Awakening

Some things simply come to me and I feel drawn to write them down.  This is one of them... brought on by a dream I had of a particular painting... and I am sharing it here with you.  You don’t have to think as I do or believe as I do but you might find it interesting.


I believe the spiritual journey is not so much a journey as it is an awakening... akin to how we might wake from a very deep sleep... allowing our senses to make the transition from a dream-like state to a gradual awareness of sound, atmosphere, etc.  When this gradual transition is made, it is then we might open our eyes... or even close them again until we are ready to keep them open.  Then is the struggle to separate ourselves from the warmth of our blanket cocoon.

There are times that which I experience is much like the state between sleep and wakefulness.  And when I do, I have a great sense of awareness that what I have experienced is very much a part of my continual awakening.  

I do not travel from place to place.  There are no particular stages or steps to my awakening.  So it cannot be considered a journey... though I often thought of it that way.  No, I am realizing that the things I am becoming more aware of... the “growth spurts” as I call them... are parts of myself I have always had... but did not know.  It’s as if they were always a part of me from before the beginning of time... but lay dormant...  waiting patiently to be awakened.

Are they discoveries along the way, as I’ve often referred to them?  Or is it more like finding a long lost prize possession and rejoicing in its finding?  

Not so very long ago I did an oil painting I called, “The Awakening”.  The painting depicts a nude female figure rising out of the fire and ascending into the air along with the fire’s smoke.  As she ascends, her physical body becomes less and less detailed.  It can still be seen but indistinctly through the also rising smoke.  Her awakening is depicted as an inner, spiritual one.

The thing is, awakenings are not total or permanent.  They cannot be isolated and categorized.  One cannot say a simple introduction to an awakening constitutes the whole picture.  No.  Just as when we awaken from a sound sleep to the real world, it is a gradual process... so gradual that it will take us our entire lifetimes to reach complete wakefulness.

The Awakening

Love, Light and Joy to you!

Rev. Connie