When Awakening Becomes an Addiction: A Post-Spiritual Reflection
(By Vi?t Ân – Author of READ REGRET BURN)
Awakening is supposed to set you free.
But what if, for many, it has simply become a subtler form of bondage?
In the early stages of “spiritual awakening,” there’s often an overwhelming sense of wonder. A feeling that life has cracked open, revealing a hidden dimension of truth.
It feels pure, authentic, exhilarating.
But as the initial glow fades, something else quietly creeps in: the desperate need to stay awake.
You begin chasing a state.
You search for signs that you’re “deep enough,” “aware enough,” “non-attached enough.”
You read, meditate, surrender, observe, breathe — anything to maintain the fragile high of realization.
You no longer worship an external god.
Now, you worship the state of “awakeness” itself.
And just like that, awakening becomes the new addiction.
Trading One Illusion for Another
The most dangerous traps are not the ones that look like cages.
They are the ones that look like freedom.
You no longer bow at the altar of religion.
You bow at the altar of mindfulness, presence, non-duality, or transcendence.
You don’t pray to a deity.
You pray, silently, to the feeling of being beyond it all.
The human need for identity — for certainty — never left. It simply changed its costume.
Now it whispers: “I am the one who knows.” “I am the one who has seen.” “I am no longer asleep like the rest.”
This spiritual identity, ironically, becomes even harder to recognize — because it wears humility as a mask.
Awakening as a Performance
At a certain point, awakening stops being a lived reality — and becomes a performance.
You speak slower.
You smile more gently.
You pause before answering, as if wisdom is dripping from the silence.
You believe you’re embodying presence, but subtly, you’re acting out the role of “the awakened one.”
It’s not conscious.
It’s not malicious.
It’s simply what the mind does — build identities, even in the ruins of the old ones.
And the more sincerely you try to “stay awake,” the deeper you entrench yourself in the new role.
The Addiction to Inner States
True addiction is not to substances or actions.
It’s to feelings.
And awakening offers one of the most intoxicating feelings of all:
The sense that you are free from the ordinary human mess.
That you’re standing apart. Above.
You become addicted not to life, but to a particular way of feeling alive:
Clear. Silent. Detached. Present.
Any disturbance, anger, sorrow, fear, feels like failure.
You scramble to “come back” to your center.
You subtly reject the human experience, while pretending to accept it all.
This isn’t freedom.
It’s spiritual suppression, with a beautiful name.
There’s Nowhere to Stay
The truth is brutal and beautiful:
You cannot stay awake.
There’s no “you” that can hold onto awakening.
There’s no “state” to maintain.
Reality doesn’t crystallize into a permanent feeling of clarity.
It flows. It breaks. It forgets itself. It remembers. It collapses again.
Any attempt to grasp a fixed inner state, even “pure awareness” , is already ego in motion.
Real awakening shatters all states, even the ones labeled “awakened.”
It leaves nothing to cling to, not even emptiness.
Awakening Is the End of the One Who Awakens
The final paradox:
The moment you know you’re awake, you are not.
Because the one who knows — is still someone.
And as long as someone remains, the game continues.
Real awakening is not an experience to celebrate.
It’s not a condition to maintain.
It’s the evaporation of the experiencer altogether.
No self watching.
No self arriving.
No self staying.
Just life, raw and unsupervised.
A Final Word
If you’re tired of chasing awakening, tired of pretending you’ve arrived, tired of performing presence, maybe that’s grace knocking.
Maybe it’s time to forget even the idea of awakening itself.
Because real freedom is not waking up.
It’s realizing there was never anyone asleep.
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Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!