Being Spiritually Asleep
+ Super Mario Bros
Preface: I know there are a lot of different articles touching on “awakening”. I know things can get overwhelming trying to read so many different perspectives and attempting to reconcile them with your own understanding. So if what I write ever causes any confusion in you, please disregard my post immediately. My dispassionate goal is to provide clarity and AHAs not to cause more thinking.
Today I wanted to explain the meaning of being spiritually asleep. We hear the phrase “you’re asleep” thrown around all the time in spiritual circles so let’s unpack it. I’m going to keep things very simple in this post. This is not done to insult your intelligence. No. I’m keeping it simple because I believe there is immense wisdom in simplicity.
Spiritual sleep is not physical sleep.
“No duh, Mr. Writer. Of course it is not physical sleep”. Yes, it is not physical sleep where the two eyes are shut and you’re lying down on a bed. When we say that one is spiritually asleep, we mean that one is hypnotized by the rhythms of the thought world. Let’s say in the beginning there was pure awareness and awareness spawned this thought idea called a “person”. The more clothes or identity that is added to this thought ide of a person, the more hypnotized pure awareness becomes. This self-hypnotism expanded so greatly to the point that pure awareness forgot its original nature, it began to believe that it was this thought-idea, this person. It became the character that it created.
Waking up is about snapping out of this hypnosis. This hypnosis can be “external” by what is perceived by the 5 senses or “internal” by what is perceived by the sixth sense known as the thinking mind. It only hit me recently that the Buddhists were geniuses for knowing that there are 6 senses; so pure awareness is hypnotized by everything that is perceived by the senses of sight (1), smell (2), hearing (3), touch (4), taste (5), and the thinking mind (6).
Super Mario analogy
Let’s explore an analogy. Let’s imagine that one day Mario, the character in the popular video game series, realizes that he’s a character in a game. He realizes that everything that he can see, touch, and feel only exists in Mushroom Kingdom “Holy shit,” Mario thinks, “I am just a character”. Even more frustrating is the fact that Mario can never understand what is actually controlling him because the real player of the game cannot be found in the Mushroom Kingdom. Try as he may, Mario couldn’t get past the nagging anxiety that he could not actually see the entity controlling it in the game. Mario goes to Koopa Troopa Church every Sunday to attempt to find an answer to this anxiety but no one can actually tell him what is controlling this game, the Church keeps on making up stories so Mario leaves. After a variety of attempts to understand who is actually controlling this game, Mario has a dark night of the soul and finally surrenders to the fact that the extent of his knowledge is in the game itself.
He surrenders to the fact that he is limited as a character in a game. The wisest move for Mario to make after this realization is to surrender to the entity that can see and control the game much better than he because that entity can see a much wider perspective than he could. Mario can only see what’s in front of him.
Bells and Whistles
People ask questions like when I wake up:
- “Will I now start earning more money? “
- “Will I now start seeing angels?”
- “How about walking on water, will that happen? Oh, I forgot to ask about past lives, can I get in touch with past lives?”
This is like Mario asking after I awake spiritually:
- Will I be able to double/triple jump?
- Will I be able to 10x the amount of coins I’ve collected?
- How about Princess? Will she find me more attractive after I awake? I heard she has been staring at my brother Luigi lately because he is more athletic and can jump higher.
These people are trying to look for awakening in the illusory world. They are trying to define awakening in their very own thought world, their very own Mushroom Kingdom. The whole point of snapping out of the hypnosis of the thought world is not to chase bells and whistles. If you still see Awakening as a way to earn cheat codes and better your gameplay in Mushroom Kingdom then you’ll still remain hypnotized. Yes, the thought world can operate much smoother when you’re aware of it; however, that should not be the goal. Knowing the truth and abiding in it at whatever cost is the goal.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is simply saying “Mario remember that you are a character in a videogame” and that’s it. Fly Yoshi, hurl fireballs, defeat Bowser, and eat mushrooms with Luigi….But do all of this from a dispassionate perspective. It’s hard to pick up attachments when you know that you are in a video game.
I have no beef with Thoughts
Now I’ve noticed that some beef with thoughts in spiritual circles so I wanted to touch on this as well. When I’m playing Super Mario, I press B to jump and A to run. When I’m in the thought world, I use my thoughts to speak English, to work, to relate with folks, to solve puzzles, etc. The whole point is that I understand that these thoughts are a tool to navigate the thought world the same way that pressing buttons is a tool to navigate the Super Mario landscape.
When I stop playing Super Mario, I stop pressing A and B but that doesn’t mean that pressing buttons wasn’t needed in the specific environment that it was designed to be used in. So the whole point is not to beef with thoughts; rather it is to be detached and aware of what thoughts are so that they can serve you, pure awareness, in the role that it was meant to serve you in.
Drop all preconceived notions of what you think awakening is.
When Mario finally realizes that he’s a character in a game and is dispassionate and surrendered to this fact, he can finally find peace no matter what happens in the game. Imagine the level of stress Mario must have been experiencing when he believed that he was really being chased by monsters and that he has to save a princess only as a damn plumber. He ain’t even qualified to be saving princesses, now that’s stressful living. Thankfully one day Mario realized the character in the game isn’t inherently real. He simply continued playing on because:
- “Before enlightenment, collect coins 💰 and jump on Goombas”.
- “After enlightenment, collect coins 💰 and jump on Goombas”.
