Beyond the Awake and the Asleep

There is a particular kind of story that appears again and again in spiritual, political and cultural movements: the story of a world divided between those who are awake and those who are asleep.

The word ‘awake’ also has an older spiritual meaning: an awakening to a dimension of consciousness that is not confined to the individual personality or physical body. My concern here is not with that understanding, but with

On one side are those who believe they can see what is really happening. They have pierced the illusion, questioned the official story or escaped the conditioning that keeps everyone else compliant. On the other side is ‘the system’: those believed to control it, and the largely unquestioning population believed to be controlled by it.

It is an appealing narrative. It offers clarity in a complicated world. It gives people a sense of purpose and belonging. It may even provide the courage needed to challenge systems that genuinely deserve to be questioned.

But binary awakening narratives contain a danger. They can begin as an invitation to think independently or to challenge a genuinely unjust system but end by discouraging independent thought in order to ‘fit in’ with a tribe.

Once we see ourselves as members of the ‘awake’, disagreement becomes difficult to tolerate. Anyone who challenges our beliefs can be dismissed as unconscious, brainwashed or part of the problem. Contradictory evidence no longer requires reflection: it simply confirms how deeply asleep others must be.

But a worldview that claims to liberate us from conditioning can become another form of conditioning.

‘The system’ is often spoken of as though it refers only to governments, institutions or established structures of power. Yet human beings are naturally system-making. Whenever we leave one framework, we tend to create or adopt another, complete with its own language, assumptions, authorities and forms of belonging.

This is not necessarily a problem. Shared frameworks help us organise knowledge, build communities and act collectively. The difficulty arises when we no longer recognise the framework as a framework. A new system can be particularly hard to see when it is not being consciously constructed but is evolving as a by-product of a space left by the rejection of an older one. Because no one appears to have designed it, those within it may be less likely to notice its assumptions, hierarchies and rules of belonging.

Whatever else awakening may mean, it surely cannot require us to stop examining the frameworks through which we interpret the world. Awakening, in this context, is not the moment we escape one system or exchange one belief structure for another. It is the capacity to remain conscious of the way every framework - including the one we favour - shapes what we are able to see.

What if we aim for a third option, beyond the ‘them’ and ‘us’ narrative?

It is a less dramatic position. It belongs to those who can understand different worlds without being psychologically captured by any one of them. These people may recognise the value of conventional institutions while also seeing their limitations. They may understand alternative or spiritual perspectives without feeling obliged to accept every claim made in their name. They can work within systems, challenge them and move between them.

This position is not defined by occupation, lifestyle or social location. A person may work within government, education, business or another established institution and still retain the capacity to question the assumptions of that world. Equally, someone may live as an artist, activist, healer or independent teacher while understanding the value of conventional structures and engaging intelligently with them.

Being inside a system does not necessarily mean being captured by it. Belonging to a tribe that claims to be outside a system does not automatically confer insight or freedom. The important question is whether a person can examine the world they inhabit without making either belonging or opposition the foundation of their identity, nor needing an enemy to stabilise an identity.

Institutions, governments and legal systems are not inherently wise or just. They can preserve privilege, resist necessary change and cause real harm. But many have also evolved through attempts to address genuine problems: to establish rights, restrain abuses of power, resolve disputes and make collective life possible among people with competing needs.

Their imperfections do not prove that they are worthless. Nor does questioning them require us to assume that everything outside them is automatically more humane or truthful. The alternative to a flawed institution is not always liberation. Sometimes it is confusion, arbitrariness or power exercised without accountability.

Context matters too. The language and methods appropriate to one situation cannot simply be transferred wholesale to another. Responding to a fundamentally unjust or violently repressive system is not the same as debating policy within a functioning democracy. Resistance, protest or refusal may be morally necessary in one context. In another, meaningful change may require democratic participation, careful administration, institutional reform and sustained negotiation.

Even issues that provoke strong emotions must be understood within their actual setting.

Managing migration within a stable democracy, for example, involves questions of human dignity, law, housing, infrastructure, integration and public consent. It cannot be approached as though it were identical to confronting a system that denies people basic rights or excludes them from meaningful political participation. The moral questions may overlap, but the circumstances, responsibilities and available remedies are different.

Recognising those differences is not moral evasiveness. It is discernment.

Stepping outside the ‘them and us’ narrative is not indecision or a failure to commit. Nor is it the bland assumption that the truth must always lie somewhere in the middle. Sometimes one side is clearly more truthful, ethical or humane than another. Sometimes strong action is required; and sometimes it is not.

The distinction lies in the willingness to remain thoughtful and aware rather than simply tribal.

Those who occupy this ‘third’ position can become translators. They can speak to people across different cultures, disciplines and belief systems because they are not dependent on proving that one group possesses all the truth. They can recognise patterns, build bridges and introduce ideas in forms that others are capable of hearing.

Their work may be less visible than that of the self-declared truth-teller. It may attract less applause. Integration is rarely as theatrical as rebellion; embodied and embedded change takes time.

The challenge is not to locate the one system that will finally relieve us of the need to think. It is to remain awake to the strengths, failures and blind spots of whichever system we inhabit. That asks more of us than certainty does. But it may be the only kind of awakening that does not eventually become another form of sleep.

(Photo by Jonathan Gagnon on Unsplash)