Awake or Asleep?

Are you awake or asleep? Of course I mean in the mystical sense. What is it to be awake, or asleep? And how can we tell? And if we're asleep, how can we wake up?

To be awake is to be aware. To be aware is to be in and beyond consciousness. If we are aware of the diversity that is the Cosmos, then we are in consciousness. If we are simply awareness itself, then we are beyond consciousness. If awareness itself, we are both conscious, and unconscious, and yet neither conscious, nor unconscious.
What does this mean spiritually, or mystically? To be asleep in the mystical sense is to be ignorant, and further, what we experience within consciousness is a mere dream of our own making. What is the difference between experiencing consciousness as in a dream, and being aware in conciousness as awake? The difference is in identification. What do you identify yourself with? Do you identify with the things of consciousness, including body and mind, as well as the world? Or do you identify yourself with something else, like awareness Itself?

Consciousness will be there, but this may either be our dream, or consciousness in awareness, which is a display of the very manifestations of the Real. When we know the Self, and have abnegated ourselves, then we will be aware, awake. Otherwise, we will be in a dream. This is not to say that the world is unreal, though in the absolute sense it is, because only God is Real, as He is pure Being, and all else is inference only. We project onto consciousness our inferences, and our thoughts, or mentality, and this becomes our world. And, with personal, or soulish (selfish) identification with the things perceived in consciousness, we have our dream.

What awakens us is gnosis, or direct knowledge, perceived without the mediation of the rational mind, though perhaps occuring in intellect/mind/nous. The means of gnosis may vary widely, but such knowings are the means of waking up, because we thenceforth become aware, and we can observe consciousness as such, without identifying with the things of consciousness. Why is this so important? Because, things considered apart from their Source, become an abstraction, and unreal, insofar as these things are existent in and as Being.

Of course, this is why for us to awaken to Pure Being, even the I Am, is to awaken fully, because we will be completely aware of what Is, identifying only with That, and not with the things contingently dependent thereon for existence.

It is in this way that we are awakened, seeing all things clearly as they are and have their existence in the Real. Any thing less, considered as independent from the Source Who is Being, is to continue on in our slumber.


Peace.