On Waking Up — Awake as Compared to Asleep

On Wak­ing Up — Awake as com­pared to Asleep It’s hard to admit, but our lives are most­ly lived on autopi­lot. While there are plen­ty of rea­sons for “sleep­ing while awake,” (brain effi­cien­cy, etc.) the main rea­son we do it it is that we fear the work being awake entails.

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Some years ago, we had a convo with a 25-year-old. She was talking about being stuck. The pattern was like this:

1. I’m hard on myself.

2. I judge myself for being hard on myself.

3. I try to talk myself out of it, and then get down on myself for not being able to stop.

4. I want to change, but it’s hard.

5. I’m just lazy.

6. Wash, rinse, repeat.

We call this living on autopilot.

While there seems to be a fair amount of self-reflec­tion going on here, if you look at the pat­tern, you see that every­thing is being run, rapid­ly, through the same filter.

It looks like self-reflec­tion, but noth­ing changes, because mind-games are nothing. 

Another friend:

1. I’ve spent 12 years look­ing to oth­ers to tell me who I am and how I am doing.

2. I need to fig­ure out why I do this.

3. I keep doing it.

4. I’m mis­er­able because I can’t; fig­ure it out, and I can’t get oth­ers to stop telling me who I am.

5. I’m so excit­ed because some­one told me I’m spe­cial! I want to do what they do!

6. But what if I’m no good at it? Peo­ple will judge me!

7. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Autopilot.

The dan­ger for these two women (and the resow of us…) is think­ing that all of this effort at explor­ing “the small, tight box” is actu­al­ly a mark of being awake. 

“I can’t under­stand why it isn’t dif­fer­ent this time!” is a weird thought when all that is hap­pen­ing is a re-hashed pat­tern. The top­ic being re-hashed changes, but the pat­tern applied is the same.

It takes incredible alertness to notice this, and incredible courage to make another choice. And then to make that choice endlessly, until you die.

In East­ern thought, being awake is a state in which the per­son focuss­es on allow­ing thoughts to drift along. see­ing what aris­es, with­out latch­ing on (grasp­ing.)

We are inter­est­ed in observ­ing the inter­play between what the mind thinks (the sto­ries we tell our­selves) and what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing. The greater the cor­re­la­tion between the two, the more awake you are.

On the other hand, having the mind go one way and “life” another requires endlessly being asleep.

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A couple of examples: (somewhat lame, but hey…)

Per­haps a decade ago, I had a headache… and I need­ed to make a bank deposit, includ­ing deposit­ing a US cheque. 

I decid­ed to deposit the Cana­di­an cur­ren­cy at the ATM, then go to a teller to con­vert and deposit the cheque. 

My head hurt a bit, and I was “non-present.”

I was not “zoned out.” I ran the bank machine flaw­less­ly, right up until I stuck the cheque in the enve­lope with the cash, and shoved it into the slot. 

I then stood there for a moment, look­ing for the cheque. Sigh.

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Which matches the pattern for most of us.

Few of us are total­ly incom­pe­tent, zoned out, com­plete­ly lost in the fog. Most of us are func­tion­al. How­ev­er, and it’s a big how­ev­er, most of what we are doing is not actu­al­ly con­scious. It’s like dri­ving to work, get­ting there and not know­ing how. 

Func­tion­al, but not mindful.

Example 2

2 decades ago, I was dri­ving up to my office in Port Elgin, and decid­ed to stop at Tim­mie’s. (Cana­di­an ref­er­ence, for a Tim Hor­ton donut shop — of which there is one, or one like it, on every cor­ner of every inter­sec­tion in Cana­da — we do love our donuts.) 

I was lis­ten­ing to an audio book. I pulled into the lot, parked, got out, said hi to the nice lady I passed, and made it the 50 feet to the door of the shop, when I heard, “Hey mis­ter. Your truck­’s moving!!!”

I quick­ly reg­is­tered that she might be talk­ing to me, as I, indeed, dri­ve a truck. I whipped around, and there was my truck, head­ing back­wards through the park­ing lot. Stan­dard trans­mis­sion, and a flash that I must not have left it in gear. 

OK. There’s the mindless part. Now, the mindful piece.

I took off run­ning across the lot, cov­er­ing the 60 feet pret­ty quick­ly for a then 50-year-old. As I ran, (much like when you are falling — there’s a cer­tain slow­ness to time, and clar­i­ty) I thought about what I was going to do next. 

I elim­i­nat­ed run­ning behind the truck and try­ing to stop it — dopes get run over that way. Could­n’t grab the front bumper and stop it — it weighs more than me. That left get­ting in and apply­ing the brake.

Now, I come from Buf­fa­lo, via Chica­go, so even after 25 years in Cana­da, I lock everything. 

So, as I ran, not miss­ing a step, I extri­cat­ed my keys from my pock­et, picked the right one, and caught the truck. I ran along­side, shoved the key in the lock in one try, turned the lock, pock­et­ed the key and opened the door. I then sped up my run­ning, piv­ot­ed and vault­ed into the seat, not whack­ing any por­tion of my anatomy. 

I applied the brake. The truck had trav­eled about 50 feet back.

I drove it back to the park­ing place, left it in gear and turned it off. The lady was still stand­ing where I’d passed her, on my 100-foot dash. She applauded.

Me too.

Being awake requires one thing, and one thing only: to wake up.

• If you stand there, metaphor­i­cal­ly focussed on the rolling truck, you end up with a mess. 
• If you see what you are doing, and notice that every time you do it, you get lousy results, AND con­tin­ue to do it, you deserve your fate.
• If you con­fuse “fig­ur­ing it out” with actu­al­ly doing some­thing, you’re going to end up in the same place. 
• If you expect to be able to keep doing what does­n’t work, and get dif­fer­ent results… well… you know.

Being awake is all about notic­ing every­thing, and real­iz­ing that what is hap­pen­ing in your life mir­rors what you are choos­ing (includ­ing choos­ing to, at some lev­el, place the cheque in the enve­lope…) then you’re on the way to solv­ing your issues. 

That’s the hand you were dealt. What you choose to do next is always optional.

Being awake is see­ing clear­ly what’s right in front of you, mak­ing a clear choice, and imple­ment­ing. No excus­es, no, “It’s hard!” Of course it is, until it isn’t — just like every­thing else you’ve ever learned. 

There’s no escap­ing the truth that who you are and where you are is end­less­ly deter­mined by what you do, and what you do, with­out effort, sim­ply mir­rors your worst story.

Have a breath, sit down, learn to focus in through med­i­ta­tion, and then… do some­thing dif­fer­ent, just to see what happens.

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On Wak­ing Up — The Attack of the Why­But Monster »