A friend of mine recently posed the question, “Is it just me, or are there a lot of people waking up these days?” It’s a really interesting question, one that I’ve thought about from time to time. And so talking it over with my partner I came up with at least six different possibilities (I’m sure there are more) that one might consider with regards to the question:
- It is possible that with the dawn of the information age we are simply much more aware of that then we were before of how many people are waking up.
- On the journey toward awakening and with a more realistic model of awakening, the amount of people we see who are awake or waking up increases due to our not having far-fetched models and because we’ve simply had more time to meet them.
- It’s difficult to compare how many people are awake today versus in the past because we don’t have much reliable empirical data.
- From the purely statistical perspective, the steady rise in the world’s population would mean there are more awakened people, if we assume a similar awakening per capita.
- One argument is that as the speed of the world increases the ability to wake up to what is always already there, simply via the higher contrast, becomes easier.
- Humans may be evolving in mental, emotional, and spiritual complexity over time (Ken Wilber’s evolutionary spirituality perspective), with one major outcome being that more people are waking up.
This is a kind of geeky, and in many ways inconsequential, but it matters insofar as we know that people woke up in the past, can wake up today, and will probably continue to wake up so long as there is confusion about the dream…
