Awakening does not arrive as a permanent gaze locked onto the infinite. It arrives as a rupture—clean, unmistakable, irreversible. Something collapses that never quite existed, and what remains does not need to convince itself of anything ever again.
That first rupture carries a strange innocence. Consciousness recognizes itself without reference, without scaffolding, without an observer left standing outside the recognition. Separation dissolves, not as an idea, but as a lived impossibility. That moment cannot repeat. Once the false center is seen through, there is no way to sincerely reinhabit it.
And yet—experience continues to pulse.
Eyes remain open, yet blinking persists.
Subsequent moments can arrive that feel just as total, just as decisive, just as final. Not because awakening has reversed, but because what awakening illuminates continues to reveal its own depth. Conditioning loosens further. Residual identity releases its grip. The nervous system grows more capable of bearing intimacy without contraction. Intelligence, love, emptiness, embodiment, each may come forward as if for the first time.
Each arrival feels absolute because it is absolute relative to what had not yet been surrendered.
Blinking names this rhythm without dramatizing it. Awareness does not dim, yet perception opens and closes. Identity does not return, yet orientation subtly reorganizes. What collapses is never truth itself, only the way truth was being unconsciously framed.
Peak realization and trait realization quietly diverge here. Peaks still occur; sometimes vast, sometimes ordinary, sometimes devastatingly simple. Traits deepen; less visible, more pervasive, harder to narrate. The need for confirmation dissolves even as revelation continues.
Classical traditions have always known this, though rarely shouted it. Zen never stopped at a single seeing. Advaita never mistook first recognition for final embodiment. Mahayana never separated emptiness from compassion. Kashmir Shaivism never treated recognition as a one-time event.
Each spoke differently, yet all pointed to the same subtle fact: awakening is not repeated, but it is continuously clarified.
Blinking does not interrupt sight.
Blinking protects it.
Awakening does not require uninterrupted luminosity. It requires no defense against the natural oscillation of experience. Awareness remains awake whether perception sharpens or softens, whether insight detonates or quietly integrates.
Awakening happens only once.
Awakening happens endlessly.
The first time, separation collapses.
Every time after, whatever still mimics separation dissolves.
Eyes open.
Eyes close.
Nothing essential is lost.
That is not regression.
That is refinement.
Morgan O. Smith
Get Your Free Copy of My Book, Bodhi in the Brain!
Morgan O. Smith 