Written on March 12, 2010 by Tom Stine
A reader sent me the following email:
What I’m wondering is in the phrase, “…after enlightment, chop wood, carry water”. The thing is, I’ve lost my zest for my career which I must recapture in order to find work (was laid-off) and to pay my mortgage. In the absolute, I understand there’s no one here. In the relative, I need to find the energy, but I’m no longer interested in the Game–the whole illusion thing. What to do?
I love this question and the entire subject it represents. It gets right to the heart of the seeming paradox between awakening/enlightenment and the world we find ourselves in. What to do about this paradox?
Awakening to the truth of what we are, that there is no separate self, no “me,” is to barely scratch the surface of what enlightenment truly is. Enlightenment includes in it a process that is often termed “embodiment” because it is a process of the awakened realization penetrating all of the body-mind and undoing all remaining traces of identity. This embodiment results in what I often call a “house cleaning” of the body-mind. All beliefs are undone, thoughts and feelings become transformed, and the mind drifts into the background of experience.
Sometimes an awakening is full and complete, and then with it goes all sense of identity as a self. But these full and complete, total awakenings are rare. Typically, most of us experience an initial awakening to the truth, but then discover that we still feel like a “me” even though we’ve seen, truly seen, that we are not. And so, now we get to deal with all kinds of mental-emotional “stuff” that will be (often) slowly be seen through piece by piece. It can be a difficult time, but also immensely enjoyable.
Embodiment is a major part of the state I have been referring to as half-awake. It is the post initial awakening, pre full “enlightenment” state. These are somewhat arbitrary distinctions I’m making, and there really aren’t such things as these states. But, well, there sort of are. I’ll use these terms as if they mean something simply because it helps to make some distinctions that will be helpful to most people.
So, with that overview, let me look at my reader’s question more clearly. Let me start with “after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Quite simply, this old Zen saying is clear: after enlightenment. Until embodiment has occurred, after enlightenment is not the state “you” are in. If my reader has had a true, real awakening to the truth of his being (”there’s no one here”), then the thing to do at this point is to work through the embodiment process.
I would contend that the very situation he finds himself in, laid off with a need for a job and very real financial obligations, is exactly what embodiment is all about. You see, what we are, as Nisargadatta called it “The Supreme Reality,” is not content to simply wake-up and sit in a cave staring at “its” navel. It is All of Life, everything in existence, including jobs, bodies, careers, mortgages, houses, dollar bills, etc. It is everything. It has manifested itself as all of form. Including, as my reader puts it, “the Game-the whole illusion thing.” The Supreme Reality has manifested itself as the Game of Human Life, and it is going to play it to the fullest!
Therefore, what I would suggest to my reader, and to everyone, is play the Game of Human Life as best you can. Not the way you did ten years ago, not the way you did before you realized a bit of the truth of your being, but instead from that realization. Instead of having as your motivation for playing the Game the usual motivations such as money, sex, fame, all those things, you now have a much more interesting motivation for playing the Game of Human Life. And the new motivation is freedom. Freedom from all that seemed to keep you stuck in the belief in limitation. You now seek nothing less that the limitlessness that you are.
Everything in your world becomes about freedom, about being free of all the beliefs, fears, etc, that drive the body-mind. You use things like finding a job, paying a mortgage, having a relationship, etc, as a way to discover freedom. You spend some time taking a good hard look at the contents of your consciousness. You see through illusion after illusion after illusion. You develop a relentless drive to be free, to see everything for what it truly is: the divine, the Supreme Reality manifest. You know everything as you. Not think it, not believe it, but know it, truly, wonderfully know it. That’s enlightenment.
And in the process of doing all the above, you gain a love for the Game of Human Life. It may be, in one sense, illusory, but it is the only game in town! It is Your Game, too. What you are is the creator of this odd game, and why on earth wouldn’t you want to play it? It’s your game!
I’ll write some more at a later date about embodiment and “how to do it,” as if there really is such a thing as a prescription for embodiment. There isn’t, but there are some things worth doing. In the meantime, get a book by Byron Katie
and do some digging into your beliefs. It will help. Namaste.
