The world has been divided through religion, caste, race, gender norms, sexuality and other complex factors for far too long. However in reality we observe only two types of people, awakening or unconscious. So what exactly is awakening and how can we gain consciousness regardless of the many confusions witnessed around us?

1. Know You Are Dreaming: We all sleep and dream, yet majority of people do not realize that the world we are living in is also a dreamworld, where our mind is generating our reality.  When our eyes are open we might be actually asleep,  much like a dream in which we also see so many things and people around ourselves. Most people who are asleep in their daily ‘waking life’ find it extremely hard to believe that their life is also a dream. They think that all things that they can see, touch, feel, smell, taste or hear in their daily life are far more real than what the very same things they see in their dreams. This is our greatest mistake. 
2. Note and Pay Attention to Your Dreams: Begin your awakening by truly paying attention to what is happening when you go to bed at night. Note down your dreams so that you make a habit of paying attention to them and remembering them. After a daily practice of keeping a dream journal, you will begin to see your dreams much more clearly and yourself notice how ‘real’ or lucid your dreams can actually be. Slowly you will begin to note how your thoughts including subconscious mind can generate your dreams, and you will begin to be awake in your dreams so that you can move about, fly, astral travel or do whatever you like or even change it at your will. It is within these dreams, which you may have ignored so far, that you will learn more about your subconscious mind and how it can project various realities.
3. Meditate: We do not ‘wake up’ just because we die. We may just go from dream to dream, wandering in illusions. Awakening is about gaining consciousness and meditation is the key. Not only when you sleep at night, but also when you are going about your life throughout the day, you can find some time to sit quietly and close your eyes. By focusing on your inner world, you can literally ‘hear’ your unconscious self-talk or see what is going on in your mind. What you can observe you can also control. By focusing on your third eye through your breath in meditation, and observing inner silence, you can gain power over your mind. Self-defeating or harmful thoughts can be overcome and replaced by positive affirmations that can be quite magical. You can even learn to astral travel and to generate dreams at your will with enough practice and slowly you start seeing how you can influence your everyday reality too. Once you get startling proof that you mind is literally projecting reality into your life, you will have no shred of doubt left. 
4. Stay Non-Attached to Senses: We all get a lot of stimuli or information flowing into our mind through our senses. If you have been alert in your dreams and gained lucidity to some extent you would notice that in our dreaming we can be affected by all our senses. Just like we get entangled and involved with all our senses in our dreams, we also remain entangled and involved in our daily life in a constant pursuit of flavor, enjoyment, entertainment and pleasure. Dazed and enticed by our senses we buy into the illusion all around us everyday and imagine that we are in a very ‘real’ world. In contrast when we gain power over our senses, we stop chasing sensory pleasures all the time and become more meditative instead. For instance saying no to drugs, quitting smoking, reducing dependence on sex and alcohol, or going vegan can be the first steps in gaining self-control and consciousness for most people who have been addicted to their senses. The rest remain unconscious and a slave to their senses or ‘maya’.
5. Question Reality: The ‘law of attraction’ says that we manifest things or people into our life based on our energy vibrations such as thoughts or emotional state. Science too confirms that we are living in an illusory ‘simulation’ and that matter is in-fact made up of energy. Yet, the moment we learn the ‘law of attraction’ we use the ‘secret’ to make more money, have more pleasurable relationships, or merely enjoy life, without realizing that it is merely an illusion. Or, if we are skeptical and more scientific instead we keep ‘peeling the layers’ of the reality onion seeking more and and more sub-atomic particles within particles of ‘matter’ which is actually energetic in nature. What we really need to do is look within ourselves too and not just keep researching the outer world so that we can see where this simulation is coming from. We need more scientific spirituality or spiritual science where we research into our mind and reality connection.
6. Stay Away From Dogma: While we all respect religions and seek peace, we also need to not subscribe to dogmatic faith that requires some kind of ‘belief system’ to be imposed from the outside. We need to be aware that regardless of faith, or independent of which deity you pray to or whether you go to Church, Temples, Mosques, or any other religious place, prayers can be at times answered in amazing ways. Similarly, if you are an atheist you can still manifest something through simply believing in yourself or by holding a strong intention. Therefore any religious group or institution that tells you that only their belief or deity is true or powerful is clearly mistaken. Even worse would be those who frighten people with images of a ‘devil’ or ‘evil spirits’ influencing your life if you do not bow to ‘their God’. Such dogmas keep people bound to superstitious beliefs that prevent a real search for truth by looking inwards and witnessing how you are creating your life.
7. Forgive and Detach From Your Story:  Imagine a virtual reality show or movie where you could go into the game and experience it with all your sensations along with your emotions, as if you are the character. This is exactly what is happening in our life too which is very much like a dream unfolding through our senses and generated by mental perceptions. However bound with all our emotions and dramas we keep prolonging our illusion and remain asleep. Just like while dreaming we need to wake up by detaching from the story in our dream, similarly we can also detach from our story in our ‘waking life’. Everything that has happened all the way up till the present moment has been nothing more than a dream. Regardless of all the pain, suffering, deaths, heartbreaks and in-spite of all the achievements, success, friendships, relationships, we all have been in-fact only dreaming. Forgiving every person including and especially yourself is the most important part of awakening. 
8. Know Your Power Over the System: Something in us, consciously or unconsciously has been generating our ‘story’, and if we really trace our soul back all the way to the source, we will find how we have generated the very same systems of political, economical and religious control that we have been fighting against. We will see how we have been very unconscious since our birth or past lives, and have contributed unconsciously to the development of all the systems we have place all around us in this world and have also generated all our victim states when being abused or suffering through any timeline within the matrix. The important thing is to stop hurting and reacting to these unconscious energies from our past or from around us but to gain power over them and be the change we wish to see in our world.
9. Know that We Are One: The biggest illusion in this multi-dimensional reality show is the appearance that we are all different people with different souls. In truth we all have the same one soul deep within ourselves which we can also call ‘God’, Ultimate Consciousness’, ‘Supreme Being’, ‘Creator’ or ‘Source’. We can all gain self-realization by reaching this level of Truth or Self within us which is the same essence carried within all conscious beings. Anyone who gains consciousness awakens to this truth from within instead of being fooled by the outward display of all the characters and personalities around. When we are trying to heal others, or awaken others, what we really need to do is connect with the higher self where we all are One instead of trying too hard to change others all around us who are seem to be part of the unconscious matrix and not really open to change all the time.
10. Self Mastery: Waking up from a dream can take a longer or shorter time based on how soon we gain awareness that we are in a dream, become more lucid and ultimately detach from the story with all our senses and emotions. Similarly awakening in this life is accelerated by realizing that we are in illusion, seeing for ourselves how we are generating the illusion across every level of our own ‘matrix’ or mind, and detaching from our story or ‘maya’ through non-attachment. When we are no longer emotionally disturbed by the past, worried about the future, or entangled sensually in the present, we have gained some sort of mastery over our own self, and can certainly prepare for awakening and ascension.