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Awakening

It is not the essence (true self) that wakes up. When you talk about awakening, you are talking not about the essence but about the machine (external self). The essence does not wake up because it has the inability to fall asleep. In fact it is to the great suffering of the essence that he cannot stop, that he cannot fall asleep. It is stuck for all eternity in its wakeful state.

When the machine is asleep, it exercises its own will. When the machine wakes up, the will of the machine is disrupted, weakened, and the essence can exercise its will. The essence does not fall asleep but it becomes distracted. The essence does not fall asleep; it identifies. It identifies with what? It identifies with the sleep of the machine, so that it experiences sleep, oblivion, forgetfulness. It forgets itself by identifying with the drama of the machine.

In the awakened state, we cannot stand eternity. It's an interesting thing how the machine has no problem with the notion of eternity. There is this extension of time behind us, this extension of time before us, and they are both infinite. With space, the same. And we seem to go about it fairly well. It's infinity we cannot stand as machines. We freak out every time we glimpse it.

We create the whole world to avoid infinity. Then one day we find ourselves without this biological machine, in this true eternal state. Infinity is no problem for the essence; it is eternity we cannot tolerate. We cannot tolerate it, so we find a way to scale down again and again, into a place where we can dream again and fall asleep. The way for the essence to experience sleep is to identify with the sleep of the machine, to forget itself--then it finds a little bit of alleviation of its own suffering. This has been and will always be the suffering of the Absolute. The Absolute is trapped in its own creation, just as we are trapped in our own dramas, our own dreams, our own lives. That is the plight that is symbolized by the man on the cross.

The Creator cannot choose not to exist, because it took this turn in its own history. Whatever the Absolute did at one point, it's stamped in eternity and it's always doing it. Just like you cannot choose not to exist. We share that, that amount of pain. And a long time ago this idea of Prayer Absolute was developed in such a way that it would allow us to take on as much of that suffering as we could. We have acquired the habit, when we face the eternal state and the unveiled vision of the reality of the real world, of closing off to it, of rejecting it, of running away from it. One of the strategies that we have developed to run away from eternity is the strategy of taking rebirth, of landing. We cannot stand being in that suspended state and we struggle very hard to attain rebirth. We panic ourselves into it. Each one of us follows our own particular set of habits.

This is another key principle that you would do well to remember: the essence is a body as well; it is a body composed of habits. It is a specific number of habits, and it is a small number of habits. It is made up of these habits, and they are so entrenched that they persist beyond death, beyond the death of the biological machine--long-lasting habits. They are programs that we run, very simple habits, extremely simple, and there are only eighteen of them. The personality becomes very complex, constructed to handle very complex situations. The habit of identifying with the drama that is around us is a very common one for the essence. You cannot eliminate the habits of the essence. You can substitute the habits of the essence for other habits that will become eternal. You can substitute the drama identification with the habit of not reacting.

Koyote the Blind  

Koyote the Blind is an Hablador (Master Storyteller) in the 9th century Toltec tradition. He is also the one responsible for bringing the Aka Dua to the public in the Western Hemisphere.

Awakening is excerpted from the book Teachings of a Toltec Survivor by Koyote the Blind. The book is a record of the magically created performance of Koyote during the twelve weeks between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice in 2007.

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