THE GREAT AWAKENING

“I remember that feeling like the first gasp of fresh air after almost drowning, it was like everything I thought I knew disappeared and I was living for the first time, for a real purpose”

For the first 22 years of my life, I was sleeping. No really, when I think back, I could almost envision the years with a hazy fog over them, especially my teen years. Its not that the years were bad, but more that the years were dull, lacking color, and a feeling I’d soon come to know later in life.

Throughout my childhood, I always tried to do the “right” thing. I got good grades, played sports and tried to make my parents happy. It wasn’t until my teen years I really started to feel the stir-up with in.

Although authority had never really sat well with me, I tolerated it up until this point. I was a rule follower and never bothered to question things otherwise. It wasn’t until I was about 15, when a traumatic event occurred, that I started to really change the way I looked and thought about life.

I remember for the first time I questioned authority, “who was really in charge of my life?”, and from there, I began to challenge everything. During this period of my life I became rebellious and wanted more answers and reasons than the “Because I say So’s”.

For the first time I wanted to be free and really tried to find that freedom. I remember feeling like there was so much more to life than what everyone around me was bitching about. I remember thinking to myself there has to be more to life than the things we stress over, but no one around me could help me understand what this feeling was. I felt alone. Ostracized. Forced into the status quo, forced into counseling and with out any other ideas on how to ”succeed at life”, I enrolled into college after high school.

I slept a few more years, did things the way I was “supposed” to ... and again found myself resisting “the norm”.

After college I began working in corporate fashion, I had a “great” management job in NYC, an apartment, and a promise of a budding career. What more could a girl want, right? I remember people telling me how lucky I was and how set for life I was going to be. Little did they know, I was miserable!

I couldn’t help but get that feeling again. The nagging one, the one that told me back in HS that there has to be more to life than what we are striving for here. This time it came back stronger. It began to grow and eventually take over my life.

Thats the thing, when you resist your call, your souls call, you send yourself into this cycle of misery and discomfort. Trying to resist the feeling will only delay the awakening and trying to ignore the cry of your soul will only make ita cries louder. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you will surrender to it and overcome it.

My soul was uncomfortable doing the work I wasn’t meant to do. It was so uncomfortable, it caused me to physically despise being there. I remember crying everyday on my way to work and wishing for any delay or mishap for me not to have to go. I remember forcing myself to go anyways. You see society teaches you to go anyways and being accustomed to doing what I was “meant to”, I kept my head down and suffered through. It wasn’t until it became so unbearable, until the call became so loud, that I just couldn’t ignore it anymore. The day had finally come, I couldn’t fight anymore, I surrendered, so I woke up that morning and I quit.

“My soul had enough of the falsehood. It had to break down, for me to finally wake up”

I had no plan, no fall back cushion, and no idea what I was going to do next. But for the first time in my life, I decided to let my soul lead the way, and I surrendered all control. I walked away from that job, and the chains that held me back for so long.

As I began to walk away from parts of myself that I had become to please society, I began to walk toward the freedom I had been longing for all along. I remember the first day of not having a “job” or “belonging” to a company, it was like seeing the world for the first time in color.

“I remember that feeling like the first gasp of fresh air after almost drowning, it was like everything I thought I knew disappeared and I was actually living for the first time, for a real purpose”

The great awakening, begins with a call. It’s entirely your choice to answer. The life that awaits you on the other side could very much be the one you always dreamed of, but first you have to pick up. So the only question left is,

“in this lifetime, will you?”.