The Hardest Part About Waking Up

If you're a regular reader of these notes I send, I imagine there's a certain level of resonance with the words and the energy I put behind them.

Maybe, like me, you've been finding yourself in this process of slowly waking up from what feels like a very long sleep. It's like there's a tiny part of you that suspects that one day you decided to close your eyes for a while to forget about who you are, and then you started dreaming and the dream felt so real that you just kept dreaming and eventually forgot that you've been dreaming all along. But over time you kept running into things (situations, people, thoughts, pain) that seemed "off" at some deep level. And after a while you began questioning if there's something you've been missing -- maybe something you forgot about. You started looking for answers and through that process began to remember that you've been dreaming the whole time. And everything that felt so real for so long has started to become more and more like props on this play you've been a part of -- all symbols pointing to something much deeper; much more real.

The only challenge is that everyone and everything around you continues to insist (directly and indirectly) that this dream is the only real thing. Society might even want to label you as crazy or mentally ill for proposing that there might be something beyond this material experience of separate objects.

The paradox is that the deeper you move into yourself and the more you become aware that you are not your body and you are not your thoughts, the more this illusion of separate things having separate experiences begins to break down and the more your Self begins to expand until you reach a point where you are the whole Universe and your sense of "I"-ness drops because it no longer has anything to relate itself to -- it is everything; you are everything.

But here you're left with a choice:

You can either close yourself off to this awakening because it seems too painful to let go of everything you've identified yourself with for so long.

Or you can go on the Hero's Journey and face the "dragons" of your shadow-self so that you can realize your true potential as the One unified SELF.

Both paths are painful, the only difference is that in the former the pain will continue to show up and you'll continue to find yourself in the same types of situations, while in the latter the pain eventually leads to a deep sense of meaning and purpose.

The choice is always yours because everything you have the potential to be is already right here in this moment because it's been with you the entire time.

You must let go of everything you are not in order to realize everything that you already are.

The point of the dream is to remember that it's just a dream.

But remember: dreaming is fun, too. Just don't mistake it for the real thing.

Happy Dreaming,

Nathan Barna