Are you awake or asleep?
On the surface it’s a pretty straightforward question, isn’t it?
That’s because by the traditional definition of these words, it is straightforward.
Being asleep you’re unconscious, generally in bed.
Awake you’re consciously aware.
That’s different to the deeper definitions we’re talking about here.
“Awake?”
You may know that there’s a deep rabbit hole here?
In fact, perhaps this is the deepest rabbit hole that you can ever explore.
If you are on this path of evolving yourself and particularly have explored new-age or Eastern or spiritual or deeper esoteric teachings you might be using this word as we do.
Often you hear people on this path use this in a negative, judgmental way.
Because they are accumulating knowledge and are now more awake to how the human being is truly functioning (e.g. automatically), they label themselves in a more flattering way as having woke or being awake.
Others are labelled often pejoratively as being asleep, or called say “Sheeple.”
I suggest that you never want to judge anyone, especially when you know how easy it is to keep falling asleep.
“Asleep?”
In this context, what does it mean to be asleep?
Generally speaking it means that you lack conscious awareness.
Just like sleeping and dreaming at night where you have ZERO conscious awareness of what’s happening around your slumbering body, being asleep means that you are oblivious to your unconscious programming.
In this way you can be awake in the traditional sense, as you are reading this or say walking around, but just like dreaming in bed you can be entirely asleep in your programming.
Here, unlike your sleeping and dreaming reality where you are unconscious and have zero conscious awareness of even your sleeping body, you are still conscious.
Meaning, you are consciously aware that you exist and are having thoughts, feelings, doing things, etc.
It’s just, and here’s the nuance, that’s “Doing Conscious.”
You merely have “Conscious Awareness.”
“Being Conscious” is different.
“Being Conscious?”
OK, so what does it mean to be conscious?
See, this is one of the veils of reality that has been pulled over our eyes that once you remove you see what’s happening with you more clearly.
This is because you’re taught to “know” that you’re conscious but never taught what it actually means.
All your life it’s implied, isn’t it?
But what have you ever been taught on what it actually means to be conscious?
This thing that determines every experience you are ever having every second of your life, you’re never taught anything about?
Do you feel you have a strong understanding?
Because one thing we’re led to believe is that unlike all of the animals and plants on this planet, us humans are uniquely special, with this uniquely special thing called consciousness, which you’re never educated on what it actually means.
One might even say that you’re misled.
Conscious?
A reason I say that we are misled on what it means to be conscious is because it can lead you to think that you’re consciously choosing.
Meaning, we’re taught to believe that we’re a level above some monkey acting entirely out of its “monkey programming,” with zero ability to even know it’s a monkey, let alone to choose how it is being.
One might say that monkey lacks any free will relative to a human because it has zero conscious awareness of its monkeying around, let alone consciously choosing.
In contrast we’re led to think that us humans have free will and are every day living through conscious choice.
We all know that this is obviously FALSE because we all know that we’re all controlled by our habits, for instance.
But even here because of the “User Illusion,” you can be misled to think that you’re consciously choosing.
When most often we are asleep in our unconscious programming.
Doing asleep
Being conscious means that you’re choosing how you’re being.
Whereas most the time we’re Doing Conscious, asleep in our automatic programming automatically doing who we are automatically programmed to be.
For this reason few humans ever exercise free will.
This is because, while we all have conscious awareness of how we’re being, we’re never taught how to wake up from our unconscious programming and choose who we are being.
It’s a reason why habits can be near-impossible for many of us to change, for instance, which is the most obvious definition of being asleep in your automatic programming.
It can be hard enough just to have the conscious awareness that your body and brain is automatically doing its programming.
But it can be even much harder to consciously choose how you want to be.
Procrastination being a painful example.
“Possessed by Programming”
A reason this can be so hard is because, as we put it in our system of therapy and transformation, Rapid Sustained Transformation, RST, you become possessed by your programming.
Anger is a perfect example because we all know how much it can hijack your brain.
In these moments if you are to consciously observe where you’re at, or consciously choose a better way of being, you’d likely choose to think, feel, behave differently.
It’s like a person cut off on the road getting all angry and driving after some stranger to cut them off or get next to them and give them a piece of their mind.
In these types of moments when you are possessed by programming, it’s like that way of being has taken over you, hasn’t it?
How conscious are most of us being in these moments?
Or are you so engulfed in emotion that you rationalize what you’re doing, and only afterwards look back on who you were being?
In these and just about every moment conscious awareness is hard enough.
Let alone consciously choosing how you’re being.
This is why I built RST.
Woke or awake?
RST is a system of human evolution.
Yes, it is the most advanced modality that I can conceive for therapy and rapid transformation, but it’s built for something much harder—
For staying awake.
See, lots of people have woken to these ideas.
This path of human evolution tracks back to the oldest human knowledge before Ancient Egypt so lots of people know this path.
But there’s an enormous difference between knowing the path and living the path.
From having woke to living awake.
Living awake
My truth is that I’ve never found answers elsewhere, which is why I’ve never stopped evolving this human tech.
I learned more than I could have imagined from traveling the world training with true masters of personal change, but this wasn’t enough for me.
In the thousands of books I read on these topics, I certainly learned a lot about these ways of thinking, but you find basically nothing on actually living it.
For instance, over and over again you come across powerful concepts like the “Gratitude Teaching” because every human on the planet gets that being grateful is a better way of living your life, right?
It’s just, if this or other basic concepts are the answer, then why is it so hard to live?
Why do you even need to try to be grateful?
How is it that in this modern world where you can look back and see how much you have relative to any other humans in history that so few of us are naturally grateful?
When you go all the way down the rabbit hole you learn why all those basic teachings fail.
Even just developing the first level of conscious awareness that you aren’t being grateful or want to be grateful can be near-impossible for many of us, for instance.
Let alone actually consciously choosing to be living gratefully.
This is the difference between having woke and living awake.
You’re living consciously.
Living consciously
Living consciously you don’t just know what it means to be conscious.
Or have conscious awareness of what your body and brain are automatically doing.
You are consciously choosing how you’re thinking, feeling, being.
You’re no longer controlled by your habits and automatic programming.
Anyone who has woke gets this.
But only staying awake are you consciously living.