In one of my recent posts, I explored the question ‘Are You Asleep?’ at the individual level—how routines, when left unexamined, can quietly numb the soul.

Now, let’s widen the lens.

At a societal level, routine can feel like safety amid the world’s noise. But routine can also become a distraction from what is happening around us. This is how we slip into autopilot. How even the seasoned become careless. How familiarity dulls awareness.

When we fall asleep spiritually, we become more influenced by the world around us—the external, the reactive, the loud.

Let me be clear: when I speak of spiritual and worldly, I am not speaking in religious terms. You can be spiritually asleep while practicing religion. You can attend church, mosque, or pray every Sunday and still move through life unconsciously. Awakening is not about ritual—it is about intention. It is about choosing presence. It is about actively moving in love.

As Melville warns, when we sink too deeply into spiritual slumber, the only thing capable of waking us is disruption.

Does that feel familiar?

The times we are living in are disruptive—deeply so. They are soul-shaking by design. Not as punishment, but as an invitation.

We, as a collective, have been asleep for a long time.

And now that something has stirred us awake, what matters most is what we choose next.

“He can never be truly said to be happy, who is occupied with his own happiness.”

—Herman Melville

Do we react from fear and emotion?

Or do we pause—and choose to heal?

I am not saying don’t be angry.

I am not saying don’t feel grief or sadness.

I am asking this: when acting from love and presence, what can you do?

How can you become a source of light rather than more noise?

How can you soften what has hardened, illuminate what has been ignored?

Because it will take light to heal a world that has grown accustomed to the dark.