Path of Awakening
Saturday, June 20, 2009 by the BCth
The fact we must understand is that we are all sleeping.
Oh, we think we're awake. We know the difference between sleeping and waking. Sleep is when you drift off into dreamland and forget where and when you really are. While you're in the dream, you think it's real, but when you wake up, you realize it wasn't real, it was only a fantasy in your mind. Then you forget all the nonsensical dreamworld fantasies and get up and do all the real things you have to do all day, and in the evening you go back to sleep, and next morning you wake up and do it all again the next day. Or some variation of it all. It's the daily grind. You accept this. You have a role in life, in society, and you are content to fill it, whether you're a student or an employee or a small business owner or an unemployed. You may not be content with your life, but there are certain things you accept because they're just part of the way things are and the way they've always been done.
But what if something were to happen that shocked you out of this more or less willing acceptance of the way things seem to be? Something that challenged the very foundations of your understanding of the world? Then you would question that understanding, wouldn't you? You would seek to revise it to fit the new information.
What if, in the process of seeking satisfactory answers to these questions you couldn't ignore, you uncovered more new questions? And as you sought answers to those questions, you found still more questions? You would be led down a rabbit hole, wouldn't you? And where that path goes, nobody knows. But you're counting on it leading to the truth, because by now you're one of us: a seeker of truth.
Little do you know what you've let yourself in for! The path of the truth-seeker is fraught, fraught, fraught with traps and blocks and riddles and confusion. Also with a great many monstrous, frightening truths that you never saw and never would have wished to see. The deeper you go, the more you comprehend what a sham and deceit and half-truth is the picture of reality you once held. The institutions and the systems you once trusted with your money, your security, your life, even your eternal soul, all turn out to be the bars of a very, very craftily constructed prison. You realize that the planet you are on is a prison planet for human souls.
What is the way forward? This becomes the driving question. Can we defeat the guards and dismantle the prison, creating a more just, harmonious, and free world in its place? If so, how? And if not, then what? Do we wait for a saviour? Do we welcome and prepare for a chaotic armageddon and collapse of all systems, hoping to survive by our wits and our guts? Do we join the prison guards instead, hoping to be on the winning side? And most of all, what does it mean to escape, to win?
We see that it is all a grand chessboard, and we are the pawns. There are levels to reality beyond our ability to perceive, and it is from these higher levels that the game against us is being played, by forces unseen. As long as we are the pawns and they are the players, they will win. But now that we are aware we are being played, the game changes. We learn about their realm, and what manipulations they are capable of. What their motives are. What their tactics are. What rules they play by. And we begin to train ourselves to counter their moves. In addition to being truth-seekers, we now become spiritual warriors.
But we have not yet won. We are not yet awake.
If we had, if we were, we would not still be here.
The only way to win the game... is to stop playing it.
When we truly awaken, we will see it all for what it was: a dream that was only real in our minds.
That is the path of awakening.
Oh, we think we're awake. We know the difference between sleeping and waking. Sleep is when you drift off into dreamland and forget where and when you really are. While you're in the dream, you think it's real, but when you wake up, you realize it wasn't real, it was only a fantasy in your mind. Then you forget all the nonsensical dreamworld fantasies and get up and do all the real things you have to do all day, and in the evening you go back to sleep, and next morning you wake up and do it all again the next day. Or some variation of it all. It's the daily grind. You accept this. You have a role in life, in society, and you are content to fill it, whether you're a student or an employee or a small business owner or an unemployed. You may not be content with your life, but there are certain things you accept because they're just part of the way things are and the way they've always been done.
But what if something were to happen that shocked you out of this more or less willing acceptance of the way things seem to be? Something that challenged the very foundations of your understanding of the world? Then you would question that understanding, wouldn't you? You would seek to revise it to fit the new information.
What if, in the process of seeking satisfactory answers to these questions you couldn't ignore, you uncovered more new questions? And as you sought answers to those questions, you found still more questions? You would be led down a rabbit hole, wouldn't you? And where that path goes, nobody knows. But you're counting on it leading to the truth, because by now you're one of us: a seeker of truth.
Little do you know what you've let yourself in for! The path of the truth-seeker is fraught, fraught, fraught with traps and blocks and riddles and confusion. Also with a great many monstrous, frightening truths that you never saw and never would have wished to see. The deeper you go, the more you comprehend what a sham and deceit and half-truth is the picture of reality you once held. The institutions and the systems you once trusted with your money, your security, your life, even your eternal soul, all turn out to be the bars of a very, very craftily constructed prison. You realize that the planet you are on is a prison planet for human souls.
What is the way forward? This becomes the driving question. Can we defeat the guards and dismantle the prison, creating a more just, harmonious, and free world in its place? If so, how? And if not, then what? Do we wait for a saviour? Do we welcome and prepare for a chaotic armageddon and collapse of all systems, hoping to survive by our wits and our guts? Do we join the prison guards instead, hoping to be on the winning side? And most of all, what does it mean to escape, to win?
We see that it is all a grand chessboard, and we are the pawns. There are levels to reality beyond our ability to perceive, and it is from these higher levels that the game against us is being played, by forces unseen. As long as we are the pawns and they are the players, they will win. But now that we are aware we are being played, the game changes. We learn about their realm, and what manipulations they are capable of. What their motives are. What their tactics are. What rules they play by. And we begin to train ourselves to counter their moves. In addition to being truth-seekers, we now become spiritual warriors.
But we have not yet won. We are not yet awake.
If we had, if we were, we would not still be here.
The only way to win the game... is to stop playing it.
When we truly awaken, we will see it all for what it was: a dream that was only real in our minds.
That is the path of awakening.
