It means you actively question everything you are told instead of taking it at face value.

Look at nature. Flowers, trees, animals, etc. It is Eden. It is truth.

It is reality.

Now, take a look at what humankind has superimposed upon it. Some of this, although "real" (in a tangible sense), is artificial. The depth to which you're able to distinguish between reality of truth and fabricated reality is the measure by which you are "awake".

Fabricated reality seems to be the inevitable result of institutions. Symptoms/effects/manifestations of these institutions are: propaganda (imaginary ideologies), the one party two party system (imaginary choices), and of course the inevitability of corruption (imaginary good).

When you dig deep enough into fabricated reality, you discover that it is now more prevalent than true reality, because it has so thoroughly pervaded and enslaved human society.

The trees do not know politics. If politics (or money) is involved, you can pretty much bet your life that it's fabricated reality (tangible, but not reality of truth).

Beautifully stated, as usual.

I don't know about the "as usual" part, but thanks... I guess my liberal arts degree does come in useful when freeform thought is appreciated.

This is going to sound like ass kissing, but your humor regularly makes me laugh, and your insight it usually spot on. I look forward to your replies...guess I'm a fan.

Edit - and your name is fun to say.

*shy (cognitively dissonant) fidget*

Heh, didn't mean to cause discomfort. I will crawl back into my gimp box now.

Having never had a 'fan' before, I was going for 'veiled pride' (one of the seven deadly...).

On a related note, I have to admit to being outspoken... which seems to get upvotes in this subreddit.

When people use the phrase "wake up", they are usually calling for their audience to become aware of some aspect of life they are either overlooking, are being lied to about, or are, consciously or unconsciously, ignoring. Wake up and realize that politicians are not on your side. Wake up and realize that religion is a cultural tool, not some higher truth. Wake up and realize that there is more to life than money and politics. Stop sleepwalking through life. Just stop. Look around. See the beautiful expressions of fractal life in the plants. See the spectral refraction of the sunlight in our atmosphere are dawn. Watch billions of gallons of life-giving H2O flow by you.

Life is beautiful, and too many people get caught up in the bullshit we create for ourselves. Find love, find friendship, and explore the world. Life is too short to live in a box paying for crap you don't need and blaming other people or other political philosophies for your problems. Get off your ass and live.

WWTDD?

Fucking love those memes.

Imho it's just another division that plays on people's false ego. When they say they're "awake" they really mean they're more "awake" than the "sheeple"...

The conspiracy theorists complain that people unlike them aren't as smart as they are, the anti-conspiracy theorists do the same.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41108/Peaceful%20Inhabitant%20Solution/John%20Fischer%20-%20Not%20the%20Only%20One.mp3

I guess I'm not forever alone, afterall.

Moravieff uses the term confluence to designate a peculiar hypnotic state in man where he is identified with the mental currents that flow through him and mistaking the thoughts that are engendered from this current as his own thoughts. Man's submersion into this mental current is what Gurdjieff calls 'waking sleep' or 'relative consciousness' and it is this level of consciousness that an ordinary man is born into, lives his everyday life, and then dies, without ever waking up into more objective states of awareness.

Man lives his waking life in a kind of 'waking dream' where he only dreams that he is awake. Ordinary physical sleep is a purely subjective state. However, when man 'wakes up' he is, according to Gurdjieff. still in a 'waking sleep.' This state of 'waking sleep' is less subjective then ordinary sleep because man can now distinguish between 'I' and 'not I' in the sense that he can recognize objects apart from his physical body, and to a certain extent orientate himself among them in relation to their position and qualities.

It is in this 'waking sleep' that man lives his life. He lives, loves, works, raises a family, etc., in this 'waking sleep' state. But it cannot be said that man is truly awake in this waking sleep state, because he is still strongly influences by his dreams, and he really lives more in his dreams then anything else. Particularly it is within this dream state where our unconscious motivations really reside and it is because of this that man is generally unconscious of what truly motivates him while he is living his everyday life. He is unaware of his true motivations that are the casual forces which propel him in his day to day activities. He only dreams that he is aware and thus lies to himself about his true motivations. Thus his life is a lie.

Ouspensky says: "All the absurdities and all the contradictions of people, and of human life in general, become explained when we realize that people live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and do not know that they are asleep."

However if man is asked if he is awake then nature plays a curious trick.

Ouspensky says in his book 'The psychology of Mans Possible Evolution' p.32:

"If you ask a man if he is conscious or if you say to him that he is not conscious, he will answer that he is conscious, and that is absurd to say that he is not, because he sees and hears you".

"AND HE WILL BE QUITE RIGHT, ALTHOUGH AT THE SAME TIME QUITE WRONG. He will be right because your question or your remark has made him vaguely conscious for a moment Next moment consciousness will disappear. But he will remember what you said and what he answered, and he will certainly consider himself conscious."

