Is awakening binary or a degree?
In my experience, both are true in their own way.
It can come gradually or suddenly, and the deepening into it is gradual.
WHAT IS AWAKENING?
What is awakening?
In short, it’s what I am noticing itself.
To myself, I am consciousness, and it’s the consciousness I am noticing itself.
I find this in immediate noticing. I am fundamentally this awake space within which all experiences appear, including what a thought calls this human self, the wider world, and so on.
Intellectually, I find the same. To myself, in immediate experience, I cannot be a human being with consciousness as a kind of appendage. To myself, I have to be this consciousness within which this human being and the wider world appears, and also any sense of an observer or doer or anything any thought can point to.
WHO AND WHAT I AM
It’s not wrong that I am this human self in the world. It’s an assumption that works reasonably well. As who I am, I am this human self in the world with a name, biography, passport, and so on.
If I viscerally take myself to fundamentally be this object in the world, it inevitably comes with some inherent discomfort, distress, and a sense that something is off somewhere.
In my own first-person experience, I find I more fundamentally am something else. I find I am what the world, as it appears to me, happens within and as. I am the consciousness that forms itself into any and all experiences.
This profoundly changes the context of my everything. I am no longer fundamentally an object at the mercy of an unpredictable world. I am what it all, to me, happens within and as. There is a (groundless) ground for it all.
THE PROCESS
That noticing is, in a sense, binary. The consciousness we are either notices itself as the appearance of the whole world or not.
Awakening is also a process.
It’s a process of…
The consciousness I am noticing itself here and now, and noticing itself in daily life and through different states and the always-changing content of experience. This is a new habit.
Exploring how it is for this human self to live within and from this new context. How it is to live from and as this in different situations and areas of life.
Inviting our human self to heal and reorganize within this new context.
Exploring the different facets and aspects of my nature – what a thought may call capacity for the world, consciousness, oneness, love, and so on. From my own experience, I can also include the fertile darkness, divine feminine, Christ energies, and more. There seems to be no end of these facets of what I am that can come to the foreground of experience and be noticed and explored.
MY EXPERIENCE WITH SEEING ENERGIES
There is another reason why I tend to focus on the degree aspect of awakening, and that has to do with my own experiences starting in my teens.
In the summer of 1986, when I was sixteen, I was sitting outside in the garden under beautiful birch trees reading a book. This was the year when the world – including everything connected with this human self – seemed very far away. (I have written about this before. I thought something was profoundly wrong, medical experts couldn’t find anything, and I later understood this was an apparent observer-observer split.)
I remember seeing the leaves against the blue sky, and seeing light around the leaves. I initially dismissed it as some kind of optical illusion. In the following days, this light became stronger and stronger, and in a few days, I saw the light around everything and everyone.
I saw it around inanimate objects, plants, non-human beings, and humans, although the structure was (is) different around each type of object. It’s simple around inanimate objects. Brighter and more alive around plants. More complex and goes further out in non-human beings. And even more complex and goes even further out around humans. (In reality, it seems to go infinitely far out around everything and everything, but the more obvious part of this is closer to the object or body.)
For whatever reason, what I see most clearly is the degree of awakening in someone’s system.
How awake is the consciousness to itself? How far out from the body does this awakeness go? How subtle/high frequency (for lack of a better word!) is it?
I was alone with this, and the awakening process in general, until a few years later.
When I was 19 and in my weekly tai chi class, a young woman talked with me during the tea break after class. We walked to the train station together, and she said she had taken contact with me because she had seen my energy field in class while standing behind me. She could see the awakening process I was in and that I too can see energies.
We became close friends. Once, I remember sitting at a train station with her looking at the energy system of different people and comparing notes. We always saw the same, although certain things were more highlighted for each of us.
A couple of years later, something similar happened with the then-wife of Jes Bertelsen.
WHAT DO I SEE?
What are some of the things I see in the energy field?
Different practices have different effects on the energy/consciousness field. People do body-centered practices like tai chi, qigong, yoga, Breema, and to some extent dance, the energy field close to the body is brighter than average. People who do basic meditation (notice and allow) often have a field that’s conscious of itself relatively far out. (Although it depends on how clear their practice it and often for how long they have done it.) Some practices bring in a lot of light into the system, especially devotional and heart-centered practices. Some practices create a very soft and almost watery energy/consciousness field. (Some of the higher levels of the Vortex Healing training do this.)
Some have a relatively awake field although they have no interest or experience with (organized) spiritual practice, and they don’t seem to have a conscious noticing of their nature, at least not something they would put into words (or be interested in putting into words). The awakeness just there and lived. That’s very beautiful to me.
Immediately after a noticeable awakening shift, there is often a lot of light and energy in the system. This fades and softens over time and it seems to be a kind of side-effect of the awakening shift. This can last for months or even years. (For me, it lasted many years and faded slowly.)
When there is a reasonable amount of awakening in the system, the field (consciousness) is awake to itself infinitely far out.
The most awake systems I have seen – Adyashanti, some Tibetan teachers, and a few others – have a field that is far more subtle and high frequency. It’s almost like water. It seems to live very close to void or emptiness.
No matter how messed up a system is at a human level – no matter how much trauma, reactivity, pain, and so on – there is always light. The energy field is made of light. They are essentially, at an energetic level, light. That’s beautiful to me.
And a couple of more specific instances…
When I was a member of the Center for Sacred Sciences in Eugene, Oregon, one of the veterans had some kind of awakening shift. He was presented as awake and a new teacher. In his field, I saw that the awakeness was wobbly and not as clear as it was presented. Within a few weeks, there was another announcement saying that the awakening wasn’t as stable as they had thought.
When I was nineteen and in my early twenties, I did a lot of Heart/Jesus Prayer (which continued 24/7) and also Christ meditation. I could feel a kind of heat on top of my head, and I was very surprised when I saw myself in the mirror and noticed a kind of flame on top of my head. It was very similar to some of the depictions of the Holy Spirit descending on the disciples. I suspect this happens to anyone doing these practices with some dedication, receptivity, and over some time.
Note: Lightly edited for clarity August 2026.