This Month’s Being Game: Awakening!

This month our Sacred Commerce practice reaches for the stars with being Awakening!

We asked our Dharma Dream Team to weigh in on what Awakening meant to them.  We’re thrilled to share their answers…

Awakening can be tricky in my experience because the more I want it the more I seem to push it away.  In fact, coming from a place of wanting/trying may actually be counter productive.  The Tao Te Ching illustrates this point beautifully:

“Fill your bowl to the brim, and it will spill.  Keep sharpening your knife, and it will blunt.  Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.  Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.”

What I am learning about Awakening is that it is a continuous practice of choosing to be happy, fulfilled, awakened as opposed to trying to be.  This practice looks like choosing to be conscious of the present moment and how I am interacting with it: am I resisting the moment, disagreeing with it, engaging with it, or in love with it?  To the degree that I can choose to be with each moment is the extent to which I get to awaken to the beauty, mystery, love, and wonder each moment offers.

As a new member of the Dharma family, I am filled with an incredible sense of opportunity to truly begin my path of awakening. I’m inspired by a new perspective of being love and thereby calling forth love in all parts of my life. I recognize that without my previous paths and experiences I would not have reached this one and am so excited to jump into this new world of compassion, service, and gratitude. I’m taken aback by all the love that already existed in my life that I just wasn’t ready to see, especially with my family and friends. The practice of being me – being love – and seeing  the world without a lens of ego or judgment is my awakening.

To me, awakening is the state of becoming aware.  Aware of surroundings, implications, and the true meaning of what we perceive on a daily basis.  Awakening is the practice by which I am able to more fully understand what my place in this world is.  It’s the practice of seeing people not for their actions, but their intentions.  It’s also the practice of becoming cognizant of my own actions, and the implications of said actions on my friends, family, community, and world as a whole.  My awakening has been the realization that my only true gift to this world is love, and sharing it means being it.  Awakening, to me, is being the love that we all seek to share – no matter the circumstance.

Similar to the physical process of awakening from physical sleep,  spiritual awakening is my process of allowing my “dreams” of love, compassion and service to gain entrance into my daily “reality”;  the reality of my life situation, the reality of my family, the reality of my community, and at Dharma, the reality of my work.  Before Dharma, I would hit my awakening “snooze” button whenever I went into work.  Most places I worked made no space for awakening; and certainly didn’t encourage it.  Dharma has taught me that commerce with compassion not only helps me understand and meet the needs of my valued merchant community, but it also allows me to practice my commitment to service, to consciousness, and to love.  At night, I lay my head on the pillow knowing that my work has allowed me to practice what I believe;  love for my community, love for mother earth, love for my colleagues and love for myself.

For me, awakening is the process of cultivating the wisdom, compassion, loving kindness, and equanimity that comes from being present to what is arising in any given moment.  Our daily practice of Sacred Commerce has created a verbal forum to experience our own awareness as well as to bear witness to the transformation of our fellow dharma mates.

Choosing to practice “Business as a path of Awakening” has been a dream come true.  I see awakening as getting in touch with who we truly are.  This does not mean waking up to new knowledge, an improved state of mind or a better version of ourselves.  This means remembering that all of the truths and higher virtues are not only with us the entire time, but in fact are our very selves.

We wish you happiness and joy on your path to Awakening!