​

Awakening

​

It is said that when the Buddha started to wander around India shortly after his enlightenment, he encountered several men who recognized him by his radiance and peaceful presence to be a very extraordinary being.
They asked him, "Are you a god?"
"No," he replied.
"Are you a reincarnation of god?"
"No," he replied.
"Are you a wizard, then?"
"No."
"Well, are you a man?"
"No."
"So what are you?" they asked, being very perplexed.
"I am awake."

 

Buddha means "The Awakened One". How to awaken is all he taught.
That’s what the word “Buddha” means, literally: to be awake.

Other terms often used that point to the state of Awakeness are Enlightenment, Liberation, and Realization. All of these words suggest a state of being in which one knows their True Nature beyond the ordinary, familiar egoic sense of self. A.H. Almaas writes:
“This experience of awakening operates on two dimensions simultaneously. First is the psychological one. To be awake means you are literally awake—like having awakened from long sleep, or from illusions, from dreams, from all the sufferings of ignorance. This is the psychological awakening: Now you see the truth and wake up from the lies and the ignorance that you have been living in. It also means you wake up to your true nature: You now see what and who you are, instead of what you thought you were. 
The second sense of awakening is phenomenological. It is the sense of being awake, clear, and bright, as if you just woke up. Suddenly your head is above the clouds and you start seeing. So this awakening is not only a matter of awakening to some truth; it is a certain state of Being. It is being awake—you actually and literally experience yourself as a bright and brilliant presence. You have not only awakened, but you are the awakeness, you are the awake and brilliant presence."

​

Quotes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

 

 

 

​

​

Everyone is this naturalness. When we start calling it enlightenment and awakening, thought can use that to compare, right? But if we say this naturalness or this simple presence, thought can't run a comparison study. The whole invitation is to look prior to language, prior to concepts, prior to thought's projection. 

What's looking and what's seeing? There's not that much there. There's just this simple, ordinary presence, and it is so unadorned. You can run right by it if you're looking for something fancy. It's always been here, it has no age, it doesn't really have any properties or qualities, it's just this intelligence. It's so quiet, that's why they call it silence.

~ Pamela Wilson

What is liberation?
It is to be free of personal identity.
It is to be free from the hypnosis of conditioning;
to be free from the magnetic influence and compulsiveness 
of the psychological mind.
It is to recognize that you are not an object, 
that this body is an inadequate representation of being, 
and is only a vessel through which consciousness 
and the vital force act in their portrayal called ‘life’.
~ Mooji

It is said that the ego must die in order for you to truly live. But nothing need die; you simply need to grow up. A child does not die in order to grow into an adult. The child simply grows up; it evolves and leaves behind what is no longer appropriate. See that the ego is no longer useful or appropriate and leave it behind. Only the ego makes its own demise seem dramatic.
~ Adyashanti

If awakening is to flower in you, you must truly want liberation from all that is false in you. You must want to give yourself totally to the inquiry into what is true beyond all inherited concepts, ideas, and beliefs.
~ Amoda Maa

In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep. And in order to realize that one is indeed in a state of sleep, one must recognize and fully understand the nature of the forces which operate to keep one in the state of sleep, or hypnosis. It is absurd to think that this can be done by seeking information from the very source which induces the hypnosis.
~ G.I. Gurdjieff

It is extremely rare for an individual to have an awakening experience and free themselves completely of the conditioning that makes them suffer. Most people have to engage in some practice. If you are sitting around waiting for the magic moment to come so that you are totally free, you may be prolonging your suffering. 
~ Scott Kiloby

Awakening is the process of deprogramming - enlightenment is the unprogrammed state.
~ Jed McKenna

We’re not any more special than any other people. The spiritual path we have is linked to am kadosh, which is a path that is there to help us awaken to the holiness that we always have been. It’s a holiness that’s inherent in all there is. It’s an awakening of the divine nature of all there is. Of everything and everyone. So in that sense, all the spiritual practice in Judaism is there to help you, to help me, all of us individually, to move into awakening into the holiness that we are. To move beyond ego.  
~ Rabbi Olivier BenHaim

When you shall begin to question your dream,
awakening will be not far away.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

To be truly awakened is actually very ordinary. It just means that you are here as the trees are here. You’re here as the flowers are here. That’s all it is. You’re here, rather than lost in a world of not here. As you relax and deepen into the present moment, no matter how ordinary it appears to be, then slowly and gently the deeper levels of Presence will open up.

