are you awake?
are you awake?
We sleep, more or less, for 2000-3000 hours a year. In my lifetime, I have been asleep for over 145,000 hours. Do your math?
Once we are awake, we work, shop, wash, eat, clean, entertain, escape, avoid, play, study, listen, and surf the web. We take care of our looks, our kids, elderly parents, pets, gardens, and we file taxes annually (some of us).
But when do you pause? When do you wake up to what life’s about?
What are you waiting for?
Most of us wait for a crisis: a diagnosis with a critical illness, an accident or a great loss, like the death of a loved one, a marriage, a career or a reputation. We are faced with a failure or impossible situation like an affair, an addiction, a long-standing pattern that limits us, or we are involved in wrong-doing. Some of us feel unhappy, depressed, angry, and hopeless, others have a pit in their stomach that constantly hurts, and then there are those who have an intuitive sense that life could be easier or better. We all feel this place in us that doesn’t work inside. It especially shows up in our relationships, or when we behave “badly.”
To “awaken” is a choice to rise up and meet the challenges in your life, followed by an intention or a discovery that sheds light and awareness on your situation, on a part of your life that lies hidden or asleep. What awakens in you leads you to new actions. “Where ever you go, there you are,” wrote Jon Kabbat Zinn, yet there is a world of beings also sharing with you. And if you think of all the living beings in this world, including the microscopic ones living inside us and the underwater ones swimming through the oceans, then, there are countless beings depending on us.
You wake up for others, not just for yourself.
Waking up isn’t so much about you, its about getting the “unhealthy you” out of the way. It’s about finding a way to rewire your old patterns that don’t work, so you can give the best of you to this world, that my teacher and friend, Roshi Joan Halifax, says, “is imperilled.”
Inside this website are ways I’ve found to wake up-- meditation, qigong, Buddhist philosophy, End-of-Life caring for the dying, volunteering, being in nature, and mindful listening.
No one does this work alone: the wise know the strength, not the weakness, in asking for help. If any good comes from this waking up, the world will be a happier place.
Two Hands Together, Andrew Yakusan Blake andrew@andrewblake.ca
Andrew’s website is dedicated to every person that is working towards being a more compassionate and loving person.
It is dedicated to all the teachers, therapists, and healers in the world, who help us to awaken to this loving presence.
It is also dedicated to all the traditions. perspectives, and teachings that point us on our way and remind us, it is never too late to wake up.
Waking up to a wiser you