Waking Up – Discovering Natural Awareness

Who am I? What is this?

The process of inquiring into the nature of our personal reality and our experience of the world is the path to waking up.

Waking up can serve two different agendas… (1) the pursuit of liberty (freedom from psychological barriers to building a more satisfying and fulfilling life), and/or (2) the pursuit of liberation (freedom from fundamental assumptions about all experiences of self and world).

Present-centered (mindful) awareness is an important tool in both pursuits.

Liberty. In good psychotherapy and coaching, present-centered awareness can help us gain insight into personal assumptions (internal models) we have about ourselves and the world (e.g., I need to be the best; the world is dangerous), and this is an important tool in working through barriers to a more satisfying life. As noted earlier, the problem isn’t that we have those beliefs. The problem is that we’re identified with them, and don’t know that we’re having them. It’s just how things are. For example, we won’t pursue what we want in our life if we learned from our upbringing that what we want doesn’t matter.

Seeing that we’re fused with thoughts and feelings – and reflexively responding to life – is an important step to increasing our personal liberty, to increased freedom. In therapy and coaching, we can discover unconscious beliefs, work with them constructively, and try on new behaviors.

Liberation. While building a life that is satisfying and fulfilling is important, there are further shores to be reached via mindful awareness. When employed with other more radical intentions, mindful awareness is a foundational practice that helps us deeply examine such questions as “Who am I?” and “What is this?” We can also investigate experience in a way that challenges even more fundamental assumptions (e.g., I am a separate self, I am a mind in a body). We might do this by looking closely at how experience arises and passes, or by asking ourselves in an intentional and curious way such questions as “Who is having this experience?” 

This kind of investigation can lead to direct insight into the nature of the self and phenomena, and can change our lived experience in very profound ways. When mindful awareness is engaged and investigation is pursued in this more fundamental way, we are now talking about taking steps toward liberation – toward waking up to our true nature.

Helping people wake up in the more fundamental sense has been an agenda for psychospiritual and philosophical systems throughout time and across the world. Some approaches have been quite direct and radical – and an exhaustive list is not possible here. However, ways of pursuing this fundamental awakening are at the heart of nondual, natural awareness, mystery traditions, and many psychospiritual systems.

These awakenings can happen in steps, and can also happen suddenly. Sudden, unexpected awakenings that tap into this fundamental “nature of nature” can be exciting, but can also be disorienting. In practices that invite this kind of awakening, we may coincidentally encounter various nonordinary or transpersonal phenomena along the way. To learn a bit more about integral-transpersonal psychology, go here.

Inquiry, natural awareness, and direct path practices are pointing awakening in the more fundamental sense, i.e., awakening to our true nature, to our natural state.

The practice of Inquiry takes stable attention and mindful awareness – and combines them with an attitude of investigation – to begin deconstructing assumptions we have about our self, the world, and experience. 

“Inquiry” is a commonly-used term to refer to this process of investigation and deconstruction that leads to waking up in this fundamental sense. Classic self-inquiry takes the question “Who am I” to the end of seeking. We can also inquire into the nature of experience with such questions as, “What is this?” In related practices, many natural awareness and nondual approaches take a direct path, and may offer such instructions as “let things be as they are” or “rest as awareness.” Such practices can take us to the end of seeking.

We can also engage this inquiry through more structured and focused methods of investigation. The insight meditative tradition – for example – offers clear guidance on how to pursue this investigation of the contents of awareness.

All of these approaches point to a direct experience that is not reducible to words, but this direct experience changes – sometimes momentarily, sometimes in ongoing ways – our sense of who we are, of the nature of things, and our understanding of what is happening. Such paths are commonly characterized by paradox – such as how to reconcile “trying to change what we’re doing” with “letting things be as they are.” 

Nondual and natural awareness traditions and different approaches to self-inquiry will naturally bring us to places of paradox which the intellect is not equipped to resolve.

Awareness and meditative practices sometimes play a role in a person’s larger view of themselves and the world. For example, some of us may have interests that fall in the domain of transpersonal psychology and therapy (e.g., altered states of consciousness, nonordinary experiences, integral development, spirituality, being).  For clients who do have these interests, there is space in our therapy and coaching work for these interests.

In summary, the pursuit of waking up serves two seemingly different ends…

• One purpose (and one might say the “ultimate” purpose) of pursuing awakening is to grasp deeply, viscerally, and practically that we and the world are not what we thought. This is the radical challenging of fundamental assumptions we’ve held about the nature of ourselves and experience. This is the purpose of pursuing such practices as “Who am I?” to their very end. 
• Another purpose for pursuing awakening is more circumscribed, but important for our everyday mental health. We awaken to some aspects of our world view – some of our limiting personal assumptions – so we can get out of our box and operate in new ways to create a more satisfying and fulfilling life. In this scenario, we wake up for the purposes of living well.

To learn more about increasing satisfaction, vitality, and fulfillment in your life, visit the page on Living Well – Cultivating a Fulfilling Life.

If you want a therapy or coaching environment that is open to natural awareness practices, inquiry, and awakening, and/or you want to take back your attention, re-engage with your life, and increase your satisfaction in life – then schedule an appointment with Dr. Martin.