The Perilous Path Towards Awakening

By Bernhard Guenther, January 29th, 2017
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The Perilous Path Towards Awakening

By Bernhard Guenther, January 29th, 2017

Chapters:

  • The Hyperdimensional Matrix Control System (recap)
  • The Process of Awakening
  • What does it mean to be “Awake”?
  • Traps on the Path Towards Awakening
  • Occult Hostile Forces Targeting The Seeker
  • Sincerity and Radical Self-Honesty
  • Life as a Catalyst and Teacher

As the cosmic energies of our planet become increasingly infused with the contrasting expression of light and dark frequencies during this Time of Transition, many of us (whether we are conscious or not of this elevation in contrasting vibrations) are experiencing breakdowns and breakthroughs at an accelerated pace. We are being pushed to awaken – to align with the divine force. This process brings up anything that is not of the same frequency that our spirit is currently “downloading” in order to be transmuted. Many things are transpiring and shifting on multi-dimensional levels which lie outside of our conscious awareness. The strong currents of these galactic waves are pressuring us to ride the flow of transformation. Any resistance and/or desperate need to control this process (based on fear) can cause us to get sucked into the undercurrent and be held under until such a time as we can get back on the wave again, i.e., learn our lessons and keep doing the necessary clearing work in order to embody the higher frequencies.

From a hyperdimensional perspective, the anti-divine, dark occult forces are operating on overdrive, trying to lock as many human beings as possible into a frequency prison (which will be heightened with the dawning of the Transhumanism/A.I. agenda, which enables “soul snatching” to occur) so as to counteract the “Divine Awakening Force” and thus ensure they do not lose their “food” source. Yet, this increase of friction and suffering has a teaching-function – as part of the evolution of consciousness – and serves as a catalyst and opportunity for internal alchemical initiation for those people who have the soul-seed capacity to truly start questioning everything they ever believed in/were told/taught by official culture. Most importantly,  it can activate an engagement in sincere self-work and embodiment practices (soul growth/integration). The choice to “answer the call” is, as always, within each Individual, and also depends upon his/her soul potential (and personal lessons), for not everyone is here to “awaken” in this current cycle (and there is no judgment around that) as we are also in the midst of a Timeline-Reality split. This is, after all, the apocalypse, which means “unveiling”, not “destruction” (and “occult”, for that matter, means “hidden”, nothing inherently to do with “evil” intent).

The Hyperdimensional Matrix Control System

Anyone who is familiar with my work knows that I have written and talked a lot about the Hyperdimensional Matrix Control System (HMCS) over the years, i.e., the non-physical occult hostile forces and their mechanisms that aim to keep us spiritually asleep. To recap this phenomenon, humanity is not on the top of the “food chain,” and humanity is not in control of its sovereign decisions on a ‘macro’ scale. The idea of “free will” is, in many aspects, an illusion. Most of what you see on the world stage is manipulated and designed to create this “food” frequency of scarcity-fueled fear and reactivity…to keep humanity in a frequency prison governed by forces who operate outside of our five-sensory perception.

These forces work through us/others (including through the elite/controllers on a 3-D level, whom they use as portals/puppets to carry out their agenda) and distract us by projecting the shadows of separation consciousness on the wall/world stage (divide & conquer) and official cult-ure. “Government” (or any belief in external authority) is also an “archonic” creation; the perfect foundation to keep people stuck in an endless loop of conflict with each other, ensuring that we remain disempowered so as to produce all the “loosh” they require to keep well-fed.

“There are beings in the spiritual realms for whom anxiety and fear emanating from human beings offer welcome food. When humans have no anxiety and fear, then these creatures starve. People not yet sufficiently convinced of this statement could understand it to be meant comparatively only. But for those who are familiar with this phenomenon, it is a reality. If fear and anxiety radiates from people and they break out in panic, then these creatures find welcome nutrition and they become more and more powerful. These beings are hostile towards humanity.

Everything that feeds on negative feelings, on anxiety, fear and superstition, despair or doubt, are in reality hostile forces in supersensible worlds, launching cruel attacks on human beings, while they are being fed. Therefore, it is above all necessary to begin with that the person who enters the spiritual world overcomes fear, feelings of helplessness, despair and anxiety. But these are exactly the feelings that belong to contemporary culture and materialism; because it estranges people from the spiritual world, it is especially suited to evoke hopelessness and fear of the unknown in people, thereby calling up the above mentioned hostile forces against them.”

~ Rudolf Steiner [Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – Die Erkenntnis der Seele und des Geistes – Berlin, 1907]

However, this is a “concept” that is really hard for most people to grasp and accept and is most often ridiculed and laughed off as “sci-fi”, “conspiracy nonsense,” or “mental/psychological delusion” because it’s so far out their conditioned beliefs and view of life (a perspective that is inserted into our minds by the same “force”).  And yet, despite the cynical skepticism, all of the ancient mystery schools, true shamanic insights, and esoteric teachings (much of which have been suppressed and/or distorted over thousands of years for obvious reasons) have conveyed this truth for ‘the ones with eyes to see and ears to hear,’ using their own language and symbolism, be it “The General Law” (Esoteric Christianity), Archons (Gnostics), “Lords of Destiny” (Hermeticism), Predator/Fliers – “The topic of all topics” (Shamanism, Castaneda), “The Evil Magician” (Gurdjieff), The Shaitans (Sufism), The Jinn (Arabian mythology), Wetiko (Native American Spirituality), Occult Hostile Forces (Sri Aurobindo & The Mother, The Integral Yoga), the Ahrimanic and Soratic Spirits of Darkness (Rudolf Steiner), etc.

It also relates to the UFO phenomenon and alien forces that have genetically modified human beings – downgrading our race from the original blueprint – eons ago. Aliens in this context are not physical beings from other planets (as Hollywood tries to program us with) but inter-dimensional entities that can shape-shift and pop in and out of physical reality.

It is not a “fairy tale” or “superstition.” Our entire (modern) civilization is, for the most part, a product of this “force”…our society is an “alien” construct that we have been led to accept as arising from “human nature” – a condition wherein pathology has become normalized.

Don’t wait for this Knowledge and Truth to be brought to you via TED, Oprah, The NY Bestseller list, mainstream “science,” let alone any politician or celebrity-style spiritual gurus….and don’t believe me either….find out for yourself! But I suggest you not ridicule/judge – or have an “opinion” about – something until you have sincerely researched it yourself … which, in this case, also implies sincere esoteric self-work in order to perceive these forces directly, to “see the unseen” beyond appearances….and to ultimately free yourself from its influence via tapping into your own embodied connection to the Divine and Spirit within, i.e., DNA activation to reconnect with your original blueprint prior to our collective (and ongoing) genetic modification.

“We are asleep—in a dream state—and mistakenly think we are awake. One of the fundamental aspects of the ontological category of ignorance is ignorance of this very ignorance; he not only does not know, he does not know that he does not know. We are in a kind of prison but do not know it. This BIP (Black Iron Prison, i.e hyperdimensional matrix) is a vast complex life form which protects itself by inducing a negative hallucination of it. 

The occlusion is self-perpetuating; it makes us unaware of it. We are supposed to combat it phagocyte-wise, but the very valence of the (BIP) stasis warps us into micro-extensions of itself; this is precisely why it is so dangerous. This is the dread thing it does: extending its android thinking more and more extensively. It exerts a dreadful and subtle power, and more and more people fall into its field (power), by means of which it grows.

This is a sinister life form indeed. First it takes power over us, reducing us to slaves, and then it causes us to forget our former state, and be unable to see or to think straight, and not to know we can’t see or think straight, and finally it becomes invisible to us by reason of what it has done to us. We cannot even monitor our own deformity, our own impairment. Being without psyche of its own it slays the authentic psyches of those creatures locked into it, and replaces them with a spurious microform of its own dead psyche. The very doctrine of combating the ‘hostile world and its power’ has to a large extent been ossified by and put at the service of the Empire. The BIP warps every new effort at freedom into the mold of further tyranny. The Empire is only a phantasm, lingering because we have gone to sleep.

So long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But when it is recognized, it is dissolved. When it is revealed, it perishes…. It is powerful because we have not recognized it. The bombardment of pseudorealities begins to produce inauthentic humans very quickly. The artifact enslaves us, but on the other hand it is attempting to teach us to throw off its enslavement. Compassion’s highest power [embodied higher love] is the only power capable of solving the maze.

The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give. If the final paradox of the maze is that the only way you can escape it is voluntarily to go back in (into it), then maybe we are here voluntarily; we came back in. Anamnesis was the loss of amnesia. You remembered your origins, and they were from beyond the stars.”

– Philip K. Dick

“Due to the lack of a state of higher awareness, the planet Earth is a small hell, where by divine grace or infernal evil, the individual neither notices nor evaluates his precarious condition or the cloudiness of his awareness. Like true madmen, each sapiens, like Don Quixote, the Castilian nobleman, strikes out against his own windmill. Thus, battle after battle, youth is lost, illusions die, purity withers, and the last glimmers of lucidity gradually disappear.

If we were perverse gods or immoral despoilers, we could not invent a better method to make a group of slaves work peacefully than to make them believe, by means of collective hypnosis, that they are happy and important. We would then have perfect robots who would work untiringly, producing what we desire. In addition, these robots would make and maintain themselves. It could be argued that sapiens, unlike other species, sows, produces, and labors only for himself and not for other beings. This is true for the products and material sapiens uses for his own maintenance. No non-human species steals the material product of sapiens’ efforts.

On the other hand, this is not the case with the subtle fruit produced by the human nervous system in everyday life. This fruit is rapidly reaped by certain beings who are much higher on the evolutionary scale than the human being; veritable gods of space, who profit from human efforts, but in turn fulfill certain cosmic functions and occupy an important position in the universal economy. These beings have been mentioned previously: they are the Archons of Destiny.

All of Earth’s inhabitants are under the sway of one or more of these ‘gods’, who regulate, shape, and direct the destiny of humanity. But this is not so for the destiny of the Hermeticist, who attains his vital autonomy at a certain moment, releasing himself from the mandate of the Archons.

The Archons of Destiny are terrifying beings, not because they are evil, but due to their cold and inexorable severity in the manipulation of sapiens. If we were to establish a symbol for these beings, no doubt they would be depicted with a whip in their hands, a girdle of bristles or netted wire with which they chastise humanity in order to ensure their progress, although this evolution may be imperceptible during our earthly time. For example these occult judges pitilessly provoke a world war in which millions of people die.

Sapiens, in his extreme fight for existence and in his various relations with the natural and social environments surrounding him, inevitably experiences all kinds of tribulations, suffering, deceptions, and other experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant. As a consequence, his emotional and nervous systems develop certain embodied elements, that are extremely powerful, and which abandon the human body in the form of vibrations (everything vibrates; matter is only vibratory energy). These vibrations are transmitted through antennae incorporated in the biological unit which are tuned to the frequency of the Archons, who then reap this power and use it for purposes we cannot divulge, again stating that they accomplish a cosmic function.

It is thus that sapiens is unwittingly stripped of the most noble product he has produced; the final distillate of human experience, the broth in which lies the blood, the soul, and the very life of the individual. The individual lived for this, suffered, loved, enjoyed, worked, built things, went to war, studied, investigated, only to prepare the golden broth of his life. We must understand that the “central computer” only exists in relation to the Archons of Destiny as an instrument to control sapiens.

The object of life [from the archonic perspective], the reason for which sapiens was created [via genetic modification/engineering], is not for him to enjoy life in the garden of the Lord, but rather to be a pawn in his vineyards, a worker so perfect he can act as cultivator and food at the same time.

If man could prevent his golden broth from being stolen, with this vital product he could become equal to the gods, rapidly evolving by integrating within himself the products from the chemical laboratory of his physical body. This is exactly what is done by the student of Hermeticism, who is temporarily freed by the Archons of Destiny. This individual, by virtue of his understanding and responsibility, has no need for an overseer with whip in hand to oblige him to evolve through suffering, as he takes responsibility for his evolution into his own hands, and if he deems it necessary, submits himself to the same temporary suffering in order to attain eternal happiness. This is in contrast to the profane or worldly person who chooses fleeting pleasure at the expense of eternal suffering.

Enough revealing of secrets which are hidden from sapiens. Let us spread a cloak of silence on this subject in order to comply with the mandate of the esoteric Sphinx who demands silence. Speech and silence are two swords, which must be handled with sublime skill in order not to disrupt universal harmony. Those who have “eyes to see” will understand everything not stated in the written word, but in the cryptic language of the initiate. For those not in this state, it is best that they understand nothing and continue to sleep tranquilly. Ultimately, the Archons run no risk of a bad harvest from a possible rebellion of sapiens. Sapiens is too blind to see where the danger is really found.

It is sad to observe the tremendous limitation of sapiens, who shuts himself up in the small world of stereotypical concepts, of memorized knowledge, of imitation, and mechanisms of compensation and defense. His mental disability prevents him from realizing just how small the cubicle is which imprisons him. And, thus, with a mind made up in advance, he accepts, condemns, or tolerates without bothering to intelligently analyze the situations with which he is confronted.”

– John Baines, The Stellar Man

If you’re not familiar with this topic (and/or new to my site), here are some starting pointers:

The Process of Awakening

Despite the madness and seemingly-increasing chaos enveloping the outside world – or rather, because of this development – I see more people experiencing an “awakening” in their lives. At the same time, the same intensification of energies has other people getting caught in (and unconsciously aligning with) the divide & conquer agenda of the occult forces, as we currently see manifested in the shadow projections (or worship) which surround their latest authoritarian puppet installment, Donald Trump (and thus generating all of the resulting emotional “loosh” for the hyperdimensional puppeteers to feed upon), which I’ve written about HERE.

“In the big picture, it really does not matter what person is the President, what organization is spraying chemtrails, running the cabals, or financing negative alien “black op” projects. They are a symbol of a collective “mind controlled puppet” playing out their role as the unseen force manipulates their ego’s behavior to keep the same 3D structure feeding the same vampires. They will just pluck another dominating ego persona from the masses to play out the same fear manipulation program.”

– Lisa Renee, How Much Are You Willing To Know?

Some people believe themselves to have finally “woken up” from the manipulation of the Matrix Control System. However, the word “awake” seems to be a very abused and overused word these days. What I notice is that more people are becoming aware, for the most part, of the symptoms of the Matrix on a 3D surface level (which is encouraging to see and a good start), but mistake that for having truly “woken up” in the holistic sense of the term, and therefore most of them oftentimes don’t follow up or keep “going”, especially with regards to inner self-work. Our inner voice – stemming from the real self (“speaking” to us through a sense-embodied intuitive knowing, not via head-centric thought-injections), hidden behind the socially/cultural conditioned/programmed mask of personality we identify with – also whispers to us to go deeper, if we can hear and heed its “signals”. These echoes are hardly recognizable at first, but become more audibly-apparent as we shed our layers of conditioning, programming and trauma/wounding. It’s the voice of Spirit and the Divine, asking us to recognize our true nature, to keep going deeper within…to self-realize, self-actualize.

