Awakened Yet Fast Asleep

 

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Awakened Yet Fast Asleep

All of us are awake, but in some respects still fast asleep. Our wakefulness has not reached a stage of complete awareness – we are in a state of limbo, awakened from the world of animals but fast asleep in the world of Gods.

We are in a transitory period. We have not yet reached the state of awareness – we are on the way. The past is left behind and the future is not attained yet. Hence the agony, the anguish: we are torn apart. The past pulls us back. To be an animal again seems to be pleasant, and it is, because that does not have the agony, anguish, and anxiety we feel from our past and worry about the future.

The peace, the calm, the collectedness of the animal is lost. The animal is happy because it is unaware - unaware of death, unaware of the problems of life. The animal is happy because there is no consciousness. Consciousness first brings pain, because suddenly we become aware of a thousand and one problems facing us. We have to encounter them, solve them or dissolve them. All peace disappears.

Just a little consciousness is enough to be aware of pain. But much more awareness is needed, much more consciousness is needed, to be aware of the deeper realms of our inner kingdom. Humans are in a kind of drunkenness: awake and yet not awake. We see a little bit, and yet everything seems to be dark, just shadows moving in the dark are felt. But nothing is absolutely clear; there is no clarity, no transparency, no light.

This is our state. And we cannot go back because there is no possibility of going back. We try hard to go back - through sex, through food, through alcohol, through drugs -we try somehow to drown this little bit of consciousness that has arisen within us. But it comes back again and again, because whatsoever has been learnt has been learnt for ever - it cannot be unlearnt.

It has happened in our being. Now there is no way to discard it. We must live with it. The only possibility is to move ahead, to grow more into awareness: if it has brought pain, then go deep into pain, but become more and more aware. Use pain as an object of awareness, as an object of meditation.

We become sad - be aware. Let sadness become our meditation. We become angry - be aware. We are in love - be aware. Use all possibilities, all opportunities to be more and more aware. Slowly and surely, the momentum gathers, and one day something explodes within us. That explosion we know as the blooming of the thousand petalled lotus.

Let us awaken fully and live in complete awareness, in a continuous state of bliss and joy, totally in the here and now.