Since sleeping is not a conscious state of mind, you can’t really know that you were asleep until you wake up, right? Read that sentence again… (No really, read that sentence again…) Similarly, you can’t really know that you are “sleep-walking” through life unless you finally wake up. Naturally, since you know that you aren’t presently asleep, you assume that you are fully awake. But are you? How can you tell? Sounds insane I know…but hang with me for a little bit and hopefully it will become more clear. Being asleep in life is eerily comparable to being deceived. All of us think we are right in our own eyes and are assured we are smart enough to see through things that aren’t true. Yet, people are deceived for a lifetime and sometimes never become remotely aware of the multitude of stuff they adhered to that simply wasn’t true. And, before a person can escape deception, at some point they have to be willing to observe their own life and recognize the effects that result from their own causes and change those causes. Until that happens, they remain in their deceptions, steadfastly assured they haven’t been deceived. In other words, they have to wake up!
How many times have you heard the story where people have some brush with death or disaster and suddenly wake up to the “real” things that life is all about? Or maybe life’s struggles seem too persistent or the string of “gone wrong” has gone on for too long and that leads to a willingness to see what you haven’t been able to see before. In either case and contrary to public opinion, you don’t have to suffer to learn, that is if you are willing to “see” what you haven’t been able to see before. And, have you ever given any thought as to why it is we cannot seem to see the things that are sitting right in front of us? We cannot see because we are distracted. We live within the confines of our own minds and spend our days rehearsing the past and fearing the future. By adulthood we have a pretty good idea (or so we think) about how life works. We have drawn our conclusions; analyzed ourselves into oblivion and developed a multitude of conventions that we live by. We no longer question our reality and play along in a script we don’t enjoy, unaware that it is our very own script. We play our assigned roles (the victim; the happy go lucky one; the irresponsible one; the successful one; the misunderstood one) as if our parts were doled out to us before we were born; forever destined to star in a movie we wouldn’t pay to see ourselves. Egads! We cannot even begin to see how this is all taking place because we have stopped looking and learning and chosen rather to live by some conclusion we drew back in 1985. We are adults after all and we know stuff!
So again we must “consider our ways” and learn to see what has been sitting all around us for years and years. And in order to see, we have to get outside of our own thoughts and our pre-made assumptions and simply observe what is. The only time we have to work with is the time called, “right now!” Yesterday is long gone and the future never arrives as the future, only as “right now.” We have to learn (again) how to be fully present in the moment (like how children live). We have to become an observer of our own lives. Now lest you think I just went new age mystical on you, let me explain. As an observer of our own lives we don’t jump from predetermined conclusion to conclusion, but instead we take the time to focus on the moment. And as an observer we question. We ask ourselves things like “what is causing me to feel anxious right now?” We ask, “Am I listening to the things people are telling me? Am I even listening at all or have I checked out to some future time?” And even better and more impacting we ask God to show us what we have been missing and to help us see the things we can no longer see! Then, after we make those requests, we observe and listen. We make ourselves willing to see new things. We look for the answers to our questions. We seek assured we will find and we knock knowing that someone always comes to the door and opens it.
After you start attempting to live this way (because let’s face it old habits are hard to break) something marvelously wonderful takes place. You wake up! You begin to recognize that your life is ever the out working of your own thoughts and beliefs. You begin to understand that you are the one that writes the script for your own life and that you are free to make yourself what you will. Hey maybe you were typecast as a comedian! Write a new script. Maybe you always got assigned the victim side role. Write a new script. Maybe you could never quite get to the big things you always saw yourself doing! Write a new story. You see, when you are truly awake to life, you can recognize that all those limitations and reasons and excuses were simply stories you told yourself because you didn’t know you were asleep. The life that God intends for you to live is a life full of excitement, vibrancy, passion, love and fulfillment. Don’t assume you are already living it because you cannot know that you were asleep until you wake up! Wake up to life my friends. Live in the moment. Observe your life. Observe your causes and observe your effects. And do it all right now, in the present, in the only time you have. That is a life worth living…AWAKE!!!