How do we know that awakening is needed?

...Because we live, in all mainstream public discourse, in an insane world of lies.

The insanity can be seen in the kind of things we talk about and what is avoided/ excluded from conversation.

The lies can be seen in that all our insane conversations are built on lies - in deliberate lies: that is, on strategically dishonest, selective, distorted, misrepresentation ad misleading (as can be seen if ever we can compare public discourse with reality as experienced directly).

We categorically live in a world where what is treated as of primary importance is either trivial or false; or when genuinely important is permeated with very obvious distortions and taboos.

Now, all this is perfectly obvious to everyone who is genuine in their spiritual Christianity; but in fact very few people indeed are genuine in their spiritual Christianity - very, very few. (Not because they try and fail; but because they are not even trying.)

And those who are not actively seeking to live in a spiritual way in the context of Christianity, are - here-and-now - in great peril; because for the first time in history the mainstream public discourse is positively leading to chosen self-damnation.

I mean, normal modern people disbelieve in anything other than the material world and see no need to seek for anything other; and/ or when they are spiritual - eg. New Age, Perennial Philosophy/ Eastern Religious people, they disbelieve in the reality of purposive evil in this world and the possibility that they themselves are on course deliberately to blight their own eternal life beyond mortal death by choosing to side-against God. 

The fact is that we modern people in The West live in an insane world of lies; therefore if we adopt a passive attitude to human existence we will develop and endorse and end-up deliberately choosing an insane and lying eternity - which we can do, because we are free agents.

We simply must notice our pervasive environment of insane lies, must awake to the reality of our situation, and must acknowledge the fact of our own personal agency - our freedom...

We simply must become spiritually active, striving; must take our personal life and the nature of existence seriously and truthfully, and then (but only then) can we do something constructive about our situation.