Awakening from the Ego's Slumber
We know the ego keeps us asleep, unconscious, and suffering—read more about that here, here, and here. So how do we wake up? How do we rediscover who we really are underneath all of the identities we wear? Keep reading to find out how to awaken from the ego’s slumber.
Here’s what you’ll learn from this article:
What it means to ‘awaken’.
How avoiding the darkness in our lives actually keeps out the light.
Our personal examples of pushing past self-limiting walls.
Let’s get to it!
THE SLUMBER
We spent last month talking about the many ways the ego keeps up “asleep”.
We come into this world awake and through the ego’s veil of forgetfulness and the world’s conditioning, we quickly drift into a deep, ego-driven slumber.
While in the ego’s slumber, we move through life caught up in the mundane.
We become so zoomed in on the day-to-day manifestations of the physical that we forget we’re spiritual beings having a human experience. Not the other way around.
We mistakenly believe that we are our thoughts and emotions, and so we cling to the identities formed by them.
But the truth is that we are so much more than our thoughts, emotions, and identities.
Before we awaken, the mind clings to thoughts, objects, and emotions which then become the building blocks of our psyche.
Our entire lives are then built upon a thought-constructed version of who we are.
But if we aren’t our thoughts—which we now know we aren’t—how can we trust them to define who we are?
It’s in realizing what we are not that we begin to awaken to the truth of what we are: pure, limitless consciousness temporarily attached to form.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO AWAKEN?
Few people define the process of awakening as clearly and concisely as Eckhart Tolle…
"Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate... Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you are awake you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it... Awareness is conscious connection with universal intelligence. Another word for it is Presence..." — Eckhart Tolle
To summarize, being “awake” means you recognize that the real you is not your thoughts or emotions but the spacious awareness behind them.
It’s from this space of awareness that you awaken to your true nature.
And like most good things in life, we can’t rush it.
NO, YOU CAN’T HURRY AWAKENING, YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO WAIT 🎶
Try as we might, we can’t force ourselves to awaken, but once awakening begins it can’t be reversed.
Of course, the ego can hit ‘snooze’ and delay the process a bit. Pesky little thing, isn’t it? But it can’t stop it.
If you’re here reading this now and everything we’ve talked about this last month has resonated with you, there’s no doubt that your own awakening process has begun.
Perhaps it’s even far underway.
Whether the process has begun for you or not, be careful not to allow your ego to judge.
If you’re awakening, you’re no “better” than someone who isn’t, and if you’re not yet there, you’re no less than someone who is.
Remember, a spiritual ego is no different than a non-spiritual ego.
Judgment for ourselves or others only pulls us further away from the truth of who we are.
We’re all in this together, and it’s through awakening to our true nature that we begin to remember this fact.
AWARENESS IS WHERE AWAKENING RESIDES
Through awareness, we become the spacious observer of thoughts, things, events, and emotions rather than thinking we are those things.
The more often we step into this “observer” role, the less focus we give to any one thing, emotion, thought, or event.
Thus, instead of clinging to fleeting states and forms to derive a sense of stability, we move into a state of recognition that all stability comes from within.
In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer describes the “seat of Self” is the space of “centered awareness” from which our consciousness observes emotions and thoughts and allows them to pass by without identifying with or clinging to them.
Singer notes that the part of you that serves as the observer—the aware aspect of yourself—is distinct and separate from whatever it is you’re experiencing.
Awakening, therefore, is the act of letting go and staying in the “seat of Self” as the observer of the ego’s reaction to events or objects.
FIND YOUR LIMITS + BREAK THROUGH THEM
Whew. Deep breath. We’ve gone deep again.
You good?
Awesome. Us too.
By now you might be wondering, “How do I know when I’m starting to awaken?”
Ah, excellent question.
Resistance is the telltale sign that we’ve reached a limit within ourselves. It indicates that we’ve brushed up against a wall (AKA belief) that we’ve clung to for security.
In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer makes a great point about this form of resistance. He notes that the act of defending yourself isn’t actually about defending you but the walls you’ve built around yourself.
You’ll know you’re awakening when you feel less and less inclined to defend your walls. Instead of staying within their bounds, you’ll push to move past them.
Pushing past these walls is terrifying to the ego, but exhilarating to the higher self.
As Singer points out (The Untethered Soul p. 116), the ego assumes there is darkness on the other side of these walls. That we’ll lose ourselves if we go beyond them.
