What Does It Mean to “Wake Up”?

“Waking up” in the spiritual sense is a very personal experience. It happens differently for everyone; there’s no right or wrong way. 

The key here is that it’s an experience. There’s no belief system to adopt or idea to conjure in the mind. Intellectually, you can read these words and understand their meaning, but reading and understanding is not the same thing as waking up itself. In the simplest terms, being “awake” means that you are aware that you are aware. 

For me personally, and in learning from others, I’ve observed that there are three main elements to waking up.

1. The Discovery of Self

“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”

Socretes

As far back as Socretes, and likely further, humans have been contemplating the notion of “self.” 

The first major element of awakening is to experience the answer to the question, “Who am I?”

It begins with the separation of “self” from the mind and body. For so many years, I knew myself as a girl named Megan who likes Michigan football and going to the beach. I considered these labels and preferences part of my identity.  

I no longer see myself as these things – the labels and preferences still exist, but I don’t consider them part of “who I am.” They don’t define me. This concept can be hard to articulate in a way that makes sense; Buddhism helped me understand it better. 

Buddhism teaches that “Self” contains the qualities that we have total control over. Initially, it’s easy to think that the mind and body fall within this category. But let’s scrutinize a little. Fact of life: no one is immortal. We all eventually die, and our bodies deteriorate. Thus, Buddhism teaches that we don’t have total control over our bodies. So we are not our bodies.

The mind is similar — if you’ve ever known someone with Altzheimer’s, you will have seen first hand how the mind, too, can deteriorate. Or how about all those thoughts that run in the background – our survival instincts – the basic building blocks that make us human. Buddhist logic says that we don’t have complete control over those either. So we are not our minds.

Ok… so if we’re not our bodies and we’re not our minds, what are we? The simple answer, is we’re consciousness. We are the space in which the mind-body experience exists.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

One of the ways I answer the question, “Who am I?” is with the statement, “I exist.” It’s the only thing I really know for sure. 

I discovered a way to access this knowing as a child, which I still like to do today. I pick anything – a nature scene works best – and stare at it. I repeat to myself, I see this scene. I say it until I feel its meaning. Then suddenly, it occurs to me that I am aware of all the vibrant colors and shapes around me. I perceive them, therefore I know that I exist. I exist because I am perceiving all the beautiful colors and shapes that make up this scene.

2. The Feeling of Connectedness to All Things

The second major element of awakening is to experience the connectedness of all things – yes, this includes you!

It’s an experience of oneness with all things. There are many ways to state this with words — the all are the one, the one are the all; we are all one; nonduality – but the words are nothing compared to the real thing.

Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), experienced this on his way back from the moon. I love his raw reflection on it.

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’

Edgar Mitchell

3. The Realization That You Have a Choice

One of the most powerful elements of waking up is realizing that you can choose a different thought. You can write a different story. You are no longer limited by the thoughts you borrowed from your parents or your society or even your genes. Your story isn’t defined by the past, it’s defined by your limitless future.

When I woke up to this truth, I remember just looking around at the world in awe. It truly felt like I was looking at a new world. No longer a dull canvas I had no control over – but a beautiful painting, each stroke made from my own imagination, one thought at a time.

Waking Up Happens Differently for Everyone

It can be triggered by an event.

For some, awakening is triggered by a single event. 

For Mitchell, his awakening was triggered by the incredible experience of looking back at the small Earth, self-contained, holding everything he knew and loved on that single, delicate, beautiful blue speck in the vastness of space.

Most of us don’t have the privilege of seeing the world from that perspective, but there are comparable events that can evoke a similar experience.

For others, awakening can be triggered by a traumatic event. I recently shared my personal experience with this. Traumatic events can lead to complete surrender – when it gets so bad, there’s nowhere else to turn to but to simply, utterly, and entirely give up. A feeling of helplessness that turns suddenly into a peace. It’s in this surrender and the space that it creates, that the deep knowing comes. 

When we aren’t busy experiencing the thoughts and emotions of the mind and body, we create the space to experience the self and its connectedness to the greater whole.  

It can be triggered by a series of events.

My journey of awakening – which, by the way, I’m still on — has been marked by a series of smaller awakenings, each triggered by different events. Some were traumatic, some were deeply peaceful, but all were incredibly powerful.

Awakening is a journey, not a destination.

It can happen gradually, without distinct or noticeable triggers.

Others may not be able to point to anything in particular, but they wake up nonetheless – through repetitive meditation, or yoga for example. 

Or maybe for babies being born in today’s awakening world, they never fall asleep.

Maybe you’re awake and you can’t point to one thing in particular, but you know exactly what I’m talking about. That’s perfect, too.

Now What?

I deliberately didn’t mention science until now because I don’t want to confuse it with the waking up process itself.

To me, awakening is what’s real. The process of waking up to who and what you are is the ultimate experience of life. Science is just one way of more deeply understanding that experience.

The work of Amit Goswami and other quantum physicists points to consciousness as the basis for everything. That consciousness, not matter, is the “stuff” that everything is made of and the basis of everything we know and perceive.

You are consciousness. Yes, you have a mind and a body, but that’s not the totality of who you are. You’re so much more than that. You are part of and connected to that larger whole, that larger consciousness, that everything is made of.

That means you are so incredibly powerful.

Once you begin to wake up to who you really are, you will begin to feel your own power. You will begin to feel how your thoughts are creative. You are powerful because you are connected to everything and everything is connected to you, by way of your consciousness. 

For a lot of people, the first question they have after experiencing an awakening is, “Now what?” Well, the answer to that is,  “Whatever you want!” Your life is truly yours. To create what you want with it with your newfound freedom and power.

Waking up is the experience of knowing these truths for yourself.  

Not because I told you about them and you agree with me – because you have experienced them and know them for yourself to be true.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you’re on the right path. If you know exactly what I’m talking about, you’re on the right path. 

I’m just one person having an experience and sharing it with all of you. You are having yours. You are experiencing it in exactly the way that is right for you.

Waking up doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly have superhuman powers. You won’t be able to lift cars with your mind or jump off a building and fly. The world will still be made up of all the same shapes and colors. But something is different. The experience of those shapes and colors shifts. 

And that, my friends, is only the beginning.