What Does Awakening Cost? It’s not what the seeker expects. Somewhere along the yellow brick road, the seeker’s path, the path that is supposed to make your life better, take away the discomfort, reveal the inherent abundance and recognize your true identity, it dawns on you that just perhaps, you’d have been better off on the path more traveled. That is, if you really wanted a better you, a more comfortable life, to feel special – your own version of a superhero – or just wanted less pain.  

All of those are storylines – stories within the dream of life here on planet Earth and dimensions beyond. Everything that can be imagined is simply a storyline – not awakening. Awakening shatters all storylines, including the awakening story. It bursts the bubbles of spirituality, religion, all the isms, every flavor of lifestyle, peacekeeping, earth saviors and political champions.  

Awakening, of course, well maybe not of course to you, is the surprise of a lifetime, a shock to the nervous system, so not what you expect. It presents itself when you reach bottom, the bottom that is an absolute giving up, or at least that’s what happened here. Does it have to be that way? I find that more than doubtful.  

Reaching the bottom of the well

Why do some of us reach the bottom of the well, giving up, giving in to life as it is? I don’t know. It seems there really isn’t much that I know. I used to be knowledgeable, so much so, that I had all sorts of ideas to fix this sweet little body of mine – Kenny’s too — spanning a wealth of modalities. I, quite knowledgably, tried everything until I reached the end of knowing. It might have been better, easier for sure, to not be so well read, so capable of figuring things out, so able to research and understand. I’m guessing it would have shortened the process and eliminated years of pain and exasperation.  

What does awakening cost? Everything. Awakening is the tsunami that leaves nothing standing in its wake, not only nothing standing, but nothing at all. It is the stripping away of all scraps of identity, all willingness to holding onto anything, any belief, any bit of knowing, any desire for anything beyond this moment, including one’s own life.

Awakening leaves the need for something other than this moment in the dust, with no one left to turn and see if the dust will settle. It strips away the one who lives a life of discontent. That sounds pretty good, until you realize it also strips away the one who lives a life of joy and ecstasy.

When I said nothing, I truly meant nothing.

As all needs and wants plunge into the deep vat of acceptance, the knot that holds the identity together unravels and you see what this really is through empty eyes. It was always right in front of you. You never had to go anywhere to find it. Looking for it – the idea of an it — obscured the view. You just couldn’t see what’s actually here because you were looking through the eyes of someone, of an identity, of separation.

You were wearing a pair of glasses that distorted reality, glasses that turn timelessness into time, non-dimensionality into space, perception into things, into others, that make sensations and emotions feel like a self.

They gave the appearance of you and the world. They also presented the opportunity to feel love and hate, acceptance and anger, compassion and blame, to engage in war and to experience peace.

 The glasses aren’t bad. They are a requisite of playground Earth, that is, until they aren’t anymore, until life takes you to that moment when you drop and stop.

Nothing changes

And then what? It’s laughable actually. Nothing changes. The world continues to turn. The idiosyncrasies of the body, the personality marches on, only sans identification. We can never see the world through the experience of another. We see the world from where we stand, from our resonance. We could be talking to an identity-less being, having a deep or shallow exchange, and totally miss what is in front of us, just like we miss what life actually is.

It might be wise to opt for that personal development course instead of the truth at any cost experiential, but it wouldn’t make even the tiniest bit of difference. We are all on the path, even when it looks like we aren’t. Life is the path of awakening. There’s nothing but the path of awakening, the unescapable eventuality of the recognition of what life is. Every experience brings us closer to the moment when life as we know it ends.

Everything changes

Nothing changes … and everything changes when identification drops. The world is seen to be illusion – it’s all illusion – but that doesn’t mean it’s nothing, that it doesn’t exist. It just exists differently from what you thought. There’s no need for blame or kudos for a job well done, no need to change and fix, to compare and contrast. Life is seen for what is always was – precious beyond imagining.

Thankfully, it doesn’t change in an instant. I can’t imagine how that would feel, the unsettling of everything previously known in one tiny blip. It seems to unwind like a cat playing with a big red ball of yarn – surely and inch by inch. All struggle to make it unwind more quickly or in a certain way is gone, swept away with the identity. Life simply unfolds as it does, when it does, on its own … as it always has.

Pretty darn cool …