Wake Up

The only way I learn is by experience.

I may read something in a book. I may listen to someone else, or watch what happens in their life. I may go to a lecture. Or watch a program.

But until I actual put it into practice in my own life, I don’t know a thing.

I make mistakes. I don’t like mistakes. I don’t look forward to mistakes. I make mistakes. Mistakes give valuable feedback - but only if I realize the reason why they’re mistakes.

Success gives valuable feedback, too - but only if I realize the reason for the success.

If I don’t realize the reason for success or failure, I’m just floating along on the tide of life, reacting. Asleep.

I don’t like being asleep. Being asleep is being unconscious. Ironically, when I’m asleep, I don’t know it until I wake up.
I can’t wake myself up. If I can make the effort to be awake, I’m already awake.

Something happens that wakes me up. Like the noise in the night that pulls me from a dream. I sit up in bed, knowing something happened, but not what.

Or the Zen master whacks me in the head with a stick out of nowhere for no reason. Satori strikes. I’m awake.

If I wake up enough, I realize I was asleep and I can try to stay awake.

I can look at a mistake, and try to work out why it was a mistake. I can look at a success, and try to work out why it was a success.

Being awake isn’t easy. It takes a lot more effort to stay awake, to be conscious, than it does to sleep.

To sleep, I just have to let go. Relax and let awareness slip away.

To be awake takes effort. I have to focus, to pay attention.

That’s why I meditate. That’s why the Zen master sets me to learn to hear the sound of one hand clapping. To do either, I have to pay attention. Attention is the coin of consciousness, of awareness.

The illogic of just sitting, of listening for a non-existent noise, forces a crisis, a tear in the blanket of sleep I wear around me. I get whacked upside the head and I wake up enough to know I was asleep and can now make the effort to stay awake.

Now I can learn from my mistakes. Now I can learn from my successes.

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