The Dynamics of Waking Up

Johan Willem Kaiser uses some interesting concepts to discuss the process of waking up. 

First, he makes the same point as A Course in Miracles, that we fell asleep and that is why we are also able to wake up:

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It is not the Almighty who drives man from the Heart of Creation, but man leaves this Heart and justifies it in his own eyes by projecting the power and consequence of that separation and misinterpreting it as  a punishment or curse from God.

This is how man is, when he comes face to face with the consequences of his own deed.

Man throws himself into the labyrinth of time and space,  mistakes it for reality and subjects himself to hist power; there he creates the barricades of belief, hope and love, against his own true return to Paradise.

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Another interesting place, particularly apropos in these times of Covid, is in the glossary to his bundle of essays, The Mysteries of Jesus in our Lives (only in Dutch), when he discusses the world Herd (my translation):

Herd:

Herd is not a loveless, arrogant word with which to reject our fellow human beings. However, all of us shortchange our inborn human dignity by living like herd animals; not waking, but lazily dreaming and staying asleep within the patterns of norms and thus downgrade the uniqueness of Life to a senseless "repetition" of what others have done already, choking off everything that could be uniquely, truly individual and alive, into "standard."

The laziness of people is evident. The search for development goes on, always farming out the hard parts. For that reason alone herd-man chooses himself a Shepherd. He can have the power, as long as he also takes the responsibility. Nobody can hand off their responsibility to someone else. Still herd-man is prepared to heavy sacrifice as long as he does not have to wake-up. He offers his wife and children, he even offers his own life, if must be, everything rather than waking up, staying awake, and doing the dirty work himself. Because the Herd is always again led to the slaughter (see as clearest illustrations the political herds under their extreme "shepherd,"  Napoleon, Hitler etc.) she experiences catastrophic disappointments, rude "awakenings." Then a small group separates from the herd, the "mass" with an "ideal" (see under Ideal), that venerates the Cross, but does not want to carry it. From it a single individual separates, who undertakes the journey through the Desert of the Prodigal Son, and carries his Cross, because it has been accomplished.    

Translated from J.W. Kaiser, The Mysteries of Jesus in our Lives, Glossary p. 155