In a sense, the ego is right. But it’s only the mind-derived version of “self” we lose beyond our walls.
And in losing the mind’s limiting story of itself, we discover a much greater truth...
That the only function our walls ever served was to block out the infinite light.
“If you see a wall and it is protecting you from unending darkness, you will not want to go there. But if you see a wall that is blocking the light, you will want to go there in order to remove the wall. It is often said that you must go through the darkest night in order to get to the infinite light. This is because what we call darkness is really the blockage of light. You must go past these walls.” —Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul
In realizing this, moments of discomfort become blessings in disguise, because they allow us to perceive of our walls and (eventually) knock them down.
Beware. The ego/psyche will fight hard to keep its sense of self wrapped up in memories, emotions, and objects. Lovingly embrace the resistance and let the emotions pass through.
We know you can do it. Don’t be afraid to go beyond.
MAKE IT REAL
You spoke and we listened.
In the feedback we’ve received from you, the request we’ve heard more often than any other is, “More personal examples, please!”
Many of you have reached out to let us know that it’s personal examples and stories that solidify your understanding of these concepts.
Ashley’s Example
“You might remember several newsletters back when I shared my story about struggling with postpartum anxiety and depression.
Anxiety has been a persistent wall in my life. I’ve confronted it and knocked it down on many occasions, only to find it’s rebuilt itself in new ways.
So much of my life has been defined by anxiety. Either by its presence or by its absence.
Periods of time without anxiety have been labeled ‘good’ by my ego, periods of time with anxiety have been labeled ‘bad’.
At times, anxiety became so entwined with my sense of self that I feared not knowing who I was without it. How strange is that? I feared losing the very thing that caused my suffering.
It wasn’t until that postpartum explosion of anxiety when I realized just how much my life was limited by this wall of anxiety. It kept out so much light.
In one very desperate and tearful moment a little over a year ago, I wrote to my intuition and asked the following questions…
Q: ‘Why is my anxiety still so present in my life? I thought I was over it…’
Response: ‘Because you’ve deemed it a part of you and you cannot part with something that is so forcefully ingrained in your being. For to release it would mean releasing part of who you believe you are.’
Q: ‘So how do I release it then?’
Response: ‘To release it, you must disentangle it from your identity. Realize that you are boundless source energy and do not confine yourself to the limitations of yourself.’
Q: ‘What is the purpose of my anxiety?’
Response: ‘Well, it has much to do with your life. You’re growing and expanding through it, yes, but it doesn’t have to be this difficult. Your expansion is possible without the need for suffering, although some will only expand when perpetually confronted by their own self-wrought suffering. And so this is where you’ve found yourself. Confronted, backed into a corner in which the only way out is to expand forward and push through and into the very suffering you so desperately wish to avoid.’
Q: ‘How do I make it [the anxiety] stop?’
Response: ‘You make it stop by surrendering to it. The very act of trying to make it go away is the very thing that gives it strength and allows it to persist. To release your worries, your fears, surrender completely to them. Don’t be afraid of their darkness. You’ll find they have no power over you when you allow them to just be. By allowing, you will set them free as well as yourself. They are just thoughts but you make them so much more by entangling yourself with them. Surrender and all will be well.”
Q: ‘Any tips for surrendering?’ (my ego hated the above response)
Response: ‘Let life flow. Stop resisting. Resisting gives birth to new fears. It’s in resisting that life begins to feel forced, heavy, and daunting. Resistance puts up barriers and these barriers isolate you. In allowing, you will find peace. In allowing, you will find grace. In allowing, you will find your(true)self again.’
At the time, I comprehended the words, but I was too caught up in thinking to fully understand their meaning.
Now I do.
Once I began to make peace with the darkness, I realized it was never darkness at all, but rather a guiding light.”
INTENTION
I awaken to my higher self with joy and love.
DO THIS TODAY
Comment below and tell us one thing that struck you while reading the above. Whether it was an emotion/thought you now realize you’re attached to. Or something that resonated with you. Often, when we write something down or express a thought to someone else it makes the experience more real, anchoring it within our memory and solidifying our understanding of it.
2 RESOURCES
The Untethered Soul* by Mark Singer
A New Earth* by Eckhart Tolle
*This is an affiliate link. Purchasing through affiliate links helps fund us at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!