Awakening, as I discussed in my previous post, is the process of going from being unconscious (unable to see outside of your own mental conditioning) to being conscious (free from this conditioning)
The most common misconception about awakening is people thinking that it will instantly bring them peace of mind and free them from their mental suffering. It is sometimes seen as a magical spiritual gift that brings a lasting feeling of bliss along with it. This, unfortunately, is quite far from the truth.
First, let’s define awakening, dictionary.com has a few different definitions and there are two that I am interested in that sometimes get mixed up and cause misunderstandings.
A recognition, realization, or coming into awareness of something.
A renewal of interest in religion, especially in a community; a revival.
The first definition best describes awakening as the process of going from unconscious to conscious. You will have a lot of powerful realizations which will feel inspiring and uplifting. These realizations are your awareness/consciousness coming through and seeing through your old beliefs and conditioning, they are you becoming aware of habitual lies (beliefs) that you hold. Our thoughts, beliefs and emotions are all habitual in nature if we are living unconsciously. They are deeply ingrained habits that we practice every day. We practice them every day as they have become who we are and what we use to get a sense of identity from, just like the example of the terrorist in my previous post.
The extreme beliefs would come first and through identification with them, their life would literally become the beliefs that they hold.
I am X (religion/nationality/race etc). My enemy is Y (other religions, nationalities, races) and I must fight and kill them. This is what I mean by habitual lies and how we practice them every day as they become our identities.
This is an extreme and simplified example of a belief and how an identity forms around it. There are also other types of delusional beliefs such as: I am not good enough, he/she is better/prettier than me, I need X,Y and Z to be happy etc that directly cause mental suffering as opposed to delusional beliefs that make us who we are.
Beliefs structures are a deep web of inter-connected entangled beliefs glued together deep into your being by habitual unconscious identification with them.
Simply having a realization that beliefs such as ‘I am not good enough’ are not true, while might be powerful in the moment, isn’t going to free you from the suffering that they cause as it is connected to so many other beliefs and emotions that have would have built up over time through your unconscious identification with them resulting in a strong habitual presence in your life. When you get back to life after your ureka moment, your unconscious habit/conditioning will kick back in. It takes time for the awareness that caused the realization to strengthen to the point where it can catch your habitual conditioned mind before it takes back over which would allow you to stay present as this conscious awareness (you).
So back to the original misconception of awakening freeing you from mental suffering, as I have just explained, awakening is becoming aware of what is causing your suffering and although a part of the journey, it does not in itself obtain inner-freedom. It makes you aware of what you have to deal with in order to obtain this inner-freedom. It brings you to the point you would be at with other undesired habits like biting your nails; you are aware of the habit and have to deal with it if you want to be free of it.
Now back to the second definition of awakening that I want to discuss: a renewal of interest in religion.
When most people hear the word awakening, they tend to associate it with spirituality. They get mixed up and overlap the two definitions mentioned in this post. There is nothing spiritual about waking up from the mind and freeing oneself of its conditioning.
Freeing yourself from the mind and connecting with your true self may lead you down a path of spirituality or it may do the opposite. It is irrelevant in the context of obtaining inner-freedom. When you are free of your rigid beliefs, you can then view spirituality, religion and everything else in an unbiased manner and feel what resonates best with the real you.
