Deep Awake Meditation

Taken from The Mystery Experience by Tim Freke

I want to invite you to immerse yourself in the mystery of being, by experimenting with deep awake meditation. This will take you to the depths of the mystery experience.

I’m also going to explore the paralogical relationship between the deep awake state the deep sleep state, because it will help you understand what happens in meditation.

In our previous WOW experiment we explored deep presencing, which helped us become conscious of our shared essential nature as the field of being. This leads to the experience of lucid living, in which we see that life is like a dream arising within one primal awareness. In our next WOW experiment I want to invite you to dissolve your attention into the mystery of being, through the practice of deep awake mediation.

There are many methods of meditation and I’ve explored quite a few of them. The deep awake meditation I want to share with you is extremely simple. You need to find the right time to experiment with this practice, when you won’t be disturbed and can let go into the mystery.

I’ve been encouraging you to engage with the process of awakening by experimenting with ‘wondering, entering and presencing’ while you’re reading this book. Now I’d like to suggest you start regularly meditating, which will take your practice of ‘presencing’ to a deeper level.

Deep awake meditation involves ‘dissolving’ into the mystery of being. It’s not usually appropriate to practise ‘dissolving’ while you’re going about your daily business, because you need to keep returning the focus of your attention to the practical world. However, if you make the time to meditate and reach deep within, it becomes much easier to presence the moment during everyday life.

Here ae the basic steps to follow to practise deep awake meditation:

Wondering
Wonder at the world and become conscious of the deep mystery. Close your eyes. Be relaxed and alert.

Entering
Come out of your story in time, and enter your sensations in the present moment. Focus your attention on how wonderful it feels to breathe.

Presencing
Become conscious of yourself as the spacious presence of awareness, within which the sensation of breathing is arising. Become conscious of yourself as a conscious centre within the unconscious field of being.

Dissolving
Turn your attention deeply within and focus on the deep self Dissolve your attention into the primal ground of being.

Deep Sleep and Deep Awake

To help you understand what happens in meditation I want to explore the paralogical relationship between the deep awake state and the deep sleep state. I’m going to begin by examining what happens when we fall deep asleep.

The field of being can be seen as formless unconscious awareness, which becomes conscious through the forms it ‘dreams’ itself to be.

I am the primal oneness of awareness, conscious through Tim. When I fall deep asleep each night, the conscious ‘I’ dissolves back into the primal unconscious awareness.

When I enter the deep sleep state I have no objective or subjective identity. There’s no self… no other.. no time. I exist but I’m not conscious that I exist.

I am compelled to dissolve my individual identity back into the unconscious oneness every night.

I arise the next day reinvigorated and refreshed from my time in the timeless nothingness.

As I wake up I occasionally experience a blissful afterglow of the deep sleep state. I feel as if I’m glimpsing how good it feels to be immersed in the deep oneness of being.

What happens in Meditation?
At the end of the day we unconsciously dissolve into the primal oneness by falling deep asleep.

Meditation allows us to consciously dissolve in the deep sleep state and become deep awake.

When we meditate we allow ourselves to consciously bathe in the blissful oneness of awareness.

In one of his poems the ecstatic Sufi Rumi explains:

Every night you release the spirit
from its body-prison
and erase the mind of memory.

Each night the bird uncages
and the waking narrative pauses.

Prisoners aren’t in prison.
Governors are powerless.

No pain or aching.
No worries bout getting or losing.
No fantasies about this or that person.

The sage is in this state when awake.

Spiritual Sustenance
Becoming deep awake is consciously entering the deep sleep state, so I approach meditation in much the same way that I approach falling asleep. I can’t make myself enter the deep sleep state and I can’t make myself enter the deep awake state; but I can prepare the conditions which allow my state of consciousness to naturally change.

When I want to enter the deep sleep state I go through the familiar ritual of taking off all my clothes, turning off the lights, relaxing in a comfortable bed, closing my eyes and waiting to go unconscious. If I think about sleeping it just makes it harder. I simply need to relax and let things be.

When I practise deep awake meditation it’s similar. I need to take off all my roles and personas and become conscious of the naked presence of my essential nature. I need to sit myself somewhere comfortable, relax my body and close my eyes, then allow the deep awake state to arise.

I can practise deep awake meditation anywhere. But it helps if I have a special meditation spot that I’ve come to associate with being deep awake, just as it’s easier to sleep in a familiar bed. Joseph Campbell explains:

‘Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.”

Regular Practise
It’s possible to practise deep awake meditation for a few minutes, just as we sometimes briefly visit the deep sleep state by having a nap. But in the same way that it’s essential we regularly have a good night’s sleep, we also need to regularly dive into the deep awake state for a longer period. As the philosopher Alan Watts puts it:

‘To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important, because by going out of your mind, you will come to your senses.’

We need to regularly withdraw from life and sink into the field of being from which we return refreshed and more conscious. This is a way of refueling for the journey. We need to refuel physical by eating regularly. We need to refuel spiritually by meditating regularly.

When we’ve eaten well one day, we still become hungry the next. If we go too long without eating, our hunger will really start to hurt, as an urgent reminder that we need physical sustenance. It is the same with awakening. We inevitably start to become spiritually hungry unless we regularly feed the soul. And we can do this by practicing deep awake meditation.