Wake Up Now Read Free Page B

awakening, you’ve stumbled on a path that’s been hidden from view until now—a path that’s been traveled by countless people before you and continues to be traveled now by kindred spirits everywhere. In fact, it’s a pathless path because it’s unique to each seeker and keeps changing as the journey unfolds. Even more essentially, it isn’t really a path at all, because there’s nowhere to go and nothing to discover; everything you need to know and be is right here and now—indeed, it is the very here and now that you are. But until you fully understand the truth of these words, you’ve embarked on a journey that eventually meanders its way back home. It’s the journey of awakening, the journey to free yourself from the dream of separation and wake up to who you really are—and once you’ve awakened, to stay that way and allow the awakeness to inform and transform you. This book is intended as a guidebook on your journey home, a road map for the pathless path.
WHAT DO YOU AWAKEN TO?
    Once you penetrate the illusory nature of the separate self, you discover that what really lives this life, peers out through these eyes, thinks these thoughts, and animates these arms and legs is not the personality, which is just a lifeless construct, but being itself, which can’t be located or grasped with the hands or mind but can be directly intuited or apperceived. In other words, you can know with certainty what you are, but you may not quite be able to describe how you know.
    The various terms used to delineate being—
spirit, soul, true self, Buddha nature, God within
—are like so many labels pinned on empty space. Pure being can’t be pinned down because it has no characteristics in itself; rather, it’s the ever-present witness of all characteristics, the unchanging space in which all experiences come and go, the unmoved mover behind all activity, the limitless source of all things.
    Everything you can hear, see, smell, taste, touch, feel, and think—that is, everything with qualities or characteristics—is an experience, an object of your observation, and therefore can’t possibly be the you who experiences or observes. The question is, who or what is this you, this me? Even the me you’ve taken yourself to be, the self-image, the personality, is just a collection of characteristics and can’t be the one who experiences. Spiritual awakening means waking up to the experiencer, the witness, pure being itself, the one who is eternally aware.
    Words can’t possibly encompass the vastness of being or pin down its mystery, but they can be used as convenient pointers, like fingers that point to the moon but havenothing to do with the moon itself. The terms and phrases used throughout this book, such as
impersonal witness, ultimate subject, timeless presence
, are not intended as concepts to add to your spiritual encyclopedia. Instead, their purpose is to short-circuit your conceptual mind and point beyond it to the place inside you that already knows what I’m talking about and can recognize and resonate with the truth of these words. If the words do their job, you’ll put down this book knowing less than when you picked it up but being closer to true, nonconceptual understanding.
THE STAGES OF AWAKENING
    As powerful as waking up to pure being or the impersonal witness may be, it’s just the beginning of an often prolonged journey of spiritual unfolding. Like an earthquake in consciousness, awakening moves the tectonic plates of your psyche and sends shock waves to every corner of your life, initiating a profound transformation at the core of your being. Over time, the awakening will deepen and expand as you become progressively clearer about who you really are. Along with greater clarity, you’ll feel a natural movement to live in alignment with your realization. Eventually, the truth you’ve awakened to will become the predominant perspective and force in your life, supplanting the old beliefs and stories