Jeremiah 31:26 Meaning On This I Awakened

There is a waking that has nothing to do with opening your eyes in the morning. It is the moment you come out of the dream of compulsive thinking and truly behold the world as it is, fresh and alive, no longer veiled by the mind's endless commentary.

And what follows is a deep and unexpected peace. When anxious thought no longer drags you into past and future and you are simply here, awake and aware, the restlessness settles and you feel at ease in your own being. That peace, and nothing more mysterious than that, is why the rest felt sweet.

Waking up is the whole of it, and almost nobody has done it. Men walk, work, marry and die inside a continuous dream, the mind running its film of past and future, and the walking looks so purposeful that the sleep is never suspected.

The sweetness afterward is the surprise. The awakened one does not turn and condemn the years spent dreaming, the way the religious have condemned the world; from the far side even the sleep looks lovely, a necessary night with its own beauty. Awakening comes without guilt, and the seeing that follows finds nothing here to be rescued from.