awakened awareness

The vast, vast majority of the people on this planet are asleep.

It has always been that way.

It has always been that a few souls woke up among the millions who did not.  Many of them were persecuted and many of them were revered.  Many led ordinary lives in an extraordinary way.  Now, as our species faces deep crises of choice we are all being called to live in this extraordinary way.

We need to be Awake.  Awake to what?

Ourselves.  Or more correctly, we are being called to awaken to the Divinity within Ourselves.  The Divine Self, the Christ Consciousness, the Atman, the Soul, the Buddha-Self – whatever you wish to call it.  This is the part of us that is all God-stuff and knows it.  This is the part that is usually hidden behind mental chatter, emotional turmoil and driftiness/stuckness.  This is the part we’ve been searching for when we ask “Who am I?”

I remember a turning point for me in my own spiritual journey.  I had been jumping through all the hoops and getting nowhere.  I had a temper tantrum of sorts and said to my Higher Self – Get your butt down here.  Now, I remember my more politically correct friends preaching that I was supposed to “go up to her.”   I remember being adamant in my insistence that she show herself.  I was tired of doing it alone and she had to help.  In spite of all the raised eyebrows, all I can say is my Higher Self let herself be found.  Okay she slips away now and again, but for the most part I know where she is.
The Bible says, “Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened.”  This isn’t a sweet little phrase to tide us through the long winter.  This is a warning.  If you turn within with the firm intention of finding and awakening to your God-Self, you will.
You will.
And once you do you can never close your eyes again.  You may want to because being awake can be alarming.  However, once you open your eyes to the truth of this amazing Universe, you will work to open your eyes more and more each day. 

Awakened awareness is condition that grounded, centered and clear brings about.  Awakened awareness will help you maintain grounded, centered and clear.  They kind of work together to bring your truest nature into the world.

This condition of wakefulness is only possible if you get the “grounded, centered and clear” state of being into the realm of habit.  As soon as you know where your toes are without looking, you have a shot of being awake.  As soon as you touch upon being emotionally rich but not tossed about, you have a glimmer of the peacefulness that comes with awake.  As soon as you can feel that your mind is open to the sky above, then you can toy with the idea that you might become awake to your own Divinity, truly and deeply.

This all sounds grand and elevated but it’s really just a shift in perception. The condition of being asleep is highlighted by a couple of core attitudes:

The World is responsible for me.  When people ask, “Why would God allow…?” or “What is the government going to do about…?” or “When is somebody going to take care of…?” it is a clear indicator they don’t see themselves as a Source or a Solution.  One of my favorite sayings is “God so loved the world that He gave it you.”  Yes you.  Jesus said, “All that I do you can do and more.”  When is the last time you practiced your Jesus skills?  It’s a matter of polarity.  There is a taking polarity and a giving polarity.  Children should be in taking modality.  Adults generally should be in giving.  (And, yes, I know, it’s very important to nurture yourself in the process, but how many real givers do you know?)

So the question is, if adults should be in giving mode, who should they be getting from?  God, of course.  As I mentioned during last week, the natural God-stuff of the Universe is yours and fully accessible via your root, heart and third eye/crown chakras.  If you consciously draw spiritual energy into your life, nourishing yourself with Divine connection, then you soon realize that you are not dried up, thirsty, hungry or needy.  You have all that you need spiritually and can then go about being the solution in this world rather than the problem.

 Poor little me.  Marianne Williamson said it best when she said that our playing small doesn’t help the world one bit.  She said that our biggest fear isn’t that we’re weak, it’s that we’re strong beyond belief.  Being small is a lot like letting others be in charge.  Being small is a false humility that creates a vacuum where you talent, your gift, your greatness, your Godness could have been.

One of these days….  People who are awake have a certain urgency about them.  Maybe they’re trying to make up for lost time or maybe they just want to get out what’s in them.  In the Gospel of St. Thomas, Jesus said, ‘if you bring forth that which is within you it will save you.  If you don’t bring forth that which is within you it will destroy you.”

People who are awake know that now is the only moment.  To say, “one of these days,” is to say no to what is.  I can’t tell you how often I’ve had an idea and filed it away in the “someday” pile only to have it show up under somebody else’s name six months later.  Maybe it wasn’t for me to do.  However, on some level I was lying to myself by holding onto a bit of  the idea and daydreaming “what if.”
There is a saying that can be co-opted for this and that’s “when I was a child I thought as a child, acted as a child.  Now that I am an adult, I think like an adult.  I act like an adult.”  Okay – so it’s used for weddings.  When it comes right down to it, though, being awake is moving into spiritual maturity.  It’s also very cool.