The Awakening Experience

One evening last summer, when I was in the middle of nowhere India, I decided to explore the farmland around the ashram I was visiting. I walked trough tall grass and found myself with farmers' fields sloping as far as I could see and hundreds of sheep dotted the hills.

After I'd been walking for a few minutes, looking at the fields and the sky, there was a shift in my vision, as if someone had pressed a switch. Everything around me became intensely real. The fields, the bushes, the trees and the clouds seemed to be powerfully there, even to have their own kind of identity, as if they were more than just inanimate objects. I also felt somehow connected with my surroundings. As I looked up at the sky, I could sense that the space that fills it was the same "space" filling my own being. What was inside me, as my own consciousness, was also "out there."

This is an example of what I call an "awakening experience." In some awakening experiences, the world becomes more real and beautiful, and an atmosphere of balance seems to fill our surroundings. We feel serene and whole inside, and our normal problems and worries seem to fade into insignificance. We feel part of everything around us, with an intense connection with nature.

Awakening experiences seem to happen when the "filters" which limit our normal awareness of the world fade away. We "wake up" to a wider and fuller reality, and in comparison our normal vision seems incomplete.

I will be facilitating an Awakening circle in Atlanta the first Monday of every month. For those who want to explore their own awakening, we will share space and wisdom. Details are under the "Events" tab on the website. May you grow to know the divine within you.