When you begin your struggle to: Wake-up, become Enlightened, achieve Liberation, etc., everyone feels that whatever method, and teaching they attempt to follow
is supposed be solemn and an imposition, and indeed, to those born with an interest in the ancient, uncommon inner activity called by such names,
nothing could be more serious to them, nor represent a more important challenge,
but if eventually you have not reached a state (brought on by your own earned understanding) wherein you awaken every morning laughing and excited about having another day to realize even more astounding stuff about life that no one else notices,
then you’ve never gotten around to actually doing what you originally set out to do.
This is not said to cause guilt or discouragement in those who,
after years of effort to reach a new level of consciousness, do feel dismayed
either at the path they chose, or at their own weakness in successfully pursuing it,
but simply to bring this matter to their attention.
 

(For expediency, let us call the aim of that certain hunger that so calls to the few
by its oldest and most frequently employed description: to Wake-up  --
to Wake-up from a dream life men normally and unknowingly lead.)
If you believe that you have been sincerely trying to Wake-up  for a number of years, and feel that you have not only failed, but have, by and large,
not even made meaningful headway (allowing for the fact that you may now be
thirty years older than when you began this effort, and have, perforce of age, abandoned some questionable habits, and are less upset by the stupidities of life,
but you are still truly dozing if you can mistake an unsought-for decrease in
your overall passion for being alive for an increase in wisdom:
this is natural for ordinary men, but poison for the few),
the time need come that you radically reconsider what you are doing,
or you will eventually slip into the slick slide to cynicism,
or to even greater delusions than you started with (specifically that maybe you are actually somehow awake, especially if you can find other people who will act like
they believe you are after hearing your sales pitch promoting the idea).
 

If what you're doing isn't fun and exciting,
then what you're doing isn't trying to Wake-up --  you’re trying to prove a point
(more precisely): your genetic temperament is trying to prove a point
using the brain’s consciousness and ability to have thoughts and generate speech (more exact still): you’re not trying to Wake-up --
your temperament is trying to defend itself,
(even more specifically): you’re not trying to Wake-up  --
your temperament is fighting to stay asleep (that is): to stay as it is.
 

It appears unavoidable that a man who wants to awaken must spend several decades at least in frustrating effort, but that is no sign that the aim is not real or achievable,
and if this describes your present position  --  be thankful  --
thankful that those years are behind you and that you can now take the biggest step
on this strange journey that you have taken since you first commenced it:
that of an extraordinary, totally unnaturally-feeling reconsideration of everything
you think you know about what you have been doing to: Wake-up.
 

Few of those who begin this adventure get past this predictable sticking spot:
where is played the game of: Waking-up  --  few to no successes are to be seen,
but the field is littered with the bent bodies of frustrated failures;
this is not condemnation of any teaching or method that men adopt as a means to achieve their goal: you must start somewhere, and you must start by doing something, whatever it is, but if you are not to end up disappointed, bitter, even slightly kooky,
you must have it in you to eventually take full, unconditional stock of what you,
at this moment personally understand about the goal itself,
and the methods you are employing in its pursuit
(hope you won’t feel like the game’s been spoiled if the inevitable result of such true stock taking is revealed in advance).
 

Though your natural born mind may immediately find what is about to be said
to be foolishness, or perhaps think it an allegorical statement,
it is neither: as strange, improbable and perhaps quite unsettling as the idea may be, the words represent as closely as possible the reality of the situation (to wit):
if, after sufficient years of frustrating efforts to awaken,
the man truly to this venture born, takes an instant, top-to-bottom survey of
what he personally understands about his goal and what he is doing to get there,
he realizes that he understands nothing about either,
and to such a man this is in no wise a nihilistic statement of fact, but rather the realization of its veracity is his first real step into a more awakened state.
It is not a matter that you were stupid for the first twenty, thirty years
you struggled to Wake-up and thought you knew what you were involved in:
this period is like mandatory service in the minor leagues
without which no one can enter the major one,
and no one can set foot in the major one without one day suddenly, instantly,
and all at once, realizing down to the marrow of your bones that you don’t have
the least idea what you have been doing all those years on the farm team:
for the real nervous system rebel: this is like the first day of a brand new life;
it is his first experience of having his eyes/I’s opened at all
to what is really going on with life;
it will be remembered as the best day of your entire life.
 

In words it can certainly sound like some sort of pseudo, mystical flim flam;
a ridiculous comment attempting to pass as one filled with paradoxical allegory,
but it is as true a fact about this great adventure as can be put in words.
From a quite valid perspective: you only really begin to understand what this interest you have is when you one day suddenly and fully realize that
you have no idea what it is:
this could be called: The Basic Awakening,
and in spite of how hollow or bewildering it may sound to you at this moment,
this extraordinary, purely personal realization is the true beginning of everything
for the certain man (who takes the matter this far).
 

The Great Liberation is also a most indicative name for the aim of this special activity, and the freedom it gives is from a captivity most specific:
the delusion that you understand what you’re doing in the intangible area of your life:
to be asleep and imprisoned is to know --  is to believe that you know,
(same as every other normal human being on this planet):
only the man whose mind is no longer trapped in the dark dreams of one in prison understands that no one knows what everyone says they know,
and he now understands how/why this is, and his foot comes miraculously,
and unnaturally  --  out of a totally confining trap --
and a trap that other humans don’t even realize exists:
they take the trap to be their mind rather than the trap.