Art by Helena Arturaleza
Soul Evolution, Universal Laws, and Karma in The Body
By Bernhard Guenther, April 24, 2019
Topics:
- The Law of Cause and Effect
- The Tunnel of Light Trap and Fringe Disinformation
- The Law of Agreement
- Karma in the Body and The Law of Ascent and Descent
- How to Measure Your Progress
A big misconception on the spiritual path or any path that involves sincere self-work is that problems and challenges in life will just disappear at some point. While inner work and healing our wounds, trauma and shadow aspects definitely affect the “outside” world and can create better circumstances and relationships, it’s not as simple as many New Age teachings convey based on the distorted or over-simplified idea of the law of attraction. In other words, being confronted with many problems and challenges in one’s life does not necessarily imply an “undeveloped” inner life nor does external success, and “smooth” circumstances necessarily imply that one is more “advanced” internally and has healed everything and resolved all karma.
Many inter-related factors come into play based on everyone’s individual soul evolutionary journey; too much and too complex for the mind to understand. The mind and ego always look for reasons and justifications, dividing experiences into “good” and “bad.” Most often, if not all the time, we mistake symptoms for causes. The deeper impulses and consequences of the universal law of cause and effect have been set in motion eons and lifetimes ago and are not perceptible to the conscious mind.
A universal law is absolute and objective. It affects everyone, regardless if they don’t believe in it or are not aware of it. It is beyond any artificial man-made laws. We are not only dealing with childhood trauma to varying degrees but past life traumas that are being re-activated in the current life as well for us to face and heal. That’s also why the western psychotherapeutic approach (while necessary and helpful to a degree) is limited because it only looks for the cause/creation point of a wound/trauma in your present life, most often in early childhood, related to your parents and upbringing.
The Law of Cause and Effect
Karma is the universal cosmic law of compensation of cause and effect. However, the concept of Karma has been abused and distorted throughout the ages. When people claim, “This is just your Karma!” they oversimplify it in limited black-and-white perception, often justifying abuse, which can also result in victim shaming. