Steps to Waking Up

It's Been a Journey

I have been writing about this waking up thing for a couple of years, longer really...but in this blog it officially began in 2016, I believe.  I come here almost every morning to chart my progress in one form or another by sharing what I am learning and how.

I have this mind that likes to simplify things and put them in special order for easy processing.  So when I look at the journey I am taking I can see certain steps/levels of awakening that have and are occurring.  I would like to share those now.

Steps to Waking Up:

• Seeking and doing  to be happy.
• Powering the mind with story, past and future
• Becoming aware that it isn't working
• recognizing the fruitlessness of an "external" search involving judging and blaming
• questioning that methodology
• beginning a different type of seeking
• listening to the guidance that points inward
• looking at one's own mind
• recognizing the ego or "little self" within
• taking accountability and responsibility for one's own life
• determining that ego is not who we really are
• willingness to just sit
• knowing that something else is watching ego at work
• realizing that one knows nothing
• being willing to leave all thought and ideas behind
• finding the space beneath
• spending more and more time there
• realizing the Truth
• Loving from that space, that Truth

1. Full awareness of a  desire to be happy or at least to  relieve suffering leading to "seeking" and "doing" (For me that involved...jumping into a religious, psychology or social type of  understanding and redeeming myself through achievement, recognition,  owning, becoming more like others or better than.  It meant creating a socially acceptable idea of self.)
2. Powering the mind and ego with "story" built from "past" memory and anticipation for redemption in a "future" that will never arrive.
3. Becoming aware that what is being done in the search for happiness or the end of suffering is not really working. ...that one is not really where they want to be.(I began to see that these things I was doing and seeking were not taking me to where I really wanted to be.)
4. Recognizing that up until now "the search" had been conducted externally and that one was "blaming", "judging" external things for not making them happy when their  "expecting" "clinging" "seeking" "hoping" only created a certain pseudo contentment or relief that did not last. (As things seemed to be "taken" from me, I began to go through a process of seeing how they were not substantial enough anyway to sustain me)
5. Questioning that methodology and what one was taught to believe was real. Doubting  if it was the way to find this happiness or end to suffering. (I began to question everything I thought I knew and was conditioned to believe.  I began to look at this idea of "belief" very seriously.  To ask the question..."What is the Truth beyond conditioned belief?" about life and happiness.)
6. Beginning a different type of seeking that takes the mind away from its conditioned comfort zone ...may be looking at different ideas and possibilities that one was warned not to look at by those still in step one.  Maintaining a very "mental" connection to things, one partakes in a type of mental activity rather than a physical one, as they question and seek. (I began to look at other philosophies and religions which I was taught was "sinful" to do.)
7. Listening to the guidance that points inward as the direction to go for the answers.(I got that from many spiritual masters I read or listened to.)
8. Looking at one's own mind and belief system very thoroughly. (Though, I had a psychological understanding of things I looked a little further into what Patanjali called the "mental modifications." )
9. Recognizing the little self or ego  that we have allowed to take on so much of the control.(when I identified the ego created "little self" in me [thanks to Wayne Dyer, then Tolle and ACIM], my life  shifted dramatically.)
10. Taking accountability and responsibility for one's life and how one is experiencing it.  Seeing the reliance on past and future there as an escape from present moment awareness. (This was the hard part for me...taking ownership for my life  and putting away my story and  the victim status it honored me with.  Giving up my attachment to a past as a means to explain who I was and my reliance on the future to make it all better...was a challenging thing to do.)  
11. Having a very strong inkling that ego is not who we are and that something much greater exists within. (This helped.)
12. A willingness to just sit in the now of one's existence for at least a few moments a day, to become aware of what that greater Self might be. (I began meditating and partaking in mindfulness activities as the most important part of my day.)
13. Sensing that Something {which is no-thing}is watching, observing and witnessing ego at work with all it's mind games and senseless activity. (I do this as I go about my everyday life...When  I can make this observation I become aware of that higher Self and less identified with ego)
14. Realizing one knows nothing and being okay with it. (This was also challenging for me...to put away all I thought I learned over the years through extensive study and just rest with the idea that I really know nothing.)
15. Being willing to leave all thought, ideas about the little self , what we thought we knew at the door that leads to the greater Self.  (Tolle, Adyashanti, Patanjali and Mooji [to name just a few of the teachers that showed up in distant form when I was ready for what they could offer]helped me with that one)
16. Finding the space of stillness, quiet...nothingness...that exists beneath the veil of mental chatter and activity. (This just shows up when we lift the veil we created with our minds.  Satori. Right now I am only getting a few precious moments here and there throughout the day...still have some more lifting to do.)
17. Seeing the importance of spending more and more time there rather in the teachings and written words that point there. (This is where I am at now.)
18. Realizing the truth: one does not "become aware", one "is" awareness. Awareness is the Self where true happiness is expressed.
19. Loving from that space is why we are here I believe.

Seek not within the world to find your Self. Love is not found in darkness and in death.  Yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear love's Voice. (ACIM,W-127:6,1-3)

It's all good.