Four Simple Steps for Waking Up

Here is a thumbnail version of the four simple steps to waking up. 

1. First, get in touch with your feelings, starting with negative feelings. Don’t judge the negative feeling or yourself. Don’t repress it or try to change it in any way.  Leave it alone, let it be. Just observe. Catch the thoughts and beliefs fueling your reaction as they occur to you, without analyzing anything.
2. Next, be clear that the upset is in you, not in reality.  But don’t identify with the upset.  Don’t say I am upset. Instead say, “An upset is there.” 
3. Remind yourself that this too will pass. Everything passes.
4. When it passes, be aware of the spaciousness you feel after it has passed.

If at first there is a sluggishness in practicing awareness, don’t force yourself. That would be an effort again. Just be aware of your sluggishness without any judgment or condemnation. Trust the process.

As you reach a clearer and clearer understanding of how you have been programmed, the programming will drop away.  Your brain and your mind will quiet down and you will move into the unknown, unencumbered by any formula, the ones you learned from your culture, the ones you learned from gurus and books, the ones that you yourself invented along the way.  You will now walk alone as the prophets and the mystics did, moving away from the world of human beings into the unknown, but not away from the company of people but from their formulas. Then, even though you are surrounded by people, within,  you will experience an awesome solitude! That solitude, that aloneness, is Silence.

In that silence awareness expands to include anything and everything. A falling leaf, the tenderness of a loved one, the ripples on the surface of a lake, a pile of stones, an old building in ruins, a crowded street, a starry sky. Anything and everything.

As the silence in you grows,  a strange change will come about in you, barely perceptible at first but radically transforming. Because, having seen, you will never be the same again. You will feel the exhilarating freedom, the extraordinary confidence that comes from knowing that every formula, no matter what, is worthless, and you will never again call anyone your teacher. Then you will never cease to learn, as each day you will observe and understand afresh the whole process and movement of life. Then every single thing will be your teacher.