“Knowledge is the comprehensive embodiment of imagination that surfaces in observation and finally ripens through the reinforcement of experience, thereby inculcating knowledge. This, in fact, is the short story of life.”

– Q.M. Sidd

It should be noted that “awakening” is a process that is different for each and every one of us as we reach towards higher/broader levels of consciousness. For example, relatively speaking, you can be “awake” to the basic 3D aspects of the Matrix, but if you get stuck there (especially when there is lack of sincere inner work taking place), you’ll still be subjected to hyperdimensional interferences and manipulation, especially when you’re caught in the external expression of shadow-projection.

Being “awake” (or “woke”, as the cool kids like to say) about the matrix and the various control mechanisms and deceptions – and based on a purely intellectual informational level – is a necessary stage of growth, but only the very beginning stage of a true Awakening …and cannot even be called “taking the red pill” from an esoteric perspective. This stage of awareness are mere baby steps which must be taken prior to crossing the threshold towards self-realization, which entails esoteric self-work, embodiment [soul integration] and alchemical internal transformation in order to reach a higher level of being/consciousness …one that is based upon frequency vibration. The neurological mind can’t go there, and is, in fact, an obstacle to higher awareness beyond the five senses. This is not a very pleasant process at times, especially at the beginning stage, for it results in utter disillusionment and death of the conditioned personality, which doesn’t like to give up and let go of control that easily.

For that reason, many people in their process of seeking “truth” wind up avoiding sincere inner work by constantly externalizing the “dark” (especially with regards to shadow projection) side of reality, and thus get lost in the information swamp or hooked on sensationalism, mechanical activism, or wind up locked in the tunnel vision of the 3D matrix, decorated as it is with shadows on the wall, which is a puppet-on-a-string-pulling trap in itself, and only works in favor of the occult matrix architects. But “self-work” – to truly “Know Thyself” – is also a tricky thing, and self-deceptions in this pursuit are very common.

Some people tend to over-estimate themselves with regards to their level of being/awareness. They claim to “know themselves” when they actually mistake “the Self” for their personality (with its more subtle programming/conditioning features) …or they talk about “living their truth”, which can also be a falsehood which misleads/distorts the actual calling of the self, and instead acts as a self-justification, a denial, and a buffer. I also see people talking about the hyperdimensional matrix, claiming to be “free” from it, but don’t realize/see how it’s still working through them, especially when they get trapped in victim, blame, martyr, or savior consciousness archetypal programming.

It is important to understand the fundamentals of true deep self-work, especially since much of that has been corrupted and over-simplified via New Age/pop-spirituality and pop-psychology mechanisms. The most difficult aspect to grasp in esoteric self-work is detecting and confronting the moment-to-moment lies we are telling ourselves, and the buffers/masks we create so as to avoid the internal friction that is necessary to ignite the alchemical fire of transformation within.

“Knowledge of oneself is a very big, but a very vague and distant, aim. Man in his present state is very far from self-knowledge. Therefore, strictly speaking, his aim cannot even be defined as self-knowledge. Self-study must be his big aim. It is quite enough if a man understands that he must study himself. It must be man’s aim to begin to study himself, to know himself, in the right way.

Self-study is the work or the way which leads to self-knowledge. But in order to study oneself one must first learn how to study, where to begin, what methods to use. A man must learn how to study himself, and he must study the methods of self-study. The chief method of self-study is self-observation. Without properly applied self­ observation a man will never understand the connection and the correlation between the various functions of his machine, will never understand how and why on each separate occasion everything in him ‘happens.'”

– G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous

Now, I don’t take myself out of this critical equation, and would never claim to be fully “awake”, let alone “enlightened”. There are vastly-different levels and steps on the “spiral out”; one step cannot be claimed to be “better” or” worse” than another, it all depends upon one’s individual soul lessons/path (which includes divine timing with regards to what we’re being shown, which is not left to the impatient ego to determine), and the current condition of one’s state of being and sincerity/self-honesty. I can see in myself how hard it is to stay truly conscious every single day, how some dormant programs still resurface, enticing me to react mechanically (under the illusion that it was actually my “true self” calling to me), how my mind tries to rationalize/justify itself at times. I can see and sense how the occult hostile forces still try to interfere through my own mind via thought injections, tempting me with old cravings, or trying to generate a reactive response in me by working through others (who are not aware of at all that this is occurring).

It’s certainly not as severe as it was in the past – and I can see/sense it more easily – but “waking up” demands “super-efforts” (Gurdjieff)… not in terms of “doing”, but with regards to sincerity, self-remembering, conscious suffering (not giving in to internalized programs), staying grounded in the body and in the present moment, remaining calm, floating in zero-point non-reactive consciousness, intending and “working” (not forcefully) towards a conscious connection to spirit within as an instrument for the Divine without any sense of ambition, pride or vanity, without the egoic self-centered notion (and illusion) of the “me” personality. This entails a basic understanding of how to observe oneself and how to do “self-work”, as well as how the matrix actually operates on the unseen levels through us – not just an intellectual understanding, but an embodied Knowing… to truly “see” it in the world, in oneself…to see the unseen.

We cannot do this work alone all the time (especially at the beginning of the process), for we all have blind spots and need “alarm clocks” from others who are also engaged in the same work – people who can provide us with “mirrors”, observations which don’t stem from their own shadow projections…people who can also offer us support and encouragement. So, it’s tricky work to engage in, and the potential for self-deception and over-estimating one’s level of awareness (or “awakened state”) is huge.

What does it mean to be “Awake”?

But what does it actually mean to be truly and fully awake? Well, we’re entering slippery territory here – a place where we meet the limitations of words and language. It is something the mind cannot comprehend via a thought process or language decoding, for it is an internal experience beyond thought, emotions and feelings; a higher state of Being. As Lao Tzu said: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao” or the classic Zen metaphor of mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for the moon: “To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon…” – D.T. Suzuki

With that understanding of limitations firmly established, we can, however, do some basic “finger-pointing”. As mentioned before, beyond being simply “awake” on an intellectual level – and thus seeing through the deception and illusion of the Matrix externally (and the various levels within that) – the true, deeper and real awaking can only happen within, beyond thought. It ties into what I wrote in a previous essay about the embodied Individual:

[…]Individuality in this context is the embodied individualized soul as a conscious transducer for higher energies, being the “instrument” for Divine Will. Individuality DOES NOT mean ego/personality identification (the false “I”), or what the matrix/official culture promotes as “Individuality” which is most often a “cult of personality”.

In the same context, becoming a sovereign emancipated Individual does not imply that one is an “independent” human being, separate from everything else. That illusory idea stems from the over-riding head-centric male aspect of consciousness, the (inner) tyrant who is identified with self-achieved (false) independence. From a spiritual and holistic perspective, being a sovereign embodied Individual is based upon a deep recognition (on an embodied level) of the interrelationship of life, fully tuned into nature and the Divine/Spirit as an individualized (but not separate) expression of it – a fractal aspect of the universal Hologram. It stems from the feminine aspect of consciousness, which is grounded in Being.

A sovereign emancipated Individual is not influenced by external influences/intrusions which the Matrix attempts to inset into their consciousness: any form of rulers/authority (including hyperdimensional interference) or social/cultural programming/spiritual conditioning. But he/she is also not an isolated, “independent” and separate being, but deeply connected to (and in alignment with) nature, spirit and the Divine, as a conscious vessel/transducer for Divine Will.

Being (or the Zen notion of “non-doing”), in the true meaning of the word, does not mean that one is just passive (another common misconception). It is the still point (zero-point non-reactive consciousness) from which our wholeness can be informed by the world’s wholeness (listening to world through the body, anchored in the pelvic floor/gut, the seat of the feminine aspect of consciousness), and then respond to it from this grounded space.

It is from this state of Being wherein spontaneous, perfect action arises – action that is in alignment with nature and Divine Will.  It is receptive to “what is”, contrary to the reactionary “tyrant” of the male aspect of consciousness (nothing to do with gender), who is threatened by the present moment (and, essentially, afraid of the Feminine), addicted to “willful doing” and head-centric analysis, with a desperate need to control the “outside world”, which only results in more and more fragmentation, for the intellect/mind can never ever perceive wholeness[…].[end excerpt]

Individualization is the capacity to take up all experiences and organise them around the divine centre. The aim of the psychic being [soul/higher self] is to form an individual being, individualized, “personalized” around the divine centre [“growing” the soul to become fully embodied in one’s being]. Normally, all the experiences of the external life (unless one does yoga [not to be mistaken for the physical practice] and becomes conscious) pass without organizing the inner being, while the psychic being organises these experiences serially. It wants to realise a particular attitude towards the Divine.

Each individual is a special manifestation in the universe, therefore his true path must be an absolutely unique path. There are similarities, there are resemblances, there are categories, families, ideals also, that is, a certain collective way of approaching the Divine, which creates a kind of “church”, not materialized but in a more subtle world — there are all these things — but for the details of the path, the details of yoga [union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent existence], it will be different according to each individual, necessarily, and conditioned physically by his present bodily structure, and vitally, mentally and psychically, of course, by former lives.

To be individualized in a collectivity, one must be absolutely conscious of oneself. And of which self? – the Self which is above all intermixture, that is, what I call the Truth of your being. And as long as you are not conscious of the Truth of your being, you are moved by all kinds of things, without taking any note of it all. Collective thought, collective suggestions are a formidable influence which act constantly on individual thought. And what is extraordinary is that one does not notice it. One believes that one thinks “like that”, but in truth it is the collectivity which thinks “like that”.

The mass is always inferior to the individual. Take individuals with similar qualities, of similar categories, well, when they are alone these individuals are at least two degrees better than people of the same category in a crowd. There is a mixture of obscurities, a mixture of unconsciousness, and inevitably you slip into this unconsciousness.

To escape this there is but one means: to become more conscious of oneself, more and more conscious and more and more attentive. It is thus that gradually, slowly, with perseverance, first of all with great care and much attention, one becomes conscious, learn to know oneself and then to become master of oneself.”

~ The Mother, “Collected Works of the Mother” – Sri Aurobindo Library

From an absolute perspective, what is being described is essentially the dissolving/transcending of the “I” we think we are …this opens up to experience a realm beyond duality, where there is no sense of separation. We grasp, however fleetingly, a unity with all that is, embodying an instrument and unique expression of the Divine in tune with the natural flow of life. It is a state beyond thought, desire, or even emotion and feeling – a state of pure Being, fully tuned into the present moment.

“Behind this petty instrumental action of the human will there is something vast and powerful and eternal that oversees the trend of the inclination and presses on the turn of the will. There is a total Truth in Nature greater than our individual choice. This apparently self-acting mechanism of Nature conceals an immanent divine Will that compels and guides it and shapes its purposes. But you cannot feel or know that Will while you are shut up in your narrow cell of personality, blinded and chained to your viewpoint of the ego and its desires.

For you can wholly respond to it only when you are impersonalized [embodied] by knowledge and widened to see all things in the self and in God and the self and God in all things. The state of ignorance in which you believe that you are the doer of your acts persists so long as it is necessary for your development; but as soon as you are capable of passing into a higher condition, you begin to see that you are an instrument of the one consciousness; you take a step upward and you rise to a higher conscious level.”

~ Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga

This state of fully-accessed being-ness is obviously not what most of us experience in our striving for awakening, let alone on a consistent basis. However, what I have noticed in myself and others is that more and more people experience glimpses of this state here and there, or slowly approach it with the growing sense of “being in this world but not of it”, like a witness/observer …not from an intellectual “seeing” or “thinking” perspective… this impersonal “witness” also recognizes that you are a part of the game, seeing through the veil of all appearances and manifestations of the “one consciousness expressing itself in infinite variety”. It is an embodied experience, beyond the self-image identification of “I”. It is not attached to any thoughts. It’s a state where there is not will-full doing, nor any sense of “personal will”, as it has suddenly morphed and conjoined with Divine Will.

Ambition, vital desires, vanity, the need to be “liked” or “desired”, the notion and pressure to “become” something/someone, any comparison/competition with others (and resulting judgments), or even “dislike” of others all fall slowly away, as do any triggers and reactive behaviors. It’s the ultimate letting go of egoic control, and a surrender to life and spirit, realizing that control was an illusion all along. There is a deep and embodied sense of peace and trust, of faith and “being taken care of” (as in trusting the flow of life), knowing that any challenge that will come up serves as a deeper lesson for the purpose of a true awakening. It is the end of fear, the death of ego-identification, and re-birth of the real “I AM” – embodied spirit – expressing itself uniquely through “you”. It is being in flow with the Tao, the Divine Will of nature, as it is flowing and expressing itself through you without resistance and, as Sri Aurobindo mentioned above, you begin to see that you are an instrument of the one consciousness.

“Men usually work and carry on their affairs from the ordinary motives of the vital being, need, desire of wealth or success or position of power or fame or the activity and the pleasure of manifesting their capacities, and they succeed or fail according to their capability, power of work and the good or bad fortune which the result of their (conditioned) nature and their Karma.

When one takes up the yoga [work towards Awakening, union with the Divine] and wishes to consecrate one’s life to the Divine, these ordinary motives of the vital being have no longer their full and free play; they have to replaced by another, a mainly psychic (soul) and spiritual motive, which will enable the sadhak (spiritual seeker) with the same force as before, no longer for himself, but for the Divine.

The only work that spiritually purifies is that which is done without personal motives, without desire for fame or public recognition or worldly greatness, without insistence on one’s mental motives or vital lusts and demands or physical preferences, without vanity or crude self-assertion or claim for position or prestige, done for the sake of the Divine alone. All work done in an egoistic spirit, however “good” for people in the world of the Ignorance is of no avail to the seeker [and will keep the door shut to the Divine].

I do not mean philanthropy or the service of humanity or all the rest of the things – moral or idealistic – which the mind of man substitutes for the deeper truth of works. I mean by work action done for the Divine and more and more in union with Divine, merging one’s will with Divine Will. Naturally this is not easy at the beginning, any more than deep meditation and luminous knowledge are easy or even true love. But like the others it has to be begun in the right spirit and attitude, with the right will in you, then the rest will come.

One becomes liberated from the shackles of the outer nature; one becomes aware of one’s inner being and sees the outer as an instrument; one feels the universal Force doing one’s works and the Self watching or witness but free; one feels all works taken from one and done by the Divine Power acting from behind the heart. By constant referring of all one’s will and works to the Divine, true [embodied] love and adoration grow, the psychic being [individualized soul/true self] comes forward.

Finally, Works, Love and Knowledge go together and self-perfection becomes possible – what we call the transformation of the nature. These results certainly do not all come at once; they come more or less slowly, more or less completely according to the condition and growth of the being. There is no royal road to divine realization.

All this insistence upon action is absurd if one has not the light by which to act. The advocates of action think that by human intellect and energy, making an always new rush, everything can be put right; the present state of the world after a development of the intellect and a stupendous output of energy for which there is no historical parallel is a signal proof of the emptiness of the illusion under which they labour.

It is only by a change of consciousness that the true basis of life can be discovered: from within outward. But within does not mean some quarter inch behind the surface. One must go deep and find the soul, the (true) Self [behind the masks of the conditioned personality], the Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and imperfect thing we were.

