We speak of awakening
as discovering Freedom and Liberation.
The question arises:
Freedom from what?

From the insidious little voice
continually whispering
in your ear, so close,
closer than close,
that you assume
it is yourself.

It offers comfort—
for without it
there is only the unknown:
Life in its rawness, undefined,
uncontrolled, immense,
uncontainable, all-consuming,
without any fixed mooring
from which to navigate.

It makes things small,
manageable, offering
the illusion of security.
It weaves a story
that places you at the centre.
Unconstrained awareness
is captured to believe
that little you—the whispering voice—
is the measure of all things.
You lean on it like a walking-aid,
fearing that without its support
you would stumble, fall, be lost.

And then the shutters fall away,
and the vast unknown
reveals itself as Home,
as one’s true self,
the living heart
of the One Being,
the undefinable you
that excludes nothing.

You see that small voice
for what it is—
a shadow trying to protect you,
yet drawing life from your source,
spinning a façade
that forever crumbles.

Leave it be.
It is not your enemy,
but neither is it your guide.
It pretended to shield you
from an imagined foe,
yet in doing so it veiled you
from the radiance of your own Being.

When you find yourself
swimming and diving and surfing
in the great ocean of eternity,
let the transient wave
you imagined yourself to be
simply rise and fall and pass away.

And in that seeing
you recognize it was never
who you were.
You dreamed a dream of individuality,
and that is all it ever was—
a believable dream that vanishes
in the daylight of awakening.