Are you ready to wake up? Do you consider yourself awake? Please explain how you are striving to find/connect with your higher self.

I am awake, but I had to kill myself first. Not physically. My "self" had to be buried, that my new "self" might.

And here it comes. The line you all have been dreading. I became "awake" only through God's spirit that lives within me.

Read about how this is possible and why it was designed from the beginning.

http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/mobile/?q=John 1

Life is the process of awakening. I am more awake the yesterday... We'll see about tomorrow ;)

My plan this morning is another cup of coffee and Adderall. TGIF!

12- step programs & becoming connected to a power greater than myself did it for me

here's a great meditation exercise to facilitate what extolsmith describes, and make it effortless.

My opinion is that the more you "strive" to find or connect with your higher self, the less successful you are in actually doing so.

I didn't find any suicide requirements in the link you provided. In fact, the reference you provided seems to have been authored primarily by one of the organization's major early detractors http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/mobile/?q=Acts 9 , who was clearly not "ready to wake up", but had to be struck blind before "waking".

According to the source you provided, your waker foreknew and predestined you to conform. http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/mobile/?q=Romans 8%3A29

"You" didn't do anything... nor did you have any choice in the matter.

As a courtesy, he gave you a call
http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/mobile/?q=Romans 8%3A30

... and let you know you were predestined
http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/mobile/?q=Ephesians 1%3A5

You had absolutely no choice... whatever you got, you obtained because you were picked...
http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/mobile/?q=Ephesians 1%3A11

... not because of any suicide you lay claim to, or any striving to connect...

at least not according to the source you provided.

pause, focus, open and walk forward. You cannot change the past and you must be willing to accept change for the future. No one person is truly awake to the height of nirvana and to think you have acheived such a place makes you clouded with ego.

I fell into a depression about a year and a half ago and have been battling it since then. For many people, including myself, depression causes a positive life reorientation. Don’t get me wrong. It sucks and I would not wish it on anyone. But it has caused me to revaluate things that I had been doing my entire life. I have also been doing meditation, which brings short term relief and may be having fruitful long term consequences.

It now seems to me that I had been sleep walking my entire life. And I see that I had been carrying around a great deal of unjustifiable anger. I have been an atheist since the age of 12 and am not about to find God, but I have come to believe that there is something beyond our individual selves, that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts and that compassion toward others is inextricably bound up with compassion for myself.

So here is the grand irony. As depressed as I get, I think that in many ways I am more awake and more sane and a generally more decent person than I have ever been in my entire life.