Waking Up Isn’t What You Think It Is: The Deep Work of Seeing Clearly

Photo: Karina lago

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“The American dream of freedom and abundance is just a child’s rendering of true freedom and abundance, and serves only to convince people who haven’t gone anywhere that they’ve already arrived.” — Jed McKenna

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If you want the real thing, not just a temporary high or another mindset trick, you have to be willing to throw out everything you think you know.

Waking up is not a moment. It’s not bliss, transcendence, or the sudden arrival of peace. It’s the crumbling of illusion.

It’s realizing that the way you’ve been trying to change yourself is the reason nothing ever changes.

This isn’t about rebelling against the system for the sake of it. It’s about realizing the system is inside you. The real trap isn’t society, politics, or even trauma. It’s how you’ve been taught to interpret reality.

And most of that is borrowed. Unquestioned. Inherited from people who were suffering too.

What Most Self-Help Gets Wrong

The entire industry runs on the assumption that there’s something wrong with you that needs to be fixed. So it gives you tasks. Vision boards, gratitude lists, habits, mantras. They can help you feel productive. But feeling productive is not the same as being free.

The real problem is that most self-help never addresses who is doing the helping. Who is running the program? Who is deciding what needs to be healed or fixed? It’s usually a program built on defense mechanisms and outdated survival systems.

In other words, you’re using the problem to try and fix the problem.