"In reality, acquiring self consciousness means long and hard work. How can a man agree to this work if he thinks that he already possess the very thing which is promised him as a result of long and hard work? Naturally a man will not begin this work and will not consider it necessary until he becomes convinced that he possess neither self consciousness nor all that is concerned with it, that is, unity or individuality, permanent 'I', and Will." [End Quote]

Concerning this state 'waking sleep' or 'relative consciousness' Gurdjieff says to Ouspensky in the book "In Search Of the Miraculous" 142:

"In order to understand what the difference between states of consciousness is, let us return to the first state of consciousness which is (physical) sleep. This is an entirely subjective state of consciousness. A man is immersed in dreams, whether he remembers them or not does not matter. Even if some real impressions reach him, such as sounds, voices, warmth, cold, the sensation of his own body, they arouse in him only fantastic subjective images. Then a man wakes up. At first glance this is quite a different state of consciousness. He can move, he can talk with other people, he can make calculations ahead, he can see danger and avoid it, and so on. It stands to reason that he is in a better position then when he was asleep. But if we go a little more deeply into things, if we take a look into his inner world, into his thoughts, into the causes of his actions, we shall see that he is almost the same state as when he was asleep."

"And it is even worse because in sleep he is passive, that is he cannot do anything. In the waking state, however, he can do something all the time and the results of all his actions will be reflected upon him or upon those around him. And yet he does not remember himself. He is a machine, everything with him happens. He cannot stop the flow of his thoughts, he cannot control his imagination, his emotions, his attention."

"He lives in a subjective world of 'I love, 'I do not love,' 'I like,' 'I do not like, 'I want,' 'I do not want,' that is, of what he thinks he likes, at what he thinks he does not like, of what he thinks he wants, of what he thinks he does not want. The real world is hidden from him by a thick wall of uncontrolled imagination."

"He lives in waking-sleep. He is asleep. What is called "clear consciousness" is actually sleep and a far more dangerous sleep than sleep at night in bed. Let us take some event in the life of humanity. For instance, war. What does it signify? It signifies that several millions of sleeping people are destroying several millions of other sleeping people."

"They would not do this, of course, if they were to wake up. Everything that takes place is owing to this sleep. Both states of consciousness, sleep and the (false) waking state, are thus equally subjective. Only by beginning to remember himself does a man really awaken. And then all surrounding life acquires for him a different aspect and a different meaning. He sees that it is a life of sleeping people, a life in sleep. All that men say and do, they say and do in sleep. All this can have no value whatsoever. Only awakening and what leads to awakening has a value in reality. How many times have I been asked whether wars can be stopped? Certainly they can. For this it is only necessary that people should awake. This seems a small thing. It is, however, the most difficult thing there can be because this sleep is induced by our so-called education and maintained by the whole surrounding society." [End Quote]

On this 'waking sleep' state Mouravieff calls this a state that leads to confluence. Maurice Nicholl referred to this state of confluence as "mixing of levels," where we mix concepts and ideas that should never be mixed, leading man to making gross cross-conceptualizations about himself and the world around him, pushing him further into the abyss of deeper delusional states making him prey for those who wish to manipulate his thinking for their own nefarious purposes.

Excerpt from Mouravieff's book GNOSIS Vol I p. 157:

When man is CONFLUENT, and consequently forgets himself, he is simply carried away by one of the mental currents which pass through him--but he is not conscious of it; he thinks he acts, when in reality he is carried away all the while plunged in mental sleep. Whenever he practices the 'tresvenic' (a Russian term relating to 'coming to' after a state of drunkenness), that is, whenever he is present, and as long as this state lasts, he will realize that he is being carried away. But that is all.

He still continues to be carried away. Nevertheless, this is a great progress, as it will permit him to constate on the idea: I AM. By doing this he will make the first effort to attach himself to the permanent by detaching himself from the temporal. With the formula the I AM, man for the first time can make an effort to resist the many mental currents which carry him away, and for which he is otherwise like a plaything. It is by this sort of conscious effort that he will start to build his cage--his future command post.

An awesome summary. I need to read more of Gurdjieff's work, so far I've only read Beelzebub's Tales.

TL;DR Until a person is awake, "The real world is hidden from him by a thick wall of uncontrolled imagination."

When your "Third Eye" is squeegeed clean ~ Bill Hicks

It means "please disregard everything I have just said, or will say in the future. I have poor critical thinking skills and a large ego."

Recognize your true enemies, as rage against the machine once said " yes I know my enemies theyre the teachers who taught me to fight me comprise, conformity, assimilation, ignorance,.brutality, the elite"

Compromise, not comprise

To be awake in the conspiracy sense, is to be aware of certain realities that are suppressed or denied by the mainstream media and the politicians.

What do you think it means? Get a brain, morans!

imagine if you will some dude want's you to help him sell some "pretty lie" that he can sell to poor people. "Hey look this dude made it on it talent"? Don't you believe in talent? No he's a very rich person who wants to sell BS. It's more like shit you got a good story so lets sell it to the suckers... Yeah it's a sad story but wtf.... this is why you question leftist gatekeepers.

It means that you purchased a dvd from Infowars.com

The answer to 1776 is $19.95 at the Infowars store

Whenever I see someone write "Wake up" I disregard any further comments they have.

What sly tricks these sleepers use to continue their sleep.

By them stating "wake up" they are stating that they think I should believe what they believe, and are insulting me in the process. That since I don't believe as they do, I must not be paying attention, and they feel they need to snap me out of it.

I take that as a sign that they are not entering into a discussion with an open mind, and proceed to avoid having a discussion with them.

Now if they come at me with information, we may discuss it. It's my prerogative. Don't like it, TDB.

Awake - adjective: I term used by conspiracy theorists to make themselves sound better than the general public. Usually because they spend a few hours reading conspiracy websites and don't like TV, sports, popular activities, etc. etc.