What changes after awakening?

There are many things which change after awakening, but rather than mentioning them all in this post, I just want to talk about the root causes, which are A) awareness of connection between the inner and the outer world, and B) motivation for now.

I started to notice the connection between my inner world of thoughts and emotions and the outer world. Anger would cause weird things to happen while inner peace would allow for little miracles. This was an encouragement for me to watch my thoughts and emotions and to try not to sink into anger or sadness. This is an ongoing task.

The other thing which changed for me was the motivation why I would do things. Before I discovered the deep inner peace and joy of looking back at that which is looking – awareness itself – , I would search for fulfillment in the outer world. If only I could get this promotion at work or a cleaner and more ordered living room, then I would be happy. Like a child always needing the next toy to feel fulfilled, only to find it boring after two days already and then wishing the next thing. So, before awakening to the feeling of completeness and contentedness inside of me, I would try to get this from the outside.

I have to note, though, that not everything I did earlier was because of the motivation to fill an inner hole. Much of what I did (like dancing and Irish fiddle, for example) was because of the joy of expression and passion. But there were also other things that I did where the motivation was not pure joy and passion but was derived from this attempt to find fill the hole inside of me. It was like trying to regain the lost paradise, but doing so with the wrong means. Like looking for love in all the wrong places.

But after waking up to this place of inner peace and completeness inside of me, this motivation changed. Now there was peace, joy, and completeness inside of me. No more need to prove my worthiness to anyone by anything. That resulted in a drop of motivation to do anything. After all, the former motivation had fallen away. If I don’t have to prove to myself or anyone else anymore how smart or capable or whatever I am, then why would I need to take on challenging tasks at work? If I don’t believe anymore that a promotion and a pay raise would bring me happiness, then why would I still want to work my butt off?

Unfortunately, this lack of motivation was also present regarding the tasks I got from my guidance. If I was content with life as it was right now, why would I make an effort to write my journey down and share it? If I didn’t think that getting appreciation from others or becoming famous would make me any happier, then what was the point of coming out of hiding at all? Journaling for myself was so much easier than writing a coherent text for readers. And even though I very much enjoyed talking to open-minded colleagues at work one-on-one over lunch about my experiences, I dreaded the task of going public.

Then why did I start blogging at all? Because there was guidance which would give me a hard time when I did not follow. There were odd things happening like clogged drains and breathing trouble in my throat when I resisted. And I also experienced a very unpleasant feeling of guilt when I did not obey the guidance.

So, to sum it up, there was a newfound awareness of the connection between the inner and the outer world and also a difference in my motivation for doing things before awakening and after awakening. Before awakening, I chose what I did based on the thought, “I’m gonna go and get this or that because I assume that it will make me happy.” versus after awakening, happiness was already there. No need to chase anything. Here the motivation was more a yielding to guidance.