Written on December 17, 2009 by Tom Stine
A sure sign that you are a member of The Half Awake (Half Asleep) Club is the almost inevitable pair of questions that the mind loves to ask:
What do I do with this… this… awakening thing that has happened to me?
and
What do I do now (in general)?
Ah, the poor mind. Even when it gets it, it still doesn’t get it. I’m going to call these questions the Half-Awake Dilemma.
There is nothing wrong with these questions, by the way. As long as one has any identification whatsoever with the world, the body, the ego, the persona, anything in the manifest world of form, the questions will arise. And given that so many of us are still somewhat (or greatly) asleep, the mind will ask these questions, and, like night follows day, we will at times believe these questions are important and must be answered.
I’ve found myself trying to answer these questions any number of times. One or both will arise, I get a little hooked into it, and then I’m pondering, writing, researching, even surfing the Internet looking for answers. And each time one of these questions arises, each time I sit with one of them, I always come inevitably to the same realization:
What do I do now?
NOTHING!
Nothing?
NADA!
ZILCH!
ZIP!
ZERO!
Now, please, don’t misunderstand me. I haven’t fallen into the quite common non-dualist trap of looking at everything in the world and in a droning voice uttering, “there’s nothing to do, no one to do it, nowhere to go, and no one to go there.” Not at all. While these statements may ultimately be true, they are more often than not a convenient excuse for sitting on your butt and doing nothing all day. Not my point at all.
Implicit in many questions like “What do I do?” is one of the following two words: should or need. “What do I do?” is almost always the question “What should I do?”. The should is the key. If you will sit with the question, really look deeply into this word should, you will discover that should is a false dilemma, a lie that hooks you into an entire world of problems that need to be solved.
For instance, let’s look at a pretty ordinary example to see what I mean. Let’s take the statement, “I should exercise more.” A pretty common sentiment that many, many people share, and one that almost any doctor or health expert would endorse. But let’s turn it around and ask, “Should I exercise more?”
Here’s how to explore the question: well, if I don’t exercise, what will happen? Hmm… according to the health experts, I will have lots of horrible diseases, be depressed, and look terrible if I don’t exercise a lot, which I don’t do. But is that true? Will I suffer horrible diseases? Well, there have been marathon runners who have dropped over dead in their 30’s and 40’s, and sedentary slobs who have lived into their 90’s. So, that isn’t necessarily true. And be depressed? I’m not depressed now. Look horrible? I don’t think I look horrible as it is (you may disagree if you feel inclined!).
So, are any of these statements true? Can I know that I should exercise more? No, I can’t know. There are arguments for exercise, but there is no seeming necessity. Much different from “there is a bus about to hit me in 5 seconds. I might want to move out of the way unless I want to die.” Nothing as obvious as that.
I know this example is quite mundane, but it points out how quickly a bit of inquiry into the notion of should will quickly break down the very nature of it. Suddenly you are left with questions that have no real answer. Ultimately, after you’ve done some inquiry like this one with many other “shoulds,” you arrive at the only possible destination: you have no idea ever if there is anything you should do. It would seem, in fact, that there is no such thing as “should do” in all of existence!
You see, now that you’ve joined The Half-Awake Club, you are going to start moving through life in an entirely different way. There are no more shoulds, no more should nots, no more rules by which you must play. No, there is something new, something more interesting, and ultimately, something more vital.
Your doing will be increasingly determined by what I like to refer to as “those insistent nudges that keep repeating over and over again until you pay attention.” There is a nice word for this: intuition. Most of us, if we are honest, have had experiences that go something like this:
You feel an intuition to do X. But you don’t want to, or are afraid, or hesitant, or invent one of a thousand excuses. So you do Y. And Y doesn’t turn out the way you expected. Then you get this quiet insistence, this intuition, to do X one more time. But again, you are afraid, resistant, hesitant, or come up with 30 more excuses. And you do Z. Then A, then B, and unfortunately for you, B hurts. A lot. And so you pick yourself up, shake off the pain, and in the end, you say to one of your friends, “You know, I knew all along that Y, Z, A and B weren’t the right things to do. I’ve known all along that X is the better direction for me to go.” And you end up doing X.
