Waking up can be understood in many different ways.
Most often, it means waking up to what we really are, that which all experience happens within and as. (And cannot really be pinned down by a label, although it’s sometimes called awareness, Spirit, Existence, Brahman, Big Mind etc.)
For me, more and more, it also means waking up from trauma, from the trance of trauma.
The two go hand in hand. One shows us what we are. The other helps soften and release the often strong identification created by trauma, and holding trauma in place. What we call “ego” so often seems to be result of trauma. A way for us to try to find safety, for this vulnerable self we sometimes take to be who we are and separate. (Which is not wrong, but also not the whole picture.)
And trauma does create a trance. A trance of believing the stories and deficiency stories creating the trauma and holding it place.