The Half-Awake Dilemma
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.
