How Awake Are We?

How awake are we? This is an important question to ask one's self. I'm not referring to hitting the alarm clock and pulling ourselves out of bed to start our day. I'm not referring to being asleep in the night time or awake as in the day time. This is the basic question of our lives that is philosophical, yet very real.

Through The Media:
If you watch the news and follow the accounts of what is happening in the world according to the different media outlets, there is a good chance that being asleep is normal routine for your life. Most of what is reported in the media is not balanced, not factual and not fair and balanced as some outlets would suggest. There is no more balance in the far left reporting than there is in the far right reporting. CNN, MSNBC, and FOX NEWS all have their biases and their own pools of thought that yield to their agendas. Yet, many millions of Americans take the news to be the authority on what is happening in the world. We even have pundit after pundit now analyzing the way we should look at news.

It is not a world that allows us to wake up no matter how much we may think it is. Try turning the news off for a month and only reading some headlines if you feel the need to know what is going on. If you tune out all the extra stuff and just focus on the main thoughts in a headline, you'll be surprised at how your view changes to the news. Try turning off the TV news and you'll begin to breathe much easier and find more enjoyment and peace in life. If you don't believe me - try it and see if you can prove me wrong!

Our Daily Activities
Another major area where we tend to "sleep in life" is that of what we choose to do in our day. Time and time again, I see people who are running to and from all kinds of activities for their children, all kinds of events and various other things as well as all the running in high speed that they do in their jobs. There is never a moments rest. All is about getting to this place and doing this or that, having this day filled up and that weekend booked with things. Granted, some of these things are good things but when they get to the point where you have no down time and no rest in a day or even in a week, they become interference and noise in our lives.

Our bodies need the down time and the rest. We were not meat to multitask forever and ever in our lives. The brain and the body can not rest and repair itself when we're running in high gear. Try taking a look at your schedule for a week and see if you cannot cut in half all the things you do. Give yourself some down time where you might just go for a walk, or sit in a park or maybe read a book, take a bath or some other restful activity. One that does not involve the TV would be very important in these down times. And at the end of the week, see how you feel and see how life seems to you. I'm willing to bet that you'll see a difference in your life and things that you thought were helpful and important may appear differently.

Health Care
Another area where virtually most of us are asleep is in the area of our health. We tune into the media and health care ads to see what it is that we should do to keep our lives healthy. Some of us might consider the route of exercise as being the way we keep our self healthy. While this does help, health is much more than that. Some of us might be looking for a drug that helps some infliction that we face in our life or maybe a term that describes a condition we face. We feel that is healthy. Some of us feel that test after test prescribed by the medical community gives us the edge on preventive measures while in some ways, they are masking the true source of what may be going on.

Yes, some medical procedures are warranted and one should always make informed decisions but so many of us follow the medical establishment blindly because a Doctor makes some statement, or a internet site makes a claim or there is some "research trial" that suggests it is so. Do you know just how much research is done that is not being truthfully and honestly reported? Some of us might think that taking a flu shot is the best way to stay healthy when in fact, it is in all reality introducing the toxin into our system. I'm not advocating that all shots and vaccines are necessarily bad but I am urging people to open their eyes and be 100 times more informed than they are.

If you think I've fallen off my rocker, try to consider this? Listen to all the side effects of the drug commercials and in fact list them on a piece of paper. Now, take some time to ponder what these are. I'm sure you'll begin to see that some of these drugs can be more harmful than good. Realize to that with each drug that helps to alleviate some symptom in your body, it means that some other part of you is being turned off which of course leads to an imbalance in your body that will require further drugs or treatments. That's a mind blowing thought if you think about it.

Spirituality
One other big way people are asleep is through their spirituality. Yes, as spiritual as people want to be to themselves and the world, they are often asleep. Whether it is one church denomination or another or some spiritual self help group or even some new age/spiritualism thought pattern, they are all acquainted with being asleep to some degree. I'm often amazed at how one church feels they have more figured out than the next and they are the ones going to heaven while the others are going to be lost in Hell. I've even seen churches where clapping, instruments and certain activities are ok while it being considered wrong and sinful in others. Oh how I remember one church we went to that the church split up because some people liked to clap in a worship service while others thought it was immoral.

I'm more amazed at just how the new age spiritual movement tries to flee some of the teachings of the mainline churches. In it, they think that they have reached a higher enlightenment because they don't do things like the main denominational churches do. Yet, if they truly looked at what they did, they would quickly notice that their vocabulary and customs mirror that which is in the churches. Yes, there may be differences but if you look at the root of these things, you'll see the same elements in the churches.

Again, I ask you to take a look at yourself and see what is similar and what is different. Don't just follow someone's teachings or some book's teachings and treat it as the entire basis for life. That is being asleep. Question everything that is being taught and realize that much of what is being said, is nothing more than that person's own interpretation of what spirituality is all about. Spirituality is much more then following dogma or church teachings. Most of us limit spirituality though to something that has been regurgitated over and over throughout the ages without giving a thought to what is the true meaning behind our spirituality. I've got a feeling that there are going to be many surprised people one of these days when heaven and hell don't appear in the form they were taught.

All too often, we as humans look to others for our source of inspiration, knowledge and answers. We feel that the answers we seek to the conscious and unconscious questions of life, lie in what others tell us. In fact, the answers we all seek to life are within ourselves. This involves the spiritual, the physical and the mental. We all have the power within us to do much more than we realize and to understand much more than we allow ourselves to. Instead, we take the easy road and wait for someone out there to show us the way, to take us out of pain and to make up for our own insecurities. However, in doing so, we have given up the most basic part of our human nature. We have made ourselves powerless when in fact we are powerful.

Stepped On Toes
I realize that I've probably stepped on many toes here and I'm sure to those that read this, many are saying - yeah right - I don't do that or this writer is just not aware of what I know. You can take whatever road you want to take after you read this but at least consider how your life matches up to some of the things I've written about. I'm not asking you to take my word for this. I'm just hoping that you'll think about these things in an honest and truthful way to see if there is something within these words that sparks something in your brain. If you're not able to get to that place, than just hold this in the back of your mind for a future time in life where it will become more valuable to you.

It's In The Body
Many things that I now know in my life came to me many years ago. When I first heard them, I scoffed at them and tried to distance my life from them. I thought, how crazy can someone be to even think about these things. Yet, I have been shown things through very physical ways in my body that I could never understand before. When you see things through your own physical body and not as just some "unknown concept", you can know for sure that there is something to it. Too many follow too many unknowns when in all reality, the answers for most of what we need lies within us. That's all the further we have to go. If you can experience it in your body, than it is real.