So if awakening is a form of upleveling, in which you can often experience the brilliant sparkle of a deep epiphany that rocks you to your core, then what's the next step in the process? Once you've woken up, what happens?
If you're conscious of your awakening, the next shift is awareness. Like all shifts, awareness isn't something you can book ahead of time - it happens when it happens. Awakening is a sudden deeper understanding of hwere you are on your journey; awareness is the gradual realization of everything this new understanding entails.
Awareness can trigger some deep emotions: anger, sadness, and frustration along with amazement, elation, and excitement. It's a double edged sword and can swing in both directions, sometimes simultaneously.
Here's the gift: awareness is an opportunity to take off your mask AND to get a peek behind the masks of other people. This is a chance to ask and embrace the question, "who am I supposed to be and who am I REALLY?"
Awareness is not always a comfortable place. When you are willing to be vulnerably honest with yourself about who you are, you run the risk of uncovering unpleasant and sometimes painful truths. And once you see truth like this, you can't unsee it. However, when you can allow yourself to simply sit with and feel whatever comes along at this new level of understanding, you create the space to let those feelings rise up and be released. The trick lies in sitting with your feelings, no matter how they feel.
While this may sound like self torture, here's something to ponder: Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, states that there's a "90-second rule" for emotional processes in the brain. In her book, My Stroke of Insight, she states that any emotional reaction we experience triggers a chemical response in the body that lasts for only 90 seconds. "After that," she says, "any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to remain in that emotional loop."
So while awareness may bring on some deep and uncomfortable emotions, it also brings you closer to clarity - seeing what your vision holds. Awareness offers its own relief as you realize that you do indeed get to CHOOSE how and for how long you respond.
You get to choose who YOU are.
You get to choose YOUR next right step.
You get to choose YOUR truth.
Awareness is an opportunity to choose yourself.