The Inner Road of the Waking Man

By Fazal Abubakkar Esaf

In my journey across conversations, traditions, and inner disciplines, I have discovered one truth that returns again and again: we live in a world where almost everyone is alive, but very few are actually awake. This book is not a manual, not a doctrine, and not a path. It is simply a mirror held up to the reader — a mirror that reflects not the face, but the forgotten self behind the face.

Each story in this book arises from a single quest:
to understand the mechanical nature of human life and the rare possibility of breaking free from it.

If these pages disturb you, good.
If they comfort you, read again.
And if they awaken something quietly glowing inside you,
then the purpose of this work has already been fulfilled.

 

For many years, I observed people — including myself — living in cycles of reaction, habit, fear, and unconscious repetition. I began to see how easily a human being becomes a machine, moved not by will but by the accumulated weight of yesterday.

This book is the result of those observations.

The stories here are symbolic rather than literal.
They are not meant to entertain but to provoke inner friction — the kind that leads to understanding. Each tale carries a principle hidden beneath its images, and each principle is a small door through which one may step toward self-remembering.

Read slowly.
Pause often.
Let the meaning reveal itself in silence.

Only in silence do certain truths agree to speak.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fazal Abubakkar Esaf
• Release date: Dec 6, 2025
• ISBN: 9798231262700

Book preview

Acknowledgements

To every seeker who has ever paused in the middle of their busy life and asked,

Who is the one living inside me?

This book is shaped by your courage.

To the teachers who leave no signatures on their lessons,

to the travellers whose footsteps echo through silence,

and to those whose questions reveal more light than answers ever could—

I bow in gratitude.

And to the invisible hands that guide all sincere effort,

thank you for the impulses that brought these pages into being.

Introduction

In my journey across conversations, traditions, and inner disciplines, I have discovered one truth that returns again and again: we live in a world where almost everyone is alive, but very few are actually awake. This book is not a manual, not a doctrine, and not a path. It is simply a mirror held up to the reader—a mirror that reflects not the face, but the forgotten self behind the face.

Each story in this book arises from a single quest:

to understand the mechanical nature of human life and the rare possibility of breaking free from it.

If these pages disturb you, good.

If they comfort you, read again.

And if they awaken something quietly glowing inside you,

then the purpose of this work has already been fulfilled.

Preface

For many years, I observed people—including myself—living in cycles of reaction, habit, fear, and unconscious repetition. I began to see how easily a human being becomes a machine, moved not by will but by the accumulated weight of yesterday.

This book is the result of those observations.

The stories here are symbolic rather than literal.

They are not meant to entertain but to provoke inner friction—the kind that leads to understanding. Each tale carries a principle hidden beneath its images, and each principle is a small door through which one may step toward self-remembering.

Read slowly.

Pause often.

Let the meaning reveal itself in silence.

Only in silence do certain truths agree to speak.

Dedication

To the part of you that is still awake,

still listening,

still capable of becoming more than you are today.

And to all travellers of the inner road—

may your steps be conscious,

and your struggle sincere.

1. The Man Who Slept Through His Own Life

There once lived a man named Amin, though very few remembered his name, and even fewer remembered his presence. He walked the streets like someone passing through a dream he did not know he was dreaming. He ate, worked, spoke, and aged in the manner of a man performing gestures handed down to him by a long-forgotten script. If someone had asked him why he lived as he did, he would likely have shrugged, scratched his beard, and said, This is how everyone lives.

Amin did not know he was asleep.

Most sleeping men don’t.

He worked at a small office where papers came in, were stamped, and went out again. Years piled up exactly like those papers—neatly, mechanically, without meaning. His colleagues often joked that Amin would still be sorting documents even on his own funeral pyre. Amin would laugh with them, not realizing the joke was truer than they imagined.

Inside, however, was a subtle discomfort—a faint itch beneath the skin of his life. It appeared whenever he paused, whenever silence unexpectedly entered his day, whenever he walked home alone at dusk and saw his shadow stretching ahead like a tired servant. In those moments, he felt an inexplicable hollowness, as if something within him were calling from a locked room whose key he had misplaced long ago.

But the feeling always disappeared when the noise of routine returned. And so he continued sleeping, moving, breathing, and existing as though no other possibility could be imagined.

One winter evening, as Amin walked home, the city seemed unusually quiet. A fog clung to the streets, softening every shape, every light, every sound. The silence was heavy—the kind that forces a man inward. Amin felt that familiar discomfort again: the sense of missing something essential.

He stopped near an old bridge and leaned on the railing, watching the faint reflections of streetlights tremble on the dark water. He felt his heart beating, but it felt like the heart of a stranger. A sudden thought floated into his mind:

Whose life am I living?

The question startled him. It didn’t feel like his own thought. It felt like a message whispered by the fog itself.

As he stood there, wrapped in that unsettling question, a voice spoke beside him:

You look like a man chasing his own absence.

Amin turned and saw an elderly traveler wearing a long, dust-colored coat. The man’s eyes were bright—almost too awake, as if they belonged to someone who never slept at all.

I don’t know what you mean, Amin said, embarrassed.

