What is Awakening? Part 1

Why it matters but is also so confusing

Firstly I’d like to apologize to those that showed up for my live stream on Monday. I had technical issues again but was eventually able to work it out —but I needed to reconfigure everything and start streaming with a new link, which was likely difficult to find. Some did find it though, so thanks to those who persisted it was helpful to know I was speaking to a live audience. You can watch the talk and meditation here:

Next week the topic will be The Existential Crisis: Personal and Collective. Very relevant for our times. It will be next Tuesday, April 22nd at 11am PT / 2pm ET. You can see the stream and sign up to get a notification here.

What is Awakening?

The term “awakening” is thrown around in spiritual circles and usually denotes some big insight or shift in perspective. But traditionally an awakening is something very specific, a radical shift in awareness that is profoundly impactful and yet impossible to accurately describe.

The major meditation traditions, including Buddhism, have the explicit goal of awakening. This is sometimes seen as something unachievable for us ordinary folk, and yet many people are claiming they have had real awakenings.

Many people dismiss these claims outright, but throughout my two decades of exploring meditation and connecting with communities I’ve happened to meet some very grounded people who have had awakenings, as well as my own glimpses, leading me to believe that this is far more achievable than many people think (something I explore in a bit more detail here).

Why It Matters

Awakening is sometimes thought of as an all or nothing game. Either you are awakened or you aren’t. This is likely because awakenings are often reported as a breakthrough experience, with things looking dramatically different on the other side.

But this isn’t totally true. Awakening is a spectrum. Yes there can be a threshold experience where things shift quickly, but many people also have a more gradual awakening experience.

As my main teacher Shinzen Young says; “you can get wet by jumping in the pool, or by walking through the fog.”

The reason awakening matters is because it helps us set the direction.

Awakening is both about suffering less and also about seeing things clearly, sometimes called self-realization or just realization. It’s the recognition of our true nature, and there’s something deeply satisfying about it.

If we understand the basics of awakening, we can direct our practice in that direction. We can better see the parts of ourselves, our habits and ways of seeing things, that are out of alignment and make the appropriate adjustments.

This is why in my Comparative Meditation Course (new cohort starting in 2 weeks!), I start with awakening. If you really want to “get” meditation, you need to have at least a basic understanding of what it is.

So What is Awakening?

"Self-realization is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been." -Ramana Maharshi

The reason there’s so much confusion about awakening is because it is in fact impossible to accurately describe.

This is because awakening is an experience of pure awareness that is beyond the conceptual mind.

Most of what we think of when it comes to the mind is conceptual. We use our mind to think and try to understand things and solve problems. But to perceive what’s sometimes called “the natural state” we must learn to rest our conceptual mind and open our perception to an awake awareness that transcends thought forms.

Now we cannot accurately describe this state because of the limitations of thought. Thoughts have beginnings and ends. They have form. But the awakened state is timeless, formless, and infinite.

While we cannot accurately describe this, we can describe aspects of it. And this is what much of the world’s spiritual writing is attempting to do.

Different traditions emphasize different aspects. Let’s explore some of the common ways in which the awakened state is described (note that even saying it’s a “state” is inaccurate, as it is really ultimate truth or reality, which isn’t really a “state”).

Qualities of Awakening: Non-duality

“Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy; none of its parts are unconnected. They are composed harmoniously, and together they compose the world. One world, made up of all things. One divinity, present in them all.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Maybe the most distinctive and also confusing description of awakening is that reality is non-dual, and awakening perceives this directly.

Non-dual means that everything is one, or everything is connected. This makes absolutely zero sense to the logical mind, so don’t worry if this isn’t landing for you. But I’ll still take a shot at making sense of it conceptually.

The claim here is that everything is awareness, and there is no separation between the observer and the observed.

For example, I look at the lamp on my desk. I’m over here, it’s over there. We seem very separate. But if I focus on the awareness itself, instead of the objects being perceived, I notice that I can’t actually distinguish the lamp from my awareness of the lamp.

