After Awakening When the Body Still Contracts

After awakening, many people expect the body to relax and life to feel settled. The belief in a separate self has dropped, so ease should naturally follow. Yet for many, the body still contracts. Emotions rise. Old protection remains. This often creates confusion and self-doubt.

In this episode, I speak about why this is a natural part of awakening, and why nothing has gone wrong.

Seeing through the self illusion is a mental recognition. A belief drops. This shift is often quiet and simple. But the nervous system does not reorganize instantly. The body may still carry years of contraction and learned protection that now begins to unwind.

Awakening is not only about clarity in the mind. It is also about allowing the system to feel safe enough to open. When the imagined character no longer needs protection, old defenses can soften. This process can feel uncomfortable at times, even though it is part of integration and healing.

If you have already seen the truth but still feel tight, guarded, or unsettled, this episode offers reassurance. The absence of ease does not mean awakening failed. It may simply mean the body is learning that it is safe to relax.

Transcript

Today’s episode is a talk about what happens after awakening, when clarity is here but the body still hasn’t fully relaxed.
I wanted to share it exactly as it was spoken, without the usual intro, because this topic benefits from meeting you quietly, right where you are.

But when the belief drops, it's just a silent pop. Doesn't even make a sound. You believe something and then you don't. And if you are waiting for that shift or that dramatic event, you may be waiting your whole life. Yes, there is a common myth in spiritual circles that awakening should be dramatic that there would look like a clear event or something that happens big bang, a clear line between before and after. Then you know that something happened and you are here awake. And with that there is also an expectation that after that shift that dramatic event the emotions wouldn't come down the mind would get quiet. They would be always nice and easy. Life would become piece of cake. But that's a myth. Awakening doesn't have to be dramatic because what it is is is a drop of a belief. You believed in something, it fell away. It didn't come and say, "Okay, bye. I'm leaving now. Here you go. Have some fireworks or have some uh certificate or some achievement." But when the belief drops, it's just a silent pop. Doesn't even make a sound. You believe something and then you don't. You believe there is a me inside the body running the show. When you believe there is a character somewhere even though you cannot see it but you believe it and then you don't the clarity seeing things as they are. Emotions as emotions, thoughts as thoughts, stories as stories, sensations as sensations without that added filter. Me.

So then my my point is that it's not dramatic and it doesn't have to be and if you are waiting for that shift or that dramatic event you may be waiting your whole life and it may never come and the problem is that when you don't get that event or that experience ground shaking experience you may think that there is something wrong with you that there is not enough awareness that you have to doing something and that's a painful place to be. So I just want to say this clearly this assumption is wrong.

The after effect may happen may happen. I'm not arguing with that but it's not a proof that awakening happened. It's not required for awakening to happen. It's just an after effect. Sometimes there is a big release. Sometimes there is a lot of joy and a happy honeymoon phase comes in or there is a purge and it feels horrible. You never know what's right for you. But the absence of fireworks is not a proof that you don't see that the character is imagined. that you don't see that what is here is life and it's happening by itself.

I want to mention today that this awakening is happening in in layers. There is a mental layer that it's so easy to see that there is no self. Okay, can happen today. It maybe already happened. But the next layer is that all these emotions, all the repressed energies, all these stuff that has been buried and hasn't been looked at starts to rise up and all that wants to be met, to be seen, to selfre. Self-release is the key because well if everything is happening by itself

things come out by itself they release by themselves by itself.

The thing is it's about safety.

When the mind sees that there is no character as it thought there was that the characters imagine is not real. The system doesn't get it so quickly. The system is maybe still in in contraction in in shock. So I want you to to imagine now you may close your eyes for fun and just imagine that you are a snail. a snail that lives in a garden and it's just doing its snail business, walking around, moving slowly and gently and then there is a kid and the kid comes in with a stick and pokes this nail. So what this snail does immediately just goes in into the shell, hides, stays small. This shell is hard. It's safe. So after a while starts poking out and just one eye another eye starts looking around is it safe? And if it's safe it starts coming out with a body and starts moving but the kid looks at the snail and says hm that's fun and that may happen many times. Well, shell is safe. Correct. It's nothing wrong with retrieving, contracting, and hiding.

But what if we live our lives like that snail? Contracted, small, safe, and don't even want to come out anymore because of the fear of the shock.

Fear of the shock. What if I need to contract again? So, it's better to stay close, small, and hide, then come out and experience that shock again.

What if that happened to your system? It's soft, fragile, gentle, innocent, wanting to play, wanting to explore, and wanting to have fun and just be itself, do its own business. But because it has been hurt, poked, it had to contract so many times that now it doesn't know that it's safe anymore. And the world out there feels dangerous. What people think, what may happen, what horrible situations can occur, how will it deal with them. So the system stays small and contracted in order to protect itself. So so it's not wrong. The shell is good. You know, it's doing its job. It's keeping something safe.

But it also limits and protects from living fully, from living openly, from feeling fully. And it may be comfortable to feel contracted because this is the old way. This is how everyone lives. This is how my parents lived. And what if I open up and just get out into openness and be happy? Would other be hurt? Would other people be upset about that? Maybe they're not going to like it. But that's just old programming.