The traveler chuckled softly. Of course you don’t. Most men do not recognize themselves even when they’re standing inside their own skin.

Amin frowned. Do I know you?

No, the traveler said. But I know your condition.

My condition?

Yes. You are asleep, though your eyes remain open. You move through life like a leaf moved by wind. You live without living, act without choosing, speak without knowing who speaks through you.

Irritation rose in Amin. What nonsense. I work. I take care of my responsibilities. I live like any normal man.

That is precisely the tragedy, the traveler replied gently. To live like any normal man.

Amin opened his mouth to argue, but something inside him fell silent. The traveler’s words had touched that hidden knot—the quiet discomfort he had ignored for years.

How do you know this about me? Amin asked.

Because I was like you once, the traveler said. I too slept through my own life. Then, one day, someone shook me awake.

And who shook you awake?

A moment, the traveler said. A terrible, beautiful moment when I realized I had not lived a single conscious day. The shock was enough to open my eyes.

Amin swallowed. And how do I wake up?

The traveler’s eyes softened. By beginning to see. By remembering yourself—even for a single breath. By refusing to live on automatic.

He placed a hand on Amin’s shoulder. If you wish, I can show you the first step. But you must take it willingly.

Amin hesitated. His instinct urged him to walk away—to return to the familiarity of his warm bed, his television, his routines. But something in him—that locked room, that faint calling—trembled awake for the first time.

What is the first step? he asked.

The traveler smiled. Come. Walk with me.

They walked slowly through the fog, and the traveler spoke with a calmness older than the city itself.

You think you are one person, he said. But you are many. Different moods, thoughts, desires, fears—each of them speaks through you at different times. One moment you are courageous, the next you are timid. One moment you decide to change, the next you abandon the idea. One moment you love life, the next you resent it.

Amin nodded reluctantly. It was true, though he had never questioned it.

This is the sleep of man, the traveler continued. A sleep where we drift between a thousand selves without realizing we have no captain guiding our ship.

So how do I find the captain? Amin asked.

You build him, the traveler said. Through small moments of awareness. Through remembering yourself. Through catching the automatic movements before they take control.

And if I fail?

You will fail, the traveler said. Everyone fails at first. But failure is not the problem. Forgetting to try again—that is the real sleep.

They reached a quiet square where a single dim lamp flickered. The traveler stopped and faced him.

Listen carefully, he said. "Begin with a simple practice:

Sit alone for five minutes a day

and observe your thoughts without following them.

Watch them as you would watch passing clouds.

Do not judge, do not engage—simply observe.

If you can do this sincerely, even for a week, you will experience the first crack in the walls of your sleep."

Amin felt both hopeful and afraid. And what happens after that?

The traveler smiled. After that, life will begin to reveal itself. But only to the part of you that is awake.

Will I see you again? Amin asked.

The traveler began to walk away. "If you continue sleeping, no. But if you begin waking up—

we are already walking together."

The fog swallowed him before Amin could speak another word.

That night, Amin returned home with a strange heaviness in his chest—not sadness, but the weight of an unfamiliar truth. He sat on his bed, closed his eyes, and tried to observe his thoughts.

He lasted twelve seconds.

Anger, boredom, impatience—they crashed into him like waves. He wanted to get up, to distract himself, to forget the entire encounter at the bridge.

But then he remembered the traveler’s words:

"You will fail. Everyone fails. But forgetting to try again—

that is the real sleep."

So he tried again.

And again.

And again.

He felt no enlightenment, no revelation, no transformation. But he felt something—a trembling, a quiet stirring, as if an ancient door inside him was shifting after years of silence.

When he finally opened his eyes, he whispered:

I will try again tomorrow.

For the first time in his life, Amin felt he had made a choice—

a real choice, born not from habit but from inner decision.

And in that small decision, in that fragile moment of awareness, a man took his first step out of sleep.

Amin did not become enlightened that night. His life did not suddenly change. But something infinitely more important happened:

He woke up for one conscious moment.

And that single moment was enough to begin.

2. Whispers From the Invisible School

Most people believe that a school is a building — a place with doors, bells, and benches where lessons are taught at appointed hours. But there exists another kind of school, one with no walls, no enrollment forms, no fixed teachers, and no timetable. Its doors open only for those who have begun to suspect that ordinary life hides a deeper reality beneath its familiar surface.

Amin had never heard of such a school. Then again, before meeting the traveler on the bridge, Amin had never really heard of himself either.

After their strange encounter, Amin began practicing the small exercise the traveler had taught him — sitting still for five minutes a day, watching his thoughts without being pulled by them. At first, the practice felt impossible. His mind behaved like a restless child. It wandered, argued, complained, invented excuses. But Amin persisted. Something inside him — that small trembling spark awakened by the traveler — refused to let him stop.

Weeks passed. Amin felt no dramatic transformation, yet something subtle had shifted. He began noticing things he had never paid attention to before: the heaviness in his breath when he lied to himself, the automatic irritation he felt when a coworker spoke too loudly, the quiet sadness that hovered behind his daily routines.

It was as though a faint light had been lit in a corner of his inner house, illuminating dust that had always been there yet unseen.

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