There is a peculiar tension that arises when someone who has awakened to a certain depth of understanding encounters some one who is still, as we might say, asleep, and by a sleep, I do not mean literally unconscious, but rather living in the conventional dream, the collective trance, the agreed upon fiction that most of society accepts without question.
The person who is awake has seen through something fundamental, has recognized something essential, has had the veil lifted in some significant way, and the person who is asleep is still operating within the old assumptions, the old beliefs, the old way of seeing. When these two meet, something interesting happens, and it is rarely comfortable for either party. Let me
describe first what occurs in the awakened person. There is initially often an impulse to share what has been seen, to communicate the realization, to help the other person see what is now so obvious. This comes from a genuine place of compassion, of wanting to relieve suffering, of recognizing that the other person is trapped in a prison they do not even know exists. It is like watching some unstruggle with a locked door while you can clearly see that the door is not locked at all. They simply
need to turn the handle differently. But very quickly, the awakened person discovers something frustrating. The realization cannot be simply handed over. It cannot be explained in a way that will make the sleeping person suddenly wake up. Because the sleeping person is not just lacking information, They are operating within an entire framework of understanding, an entire structure of perception that makes the awakened perspective literally incomprehensible to them.
It is not that they are stupid, or stubborn or wilfully blind. It is that they cannot see what they cannot see. Their very way of looking prevents them from seeing. It is like trying to explain color to someone who has been blind from birth. You can use all the words you want, but the words cannot convey the actual experience. The framework for understanding is simply not there, And so the awakened person finds themselves in a strange position. They
can see clearly what the sleeping person cannot see. They can see the suffering that is being created by false beliefs, by identification with the ego, by resistance to what is. They can see the freedom that would come from simply letting go, from simply seeing through the illusion, And yet they cannot make the other person see it. This can lead to a kind of loneliness, a sense of isolation, because the awakened person now lives in a different reality
than the sleeping person. They are using the same words, occupying the same physical space, but they are experiencing fundamentally different worlds. The sleeping person is experiencing the world through the filter of ego, of separation, of constant doing and becoming and achieving. The awakened person is experiencing the world more directly, more simply, with less of that filtering, less of that separation, And so when they talk, they are
often talking past each other. The sleeping person is concerned with things that seem utterly trivial to the awakened person, status, reputation, achievements, possessions. The awakened person tries to point to something deeper, something more fundamental, But to the sleeping person this just sounds abstract, impractical, perhaps even irresponsible. The sleeping person might say, but what about paying the bills, what about getting ahead? What about
making something of yourself? And these concerns are real within their framework, within the dream of separation and achievement and constant striving. These concerns make perfect sense, but the awakened person is operating from a different understanding. Reckonize that bills must be paid and practical matters must be handled, But they also see that all of this can be done without the anxiety, without the identification, without making it into
some ultimate concern. They see that you can engage with the world without being enslaved by it, that you can participate in the game without forgetting it is a game. But how do you explain this to someone who believes the game is reality, who has staked their entire identity on succeeding within the game. You cannot, or rather, you can speak the words, but the words will not penetrate. They will bounce off the shell of the sleeping person's
belief system. Now, what happens in the sleeping person when they encounter someone who is awake. This varies greatly depending on the individual. Some sleeping people's sense that the awakened person has something they do not have, some quality of peace or freedom or presence, and they are drawn to it. They may not understand it, they may not be able to articulate what it is, but they feel and they want it. This can be the beginning of their own awakening.
