When it's time to awaken, a longing for awakening arises from deep within us. This longing comes from Essence and spurs on our spiritual growth. However, it is often co-opted by the ego, which sees awakening as an opportunity to be special, feel good, get what it wants, or escape life. When the desire to awaken is co-opted by the ego, the result is suffering, as with every other desire tthehe ego has. To the ego, how we are and how life is right now never seems good enough but flawed and lacking the ingredients for happiness. This is the ego's constant state, a state of discontentment.

Many suffer greatly over wanting to awaken, as over every other desire. That's because desire by its nature takes us out of the moment, where contentment is possible, and into a dream of something better in the future, which creates an experience in this moment of lack and, therefore, dissatisfaction.

It's natural to want to escape this state of dissatisfaction, and that drives us along the spiritual path toward awakening. Suffering does eventually wake everybody up. But what we may not realize when we are ego identified is that our discontentment is caused by longing for something else—for spiritual awakening or whatever else is desired—not by the actual absence of anything. There's so much to be grateful for right now, but the ego doesn't see this. When we are able to acknowledge what we are grateful for about our current circumstances, we drop out of the ego and into Essence and experience contentment—awakeness.

The good news is that you don't have to have a spiritual awakening to experience awakeness. If you want to experience what it's like to be awakened, just be here right now and not in your thoughts about what's happening now, the past, the future, or what you want. Just be here right now. Do you want awakening enough to turn away from your thoughts about yourself and from your desires, which are just more thoughts? That's all that is required, really. Do you want awakening enough to just be present in this moment without all of your thoughts?

The ego doesn't want to be present, and it doesn't want to give up thoughts about me because then it would no longer exist, since it exists only as thoughts about me. The you that you think of yourself as and all the desires that go with that are just thoughts about you. What is really alive and living this life isn't a thought, but a Being, while the thoughts about you are the self you pretend to be—a masterful, but false, disguise for this Being.

When, for even a moment, you stop thinking this you into existence by being involved with stories and self-images of yourself and, instead, experience the Being that you are, you are awake. When you live from this place, it's said that you are awakened. But isn't it wonderful that, in any moment, you can choose to experience awakeness by simply disregarding and not identifying with thoughts about yourself and with the desires of the ego?

The process of awakening is a process of learning to disidentify with the egoic mind, or the false self, and identify instead with the Being that you are, who is here right now and always has been—looking out of your eyes, breathing, and moving your body. Who else would be doing these things? The you that you think you are stops existing as soon as you stop thinking, so how can that be who you are? The false self, or ego, comes and goes with thoughts about me, my life, and what I want. When you are involved with thoughts about me, then you exist as this you, and when you aren't, you exist as Beingness.

The process of awakening is facilitated by meditation because meditation trains us to detach from the egoic mind, or false self, and experience Being, or Essence. The more we meditate, the easier it becomes to detach from the egoic mind in our daily life and express our Being. So, do you want to awaken enough to make time to meditate? The ego doesn't want to meditate, so you may have to overcome the ego's resistance to it because, naturally, it doesn't want to disappear, which is what happens in meditation.

The longing to awaken motivates us to do things that support awakening. It drives us to attend spiritual gatherings, read spiritual books, meditate, question, inquire, do healing work, be quiet, and just be. This longing is a force that calls us Home, but you have to be willing to answer its call. When you do, it feels fulfilling. The egoic mind, however, might tell you that you don't have time for these things or that they aren't enough or aren't making a difference or are too difficult or that the teacher is flawed. It will try to interfere with the natural process of awakening. It's good to be aware of how the ego tries to hinder this process, while at the same time, enflaming your desire to awaken in a way that causes you to suffer.

There's no need to suffer over awakening because each of us is waking up in exactly the way and at exactly the time that is best for us. And you especially don't have to suffer when you realize that in this very moment you have the capacity to experience awakeness simply by choosing to be here now in this moment without involvement in the story of me. Do you want to awaken enough to choose being awake in the moment to being lost in the dream of me?