So seeing through the self illusion is recognizing with the mind that the character is imagined.

Then the shell doesn't need to keep that character safe anymore. So it starts crumbling. And this may be intense and unexpected. It's not something that you would anticipate because when it starts breaking it feels like there's something wrong. I didn't see something. I got back. The self came back. How can the self come back if it's imagined?

It cannot. So whatever is happening here, the emotions, the charge, the reactions, the contractions is not the self. It's not the character with your name that is doing that.

So awakening is not just mind's realization. It's also the system starts to come back to its natural state of ease, natural state of relaxation and natural openness.

And when when I hear definition of enlightenment in a way that it's the absence of resistance, I agree with that. It's not just an absence of resistance. It's not it's the absence of contracting. It's absence of hardening, hiding. It's openness. Everything can come in. And you can get poked. Yes. Interesting. What happened here? Yes. Please poke me again. See if there is something inside that is ah trying to avoid that or get rid of it or make somebody else wrong because they poked you or if there is like yeah okay bring it on. Let's see. Let's see. It's interesting what's going on here. Because there is space for everything. there is allowing everything to be as it is.

So seeking is a lot about trying to fix, to change, to amend, to control. And this shift of recognition is bringing the attention back here, into the body, into this experience, knowing that it's all okay, that you are okay. Whatever is happening is okay. Whatever wants to come in can be seen, explored, allowed, experienced without the fire. Because peace is not that there are no more worldly events or situations that require some kind of intensity and decisions. No, peace is h okay it is I am here. This is here. It can be peace is taking the hands off, controlling, trusting, knowing that it's all okay, it's all unfolding as it should. So if you recognize it in your experience that the mental understanding and experience are different that there is still contraction still avoiding still trying to solve there's nothing wrong with you or with that it's just a next step it's an this layer of hardened protection is being dissolved

and it's not what the mind expects. So whatever you saw, heard or read and other people talking about, yes, it's it's good. It's valid. It's valid for them. But the way your system works, what you can handle, what is being presented for you is true. There's nothing wrong with that. It's right. It's exactly right. So you can relax into that and allow allow life to show up in the way it is showing up. That removes a lot of unnecessary suffering because when we think how life should be, how awakening should be, how I should feel and yet the reality is different. The reality is made wrong and then there is pushing against that trying to fix it.

And in my work, I sit with people with whatever is coming up, whatever wants to be seen, whatever is ready to self liberate, whether it's a story, a feeling, emotion, an old energy, or something you don't even know how to put words there. The contraction, the frozenness,

giving it all space. assuring that it's safe to open up to come out of the shell to free itself.

It takes time and patience. There is no quick fix. But look at this. This system may be noisy. The critic, the punisher, the security guards, everyone is activated all the time trying to keep you safe.

And the noise is here

because it's waiting for resolution. It's like a wave that couldn't tick and fall away.

So if the motion is a wave, look at that. If the emotion is a wave, it rises. It gets more intense. It peaks and then it dissipates and falls away.

Now, if you try to fight with a critic or punisher or guilter or shamer, good luck with that. It's not going to work. But seeing that wave, feeling that emotion, allowing that tightness to open up and self release, that's where the noise leaves the system.

So what we call a sense of me

it's just a shell is just hardened protection that has been here for years and it feels like tightness. It feels like emotion. It feels like an idea. It feels like a story. It feels like there's somebody here solid. Yet when you are looking at it, what are you looking at?

Really, what are you looking at? An image, an idea, a thought, a feeling.

Maybe that is it. A feeling, a thought, sensation, not a me, not a sense of me, not what you are.

And I know that it feels like there's going to be an explosion. Something big is going to happen. Waiting for that big to happen. But the softening is not a firework. It's leaning back into yourself, leaning back into the safety, leaning back into what is always here. Beautiful openness.

It feels good.

Oh, and there are so many layers here that you can see it from so many different angles and so many deep recognitions can happen. So don't worry about that. It will come. You are where you need to be. You are looking at what you need to look at. As long as you're looking at, not looking for. You're looking for escape, looking for fixing, looking for resolution. No, no. You're looking at what is here right now. What is here that wants to be felt, wants to be expressed, wants to be experienced, wants to be maybe just acknowledged and allowed to be.

When you are stop when you stop looking out and start looking in, that's a flip. That's the shift. That's where everything starts to entangle, starts to undo, starts to open. And with that, you can notice that it's more comfortable to be you, more comfortable to be in your body, in your environment, in your relationships. She is becoming freer, more natural.

And that's a journey. Yes, seeing is essential. Seeing, recognizing that you are not the character that is running the show, that the character is imagined, that you're not a thought, not an emotion, not a sensation, not an experience,

you simply are.

It's a recognition that you are. It's recognition that you are not you are this or you are that or the other. That you are now. Are you are you here? I'm here

just being.

I'm here just waiting for the next word to come flow out. And it flows out.

So instead of waiting for a big bang or explosion or some kind of shift, shift your attention from looking for to looking in.

And here you are.