Why Don't People Wake Up?

How many people meditate around the world?

The common estimates are about half a billion, though I find that hard to believe, when more than half the people in India alone (population 1.2 billion) say that they meditate regularly.

In any case, I think we can safely say that meditation is a popular thing.

And how many people devote their entire lives to meditation? This is far harder to assess, but there seem to be at least a million monks and nuns out there - perhaps as many as three million, perhaps more.

How many people are awake?

There are awakened people in the world, but far fewer than there are meditators - even among those who have supposedly given up everything in order to find truth.

Why is this?

Imagine that you are going on a trip - a physical journey. You want to get from Point A to Point B. Let’s say, just for fun, that you want to climb Mount Everest.

When you reach that mountaintop, it is certainly very different than any other place you have ever seen: higher, whiter, special-er. You might be wearing different clothes. You may even have gotten a tan. But standing on that mountaintop is your favorite person in the world, whether you like it or not: It’s you. The scenery has changed, but you are the same person. YOU have made it to the top of Mount Everest. If you take a selfie, everyone can see it’s you, and they can see that you are in a special place.

Now imagine a spiritual journey. You might travel for days, weeks, months, or years; but that is not the point. You might go places, geographically; but that, too, makes no difference at all. The big question is: Are you the same person? Has the scenery changed? Or have YOU changed?

There is an inevitable point along all spiritual journeys in which you start to feel like you are going crazy. You might start to cry, or lose your temper, or have general mood swings, or forgetfulness… or it might not be so apparent, at least on the outside. But you will feel like you are going nuts. The reason for this is that you are starting to lose your grip on who you think you really are. It might be clear as day - to you or to others - or it might be subtle. But everyone reaches a point where they feel like something they are truly attached to is going to disappear. And the truth is that, if you keep at it, you will have many, many experiences like this - not just one.

When I started to meditate - in my twenties - I was afraid very early on that I would lose my love for music.

A lot of people tell me they are afraid to lose their self control.

Further on down the road, most meditators find themselves genuinely afraid that they will die.

Whatever the fear is, most people try to bargain: They look for a way to go on meditating, without letting go of this precious part of who they are. They look for ways to “make it work”. And they find wonderful ways - or so they think. They stay in control, and they meditate. They reach a lovely “middle ground” where they are sure they have their hands in both worlds. But the bottom line is that they take no risk, and so they stay the same. Their “selfies” show the same smile, the same person, with a different background.

Waking up is scary. And it’s also a process: There are many breaking points. The person who arrives is not the one who set out, originally, on the journey. The scenery might stay the same, but you yourself are different.

When you reach that door on your journey that says something like “Nothing beyond this point”, “Insanity 101”, or even “Death” - do you dare to open it? And do you walk inside?

Whenever we bump into someone who has not seen us in a very long time, we might say things like “Hi” and “How have you been”. We might talk about all that water that’s passed under the bridge, things we’ve done, places we’ve been, and people we’ve seen. But my favorite thing to hear in those moments is, “Wow, you’ve really changed”.

Image by Aileen David Rae, Unsplash.com