Woke... or just dissociated from the body?

One of the biggest questions that I find rattling around the back of my mind, unanswered, goes something like this…

How has our modern-day, civilised state been achieved?

• Have we continued to evolve as a species?

• Or have we just developed tons of tech?

• Have we moved forwards through love and awareness?

• Or are we simply more dissociated from the body?

Perhaps it’s just underlying pessimism on my part, but mostly I find myself aligning with answers 2 and 4 above.

Yes, I do see that people are more heart-centred now than when I was growing up in the seventies and eighties. But they also seem less real. Is the drop in violence and aggression due to a more open heart? Or is it simply because we’re now so out of our body that we no longer feel all those uncomfortable animal emotions?

I don’t know the answer to that.

One thing that I do feel confident to assert is that true social progress can only be achieved through individuals developing more self-awareness - through us having the courage to look inside and investigate our thinking and behaviour. We have to be willing to track down our most cherished beliefs and thinking patterns to their true source. And that can only happen on an individual basis - one person at a time.

Do I see more of that happening now than when I was growing up? Nope. It seems about the same to me. It’s like there are always a few people who naturally start to look inside and go deeper. Then there are people who at some point get inspired to do so by others, and get enough of a result to continue. Then there are people who, like myself, find their lives getting so dysfunctional that they can no longer avoid taking radical action. And then there are the masses.

How does the world outside relate to all of this? I mean, ideally we would live in a world where more attention to looking inside would be promoted by the government or surrounding social systems. Right now, that’s not even on the radar. In such a world, we would be encouraged to go out and experience life - to get a job, find friendships, fall in love - but to also use our experiences to come to understand ourselves more deeply. In short, to also look inside and develop our self-knowledge.

I’ve never heard of such a world existing, at any point in our past. But I don’t see us any further away from the possibility of it happening, just as we’re no closer. The idea of such a world is still in play. It could still emerge.

So, does the world outside even matter? Does it matter what political system we have? Does it matter how fair the world is? I think that it matters but by no means as much as many who want to change things believe. That’s precisely because of the inter-relationship between our inner and outer world. Ideally, the conditions in the world around us stimulate us to look into our inner world. That can happen in capitalist, communist or fascist systems. It can happen in autocracies or democracies.

I believe the thing that it is vital to understand is that, initially, each of us seek to create a world that no longer triggers us. Our ego-dominated mind seeks stability for itself. Situations that are manifestly unfair - such as the way that people of different race or sexual orientation are often treated by society - trigger that stability-seeking ego. Many of us seek to oppose unfairness - to drive it from society.

This to me is undeniably good. I do not wish to live in a world that is racist or that marginalises people who do not fall into simple sexual categories. But in pushing to create such a world, the personal aspect of the triggering must also be appreciated.

It is important to be able to say “I feel triggered by racism” and to not simply jump to “racism is bad.” Without this step, there is a risk that our ego simply puffs out into a state of rigidity through the moral posture we are taking. And that decreases the possibility that we can develop self-knowledge, self-awareness.

This is why I have issues with the term “woke.” The word itself implies a completed state. It appeals directly to that part of us that does not wish to look inside but instead wants to simply adopt the posture of being morally superior to others and to try to change the world outside. It’s a colossal ego-trip and it can be addictive. The term “waking” would be a great deal better.

If we stay “woke” for too long, all that will happen is that we will dissociate from our body more and more. Our mind will simply have weaponised itself to achieve social change. Our sense of our body will recede further and further from our awareness.

Addicted to maintaining a sense of moral righteousness, our weaponised mind will embed itself even more deeply within us and, bit by bit, our essential humanity will become lost. Substituting moral posturing for genuine human feeling, over time we become simply robotic.

As we seek constantly the latest thing that we must take the right attitude towards, so we reduce further the possibility of returning to the path of self-awareness. We have become victims of an addiction at least as virulent as that experienced by anyone trapped in the grip of substance dependence. We have become junkies.

It actually takes at least as much courage to face ourselves as it does to face the world. To access, feel and show all that anger, pain and vulnerability hidden inside is a huge challenge. Taking a moral posture is much easier. But it is the life of a true human being to face oneself as much as we face the world.

We want progress. We want the world to become better. We want to make a fairer and more decent society. These things are good. But if through this forward movement we become detached from the possibility of developing our self-awareness, nothing good will come of it. Not for us and neither for anyone else.

Become waking… not woke.

Thank you for reading.

Devaraj