This talk explores the relationship between growing up and waking up. It commences with a reading of the first five verses of the poem Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth. I then discuss the distinction made by my teacher Barry Magid between a “top-down practice” and a “bottom-up practice” and outline some of the pitfalls of a top-down practice. It was Jack Engler who coined the phrase you have to “be somebody before you can be nobody”. I then weave together developmental psychology and trauma theory and how the process of waking up is an inherent potential in human development because it is our true nature. However, existential anxiety and developmental trauma often distort into a self-centred self which has anxiety at its core. This is contrasted with a life-centred self, characterised by openness to others and the world. The talk finished by stressing that it is better to integrate the self-centred self into the life-centred seld prior to integrating the life-centred self with the formless self of awakening.