The Second Awakening

If anyone says, "I am awake," they lie. Or perhaps they have become nobody. Because nobody awakens.

In the morning, we awaken from night dreams into another kind of dream, the dream of "me" and "the world out there." For a few graceful moments, we may float in the ocean of turiya, pure awareness, beyond waking, dreaming and deep sleep. But almost immediately the "I" rushes back in, with all the obligatory burdens of yesterday, to shut down the vast innocence we really are. When yesterday's mind returns, we see the world through a glass darkly, a window clouded by the illusion that the seer is separate from the seen.

Who awakens? If the answer is "me," then there was no awakening, only a transfer from one dream to another. But when the Second Awakening happens - not just waking from sleep, but waking from the dream of "me" - there is no separate mind left to declare, "I am awake." The universe is awake.

The mountains have awakened. The sky has awakened. The sparrows have awakened and they are singing about it. The grass has radiantly awakened to green about it. Stones and pebbles in the dust awake and shout. But none of them shout "I." Their language is not heard. It is a vast poem of silence, where "I" have become pure listening, every speck of dust a galaxy of consciousness, the distant stars intimately close. There is no other.