~ Leonard Jacobson

I'm sure you are aware of many descriptions of awakening. We need to really be mindful that these accounts serve as an inspiration, serve us as a reminder that wow, that is possible, that is available, it happens, it actually works. However, we don't want to use that as a measurement. And we don't want to use that against our own experience. If you compare, that's really useless. We have to recognize, wherever you are that's perfect. Wherever you are that's the beginning, that's the path to freedom. Where you are, not anywhere else.
~ Neelam

Can people awaken without any spiritual practice at all? It happens. But it also just happens that like about ninety-nine percent of the people that do have deep awakenings also had a spiritual practice.
~ Adyashanti

The dream we are living has absolutely no purpose other than our awakening.
~ Tony Parsons

Because it has been man's conditioning that it is only effort which could bring him anything in life, it is extremely difficult for an ordinary man to grasp the fact that nothing more than a deep understanding of one's true nature is necessary for the total transformation of awakening to take place.
~ Ramesh Balsekar

 

It takes courage to wake up out of the dream of who you thought you were. And waking up does not happen to someone who is fitting in and following the flock of sheep. It is a willingness to keep putting your head in the lion’s mouth. A willingness to risk it all in order to come alive. It is a willingness to live for the love of truth, no matter what. The love of truth and courage go hand in hand. You can not truly love truth, without the courage to die for it.

~ Unmani

The soul informed by the ego is asleep. This is why enlightenment is called awakening -- your soul wakes up to what is really here. . . . The most evident manifestation of the soul being asleep is one's unshakable conviction in conventional or consensus reality, and in the content of one's overall social conditioning. 
~ A.H. Almaas

Awakening is gradual in the sense that your progress to the edge of the cliff is gradual. There may be five steps or five thousand steps taken before you reach the edge, but the last step is always sudden and irrevocable.
You never take the last step. It takes you. The ego will not willingly go over, even though it says, "I want to be free of the burden of myself." It doesn't really want to be free of the burden of itself, it simply wants to be free of its limitations and those aspects of itself it doesn't like.
~ Wayne Liquorman

The whole idea of being here is to awaken to the truth that 
you are not the body, nor the mind, nor the doer, that 
you are the absolute reality. 
This is really the only thing you should be concerned with. 
Everything else will take care of itself.
~ Robert Adams

​

In a true awakening, it is realized very clearly that even the awakening itself is not personal. It is universal Spirit or universal consciousness that wakes up to itself. Rather than the "me" waking up, what we are wakes up from the "me". In awakening, what's revealed to us is that we are not a thing, nor a person, nor even an entity. What we are is that which manifests as all things, as all experiences, as all personalities. We are that which dreams the whole world into existence. Spiritual awakening reveals that that which is unspeakable, is actually what we are.

~ Adyashanti

​

We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.

~ Thích Nhat Hanh

​

When you awake, you cross a line of no return, and you never see the world in the same way.

You are still dreaming, because you can not avoid dreaming, because dreaming is the function of the mind, but the difference is that you know It is a Dream.

Knowing that, you can enjoy the dream or suffer the dream.

That depends on you.

~ Don Miguel Ruiz

​

Self observation is an instrument of self change, a means of awakening. By observing himself man throws, as it were, a ray of light on his inner processes which have hitherto worked in complete darkness. And under the influence of this light the processes themselves begin to change. 

~ G. I. Gurdjieff

​

Enlightenment is real; and each of us, whoever we are, can in the right circumstances and with the right training realize the nature of mind and so know in us what is deathless and eternally pure. This is the promise of all the great mystical traditions of the world, and it has been fulfilled and is being fulfilled in countless thousands of human lives. The wonder of this promise is that it is something not exotic, not fantastic, not for an elite, but for all of humanity; and when we realize it, the masters tell us, it is unexpectedly ordinary. Spiritual truth is not something elaborate and esoteric, it is in fact profound common sense. When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don t actually become a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being. 

