What Happens Post Awakening?
What Happens Post Awakening?
The Turtle and the Water
A sea turtle was mistaken for a land turtle and placed in a terrarium with sand and a heat lamp. The turtle wasn’t feeling well and had a longing for something it couldn’t quite identify. One day, when it was out of the terrarium and wandering around the house, it noticed the front door was open. It strolled out into the garden for the first time and found a large puddle of water. It was like a religious experience for the little turtle to submerge itself in the water; finally, it felt at home. But after that experience, nothing was the same. Once it had tasted the water, it was all it could think about and long for.
Just like the turtle that tasted water, we humans are profoundly affected by a direct experience of our innermost being. Post awakening it can then become difficult to wholeheartedly return to the filters, identifications, masks, strategies, and armors we had previously.
You might also notice that your “navigation system” changes. From being guided by your desires and fears, your calculations, hypotheses, belief systems, and opinions, your main compass becomes your intuition. Instead of acting on autopilot, you act consciously from a neutral, still place.
The transition phase can last for a short period or many years, and it can be anything from mildly confusing to completely life-changing. However, there are also a few individuals, like Eckhart Tolle, who wake up suddenly. His entire experience of the world/himself changed totally in an instant. Everyone’s journey is unique and should not be compared to anyone else’s experience, but once you wake up from the dream, it doesn’t matter what caused you to wake up.
What Happens When You Become Still and Aware?
Imagine stirring a large barrel of water with a giant ladle. In the barrel, there are various things and substances you’ve forgotten you put there and others you don’t even know how they got there. You look down into the barrel and see only murky water swirling around. When you stop stirring the water, it calms down and starts to clear up. But just when you thought it was calm and clear, things start popping up to the surface, one by one or several at once.
This is exactly how it works when we pause, stay in the present moment, and dare to feel our emotions (without commenting on them, fleeing, identifying with them, or acting on them). We can start to feel stillness and see more clearly, but suddenly an old suppressed trauma from childhood can surface.
Don’t stop there and think the practice isn’t working.
If you continue to stay present and not flee, you might start to see how the trauma has been the basis for many of your destructive behaviors, thought patterns, and feelings in life, without you being aware of it. When you objectively dare to look at the trauma and feel the emotions connected to it, you can start to heal and become truly free.
The grief you never processed because you kept yourself super busy with work to avoid feeling the sorrow and longing suddenly surfaces.
The pain and anger over your failed marriage, which you suppressed to not show your children how badly you felt, might come up again. The shame over a financial crisis, the pain of being abandoned, the regret of causing suffering…everything we’ve swept under the rug can come up…or nothing at all.
When you dare to feel what is, it’s like pulling up weeds by the root instead of just trimming the leaves. It’s more strenuous and painful, but far more effective and the only thing that seems to work in the long run to become free and healed. For some, it’s a tough and slow process, with much digging and pulling to get the root out. For others, it’s a super quick process of just plop, with some pain, pulling up the weed by the root. But then there are those who wake up almost instantly and deeply understand who they really are. When they realize they are not their thoughts, feelings, memories, traumas, sensations, desires, fears, or personality, but the still awareness that is aware of the thoughts, feelings, and sensations, the weed simply becomes irrelevant. Everyone has their unique journey here on Earth, and it serves no purpose to compare your unique journey with anyone else’s.
Mooji Quote
“It is not important what you think. What is important is to recognize what you are not.”
The Story of The Turtle and The Water
A sea turtle was mistaken for a land turtle and placed in a terrarium with sand and a heat lamp. The turtle wasn’t feeling well and had a longing for something it couldn’t quite identify. One day, when it was out of the terrarium and wandering around the house, it noticed the front door was open. It strolled out into the garden for the first time and found a large puddle of water. It was like a religious experience for the little turtle to submerge itself in the water; finally, it felt at home. But after that experience, nothing was the same. Once it had tasted the water, it was all it could think about and long for.
Just like the turtle that tasted water, we humans are profoundly affected by a direct experience of our innermost being. It can then become difficult to wholeheartedly return to the filters, identifications, masks, strategies, and armors we had previously.
You might also notice that your “navigation system” changes. From being guided by your desires and fears, your calculations, hypotheses, belief systems, and opinions, your main compass becomes your intuition. Instead of acting on autopilot, you act consciously from a neutral, still place.
The transition phase can last for a short period or many years, and it can be anything from mildly confusing to completely life-changing. However, there are also a few individuals, like Eckhart Tolle, who wake up suddenly. His entire experience of the world/himself changed totally in an instant. Everyone’s journey is unique and should not be compared to anyone else’s experience, but once you wake up from the dream, it doesn’t matter what caused you to wake up.
Ramana Maharishi Quote
“The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.”
How to Observe Your Thoughts
Imagine you are on a bridge over a large train station; you are early for a meeting and spend the wait watching all the trains coming and going. Whether the trains are on time or not doesn’t concern you in the least, nor how many passengers they have, the names of the conductors, or the construction year of the trains. You don’t care about where the different trains have been or where they are coming from, how many toilets they have, or what color the seats are. You simply look down at the trains and perhaps calmly notice their movements, how the light falls, the sounds they make when they brake, and the pattern all the tracks create.
Ramana maharishi Quote
“All that is required to realize the Self is to be still.”
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How to Be Free From Negative Thoughts
Try observing your thoughts in the same objective, relaxed way you watch clouds in the sky or trains passing through a station. The multi-Oscar-winning film “A Beautiful Mind” from 2001, directed by Ron Howard and based on the book of the same name by author Sylvia Nasar, is about the famous mathematician John Nash’s life, played in the film by Russell Crowe. It’s a true story about a mathematical genius who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. He was completely consumed by his inner visions, suffered terribly, and his mental illness caused great suffering for the people he loved most.
His recovery did not consist of him stopping seeing people who weren’t there but in no longer giving them his attention and energy, focusing on reality instead.
At first, you might easily get distracted and consumed by your thoughts when you try to observe them, but as you practice, it will become easier. Over time, you can start choosing which thoughts to direct your attention to and which to ignore. It’s useful to remember your dentist appointment, but you can learn not to focus on and waste energy on judgmental, critical, belittling, hateful, and fear-based what-if thoughts.
My Post Awakening Playlist on YouTube
Papaji Quote
“Let go of all ideas and images in your mind, they come and go and are not even generated by you. So why pay so much attention to your imagination when reality is for the realizing right now?”
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