More on Being Half-Awake

Written on December 9, 2009 by Tom Stine

credit: Indy Kethdy

By using the term “Half-Awake” I’ve probably given a somewhat false impression to many people. Saying half-awake almost implies that there are 3 states that a person can exist in:

Asleep
Half-Awake (or Half-Asleep)
Awake

However, as a few of you can attest, a schema such as this one would be grossly over-simplified and possibly inaccurate. Let me try to clarify a bit what I mean by half-awake and how it fits into what is experienced along the spiritual journey:

1. ASLEEP

The vast majority of humanity is sound asleep. When I say the vast majority, I mean to say 99.99% (and I may have left out a few 9’s). I don’t think I need speak too much about this part, because, well, everyone reading this article knows exactly what asleep is like. *grin* I also recognize that more than a few spiritual people will take offense at me characterizing the vast majority as asleep. I never said there was anything wrong with being asleep, because there isn’t. It’s just a phase consciousness appears to pass through. In fact, there really is no such thing as asleep, it is merely the appearance of asleep. More on that another day. However, asleep is what many, many people experience.

2. An AWAKENING occurs

For no apparent reason (really, that’s how it works out), a moment of “Ah-ha!” happens, a realization, a seeing through the veil of illusion, a moment of pure knowingness. “Ah, so THIS is what I am!” The delusion of separate identity is uncovered to be a lie. An awakening is like no other spiritual experience. It is not an experience, in fact. It is beyond all experiences.

In this moment of utter clarity, one knows beyond question that the “me” that defined them, the psychological sense of self, is empty, void, nothing. Instead, what you are is everything. And beyond.

Very often, an awakening is accompanied by the expression, “Well, I’ll be damned!”

That said, for the most part, an awakening is not permanent. It does not last. Some teachers like to use the expression “non-abiding” to describe this experience. The old psychological sense of self resurrects itself, and once again you find yourself being trapped by the very thoughts and beliefs that you had seen through. You know it isn’t what you are, and yet, there it is.

3. HALF-AWAKE

The experience I’m calling half-awake can take many forms, varieties and “percentages” of awakeness (although measuring one’s awake percentage would be silly and quite futile to say the least). But this half-awake state is what follows from above. A real, genuine awakening occurs, and yet the psychological self is still operating. You are able at times (quite often, in fact) to get lost again in the seemingly important thoughts and beliefs of the mind. You seem to be a someone who has many somethings “he” needs to do.

What I’ve noticed in my own experience, however, is that this experience of being half-awake has changed over time. I would speculate that what I’m calling half-awake is quite evolutionary, fluctuates and is not a single, unvarying state. It changes as one dives deeper and deeper into the mental structure and uncovers more and more of the belief system that held the asleep condition in place. It also changes because there is a natural movement inward toward greater and greater clarity.

After the first awakening, it seemed that I fell back asleep. I couldn’t forget what I realized, and yet, I felt somewhat lost again. And yet, much of my life was different. I couldn’t stay asleep for long without the memory of that awakened state touching awareness. It really was more a contrast between the awake state and my new half-awakeness. But after a month or two, it became apparent that “half-awake” was very different from asleep. There was a sense, however, of going “in and out” of awakeness, but never that full experience of awakening that I had.

In the past 6 months, something new has become apparent, something different from what I had been experiencing. Now, I can’t really say that I’m ever really asleep. There is no more sense of “in and out.” Presence, consciousness, whatever word you care to use for the reality of what we are, is always “just inside my perception,” if that makes sense to you. It is like I can see it just out of the corner of my eye. Not really, but that’s the sense of it. “It” is here, now, present, and doesn’t leave, even in the midst of being occupied by a thought, belief or problem. I’m never asleep, even though I’m not fully awake.

It feels as if I’m moving along a continuum, a line of increasing awakeness. On the far left of the line was asleep. Then came “awakening” followed by what I’m now calling half-awake, but in reality is still a continuum of awakeness. Maybe a diagram will help make this explanation a touch clearer:

4. ABIDING AWAKENING

Ah, here is the Holy Grail of the spiritual journey. I know there is inevitable disagreement about the meaning of every term in spirituality, but abiding awakening is what is most often meant by the “E” word, Enlightenment.

At some point along the way, no one can say when, no one ever knows when or how, something within simply ceases. The psychological sense of self, the “ego” as it is often called, simply goes from the foreground of awareness to the background. It becomes irrelevant. It ceases to be of importance. The Buddha knew what he was talking about when he spoke of Nirvana, for that word simply means “cessation.”

What you are no longer is caught in the mind. It knows itself to be what it truly is. There is no “you” anymore in any real sense. There is just experience. What you are simply is.

I’ll be honest: I can sense this cessation. It is present in my very awareness, a sense that something will drop away, something will completely give way.

In the past 6 months I’ve had further glimpses of this shift. I guess we could say they’ve been “little awakenings,” although I have no idea what that really means. They’ve simply been deeper experiences of truth, further realizations of the Oneness of all things, the emptiness of what I used to see as myself. As so many before me have explained, there is emptiness and Oneness, simultaneously existing, no contradiction.

In the end, that’s all there is: deeper seeing. Even once you have ceased, once there is the experience of abiding awakening, this is still not the end. The spiritual seeking and spiritual journey may have ended, but there is further clear seeing to occur. Consciousness, if it has a purpose, wants to continually see things more clearly.

That’s why in the little diagram above, I put an arrow on the right end of the line. There is simply a continual movement of seeing all things more and more deeply, clearly, fully. Consciousness growing more conscious of Itself through the body called Tom or David or Sarah or Ellen. If enlightenment is anything, this further clear seeing is what it is.

And as long as there is a body that you, Consciousness (for that is what you truly are), seem to inhabit, there will never really be an end to looking and seeing. As my friend Davidya pointed-out in an email to me, there is quite likely always some arising of the psychological self, even in one who is what we might call enlightened. But it becomes a non-issue, arising and in the same instant falling away. Nisargadatta and Adyashanti both spoke of this occurrence, too.

I hope the above clarifies a bit more this experience I am calling half-awake. I’m sure there is still more to be said, and I’ll be happy to share it with you. Thanks for reading. Namaste.

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