How I Woke Up

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Interesting comments by Michael Ross about "waking up" in a thread below:

"It's good you have awoken. Most people never will. Most people do not want to. They are so enured in their mental slumber they will fight to stay asleep.

Usually, the only way to wake someone fully is... to remove them from the environment - from the group mind think - and let them awake on their own."

- see http://www.sowpub.com/forum/showthread.php?p=22217
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Thought I'd add to that and start a new thread. Might be interesting.

I look at it this way: When you are born, your vistas are unlimited. Your potential is unlimited. Your reach . . . that is, your willingness to look and explore . . . is boundless. But there's a problem: OTHERS!

Parents, for example, might not want you reaching too much for their own reasons. Perhaps they don't want to see you get hurt. Or maybe they don't want to have to bother looking after you and it would be "nicer" for them if you just sat still and stopped all this exploring of your environment.

Then there's religion. I'm not saying it's a bad thing . . . in fact, it can have some very good effects. But wrong-headed religion can also blunt your reach. "Don't YOU look! All the looking's been done for you, and this is what we saw and what we know to be true (and what YOU should believe without bothering to look for yourself)".

And don't forget the media. And businesses. The media want you to look at things their way and get you embroiled in their contrived controversies, and businesses want you to buy what they have to offer. "We provide everything you need . . . and everything you need to know". Again, individuals and groups wanting to do the looking for you. You don't have to look for yourself.

Friends and relatives . . . acquaintences . . . schools . . . . peers . . . special intrest groups . . . cults . . . on and on. Lots of sources of information and viewpoints about "how it really is" and how YOU should think about it. Well, guess what: If you buy into it to any large degree, you're lost! And what you've lost is your REACH . . . your ability to look and explore and see with your own eyes. Eventually, you only see what's put on the screen in front of you. And what you see on that screen and read in newspapers and magazines and hear on the radio is the sum total of your reality about society and "what is". Congratulations. You have been successfully hypnotized!

Well, back in 1972, I had just about had it. Truthfully, I didn't know what had happened to me at that time, but I knew that I wasn't happy with my understanding about life. There HAD to be more to it than what I was experiencing! So this is what I did:

I sat down on the couch in my living room, and in my mind's eye out in front of me, I a took a look at everything my parents had ever taught me and told me. And, again, in my mind, I put all that BEHIND me.

Then I looked at everything I read in newspapers and magazines, read in books, saw on TV and in the movies and heard on the radio. And I put THAT behind me.

Then I examined what I was taught in the religion I was brought up in. And I put it behind me.

Same for everything I learned in school. Put it behind me.

Friends, relatives, acquaintences, co-workers . . . all of the stuff they told me . . . I put it behind me.

Finally, after going though this process for some time, I ran out of outside sources of information. And I said to myself "OK, now *I* am going to look for MYSELF to see what *I* know for certain, without having been told by someone else."

And guess what: I found out that I didn't know ANYTHING for certain! But, having looked for myself, I did know THAT. I was totally certain that I knew nothing for certain, and that no one told me that and that I had found it out by looking for myself. That was a humbling but exhilarating experience!

But there's more. That was just the starting point. Now that I was looking for myself, I decided that there must be answers to what we call "life" . . . real answers . . . and that *I* could find those answers. And so I began, for the first time in my life, looking with my own eyes.

And that is how I woke up.

Have you had some kind of a similar experience?

---- Hugh