The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or standing back and seeing the Light within till we discover and can build the Godhead within and without us.”

– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga

It is also the state wherein we are not subjected to any attacks or interferences of the the occult hyperdimensional forces, since we find ourselves resonating on a higher frequency, beyond their vibrational realm, i.e. we have truly transcended the Matrix. The “reality” we subsequently experience is of a much richer and more subtle impression, not bound to the illusion of linear time, hence there is no pressure to do, no hurry, no impatience. Will-full doing dissipates, to be replaced by an embodied responding to what is – and what life brings – that is uniquely tuned to our soul lessons and talents; it guides us from an embodied inner place without expectations and attachment to outcome. Goal setting and ambition are replaced by a quiet aspiration with intentions but without expectations or need to control. Making choices and decisions don’t stem from a thought process anymore or any head-centric analysis of “should” or “shouldn’t”, but emerge from a gut-level of nonverbal intuitive knowing. Life becomes like a dance in the river of life as we don’t fight the current anymore, being in the “zone”, locked into the rhythm of life (Tao).

Contrary to popular beliefs, this awakened state is not a constant feeling of “bliss” or ecstasy (even though there can be peak experiences like that), nor is it a “feeling” of love or happiness. It really transcends anything we usually  experience in ordinary consciousness states that are related to emotions and feelings. Ultimately, it transcends the duality of pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering. There is a deeper, silent contentment, a grounded calmness and sense of peace, not depending on any external circumstances… a sense of slowing down and simplifying.

It’s a place of true freedom. Thoughts may still come and try to attach themselves, but it becomes easier to detach from them – to release from believing in them or identifying with them. This sense of deteachmment is, however, not an intellectual form of dissociating, but an embodied recognition of one’s true nature in contrast to the illusion of thought (and who we “think” we are). One recognizes that the mind is just a tool, a servant, but not be looked upon as the master/guide. It’s not about demonizing the intellect either, for it needs to go through its own transmutation to become an instrument for the Divine, accessing higher knowledge (Gnosis). We can also still “use” it in practical ways to live out our daily routines, since we didn’t just “check out” of our existence here on Earth; on the contrary, we are more involved with reality – more fully-embracing of life – and whatever this dance may bring in full conscious participation with the rhythms of life, we will participate in…without attachment and will-full doing.

“All of us, in our own process of awakening, will visit the limitation of our personal will. Most of us will visit it several different times, on deeper and deeper levels, until it is fully extinguished.

The loss of personal will isn’t really a loss at all. It’s not as if we become the doormat of humanity, that we stop knowing what to do or how to do it. Quite the opposite happens. By surrendering the illusion of the personal will, a whole different state of consciousness is born in us; a rebirth happens. It’s almost like a resurrection happens from deep within us. This resurrection is very hard to explain, like many things in spirituality, but in essence we start to be moved by the completeness and totality of life itself.

The depiction of this kind of movement is very vivid in the Taoist tradition, which focuses on the expression of the Tao, or the truth, through us. If you read through the Tao Te Ching or look at some of the Taoist teachings, you start to get a feel for how willfulness is replaced by a sense of flow.

When you get out of the driver’s seat, you find that life can drive itself, that actually life has always been driving itself. When you get out of the driver’s seat, it can drive itself so much easier—it can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the “me” is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.

As their sense of personal will diminishes, people often say to me, “I don’t even know how to make a decision anymore.” This is because they are operating less and less from a personal point of view. There is a new way of operating, and it is not really about making this decision or that decision, the right decision or the wrong decision. It is more like navigating a flow. You feel where events are moving, and you feel for the right thing to do. It’s like a river that knows which way to turn around a rock—to the left or to the right. It’s an intuitive and innate sense of knowing.

This kind of flow is always available to us, but most of us are too lost in the complexities of our thinking to feel that there’s a simple and natural flow to life. But underneath the turmoil of thought and emotion, and underneath the grasping of the personal will, there is indeed a flow. There is a simple movement of life.”

~ Adyashanti, The End of Your World

Personally speaking, over the past few years I’ve had more glimpses into that state of ‘flow’ being, and started to increasingly experience life and “reality” on a different level that is hard to even put into words. I’m more and more grounded in the present moment, unconcerned about the past or future. As mentioned before, by no means do I claim to have fully “awoken”, let alone achieved a real state of “enlightened” existence, but there have been internal changes within me – which reflect my “outer” reality – that are undeniable (which have also resulted in an exponential increase in positive synchronicities).

There is also more joy and simple contentment and gratitude in my heart, as well as humility for the mystery of life; a deeper trust and faith in the here and now and the “universe”…a sense that I’m being “taken care of” and “supported”. Yet, my personal emancipation and embodiment process continues, and there are always more lessons to learn. I still have my days when I get stuck in the head, get disconnected, reactive, project (and my ego gets the best of me), melancholic, down on myself, or caught up in a thought loop, but it’s not even close to the state of Being I was in a few years back.

Many of us experience glimpses or subtle impressions of what I described above, but most of the time they don’t stay with us, and aren’t permanent by any means. That is normal as well, so even when the “light” diminishes and we get caught up into our thought loops and mechanical behavior once again, we must not despair. Much is happening behind the veil, as Spirit is busy doing its work.

The Awakening process is not a linear process. Many factors come into the journey  as it is so very different for each of us. From a broader perspective, we all are where we need to be when it comes to soul evolution. The trap is to compare ourselves to anyone else, or get caught in the mindset of what “should” be happening, or where we “should” be with regards to our inner development, or become bogged down in our mind’s idea of “success” and “failure”, all of which most often results in anxiety, depression, impatience, frustration or anger.

When I find myself in such a state (especially when a thought of “should/shouldn’t” comes up), I use it as a feedback signal that I’m currently dis-embodied (not in my body) and disconnected from my true self/spirit (in the absolute sense, we are never disconnected, of course) and I don’t attempt to make any decisions from that state. Instead of fighting it, acting out of desperation, or forcing myself to get out of it, I surrender to it – meaning that I don’t avoid these feelings, nor act upon them, but simply accept and observe them. Usually, I go into meditation to fully feel them in my body (other times I’ll dance or take a walk in nature) and also inquire deeper into any thoughts associated with these emotions, since there is usually a feedback loop between thought and emotion – one triggering the other.

As I surrender to what is, an underlying (false) belief from the past (based on conditioning/wounding) – which the thought is associated with – usually comes to light…or I sometimes sense an archonic thought injection, bringing it into conscious awareness through simple inner perception without identifying with it, which helps to dissolve the thought, i.e. metaphysical detachment. Sometimes this also results in emotional processing (without resulting judgment) by “loving what arises” and just feeling into it with unconditional acceptance. Self-love – as in wholeness, accepting the “dark” and “light” within, without judgment – is a key ingredient in this process.

Traps on the Path towards Awakening

Let’s look at some of the traps on the journey towards awakening, and also examine some of the pitfalls we can fall into in the wake of experiencing a glimpse into the profound “other-ness” of an awakened (if still impermanent) state. All traps described below (this is merely a selection of the main ones I have observed in myself and others) can happen at any given stage of the awakening process, and many can occur simultaneously. Personally speaking, I’ve fallen into many of these traps in the past (and learned the hard way), and some of them still creep in here and there if I don’t “catch myself”.

Spiritual Bypassing

Spiritual Bypassing (first coined by John Welwood in 1984) is the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs. We engage in spiritual bypassing when we bypass necessary basic psychological work, believing ourselves to be more (self)aware than we actually are, and thus over-estimate our state of being. It relates to intellectualizing higher spiritual truths, ideas, and concepts, and thereby distorting/diluting them in order to avoid facing our blindspots and conditioned personality.

Spiritual Bypassing also reveals itself when we judge negative emotions as something “bad”, “un-spiritual” – a virus to be avoided…believing that “being spiritual” means to always be nice, positive, smiling and non-confrontational (resulting in a lack of boundaries and reality-avoidance).

Signs of spiritual bypassing:

  • exaggerated detachment (intellectual/stuck in the head)
  • emotional numbing and repression
  • overemphasis on the positive
  • anger-phobia (most often resulting in passive aggressiveness and a “make nice” mask)
  • blind or overly-tolerant compassion/weak boundaries
  • lopsided development (cognitive/intellectual intelligence often being far ahead of emotional intelligence —> lack of embodiment)
  • debilitating judgment about one’s negativity or shadow side
  • devaluation of the personal/physical relative to the spiritual – separation illusion
  • delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being
  • forceful efforts to kill/eradicate the ego, or judging it as “bad”
  • using statements (absolute/higher “truths”) such as “everything is perfect”, “it’s all an illusion”, “we are all one”, “love is all there is” as philosophical (intellectual) concepts to avoid dealing with the not-so-pleasant aspects of every day life in this 3D duality (bypassing responsibility and lessons of our 3D incarnation)
  • using spiritual practices to escape unpleasant emotions; for example, using meditation to dissociate from emotions, rather than transmute them.

“When we’re immersed in spiritual bypassing, we like the light but not the heat. And when we’re caught up in the grosser forms of spiritual bypassing, we’d usually much rather theorize about the frontiers of consciousness than actually go there, suppressing the fire rather than breathing it even more alive, espousing the ideal of unconditional love but not permitting love to show up in its more challenging, personal dimensions. To do so would be too hot, too scary, and too out-of-control, bringing things to the surface that we have long disowned or suppressed.

But if we really want the light, we cannot afford to flee the heat. As Victor Frankl said, “What gives light must endure burning.” And being with the fire’s heat doesn’t just mean sitting with the difficult stuff in meditation, but also going into it, trekking to its core, facing and entering and getting intimate with whatever is there, however scary or traumatic or sad or raw.

Spiritual bypassing is largely occupied, at least in its New Age forms, by the idea of wholeness and the innate unity of Being — “Oneness” being perhaps its favorite bumper sticker — but actually generates and reinforces fragmentation by separating out from and rejecting what is painful, distressed, and unhealed; all the far-from-flattering aspects of being human.

The trappings of spiritual bypassing can look good, particularly when they seem to promise freedom from life’s fuss and fury, but this supposed serenity and detachment is often little more than metaphysical valium, especially for those who have made too much of a virtue out of being and looking positive.

A common telltale sign of spiritual bypassing is a lack of grounding and in-the-body experience that tends to keep us either spacily afloat in how we relate to the world or too rigidly tethered to a spiritual system that seemingly provides the solidity we lack. We also may fall into premature forgiveness and emotional dissociation, and confuse anger with aggression and ill will, which leaves us disempowered, riddled with weak boundaries. The overdone niceness that often characterizes spiritual bypassing strands it from emotional depth and authenticity; and its underlying grief — mostly unspoken, untouched, unacknowledged — keeps it marooned from the very caring that would unwrap and undo it, like a baby being readied for a bath by a loving parent.

Spiritual bypassing distances us not only from our pain and difficult personal issues but also from our own authentic spirituality, stranding us in a metaphysical limbo, a zone of exaggerated gentleness, niceness, and superficiality. Its frequently disconnected nature keeps it adrift, clinging to the life jacket of its self-conferred spiritual credentials. As such, it maroons us from embodying our full humanity.

Cutting through spiritual bypassing means turning towards the painful, unwanted, scary shadow elements of ourselves. To do this we must cut through our numbness and defenses, approaching it with as much care as we can. If doing so seems to heal our heart, we are on the right path. When heart heals, it opens and expands, not shatters. When we denumb and become more comfortable with our own comfort we see what drove us into spiritual bypassing. This is a challenging journey to say the least.

True spirituality is not a high, not a rush, not an altered state. It has been fine to romance it for a while, but our times call for something far more real, grounded, and responsible; something radically alive and naturally integral; something that shakes us to our very core until we stop treating spiritual deepening as something to dabble in here and there. Authentic spirituality is not some little flicker or buzz of knowingness, not a psychedelic blast-through or a mellow hanging-out on some exalted plane of consciousness, not a bubble of immunity, but a vast fire of liberation, an exquisitely fitting crucible and sanctuary, providing both heat and light for the healing and awakening we need.”

– Robert Augustus Masters, Spiritual Bypassing

Spiritual Bypassing also ties into Spiritual Materialism, coined by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and defined as “a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality” where we “deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.” It relates to getting “addicted” to spiritual teachings and practices, with people continuously looking for the next workshop, the next teaching, the newest guru in town, going from one seminar to the next, traveling all over the world to find “truth”, going from healer to healer, “master” to “master”, in the hopes of someone healing them or bringing them “enlightenment”. Spiritual Materialism also shows itself by building a library of spiritual techniques that their ego likes to “show off” to prove their worthiness – to reveal how much of a “properly spiritual” person they are, and how much they have read, “know”, and practice.

Trap of Superiority

The sense of feeling better than others who are still be plugged into the Matrix, or who haven’t had any profound awakening experiences; the lure of looking down on them is the most common trap many people fall into. This is especially the case when truth seeking is not combined with inner work. In the more extreme manifestation of superiority, we lash out on others, calling them names and attacking them personally for being “blind” and not aware (most often conducted via the internet/social media, hiding behind a screen).

The delusion of superiority is, in fact, a symptom of still being plugged into the Matrix, since the Matrix feeds off of Service to Self (STS) ego separation-consciousness (with its manifestation of “competition” in people’s personal and/or professional lives). We see this attitude play itself out most often in “truth seekers” who just “woke up” to the basics of the 3D matrix (the political illusion, government corruption and relating symptoms: the banking cartel, fake war on terror, lies of the mainstream media, false flag attacks, etc.) and lash out on people who are still asleep and hypnotized. In a sense, this is a normal stage as well. As the saying goes “The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off” (ironically enough, this was coined by CIA controlled opposition asset Gloria Steinham). So, anger is not to be judged as “bad” (spiritual bypassing), but we need to remain mindful to avoid projecting it outwardly.

This trap subject also ties into shadow projection. When we get emotionally riled up and project that reactive energy onto others – coming from sense of superiority – we actually feed the occult forces in the hyperdimensional realms. It stems from the “predator mind” by which these forces work through us, triggering mechanical/reactive behaviors to produce the “loosh” frequency they feed upon. There are varying degrees of superiority complexes, with various manifestations which we all can fall into (from subtle to very apparent). As long as we have an inner sense of superiority (especially the disease of moral superiority) or “specialness” in comparison to others – even without any external projections – the matrix has its hooks in us. This can also happen to “wanderers“, (individuals whose souls have incarnated from a higher density (4th or 6th density) into this 3rd density with a specific mission to accomplish in order to assist humanity), who are very identified with the wanderer (“starseed”) concept (seeing oneself as “better” than “humans”), and the ego feeds off of this divisionary mentality. This is also how negative forces target, hijack and derail wanderers from their mission – by appealing to the shadow aspect of their ego.

