Awakening is a shift in identity, from identification with being a particular person with a name and form to the recognition of something much more fundamental. The initial awakening is not something that happens to the person we usually take ourselves to be, but is an awakening of consciousness itself from the personality. Awakening is not a final state or experience, but recognising that which is prior to all experience and from which everything we do experience arises. There are multiple phases we go through after this initial awakening, including what we call “Unity Consciousness” and beyond. Awakening is not a belief system or model, but an immediate shift in the way one experiences themselves and reality. Awakening itself is the beginning of a long seemingly never ending trajectory of deepening, refinement and openings to the secrets of existence.

No, an awakening that has matured along the path is not a dissociated experience, but rather has gone through a process of transcend and include. Transcendence is a needed stage along the path, as it is the process of “waking up.” Waking up is an up-and-out movement where we essentially recognise ourselves as beyond time and space, beyond our conditioned patterns and beyond the conceptual understanding we once had of being a separate isolated self. We experience our True Nature as being unconditioned consciousness.

As awakening matures, all that was transcended becomes recognised as the very same substance of the awake field of consciousness that was recognised in the initial shift. This is a movement of unification, where everything that was woken up “from” is awakened to as also That. In a more mature awakening, our humanity is fully included—not as something separate from that which we have realised but as an ever-refining expression and embodiment of it. As this recognition matures, we can no longer distinguish between the unmanifest Source and the manifest world, and life becomes experienced as Non-Dual, with the process eventually leading us beyond consciousness altogether.

This group is not a self-help group or about “gaining” anything, but the explorations and offerings here can help to soften one into a process that is already happening within them or have the intention to ignite the flame of grace within to begin its unfolding. The process of awakening is one of dissolution, and this can be a very difficult process for many people. The challenges and traps along the way can be many. This group is here to help those of us devoted to discovering Truth build further capacity to allow the process to unfold according to the deeper intelligence that is driving it.

As things have unfolded here, it has become clear that there are no truly adequate models or stages that can capture the process. Though there are themes that run through people’s processes universally, these themes will be discussed in various groups according to the needs of those joining.

Awakening happens by grace. It is not something we can “make” happen through any kind of effort on our behalf, though effort is still needed, especially in the early stages. We can use practices such as meditation, self-inquiry, devotion, embodiment and other methods to prepare our mind and system for grace to open things for us. It requires effort to begin with, which eventually leads us to effortlessness. The effort is used to unglue ourselves from identifications with the thinking mind and continue to deepen and open into what is prior to that. As that effort takes us outside of the gravitational pull of our everyday identities, through grace we begin to recognise in deeper ways that this is our essential nature and abide in that which we have come to recognise as our essence and the essence of everything.

These are some common myths we collectively hold about the nature of awakening, but as we deepen our understanding and experience, we begin to see them as simply the mind’s fantasy of living in some kind of ideal heavenly state where we have escaped all of life’s problems. There are many more myths and misconceptions than what is written below, which we will discuss at certain times in the group.

• Awakening will resolve all of our suffering

• We lose our humanity and live in a transcendent cloud

• It is a final “state” or constant “experience” of enlightenment

• We will no longer experience anger, reactivity or challenges

• Our lives will be perfect; we will be able to manifest anything we want

• We will live in a constant state of bliss

• We will always act in a way that is unconditionally loving

• We will meet God as an object within our consciousness as something separate from everything else

• All our trauma, conditioning and wounds will be magically resolved

• An awakened teacher will have no wounds, no shadows, and no issues