How Awake Do You Want to Be?

Sometimes, this is a very hard question to answer.  I mean, the knee jerk response is “um, yeah, I want to do all the things to wake up in this life!”  Then you have to actually begin to do those things and that seems like a pretty tall order and then perhaps you are like, “can I just be like 50% awake?  67%?”

The process for awaking to the life you have and are currently living seems like a somewhat no brainer kind of thing.  But actually living in an awake and present manner is a lot harder than it seems.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I have a lot of time on my hands and I do not always spend it wisely.   I would love to say that I think things like, “how can I use this situation to help others?”  Or “how can I add benefit to this life?”  And I do think those things quite a bit.  But I also have a kind of asshole default setting that doesn’t want to think about you and how I can make it better, instead opting for selfish bullshit engagements that do nothing but appease and serve my ego.  Harsh but true.

I am currently in a growth spurt, spiritually, physically I am sure I have begun the shrinking process.  But emotionally and spiritually, I am in a growth cycle and it is painful.  I do not like it.  So the answer to the question, “how awake do you want to be?”  Is often, “ummm, do I really need to be awake at all today?  I would like to sleep in and through this next phase of development, please!”  But, while I know I have that option, I cannot take it or exercise it.  I know there is work to be done and I will spend more of my precious energy resisting the lessons that are front and center than I will succumbing to them and all their attendant pain and hardship.  They are here, so I will deal with them.  And I will try not to act like a jerk about them. I said try.

I want to be awake.  But I often kind of feel like this question is kinda like asking, “do you want anesthesia or do you want to remain awake during the surgery?”  And I suppose, in a very real way, that is exactly what this question is asking us. And I think, for most of us, we want to be awake, but we do not want the associated pain that comes with the task at hand.  Maybe that is just me, but I am going to pick the anesthesia every single time.  And thus my living problem is front and center.

It isn’t the pain so much that causes me to balk here, if you look at my life choices, you would absolutely be able to make a stellar argument that I enjoy the pain because look at how often I choose it.  So what is it?  It is being uncomfortable.  That I loathe more than anything and honestly, it is the mental anguish I cannot bear.  Physical pain is easier to endure than the emotional pain of sitting with hard things without reaching for something to take the edge off.  And while I no longer reach for drugs and alcohol to numb me out and calm me down, I absolutely reach for a myriad of other things to distract me from the uncomfortability of living.

And I think, at least for me, being awake to life is being able to put down all the things we use to take ourselves away from the present moment.  To not reach for something to distract us from the here and now.  I was at the gym yesterday and I kept looking at my phone and I noticed all the other people on their phones.  And I wondered, what people did at the gym before cellphones?  Did they actually talk to each other? At the gym?  WEIRD!

So my answer to how awake do I want to be is that it depends.  Somedays, I want to wake up to the here and now and live it without anything to take the edge off.  But most days, I am habituated to reach for something, anything to take me away from whatever it is that is going on in the moment.  The hardest thing I have ever done in this life is to be where I was, without reaching for something, anything to augment my situation.

I want to be awake, but I would really like it if I could just keep doing what I do and the awakening process could just happen to me without me really having to do much of anything different.  But that is not how awakening works, like at all, ever.  I have to put down and away all the things I use to make myself feel better and just sit there and be present with what is. And sometimes, far more often than I would like to admit, that feels like you are asking me to peel my skin back one layer at a time.  And I really, really, really do NOT want to do that.  Ever.

I want to wake up and be here.  I mean, I do not know how much time I have left.  I would like to do all the things that make life worthwhile, but I have to get over this desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  And I have been trapped in that particular samsara for the entirety of my life so far.  So much of my time, I just feel like some sort of caged animal, pretending like I have a choice in the matter, and just running here and there and everywhere, squirreling away food stores for a winter that will never, ever come for me.  The futility of my actions currently makes me quite despondent and lost feeling.

But I know this is just an opportunity to show up differently.  To be present and awake is always a choice, and my ability to select it and do it, always available to me.  And I am going to get to that just as soon as I stop doing all the compulsive shit I do to take me away from the fucking here and now.  I swear.  Really.  I am.

What I really know to be true, is that being here and being awake is a choice.  A hard choice, one that I have to recommit myself to over and over and over again.

Again, still...

Day after fucking day.