What Is Awakening

Awakening. That’s the change from asleep to awake, right? You are sleeping, you open your eyes and wake up… yes?

Well yes, in the common sense of the word. But here we’re talking about definition #4:

Awakening (noun):  a recognition, realization, or coming into awareness of something; e.g.
an ecstatic awakening to the profound beauty of Nature; a rude awakening to the disagreeable facts of human treatment of Nature.

An Awakening is a shift of perception that occurs in your mind. Speaking generally, an awakening experience can be something as simple as the moment when, as a child, you realized that monsters don’t actually live under your bed. Or the moment you realized that Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist. Other simple awakenings include moments such as when you finally mastered the art of riding a bicycle without assistance, or learned how to throw flat stones so they skipped across the surface of the lake. We often consider such awakenings as simple learning experiences. But it’s more than that. There is always that special moment when you have the perception of a shift in your awareness. Something new and unexpected has occurred, and it is wonderful. A thrilling ecstatic feeling follows instantly afterwards.

What Happens?

Note that with every awakening experience something is lost – unfounded fear, ignorance, inability, perceived limitation, false belief, erroneous assumption, unsound opinion. And something is gained – an enhanced outlook, sense of possibility, heightened creativity, expanded ability, a new skill. Every awakening makes you feel fresh, alive and energized.

With this understanding of the general definition of awakening, you can see that every kind of person, at any age can have an awakening at any time. Every awakening, even the smallest is cause for celebration, and the natural awe-some joy of the experience of awakening is your built-in reward.

The Big Ones

Here, on this site, I talk about the biggies; the major awakening experiences. Even more important, and not often talked about, is the intense awakening process itself. If you are so destined, the process may begin within you. The over-arching Awakening Process is the actual and permanent transforming element. It is the awakening process that actually does the difficult internal work, eventually and permanently establishing your awareness in the enlightened state.

Enlightenment does not occur in one brilliant moment, though many of us have been led to believe this. Becoming Awakened, Enlightened, Realized, or whatever you want to call it, is the final breakthrough that occurs after a long process of examination, demolition, breakdown, detoxification of debris and thorough rebuilding and rewiring within your body, mind and subtle energy bodies. To get to that end point requires countless changes and refinements within you, on multiple levels. The overall Process, the priorities and patterns of change that occur inside, are very similar to the physical detoxification processes that occur in your body when fasting. And it is very similar to the mental detoxification processes that occur when aberrant programming and conditioning dissolve as you awaken to who and what you are as an Individual human being among other human beings.

After that final breakthrough, there will be many years of acclimating to your new state of being. Refinement continues within your psyche.

Definitions

Let me lay out my definitions for you: An Awakening, The Awakening Process and Awakened.

‘An Awakening‘ experience is a one-off expanded consciousness or mystical experience. Various names and phrases are used to describe such an experience – cosmic consciousness, oneness with God, merging with the Absolute, mystical experience and many more. Whatever it may be called, it is an extraordinary peak experience that goes far beyond one’s usual sense of self and perception of reality.

You may have no awakenings, one awakening or many awakenings during your lifetime. There are two general directions an awakening experience may take within you: 1) The peak experience occurs, fades away, and nothing much more comes of it. You will remember the experience for the rest of your life, but it doesn’t seem to have any major impact on how you conduct the rest of your life; 2) The peak experience ignites a spark within you to investigate it more deeply. You will delve into spiritual matters to some degree, or possibly to such an intense degree that it becomes the only pursuit that matters to you. It becomes the total focus of your life. All you want is to rekindle that experience. You want to understand it, to know its purpose, and most importantly how to get yourself back into that incredible feeling and knowing. Forever, please!

An awakening experience may last a few seconds, or a few minutes. Maybe it lasts an hour, a day, or even many days in rare cases. No matter how long it lasts, it makes an indelible mark in your psyche. You will never forget it.

‘The Awakening Process‘ is an ongoing massively transformative internal process. During this process you may experience many ‘awakenings,’ many extreme experiences along the way, both ecstatic and joyful, or brutal and troubling. These awakenings will come and go, while the Process itself continues, often in a hyperactive, manic way inside you. Many times you will feel to have no control over the Process; it controls you. It is a process of examination and elimination. What is being examined and eliminated is your identity – all your beliefs and all your attachments to them.

