Are You Awake?

We can divide our species into three categories: (1) sleepwalkers, (2) dreamers, and (3) those who are waking up.

Sleepwalkers: These folks are relatively harmless but can still a pain for the rest of us.

They block the aisles at the grocery store, unaware that you are a foot from them waiting for them to let you pass.

They sit at green lights in front of you staring at their phones.

They myopically ignore and avoid politics, suffering, poverty, violations of civil rights, not to mention the late fees that their credit card companies charge.

Dreamers: These people are more complex.

Where a sleepwalker is more likely to harm himself or herself, dreamers can be dangerous to all of us.

Dreamers seduce sleepwalkers and other dreamers with their visions of how life could be if only …

Dreamers like Plato, Jesus, and JFK seduced with positive dreams.

The Beatles, Dylan, and Leonard Cohen dreamed their dreams and sent them out like sirens’ songs.

Dreamers like Hitler, Jefferson Davis, and Jim Jones seduced with negativity.

Jingoists, war mongers, fundamentalists preaching hell and damnation, racists: they seduce with fear and negativity.

Dreamers lynched African-Americans for years (before they discovered that incarceration was cleaner and more effective), dreaming that white bastards could remain in power over African Americans indefinitely if they just oppressed them sufficiently, seducing followers with the message that God selected his chosen people by assigning skin color.

Dreamers tend to be delusional, for better or for worse.

Pollyanna or Dante with a million variations in between.

Some dreamers sell love; some sell hate; but they all share a sense of unreality.

Becoming awake: There are few around.

Obvious examples are the Dalai Lama, don Miguel Ruiz, Warren Buffet, Eckhart Tolle, and unnamed Zen masters.

As an undergrad, I had a professor who taught art history.

The one thing I remember from his course, other than it was nice to sit in the dark and see his slideshows, was that he said, “I do not want to hear any of you ever say that a work of art represents reality as it really is.”

I don’t know if I understood what so offended him: the apparent redundancy, the metaphysical arrogance of assuming that we would know “reality as it really is” if it bit us on the collective leg, or the quasi-sixties jargon (I’m dating myself, but that was the sixties).

Yet, with apologies to art historians everywhere, it is hard to say it better: those who are becoming awake embrace reality: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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Note how we all have different systems for perceiving reality (or, if you prefer, phenomena).

Becoming awake challenges us; we may prefer to live in our dream worlds or with our delusions.

One could argue that we cope with the harsh glare of reality by sleepwalking and dreaming.

“Somewhere over the rainbow …”

Buddha taught us to wake up and then help others wake up.

Reality can be harsh, but it emanates power and beauty only appreciated when we embrace it.

An effective coach can help you enhance your awakening and live a fuller life by coaching with wisdom.