Waking Up Is Messy

Insight interrupts.

There’s a common fantasy in spiritual and psychedelic circles that “waking up” means transcending one’s problems — attaining more clarity, peace, and focus.

Like a light that switches on and casts away the dark, confusing, and painful aspects of your life.

But in reality, awakening is much more inconvenient… disruptive, even.

Real insight rarely gives you a clean upgrade. It doesn’t turn you into a calmer, wiser, or more efficient version of yourself — someone who suddenly has everything figured out. It’s not going to turn you into a sage.

More often than not, it does the exact opposite.

It complicates things. It throws a wrench into your otherwise routine and familiar life and messes with the stories you were once comfortable telling yourself. It strips away the excuses and justifications you told yourself about your relationships, motives, and contradictions.

The life you were building may still look functional from the outside, but inwardly it starts to feel off.

Your job, which at one time made sense may begin to feel hollow.

Relationships you’ve outgrown don’t necessarily collapse flat-out, but they may stop working the way they used to.

You may find yourself unable to pursue your ambitions with the same passion — yet you’re also unable to name what you should replace them with.

On the surface, nothing is “wrong” enough to abandon outright, but there’s a lingering buzz in the back of your mind that tells you something’s just not quite right.

While this still counts as insight, it’s not necessarily the kind that elevates you. At least not right away.

You may feel more isolated and uncertain. Your sense of identity can lose its footing as you’re forced to re-examine what you thought you knew about yourself, your values, and the direction of your life.

This can feel uncomfortable at best, and unbearable or destabilizing at its worst.

It doesn’t mean that something went wrong. It’s merely a byproduct of the fact that our conscious experience is not static — there is no clear path, no arrival, and nothing to resolve.

The practice is simply to stay with it.

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