Realization and Panic Attacks

In my early journey on the non-existent path of realization, I had many early mornings where I would awaken with a feeling of panic.

This usually occurred just before the sun was giving birth to a new day. In these times, I felt like my contracted mind was dripping sweat. Each drop contained different versions of essentially the same fear.

What if realization is just another invention of the mind? What if realization is a conspiracy that the matrix invented to keep the weirdest of us occupied? What if this experience is yet another brainwashing, like the one, for instance, by which I am convinced of being somebody just because enough people in my life have called me by the same name since I was born? What if realization is just another assumption/concept I am taking in mistakenly as the absolute truth? What if realization is another religion and my secular mind didn't even notice?

Later, in one of my meditations, clarity about what realization is all about showered me like rain on a sunny day. The colorful rainbow in the cloudless sky erased all questions and doubts from that moment on. The path of realization is the path where we decipher the codes of the instructional manual of existence so we can use existence and not be abused by it.

Imagine you obtain a vacuum cleaner with no manual to operate it. You have no idea what this thing is for. You try to use it as a bag and you lose all your belongings. You try to eat it and you nearly break your teeth. Put it on your head as a hat and you nearly break your neck. You keep moving from one suffering to another, from one pain to another, until something whispers in your ears: "I have instructions on how to use it without harming yourself."