5 People You Must Avoid After Awakening - Alan Watts - YouTube
Transcripts:
Stop right now. Ask yourself this. Why does everyone around you suddenly feel wrong? Not bad, not evil, just off. Like you're listening to a song you used to love, but now you can hear every false note, every forced lyric, every place where the melody pretends to be something it's not. If you're feeling this, if you've started to see through the performance we call normal life, then congratulations.
And I'm so so sorry because what comes next? That's the part nobody warns you about. You've woken up and now you're surrounded by sleepwalkers. Here's the brutal truth they don't mention in all those spiritual books. Awakening doesn't make life easier. It makes it lonier, more complicated, more dangerous even. Because the moment you open your eyes, you realize you're standing in a crowded theater where everyone else is still watching the movie and they're angry that you're blocking their view.
So what do you do? How do you protect that fragile flame of awareness that's just started flickering inside you? How do you walk through a world that wants to pull you back to sleep? Simple. You learn to recognize the dream pushers, the flame snuffers, the five types of people who will, often with the best intentions, try to drag you back into the beautiful, terrible illusion you just escaped from.
This isn't about judgment. This isn't about being holier than thou. This is about survival, about keeping your light alive in a world full of wind. Are you ready? Because once you see these patterns, you can't unsee them. Picture this. You've just had the most profound realization of your life. The walls you thought were solid.
They're made of mist. The identity you've been defending, it's a costume. The story of you, it's been a beautiful lie. You're vibrating with this new truth. You feel raw, alive, terrified, and exhilarated. And then you try to share it with someone you love. Big mistake. Their face changes. Not dramatically, just a subtle tightening around the eyes.
A careful smile that doesn't quite reach their heart. And then come the words wrapped in concern. Are you okay? Maybe you should get some rest. You're overthinking things again. This doesn't sound like you. Here's what's really happening. You've just threatened their entire reality. These are people who've built a fortress of certainty brick by brick, belief by belief. The mortgage is real.
The career ladder is real. The 5-year plan is definitely real. Their safety depends on knowing, on controlling, on keeping everything in neat little boxes labeled that's just how life is. And you, you just set fire to all their boxes. They can't let you be right. Because if you're right, then everything they've been clinging to is what? a dream, a game, a cosmic joke.
So, they'll do what any dreamer does when someone tries to wake them. They'll pull you back down into sleep with them. They'll use reason. They'll use love. They'll use shame. Whatever it takes to get you to close your eyes again and agree that yes, yes, of course, this is all there is. Listen carefully. The moment you start defending your awakening, you've already lost it.
Truth doesn't need your arguments. Peace doesn't require their approval. What to do instead? Smile, nod, and say nothing. Let them have their certainty. Let them keep their comfortable prison. You can't wake someone who's pretending to sleep. And you'll exhaust yourself trying. The awakened don't recruit. They don't convince. They don't explain.
They simply are. And their presence alone becomes an invitation that some will eventually accept. But here's the key. Stop spilling wine into broken cups. Your revelations are pearls. Keep them for those who have eyes to see. The rest, let them dream in peace. When you stop trying to prove you're awake, a strange thing happens.
You become more awake. Your energy stops leaking. Your peace deepens. And silence, real spacious silence, becomes your greatest teacher. Oh, this one, this one is delicious in its irony. You'll meet them at yoga classes, meditation retreats, that organic cafe with the overpriced kombucha. They speak in hushed, reverent tones about raising their vibration.
They casually drop Sanskrit words into conversation. Their Instagram is a carefully curated shrine to their enlightenment. Prayer beads, sunrise meditations, quotes about oneness superimposed over mountain landscapes. And here's the trap. They're saying all the right words. Energy, consciousness, nonduality, presence.
They've read all the books you've read. They quote Roomie and Tole and probably have a shrine to Buddha or worse, a Buddha tattoo. They seem like they get it, like they're awake, just like you. But watch carefully. Listen with your whole body, not just your ears. Notice how every conversation becomes a subtle competition.