Granted, the awakening process is not necessarily brutal for everyone. But it is absolutely true that everyone who is selected to go through the awakening process is someone who has loads of egoic junk inside that must be metabolized, detoxified and eliminated. Everyone has loads of egoic junk inside themselves. The Awakening Process is the time for you to take it all on, deal with it, and get rid of it. The process of coming face-to-face with all the crap inside you and permanently getting rid of it is no picnic. It is very serious business, and will be incredibly intense and difficult for most people who go through it. No one is Awakened or Enlightened until the junk inside is dealt with and eliminated – to completion.

In my case, the Awakening Process was initiated and ran its course over 4 years, governed at all times by the supremely intelligent Kundalini power within me. My Kundalini Life Force was turned up to high volume and remained hyperactive throughout the Process. It is what drove and guided the whole Process within me.

Some who go through the Awakening Process may say that Kundalini had nothing to do with it. I respectfully disagree. As I have seen it and experienced it, I realized that Kundalini is simply a word for the Intelligent Life Force that created me, that sustains me, that created my ego-self, and, when the time was right, fully fired up again to very carefully deconstruct, disassemble and dissolve away all the ego-self imprints that I had carried with me throughout my soul’s journey over lifetimes.

With every waking moment that you exist in this dimension, you are aware, perceiving, thinking and acting through the use of your Conscious Life Force, your Kundalini. It is the animating force within you. It is what leaves you when you die. Everything in your life depends on your Kundalini life force, from your conception, to your birth, to your death. Kundalini is what is greatly amplified during your spiritual Awakening Process. With the intense and challenging spiritual ‘detoxification’ that is occurring, it is your Kundalini that is doing the work inside, at a much stronger level than normal waking life. Because Kundalini is clearly apparent during these times of intense spiritual purification within, it is often only spoken of as ‘being awakened and active’ during these stages of growth, and ‘dormant’ when not. But in fact, kundalini is always active inside you; it is simply a matter of degree.

Essentially it is this: Ego cannot get rid of ego. Only the Intelligent Life Force – Kundalini – can do that job. Your Kundalini life force created your ego. Your Kundalini life force will carefully and surgically remove your ego, when the time is right. And not before.

Once my Kundalini Process awakened, it took charge of the whole Process. It ran the show. It was the boss. It had specific intentions, and it continued its work until it was satisfied that all had been completed. ‘I’ came along for the ride… until my sense of ‘I’ eventually disappeared.

I address more issues about Kundalini on another page in this website.

‘Awakened‘ is complete, done. Some call it Enlightened, others quibble about the terminology. No matter. The Kundalini-driven Awakening Process has run its course and completed the transformative work it intended to accomplish, which is huge! Everything that you thought you were is gone; everything you now are is amazing and completely unexpected.

This does not mean absolutely finished, as in ‘no further development or evolution will happen’ in your personal conscious awareness. That never ends. What is accomplished and completed is the careful de-energizing, dismantling and detaching of your ego-driven sense of identity, which is your very strong sense of self identification to your personal ‘story’ and your history. Who you believe yourself to be… everything about you that you believe makes you ‘you,’ is taken apart and eliminated, piece by piece. Permanently.

Likewise, the ‘little mechanisms’ (as I like to call them) within your psyche that act as little motors that feed and keep your ego and sense of identity going are dismantled and deactivated too. Permanently. Your little worry mechanism, your little regret mechanism, your little jealousy mechanism inside; these are all shut down and carted off. Experiences of worry, regret, envy, jealousy, pride, greed and so on… they simply don’t occur any longer.

Amazing.

So to sum up, just as a ‘cleaning process’ is the action of removing undesirable material, and ‘cleaned’ is the state when the process is complete, the Awakening Process leads to the Awakened, Liberated, Enlightened State.

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Big, intense one-off awakenings, the experience of unity consciousness; these are the juicy awakenings. Sometimes I think of these brief ecstatic experiences as ‘teasers’ along the way; blowout experiences that keep tantalizing you to go further. They are so amazing that they keep you seeking for the grand prize. Your spiritual journey and full awakening process may include a few or perhaps many of these brief, intense awakening experiences. And when the awakening process is complete, you may or may not have such experiences again. But you’ll no longer care about that.