The difference between woke and awakened is vast.
To paraphrase a 2001 commentary in WIE (What is Enlightenment) magazine:
To dare to even speak about radical transformation, let alone call other people to a higher level, is against the unstated rules. And of course, one's definitely going to be put in one's place for doing something like that. And thus without realizing, many participate in a conspiracy of mediocrity.
The conspiracy of mediocrity is basically the conspiracy to express your own ego instead of transcending it or letting go of it. The idea has become "if I can really emote and express my self-constriction with sincerity, I'm somehow spiritual." Actually, people (today's Woke) who are involved in this boomeritis even deny the importance of Enlightenment or Awakening, because that's saying some states are higher than others ... and we shouldn't be so judgmental because it offends the neo-pluralistic ego.
The spiritual experience, which ideally should be a stepping-stone to less ego and greater transparency, has become a victim of our therapeutic culture, where we don't make judgements because that would hurt egoic self-esteem, and so all we do is embrace, console, and celebrate the personal self. Spiritual practice has become nothing more than a form of therapy where self-acceptance and a neo-pluralistic agenda rather than ego-transcendence is the goal.
The great promise of the human potential movement was very straightforward - there are higher human potentials. Now, from the therapeutic culture, people say, "wait a minute. you're saying there are higher potentials, so does that mean I'm lower? because that can't be right". All of a sudden it implied a judgement, and nobody's allowed to be higher because that means someone else is going to be lower. And you're not allowed to call anybody lower; therefore nobody's allowed to be higher. (Equity and skin color now trumps Character).
So the Human Potential movement got derailed and was replaced by this (Spiral Dynamics level 6) therapeutic self-expression, self-acceptance movement, which catastrophically prevents higher transformation and Spiritual breakthroughs. Under the therapeutic culture, if you feel good, you're enlightened. That is mediocrity, the conspiracy toward mediocrity, and the cancellation of Higher Human Potential.
In our current therapeutic, woke, personal truth orientated society people don't want to see that what they feel is meaningful actually promotes the greatest threat humanity has ever faced ... that their neo-pluralist ideology is the enemy of Human Potential.
Using the Evolutionary Psychology model of Spiral Dynamics, our current therapeutic society can be bundled in Level 6 ... color coded as Green (Greens) ... their metaphor: FeelingsMatter.
However, "The 6th level of thinking are an attack upon nature and Nature's Laws, that should be around for the shortest period of time of any of the lower ways of thinking that we have had" - Dr Clare Graves.
The ONLY healthy Green is one who recognizes that EVERYTHING they believe is WRONG
"The person operating at the 6th level [aka Global, pluralistic Consciousness] must realize that everything that human beings have ever believed in, is by and large, wrong." Dr Clare Graves.
Buddha was asked (Sambodhi Sutta), 'What are the prerequisites for the development of the wings to self-awakening?' His response was that admirable friends, admirable companions, is the first prerequisite for the development of the wings to self-awakening."
Admirable friends put the dharma (a relevant life) before human-centric viewpoints ... thus making available a fertile ground for cultivating Heart-mind or Unfabricated Present Awareness. Sakyamuni Buddha (Upaddha Sutta) said that admirable friendship is the whole of spiritual life.
Shared from a friend.
