LF223 Phil Escott – What is Awakening?

Phil Escott and I ask ‘What is awakening?’

From the New Age movement to the 2012 phenomenon, and across the spectrum of belief that is contemporary spirituality, in recent decades there has been a lot of talk about awakening. But just what is it, and how do you get there? Exploring Eastern mysticism? Meditating on a mountaintop? Becoming a hermit, hiding in the woods? It could be any or all of these, and also none. What if awakening is nothing like you’ve been led to believe? Like the ordeal of transformation through trauma, awakening can be difficult, unexpected, and at first, even unrecognised. Although sometimes sudden, it can also be slow, and often more subtle than expected. It may even take place at the moment of your death, but it is always incomplete. Typical traits such as the dissolution of desire and the death of ego may not transpire, and the hoped-for end of human faults and frailties may be an illusion.

In the quest for an answer, the mystery only deepens, and the esoteric elements of all this will, for the time being, likely remain meaningless and irrelevant to most. We remain prisoners to fear and resistance, unwilling to grasp the vast totality of that which is always there. But in the end, whatever the truth, should such a thing exist, the fact that you are a sense organ of the infinite and that the Universe is waking up through you, remains undimmed.

Previous interview with Phil Escott:
Holistic Health and Natural Healing

Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’
Stellardrone ‘The Edge of Forever’