Woke Versus Awake

Nearly everyone is aware of the term to 'be woke'.  It has gained substantial popularity over the last few years.  T-shirts and bumper stickers have come out with "Woke as Hell" or "Woke as F*ck", "Get Woke", "Stay Woke", etc. etc.  

Upon first hearing the term, I thought it was great.  "Wake up from the illusion", I thought. Understand the nature of reality, and the sleeping, dreamlike nature of this world.  Wake up to the True Reality of Pure Awareness, Divine Consciousness.  But No.....This was NOT the context in which people were using it. 

Of course, they thought they were - in a sense.  Get woke to the horridness of injustices upon society! 

Wikipedea defines WOKE as:
Woke (/ˈwoʊk/ WOHK) is a political term originating in the United States referring to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice.

Merriam Websters defines AWAKE as:
intransitive verb
1 : to cease sleeping : to wake up
2 : to become aroused or active again
3 : to become conscious or aware of something

Now, granted, the second and third meanings could be construed to indicate becoming aroused and active and conscious of injustices. But the first and primary meaning, and generally accepted meaning, is to wake up from sleeping.

But what about AWAKE?   What does it mean to be awake in a spiritual sense?  Thousands of teachers for thousands of years have told us to "Wake Up!"  Not to injustices in the material world, but rather to the very unreality of this material world.  Some say it is real but temporary, while others say it is totally a dream, no more significant than your sleeping dreams.  But in either case, the idea is that YOU are identified with this material world, with your body, your personal sense of ego - all of it with great attachment. You believe yourself to BE these things - your body, your name, your gender, your race, your nationality.  But is this YOU?  Are you your name, or do you HAVE a name?  Are you this body, or do you HAVE a body?  Are your thoughts YOU, or are you aware OF your thoughts, feelings, emotions?  So, your body is of a certain gender, nationality, race, size, shape, etc. but is that you, or your body?   YOU are not male or female, white or black, big or small, American or Indian. You are That which is Aware of the body and its characteristics. You are the Witness of your body, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. 

The Vedic scripture Srimad Bhagavatam (3.27.14), for instance, tells us that..... "Although a devotee appears to be merged in the five material elements, the objects of material enjoyment, the material senses and material mind and intelligence, he is understood to be AWAKE and to be freed from the false ego."   Here, the term 'devotee' refers to the enlightened person, the saintly rishis and devotees of God, and 'false ego' refers to that very identification with the body and personality.  In Sanskrit, ego is called 'Ahankara' which literally means I-maker - that which creates the identification as "I" and with the body.  In other words, most are asleep to their true nature.

In Bhagavad Gita, 2.66 it says, "What is night for all beings is the time of AWAKENING for the self-controlled; and the time of awakening (Wokeness) for all beings is night for the introspective sage."   So, as people are 'WOKE' to these material 'injustices', they are quite literally asleep to much deeper and eternal nature of themselves as Consciousness - free from all labels and conceptions.

While individuals all over the planet are fighting over various 'social injustices', it only creates division between those various groups.  One group is oppressing another. This group is victimized. Those ones are evil.  And on and on and on.....   But that IS the nature of the material world.  Bhagavad Gita tells us that it is duhkhalayam asasvatam - it is full of misery and it is temporary.  The vedas tell us that one animal is food for another. Is it fair?  No. Can it be changed?  Maybe. But its been this way since the beginning.  That doesn't mean we have to like it or even accept it.  But that is NOT the real problem.  The real problem is how to get OUT or to transcend this material suffering. In other words to AWAKE. 

Bhagavad Gita says in 5.18, that "The humble sage, by virtue of TRUE KNOWLEDGE, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcaste]."  True Knowledge (Vidya), means to be spiritual AWAKE.  The sage recognizes that each of us is a spiritual being, TEMPORARILY embodying a particular body.  Each of us has Karma (previous actions) which determined our current body and everything that goes with it.  Niti Shastra even tells us that such things as the lifespan and time of death, a person's wealth, even their education is 'written on the forehead while in the womb'. 

So being WOKE to the injustices of the material world is nothing!  It means you have the intelligence to see what is happening, and hopefully might choose not to act that way yourself. But we can go beyond that and AWAKEN to our true spiritual nature, to a permanent solution, and help others to do that as well.    As Vivekananda Swami stated, "AWAKE. Arise. Stop not until the goal is reached."  The real goal of Spiritual Awakening!