Awakening – Trust and Surrender Fear and You Rise Effortlessly
Awakening… Enlightenment is revealed through surrender. To the ego it means disappearing.
I found this Alan Watts audio that I found to be right on in so many ways. The title of the video on YT is – Why 99% Fail the Test of Spiritual Awakening.
We often romanticize spiritual awakening. We picture it as a serene sunrise, a sudden clarity, or a “gentle beam of light” that instantly upgrades our lives. But in a stunning lecture, Alan Watts dismantles this comforting myth, revealing that true awakening is far stranger, deeper, and often more terrifying than we expect.
Awakening from Alan Watts Perspective (Excerpts)
“People often speak of spiritual awakening as if it were a gentle sunrise. A soft glow rising behind the horizon of the mind. Warm. Golden. Comforting. But the truth is far stranger and far less polite. Awakening doesn’t arrive like a sunrise. It arrives like an earthquake. First a tiny tremble. Then a crack running through the walls of the life you thought you were living. And suddenly the entire floor of everything you believed drops out from under you. You stand barefoot in the rubble of the self you spent a lifetime constructing.”
“Most people imagine awakening as a spiritual luxury. A pleasant upgrade. A cosmic spa day. But real awakening doesn’t feel like an improvement. It feels like an unraveling. You are not being punished. You are being revealed.”
“The personality, that clever little actor you’ve played your whole life, trembles at the thought of its own impermanence. It whispers that without it you’ll be nothing. You believe it for a moment because the ego has been your loyal guard. It built the castle and convinced you that you were the castle.”
“Enlightenment offers clarity, not comfort. Clarity shows you the masks, the lies, the betrayals of yourself, the strings you’ve danced on. Then it hands you the scissors. Every string you cut is attached to a memory, a role, a story that once kept you safe. Awakening asks you to let it all go.”
“Trying to grasp awakening is like trying to hold the sky. The moment you try to contain it, it ceases to be the sky. Awakening can only happen when grasping stops. But we cling to identities, beliefs, fears, stories. Awakening asks us to let them go. Every idea you have about yourself is borrowed. Every identity stitched from memory. Every fear a ghost. And still we cling.”
Here is an overview of the profound truth bombs dropped in this video, exploring why so many struggle—and ultimately fail—to pass the test of true awakening. I didn’t find anything I disagree with here.
1. Awakening is an Earthquake, Not a Sunrise
Watts opens with a striking metaphor: awakening doesn’t arrive politely. It arrives “like an earthquake” [00:25]. It is not a spiritual luxury or an improvement of your current self; it is a dismantling of the life you thought you were living.
The reason 99% of people “fail” or turn back is that they are looking for an additive experience—something to make them feel better. But awakening is subtractive. It removes the illusions you have clung to for safety. As Watts notes, “Before truth can set you free, it must dismantle everything that chains you” [01:03].
2. The Ego’s Panic and the “Dark Night”
When the false self (the ego) begins to crumble, it panics. It views this expansion of consciousness not as growth, but as death.
- The Ego as a Guard: The ego has spent your entire life building a castle to defend you. When awakening shows you that you are the space the castle stands in, not the castle itself, the ego feels obsolete [01:52].
- Resistance: The profound struggle often called the “Dark Night of the Soul” is actually the ego’s fight for survival. It will distract you with business, noise, and fear just to avoid the silence where it cannot exist [06:59].
3. The Trap of Control
One of the most potent sections of the talk centers on the paradox of control. We try to “get” enlightenment the same way we get a degree or a promotion—through effort and grasping.
- The Water Metaphor: Watts compares awakening to floating in water. If you thrash and try to grab the water, you sink. You only rise when you trust and surrender [10:30].
- The “Cosmic Joke”: The ego believes it is the musician playing the flute of life. Awakening reveals that you are actually the instrument, and life is playing you [21:03].
4. The Terror and Freedom of “No Self”
Perhaps the hardest truth to swallow is the dissolution of the separate self. We are taught that we are lonely bubbles floating in an indifferent universe. Watts argues that this is an “utterly untrue” illusion.
- You Are the Universe: You are not a separate entity observing the universe; you are the universe experiencing itself. “You are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something the whole ocean is doing” [15:05].
- The Fear of Unity: Real unity feels destabilizing at first because the separate self has no place to stand. It feels like free-falling without a parachute [16:12].
5. Certainty vs. Freedom
Finally, the video touches on our addiction to certainty. We build shelters out of labels and beliefs to feel safe. Awakening “blows the entire structure over like a house of cards” [24:38]. While this loss of certainty feels like a tragedy to the mind, it is actually a liberation. You move from the brittle safety of “knowing” to the fluid, living stability of “being.” You discover that you don’t need to hold onto life because life is already holding you.
Last Breath
The journey isn’t about becoming something new; it’s a “strange kind of homecoming” to what you always were [29:04]. The tests of awakening—the fear, the loss of control, the uncertainty—are simply the fire burning away the masks so the real you can emerge.
Watch the full video here: Why 99% Fail the Test of Spiritual Awakening | Alan Watts