Sound familiar? Yes, it does. And that is how you are going to live from now on.
One nice thing about these little insistent urgings, these intuitions, that help you see them clearly is that they never argue with you. They never offer reasons, they never debate, they never tell you bad things will happen if you don’t do what they suggest. They are quiet, subtle, and while insistent, are often gentle. But they never let up. They are persistent and insistent.
So, if you ask me, “What do I do with this awakening thing that has happened?” my response is: what do you notice arising in you? What do you feel at a subtle level to do? You will probably say, “I’m not sure.” To which I will say, good, fine, go sit on it some more. Don’t do anything. Come back in a few months and see what has arisen. Don’t worry. Life will show you.
Increasingly, I’ve noticed that doing nothing can be employed almost as a strategy, and it often works quite well. I get something that feels like an intuition, but I’m not sure. So I do something I never would have done 10 years ago: I wait patiently. And then lo and behold, things start to move in interesting ways. And before I know it, I’m doing the very thing I had the insistent urge to do, mercifully without all the painful false starts in the middle.
This process is exactly what has lead me to spiritual teaching, writing and working with people. You see, in some ways, I haven’t really wanted to. But there has been this urging for a long, long time. I’ve resisted, I’ve blown it off, I’ve held back. I’ve thought of dozens of excuses. For instance, I’ve told myself it is arrogant to do something like this teaching and writing thing. But in the end, the urging is still there. I’ve done Y, Z, A, C, G, H, L, and even R, but in the end, only X will do. Teaching keeps showing up whether I like it or not. And, fortunately, more often than not I like it. There is something deeply satisfying for me about teaching and working with seeming others.
Conversely, at times I’ve actually tried to dive into the teaching or working with people, thinking that since there was this nagging insistence then I should start teaching. Ah, there is that nasty should word again. I would end up feeling pressured, forced by the should, and then I would resist and fight back. Invariably, the timing was never right every time I jumped in because I should do it. Things never quite reached fruition. As the should fell away, more and more things opened-up for me, both inside and outside, and thus I find myself sitting here today writing to you.
I suspect that most people that experience awakening then experience this odd state of affairs. Interestingly, as I’ve discovered over the past few years, the majority of people who experience awakening never do any spiritual teaching. They live quiet lives of service doing many, many other things. Many don’t even do anything that looks like service. But nonetheless, their very presence is abundantly of service to mankind.
Perversely, many of these people will struggle with an egoic insistence that they teach while at the same time feeling that subtle urging not to teach but to do something else. And they must then go through the process of letting go of the ego’s insistence that they teach, just the opposite of what I’ve gone through. Amazing how it all works, isn’t it?
And thus is the Half-Awake Dilemma. If you are experiencing it, enjoy it as best you can. It gets easier and easier the more you open to the Awakeness that you are. Namaste.
Written on December 9, 2009 by Tom Stine
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.
Written on November 14, 2009 by Tom Stine
“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” — Groucho Marx
As I mentioned in a previous post, To Be Half-Awake (and Half-Asleep), my experience of spiritual awakening has been to be in a state that I am referring to as Half-Awake. Moreover, as I discussed, there are others who are experiencing this strange state, including some of you reading these articles (and I heard from quite a few of you after the last one). It is a far more common state than we might imagine, while at the same time, not the experience of the majority of humanity.
Moreover, it has been my experience that the majority of spiritual teachers and even “enlightened gurus” are fellow members of the Half-Awake Club. Unfortunately, many of these gurus and teachers have either flat out told their followers that they are fully awake, enlightened, or have simply left a profound state of ambiguity around the matter such that their followers have made bold claims as to the “enlightenment” of their guru.
Lest you get the wrong idea, there is nothing wrong with being a member of the Half-Awake Club. For the majority who awaken, being half-awake is just part of the process. It is simply part of the path. No big deal, no shame, no problem. Condemning people for being half-awake would be like condemning teenagers for being “half-adults.” Ridiculous to say the least.