The trap of superiority is so common that it is almost a “natural” by-product of the awakening process. It can manifest itself at any given stage, even after having had a mystical awakening experience which the ego then hijacks. In other words, the ego believes itself to be awake, turning into a “spiritualized ego”. Many self-proclaimed masters/gurus (or even popular figures in the “truth movement”)  have big superiority issues (cult of personality disorder) which their followers often feed with their “worship” and hierarchical-authoritarian programming, coming from a self-perceived inferior state of being, and thus putting another person on a pedestal.

“No matter what the practice or teaching, ego loves to wait in ambush to appropriate spirituality for its own survival and gain.”

– Chögyam Trungpa

More often than not, we have no control over when thoughts/feelings of superiority enter us. It can happen as a mechanical reflex response – as the sudden appearance of feelings of jealousy or anger. The key is self-observation, not trying to get rid of it (the axiom “what we resist persists” applies here), to say nothing of judging ourselves for thinking/feeling that way, which is very self-defeating. Avoid trying to push it away or acting on it; instead, we keep to working on ourselves, which helps to eventually detach our vibrational field from such thought intrusions; by not identifying with them positively (accepting) or negatively (judging ourselves/forceful resistance), we can slowly release them. Patience is key here.

A good thing to keep in mind that everyone reading this article was once fully “asleep”, caught up in the Matrix control mechanisms – none of us were born “awake”. We’ve all had our individual awakening moments, realizing that we have been believing in lies our entire lives, and that path to freedom is different for each of us. That’s where compassion and empathy come in, for both ourselves and others, even though blind/unconscious people who “dream to be awake” tend to support the matrix agenda, and hence unknowingly do a lot of “harm” despite their well-meaning intentions (for example: the belief in government, engaging in the political puppet show, which stems from a “Stockholm Syndrome” mechanism which is based on social conditioning, i.e. authoritarian programming, and hence feeding into the divide & conquer agenda). It is important, though, to not fall into “blind compassion” or intellectualize compassion, which can result in a fake mask of “compassion” and pity for others, which, ironically, also stems from an unconscious sense of superiority. From a bigger picture perspective, it is also important to keep in mind that not everyone is here to awaken during this current cycle. There is nothing wrong with this truth, and there is no judgment…it is merely a function of the cosmic equilibrium.

“Blind compassion is rooted in the belief that we are all doing the best we can. When we are driven by blind compassion, we cut everyone far too much slack, making excuses for others’ behavior and making nice situations that require a forceful “no”, an unmistakable voicing of displeasure, or a firm setting and maintaining of boundaries. These things can, and often should be done out of love, but blind compassion keeps love too meek, sentenced to wearing a kind face. Blind compassion is kindness rooted in fear, and not just fear of confrontation, but also fear of not coming across as a good or spiritual person.

When we mute our essential voice, our openness is reduced to a permissive gap, an undiscerning embrace, a poorly boundaries receptivity, all of which indicate a lack of compassion for ourselves (in that we don’t adequately protect ourselves). Blind compassion confuses anger with aggression, forcefulness with violence, judgment with condemnation, caring with exaggerated tolerance, and more tolerance with spiritual correctness.”

– Robert Augustus Masters

Trap of forcefully trying to wake up others

Many of us who have taken the “red pill” and are increasingly-seeing through the lies and illusions of official culture can be eager to tell others what we have found out and realized in our journey. We want others, especially our friends and family, to “wake up” as well. We see how they suffer needlessly, supporting the forces which are oppressing them and leading them astray, so our intentions to wake up others are coming from a well intended place; sometimes, they’re just coming from a place of excitement with regards to sharing information. However, two things are important to understand and apply: External Consideration and Strategic Enclosure.

External Consideration” means adapting to the worldview/beliefs of another person, and thus not pushing information onto someone who didn’t ask for it in the first place. Sometimes, this approach involves supporting other peoples’ ‘illusions’ because they are not ready to hear the truth, let alone be assisted in becoming “un-plugged” from the Matrix Control System. In esoteric terms, “Giving without (sincere) asking” is a violation of free will. It may interfere with the soul lesson/path of the other person involved – an individual who needs to learn certain lessons for him/herself, even if that entails long periods of suffering and struggle.

In this context, we cannot “do” anything for another person, nor “save” them – if they are not engaged in the process of sincere self-work and earnestly seeking truth for themselves, it will most likely be counterproductive to engage with them by providing a contrasting point of view. The “asking” part of the equation doesn’t have to be verbal in nature – it depends upon the situation and context. On the other hand, not every “asking” cue is sincere, so trusting one’s intuitive hunches regarding what to share (and what to withhold) is important; simply being “curious” is not a sincere form of “asking”.

“To those people who simply pry into the occult from mere curiosity, we have nothing to say. They will obtain just as much as they deserve, and nothing more. “Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you” is equally as true today, in relation to esoteric knowledge, as it was 2000 years ago. …

It invariably presupposes that the supplicator and the knocker are in real earnest, and that they seek only to satisfy the deep yearnings of the immortal soul. The doorkeeper, or guardian of the temple of truth is as mute as a granite rock to all others. They may supplicate, they may shout and bawl until they are hoarse, they may knock and buffet the door until they rouse a nation with their clamour, and if they approach in any other spirit than [earnest desire to satisfy the deep yearnings of the immortal soul], it is all to no purpose. We can never take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm.”

– “The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism” by Joscelyn Godwin

Strategic Enclosure” relates to having a strategy with regards to how to present information that may challenge another’s belief systems. Sometimes it is more productive to remain silent than to drop “knowledge bombs” on an unsuspecting mind, let alone trying to convince another person through argument and debate (which only creates the emotional loosh for the occult forces to feed upon). This also ties into the saying “Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces” – such is the biblical description of “cognitive dissonance” in its most basic of terms. At other times, however, directness and “calling a spade a spade” is needed as an appropriate response as well.

The drive to seek out truth in oneself and the world – and act upon it with integrity – has to come from oneself. No one can do it for another, and no one can push another to do it, until he/she himself/herself realizes the precarious times we live in (most often arising as the result of personal suffering and disillusionment), acts upon it, and starts to work on him/herself. Oftentimes, people do not start to sincerely seek truth or engage in deeper self-work until they have suffered, and are confronted with the inevitable disillusionment which subsequently arises, and surrender to it.

“Whether we use psychological or esoteric terminology, the basic fact remains the same: human beings do not earn free will except through self-discovery, and they do not attempt self-discovery until things become so painful that they have no other choice. If the individual makes no effort to expand his consciousness so that he can understand the nature of his total unfoldment and can begin to coorperate with it, then it will seem that he is the pawn of fate and has no control over his life. He can only earn his freedom by learning about himself so that he can understand what value a particular experience has for the development of his whole self.”

– Liz Green

What we can do, however, is spread some “seeds of awareness”, giving people some “food for thought” so to speak, without trying to convince him/her of the veracity of the information, nor having any expectations about how they’ll receive it. Some seeds sprout, some never blossom, but never underestimate the butterfly-effect over “time”. Each situation is different, of course, which goes back to “External Consideration” and “Strategic Enclosure”.

“If you do find an extraordinary truth, shall we say, from extraordinary evidence, more than likely, then in the course of your life, if you come upon that, you quickly learn there was a path to that view. And it may be complex, it may be simple, but there was a way to it. You don’t jump straight to it without the intermediate stages. And the more remarkable that truth is the longer it takes to deeply acknowledge and know it—know it at a very inner [embodied] level.

Yet, we can observe that there is sort of a tremendous impulse to want to share our discoveries with people and to prove to them and to underline things and expound what we believe. But everybody has to wake up for him or herself. I’ve said this over and over. You cannot really do it for anyone else. So it is both unrealistic and unwise to say, to expect someone touted in a mainstream view of politics and culture and education to suddenly entertain [esoteric and fringe ideas].

The more outstanding the revelation the longer it takes to get to it. So we have to sort of respect that in a way. We have to expect also that it takes time for people to understand what is real and what is unreal. All we can do is set forth our discoveries and let people make of it what they will. And that takes discipline and a high degree of self-confidence. And amongst academics that is not always to be taken for granted. Because it is not just academic discipline but it is personal disciple in your own growth in your own being not just the computer element of our minds but all of the rest of the faculties as well.

And if we falter in our convictions, if we constantly need validation and reassurance then we start to compromise even our own materials. It is better not to do that at all. Just play your own game. Do your own thing and get as sharp and authentic as you can. And don’t stop and keep doing it. And it brings to mind the question of what actually is it when we say truth. And I very much feel, having worked with all levels of sort of philosophers, and academics, and psychologists, and mystics, and new agers…that being smart is not sufficient to know the truth.

And I would say that the truth reveals itself slowly depending on the intellectual, emotional, transcendental awareness of the individual. And those last two elements are sorely lacking in the average investigator—I would say. So their inquiry is necessarily therefore flat and rather one-dimensional. It is limited, to put it politely, like a [person] who cannot see the real substance of a situation because he does not really get it. He lacks sincerity, humility, and insight.”

– Neil Kramer

At the same time, I also feel (and have seen) that the ideas of “external consideration” and “strategic enclosure” have been used as a buffer, an avoidance strategy, and a rationale to excuse people from being outspoken about the important issues which our world is facing in this day and age – or even with regards to what we truly think and feel, our own sense of vulnerability and openness. Oftentimes, there is this irrational fear and paranoia about what others may think of us as individuals if one is more outspoken – allowing opinions to frame our own sense of self-worth.

More on this topic in my past essay: Vocation and Seeking Truth – The Challenge of Making a Living while Exposing and Transcending The Matrix

Trap of wanting to help others

This trap is closely related to the drive behind forcefully trying to wake others up. Since, in many instances, there is obviously nothing wrong with wanting to help others – and in fact, it is often encouraged to be there for others in need – respecting free will applies here as well since we cannot truly help anyone who is not willing to help him/herself, or who is not asking for it, even though the “asking” doesn’t have to be “verbal” but context is important and every situation is specific.  The desire to help and be of service is also coming from a well-intentioned place; however, if we start to give people unsolicited advice, or tell them what they “should” or “shouldn’t” do, we are not being considerate, but rather, are coming from a place of selfish desire to change the other person, especially when we disrespect previously-established boundaries. This doesn’t mean to stay silent when people behave in abusive ways towards others and we need to step in to provide support against injustice. Again, it all depends on the specific situation and context.

“It would be necessary to develop oneself to such an extent that it would be possible to know and understand enough to be able to aid someone else in doing something necessary for himself, even when that person was not conscious of the need, and might work against you, that only in this sense was love properly responsible and worthy of the name of real love.

Even with the best of intentions, most people would be too afraid to love another person in an active sense, or even to attempt to do anything for them; and that one of the terrifying aspects of love was that while it was possible to help another person to a certain degree, it was not possible to actually “do” anything for them…. If you see another man fall down, when he must walk, you can pick him up. But, although to take one more step is more necessary for him even than air, he must take this step alone; impossible for another person to take it for him.”

– G. I. Gurdjieff

The drive to help others can also come from a place of avoiding our own “stuff”, and most often the advice we give others is what we need to apply to ourselves, first and foremost. We have much more impact in helping and inspiring others if we live by example (as embodied frequency anchors), but we ought to be careful of the superiority complex creeping in, as well as the savior complex (addressed later). The notion of “Service to Others” (STO) has also become very distorted, in particular amongst the “New Age” religion, where  STS (Service to Self) is usually mistaken for STO, especially when we primarily “help” others to make us feel better about ourselves, or even feel the need to tell others how much we have been of service, and thereby feed off of the attention/adulation. This ties into the “spiritualized ego” deception. Michael Topper gives an overview of the STO/STS dynamic from a higher perspective HERE.

Both traps – trying to wake up, and attempting to help others – can be particularly challenging in intimate relationships, when one partner starts to wake up and is engaged in sincere self-work and truth seeking, but the other partner isn’t. If both partners don’t start “looking in the same direction” and have no foundation of sincerely working on both themselves and the relationship, separation is oftentimes inevitable, for both partners wind up essentially interfering with each other’s soul path. It is important to note that relationships take on a whole new level when both partners are sincerely engaged in truth seeking and self work, and hence mainstream-style relationship psychology has its limits, since it usually approaches relationships from a “matrix” perspective, without considering other factors, such as “The Dark Side of Cupid/Love Bite and Hyperdimensional Interferences in Relationships.”

Trap of the Revolutionary Mind (stuck in 3D)

This is also a very common trap: we get caught up in the tunnel vision of the 3D Matrix (fighting it externally), which is, after all, only a manifestation (symptom) of the non-physical hyperdimensional matrix; by doing so, we inadvertently feed into the Negative Realm’s agenda of divide & conquer, and then the “matrix has us” by working through us, feeding off of all the projected emotional “loosh”. It also ties into the limitations of 3D thinking (stuck in the head) with regards to trying to “fix” the world, as well as the mis-perception of “evil” and trying to eradicate it, instead of transcending it/the matrix. This trap is based on a lack of awareness/understanding of the occult hostile forces operating outside our range of five-sensory perception.

“[Look] at what happened in 1914 – or for that matter at all that is and has been happening in human history – the eye of the Yogin sees not only the outward events and persons and causes, but the enormous forces which precipitate them into action. If the men who fought were instruments in the hands of rulers and financiers, these in turn were mere puppets in the clutch of those hidden [hyperdimensional] forces. When one is habituated to see the things behind, one is no longer prone to be touched by the outward aspects – or to expect any remedy from political, institutional or social changes; the only way out is through the descent of an [embodied] consciousness which is not the puppet of these forces but is greater than they are.

– Sri Aurobindo, The Hidden Forces of Life – The Integral Yoga

I have addressed this trap (also related to the trap of “fighting evil”) in more depth in previous essays:

Trap of Meaninglessness

Another self-defeating state of being which some people find themselves in at some point on their awakening journey is the notion of meaninglessness, or “nothing matters anyway”. We can slip into this dis-empowering state even after having had experiences of a deeper experience of self-realization (wherein we embody the wholeness and unity of it all, with the dissolution of the “me” personality and loss of separative consciousness, giving way to an an all-inclusive, expansive experience of the Divine, realizing the illusion of the dream state we have been caught within). This is also how the ego can sneakily hijack such profound experiences after the “coming down” period commences in the wake of such revelations, thereby distorting “higher” truths (such as “all is illusion”) into a sort of paradoxical, spiritualized nihilism.

We, therefore, don’t see any purpose to do anything at all, for whatever we do is irrelevant, since we believe that nothing matters anyway from the absolute perspective, which from THAT perspective is “true”. However, the trap is to assume “god’s point of view” (not talking about any external religious idea of “god”) and “forgetting” that we still have to play our roles in alignment with Divine Will, incarnated into a body and placed within the grand scheme of the evolution of consciousness. The frequencies of creation from the “One” transduce through all expressions of energetic manifestation, intermixing with our incarnated Being, and are all a unique expression of “God”, which (from a individual perspective) is our unique soul path with all its expressions, unique talents, and lessons (i.e.”purpose”).

This trap is even more severe when one uses absolute truths such as “all is one” and “all is illusion” from a strictly intellectual belief-structure perspective, without ever having experienced a true embodied awakening. Many followers of the non-duality philosophy can fall into that trap, reinforced by their own rationalizations and over-estimating their level of Being. We see this as well in distorted New Age spiritual teachings that have co-opted and distorted “higher truths”.