But more commonly, the sleeping person experiences the awakened person as threatening, not consciously, not explicitly, but on some deep level, because the awakened person's very presence calls into question everything the sleeping person has built their life upon. The awakened person is not striving, not anxious, not caught up in the same concerns, not playing the same game, and this is unsettling. The sleeping person's ego interprets this as a judgment,
as a challenge, as an affront. Who does this person think they are acting so calm, so unbothered, so above it all. The ego feels threatened by the presence of someone who is not enslaved to the ego. It feels exposed, diminished, invalidated, and so the sleeping person may respond with hostility, with mockery, with attempts to pull the awakened person back into the drum. You think you're so enlightened, don't you. You think you're better than everyone else. Let's see how you handle a
real problem. This is the ego attempting to defend itself, attempting to drag the awakened person back into identification, back into the game, back into the dream, or the sleeping person may simply dismiss the awakened one as strange, odd, not quite right. There's something off about them. They're not normal. They don't care about the right things, and in the context of the collective trance, they are absolutely right. The awakened person is not normal. They do not care about
the same things that normal people care about. They have woken up from the shared dream, and from within the dream, this looks like madness. There is a saying in Zen before enlightenment, chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water. The awakened person does the same things as everyone else, but from an entirely different place, with an entirely different quality, and this difference is invisible to the sleeping person. They see the same actions and assume the
same motivations, the same concerns, the same inner experience. They cannot see the inner freedom, the inner spaciousness, the inner peace that accompanies the actions. So what is the awakened person to do in this situation? How do they relate to sleeping people? Who are, after all, the vast majority of humanity. How do they navigate a world that is largely operating from a level of consciousness they have moved beyond. The first thing is to recognize that you cannot wake
someone up through argument or explanation. You cannot convince someone to be enlightened. You cannot give them a realization through clever words or compelling logic. Awakening happens in its own time, through its own mysterious process. You can perhaps plant seeds, you can perhaps create conditions that might be conducive, but you cannot force it. The second thing is to let go of the impulse to fix, or save or enlighten every one you meet. This impulse, though it may feel
like compassion, often has its own ego component. There is a subtle superiority in the idea that you have something they desperately need, that you can see what they cannot see, that you must help them. True compassion recognizes that everyone is on their own journey. Everyone is exactly where they need to be, and your role is not to drag them to where you are. The third thing is to
simply be what you are, without apology or explanation. Live from your awakened perspective, not as a performance, not to prove anything, not to convert any one, but simply because that is what is natural for you now. And in that authentic being, in that genuine living from presence rather than ego, you become what we might call a transmission.
You see, awakening is not primarily transmitted through words or concert It is transmitted through presence, through being, through the quality of consciousness that emanates from someone who is awake. When you are genuinely present, genuinely at peace, genuinely free from the constant agitation of ego, this creates a kind of field, and people who are ready, people who are ripe for awakening will feel this field. They will be
drawn to it. They will not necessarily know what it is or why they are drawn, but they will feel that something different is possible. This is how a true teacher works, not by preaching or explaining or trying to convince, but by being so completely established in awakened consciousness that their very presence invites others into that same consciousness. The teaching is not in the words. The words are just pointers,
just fingers pointing at the moon. The teaching is in the being in the silence, in the quality of presence. But this requires that you are not attached to outcomes, not invested in whether people wake up or stay asleep. You offer what you are, and you let go of what happens with that offering. Some people will be touched by it, some will be threatened by it, some will not notice it at all. And all of this is fine. You are not responsible for waking people up. You are
only responsible for being awake yourself. Now, there is a particular challenge that arises when the sleeping person is some one close to you, a family member, a spouse, an old friend. These are people with whom you have long established relationships, relationships that were formed when you were both asleep, both operating from ego, both caught in the same dream, and now you have woken up, but they have not. This can create tremendous tension. They expect you to be
the person you were. They want you to engage with life in the way you used to engage with it. They want you to care about the things you used to care about, to get upset about the things you used to get upset about, to participate in the drama the way you used to participate, but you cannot. You cannot go back to sleep. Once you have woken up, you cannot unsee what you have seen, and so you find yourself in a relationship where you are fundamentally out
of sync with the other person. They are speaking a language you used to speak, but no longer speak. They are playing a game you used to play but no longer play, and this can be painful for both parties. The sleeping person feels abandoned, feels like you have changed in some fundamental way, like you are no longer the person they knew, and they are right you are not.
