Wake Up Now Read Free

guidance in plain language on the often prolonged and complex journey of spiritual awakening. If you aspire to awaken or have already experienced an initial awakening, then this book is definitely intended for you. As I’ve discovered, awakening doesn’t belong to one teaching or tradition, and in any case, once you wake up, you actually awaken out of traditional frameworks. After all, if you’re awakening to your true nature, the one you’ve always already been deep down inside, how could one tradition or approach have a monopoly on it? This precious spiritual nature has always belonged to you, and, like one version of the proverbial prodigal son, you’re merely discovering the diamond that’s been hidden in your pocket all along.
    In fact, more and more people appear to be awakening to their inherent spiritual nature, whether or not they’ve been practicing meditation or some other prescribed technique. Perhaps it’s just our technological times, when experiences are shared so much more globally through cell phones, e-mails, websites, and blogs, but awakening seems to have shed the garments of religion and revealed itself for what it is—a universal human experience available to everyone right here and now. Despite what you may have been led to believe, enlightenment is your birthright, your natural state—you merely need to reclaim and learn to embody it.
    In this book, I offer a direct approach to enlightenment that circumvents the elaborate rituals, practices, and teachings of traditional religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Instead of requiring you to pledge allegiance to certain beliefs or adhere to preestablished spiritual practices, I point directly, again and again, to the truth of who you are and invite you to resonate with the source from which the words arise, allowing it to awaken to itself inside you. Instead of helping you to construct a new and more comforting belief system, I encourage you to investigate and penetrate the many ideas and preconceptions you already hold in order to reach the living truth that lies beneath. This approach to spirituality is actually quite radical, because it goes right to the root or source from which all spirituality springs and invites you to abide there, rather than hanging out in the leaves and branches.
    At the same time, this approach is definitely not “awakening lite,” a quick little shortcut to enjoyable experiences thatyou can add to your spiritual résumé. Quite the contrary, these teachings are potent and subversive, and once received and considered, they have the power to transform your life in unexpected and possibly uncomfortable ways. They’re like spiritual computer viruses with the power to wipe your hard drive clean of concepts and fill it with the clarity and wisdom of truth. Or if you prefer nature metaphors, they’re like seeds that, once planted, have the potential to grow into radiant flowers that crowd out the old weeds in your yard. Whatever image resonates for you, just know that you read this book at your own peril, for you may not be able to return to your old way of seeing things again.
WHAT IS AWAKENING?
    In the broadest sense, the term
awakening
is merely an evocative metaphor that’s been bandied about in spiritual books for years to cover a range of experiences. Any experience can be considered an awakening if it opens you to a new, previously unrecognized dimension of being. For example, you can awaken to your sexuality, to the energy fields of the body, or to the mythic gods and goddesses of the archetypal realm.
    But the awakening I’m talking about in this book is deeper, more essential, and more transformative—it’s a fundamental recognition of the inherent insubstantiality or emptiness of the person you take yourself to be and a radical shift in your identity from being the suffering separate self to being the eternal witness, the limitless space or ground in which all experiences arise. In other words, you