What is Awakening (Truly) About?

Posted on by Branimir

While there are many paths to realization and liberation, most of them boil down to one key discovery: understanding how the mind truly works. Put simply, awakening is about seeing and FULLY grasping how the mind operates alongside with shedding all identifications with it. But this isn’t something that happens overnight—it takes time because the brain is wired in complex ways. These neural patterns create a convincing story that there’s a “someone” behind it all—a doer, a thinker, a feeler. This sense of “self” is tightly woven into a web of beliefs, our senses, emotions, that hold the illusion in place.

Before I began this process, like many others, I never thought to question the mind in this way. I simply accepted my thoughts as “me.” It was second nature—automatic. It never once occurred to me to ask whether this was true. But once the awakening begins, things change. We start to reevaluate this belief and approach thoughts from a new angle. Curiosity kicks in: Where do thoughts come from? How do they rise up, and where do they go? One of the first realizations is that we don’t control our thoughts—they just show up and disappear on their own. No matter how hard we try, we can’t stop them. With some careful attention, it becomes clear that the idea of control is an illusion, just smoke and mirrors. As this illusion starts to crumble, everything—inside and out—begins to look and feel different.

As we move further along this journey of awakening, what we’re really doing is further getting to know the mind from the inside out. Even when we allow ourselves to fully feel emotions, we’re still working with the mind because emotions tied to suffering are often rooted in deeply held beliefs. We begin to question these beliefs, see through them, and, ultimately, free ourselves from the grip they have on us. When this happens, it’s as if a weight is lifted—thoughts begin to quiet down, especially those that fuel our suffering. The emotions that once kept the body tense and constricted seem to dissolve. It becomes clear that the power of thoughts lies largely in our automatic reactions to them. It’s this reactivity that fuels the engine of thoughts, and ultimately, our suffering.

Eventually, we’re struck by the realization that LITERALLY everything we took so seriously was just a game of the mind—ideas stacked on top of more ideas. Even the sense of “me,” the personality we’ve held onto for so long, is revealed to be nothing more than a fleeting thought, a mirage reflecting back what we perceive in the moment—what we’ve come to call “reality.”

At this point, the bigger picture starts to emerge. It turns out that our brains aren’t designed to experience reality as it is. And thoughts? They’re not equipped to grasp the true nature of reality either. Even the very concept of “reality” becomes foggy, as we realize we don’t need it to explain the unexplainable. Slowly but surely, we begin to see directly that the senses belong to no one. Everything starts to slow down and fall away. The mind grows quiet. There’s no longer a sense of separation, nor a sense of non-separation either. No duality to be found. Language becomes absolutely not equipped to capture what can be only directly experienced. Thoughts about the world around us are still present, but that’s all they are—just passing thoughts. Like a fleeting image unrelated to anything specific, like a stranger passing by. They may come and go, but they’ve lost their dance partner—and they won’t be finding it again.

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