I’ve been hearing a common theme from students, friends, and new acquaintances on the spiritual path. They all seem to want to put off fully awakening until there’s a better time.

As a former member of that group, I can tell you that it is about the worst thing you can do for the most part. Spiritual awakening has this amazing ability to help you see what is true and real in life. Most of your current life isn’t built up on what is true and real. Most of your current life is built up on ego, expectations, fear, and illusion. Trying to keep a foot on both banks is truly, truly impossible and painful.

Awakening Isn’t Convenient

Let me repeat: awakening isn’t convenient. Most of the systems and functions of human society are built up to support the continuance of those systems and functions. Awakening is an embracing of change. Rather than view it in the sense of anarchy (which kinda blows up everything in the naive hopes that somehow a world without systems and institutions is better), awakening is an added 5 gigawatt jolt of energy running through everything in your life. The ways and conduits of your life that are in alignment with this energy get really expanded very fast. So if you’re in a job that really is about serving humanity, you may suddenly need to take on a bigger role. If you’re in a job that is about greed and fear, that jolt of energy is blowing up every project you touch. It is truly demoralizing to try and hold onto the old stuff during this time period of change in your life.

Because spiritual awakening has no interest in serving the old ways of being that have lead to death, harm, and despair. I just keep pointing back at the 20th century because it so epitomizes the extreme delusion that humanity is still possessed by. If you think that way of living is okay, then just stay asleep. But for most of us, we see just how badly we all have to wake up to change the course of the world from a path of self-destruction to a path of salvation.

We All Have to Do the Work

Spiritual awakening may have also illuminated very clearly where you haven’t lived in integrity. But it’s not convenient, and you know that you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you to change your ways. So you put it off. You put it off, and you put it off. But the pressure is mounting. Things are fraying at the edges. You are trying to hold onto everything, but you feel like you’ve got the reigns to two different horses pulling in two different directions. You have to make a choice, and it’s going to hurt both ways you go. But one way is the path of healing and embodied awakening. The other is the path of pain that we all know so well.

You can’t go back either. So, in many respects, you’ve already made the choice. Some part of you–conscious or subconscious–chose to wake up in the first place. You’re already on the path, and you can’t resist it. Every way that you try and resist the path, the pain will grow. For some of you, the pain is actually very physical. You may feel energy moving into your body, and in all the places that you’re resisting this change, parts of your body are hurting like all Hell. They’ll become phantom pains that traditional medicine doctors will tell you that “Well, I can’t find anything wrong, but if it keeps up, I’ll prescribe something for you.” But you know what’s down that path too. You’ve seen how people have medicated themselves into oblivion. So you’re going to have to find your courage if you want to get through this awakening.

The Embodied Awakening: A New Space of Total Self-Realization

The term embodied awakening may be new for some people. Essentially, it means that all parts of you are awake. Your body, mind, and heart wake up to the soul’s truth, and that’s an intense transition. Many people seem to believe that they can “think” their way to enlightenment, and some people do awaken in their minds only to stop there. There’s something about this emerging consciousness that’s pushing beyond that. It wants to fully manifest in all of us, so we can’t just intellectually know our truth. We have to speak it and embrace it in our hearts. We have to act upon it consciously and live it each day. It has to integrate from the tops of heads to the tips of our toes. It needs to be just as aware and present in the depth of sexual union as it is in the board room as it is changing a diaper.

But because so much has been out of alignment for so long in this world, this can seem to be quite a task. As the masters always remind us, it’s just one step at a time. One breath at a time.

And it won’t wait. It’s tired of waiting. This awakening is tired of atrocities and pain. Many of us who understand our soul’s purpose also know that we don’t want to be asleep in this lifetime anyway. That’s not what we’re here to do. It’s not what you’re here to do.

The Coming Wave of Consciousness

We’re moving out of the initial waves of consciousness and towards a really big one. Many of us who got kicked out of bed about four years ago are the teachers, healers, counselors, and guides for this coming wave. It’s about to get really crazy in the world. People think that the tsunami, uprisings in North Africa, and failed economies are a lot of tumult, but it’s really just the start. The whole world needs to change. We need to rediscover community and love. We need to ditch these glorified ideas around individualism and competition that have furthered greed, fear, and hate. There’s a radical shift coming in resources in the world to redistribute things according to a more egalitarian system. I have no idea what that looks like yet. Maybe you do. Maybe that’s part of your purpose, but I do know that we have all the right people here in this time to do it.

But none of this can happen until you wake up. So, it’s time to choose. But you probably know that you’ve already made that choice anyway.

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I'm a spiritual teacher who helps people find freedom from suffering.

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