A spiritual Olympics where enlightenment is measured in meditation hours, plant-based meals, and how many times they can say ego without irony. Oh, I used to get triggered by that,too, back when I still had attachments. I've transcended the need for validation, said while desperately seeking validation. We're all one, subtext. But I'm more one than you.
The ego hasn't died in these people. It's just wearing a new costume. It used to be the suit and tie, the sports car, the corner office. Now it's the yoga mat, the crystal collection, the ability to sit in lotus position for 2 hours, same game, new outfit. And here's the danger. They'll tempt you to start performing, too.
Suddenly, you're questioning yourself. Am I spiritual enough? Should I meditate longer, post inspirational quotes, speak softer, smile more mysteriously, wear more flowing garments? Just like that, you've turned the infinite into a fashion show, the pathless path into a race, the end of self into a new, improved spiritual self.
Real awakening, it's as plain as washing dishes. It doesn't announce itself. It doesn't compare itself to anyone. It doesn't have an Instagram account. It's so ordinary, so simple, so unglamorous that it can walk right through a room of spiritual performers without anyone noticing it at all. The truly awake person might be the janitor, the checkout cler, the grandmother watering her plants.
They're not trying to be anything. They're not even trying to not try. They've simply stopped playing the game, including the game of look how enlightened I am. What to do with the spiritual performers? Don't expose them. Don't challenge their performance. The mask will fall away when it's ready. probably when no one's watching.
Just don't get pulled into the theater. Don't audition for a role in their spiritual drama. Keep your practice private. Keep your realizations quiet. Let the depth of your silence speak louder than any words. Remember, you're not in a race to enlightenment. There's no finish line, no leaderboard. The moment you think you're ahead of someone else, you've already lost your way.
True freedom is the end of comparison altogether. Now we come to perhaps the most painful type to avoid because unlike the others, these people genuinely need you. Or so it seems. Here's what happens. Awakening makes you sensitive, porous. Your heart cracks open like an egg. And suddenly you can feel everything.
The silent desperation in the checkout line. The hidden grief behind small talk. The thousand tiny sufferings people carry like invisible stones. You become a lantern in the dark. And lanterns, they attract moths. Enter the emotional vampire. They're not bad people, not manipulative monsters. They're just empty, desperately, achingly empty.
And they've learned consciously or not that you have something they want. Light, energy, peace, attention, the feeling that someone finally sees them. You'll recognize them by their patterns. Their stories never end. Each problem sprouts three new problems. Every solution reveals another crisis. They drain you without ever meaning to.
After spending time with them, you feel exhausted, hollowed out, like something vital has been siphoned away. They say things like, "You're the only one who understands me. I don't know what I'd do without you. You're so much wiser than everyone else." And that right there, that's the hook. Because your newly awakened heart wants to help, wants to heal, wants to share the light that was so freely given to you.
And surely, surely, if you just love them enough, explain things clearly enough, hold space long enough, they'll find their own way to the light. Right? Wrong. Here's the hard truth. The one that will break your spiritual heart. You cannot rescue anyone from a dream they're still enjoying. Some people are addicted to their suffering.
They've built their entire identity around being wounded, misunderstood, broken. Their pain is their power. Their story is their currency. And if you take that away, if you actually help them heal, they'll lose the only thing that makes them feel special. So they don't actually want solutions. They want an audience, a never-ending supply of sympathy, someone to cosign their victimhood and confirm that yes, the world is cruel and they are powerless.
Your compassion becomes their food source. And here's the crulest part. The more you give, the more they need. Your light doesn't illuminate them. It just makes them hungrier. It's like trying to fill a cup that has no bottom. Eventually, you'll have nothing left to give. And they'll simply move on to the next lantern. What to do? This is where awakening requires ruthlessness. Not cruelty, ruthlessness.