Confusing? Yes. But this is a real achievable state. As opposed to perceiving things with awareness (that is there and I am seeing it from here), we begin to perceive everything as awareness (awareness has no locality, it’s universal, has no beginning or end). I explore this concept in more depth here.

So we have the non-dual aspect, which is one of the most dramatic and foreign concepts, but don’t worry too much about this one for now. The other qualities of awakening will likely be more pragmatic and helpful, especially in the earlier stages.

Qualities of Awakening: Non-Judgment

"Any judgment is past oriented, and existence is always herenow, life is always herenow… Only a non-judgmental mind has intelligence, because it is spontaneously responding to reality."
-Rajneesh

Meditation and mindfulness are often described as non-judgmental awareness. Non-judgment is key.

Judgment, it turns out, isn’t all that good for us. When we judge others, we carry that judgment with us.

If you really pay attention, you can start to see what judgment does to your mind and body.

Think of someone or something you don’t like. Notice what happens to your mind and body. It’s often very subtle, but judgment causes a contraction. It closes us.

It closes our mind to perceiving things more fully, as we begin to filter our experience through our judgments, greatly compromising our ability to take in and evaluate new information.

It closes us creatively. Creativity comes when we allow our mind and express itself freely. But if we judge our creative output while in the creative process, it creates a creative block. We need to let go of judgment to fully immerse ourselves in the creative process.

It closes us emotionally, stifling our feelings. Judgments limit our emotional expression and our capacity to feel fully. This leads to a sense of disconnection, isolation, and potentially numbness or dissociation.

It closes us physically. Not liking things is a significant form of stress, that can lead to chronic tension. This is simply our body trying to protect us from what it perceives as an unsafe world.

The truth is that carrying judgment only hinders us. Our judgments our burdens we carry, and they weigh us down. They close us to the inherent joys and beauty of life.

The opposite of judgment is acceptance. We accept things as they are. This feeds into the next quality of awakening…

Qualities of Awakening: Natural Perfection

“Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.”
-Shunryu Suzuki

Awakened people report that everything is absolutely perfect as it is. The awakened state is inherently unproblematic. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t also make meaningful change in the world once awakened (did I mention that the awakened state is paradoxical?).

This isn’t to deny the problems in the world. On the relative level, there are undoubtedly many problems in the world, things we should try to change or improve. But it is also possible to tune into something right here and right now that is fundamentally OK. A quality of awareness in which there is no problem at all.

There is something fundamentally whole or complete about this moment, right now. When you can attune to this, it has a quality of satisfaction or fulfillment, in which there is nothing left to be desired.

In Tibetan Buddhism there’s a meditation prompt:

“What is here now when there is no problem to solve?”

Sit with this for a moment. What do you notice?

It is often said that the mind is a problem solving device, and if it doesn’t have a problem to work on it will create one.

Well there are no shortage of problems in the world, and no limit to the problems the mind can create. We can go through our entire lives thinking that solving problems is all the mind is capable of.

But when we learn to relax the mind is becomes more and more possible to attune to the fundamental beauty of life. And this is important, because why else would we care about the world?

I’ve noticed that people who are more attuned to the natural beauty of the world care about it a great deal more. As one of my favourite psychologists James Hillman once said:

“That the world is loveless results directly from the repression of beauty, its beauty and our sensitivity to beauty. For love to return to the world, beauty must first return, else we love the world only as a moral duty: Clean it up, preserve its nature, exploit it less.”

Ok that’s it for part 1. Stay tuned for part 2 where we will explore more qualities of awakening including freedom from attachment and suffering, impermanence, open awareness, and naked perception.

Come explore a thoughtfully curated eclectic mix of practices that lead to these perceptive qualities in my Comparative Meditation Course. A fun exploration through some very different practices that lead to more a more full or awakened perception.

This course will be a live group but also has a self-paced option and an online community for discussion between sessions. There’s a suggested price but also pay-what-you-can option, and I’d be very happy for you to join at whatever rate works for you. Sign up and learn more here!