Falling into the “meaninglessness” trap can also occur when we get overwhelmed by the collective meltdown madness. As we shed the layers of illusions and lies we’ve been indoctrinated with, and can perceive more and more of the normalized pathology in our world (with millions of programmed people dreaming to be awake), we can succumb to a state of “frozen shock”. This rigidity can hold its grip when we get stuck in the necessary process of disillusionment and the resulting sensations of despair, depression and hopelessness take hold; we only see negativity in our world, and isolate ourselves from everything and everyone (note: learning to be alone in solitude – not to be mistaken for loneliness – is a necessary lesson to learn in this process as well). We then tell ourselves that “it is of no use”, “the world will always be as it is”, “there is nothing I/we can do”, “nothing matters”, etc.. This is the ego’s desperate grip to not let go, to recommit to the illusion of separation, and it also hijacks the process of “making the darkness conscious” by turning it into self-loathing negativity. Hyperdimensional attacks and interferences can also increase during this “dark night of the soul”, trying to keep us in the “underworld of darkness”, even to the point of pushing us into suicidal tendencies.

Art by Cameron Gray

However, as mentioned before, the disillusionment process is a necessary (and in fact, positive) stage of the awakening process (i.e the dissolving of illusions); hence, feelings and periods of despair, depression, shock, loneliness, and meaninglessness are normal symptoms of a deeper soul awakening, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel if we have faith and persist without giving in to the darkness within and without. Ultimately, it lays the groundwork to ignite the inner alchemical fire of transmutation; from lead (matter/ego-consciousness) into gold (spirit/divine will).

Avoidance of every-day responsibilities

Some people can become so infatuated with living a “spiritual life” – or get trapped in the revolutionary mindset – that they use it as an excuse to avoid dealing with ordinary daily affairs. They tend to reject anything which they don’t perceive as “spiritual” (or what they see as “the matrix” reality) in a knee-jerk/black & white reactionary way – such as not paying their bills, rent or feeling too “good/spirtual” to even get a source of income and work. In the more extreme cases, they tend to manipulate, leech (and essentially feed) off of others in order to provide for themselves (and themselves alone).

The rejection of the material world is another area of a distorted understanding with regards to the spiritual life (the flip side of that coin is using spiritual concepts as a justification/means of obtaining materialistic greed/addictions). Many truth/spiritual seekers believe that their inability to function in the “3D world” and inability (refusal) to manage ordinary daily affairs is like wearing a badge of merit — a proof of their great spirituality (“I am too spiritual to…”) This ties into the martyr complex as well (addressed later). The Zen saying “Before Enlightenment: chop wood, carry water; after Enlightenment: chop wood, carry water” applies here, which basically means having humility.

This also applies to the trap of “fighting the 3D matrix”. While the matrix control system mines us for our energy, and keeps many of us preoccupied with survival and “making a living” while stealing from us (taxes) or manipulating us into debt (or worse), we need to be strategic planners in order to avoid attracting unnecessary negative attention from the matrix that could compromise both our ability to function and to be of help to others. When we refuse to deal with ordinary life affairs – stemming from an inflated sense of being “spiritual” or an emotional reactive “fuck the system” attitude (projected at the symptoms/shadows on the wall of the 3D matrix) – the “matrix has us” in this case, too, for we essentially react out of ego/survival consciousness, which is exactly the frequency where the matrix overlords want us to be.

Some people focus their whole energy and life to get “off the grid” or look for loopholes and ways not to pay their taxes, essentially trying to live “under the radar”, which can compromise their ability to be of service. It can also become an “escape” avoidance strategy, based on 3D-survival thinking. While I’m obviously not condoning the tax(theft) system, nor am I against striving towards self-sustainability or living “off the grid” (quite the contrary), we need to be cautious not to fall into the 3D revolutionary (round we go back to the point again) mindset trap, nor into  reactionary black & white thinking/behavior. As it is mentioned in various esoteric teachings, such as “Gnosis” by Boris Mouravieff:

“From his first steps on the track [way of access towards awakening – transcending the General Law/Hyperdimensional Matrix], man must apply the principle: ‘feed the crocodile so that we are not devoured.'”

In other words, sometimes we need to feed the “crocodiles” to keep them calm, i.e. play by the matrix “rules” to an extent in order to protect ourselves so we can continue with the Great Work and not draw unnecessary negative attention upon ourselves.

Trap of Victim and Blame Consciousness

As we wake up to the “horror of the situation” (as Gurdjieff described it) and realize the madness of the world – with sleeping people “dreaming to be awake”, as well as our own sleep state and conditioning – it can feel like we’re caught in a prison, and that analogy is correct in many ways. As a result of this “shock”, it can be natural at first to feel like a victim and blame the powers-that-be (the global elite on a 3D level, or their hyperdimensional puppeteers) for our situation. However, getting caught up in blame and victimhood is essentially a dis-empowering state that feeds the matrix. While the whole set-up feels like being in a prison, from a higher perspective, life on earth is a “school” for the evolution of consciousness, and all there is are essentially soul lessons.

When we are subjected to personal attacks (hyperdimensionally, or from other people), or have to deal with difficult interpersonal relationships (where we tend to blame others or our partner for what they/he/she has done “to us”), and we go into reactivity, the matrix is being nourished. Obviously, this doesn’t mean to put up with abuse, and boundaries need to be made. However, essentially, we cannot blame others for how we feel. The victim/blame frequency is exactly what the hyperdimensional matrix feeds off of, and “they” want us to engage in interpersonal fighting, for it all creates the emotional “loosh” for them to feed upon. The moment you take anything personally, the matrix has you, triggering your self-importance (identification with your personality/ego).

“Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it – what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.

Every effort should be made to eradicate self-importance from the lives of warriors. Without self-importance we are invulnerable. Self-importance is not something simple and naive. On the one hand, it is the core of everything that is good in us, and on the other hand, the core of everything that is rotten. To get rid of the self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece of strategy.

In order to follow the path of knowledge one has to be very imaginative. In the path of knowledge nothing is as clear as we’d like it to be. Warriors fight self-importance as a matter of strategy, not principle. Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy. My statements have no inkling of morality. I’ve saved energy and that makes me impeccable. To understand this, you have to save enough energy yourself.

Warriors take strategic inventories. They list everything they do. Then they decide which of those things can be changed in order to allow themselves a respite, in terms of expending their energy. The strategic inventory covers only behavioral patterns that are not essential to our survival and well-being. In the strategic inventories of warriors, self-importance figures as the activity that consumes the greatest amount of energy, hence, their effort to eradicate it.

One of the first concerns of warriors is to free that energy in order to face the unknown with it. The action of rechanneling that energy is impeccability.

The most effective strategy for rechanneling that energy consists of six elements that interplay with one another. Five of them are called the attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, timing, and will. They pertain to the world of the warrior who is fighting to lose self-importance. The sixth element, which is perhaps the most important of all, pertains to the outside world and is called the petty tyrant.

A petty tyrant is a tormentor. Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction. Petty tyrants teach us detachment. The ingredients of the new seers’ strategy shows how efficient and clever is the device of using a petty tyrant. The strategy not only gets rid of self-importance; it also prepares warriors for the final realization that impeccability is the only thing that counts in the path of knowledge.

If seers can hold their own in facing petty tyrants, they can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then they can even stand the presence of the unknowable. The mistake average men make in confronting petty tyrants is not to have a strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is that average men take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings, as well as those of the petty tyrants, are all-important. Warriors, on the other hand, not only have a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from self-importance.

Petty tyrants take themselves with deadly seriousness while warriors do not. What usually exhausts us is the wear and tear on our self-importance. Any man who has an iota of pride is ripped apart by being made to feel worthless.”

– Don Juan in “The Fire From Within” by Carlos Castaneda

Regardless what happened “to us”, in light of the process of awakening, we need to become aware of the victim archetype that is strongly embedded in our collective psyche in order to empower ourselves and take self-responsibility for our healing, growth, and life journey.

“The root of the Victim archetype is a fear that you cannot survive or will not survive. Not just physical survival but the survival of your identity, your hopes and dreams or sense of self. Deep down there is a belief that you don’t deserve to thrive and the Victim is a way to have passive control over your life. All victims are entitled. It may take you some time to see your own sense of entitlement but it is important to identify it to be able to transform this interesting archetype from shadow to light. Working through the Victim may be the most difficult thing you do but it is the most life altering as well.
[…]
The Enlightened Victim understands that real power comes from within and is bound up with personal responsibility. When you are the Enlightened Victim you cannot blame others because you can see that the loss of power happens from within. It would be useless to look for empowerment where it does not exist. The Enlightened Victim asks “what can I do with the situation that I have been given?”

There is this great scene from The Lord of the Rings movie where Frodo, feeling victimized by the fact that the ring of power has come to him, says to Gandalf: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” And Gandalf answers him wisely: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.” Here Gandalf shows Frodo where his true power lies. There are some things in life that are not for us to decide but we can decide what to do with what we have been given, or what has happened to us. It is a very encouraging thought.
[…]
The Enlightened Victim is not afraid of weakness and fragility because you maintain vulnerability as a strength. You have learned that power can be found even in the worst victimization. You are no longer afraid of failures, losses, tragedies, suffering and misfortune because none of these outer circumstances has the power to control your life. Vulnerability is the keystone of your strength because it allows you to discover different kinds of power and especially recognize the strength of openness. Vulnerability makes you pliable and willing to be changed by your circumstances without losing your power.”

– Susanna Barlow, Understanding the Victim Archetype

We see the victim/blame archetype playing out on social media these days as well. A good way to check yourself in order to ensure you are not falling into that trap (and thereby essentially giving your power away energetically) is to observe how easily you get triggered/upset about other people’s posts, opinions, pics, etc… especially on a baseline emotional level. Observe how you may be projecting inner turmoil onto people you have never met personally, nor talked to face to face… taking things personally, getting offended, even if you feel justified in doing so because you were  “attacked” (by the way, there is nothing wrong with blocking/deleting people – making clear boundaries is important, too!). Observe, when sharing personal stuff, if it is actually coming from a place of self-pity and blame, instead of honest vulnerability that’s supported by humility (not to be mistaken as “self-diminishment”) and personal responsibility….or posting something in order to seek out attention, which relates to Narcissism.

All this of this emotional “loosh” – based on egoic self-centeredness – is sustenance for the Matrix. It’s tricky at times to catch it in yourself,  and the ego/predator mind can camouflage itself and shape-shift like a chameleon. Self-sincerity, radical self-honesty, and observing oneself are key tools to deploy in order to check in with our actions and thoughts at all times in that regard (a good question to ask oneself: what is my true – most often hidden – intention for posting this or that?). All of this is especially true in relation to the internet and the archonic A.I. infection we are all exposed to via technology, keeping us head-centric and isolated (despite the positive side of connecting, networking and sharing information).

At the same token, it’s important not to blame ourselves, especially when buying into the New Age distorted idea of “You Create Your Own Reality” and the over-simplified idea that you “created” everything in your life, based on your thoughts and emotional state.

The so-called “Law of Attraction” (as it is commonly used these days in corrupted New Age/pop-spirituality concepts of “You Create Your Own Reality”) is a gross distortion of its true esoteric meaning and source, just as the saying “Ask and You Shall Be Given” has also been corrupted from its original esoteric meaning and watered down into “I can have anything I want from the “universe”, if I just “ask” for it and align my thoughts and emotions with my desires”. First of all, the “law of attraction” (based on the saying “like attracts like”) was geared towards the sincere seeker engaged in esoteric self-work, meaning that he/she will “attract” (through his “SINCERE asking”) anything that will help him/her for his/her soul evolution with the aim of union with the “One”, i.e. soul embodiment, self-realization, awakening/enlightenment, etc. The phrase “Ask and You Shall Be Given” relates to esoteric Knowledge, Truth, assistance, and “occult secrets” that will help him/her on the path , not a “thing” (or job, money, relationship) based on the ego’s culturally-conditioned cravings.

However, what he/she will be “given” or “attract” is not up to “him/her”, but relates to his/her soul lessons and even includes (besides “positive” things, such as the right teacher/teaching, and assistance appearing at the right time) challenging situations, trials and initiations (including attacks by occult forces, which can be teachings/initiations in disguise) that may seem “negative” to the uninitiated eye, but are necessary lessons for him/her to pass through as part of the awakening process. They have nothing to do with “attracting them because of his/her negative attitude”. In the end, it’s about letting go of the monkey mind conditioning, and realizing the illusion of “personal will” (ego identification) so as to give way to Divine Will – becoming an embodied sovereign Individual, a conscious instrument for Spirit to work through, expressing itself in this reality plane by merging with him/her/it as a unique frequency anchor.

Trap of Savior and Martyr Consciousness

On the other side of the victim coin is the Savior/Martyr complex, which ties into the previously-discussed ‘waking up/helping others’ trap. This inflated state – being identified with the “savior” – is based upon the illusion that there is something “wrong” with reality (as in, the creative force of the Source/God/Universe from which all originates/is manifested from, is somehow a “mistake”) and we therefore need to “save” or “fix” the world. By assuming “god’s point of view”, and thus resulting in a sense of grandiosity and feelings of “special-ness” (superiority complex), this trap ties into the misconception of what “evil” actually is, and how it operates within the duality of light and dark. It doesn’t mean to just sit by either, but rather, to actively engage in the evolution of consciousness, with all of the collective and personal lessons contained within that process, in order to become frequency anchors in alignment with Divine Will.

The savior complex is also very common in people who are overly-identified with the the ‘wanderer/renegade/starseed/family of light’ concept, which their ego hijacks so as to put themselves on pedestals while “looking down” on humans (as mentioned before in the superiority trap). This topic is explored in depth in this essay: Wanderers, Purpose, and Esoteric Work in this Time of Transition

It also relates to people who are very attached to (and identified with) what they perceive as their “mission” and “purpose”. While we all do have our individual callings in life – which we can (and should) be passionate about – it is important to keep in mind that purpose is not a definition, but a process, and should be seen in light of our individual soul evolution and how it aligns with our unique talents, our development, and our lessons to learn. The moment ambition, pride, will-full doing or a need to “prove ourselves” kicks in, we are not aligned with spirit within, but rather with ego-consciousness…cravings take over, and the matrix has us.

The martyr complex is an even more exaggerated form of the savior complex – it is activated whenever we feel we need to suffer “for others”, and pride ourselves for carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders. It shows itself when we proudly “show off” how we are being “attacked” for what we do (activism or speaking out) and often needlessly put ourselves into compromising situations to somehow prove how right we were all along. This behavior is also based on a lack of external consideration and strategic enclosure as explored before in this article. It relates to deep dogmatic religious programming as well, especially the Christian idea that “Jesus died for our sins”, and ties into the collective external savior program, with the masses looking for someone to save/lead them (based on authoritarian programming).

