What is Awakening? What are we “Awakening” from?

Our objective at Artemes is to help inspire a global awakening. We believe that it is possible to use today’s technology to create a paradigm shift resulting in a new experience of reality. 

We have given a lot of thought to the “how” part of this, to creating a system that makes sense in an economic way and allows innovative, integrous leaders to step up and have the resources to create real change. The big picture “how” is a continuous conversation where philosophy meets reality. 

Fortunately, we need not wait for a cutting-edge system to begin this process of awakening. We, you, every individual, can start the process now, in this very moment.

But what are we awakening from? What does this even mean?

What is “awakening” ?  

a·wak·en·ing
/əˈwāk(ə)niNG/

noun

1. an act of waking from sleep.
2. an act or moment of becoming suddenly aware of something.

When it comes to spiritual awakening, both definitions work. I particularly like the second because of the concept of awareness. When I say awakened, I mean that moment when you see/realize/understand that reality and your perception of reality are not the same thing. 

It is the ultimate ah ha moment. 

An awakening doesn’t happen to everyone and it happens differently every time. Your awakening may come as a result of a life changing experience. It may come as a result of hitting rock bottom. It may come as a result of great hardship, grief or wondrous joy. You may seek out awakening for decades or it may present itself as subtly as a passing glance.

The moment that you accept that all is not what it seems, you may begin a new journey. You may be the same person externally, but the world is definitely not the same for you.

“My father says almost the whole world’s asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says only a few people are awake. And they live in a state of constant, total amazement.”

Patricia to Joe in Joe Vs the Volcano

What are we awakening from?

Good question dear reader! What ARE we awakening from? What is this great sleep I speak of?

I personally see my life asleep like a continuous loop of a movie that played in my mind. Like a movie, it was like reality but it was not reality. Like a movie it was based on a story that a person, or many people – had contrived.

It consisted of memories of the past and dreams of the future, and it was epic only in its complexity of beautiful, ugly, mean, wishful, fantastical, sexually-charged, societally conditioned thoughts and feelings that were burned into my synapses.

These thoughts were narrated by a voice that I thought was me.  A voice that jabbed and cut better than Muhammad Ali. My world consisted of this voice and these thoughts, spliced together one after another into a thought-dream, a movie. The movie that was my reality.

What I thought was the whole world—vast and sprawling—was actually just a microcosm of what I was capable of experiencing or contributing to. I was operating from within this limitation, breathing in shallow and fighting for air. I thought I saw the world in full color, when really it was shrouded in darkness. I saw the shadows and believed them to be light.

My perception of reality had very little to do with my actual moment to moment circumstances. Business meetings, lunches, parties, cigars, sex, nearly everything happened around me while I was trapped in my mind. The same scenes played out over and over again…  

Does this seem familiar?

What does your reality look like? 

Is it based in truth?

Is it possible that like me, you live in your own illusion too?

You are the only one who can answer this question.

Sit alone quietly and ask these questions of your Self and a new reality may begin to emerge… Maybe a reality of constant, total amazement.