I just finished Adyashanti’s The 30-Day Wake Up Challenge. I know. I know. The title… 😬But let me explain…
I picked up this audiobook through Audible.com (I don’t know if it’s available elsewhere). I like Adyashanti’s books (Adyashanti means primordial peace). In particular, Resurrecting Jesus and Spontaneous Awakening each had a big impact on me, so I was eventually able to overcome my aversion to the title of this one, which I find too evocative of another wellness gimmick making overreaching marketing claims.
For each day of the 30 days there’s a talk which is usually followed by a short meditation practice that you are meant to return to again and again throughout the day.
The first week of the program focuses on what Adyashanti calls “awakened awareness,” and the meditation practices work with the mind and the area of the head (the area from which most of us have been acculturated to live most of the time).
The second week of the program deals with the “awakened heart,” and the practices focus on love and compassion and are often entered into through the spacious region of the chest.
The third week of the program focuses on the “awakened ground of being,” and the meditations intend to ease the practitioner into the depths where the conditional aspects of our being start to fall away. The somatic focus of this section is on the belly below the navel–what people familiar with Zen practice will recognize as the hara.
The fourth and final week of the talks are geared toward “embodied awakening,” in which Adyashanti offers challenges that are usually interpersonal in nature. These talks aim to bring our awakening into our relationships and the rest of our lives. This can include “leading with the heart” each time you encounter someone, “pivoting toward peace” when you you feel yourself heading down a different path, “seeking to understand” where someone is at before you make them try to understand where you are, and seemingly simple (but nearly impossible) practices like, “be totally honest with yourself and others for one day.” In this last 9 days of the program, there’s often no guided meditation.
I used the structure of the program and my curiosity about the topics to help get me onto the cushion (or more usually, the rocking chair in the backyard) each morning. Most days I woke up, sucked back an espresso, and went outside with the baby monitor and my headphones, eager to hear what was next. I would listen to the talk through one headphone, do the guided meditation, and then sit in silence for as long as I felt like it or until I started to hear, “Dadadadadada, daddyyyyyy…” through my other ear.
I’d like to tell you that I was up sharply at 5:30 and sat for a long time everyday, but it isn’t true. I missed a few mornings and often ended up circling back in the afternoon or evening when I had time. Some days I only got through listening to the ten minutes of audio, and other days I didn’t get to it at all (in truth, it was probably more like a 36-day wake up challenge for me 🤫 ). Most days I would listen to the talk a second time as I went to bed. More often than not, I’d fall asleep to Adyashanti’s voice before the short audio ended.
I didn’t love all of the talks. Some of the themes and practices within each section were too similar to others to feel distinct, and I often wanted more theoretical rigor or grounding in tradition. I also didn’t grock some of the practices in the final section, mostly because I couldn’t always feel my way into the practices. For example, on the day I worked on “pivoting towards peace,” I could perceive an identifiable internal shift each time it happened, but on the day where the instruction was to be totally honest with yourself and others, the practice felt flat, like another piece of “good advice, that you just can’t take,” (is that really irony, Alanis?).
Having said all that, I thought the audiobook was great. It helped me reinstate the habit of sitting first thing in the morning–something I did with zeal before our kids became multiple. Before kids I would get up everyday and sit for forty-five minutes or an hour in full lotus atop my zafu with incense and the whole deal. I’m not sure that practice didn’t come with some hidden costs, but my day definitely goes better when I do at least a little sitting first thing (even if it is in the rocking chair).
I think anyone looking for some guidance or a fresh approach to their sitting practice could benefit from this audiobook. I also think that if you’re beginning to feel like your practice isn’t helping you cultivate greater wisdom, compassion, or ability to see yourself as inextricably woven into the fabric of reality, this program could help you tap into what might be missing from your own practice (or what you might not have properly understood within your particular tradition). You might also find that if you’ve gotten really good at meditating but you’re still being a self righteous dingus or a selfish, suspicious a*hole more than you’d like and don’t know how to work on it, these talks and practices can give you a new approach to bring your realization out into the world.
Wherever you are in time and space, I hope your practice is going great (even if it’s hard and messy and deeply uncomfortable at times) and that it’s serving both your transcendental unfolding AND your day-to-day life in the conditioned world. As always, feel free to leave your thoughts or some other good reads/listens in the comments, and take heart! As Adyashanti reminds us, waking up is not only for the “rare or the few;” it’s for everyone and it might even be a lot closer than you think. 😉
🤟 🕉 🙏 💜
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