In order to avoid any of these traps (or pull ourselves out of them again if we fall into one), humility and modesty are key assistants on a basic foundational level:

“Like it or not, humility exists only in the wake of arrogance. Few people know humility for itself or opt for it right away. Most of us have fallen into arrogance and egotism and have failed. We come to humility after having thoroughly tested the alternative.

True humility is a choice we make each time there is a confrontation, and unless a person is supremely comfortable, self-assured, and safe, he or she cannot easily be humble.The dynamically modest person chooses to be humble out of strength. The humility of the Changes [I Ching / Yijing] is an active power. As such, it is more than a moral position: it is a virtue.

Humility is akin to compassion— at least in the sense that true compassion means extending one’s energy and talents on behalf of others. One cannot be merciful from a position of weakness.[…] Remaining humble even when you are under great duress, staying self-possessed in the face of insults, and refusing to bully others with your position and power are all examples of humility from the vantage of great strength.

Those who are humble will gradually discover other advantages. They will not hesitate to go beyond themselves. With nothing to prove, they are willing to explore new situations. True, they might make mistakes. They may even suffer embarrassment. But the humble person acknowledges and accepts that. The immodest make mistakes too – but they try to hide their errors and deny their fallibility. That worsens their mistakes and increases their isolation.

– Deng Ming-Dao, “The Living I Ching; Using Ancient Chinese Wisdom to Shape Your Life” (Hexagram 15)

THE PATH TO THE TEMPLE OF SECRETS

The Temple of Secrets is located on a high mountain, and everywhere thorns are covering the path leading to the Temple. The inconceivable, mysterious height of the mountain is the reason why many people doubt the existence of the Temple of Secrets. Some think of it as a Fairy Tale, some consider it an old Myth and others believe it to be the Truth.

At the entrance of the narrow path stands Ignorance, with her sisters Stupidity and Laziness, and they tell awful tales to the travelers and of horrible adventures the travelers will encounter if they set foot on this path. That is how lazy Human Beings and fearful Human Beings can easily be persuaded to turn back.

There are a few Human Beings on which ignorance attempts her deceptions in vain. They climb up the first part of the thorny steep path, and when they are about half way up the mountain, they reach a plateau on which they find the Temple of Self-Love. Next to this Temple stands Self-Conceit, Pride and Know it-All and they offer the traveler a cup, out of which he drinks his own Self in great gulps and thereby becomes intoxicated with himself, with his own “I.”

These travelers then become so intoxicated with themselves that they imagine that their Temple, the Temple of Self-Love is the Temple of Secrets and there is nothing, but nothing, above them. The inscription on this temple, the Temple of Self-Love, reads as follows: The Sanctuary of the Wisdom of the World.

Desires, passions and wantonness are the servants of these priests. However, those whose heart searches for the truth will not find any satisfaction with this and they will keep on searching.

A few thousand steps from this Temple you will find a very secluded little hut, inhabited by a hermit, with the following inscription above the door: The Residence of Humility.

The man who lives here guides the strangers to the residence of humility, which in turn leads them to Self-Recognition. This Divine Beauty becomes the traveler’s companion, and with her, he conquers the inaccessible mountain. Whosoever tries to reach the Temple of Secrets without this Divine Beauty can very easily be misled by his Self-Love, and as a result, will follow the wrong path.

His greed for knowledge will lead him to the Temple of Curiosity. The inhabitants of this Temple are: fraud, seduction and deception, the founders of most of the secret societies, and those Human Beings who in search for the Truth and for the Temple of Secrets will, if they join these Secret Societies, be robbed of the ability to see with their Soul. They are then led to the top of the mountain, where they fall into the abyss or into the labyrinth or maze, in which they will walk in circles for eternity without finding the Truth.

Humility alone is the best guide. This alone will lead the seeker to the Master of Teachers of all secrets. This Master Teacher is the pure will. This pure will becomes the friend of the highest of knowledge and they enter into a bond of eternal union [Divine Will].

The knowledge of the effects of the Eternal Light of godliness in all created beings is True Magic in Theory. The conception of this Light, or the transition from the intellect to the will, is True Magic in Practice.

– Von Eckarthausen, Magic: The Principles of Higher Knowledge, 1788

Occult Hostile Forces Targeting The Seeker

The aforementioned traps on the awakening journey relate more to our inner attitude and ego-hijacked spiritual insights, experiences and knowledge (including knowledge of how the matrix works), which leads to the ego believing itself to be the awakening self. The way I use the term “ego” is in relation to identifying with who we “think” we are, the conditioned personality, or anything we “do” based on the illusion of being separate, caught in a fragmented state of consciousness, i.e. lack of wholeness, (which is also the result of the division of the inner male and female that shows up in the body-mind(head) split that is so prevalent in our modern society).

However, all of the traps mentioned before are also “enhanced” by hyperdimensional interference and attacks which lie “outside” of our ego-structure or shadow issues  – as important as Shadow work is from a Jungian perspective, it has its limitations (as does psychological work in general, which I have addressed in this essay.) The occult hostile forces affect us in more ways than we are aware of, especially with those people who are actively engaged in consciousness-raising activities, spiritual self-work, seeking truth, and speaking out about it. Be it through our own minds, like psychic attacks or entity attachments, or forces working through others who are being used as “portals” to vector us off our path, vigilance is essential. Think of Agent Smith being able to inject himself into any character in the virtual world within the film “The Matrix”, trying to stop Neo from awakening to his actual abilities. Hence, cognitively-blind people – people who are asleep, plugged into the Matrix, the grand illusion – can become unconscious “tools” and puppets of the Matrix, deploying tactics like peer pressure/social ostracization to make sure no one jumps out of line.

In addition to the weak and defenseless, [these hidden] vampires seek out people who are on the verge of a quantum, evolutionary leap in consciousness, but have not yet fully integrated their realizations and come out the other side. These individuals are in an energetically sensitive and “charged” condition, and their openness and vulnerability invites the vampiric entities to help themselves and gorge on the light of their prey’s expanding awareness. Paradoxically, though, thriving on the absence of light, vampires can be said to be “light-eaters,” as they draw and consume the light belonging to others into the cavernous black hole of their congenital emptiness. Economically speaking, vampires want to corner the market on energy, on light, so as to centralize their power and control.

Unable to generate the light-energy source themselves, they need to steal and use the reserves of the beings harnessed in thrall to them. The emerging positive-and healthy elements in the other person are either co-opted, neutralized, or corrupted. Once their victim is cornered, the vampire literally wants to keep their captives under lock and key. Paradoxically, vampiric wetikos try to destroy others’ light, as it reminds them of what they’ve killed in themselves, while simultaneously trying to appropriate the fight for themselves.

Wetikos see their job as “arresting” the creative expressions of love, because genuine love threatens their reign of terror. The strategy of these predators is to distract us so as to keep our attention directed outward, thereby stopping us from finding the light within ourselves, which would “kill” the vampires. If we hold up a mirror and reflect back the insanity being exhibited by those stricken by the wetiko psychosis, we run the very real risk of being accused of being the ones who are crazy. lf we do manage to connect with the light within ourselves and try to share it with others, these nonlocal vampiric entities (what I have in previous writings called “nonlocal demons,” or NLD for short), not bound by the 3-dimensional laws of space and time, will try, via their “connections” to the nonlocal field, to stop, us by influencing other people to turn against us.

This process can destroy us, or, if we have the meta-awareness to see what is happening and are able to skillfully navigate our way through, can serve to further strengthen our intention, deepen our connection with the light of lucidity [within], hone our skill of creatively transmitting our realizations, and cultivate more open-hearted compassion. It is as if these psychic, nonlocal vampires are guardians of the threshold of evolution.”

– Paul Levy, Dispelling Wetiko

“There are highly conscious forces whose sole aim, apparently, is to discourage the (spiritual) seeker and divert him from the path he has chosen. The first sign of their presence is easily perceptible: joy is clouded, consciousness is clouded, everything becomes shrouded in an atmosphere of melodrama and gloom. Personal distress is a sure sign of the enemy’s presence. Melodrama is a favorite haunt of these forces; that is how they are able to create the greatest havoc, because they play with a very old teammate within us, who cannot help loving melodrama even as he cries out for relief.

First, they generally make a point of forcing us into sudden, extreme, and irrevocable decisions in order to take us as far away as possible from our path–a pressing, exacting vibration that demands immediate compliance; or else, they take apart, with remarkable skill, the whole system of our quest to prove that we are deluding ourselves and that our efforts will come to nothing; more often, they bring about a state of depression, playing with another well-known teammate within us whom Sri Aurobindo calls the man of sorrows: a fellow . . . covering himself with a sevenfold overcoat of tragedy and gloom [self-pity], and he would not feel his existence justified if he couldn’t be colossally miserable.

The method for dealing with these adverse forces is the same as for the other vibrations: silence, inner stillness that lets the storm blow over. We may not succeed the first time in dissolving these attacks, but more and more they will seem to take place on the surface of our being; we may be shaken, upset, yet deep down we will feel the “Witness” in us, unscathed and unaffected–he is never affected. We fall and get back up again, each time becoming stronger. The only sin is discouragement. In practice, the [sincere] seeker will be far more exposed than others [for his/her aim is a threat to the occult hostile force’s agenda].”

– Satprem, “Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousnes”

Anyone who is on the verge of a true awakening will attract the attention of these forces, and it has not always the result of having negative thoughts or a negative attitude (as is claimed in the distorted New Age version of the “Law of Attraction”). The simple reason for their sinister acts is that they don’t want to lose their “food” source, and so they attempt to derail you in the midst of your frequency shift (as a result of the awakening process). They especially target our own blindspots, wounds and predominant ego-identifications, which are different for each of us. For example, if you have an inherently built-in “white knight” syndrome, they will enhance your savior complex, as well as inducing you into the trap of (forcefully) trying to wake up/help others. Or, on the other hand, if you suffer from low self-esteem and self-pity (most often due to past trauma/childhood wounding), they will enhance the victim complex. Same goes for the superiority complex, and so on. Anything that I mentioned in the traps section can and will be augmented by hyperdimensional interference and thought injections.

That’s why, in light of the awakening process from an absolute perspective, the most important part of the experience is to get out of the head and not identity with any thoughts which reside in there, regardless if they come from our own internal ego-structure or are infused via “external” insertions. The way out is by instilling a calm and grounded non-reactive state of being, anchoring to an embodied higher frequency, which results in activating our original blueprint prior to genetic modification so as to transcend the matrix. But before we can do that, we need to clear the vessel within, and that is much harder work than fighting the matrix externally (which is futile anyway, at the end of the day), especially when getting stuck in its 3D manifestations.

It is through “mistakes” and attacks that we learn and grow – at the end of the day, even these forces (whether they are working through others or targeting us directly) are our “teachers”, making us aware of where our work is required within our inner-verse. When it’s all said and done, these are just lessons and initiations to help us become more aware and conscious. The trap lies in the possibility that we might get stuck within a lower vibration (or purely-3D “thinking”) prison, and get bogged down in negative emotional “loops”, projecting them onto others and the world-at-large.

“While we may not always be the source of injustices against us, we are the cause of its entrance into our lives. The Matrix, even with all its imbalances and corruption by those freewill entities who have overstepped their place in nature, is nevertheless still a learning program entirely responsive to our own ignorance and weaknesses. It may be a predator’s choice to attack, but it is our choice to accept the attack and succumb to it.

The Matrix Control System can only trip us via the elements within us that correspond to its low vibratory nature. If we ignore our intuition, have blind spots in our awareness, or engage in ignoble feelings and behaviors, then these are the avenues through which we are had. Attacks serve to identify our own weaknesses, thus providing focus for where to take the next step on one’s path of spiritual awakening.

In the absolute sense the Matrix Control System serves to accelerate your spiritual growth, and although its agents see you as the enemy, know that you can utilize them as teachers. You do not need to seek them out, for they will find you as you progress in your learning path. Most importantly, know that you will never be given anything you cannot choose to handle successfully.“

– Tom Montalk

There is always a spiritual test before being able to attain the next stage of power. Each time you have to make progress, you have to undergo an examination. When Divine manifestations take place, they have also to pass through great difficulties and sufferings as a result of oppositions of dark and anti-divine forces which have had a hold upon earth since the creation. Those dark powers always oppose the new Lights because they do not want to give up their grip on the earth and sometimes their hostility even takes the form of war on earth  [created and initiated by occult/hyperdimensional forces working througt their human puppets], but in spite of all obstructions the Divine Will succeeds at last.”

~ The Mother, “Collected Works of the Mother” – Sri Aurobindo Library

Trap of Paranoia and Attachment to Experiences

I see more and more people becoming aware of the hyperdimensional matrix forces and how they might possibly be interfering with their own lives, working through them or through others close to them. This is encouraging to witness, for awareness and education about this topic helps many people to heal and work through their tribulations. At the same time, I also see people getting caught up in paranoia mode – or the victim/blame complex kicks in. Oftentimes, I also notice (in some people I work with) that they are actually not dealing with entity interference, but with their own thought projections (based on fear/paranoia) that have taken on a “life” of their own and have become “entities”, so to speak, but are not directly-related to the occult hostile forces interjecting from a different realm.

Sometimes people can also get very attached to their experiences and “story” on an unconscious level, while at the same time wanting to heal and move on (via a conscious healing process). This unconscious attachment and inner contradiction results in an inability to fully let go and heal,  as the ego actually feeds off of the story/experience by strongly identifying with it. Usually, there is an unconscious “self-importance” or a sense of feeling “special” at play here in relation to having these experiences which define one’s self-image (i.e. who we “think” we are). Sometimes, it is also just an underlying morbid fascination with the topic, and a part of themselves (the “predator mind”) that actually “likes” the drama identifies with this subject. Essentially, it still provides the frequency which these forces lock onto; meanwhile, none of this is recognized by the person on a conscious level, which shows how tricky it can be to deal with these forces in order to establish a sovereign embodied state of being (complete with energetic boundaries).

I see the same pattern occurring in the fringe/UFO/alien community, where some researchers and people who had/have encounters with occult hostile forces (in whatever shape or form they manifest, and specific names we give them) are getting caught up in a tunnel vision, and tend to “forget” or miss the point of essentially transcending the occult influences/interference via sincere esoteric self-work, embodiment and anchoring to a higher frequency. While it is obviously important to understand the “modus operandi” of the hyperdimensional entities and educate ourselves (and others) about it, we need to be careful not give “them” more power by giving them too much “attention”. It’s not a black & white scenario and as always, each situation is different. This also relates to the Trap of getting stuck in the rabbit hole of information overload, which I’ve addressed HERE.

“We have considered the modus operandi of telepathic suggestion in detail because it forms the real basis of every kind of occult attack. Whether it be a discarnate entity, a being of another order of evolution, a demon from the Pit, or merely the panic-stricken soul of a selfish friend, clinging to the life of form regardless of consequences, in all cases the opening gambit is the same.

Until the aura is pierced, there can be no entrance to the soul, and the aura is always pierced from within by the response of fear or desire going out towards the attacking entity. If we can inhibit that instinctive emotional reaction [zero-point non-reactive consciousness, grounded in the body – embodiment/soul anchoring], the edge of the aura will remain impenetrable, and will be as sure a defense against psychic invasion as the healthy and unbroken skin is a defense against bacterial infection.”

