Pedro J. Pérez
ESPT

Espiritualidad

Truly waking up: when consciousness brings you back to life, not away from it

There is a huge difference between waking up and disconnecting. Consciousness that grows does not take you out of your life: it brings you back to it with more hunger, more touch, and more heart. Learn to recognize when practice opens you and when, without meaning to, it is taking you far from

By Pedro J. Pérez ·

The narrator that never falls silent

There is a voice inside you that comments on everything you experience. It is not your consciousness: it is a tireless narrator that turns every scene into a chapter of an endless story about yourself. It accompanies you in the car repeating yesterday's argument, sits on the edge of your bed at night to rehearse tomorrow's difficult conversation, and keeps old grudges as if they were relics that must be protected. That continuous story rarely asks whether you want to listen to it; it simply imposes itself, and you mistake it for reality.

The difference from the rest of living beings is notable. An animal lives danger, goes through it, and returns to its own business: it drinks, sleeps, continues. It does not stay ruminating over what almost happened to it or ask whether it deserved to be near the water. We, on the other hand, drag along an unfinished autobiography that tints the present with shadows from the past. Recognizing that narrator is the first act of freedom: it is not about silencing it by force, but about no longer believing every word it says.

Presence is not absence

Many people come to meditation seeking calm and discover something valuable: the possibility of letting go of the inner commentary and inhabiting the moment. That is a beautiful beginning. But it is worth sharpening discernment, because the same practice that frees you can, in some people, begin to look like a withdrawal from life. Attention becomes distance, and distance disguises itself as serenity. The body feels far away, emotions are dulled, and the people you love seem to be behind glass.

Authentic awakening does the opposite: it opens you. It makes you more available to your friends and family. Food recovers its flavor, a hand on the shoulder is appreciated, grief arrives when it has to arrive and then follows its course. If your practice is making you untouchable, expressionless, or detached from your own life, you are not waking up: you are moving away. Spirituality is not a ladder to leave the world, but a door to enter it with more honesty.

When distance was a survival strategy

The mind has a wise resource: when something hurts too much to feel all at once, it creates space between you and that emotion so that life can continue. That distance is not a failure or a weakness; it is a form of protection that many people learned long before sitting down to meditate for the first time. In psychology it is called dissociation, and the term does not point to anyone as guilty: it describes a mechanism that was necessary at the time.

The problem appears when that mechanism, instead of being an emergency exit, becomes the house where you live. Then disconnection stops protecting you and begins to impoverish you: there is no longer acute pain, but there is also no flavor, no bond, no texture. Intense practices or long silences can reactivate that habit and amplify it. If you notice that you are withdrawing persistently, that life has lost its relief, or that sadness has become constant fog, seek professional support. A therapist who understands both trauma and contemplative practice knows how to move in that territory, and asking for help is also an act of spiritual lucidity.

The fire waiting to be lit

The here and now has never gone away. Distance does not change the existence of things: it only prevents you from touching them. Imagine that you have spent hours walking in the snow and arrive at a house with a lit fireplace. The fire does not chase you or call out to you; it is simply there, waiting for you to come closer and hold out your hands. That is presence: warm, discreet, available. You do not have to manufacture it, only stop turning your back on it.

That is why, when the mind has grown used to looking at life from afar, what helps most is usually not another technique with a spiritual label, but the ordinary presence of the real: the morning light, the movement of the body as you walk, the warmth of a conversation, the weight of your feet on the ground. They are humble things, almost insignificant, and precisely for that reason they work. Life invites you to return through the smallest doors, not the most solemn ones.

More life, not less

There is a false belief that spiritual realization and psychological health are separate paths, or even opposite ones. They are not. The most genuine awakening that can be recognized in someone manifests as more life, not less: more capacity to love, more tolerance for pain, more simple enjoyment, more desire to be with others. Lucidity does not make you cold; it makes you permeable. You can feel sadness without sinking and joy without clinging.

Healing does not rigidly depend on one specific technique. It also happens in the humble places where life insists on calling you: a shared meal, a walk without a destination, a voice on the phone, the simple fact of noticing your body resting in a chair. There is no contradiction between waking up and being whole. On the contrary: the more whole you are, the more available you are to the sacred, because the sacred is not somewhere else. It is in this, here, now.

A practice for returning: the next meal

Choose one meal today, the next one that comes. It does not have to be special or photogenic; bread and tea are enough. Sit down. Turn the phone face down. Observe the color of what you are going to eat, the steam if there is any, the weight of the cup in your hand. Take a bite and let it be that bite: feel its temperature, its texture, its sweetness or its salt. There is a body being fed and a warm room holding it. The same consciousness that reads these words is the one that savors that bread.

If a thought appears about whether you are doing it right or whether you are present enough, let it come and let it go. Take another bite. This practice is not inferior to a long, silent retreat. For someone who has been drifting away from their body in the name of awakening, a meal received with full attention can be exactly the place where the return begins. Because waking up is not a way of abandoning your life: it is recognizing that you are here to receive what life gives you, a body to care for, people to love, and an ordinary day that keeps offering you its presence.

Reading and references