Awaken

    As I aged through time, moving through life rather than truly experiencing it, I felt an increasing disengagement with the world around me. A good therapist might see this as a "mid-life crisis," but it was something far deeper—something more profound. It was as if I had been sleepwalking through existence, only to suddenly awaken. Not just an awakening of thought, but an existential rupture, a tearing away of the illusion I had unknowingly wrapped myself in.

    Life before felt like a dream—one filled with distractions, obligations, and a hollow sense of purpose dictated by forces outside of me. But now, standing in the clarity of this moment, I began asking myself the questions that had long been buried beneath routine and expectation.

"When was the last time you felt good?"

"Is this really all there is?"

"Why do you limit yourself?"

    These were not passive thoughts. They came with weight, with urgency. Each question chipped away at the facade I had accepted for so long, revealing a raw and undeniable truth: I had been conditioned to accept a reality that was never truly mine.

    And so, I came to understand what was happening to me—it was an Awakening. A shift in perception so profound that it made the world itself feel different. It wasn’t the world that had changed, though. I had changed. My consciousness had expanded beyond the limits I had unknowingly placed upon it.

    This was more than self-reflection. It was a moment of true freedom, where I could finally see the chains I had worn for so long—the ones I had mistaken for necessity, for structure, for security. But now, they were nothing more than weights holding me down, illusions masquerading as truths.

And for the first time, I had the power to break them.

    And so, with my illusions shattered, I stood at the edge of something unknown—something terrifying yet intoxicating. The weight of my past, of all the expectations and conditioning I had unknowingly carried, was slipping away, leaving behind a strange and unfamiliar lightness.

    But lightness is not always freedom. At first, it felt like an abyss—a vast, formless space where everything I once believed had crumbled, and nothing yet existed to replace it. I had awakened, but to what? If the life I had lived was a dream, then what was reality?

    That question haunted me. It wasn’t just about the external world—it was about me. Who was I without the narratives I had clung to for so long? Without the labels, the goals I had thought were mine but were never truly chosen?

For a while, I drifted, lost in the weightlessness of awareness. But then I realized something: this emptiness wasn’t a void. It was possibility.

For the first time, I wasn’t bound by unconscious patterns. I wasn’t reacting—I was choosing.

And choice is power.

    I saw, then, what this Awakening truly meant. Reality isn’t something that happens to us—it’s something we create. It is not static, not fixed, not some immovable truth we are forced to accept. It is shaped by consciousness, perception, and choice.

    These were the forces I had been blind to before, the forces that had always been mine to wield. The world is not simply the world. It is a shifting mosaic, a fluid tapestry woven by what we perceive and believe.

So, I asked myself a different question: If I am awake now, what do I choose to create?

I could fall back into the dream, let the weight of old fears and habits lull me back into unconsciousness. That would be easy. Safe.

Or, I could step forward—into the unknown, into something real.

Into myself.

And so, with the chains of the past broken, I took my first step into a world of my own making.

    At first, stepping into this new reality felt like walking barefoot on shattered glass—each step painful, uncertain, unfamiliar. I had spent so long moving through life on autopilot that conscious living felt overwhelming.

    Everything I had taken for granted, every belief I had accepted without question, now demanded scrutiny. I saw the systems around me—capitalism, materialism, social hierarchies—not as immutable forces but as constructs. And like all constructs, they only had power if I continued to accept them.

    I questioned everything. Why did I need to chase success as defined by others? Why did I measure my worth by my productivity? Who had told me what I should want, and why had I believed them?

And most importantly: If none of these things defined me, then who was I?

At first, I had no answer. And that terrified me.

But fear is just another construct. A conditioned response meant to keep us from change. And I had already changed.

So, I let go.

  

      I stopped chasing. Stopped clinging. I let the old version of myself dissolve. It was painful—grieving the person I had been, the person I had pretended to be for so long. But in that grief, I found something new: freedom.

    I started to see the world as it was, not as I had been told it should be. Reality was fluid, subjective, shaped by my own perception. And the more I embraced this truth, the more I felt a strange sense of power—the power of choice.

So, what did I do?

I walked away from the illusions. I abandoned the need for validation. I stopped living by the rules of a game I had never agreed to play.

I redefined success—not as wealth or recognition, but as authenticity. Not as external achievement, but as inner clarity.

I devoted myself to truth—not absolute, objective truth, but my truth. The reality I could shape through Consciousism, through the understanding that to be awake is to create.

And I created.

I wrote. I spoke. I shared. I connected.

    I sought out others who had glimpsed beyond the veil, who had felt the stirrings of something greater. Some understood immediately. Others resisted, afraid to wake from their comfortable slumber. But truth, once glimpsed, cannot be unseen.

And so, I keep going.

Because once you awaken, there is no going back.