Waking Up

Do you ever feel as if your whole life is a dream? Actually, I feel that way sometimes. When I am meditating, I often hear an inner voice tell me to wake up. Like "Awaken, Awaken, Awaken". The concept of awakening to truth is found in many religions and most esoteric practices. Awakening is usually likened to enlightenment. But I wonder if it is not simply esoterica, but perhaps a more literal waking up that is called for.
As humans, we are constantly flooded with sensory and extra sensory information. In order to function at all we have to ignore vast amounts of information in order to pay attention to the things we have to pay attention to. Autistic people are said to be very sensitive to the flooding of sensory stimulation, and so withdraw into themselves in order to cope. I think there is getting to be so much sensory stimulus for all of us that we all are withdrawing. Obsessive use of video games, computers, texting, i-pods, and all the gadgets we quickly become obsessed with, are sometimes used as an escape. These gadgets allow us to hyper focus on one thing thus shutting out the myriad stimulus all around us. I am not saying that these "newer" technologies are a special case. We have been doing the same thing with TV for decades. I am also not saying that technology is causing this. Humans are more and more desperate to withdraw from the vast amount of data, images, ideas, and technology can be a place into which they can withdraw. Of course, if it were not for all of the technology, we would not be so constantly barraged with data. I am not blaming technology for anything. Technology is created and used by humans. We are the only ones responsible for what we do with it. No one creates products unless there are consumers ready, willing, and able to consume it. That said, why do we consume it? And, are we stopping to think about what we are not doing, while we are hyper-focused on some game, or farmville, or mafia wars, or texting a vote for the next "American Idol"? These activities tickle the creative part of us just enough that we might think we are actually DO-ing something. When you let technology burn up all of your time - whether it is gaming, tv watching, facebook time sinking, or anything else, you keep yourself asleep and hyperfocused on someone else's life and creativity. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, necessarily. I'm just suggesting that we all consciously decide if that's what we really want from life.