~ Sogyal Rinpoche 

 

One wakes up each day from the dream....but to be free, one has to wake up from the waking state.

~ Mooji

​

The last step before awakening is 

when you no longer react to life and you begin to feel harmony, 

everywhere, under all conditions, under all circumstances.

And then you awaken.

But if you are feeling distraught and angry and upset 

and you are practicing to awaken, you will never awaken.

As long as you have those feelings.

Those feelings have to go first.

You have to harmonize yourself with the universe.

You have to reconcile yourself to the whole universe, 

starting with the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, 

the animal kingdom and the human kingdom.

You have to develop a feelings of love and compassion 

towards everything.

~ Robert Adams

​

Spirituality means waking up.  Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep.  They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up.  They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.
~ Anthony DeMello

What we typically call “me” is not ultimately who you really are, but your personality brand; a particular collage of past impressions, conclusions, beliefs, emotional habits, likes and dislikes, held together by the glue of attachment. Like a childhood comfort blanket, it has our familiar smell and feel to it, and so we often do not stop to question whether our personality is real. All too often, we are hypnotized by our own propaganda, forgetting that we are really spiritual kings and queens, blessed with all kinds of inner riches.
~ Miranda Macpherson

Awake awareness might seem like a new experience; however, it's not an altered state, a transcendent state, or even a meditative state. It's our innate, true nature that is always here. When we have shifted into awake awareness, we realize that ego-identification is actually the altered state. By recognizing awake awareness, we are dehypnotizing ourselves from the trance of ego-identification."
~ Loch Kelly

If you stood no chance to awaken to the Truth, then why did Krishna bother talking to you about awakening to the Self? Why did Christ and all the holy prophets talk to you and give up their lives for you? They are speaking from, as and to the eternal being we all are. They intend to awaken unchanging self-recognition in you, for the eternal existence has temporarily come under a state of hypnosis, whereby it believes it is merely person and so it lives as a person, suffers as a person and dies as a person, while all along, ever-present within us, the supreme Being is alive -Imperishable. Use your life to find the Ultimate One. Find It as soon as you can and awaken to the timeless and limitless Truth.
~ Mooji

Trying to fix yourself is a form of judgment and judgment will keep you eternally imprisoned within separation.
Awakening is not about fixing yourself.
It is about revealing every aspect of yourself with love, acceptance and compassion.
As Jesus said : "All that is hidden shall be revealed".
~ Leonard Jacobson

You save the world by taking responsibility for your awakening and then where that awakening leads to, you follow.
Maybe you will be a social activist, maybe you will be a hermit. That’s not up to the thinking mind; the thinking mind is no longer the leader, it is the follower.
The thinking mind is an exquisite follower, but first it has to surrender to follow.
You have permission to be yourself.
~ Gangaji

Many people who are going through the early stages of
the awakening process are no longer certain of
what their outer purpose is.
What drives the world no longer drives them.
Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly,
they feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them.
Some feel that they inhabit a no mans land between two worlds.
They are no longer run by the ego,
yet the arising awareness has not yet become
fully integrated into their lives.
Inner and outer purpose have not merged.
~ Eckhart Tolle

What is it like to live an awakened life?
While the world is trying to solve its problems and everyone around you is engaged in the same, 

you’re not.
While everybody around you is trying to figure it out, trying to arrive, trying to “get there,” trying to be worthy,
you’re not. 

While everyone thinks that awakening is a grand, noble, halo-enshrouded thing, 

for you it’s not.
While everybody is running from this life right now, in this moment, to try to get there, 

you’re not. 

Where everybody has an argument with somebody else, mostly everybody else, starting with themselves, 

you don’t.
Where everybody is so sure that happiness will come when something is different than it is now, you know that it won’t. 

When everybody else is looking to achieve the perfect state and hold on to it, 

you’re not.
~Adyashanti
 

BACK

​