The very nature of awakening is such that no one can be blamed or criticized for where they are on the journey. As a matter of fact, you have no control over awakening, over going back asleep, over fully awakening, etc. It is a gift, the supreme act of grace from the divine. I am very clear that I did nothing to experience an awakening (or any subsequent awakenings). They just happened. Really, I kid you not. I’ll address this point more in future writings. But as Ken Wilbur likes to say: awakening is an accident; all we can do is make ourselves more accident prone.
On the one-hand, I have to say that I don’t really care what other teachers are up to. It’s their karma, not mine. But on the whole, the mass of spiritual seekers have acquired some wrong-headed ideas about enlightenment and awakening, and I think we need look no further than the field of half-awake spiritual teachers for a lot of misinformation. Their own self-deception has led to some crazy ideas about reality and awakening to it.
To be honest, we have to admit it is a sad state of affairs out there in the spiritual world. There are websites like Sarlo’s Guru Ratings where you can read reviews of your favorite guru. There are other sites like Jody’s Guruphiliac whose mission is to reveal the “self-aggrandizement and superstition in self-realization.” Would we need or even have these sites if the spiritual world had its act together? I think not. (Warning: if you follow these links, prepare to read some harsh critiques of some of the best known gurus and spiritual teachers in the world. These sites are not for the faint of heart. Your favorite guru may get slammed.)
A little dose of self-honesty would go a long way in the spiritual world. And believe me, the gurus discussed on both these sites aren’t just obvious frauds and hucksters. There are some truly spiritual dudes out there who simply are unwilling to look in the mirror, be honest with themselves and with their followers.
There is even an interesting book, Halfway Up the Mountain, that seeks to address this very issue of Half-Awake spiritual teachers. The irony of the book is two-fold:
1. Most of the experts interviewed are in the Half-Awake Club.
2. They more or less condemn the state of being half-awake.
Again, to repeat in clear terms: there is nothing wrong with being half-awake. One can be a very effective teacher, helper, counselor, etc, from this state. A Course in Miracles makes this point quite well:
Do not despair, then, because of limitations. It is your function to escape from them, but not to be without them. If you would be heard by those who suffer, you must speak their language. If you would be a savior, you must understand what needs to be escaped.
There really is too much to say about this subject for one article. I will get into this topic much more deeply in later articles as it gets to the very heart of spiritual awakening, what it is, how it flows, how it manifests in one’s life, how one’s life can change or not as a result of awakening, etc. And I’m also certain there will be the inevitable question: how do I know who is fully awake and who is not? I’ll just leave you in suspense on that one, with just this one comment: I don’t know for certain, but there are often telltale signs that one can look for, and even better, sense. A true light shines clearly for all to see.
Look for more in the coming weeks and months. Namaste.
Written on November 10, 2009 by Tom Stine
I am half-awake. Or half-asleep. Or even better, I am awake and asleep at the same time. It is a strange place to be, and I’m sure there are others who know what I mean. And I’m also sure there are spiritual teachers and writers who would say that such a state does not exist. But still, it is my experience.
What does it mean to be half-awake? The best way to explain it would be first to start with what being awake means. Being spiritually awake means the same thing as enlightened. I prefer the phrase “spiritual awakening” over enlightenment simply because it has less baggage associated with it. There is too much talk in the spiritual world about “enlightenment” and “enlightened gurus” for my tastes. And, as a bonus, awake is a nice description of what it feels like to awaken(although, to be fair, enlightenment really is quite accurate, too). It is almost the same experience as awakening from a dream at night. Almost.
