Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church

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Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church

Untitled Document

“Awake”
Rev. Sara Ascher
11 September 2005

“Wake Up!” Like a window smashing it comes, the alarm, the voice, the music, the gentle touch, the sunbeam on our face calling us to awake and to begin our day. Everyday we are startled out of unconsciousness, out of dreaming into reality, into the duties and tasks of the day ahead. We have to wake up and get up to go to school, to work, to clean the house or run errands, maybe even just to take the growing number of medications our physicians have prescribed.

To be awake, to be conscious, to be aware of our surroundings, to be as Stephen Batchelor (a former Buddhist Monk) writes “exposed to the unsettling ambiguity of [the] world. To be metaphorically ‘awake’,” he continues, “is to encounter [the] world and respond…”

We are called to wake up again and again in a multitude of ways. And these calls to consciousness are not only pulling us out of slumber, but ignorance and illusion. Awakenings come in many guises, but in general there are two types, suggests Pir Zia Inayat Khan, the president of the Sufi Order International, North America. He says that our awakenings either come as a “sudden mind-bending glimpse of hidden things” or as a “sustained inner capacity to integrate experience…[into] realization.” So there are truths that come to us all at once in one moment, like a flash of lightening while others come slow like an iceberg creeping towards us.

“The goal of awakening,” writes Rabbi Rami Shapiro, “is the ending of the [divided] self.” The idea, on a spiritual level is to integrate all of who we are as one being rather than living as a collection of separate selves. Being awake is to be fully aware not just to get through our day or even the rest of our lives, but also to be awakened to something deeper, something of truth.

Not all awakenings are joyful or blissful or bring elation. Today we mark the fourth anniversary of the horror and tragedy of the terrorist attacks on the 11 September 2001. Our nation was awakened that day. Through the fire and smoke and dust and shock came the painful realization that we as a people are not invincible – that the two oceans that flank the eastern and western edges of our country cannot protect us from all harm that may be directed at us. In fact they cannot even protect us from knowing others wish us harm.

Over these past several years we have had to learn, as other nations have, how to live with a fear and a sense of vulnerability few of us had ever felt before this. We have had to get used to walking through airports where armed security stand watch with rifles. We have had to wake up to the idea that though we personally have done nothing to injure another, the actions of our government and the values of our nation are enough to induce the wrath of others.

This is an awakening of a deep and difficult kind. To come to the knowledge that simply being who we are, living our lives in a manner that makes sense to us and living our beliefs to the best of our abilities can evoke such hatred in another that they would wish our destruction. It is the ugliness of our humanity that is the hardest to wake up to. It is the part of ourselves that we would rather ignore, hide away or claim that only a few possess. But this ability to hate lies within us all. Every time we think another person to be lesser than ourselves we are destroying their humanity. This is a truth that if we are to make inroads in abolishing war and oppression that we must face. This is as important to our full awakening as human beings as is the idea that we as finite creatures have a great power to change.

But to change we must first know ourselves. We must be awakened to the truth of our inner selves and understand the divinity that lies within. And awakening is all about change – changing our perceptions and prejudices; our actions and thoughts. It is about seeing what is real, not just what we wish to be true.

A story is told about a young student in India who spent years at the side of his guru learning. Suddenly the student comes to understand that there are no opposites, all distinctions are illusory. God is All and All is God.

Deeply grateful and filled with bliss, he declares: “God is the sole Reality!” Then be bows deeply to his teacher and goes out into the world.

Not long after leaving his community he finds himself walking along a narrow jungle path, uplifted, savoring his realization. Coming the other way, is an elephant with his rider shouting to warn travelers of its approach.

The student thinks to himself ‘why should I concern myself with the elephant? All is one; I and the elephant are one.’ Blissfully, he continues on his path. The rider’s cries grow louder and louder, but the student is absorbed in his elation. ‘I am God, and the elephant is God.’ And so he proceeds to walk along the path toward the elephant.

A moment later, the student finds himself lying in a ditch, covered with bruises and mud.

He returns to his teacher, limping and confused, asking him how could that have happened?

The guru replies, ‘Yes, it is true that you are God and the elephant is God. But why didn’t you listen to the voice of the rider, who is also God, shouting at you to get out of the way?’

The problem with the poor student is that he didn’t integrate the sudden understanding he had come to into his everyday experience of the world. Just because he saw and felt and knew deeply that all creation is united doesn’t change the natural state of things. An elephant is still an elephant, a human being still a human being and in the event that on a narrow road person and elephant meet one another coming in the opposite directions it is obvious that the person is going to lose the battle of who has the right of way.

But we don’t need an elephant to knock us off the path to be brought back to reality. Events occur all the time, small and great, that jostle us awake to our lives: the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, an unexpected gesture of kindness, a glorious sunset, reading. All these moments call us to be aware, to be awake to that which is happening around us. I’ve heard it said several different ways, but the idea remains the same…that life is what happens around you while you are busy doing something else.

We get caught up in these other things and we need reminders of how precious a gift our lives truly are. And so we come together. We gather together as a religious community to be awakened, to catch glimpses of ultimate truths hidden and to continue the process of living as whole beings. “Often a Holy Thing,” wrote Pythagoras, “is living hidden in [the] dark.” So we come together to integrate our experience into our realization and to bring meaning to the moments of our awakening. The words from the Gnostic Gospel of Philip reads, “You must awaken while in this body for everything exists in it…”