The awakened person feels lonely, feels misunderstood, feels the impossibility of truly connecting with someone who is operating from such a different level of consciousness. What is to be done in such a situation. There is no easy answer. Some relationships can evolve, can accommodate the change. If there is life, an openness and willingness to let the relationship be different
than it was, then something new can emerge. The sleeping person may not understand your awakening, but they can perhaps accept it, can perhaps allow you to be different, can perhaps even be curious about what you are experiencing. But
some relationships cannot survive such a fundamental shift. If the relationship was based entirely on shared ego concerns, on mutual reinforcement of the dream, on playing specific roles for each other, then when one person wakes up, there is no longer a basis for the relationship, And as painful as this is, sometimes the most compassionate thing is to let the relationship go, to release each other, to find connections that are more
aligned with where each of you actually is. There is also the phenomenon of the sleeping person who claims to be awake. You will encounter many of these people who have learned the language of spirituality, who can talk fluently about presence and awareness and non duality, but who are still fundamentally operating from ego. They have replaced one set of concepts with another set of concepts, but they have
not actually seen through the conceptual framework itself. These people can be particularly confusing to deal with because they sound awake, they use the right words, they say the things that awaken people say, But if you are genuinely awake, you can sense that something is off. There is a quality of efforting, of performing of subtle self aggrandizement. They are using awakened language to reinforce the ego rather than to point beyond it. The truly awakened person is not invested
in appearing awakened. They do not need to prove their enlightenment. They do not need to be recognized as special or advanced or spiritual. They are simply being what they are, and this has a quality of ordinariness, of simplicity, of lack of pretense. The person who is performing awakeness, by contrast, has a quality of trying, of needing to be seen
a certain way, of subtle superiority. And when a genuinely awakened person meets someone who is performing awakeness, there is often a mutual recognition, though not the kind either party would prefer. The genuine one sees through the performance. The performer senses they are being seen through, and may respond with defensiveness or competitive spiritual one upmanship. It is all rather tedious. Let me also speak about what does not
constitute awakening. Awakening is not about having special experiences or achieving altered states. It is not about feeling blissful or peaceful all the time. It is not about becoming perfect or never experiencing difficulty. The awakened person still has a human life with all its challenges and sorrows and complications. What has shifted is the relationship to all of this. The awakened a person is not identified with the content of experience. They are not taking the ego's story as
the ultimate truth about who they are. They are resting more in awareness itself, in presence, in the witnessing consciousness that holds all experience. So when you meet someone and you are trying to discern whether they are awake or asleep, do not look at the content of their experience, look at their relationship to it. Are they caught in it, identified with it, defending it? Or is there a quality of spaciousness of allowing of being with what is without
needing it to be different? The awakened soul meeting the sleeping soul is in many ways the fundamental encounter of the spiritual path. It is the encounter between levels of consciousness, between ways of being in the world, between the dream and the awakened state. And it happens not just between different people, but within each person who is in the process of awakening, because you are both the awake soul
and the sleeping soul. There is the part of you that has seen, that knows, that is free, and there is the part of you that keeps forgetting, that gets pulled back into identification, that falls asleep again. And these parts encounter each other constantly. The awakened part witnesses the sleeping part with compassion and patience. The sleeping part sometimes resists,
the awakened part sometimes surrenders to it. This is the inner work, not achieving some permanent state of enlightenment where you never forget again, but becoming increasingly established in the awakened perspective, so that even when you forget, you recognize you have forgotten and can come back. Even when you get caught in the dream, you wake up again more quickly.
And as you become more established in this, your encounters with sleeping souls become less fraught, less frustrating, less lonely. You recognize that they are you, not the current you, but the you that you were, the you that in some ways you still are, and you meet them with compassion rather than judgment, with patience rather than frustration, with understanding, rather than the need to change them. You recognize that the sleeping soul is not your enemy. It is not
a problem to be solved. It is simply consciousness in a different stage of its own unfolding. And your role is not to wake them up, but to be awake yourself, fully, authentically, without apology or explanation, and in that being you offer an invitation, a possibility, a reminder that another way of living is available. Some will accept that invitation, most will not, and both are perfectly fine, because in the deepest sense, there is no separation between the awakened and the sleeping.
There is only consciousness experiencing itself in infinite variety, in infinite stages, in infinite expressions, and it is all necessary, It is all part of the whole, It is all in its own way, perfect