Spiritual awakening, in its fullest sense, is the complete removal of delusion from consciousness. The Truth of your being, your reality as absolute consciousness, as the One consciousness that exists everywhere and is everything, is your natural state. For some inexplicable reason, the majority of humanity finds itself in what we could call a dream state, a state of consciousness characterized by a pervasive sense of individuality, a sense of “me” as a separate self, not connected to others, existing apart and alone from all other living beings and non-living things. Spiritual awakening is the reversal of this dream of separateness, a full, complete total reversal. Once one is truly awake, or as Jed McKenna would call “done,” there is no longer any doubt as to what you are and no tendency to re-enter the dream state of separateness. Even more, there is no “one” who is even awake, for the sense of individuality is gone. Consciousness has returned to a clarity, a clearness that is no longer deluded or confused.
Many people, although not that many when compared against the backdrop of 6.5 billion human beings, have experienced something rather profound, a spiritual awakening. They have experienced a realization of the truth of their being. They find themselves, for a moment, a minute, an hour, day, week or even year, as no longer this supposed separate self. They know at the depth of their core, all the way to the bottom, that the “me” they thought they were was merely a phantom, a psychological sense of self, no more real than any other thought, a figment of their imagination. And for that moment or hour or day, they are awake, utterly awake, as if they were never asleep in the dream state of delusion.
For most that have this experience, however, it doesn’t last. While much of the old psychological self, which many refer to as the ego, may have been blown out of the system by the experience of awakening, much may still remain. This psychological sense of self, the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc, that give it a sense of reality, has a certain weightiness, a certain momentum or inertia, that will continue to function after the experience has passed. And it may take many years for the inertia of this false self to wind down and eventually cease, like a pendulum that, once swinging, will swing and swing and swing until it finally comes to rest in perfect stillness. Cessation (the actual meaning of the term “nirvana”) is the eventual fate of the egoic self, but it almost always takes many years for that fate to come into full bloom.
This is the state I find myself in. Something happened to me that can only be described as miraculous, a gift from the divine. At some point, I will have to share that experience with you, because I think it might prove helpful to others. But as happens to the vast majority of people who experience a true spiritual awakening, the egoic self resurrected itself and came back in. I, too, experienced a pretty incredible “blowing out” of a lot of psychological baggage, but the material that was left came back with a vengeance! For over a year and a half, while there have been many amazing changes in my experience, there have been some old, buried items that have been raging in me at times, things I thought were over and done with 10 or 20 years ago.
There have been swings from fear to courage, from bliss to suffering. The dominant psychological pattern for most of my life, anxiety, has ebbed and flowed. While I became permanently free of panic attacks prior to this awakening, other forms of anxiety still plague me, and at the oddest times and places. All in all, I have to say it is simultaneously amazing and bizarre.
One of the hallmarks of the awakening process is the increasing inability to deny anything. You simply become incapable of hiding from any psychological issues that you repressed, denied or buried deep in your subconscious. You can no longer lie to yourself, and when you try, well, have you ever thrown a boomerang? The few times I’ve thrown one I’ve always ended up jumping out of the way of a rapidly spinning piece of wood itching to whack me upside the head. A whack upside the head is exactly what happens every time I attempt to lie to myself these days. What worked wonders 5 years ago is pointless, futile and outright foolish these days.
So, while I know the truth of what I am, while I can feel it, experience it, often see it in others, know it beyond question, I still am not fully aware of it yet. The description of enlightenment as “abiding non-dual awakening” is not my experience. Some days it is as if my awareness is on a roller coaster, going up then down, over then under and around. Moments of utter clarity then moments of delusion. And as I have come to realize, it is a perfect way to be, just as perfect as any other way of existence, lacking nothing. Like I said, it is strange.
Maybe a few of you are members of what I’m going to call the “Half-Awake (Half-Asleep) Club.” Most probably are not, and that is okay. It is a club that some of you will join soon, some will join at some point in this lifetime, and all of you are destined to join during some non-existent future life. Even a few of you may have “graduated” beyond the club. I’ll write more about the other members of this club in a few days, as there are quite a few of us. A sneak preview: most of the “enlightened gurus” and “spiritual teachers” floating around the world are fellow members. There is much to discuss about the strange existence I’m calling Half-Awake, and I’ll be saying more about it. Until then, I would suggest you read (or re-read) the article on Adyashanti’s View of Awakening…. Namaste.