– Dion Fortune, “Psychic Self-Defense -The Classical Instruction Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack”

“It is so that they [the hostile suggestions] must be regarded – without interest, with indifference. That removes the necessity for constant struggle which is itself a form of interest, and it is as discouraging and more to these suggestions. To think too much of the hostile Powers is to bring in their atmosphere. One has to recognise them when they come and repel them, but to think much about them, to fear, to be expecting or looking out for them is a mistake [for it invites them]. It is better not to trouble about the hostile forces. Keep your aspiration [to the Dvine, your embodied I AM presence] strong and sincere. If you begin to concern yourself about the hostile forces, you will only make the path more difficult. 

The worst thing for sadhana [spiritual self-training and epractice] is to get into a morbid condition, always thinking of “lower forces, attacks.” If the sadhana has stopped for a time, then let it stop, remain quiet, do ordinary things, rest when rest is needed – wait till the physical consciousness is ready. My own sadhana when it was far more advanced than yours used to stop for half a year together. I did not make a fuss about it, but remained quiet till the empty or dull period was over. The adverse forces take advantage of any perturbation of that kind, for it opens, as it were, a passage to their action. Fear is the one thing that one must never feel in face of them, for it makes them bold and aggressive. Moreover, fear, calls the thing feared – it must therefore be thrown out altogether.

It happens so with everybody so long as there is not the positive siddhi of transformation by which it becomes contrary to the very nature of the instrument to respond to these vibrations – because they have become foreign to it. Till then all depends on the vigilance of the consciousness and its will. The repetition of the response does not increase the difficulty – it only retards the clearing out of the invading forces.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga

Sincerity and Radical Self-Honesty

The most important part in the process of and work towards awakening is self-honesty, how sincere we are with ourselves. As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, lies to the self are the most harmful and biggest stumbling blocks in esoteric self-work and also the hardest to detect. As we gain higher levels of awareness and consciousness, we realize the responsibility we have, what “awakening” truly is about and how challenging true freedom actually is for it entails letting go of control (the illusion/limitation of personal will), realizing that we cannot blame anyone or anything.

“Forgiveness is the most fundamental forward movement towards the integration of light and shadow within. Without it, we run aground in the quagmire of judgment and denial. It is the foundation of the shamanic journey, which requires that we immerse ourselves in the waters of perpetual renewal. Shamanic forgiveness instigates a dynamic that employs not only the emotions and intellect, but reaches the very fountainhead of behavior – the DNA – setting up new neural pathways and changing the chemical balance within the Human brain.

In this way, the electromagnetic field then holds a resonant support system for forgiveness, creating an inner dialogue of compassion. When we forgive, we embrace absolutely our response-ability within the interconnectedness of all creation. The gateway to the path that leads to the transmutation of the life-death-rebirth cycle is opened through forgiveness, and is the shedding of the first layer of mortality, initiating the journey from victimhood to creatorship.”

– Juliet Carter

The more sincere we are in this process, the more we will detect the traps we can get caught up in, and the more predominant our inner voice (Spirit) becomes as it increasingly “checks in” on us; conversely, the more sincere we are in this process, the less we’ll be able to pretend to ourselves – and to the outside world (and others) – of being someone we “are not”. Essentially, it’s about coming out of hiding, dissolving the buffers and masks that cover up the real “I”.

I have found over the years of working with people, even people who have had very deep and profound awakenings, that most people have a fear of being truthful, of really being honest—not only with others, but with themselves as well. Of course, the core of this fear is that most people know intuitively that if they were actually totally truthful and totally sincere and honest, they would no longer be able to control anybody.

We can not control somebody with whom we have been truthful. We can only control people if we tell half-truths, if we shave down what is true. When we tell the total truth, our inside is suddenly on the outside. There’s nothing hidden anymore. For most human beings, being that exposed brings up incredible fear. Most people walk around thinking, “My god, if anybody could look inside of me, if anybody could see what is happening in there, what my fears are, what my doubts are, what my truths are, what I really perceive, they would be horrified.”

Most people are protecting themselves. They are holding a lot of things in. They are not living honest, truthful, and sincere lives, because if they were to do so, they would have no control. Of course, they don’t have control anyway, but they would have no illusion of control, either.

Most people don’t get out of childhood without having many experiences of being wounded for telling the truth. Someone said, “You can’t say that,” or “You shouldn’t say that,” or “That wasn’t appropriate.” As a result, most of us have very deep underlying conditioning that being just who we are is not okay. We have been conditioned to believe that there are times when it is okay to be truthful and honest, and there are times when it is not okay to be truthful and honest. Most human beings actually have an imprinting—not only in their minds, but in their bodies and their emotions—that if they are honest, if they are real, something bad is going to happen. Somebody is not going to like it. They won’t be able to control their environment if they tell the truth.

But telling the truth is an aspect of awakening. It may not seem like it, because it’s very practical and very human. It’s not transcendent. It’s not about pure consciousness, it’s about how pure consciousness manifests as a human being in an undivided way. We must be able to manifest what we realize, and we must also come to grips with and start to notice the very forces within us that keep us from manifesting truthfulness in every situation.

Almost every time I’ve given a talk like this in public, someone will come up to me later and say, “You know that talk you gave on truthfulness and honesty and all that?” And I’ll go, “Yeah, I remember the talk.” And they’ll say, “Well, somebody came up in the parking lot afterward and decided that she needed to tell me all the rotten things she thought about me, in the name of honesty.

And I just kind of shake my head. I hesitate to even give talks on this topic, because it’s so easy to misunderstand.

Truth is a very high standard. Truth is not a plaything. To tell what is true within ourselves is not to tell what we think; it is not to tell our opinion. It is not to dump the garbage can of our mind onto somebody else. All of that is illusion, distortion, projection. Truth is not unloading our opinions onto someone. That is not truth. Truth is not telling our beliefs about things. That is not truth. Those are ways that we actually hide from truth.

Truth is much more intimate than that. When we tell the truth, it has the sense of a confession. I don’t mean a confession of something bad or wrong, but I mean the sense where we come completely out of hiding. Truth is a simple thing. To speak the truth is to speak from a sense of total and absolute unprotectedness.

To tell truth with any consistency, we not only have to meet every place in ourselves that is afraid of telling truth, we also have to see the belief structure we have that tells us, “I can’t do that.” Those belief structures are by their very nature based in unreality. To know this is not enough; you have to actually see it, to really perceive exactly what you believe. What are the exact belief structures that cause you to go into duality, that cause you to go into conflict and hiding? Only then can you tell truth in the way I’m discussing here.

Freedom is the realization that everything and everybody gets to be exactly as they are. Unless we’ve come to that point, unless we’ve seen that this is how reality sees things, then we’re actually withholding freedom from the world. We’re seeing it as a possession, and we’re only concerned with ourselves. How good I can feel? How free I can feel? True freedom is a gift to everything and everybody.

The important thing is allowing the whole world to wake up. Part of allowing the whole world to wake up is recognizing that the whole world is free—everybody is free to be as they are. Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently—until you have given the whole world its freedom—you’ll never have your freedom.

This is an important part of awakening, and it is an easy part to miss. Again, if we were fully awake, it would be impossible to miss this, but most people do not awaken all at once. The idea of freedom is very important, however. Everybody gets to be as they are. Only when everyone is allowed to be as they are—when you have given them that freedom, the freedom they already possess—do you find within yourself the capacity to be honest and real and true.

We cannot be true as long as we are expecting or wanting others to agree with us. That will cause us to contract—maybe they won’t like what I say; maybe they won’t agree; maybe they won’t like me. When we are protecting ourselves, we are also withholding freedom from everybody else. When we realize that we are the one and only Spirit that manifests as everything and everyone, in the very nature of that realization is total freedom for all.

There is a certain fearlessness in this realization. People sometimes come to me and say, “Well, Adya, there’s still some inner place”—and, I find, it’s often a very early childhood place—“that’s afraid to just be what I know to be true.” And, of course, I’ll say, “You have to look at it, to see how you, yourself, formed certain belief structures based on what happened in the past. You have to look into it and see if those belief structures are really true.” But also, we need to recognize that we have no way of knowing or predicting how the world will receive us. Part of being awake is being willing to be crucified. If we think that to be awake means the whole world will agree with us, then we are in a total delusion.

Inside human consciousness there is a deep taboo that says it is not okay to realize the truth of being. I’m not talking about preaching it, necessarily; I’m talking about just being what you perceive. This taboo says, “That’s not okay. You will be crucified for that; you will be killed for it.” Of course, in our human history, people have been killed for it. We have a long history in many societies of getting rid of or killing truly enlightened beings, because true enlightenment does not conform to the dream state. In fact, many times the dream state feels offended and threatened by true enlightenment, because a truly enlightened being cannot be controlled. Even the threat of death cannot control an enlightened being.

Thus, as a human being, we can’t have these childish ideas that enlightenment means “everybody loves me.” Maybe everybody will love you, but more likely some will and some won’t. But when you have given the whole world its freedom, then you have gone a long way toward finding your own freedom. They are tied inextricably, one to the other.

The most important thing is not that you try to convince anybody of the truth that you see. What is really important is that you are truthful with yourself. If you can be truthful with yourself, then you can be truthful with anybody. There is no real usefulness in becoming overly focused on being truthful with everybody else. Although that’s necessary, the place to start is with yourself — can you be totally sincere with yourself? Can you go to that place that is beyond blame, beyond judgment, beyond should and shouldn’t? Can you go to that place that is so sincere you won’t shy away from any part of yourself that is still in conflict; you won’t use the perception of truth to hide from something that feels less than liberating?

It is really a question of sincerity. As I said, this is not a self-improvement program. Once you discover the level of sincerity and honesty I am describing, you find that sincerity and honesty are manifestations of the absolute nature of being. To be this sincere with yourself may not be easy, initially. You may see things about yourself you don’t want to see. You may see the parts of yourself that stand in seemingly stark contrast to everything you have realized. Nonetheless, this is where awakening moves; awakening moves toward and into that which is not awake. Sincerity is what allows this movement to happen, and it does happen if you are real with yourself.

Coming completely out of hiding, being willing to see every point of fixation, every way you go into division, enables this part of the journey to continue. As this happens, you feel your heart opening, your mind opening; you feel yourself opening on levels that you never dreamed possible. These levels are not just transcendent of humanness, but also right within your humanness, because there is no separation between your human being and your divine being.

Sincerity is the key. You have to be willing; you have to want to see everything. When you want to see everything, you will see everything.

A lot of students who come to see me have the unconscious idea that enlightenment means one should be able to feel complete happiness, total bliss, and total freedom in any situation. This is one of the unconscious beliefs that many people have about awakening, and it’s another misperception.

If you believe the misperception that enlightenment is only about happiness, bliss, and freedom, you will be motivated to transcend or escape those areas of your life that feel less than fully functional. But sooner or later, as we become more awake, we find that there is more and more pressure to encounter and deal with those areas of our lives that we have been avoiding, where we are less than fully conscious.

I have found that a lot of people become quite afraid when they start to realize where this whole movement of awakening is taking them, that it is taking them into an area where they will be called to be unusually honest and real and come completely out of hiding. This is contrary to the idea of awakening being simply a transcendence of life, the finding of a safe haven in some inner experience where we don’t have to deal with life as it is. Awakening is, in fact, quite the opposite: it’s a state of being in which we find the capacity to deal with our lives as they actually are. But as I said, many people are afraid of this part of the process, because it demands that we come out of hiding on every level.

~ Adyashanti, The End of Your World

Coming out of hiding – and being sincere with oneself – can be particularly-challenging for people who predominantly live in their heads (caught in the male aspect of consciousness). This personality possesses a strong intellect that has the ability to rationalize and self-justify everything (including crafting a clever exterior persona), especially in relation to the lies stemming from the false personality – it also has a tendency to get trapped in analysis-paralysis, being unable to recognize anything “above/beyond” themselves, i.e. the higher intelligence of the Divine and Spirit. Caught in overriding thought loops and the rationalizing mind, the door to the Divine is therefore shut – they are cut off within the prison of the monkey mind. The underlying mechanism behind this behaviour is actually unconscious fear, stemming from ego identification. Fear of the loss of control. Fear of surrender to the flow of life/Tao (with the resultant illusory fear of chaos) which is itself based on the fear of nature (the feminine aspect of consciousness) and, essentially, fear of true love and freedom. It also ties into the fear of being “insignificant”, fear of not being “strong” (fear of appearing as “weak”), fear of “not knowing” (and essentially the “unknown”), and fear of how others will perceive us if we’d open up to deeper, authentic expressions of humility and vulnerability.

“A dangerous habit is constant self-justification. When this becomes strong in the seeker, it is impossible to turn him in this part of the being to the right consciousness and action because at each step his whole preoccupation is to justify himself. His mind rushes at once to maintain his own idea, his own position or his own course of action.

This he is ready to do by any kind of argument, sometimes the most clumsy and foolish or inconsistent with what he has been protesting the moment before [but not obvious to him], by any kind of mis-statement or any kind of device. This is a common misuse, but non the less a misuse of the thinking mind; but it takes in him exaggerated proportions and so long as he keeps to it, it will be impossible for him to see or live the Truth”

~ Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga

“If man does not accept his situation and, in particular, his inner state as it appears to him, thanks to brief illuminations from the consciousness of the real ‘I’— if he is obstinate against all evidence, justifying his Personality by protecting himself behind logic, legitimacy and justice, he will then turn his back on the path of Access, and thrust himself further into the wilderness. Nobody can reach the path of Access to the Way [of union with the Divine], without first passing through an interior bankruptcy; a moral collapse [disillusionment].”

– Boris Mouravieff, Gnosis

Life as a Catalyst and Teacher

For those of us who keep working on ourselves with sincerity and radical self-honesty – facing the lies we’ve been telling ourselves (stemming from the egoic mind/personality and social/cultural conditioning, augmented by thought injections of the occult hostile forces), realizing the futility of “personal will”, etc. – and as a result have had glimpses into our true nature and birthright which lies hidden behind who we “think” we are, the gifts begin to reveal themselves in weirdly wonderful ways. We start to see, feel and align more and more with the natural flow of life (Divine Will) which is “simpler” than we “think” it is. As Adyashanti said: “This kind of flow is always available to us, but most of us are too lost in the complexities of our thinking to feel that there’s a simple and natural flow to life. But underneath the turmoil of thought and emotion, and underneath the grasping of the personal will, there is indeed a flow. There is a simple movement of life.

As a result we also start to simplify our lives and slow down. No longer driven by ambition (with its side effects of competition/comparison), conditioned/vital cravings, the need to “become”, and externally looking for love and happiness, we surrender to the simple movement of life. Compartmentalized, will-full doing and reactivity are replaced by an embodied call-and-response to life itself. At the same time, we don’t avoid life, nor do we see ourselves as better/worse than anyone else. We recognize (on an embodied level) the unity and interrelationship of all that is. It’s not a state of constant “bliss” and “awe”, but rather a sober and grounded state of being, fully embracing life, whatever may come.

