Watching the Mud Settle

There is no easy way to say this other than to come straight out with it.

I am awake.

Apparently, those were the words that Buddha uttered when a man on the road asked him what he was. I have been told that the word 'Buddha' actually means one who is awake. I guess that makes me a Buddha. (Laughing here)

I would like to point out here and now that the uses of the words like I, me and mine can cause all kinds of problems in the awakened state, but language is its own limitation. I will try to differentiate between the awakened view and the ego view where I feel it is necessary, but on the whole such writing can become very clumsy.

I woke up from the dream state on 1 April 2016. The people over at the website called 'Liberation Unleashed' refer to Awakening, or Liberation, as the 'cosmic joke'.[1] It seems appropriate that it happened for me on the date that it did.

The whole reason I am writing this is to also try to address the post-liberation state, not to become yet another unit that is solely dedicated to teaching the process of becoming enlightened, but that may change. I have no idea what the Universe might have planned for this unit and the awake-ness that uses it.

You see, that right there is an example of the language that comes about when you try to be precise about the distinction between the ego, the body and consciousness.

I am awake. I have always been awake. I am not a body. I am not an ego. I am not thoughts. I am not beliefs. I am not opinions. I am not stories.

The ego personality was not awake. It is not awake. It can never be awake, because it is an illusion.

All those texts that I read for years about attaining enlightenment suddenly make sense. I suspect that people have failed to become enlightened over the years because they did not realise that the texts and the teachings were presenting two different views.

People think that they are an ego. They believe their ego is real. They identify themselves as their ego. Their ego maintains control and hides reality from them. Reality is always there. Awake-ness is always there.

This is why so much of the training that is undertaken by mystics such as the Sufis, the cloistered monks of Christianity, those seeking Advaita, practitioners of Zen, Chan and other forms of Buddhism and a myriad of other seekers is focused on dissolving the ego, even if they don't call it that.

Once you are awake, the ego is seen to be fiction. The ego is seen to be a character that you have played for your life so far. All the separation is an illusion. As Fred Davis from South Carolina would say, 'there is a sense of Fred-ness, but there is no Fred.' [2]

I think that is enough for today. It took 41 years to get here, so I guess 'my' ego was particularly pigheaded. Now the real work begins.

Chop wood, carry water.

[1] http://liberationunleashed.com/
[2] http://awakeningclaritynow.com/