Being awake is being aware of when thinking arises, an noticing the thought as being a thought. Being “metaphorically” asleep is when all of the awareness is on thought, and thus thinking you are the thought because you notice nothing else. It’s a mistaken identity. Step back from thought and watch thoughts come and go, knowing you are the space that the thoughts arise and not the thought itself.
We start lost in thought, then occasionally awake back up, before getting lost in another stream of thought. As time goes on we awake more frequently and for longer durations.
Watch a plant or tree as a moves in the breeze, the ease it has as it moves. It doesn’t strain against the wind, but rather allows it to be and just moves with it. The presence or absence of the wind doesn’t make it any more or less a tree, it doesn’t affect its mood or fulfillment. The tree is like us, and the wind is like our circumstance. There is great wisdom in nature.
The clear blue sky is like the peace that we are inside. And clouds are like thoughts, they are temporary and obscure the peace that is there, even though the clouds/thoughts are really nothing; water mist. Yet our thoughts are energy fields that shape what we experience as wells as what others experience. Yet thoughts are temporary and changeable. A creative power that God gave us. But when we mistake ourselves for being thought; the mind rules us and we are just along for the ride. But went we are awake, and notice thoughts as just being thoughts and nothing more then that. Not putting too much weight and what the thoughts say. It puts us in the driver seat to use thoughts as we wish and to put thoughts aside and enjoy peace and joy beyond thought, which neither depends on a thought or a reason.
