What Is Basic Awakening?

What is basic awakening? What is meant by being aware and awake? These are some questions I asked in the May 27, 2017 World Satsanga with Guy Needler, based on a book I read about awakening. Spiritual seekers often talk about being aware and awake, but these terms may mean different things to different people. What is basic awakening?

In his book “Awakening Through the Veils,” Ric Weinman mapped the stepwise process to awakening that he experienced over the years. He described two kinds of awake teachers:

An avatar that manifests Divinity itself (e.g. Amma, Neem Karoli Baba, Ramakrishna, etc.). Their consciousness and energy system are different from most people, which makes it harder for you as a karmic being to align with them. Their focus is on humanity at large.
A teacher who is a truly awakened karmic being, whose focus is on individual awakening. The pattern of their consciousness becomes a model for you that’s easier to emulate.

He had both types of teachers, but said that the reason he had awakened was because Divinity had chosen to express that through his form at that time. The inner work ripened him to get to the door, but only Grace could open the door to Basic Awakening. He wrote:

Awakening is never what we expect. The ego has been tricked into being attracted to awakening like a moth to a flame, even though the ego doesn’t get to participate in it.
Spiritual seekers may believe it’s like waking up from a dream — the end of all suffering, the end of all desires, ascending to a higher plane, coming into truth, clarity and complete understanding or a permanent bliss state, merging with the Divine, being karma-free, etc.

The gap between the fantasy and the reality of awakening can be wide. But Weinman observed three basic phenomena that occur simultaneously at the time of Basic Awakening:

The core sense of “I” disappears from the heart and from everything else. This can feel like spaciousness, beingness, freedom or awake space in the heart’s “no-I zone.”
Everything is the same, because all the mental and emotional stuff remains unchanged. The patterns of I-thoughts and I-feelings and stories about I hadn’t even changed.
Everything is different, because the sense of “I” is gone. It’s as if all those I-thoughts and I-feelings were in a cloud around him, but somehow had nothing to do with him.

He said the awakening experience is unique for each individual, and it changes as we grow into it. For him it felt very ordinary, like relaxing into the natural awareness of being. It’s part of an ongoing process with many levels and phases, not some final end point. He added:

Those who are more mental may awaken and not even realize it, because they live in their heads. Those who are more attuned to their sense of self may notice an emptiness, a sense of loss or peace, or just laugh at the absurdity of their old sense of self that’s gone.
Ordinary life goes on, but now it’s suddenly different. There may be some confusion about what has happened, who it happened to, and how to live from this new place that has just begun (see How To Cope With Awakening? – Big Picture Questions.com).

Weinman wrote: “Basic awakening is not awakening to your true nature yet, but rather the awakening out of the illusion of who you thought you were.” Spiritual work is the ripening process for awakening, which is the ripening process for coming home to the Divine.

There are a series of deeper awakenings, where each level creates its own jump in the body’s energy system. Without the energetic development, the awakening will not move beyond the point that the energy system can support.
Otherwise, it can create various symptoms in the physical body (e.g. Ramana Maharshi had a persistent tremor; Adyashanti spent 4-5 years in a fetal position in tremendous pain).

Further steps will lead to awakening to being consciousness to being awareness to a taste of Divinity, which is the final opening to your true nature. It was not at all what he expected:

“I found that I couldn’t really merge into bliss and shakti any longer because whatever had been merging was gone… I had seen this place, but from the outside looking in…it looked totally transcendent and beyond, and totally present — both within everything and as everything. It was also totally knowing and totally powerful, and it was soft as Grace and all Love. Now, though, I was experiencing this from the inside…

There was just freedom and Grace, joy and peace — everything I had ever wanted, except that I couldn’t have any of that because I was already This. This was Divinity Itself.”

What is meant by being aware and awake?

Guy Needler gave his views on awareness and awakening in the May 27, 2017 Satsanga. He said awareness and awakening is something, which is attributable really to the incarnate aspect or soul. It’s all about us realizing that we are something more than we are.

Awareness is a function of awakening. It’s where we start to understand that there is something beyond what we are as the human body. When we incarnate, the ego is created with an individualized personality, which associates itself entirely with the human form.
We just use the human body literally like we use the motor car. We move in and out of it when we want to. We can choose different vehicles in which to experience multiple things.
But we do get to the point, where we start to become aware of a greater reality as a result of our work, and our ascension through the frequencies, and our evolutionary condition.

The awakening part is understanding and experiencing aspects of the greater reality at various different frequential states associated with our ascension through the frequencies whilst being incarnate. We start to become more awake and more aware of what’s happening around us, and therefore, it’s a bit of an iterative loop of awareness and awakening.

Enlightenment is a function of awakening, where we’re in total communication with Source and our True Energetic Self. The enlightenment is the very end of the awareness, awakening, awareness, awakening iterative loops. It’s an ongoing process whilst we are incarnate.

We can disassociate our consciousness with the human form, and move around the greater reality at will. We can communicate with other entities (disincarnate or incarnate) to experience more of what we are part of.
Eventually we are able to not only master the environment that we’re in, and master the human form, but also choose when and where to dissociate ourselves with the human form, if we want to (like Mahavatar Babaji).

When we get to the point of total enlightenment, we no longer need to be here. We can choose to stay and help others, or we can choose to move onwards and look after our own evolution.

From an evolutionary perspective, it’s an ongoing process with the True Energetic Self and the aspect or soul working on its behalf until we reach the end of the evolutionary cycle.
Then we recommune with Source, and then the Source moves to a different location within the Origin and starts the next evolutionary cycle.

In reference to Ric Weinman, Needler said there’s a lot of commonality between individuals, who are speaking the truth or know the truth. But they will be delivering it from different angles, or different levels of truth, or different parts of the truth. That helps us evolve.

“This is indeed a game, one you all enjoy playing very much. Try not to be so serious, ever struggling. Have fun creating! The goal of the game on this planet is to see how much joy you can create.” – Wendy Kennedy