THE FOUR STAGES OF WAKING UP
A Journey Through the Illusion of Life
Most people think they’re awake. But true waking happens in stages—some painful, some profound—and each one burns away the illusion until there’s nothing left but what is.
This is the journey of the soul through reality… or rather, through the illusion of it.
Stage One: The Sleepwalker
In this stage, life feels real, fixed, and often unfair.
You think the world is what it is. You believe you were born into certain limits—gender, race, class, culture—and that your role is to make peace with them. You might get lucky, you might not. But deep down, you think life just happens to you.
This is where most people live—trapped in unconscious identification. You’re a victim of your environment, reacting to reality rather than shaping it.
Stage Two: The Player
Then… you glitch.
You see the seams in the game. You realise rules can be bent—or rewritten. You start asking: Who am I, really? Why am I playing this role? Why does any of this matter?
Life starts to feel like improv theatre. You shift identities. You try on masks. You chase new dreams. You stop obeying unspoken rules just because others do. For the first time, you taste freedom.
But you’re still in the game.
And like all games, there are rules. There are players following scripts. There are systems, methods, politics. And most importantly—there are patterns. Patterns to be recognised, broken, harnessed, or rewritten entirely.
Everyone is playing a game. Everyone. Even the ones who think they’re “above” it—they’re just playing a different game where the main rule is to believe they’re not players at all.
There is no “Scott.” Not really. In the early years, the world impressed itself onto me. Later, as I grew, I shaped that impression into a character and learned to identify with him. But it’s still a character—on the world’s greatest improv stage.
When someone thinks they’re being “real” and not fake, they have no idea how deluded they’re being. There’s no real version of you—only the version you believe is you. A version with predictability and familiarity. A version you keep coming back to. But still a version that can be altered, adjusted, and completely changed.
So here’s the question: Does this version of you get you what you want?
If not, time to change character.
The game is unavoidable. The best way to behave here is to play to win. But here’s the irony—you never actually win. As you evolve, the game evolves with you. The rules shift, the board changes, the stakes rise. Nobody truly wins or loses.
Stage Three: The Creator
Then comes the fire. The veil lifts.
You don’t just see the game—you realise you are the game. You are the field, the rules, the player, and the play.
Every limitation you ever believed in… was your own.
This isn’t intellectual—it’s experiential. You are not a character with a soul. You are the soul, playing at being a character.
This stage doesn’t just acknowledge that you’re a character—it shows you that your outer environment is a reflection of your inner environment. If you want to change what’s outside, you have to change what’s inside first.
Life doesn’t come at you—it comes from you.
From here, all things become possible—not because you manipulate outcomes, but because you align with the Source of all outcomes.
This is awakening.
Stage Four: The Return
Eventually, all of us die. But death isn’t the end.
It’s the reset—the soul’s return to Stage One. Most forget. We come back into the dream, start again, and repeat the journey. Again and again, lifetime after lifetime, until…
We don’t.
Because there is a final return. And it doesn’t require physical death—it requires ego death. Total surrender. Full union with the Creator in this lifetime.
At this stage, even awakening is an illusion. Life and death blur into one. Questions vanish. Desire dissolves. There is no direction, no hierarchy, no higher self to reach—because all that was ever reaching was already Home.
This is what the mystics call enlightenment. The point where the soul stops returning because there’s nothing left to return to. The one who sees the illusion no longer needs to play it.
They merge—not in body, not in mind, but in Being.
So… What’s the Point?
If you’re asking that, you’re still somewhere between Stage One and Stage Three—and that’s fine. The game doesn’t punish you for not winning. It just keeps gently nudging you toward remembering.
When you truly reach Stage Four, there are no more questions. Because there’s no “you” left to ask them.
And so life continues rerunning itself until there isn’t one fragment of mind left clinging to illusion. When the last sleeper awakens, we won’t celebrate. We will simply return, as One, into That Which Never Left.
A Shared Illusion
So how is it possible for billions of people to project their own reality, yet still experience life like it’s shared?
Because both the self and the world are illusions. What we’re experiencing is almost like a digital reality—eight billion people all playing the same video game, each moving through different levels at different times, unlocking consequences unique to them.
The journey from Stage One to Stage Four is a purification process—intertwined with realms of reality we haven’t even experienced yet. Each realm has its own purpose: to bring us back to our purest form and reunite us with the Source.
Closing Reflection (The Garden Philosopher’s Note)
A flower does not ask why it blooms. It simply becomes what it already is.
And so will we.
I’m Scott D. Renwick – a free thinker, blogger, entrepreneur, and landscape contractor at your service.