How Do I Know If I'm Awake?

The great spiritual traditions exhort us to wake up, to see the truth of our being. This is said to be the key to happiness and the foundation of right living. So what does it mean to wake up and what is the truth of our being?

According to the Kriya Yoga tradition, the truth of our being is this: we are individualized units of the One Field of Pure Consciousness. The unity of being is primary and we are part of that. To wake up is to become aware of that fact and to live from it.

Now this is not new material for many of us. We've heard this said in many different ways from many different sources. Yet to live from this awareness can be illusive.

What would it be like to live from this awareness? When we know ourselves as units of pure consciousness, we experience that we are free, conscious creators intimately related to all beings. Because we are free we are responsible for our choices and because we are "one with all" we are responsible to choose for the greater good.

When we experience ourselves as one with all we feel peaceful, calm, and happy. We abide in our natural wholeness and no longer feel the angst of striving to become something, because we rest in the truth of who we already are.

Not only shall this truth set us free, the truth is that we are free. We forget this. We fall asleep and mistake ourselves for the thoughts we think, the feelings we have, the body we live in, the roles we play, the families we are born into and that we create, and the stuff that we accumulate. We identify ourselves with our favorite athletes or movie stars, with our favorite authors, with the companies we work for, and with just about anything that gives us a more solid sense of our self.

This is the life of the ego that is not connected to an awakened consciousness. Because a disconnected ego is unaware of our true nature, it is constantly seeking to build up a solid sense of self. Yet this striving of the ego is doomed from the start. It will fail by necessity, because everything that ego identifies with as solid and sure is fleeting and impermanent. All thoughts are conditional, all feelings pass, all actions are forgotten, all people, all roles, and all material possessions and achievements wear away in the sands of time.

We experience stress, tension, and unhappiness when we strive to maintain and hold onto these contents of the ego's sense of self. A part of us knows that this striving is misguided, but this part of us goes unheard in the din of the ego's distractions.

We're told to "Wake Up" from this sleep, but what does that mean? The simplicity of awakening catches us offguard. We expect enlightenment to be complex, like the ego's ladders of success. In contrast, waking up is simple, though it isn't always easy.

We wake up by observing ourselves in the present moment. We observe our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions. We feel our body, notice our posture and our breathing, and then we know ourselves as the one who is conscious of these things. We are the observer. We are pure consciousness. As pure consciousness we can then choose to inhabit and maintain certain thoughts, certain roles, and certain actions. We can choose our relationships and choose the purposes that we invest in. We can take up any of the things that the ego previously identified with and live through them without thinking that they define who we are.

When we stake our claim as consciousness that is currently expressing itself in this body, in this time and place, we abide in the truth of our being. We let go of that which causes suffering and take up that which leads to greater freedom, compassion, and joy. Our lives take on the qualities of happiness, goodness, and enthusiasm which naturally arise from the Source.

To practice this insight, you may want to experiment with a "Wake Up journal." In this journal, keep track of every instance that you notice yourself identifying who you are with any thing. Make note of any time that you need to have any thing, that you need someone to respond to you a certain way, any time that you identify yourself with any thing that you are striving to achieve. Know that you are always more than “that.”