How to stay “awake”

Whether through meditation, homeopathy or psychedelic substances (see our blog on psilocybin and homeopathy link below),  we can have the most transformational experience, or the most profound moment of awe, and feel so incredible one with everything – for a time. The exercises below are the prescription for staying awake whether you have had an awakening experience or not.

Letting your true light shine

The same exercises will allow your true uniqueness shine through as it was meant to. The only true or real self is the experiential self that arises directly from our fundamental sense of being. This aspect of the self is known by direct experience in the here and now, without interpretation or elaboration. It is an experience of unity, oneness with all, there is no “other”. It is through this true self, the experiential self, that the truly unique qualities of your expression can be liberated, seen and heard as they were meant to be.

What gets in the way is who you “think” you are

Any idea, thought, concept, ideal or image you have of yourself, anything that you can say about yourself is not your true self, but a “narrated” self. It is the self that comes from your conditioning, and comes out as a reaction to the conditioning or adhering to it, but it is not the true expression that you were designed to be.
Your personality, what you think and say about yourself, or tell others about yourself, is nothing more than a story woven by the Default Mode Network. This brain network uses whatever social and familial conditioning you have been exposed to as a framework, a grid, onto which it chooses and integrates specific memories (past events), beliefs and concepts you have been taught to create the false sense of a unified, singular and separate self or “me”. That me might also be put together as a reaction to everything you have been taught to believe as well. This expression, far from being unique, is just the polar opposite to that to which it rebels.
This false narrative self clouds over the experiential self in the same way that the experience of a moment of awe loses its awesomeness when we try to describe it to someone else.

What is the meaning of life?

The meaning of life is celebrating the uniqueness of your expression as it was designed to be. We look for and try to capture meaning as if it’s a thing. But meaning isn’t a thing, it’s a feeling – a feeling of naturalness, of flow. That feeling that is always there. It’s just that we’re distracted from it. And there’s only one distraction: the narrative mind. It is a distraction because we mistake or take our stories for reality. All memory is a simulation – a story. Everything that is not happening in this moment, including all thoughts of the future is a simulation- a story. We are able to take the most transformational spiritual experience and, within moments, we make a story about it, and a few moments later, the Default Mode Network has started creating a spiritual personality. But the awe is gone, the feeling is gone: it’s been replaced by the story. This is how we “fall out” of “enlightenment”.
It’s not that storytelling is bad. Our very nature as human beings is as storytellers. It’s when the stories are taken for truth, mistaken for the experience, such as the story(ies) that I tell about me. I make myself into a thing, a concept, an idea and stop being a natural process of wholeness and uniqueness and lose sight of the deeper reality.

There are reasons for our Story Telling

Brain imaging reveals that there’s a lot that happens in the brain when we listen to someone’s story. A neural coupling or resonance takes place: the very same areas of the brain begin to light up in both the speaker and the listener. Our brain, unbeknownst to us, is trying to find similar memories of activities or sensations to those being described by the speaker. As the story evokes memories in the listener, it also gives life to any associated emotions and sensory content, which releases dopamine and provides a sense of connection on the part of the listener to the speaker.
Story telling is what enables humans to collaborate in large numbers, work as teams, and form communities and societal groups. Storytelling has very profound effects on our brain. Our stories affect the way we think and the way we see, perceive, and how we feel about, our experiences.
Our narrative ability is our strength, but also our weakness. Stories can be useful but also useless, life promoting or harmful. Stories that embrace paradox, provoke contemplation and operate on many levels, and on many dimensions transmit wisdom and enrich our lives. On the other hand, the most useless and harmful stories abhor paradox, trying to convince us of just one side of a polarity and offer only a literal, dimensionally limited view.

Your stories determine how your brain structures your experiences and memory and creates a framework for your actions and possibilities: a framework that can limit your access to the unlimited potential of life.

Meditation is the doorway back to the unlimited, boundary-less true self, which allows the natural unfolding of the expression of your true uniqueness.

But, guess what gets in the way of meditation? Our stories!

Our stories distract us from meditation. When, in the stream of consciousness, a thought comes by that resonates with one of our stories, we are pulled into it: hook, line and sinker. Here is another example of why inquiry is the necessary counterpart to meditation.

The Key to Transformation and Remaining in Awe

Inquiry works by deconstructing the mechanisms through which our stories are created. It’s like having a magic trick explained to you: once you know how the magician does it, it doesn’t pull you in the same way. You can be impressed by his sleight of hand, but not by the reality or presumed reality of the trick.
The following steps are essential to freedom, no matter where you are on your spiritual journey, and especially if you have had a “unity”, transformational or transcendent experience or journey.