There's a difference. Learn to say no. Not with guilt. Not with lengthy explanations. Just I can't. That doesn't work for me. I'm not available. Watch what happens to your energy. Does this person nourish you or drain you? Does conversation with them leave you energized or exhausted? Your body knows before your mind does. Trust it.
Real compassion isn't endless availability. Real compassion knows when to close the door, when to step back, when to letsomeone face their darkness alone because that's the only way they'll ever find their own light. You're not abandoning them. You're trusting them. Trusting that they have their own inner flame, their own path, their own lessons that suffering is trying to teach them.
Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is refuse to participate in someone's self-destruction. And once you've learned this, once you've discovered that boundaries are love in its most intelligent form, you'll be ready for the fourth type. Perhaps the most insidious of all. Ah, the rational cynic, the skeptic, the one who mistakes intellectual cleverness for wisdom and thinks that dissecting beauty somehow makes them deep. You know the type.
Everything is reducible, explainable, demystified. Love, just oxytocin and evolutionary programming. Beauty, symmetry that triggers genetic preferences. Consciousness, an illusion created by neurons. Your awakening, probably a mental health crisis. Have you considered therapy? They have an answer for everything, which means they understand nothing.
Here's what's really happening. The cynic is terrified of mystery. Uncertainty makes them feel powerless. So they've built a fortress of logic to keep the unknown at bay. If they can explain it, name it, categorize it, then they can control it, or at least pretend they can. They'll hear you speak of interconnectedness and respond with physics equations.
You mention consciousness, they'll cite neuroscience studies. You describe a moment of pure presence, they'll diagnose it as dissociation or pattern seeking or confirmation bias. They're not seeking truth, they're seeking safety. And here's the tragic irony. The cynic is almost always a disappointed idealist. Someone who once hoped deeply, believed fully, maybe even touch the mystery themselves, and then got hurt, betrayed, disillusioned. So, they made a decision.
Never again. Never again will I be naive. Never again will I trust something I can't prove. Never again will I let myself be that vulnerable. They wrapped their wounded heart in barbed wire and called it intelligence. And now they want you to do the same. They need you to be as cynical as they are because your wonder reminds them of what they lost.
Your openness exposes their armor. Your willingness to not know threatens their need to know everything. So they'll mock your insights, dismiss your experiences, reduce your awakening to brain chemistry or wishful thinking or the psychological need for meaning in a meaningless universe. If you stay too long in their presence, you'll start to doubt yourself. Maybe they're right.
Maybe I'm just making this up. Maybe the sacred is just the spectacular. Maybe magic is just ignorance that hasn't met science yet. Your wonder, that precious, delicate capacity to be astonished by existence, will start to wither. What to do? Don't argue. Don't try to prove magic to someone who's decided it doesn't exist.
You can't logic someone into wonder. Just smile. Acknowledge their intelligence. And keep walking. The universe doesn't need your defense. Mystery doesn't require explanation. The moon doesn't stop shining just because someone explains its orbit. Remember this. Reason is a tool, not a truth. It's a flashlight, not the sun. It can illuminate a path, but it can't create the light.
To awaken is to discover that some things can only be known by becoming them. Some truths can only be touched with the heart. Some realities are too vast, too subtle, too infinite to fit inside the measuring cup of logic. The cynic has confused the map for the territory. Don't make the same mistake. Guard your sense of wonder like you'd guard a rare jewel.
Because the moment you stop being amazed by existence, you stop really living. You become a walking encyclopedia full of information empty of awe. And that brings us to the fifth and final type. the most seductive, the most dangerous, because this one doesn't come from outside you. This one lives within. Let me tell you something that might sting.
The biggest threat to your awakening isn't out there. It's in here. After you wake up, after you start seeing clearly, something interesting happens. You become aware of all the suffering around you. And not just aware, responsible. You think, I've been given this gift of clarity, this light, this peace.
