Awakening

Awakening is simply accepting the unknown by awakening to what you have always known."-Ashmita Arora

Awakening, for many, is mistakenly seen as a destination, a point where everything becomes clear and reality is understood as if the veil between the known and the unknown is ripped apart in a singular moment. But that view itself is a mirage. Awakening isn't an event; it's the slow peeling away of layers that we built ourselves, not even realizing how tightly they suffocate us. It is a terrifying yet liberating realization that you were never really awake to begin with….at least not in the way you thought you were.

When Awakening you are not discovering something new; you're simply recalling the deep truths you've buried within yourself. You've known them all along. This is not about learning; it's about unlearning. Imagine everything you ever thought was true, all the beliefs you held onto for security, all the principles you lived by, they were nothing but constructs, illusions. You never questioned the building blocks of your reality because they felt familiar. You accepted them as facts, but facts are just agreed upon hallucinations.

So, what happens when you begin to awaken? It’s not a flash of enlightenment but a slow, unsettling process of disintegration. The mind fights back because it thrives on certainty, on knowing. The unknown terrifies our minds, so it clings to an echo, a distorted reflection of experiences filtered through layers of conditioning we call “the past”. What if everything you believed about the nature of reality is just nothing more than an orthodontic pacifier, your mind’s  way of self soothing, keeping you asleep to the deeper truths?

The moment of awakening comes when you finally surrender to the fact that the unknown isn’t something external to be feared. It’s not a threat; it’s the infinite wellspring of your existence. The irony I found in my awakening was that the more I "knew," the more I realized I knew nothing. What you seek is not out there in some esoteric secret or cosmic revelation as one may assume yet it’s been inside you all along, buried under your own self-imposed limitations. Suddenly the realization hits, you’ve been running in circles, seeking answers in the world when the real mystery lies deep within.

Although I would have to say an awakening doesn’t solve the mystery. It deepens it. You think you’ll find peace by understanding more, but the moment you begin to awaken, you realize that certainty was the real prison. Moments that present seem to feel like a sick joke but the unknown isn’t some dark, chaotic force lurking on the fringes of reality, it’s the very foundation of existence itself. The universe thrives in uncertainty because uncertainty is the birthplace of all possibilities.

Here’s another truth, as you awaken, you start to notice how fragile your previous sense of self was. The identities you created, the roles you played, they start to crumble. Although the crumbling isn’t a sign of destruction; it’s the beginning of liberation. You are not your job, your relationships, your accomplishments, or your failures. These are fictions you constructed to feel secure in a world that never promised you security. The very idea of security, of stability, is an illusion. The only real constant is change, and awakening is about aligning with this flux rather than resisting it.

The process of unlearning is perhaps the most excruciating part of awakening for some. You realize that the beliefs you cherished most about yourself, about the world, about life itself were lies. Yet, you needed those lies at one point because they gave you structure, something to hold onto. The mind craved structure because structure provided a false sense of order. But awakening is the realization that order is simply chaos wearing a mask. There is no neat and tidy formula to explain existence because existence is fundamentally chaotic, beautiful yet uncontrollable.

I wonder though, what if the "you" that is awakening isn’t even real? What if the self, the ego, the mind is just again another construct? Could it be an elaborate puppet show designed to make sense of something so vast, so incomprehensible, that trying to understand it with the human mind is like trying to swim the ocean tied to a 1000 pound iron block? The self is just the surface, a tool for navigating the physical world. But as you awaken, you start to glimpse the deeper reality, and it’s truly magical. You are not the self, but the awareness behind it, the observer who has always been present, quietly watching the stories unfold.

This is where it really twists your perception. Awakening isn’t about enlightenment in the way you’ve been taught. It’s not about achieving some perfect state of being where everything clicks smoothly into place. Awakening is the moment you realize that there is no place to arrive at because you’ve always been there. The unknown you feared is simply a mirror reflecting back at you, daring you to look beyond the surface, beyond what you think you know. The moment you do, you awaken to the understanding that what you always sought was the very thing you feared.

This realization, though freeing, can feel like the ultimate paradox. How can you seek something you’ve always had? How can you fear what you are? And the mind, oh does it ever bend while trying to make sense of it, but that’s the trap. Awakening is stepping into a realm where the mind’s usual goto tools logic, reason, and certainty become utterly useless. It’s not about making sense; it’s about embracing nonsense. You stop searching for meaning in the traditional sense because you realize that meaning is subjective, fluid, and so naturally ever changing.

Now, the need to grasp meaning begins to dissolve. You understand that the mind’s fixation on meaning is a distraction. The universe doesn’t operate based on human man made concepts of purpose or logic. It simply is. It’s a dynamically built web constantly shifting, evolving, and creating. Lucky for you, you're part of that web. Not a separate entity navigating the world, but an integral piece of the infinite cosmic puzzle. You are the universe experiencing itself, moment by moment. Beautiful isn’t it?

Of course awakening doesn’t mean you suddenly understand everything. It’s not about gaining knowledge or insights that explain the mysteries of the universe. It’s about realizing that mystery is the point. How invigorating! Life isn’t meant to be solved. It’s meant to be lived, to be felt, to be experienced in all its raw, chaotic, beautiful uncertainty. Awakening is the process of surrendering to that mystery, of letting go of the need to know, and instead, embracing the unknown as the divine source of all creation.

In this space, you begin to see that awakening is not an endpoint. It’s a continuous unfolding between the known and the unknown, between the self and the no self, between the finite and the infinite. But this doesn’t frighten you anymore. Instead, it excites you. You begin to crave the unknown because you understand that it is the birthplace of all possibility. The unknown becomes the ultimate playground of infinite potential, where anything and everything is possible. Childlike wonder comes over you and you start to view the world with a sense of adventure. Just as a child gets scrapes and bruises while playing, hardships that once plagued you become minor in contrast to the excitement you feel of playing again.

And so, you awaken not to a new reality, but to the truth that reality is always shifting, always changing. You awaken to the realization that the answers you sought were never out there, they were always within you. You awaken to the understanding that the only thing standing between you and the truth was your own resistance to it. And now, that resistance has most likely ungracefully fallen away, leaving you face-to-face with the ultimate truth that you are, and always have been, exactly where you need to be.