Truth, and the enlightened person has surrendered everything to it and simply lives within it.” (131) In The Awakening Guide: A Companion for the Inward Journey, Shakti River Press, 2014
In the yogic tradition samskaras are considered the root of all impulses, character traits and innate dispositions. They are the subtle psychological and emotional imprints left by all thoughts, intentions and actions that an individual has ever experienced (including in past lives). They are often likened to grooves in the mind that have been formed by habit, and which contribute to an individual's behavioural patterns. Personally, my most intense and stickiest samskara was a particular flavour of victim consciousness, and my experience of purging it and finally releasing it was brutal. But ultimately, releasing it landed me in absolute trust and surrender.
🙏
As part of my efforts to get through suffering (mine and vicarious) I have spent time reading Quaker texts and the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. Poles apart in some respects, but equally helpful to me in more important ways.