We also recognize that life itself is our greatest teacher and catalyst for awakening. No longer mechanically/outwardly projecting our inner fragmentation, we realize the teaching-function of everything in our everyday life. We don’t use “spirituality” to avoid life, nor do we seek out “peak experiences” – we engage in everyday life more fully in the present moment, for that is the real “peak” experience (when we are fully tuned into life on an embodied level). There is no need for “more” than this.

We start to trust life more and more (and as result we trust ourselves more and more as well), not because we expect life or spirit to give us anything we “want”, but because we know that life (as the movement of the Divine) is supporting and helping us to remember ourselves, assisting in our awakening process. We instinctually-comprehend that life and spirit will essentially guide us towards what we “truly want” and need (including lessons we need to learn) from a soul perspective, not based on the ego’s whims, entitlements and conditioned desires. Interestingly, this surrender (and letting go aspect) is the hardest part for most people to accept, for they don’t like to hear that control is an illusion; they most often equate relinquishing personal will with “defeat” or “failure”, and fear that without taking “control” of their lives, they won’t find happiness, fulfillment, prosperity, etc., or will usher in utter chaos by doing so, all of which is matrix programming lies to keep humanity trapped in this fear-survival frequency.

But nothing could be further from the truth. The surrender/letting go process (in alignment with the awakening/embodiment journey) leads us eventually to true joy, love, contentment, fulfilling relationships; it opens the pathway to our vocation, purpose and calling in life, as well as abundance that can’t be measured in materialistic terms (however, it doesn’t mean you have to be “poor” nor completely reject materialism so as to be “spiritual”, which is another misconception of spirituality). But it also requires faith and trust, stepping out of one’s comfort zone and embracing the unknown and unpredictable. The “counter-arguments” for this process are the voices of the ego or predator mind (occult forces), reinforced by the matrix cult-ure that worships personality over essence. It doesn’t like to give up its reign (and doesn’t give up easily), for it would mean the end of its rule. These thought injections are not stemming from the true “self”/the real “I”.

We then know that any difficulties and challenging situations that may arise are opportunities for a deeper awakening, most often resulting in “shocks” that are necessary to shake us up and yank us out of illusion. Despite these moments of “fierce grace”, we also experience more and more beautiful equanimity and moments of bliss, happiness and joy that don’t depend on any external factors.

We become less afraid of discomfort and the unknown, realizing on a deeper level that life is not about “winning” or “losing”, but all there is are lessons, and that we are being guided and helped at every moment if we can tune into our own magnificence. Consequently, we are getting more in touch with our intuition, our internal guidance, connected to spirit within (and essentially, with Divine Will), all of which are uniquely expressed through us as sovereign embodied soul-integrated individuals. Life then becomes indeed more effort-less, as we don’t try to fight the current of life (Tao), but trust that the river of life carries us where we need to be, and delivers to us what we need to experience, based on our unique soul lessons and talents.

“While we measure our own success in terms of our personal comfort and security, the “universe” measures our success by how much we have learned. So long as we use comfort and security as our criteria for success, we will fear our own intuitive guidance because by its very nature it directs us into new cycles of learning that are sometimes uncomfortable. In developing your skill [of intuition] in your own life, you must trust your gut responses – a fact I cannot emphasize enough.”

– Caroline Myss

From a bigger picture perspective, this is how we transcend the Matrix as well, even though we still live in this world (since we have’t gone anywhere physically), but start to experience “reality” and life on a whole different level (“being in this world but not of it”). Essentially, we realize that “heaven” is right here, right now, and always has been within us, even though that impression may sound ignorant, ridiculous or “escapist” to anyone who hasn’t had this experience, and keeps pointing at the shadows on the wall in an effort to prove what he/she perceives as the “real world”. However, it is far from being anything close to “escapist”, because there is no denial of the “dark” either, in fact there is deeper “seeing” and understanding of “evil” (beyond its 3D manifestation) and its role within the duality of 3D experience, as seen in the light of evolutionary consciousness with all the “different faces of god”. But no words or “arguments” can convince such a person, and there is no need or pressure to do this anyway, since everyone has to realize that for him/herself, an internal realization, for it is beyond language and words.

No one can show it to us or bring it to us. No one is “bailing us” out, no leader, no savior, no authority, until we answer the call of the divine voice within, which lies hidden behind the illusory constructs of personality-identification. It’s a higher state of being, an embodied experience which the mind and intellect cannot come close to comprehending. The differing states of reality-experience which manifest within (and between) human beings during this time of transition is also becoming more and more apparent, and relates to the Timeline-Reality Spilt (explored in a previous essay), for some people reinforce and fall deeper into a dream state (while dreaming to be awake, mistaking reality for illusion and illusion for reality), getting caught up in the Matrix with all the “traps of agreement” laid out by the occult forces. Meanwhile, others start to increasingly (and courageously) wake up to their true nature, becoming conscious transducers of Divine Will as frequency anchors within the unfolding of the “cosmic plan”. There is also no judgment about these differing journeys, because the “splitting” from a higher perspective also reflects the cosmic equilibrium and the vast difference in soul lessons for each human being to embody in this day and age.

Essentially, every human being is destined to awaken, each in their own “time” and own way (and over lifetimes) as we play out the cosmic drama/comedy. However, we are far away from experiencing any notion of a “collective” awakening in any near “future”. So, embark on the path, watch out for the traps, don’t be afraid of the dark, and most importantly, enjoy the ride. The only way out is through, and there is light at the end of the tunnel…in fact, the tunnel is made of light itself.

“This isn’t a journey about becoming something. This is about unbecoming who we are not, about undeceiving ourselves. And so one of the most important steps is to come into agreement with your life so that you’re not turning away from yourself in any way. And the amazing thing is that when we are no longer turning away from ourselves, we find a great amount of energy, a great capacity for clarity and wisdom, and we start to see everything we need to see.”

– Adyashanti, The End of Your World

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Comments(18)

  • January 30, 2017, 2:39 am  Reply

    Brilliant! One of my best reads, thanks ?

  • Iain
    January 30, 2017, 3:54 am  Reply

    Brilliant article. Thank you for taking the time to write these Divine teachings.

  • Demitra M. N.
    January 30, 2017, 7:20 am  Reply

    While I am always aware that there are others experiencing the profundities inherent in the path of self-honesty, I rarely ever (actually, never) encounter them directly, except through their written works. This now, is a brilliant addition to that body of works — an incredible tour de force! — I am further inspired. — Thank you.

  • paul hennig
    January 30, 2017, 4:44 pm  Reply

    very solid stuff here. For more consciousness on thesematters see cameron day on ascensionhelp, com

  • Aenon
    January 30, 2017, 4:57 pm  Reply

    This is a special article Bernhard. Thank you.

  • January 30, 2017, 8:33 pm  Reply

    Thank You – for this timely information on my sojourn here on Planet Earth – I am always impressed when I have a thought lingering in my mind and then an email message shows up and leads me to the answer I need to continue with confidence, clarity, and empowerment. It is with deep gratitude that I say to you – please keep sharing these messages!

  • Krista
    January 31, 2017, 9:30 am  Reply

    Thank you for sharing this energy and insight with us. All is appreciated. Love.

  • Inspiring and grounding all at once. Thank you.

  • Janae M Bross
    February 1, 2017, 3:46 am  Reply

    Thank you, Bernhard, for all you do and share. I enjoy reading your perceptions.

  • February 1, 2017, 5:59 pm  Reply

    Wonderful piece! Thank you for taking the time to blend, write and share your thoughts with the world! Revealing truth that is!

  • February 4, 2017, 11:39 pm  Reply

    could there be an evil diabolical agenda to start the waking process
    in people, because it seems to me that the waking process causes mass confusion, and mass depression, and in turn all these people that do not connect the dots and understand the waking process run to their doctor, are put on horrid anti-depressants and that puts them in soul hell, there is never any chance of waking or finding your spiritual path once you are drugged up.

  • oggybleacher
    February 18, 2017, 6:17 pm  Reply

    I appreciate this essay like a piece of art, assembled and cited from other works of art. It’s collaborative and carefully curated so the voice is varied and more like a collective intervention in the spiraling addictive personality that is the status quo group mind. Many voices saying similar ideas, moderated by a single voice summarizing the analysis calmly. The difference between this essay and the alarmist propaganda swirling everywhere is obvious. I’d say ‘keep it up’, but I’m not sure quantity is the problem; quality of thought is the issue. This is quality.

  • Jar
    March 17, 2017, 5:22 pm  Reply

    Thank you x 10 for writing this!

    These pitfalls you describe– I must have fallen into every one of them at least a hundred times. And still do– on a daily basis, so much so that recently I had come to the sad point of just giving up and accepting the fact that I may not have “it” within me to get anywhere with all this.

    Thank you for outlining in such detail so many helpful things and for really shining a light on the sneaky little bogeys that hide out in dark corners whispering sweet nothings that I see now had brought me only a conceited kind of comfort that wasted my time and kept me stuck.

    These bogeys– they’d been there so long I swear I thought they were my friends. It hurt to see them called-out but, this article, the way you write, I couldn’t look away.

    Busted! = )

  • March 23, 2017, 8:28 am  Reply

    Thanks, Bernhard, for sharing your brilliant insights on awakening.
    Gracias por compartir tu fascinante perspectiva del camino de ascensión.
    From Spain, with awe!!

  • Erick L.
    May 16, 2017, 3:56 pm  Reply

    Hi Bernhard
    I’ve been reading your blog since “Time of transition” video, which spare me reading many books :$ but also take me to read some. I’m not sure do I fit in some topics you write about or I just been depressive and anxious. Maybe both. Right now I don’t have any particular comment or question to ask (I got answers in your blog), so I will just describe what I experience, if that invitation is still actual. I hope it might be of some help for those experiencing similar problems but I cant offer any solution cause I don’t have it. I can only describe what I was going thru.
    20 years ago I asked my self two questions ( I don’t blame cannabis for that ) where and who am I? Could this universe be different, including laws of physics and how did all this begin? I tried with all my imagination but found no sense. Why not nothing, perhaps? For a moment nothingness made sense but here it is, this world. From nothing to something like splitting 0 into 1 and -1 . And who am I?…. I guess I faint here. Very soon (weeks, month later) I found out that I’m sexual predator who was about to abuse someones trust and affection. I didn’t saw this due to moral reason, rather hedonistic first then maybe moral. It didn’t made me feel good. Next few years I was doing fine and stupid as usual (there was whole palette of stupidity), gradually loosing motive(will) for almost anything and pressure of physical (emotional) pain and absolute mental confusion grown in me. Pain became unbearable and my health was getting worse. It was like mathematical equation. If I was going to survive this and find correct cause of what is happening to me, then no more telling lies to my self, no self pity, no malignant wishful thinking and all those thoughts based on pure fantasy that reiterate again and again, not evolving or getting me somewhere. Of course it didn’t came to me over night. It took me 6 to 8 years reliving and analyzing all those moments that cause emotional wounds, fears and embarrassments, again and again and again. It was impossible for me to move on with life . Last one or two of those years I dreamed same dream almost every night. I was squeezing my jowl so hard that my teeth crushed and than I would immediately wake up with sense of gravel in my mouth. It wasn’t just a dream I was really squeezing my jowl. I try to comfort my self realizing that many of those situation, I had no control over, wasn’t my fault and those that was my fault I had no chance. I was robot with bad software and emotionally (and otherwise) responsive like piano strings. Anyone(anything) could play me. But it didn’t help. All that I could do was to continue with this struggle for my sanity. Then one day, while burning out as usual (reliving, dismantling everything to see how it works), pressure lifted of. Pain and annoying dream gone away and serotonin returned into my brain after many years. Everything else remain the same, only situations are new. By the way, all my wounds and everything that bothered me was paradise compering to things that happened and happening to others. So my guess is that intensity of this healing process depended on how egoistic and stubborn I was (how much bad software resisted). Because only when I was cornered, enchained and tormented by that pressure I was willing to admit everything, anything to make pain go away. All this experiences didn’t made me better person. I only learned to see my flaws faster, usually. And I am still battling with my bad software. After some time another dream start repeating it self almost every night. (I go to my car but it isn’t where I parked it. I look around if I forgot that I parked it somewhere else, but without success. After concluding that it is stolen I continue nervously my search around the town. If I find it, it is always a wreckage, no wheels , no engine, no doors, no seats…) It took me few months to see that maybe I have a problem and next second I knew where to look, what bothered me the most. I hooked up myself in emotional twister, giving myself into something I’m not. I fell in trap of wishful thinking. I became my emotions, and that stunned me, opened me and drained me. My attitude was wrong. We are born in this world alone and we die alone. I had to take a distance from my emotions, stop being those emotions and see them only as eyes, ears and hands in “realm of spirit” (something I start doing while that pressure was crashing me). That doesn’t mean I stopped loving someone or that I pushed away people I care about.
    Enough of me, I, I, me, I …and apology for not paying attention on English class.

  • 8009
    June 27, 2017, 10:36 am  Reply

    You know Bernhard, i have to say that was a quite thorough and actually would call it a memorable or even monumental article, very inclusive, very balanced. I am not sure i believe in synchronicities, or perhaps judging by some events of my life i would say i have to believe in negative ones, or perhaps i can regard them as lessons(?) of life, if i am in a good mood. But what kind of lesson is one that continuously provides difficulties in the course of one’s life? Can traumas’ be considered lessons? How about the ones that are impossible(?) to heal and overcome?
    Anyways, almost a year after a full breakdown, still recovering and having tried some medications too, trying the mainstream path to recovery, i was unfortunate (or maybe fortunate) enough to having to reconsider most things about my direction, my self, my mind, my sanity, my strength, etc. I could include discovering you and your work in positive synchronicities, especially this lengthy article, because the aspect of one’s control over life and its course had me really fooled i guess, and precise planning also overlooks the part where life is full of lessons, rather seeing a series of carefully orchestrated and controlled “events” or even linear points in time, which can be illusory.
    On another note, i researched anthropology, races, cultures, nations in the past, and i had this idea that Germans are somewhat problematic in the aspect of them being too mechanical as individuals, and unable to control their collective strength as a nation. Also full of mediocrity keeping complexes after the events of WWII. Somehow through you and your genetic background i also sense that a nation that has gone through that megalomaniac phase in the past, must have also gained some wisdom other nations have not, like the US has not (yet) and also this great sense of balance and modesty that permeates your writings is really not usually found in similar writings and it is noteworthy.
    I guess the individual journey is a tricky one after all.

  • Catherine Denison
    April 29, 2019, 3:18 pm  Reply

    Profoundly inspiring article. Chock full of insights. The section on the qualities of the true spiritual warrior speaks to my heart especially. I am learning much about humility this time around. So true that it is deeply connected to compassion. Thank you, Bernhard.

  • Andrija Grgic
    December 19, 2019, 11:56 pm  Reply

    With all these forces working against us, im wondering if there are any beings that work with us?
    There should be beings that are bot eager to feed on us, beings that want to destroy the monopoly of energy the dark forces created. Or is this just wishful thinking?

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