In the lives of the few wanting to awaken there exists another true dichotomy that is theirs alone, (which is): in the beginning, you either get it or not, and in the end, you either get it or not, and there is no middle. This is certainly not how it seems when you are in the middle, for your thoughts during that time cannot perceive it to be otherwise.
Do not get disheartened by what you have thus far read, for that is not the purpose of this piece. Indeed, before it is over you will have the opportunity to extract new insights into the nature of what it is that you are trying to accomplish that are both practical and encouraging.
So, we have a number of people on this planet at any given time who say/believe that they want to wake up, are involved in efforts to do so, and are making gradual progress. But most, (almost all), of them did not originally get it, and never will. Then we have the few who, through nothing they ever did, got the idea of waking up the instant they first encountered it, and they too claim to be making pertinent efforts, and experiencing collateral progress toward that end, and even though they alone have the possibility of ever achieving the goal, they are not making, “progress.”
At the end, at the goal line it is still the matter of you either get it or you do not. (To use the classic mystical terminology, you are either awake, or you are not, and there is no middle ground), and if you can somehow get your mental hands around this fact it will be of great benefit and expediency.
If your ordinary sleeping state is on the Atlantic coastline of North Africa, and the longed-for, awakened state is across the continent at the Red Sea, then to get there you must transverse the bleak, lonely and challenging Sahara Desert. (And for today’s purpose, this is not an ill appropriate allegory).
J.