Let’s Bring Us Back to Life
Because something strange can happen on the awakening path, especially when we become serious about awakening.
Without even noticing, awakening can start to feel narrow. It can become dry, tight, and strangely disconnected from the very thing it claims to reveal.
We begin to chase silence as if silence is the highest truth. We begin to value emptiness more than intimacy. We start trying to “rise above” experience, and we call that freedom. But often what is happening underneath is something much more subtle: we are excluding ourselves.
We exclude the parts that feel inconvenient, the parts that feel messy. We exclude the sensations that don’t fit our idea of peace.
We exclude the hunger, the desire, the trembling, the emotional chaos, the raw animal aliveness of being human. And then we say, “I am awake.”
But is that awakening? Or is it a refined form of avoidance?
Sometimes spirituality becomes a very sophisticated strategy to not feel. It becomes a way to disappear from life while pretending we have transcended it. It becomes control dressed in sacred language.
And the cost is high.
Oh, how well I know that. I lived that chapter. And I lived it fully. The silence became a comfort zone. The solitude became a refuge. The retreat became a lifestyle. And without noticing, I started stepping away from the very currents that make life alive: people, intimacy, movement, unpredictability, desire, connection, energy. It was subtle. It was almost invisible. And yet the price was very real.
Because aliveness is not only found in stillness. Aliveness is found in contact. In being touched. In being challenged. In being met. In being moved. In feeling the full spectrum of life. And when we retreat too far, we may feel safe… but something in us also becomes smaller. The world becomes quieter… but the heart becomes quieter too. And the awakening path becomes narrow, when it was always meant to open
Because the moment we exclude our feelings, we exclude our vitality. The moment we exclude our humanity, awakening becomes sterile. The moment we exclude the uncomfortable parts, the whole thing becomes a performance, and yea – even if no one is watching.
The truth is that awakening is not meant to shrink us into a calm, silent, polished version of ourselves. Awakening is meant to bring us into deeper contact with reality. And reality is alive. It is intimate, moving., unpredictable. It is full of sensation, emotion, desire, fear, longing, and love.
This is the juiciness of existence.
The body is not a mistake. The emotions are not obstacles. The intensity is not a problem that needs to be fixed. The contractions, the fears, the shame, the excitement, the pleasure, the sadness—all of it is part of life expressing itself.
Real freedom is not the absence of intensity. Real freedom is when intensity no longer needs to be resisted. It is when sensations are allowed to be here without the mind labeling them as dangerous. It is when the nervous system begins to trust life again.
Because the truth is simple: when nothing is excluded, nothing is missing.
So maybe the invitation is not to become more peaceful. Maybe the invitation is to become more honest.
To stop using awakening as a way to escape, and instead let awakening be what it truly is: a return.
So my friend… where are you standing in your awakening path? Are you opening into life?
Or are you living inside an awakening comfort zone?