Awakening… and then what?

I’ve been sitting with something lately.

This whole idea of awakening… the way we’ve inherited ideas about what it is, what it should feel like, or what we imagine it will finally give us. And I do feel it’s real. Profound. Transformative. It opens something immense within us.

But lately I’ve also felt that the way awakening is often spoken about can be somehow incomplete.

Because awakening may open the door… 

but it doesn’t necessarily teach us how to live once the door has opened.

It can reveal truth, connection, vastness… 

and still leave us face to face with our humanity, our patterns, our fears, our conditioning, and the slow process of learning how to embody what we’ve seen.

Maybe awakening is not the end of the path. 

Maybe it is the beginning of a deeper relationship with life itself. I say this not from theory, but from experience.

Many years ago, I went through a very intense waking-up experience. For several weeks, everything felt radically open, alive, connected. It felt as though I was in direct dialogue with creation itself… and creation was responding.

There was an undeniable sense of unity. A feeling that life was moving through everything with intelligence, meaning, synchronicity, and especially connectivity.

I felt held. 

Guided. 

As if I were standing in the center of some vast unfolding mystery full of magic.  

There was nothing to figure out. It simply was.

And then… it ended.

I came back into ordinary life. 

And what I saw, very honestly, was that I was still the same person I had always been.

The same patterns. 

The same reactions. 

The same wounds. 

The same places where growth was still being asked of me.

And that realization was deeply humbling. 

Because awakening didn’t “fix” me, but it did open something.

It gave me a new way of seeing. 

A new relationship to life.

And more than anything, it left me with a quiet inner guidance.

Not to escape this world…which I have wanted so badly since a very early age, but to enter it more fully.

To become more of this world, not less.

To bring awareness down into the body, into relationships, into family, into the ordinary reality of being human.

And that’s where the real path began.

Not in transcending life… but in learning how to inhabit it truthfully.

Later, as I continued exploring and listening, I came across the way Richard Rudd speaks about awakening, and it resonated deeply with my own experience.

He describes awakening not only as vertical — this opening upward into transcendence, unity, contact with something beyond the personal self — but also as horizontal.

Something that must move into life.

Into relationships. 

Into responsibility. 

Into how we love. 

Into how we speak. 

Into how we show up with others.

And when I heard that, something inside me relaxed. 

Because that was exactly what I had lived.

The experience itself had opened me, but it had not transformed my humanity overnight.

Instead, it revealed something true…and then asked something back from me.

It asked me to grow. 

To take responsibility for my life. 

To become more honest. 

More mature. 

More courageous.

To actually live what I had seen. 

Because awakening didn’t take me out of being human. 

It asked me to become more human.

And something that has helped me see this with incredible clarity has been plant medicine work. Because plant medicine can open the vertical dimension very quickly.

It can take you directly into states of unity, connection, dissolution, revelation, and can trigger true awakenings. Mine happened during a journey.

But what becomes truly transformative is not only the opening upward…it’s the expansion outward.

You begin to see yourself.

Really see yourself.

The patterns of your mind. The loops. The defenses. The ways you unconsciously keep yourself trapped.

You begin to notice how much energy goes into trying to control life.

Trying to force outcomes. 

Trying to make reality conform to your preferences. 

Trying to hold tightly to ideas of how things should be.

And underneath all of that, there is often a very simple fear:

“If life doesn’t go the way I want…I won’t be okay.”

And from that fear, rigidity is born.

Rigidity in our opinions. 

Rigidity in our identities. 

Rigidity in the way we relate to others and move through the world.

What the medicine has done for me is soften that rigidity. It softens the grip.

The constant contraction around how life is supposed to unfold.

But it hasn’t only softened things. It has also continued to reveal something else: the profound interconnectedness of existence.

The subtle web of relationships moving through everything. 

How nothing is separate. 

How everything is constantly communicating, responding, weaving itself together in ways the mind can barely comprehend.

And in seeing that, something inside begins to realign.

You begin to feel where you are moving in harmony with life… and where you are not.

Not through morality or judgment, but through direct feeling. You can feel what is aligned. And you can feel what no longer belongs.

And because of that, certain things begin to fall away naturally.

Not because you force yourself to change…but because some patterns simply no longer fit the truth you’ve touched.

The medicine also reveals the structure of the mind itself.

Not philosophically. Directly.

You can watch your thoughts arise. 

Watch the loops repeat themselves. 

Watch the defenses activate in real time.

You begin to see how much of your suffering comes from unconscious structures: beliefs, fears, identifications, attachments.

You see the invisible walls you’ve built around yourself. And in truly seeing them, something begins to loosen.

Because once something is seen clearly, it can no longer hold the same unconscious power over you.

Not because you fought it. 

Not because you forced yourself to transcend it.

But because awareness itself creates space. 

And from that space comes freedom.

Not the freedom of controlling life… but the freedom of no longer needing to.

Life stops feeling like something to conquer. 

It becomes something to move with. 

Something to dance with.

And in that dance, sometimes things unfold beautifully… and sometimes they fall apart.

But even then, you begin to realize: there is nothing to control.

There is only something to meet. 

Something to feel. 

Something to respond to with presence.

And this is where awakening began to reveal another dimension to me.

It is not only vertical. 

It is not only about going beyond.

Yes, there is transcendence. 

Yes, there are moments where consciousness opens into something vast and sacred.

But there is also the horizontal movement: the movement into life itself.

Into relationship. 

Into family. 

Into conflict. 

Into intimacy. 

Into the beautiful complexity of being here.

And that part moves more slowly. It is patient. It asks:

How do I live this truth? 

How do I love from it? 

How do I remain open in the middle of ordinary life?

Because it is one thing to touch truth in solitude…and another thing entirely to embody it with other human beings.

To seek the balance between what we might call the masculine and the feminine energies within us all.

Not as gender, but as movements of consciousness.

The masculine movement in spirituality has often emphasized transcendence: going upward, focusing, discipline, attainment, and reaching enlightenment.

And there is beauty and power in that. But it is not the whole picture.

What is missing is the feminine dimension. 

The feminine as receptivity, as intimacy with life, as presence, as relationship. As learning not to conquer life…but to make love to it.

To stop rushing toward some imagined destination. 

To stop relating to awakening as another achievement. And instead…to be here. Fully here.

Feeling life as it moves through you. 

Meeting each moment directly. 

Allowing existence to touch you.

There is no hurry there. 

No desperate movement toward becoming. 

Only the question:

“How do I meet this moment completely?”

And that changes everything.

Because life is no longer something you are trying to master. It becomes something you are in relationship with.

Something you participate in. 

Something you co-create with.

And for me, this is what awakening is becoming.

Not a destination. 

Not a final state. 

Not an escape from being human.

But a way of living. 

A way of softening. 

Of growing. 

Of becoming honest enough to stay open even when life does not go your way.

To trust the movement. 

To witness the dance. 

And still choose to dance with it.

Because in the end… it is not only about waking up. 

It is about how you live once you are awake.

Juliana