Awakening from the Awakening: the swinging of the spiritual pendulum

I’ve noticed an interesting trend in recent times which people are calling ‘Awakening from the awakening.” The viewpoint is that people are using transcendental practices and seeking of spiritual experiences to avoid the grounded everyday experience. It happens a lot because there’s a grasping onto those transcendent, magical experiences, like an addiction to a drug. Yes, even healing from trauma can become an addiction if it’s used as a way of attaining certain states or feelings, using various methods in a kind of spiritual thrill seeking like extreme adrenaline sports. It’s also easy to create subtle identities around being ‘healed’ or ‘on the path’.

That’s why the ‘awakening from the awakening’ people have a point. How refreshing to come back to the awesome ordinariness of everyday life, in service to the universe through family, community and nature. In this way we get to apply and embody what should be left over from all our healing - unconditional love, expressed through different soul qualities. Not directed towards specific people or circumstances (this would only be self-serving) but rather as a natural baseline state which informs your actions. It could look like being naturally curious about someone and what they have to say. It could look like being aware of how your inner filters affect the flow of events. It could look like standing up and protecting your family or community from physical, mental or energetic threat. It looks like asking yourself the question, “what does the flow require of me now?”

So, there’s certainly a lot of truth to awakening from the awakening. However, I also notice a fundamental distortion in what people are sharing. That somehow being in a fully embodied, grounded life means coming away from transcendence into spirit.

The swinging of the pendulum

I talk a lot about the swinging of the pendulum with people I facilitate. What I continually observe, both in myself and others, is that when we notice an imbalance in the way we are being or perceiving the world, there tends to be a swinging of the pendulum in the other direction.

For example, over much of my earlier life I’ve it was difficult for me to say ‘no’ to people who I felt needed something from me. It’s something I’ve done a lot of work on, especially the fear of being ostracized or rejected if I say no. Nowadays I have very clear boundaries. However, on a retreat recently I noticed a subtle barrier to letting in heart centered connection. Just subtle, but it was there. I am generally very clear that I only let energies into my field that are invited. It’s especially important when giving workshops in settings like this. But, I was noticing some distance to others beyond the natural roles of facilitator and participant. I realised that there was a slight closing of the heart, a protection because of an attachment to clarity. It was preventing me from fully letting people that I didn’t know into my field.

Sometimes the swinging of the pendulum can be subtle, like in my case, and sometimes it can be more obvious. This is what I’m noticing in the awakening from the awakening trend. A subtle rejection of transcendence as a spiritual practice.

I put it to you that we can be BOTH embodied AND transcendent.

What is being referred to here is the cessation of seeking. The point on the journey where we realise that the act of seeking is keeping us from the very state we’re trying to attain. Perhaps this is the true awakening. Spirituality is no longer and experience to be sought after, but a lived embodiment of whatever drives our soul.

What I’m seeing from this trend is many people who are sick of spiritual fashion, who want something more ‘real’. The mistake I see many make is assuming that in coming home to the embodied everyday spiritual reality, they’ve somehow come full circle and ‘made it’. While there is truth in that, what I believe is being invited now is to take the best of both worlds. Embodiment and transcendence.

Why is both important?

Firstly, our current reality is a minefield for those wishing to develop spiritually. There are a myriad of distractions and derailments contracting our consciousness down. Society has become very adept at replicating the natural flow of kundalini for example, through easily attained dopamine hits. Spiritual truths have been slightly distorted to lure you down paths that feel good, but you end up in a bubble-like state without even realizing it. So, to live what might be described as normal life is to throw yourself fully into that minefield. That’s why transcendence is key, because it reminds you that you are not of this world, you are of spirit. It keeps you in touch with the subtle inner trappings, where your consciousness gets slightly blocked or out of balance.

Thus, you can be fully in this world without being identified with it.

The second reason can be expressed through this question: without embodiment, what do we actually have to transcend? In order to transcend something we have to know all of its darkest corners. We can’t run away from our feelings, of our pain. We have to look them in the eye. If there is any slight denying of your experience then you are not transcending, you are detaching. And so one becomes the tool for the other.

Let me give you a perspective of what embodiment actually is. Over many years and lifetimes we accumulate karma, where we become identified in some way or resistant to the path the soul is taking us down. This path is to illuminate our very essence, which is beyond the body we inhabit, the lived we’ve build or the personality and knowledge we’ve accumulated. When we become identified it creates blockage in the flow of consciousness (soul) through the densities of our experience (physical, emotional, mental, astral, etc.). These blockages result in a subtle disembodiment. In other words we are not fully inhabiting our fields. So, to be fully embodied is to gradually reignite this flow of consciousness by removing the obstacles to it. This can only be done by not denying your experience but being fully in it, then moving beyond it. Embodiment and transcendence.

The key to having both

The key to having both is practicing having an expanded awareness in each moment, not only in mediation and other such practices. It’s what I do with people in my workshops. We cultivate the state of being fully embodied AND

beyond the experience witnessing it. It’s about maintaining a peripheral vision throughout the day; the ability to direct your focus without losing an expanded state of awareness.

Next time you meditate, when you’re done and go to open the eyes, make sure you do it slowly and try to maintain the expanded state of meditation. Before you get up and return to daily chores and relationships, take in everything on the periphery of your awareness; the sounds and senses you wouldn't normally notice, how your field and chakras feel to you and the subtle perception of the wider collective field.

It’s not easy and will require daily practice. However, over time the state can be cultivated. If you find yourself losing it, simply take a moment. Focus on something in front of you and expand your awareness. What is at the outer edges of your vision, what can you hear in the background, how are you breathing? We don’t have to be focused on these all time (I think we would break if this was the case), but rather by cultivating these expanded states, they run in the background more and more as a lived awareness.

So let’s be aware of when the pendulum is swinging from one side to the other. Notice where you might be getting too detached from everyday life. Likewise, notice where there might be a subtle identification with it in each moment, thus forgetting your true spiritual nature. The journey doesn’t stop when you awakening from the awakening. In many senses, this is where it truly begins!

Warm wishes,

Richard