Surely I'm meant to share it, right? To help others wake up, too. And so you become the rescuer. You start trying to fix everyone, heal everyone, wake everyone up. You see someone suffering and think, "I could help them. I should help them. Maybe I'm the only one who can help them.
" Your awakening becomes a burden, a job, a mission. And slowly, subtly, your ego, that clever shape shifter, sneaks back in through the side door. It's not wearing its old costume anymore. Now it's dressed as a saint, a healer, a light worker, someone special, someone chosen, someone whose peace depends on everyone else finding theirs.Let me be blunt. You cannot save anyone.
Not your partner, not your parents, not your troubled friend or your lost sibling, or that stranger who looked at you with desperate eyes. Every soul wakes up in its own time through its own suffering by its own grace. To interfere, to try to rescue someone from their necessary darkness, is to rob them of the very friction that will polish them into clarity.
The rescuer is just the ego in a spiritual costume. It sounds like compassion. It feels like love. But look deeper. Whose need is really being met? who feels important, necessary, meaningful when they're helping. The rescued person becomes your project, your proof of worth, the evidence that your awakening matters. And if they don't heal, if they don't wake up, if they reject your help, you feel frustrated, hurt, maybe even resentful, which tells you everything you need to know.
This wasn't about them. It was about you. Real wisdom knows you can't rescue anyone from a dream they're still enjoying. The sun doesn't chase shadows. It simply shines and the darkness dissolves when it's ready, not before. Your job isn't to wake people up. Your job is to be awake. To live your truth so authentically, so naturally, so effortlessly that it becomes an invitation, not a demand.
Some will accept that invitation. Most won't. And both responses are perfect. What to do when you feel the rescuer stirring inside you? Pause. Breathe. Ask yourself, whose need is this really serving? If someone asks for help and you can give it without depleting yourself, without needing anything in return, without attachment to outcomes, then give freely.
But if there's even a whisper of they need me or I'm the only one who can save them or my peace depends on their healing, stop. That's not love. That's the ego playing dress up. Let people have their darkness. Trust their journey. Honor their timing. The universe doesn't need a savior. It needs witnesses. People who can see clearly, love deeply, and refrain from interfering with the sacred chaos of becoming. So, there you have it.
The five people to avoid after awakening. The sleeper who insists you're dreaming. The spiritual performer competing for enlightenment. The emotional vampire feeding on your light. The rational cynic who's afraid of mystery. The rescuer of souls who might be you. But here's what this is really about. Learning to protect your flame.
Not because you're better than others. Not because you're special or chosen or superior, but because you've been entrusted with something precious, a spark of clarity in a world that's mostly asleep. And that spark, it's fragile, especially at first. So, you must learn to walk carefully. Choose your company wisely, not with arrogance, but with intelligence.
Not with judgment, but with discernment. Some people will water your garden, others will trample it without meaning to. Your job is to know the difference. This isn't about rejecting anyone. It's about respecting your own becoming. You can love people from a distance. You can have compassion without involvement.
You can see clearly without needing to make others see. And when you stop trying to convince, save, prove, or perform, something miraculous happens. Your awakening stops being a phase. It becomes a way of breathing, a gentle awareness that moves through the world, touching what it can, leaving the rest untouched.
You realize that everyone, everyone is exactly where they need to be, including you. The play continues, but you no longer have to play your old part. You can sit in the theater, watch the movie, eat the popcorn, and know with absolute certainty that it's just a movie. Beautiful, meaningful, but not ultimately real.
And that knowing that's freedom. So go now, walk through your world with eyes wide open. Love fiercely, but wisely. Share your light, but don't let anyone blow it out. The awakened life isn't about ascending to some mountaintop where you look down on the sleepers with pity or superiority. It's about standing right where you are in the marketplace, in the mess, in the middle of ordinary life, and remembering what's real.
You are not here to wake everyone up. You are here to stay awake. Everything else, let it unfold as it will. Take a deep breath, smile at the dream, and keep your eyes open. The universe is watching itself through you. Don't blink.
