Pushing Yourself Awake

NOTE: This is a two-part piece. Next week I’ll share a personal, very unexpected, encounter Irecently had. One, I believe, you can relate to. For now, enjoy this week’s preamble.  🎉

🙌  What I’ve seen lately is exhausted people.  Perhaps you are too. Your mind spins and you can’t sleep. You push yourself to stay awake to complete a task. You try to push time, squeezing a few more moments out of your day. 

Be mindful, you’re not sacrificing your life or health for the illusionary paradox of controlled freedom.

The same paradox knocks on your door as you step on a path to awaken spiritually. But, you don’t have control over how or when or where you awaken. It’s not a thing to pursue. You’ll not see the big picture until you do. Although, you will be graced with vivid sections of its mosaic from time to time.

You don’t have control over your spiritual awakening. Not the way you’d like to. You can only become aware of how you feel and respond to the perceived pressures, joys, and revelations of each experience-fueled breath.

We’d like to think we have power over the process, as we dedicate ourselves to various practices and ideologies. We meditate. We use contemplation and various physical attributes of exercise like yoga, tai chi, qi gong, etc. But do they really wake you up? Do they really keep you spiritually awake? Do they really help you become the compassionate human being you already feel pumping within the walls of your heart?

The answer is yes. They are supportive. They can be provocateurs of awakened moments. Focus and dedication to the art of compassionate and contemplative living is certainly part of the process.

Let’s look at it this way. You are a spiritual being. You are destined to be spiritually aware and awaken in this lifetime. You are here to experience incremental or significant leaps of consciousness and evolve as a soul within a human body.

If not, you wouldn’t be questioning or inquiring as to how, why, or what’s needed to wake up. There would be no interest. Not a thought in your sweet mind would rise up and question the reality of your life and being. You wouldn’t be the person reading these words. You’d be dallying elsewhere. The call would not be resounding within you to approach all things with awareness. Yet, you do hear your beckoning soul.

What meditation and other contemplative practices do for us is they offer a container. A framework to help us learn how to be and stay with what, who, and where we are.

If you feel you are off your destined path, take pause. You are never off your path. For me, dying, living, blindness, travel, children, isolation, quaking fear and pain, joy, abundance, mystical experiences, poverty, trusted loving family and friends, and other wooly and wonderful things have all been part of my path. How about you? There are seeds of growth in every experience.  Even the most ridiculous crazy choices in my life have been miraculous teachings on my path. You will never stray from your life’s destiny. Embrace it all. It’s an adventure. U-turns included. 

The heavens will help you recognize this.  You can always count on your synchronized destined path. What opens and changes are your perceptual intuitive lens to even witness your path. Then you're face with the choice to have courage or to avoid.

“Now, now little one. Your path is where your feet are. Are you ready to be bold or do you need to rest where you are?” your angels will say to you.

Guidance, however, does not insure greatness. Greatness is not what you’re seeking. It’s another false flag. There is achievement, yet, nothing to achieve.

When you find yourself emerged in a paradox, you’re living your destiny. You’ll be surround by confounding paradox. Paradox can make you feel crazy. Always remember, paradox is the Playstation of the Gods. As you live your awakening, you'll discover points of neutrality, harmony, then singularity. That’s when striving adversaries dissolve. 

So many have tried to push themselves awake. Don’t hurt yourself. You can be awakened by sitting in your closet in crying in pain, as well as traveling to exotic spiritual places … or to the gas station. Relax into where you are, like it or not. Live what’s happening. It's where grace lives too. 

When you let go of controlling time or awakening, you guessed it? You feel more free and connected.You develop a steady and softer framework and walk through the priorities of your day with greater clarity and ease. 

There’s no kindness in pushing yourself awake. There’s no compassion and you risk missing the truest gems of your spiritual awakening. Yet, they will circle around again. So there is really no risk.  Is there? It’s choice with which you must grapple; at least until you trust yourself.

This week, make a promise to yourself. Catch yourself in the act of pushing. Are you trying to make something happen or push yourself awake by getting it right? The right posture. The right this or that. When you do, fall back to a sense of ease and intuitive presence. That is what presence is — all aspects of Spirit, soul, and self seamlessly aligned in the experience.

Your practice this week is to offer yourself the gifts of grace and patience. We are just starting to stir and recover from a year of significant global change ... and we’re still shifting.

Be good to you and yours. Until next week, Part Two of Pushing Yourself Awake. I want to share a personal story which illustrates that when you least expect it the heavens rush in and crack your heart wide open.  

Between your soul-driven destiny and those persistent angels around you, well, they sure know how to get your attention! 

Big Hugs,