Instead, we’re also interconnected with all life, the same way a wave is inseparable from the ocean.

Our choice today is to break down, shut down, act out—or break through and wake up.

When we wake in, we discover our individual human being as an innocent and wise “Being.” From here, the core stories and the old feelings of shame—“I’m not good enough,” “Something’s wrong with me,” “I’m unlovable”—are no longer convincing.

Upon initially waking-up, we are free of much of the internal suffering of egoic craving, aversion, worry, and depression. However, we can get spaced out, remaining detached from the ability to live a fully embodied human life. Until you can continue to wake in and wake out, you can remain ethically relative and emotionally detached.

You can wake up, but still not grow up.

Waking-in is where waking-up meets growing up.

A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest

Identity moves from ego to self to Being. This awake-identity process is only available when growing up and waking-up meet. The awake-identity stage of development allows us to detox our repressed emotional storehouses and rewire our brains so that we can respond to life rather than merely reacting.

Second, in this day and age, it’s actually more difficult and dangerous to try “holding it together” and “doing the best we can” from the level of ego-identification than it is to begin the journey of awakening.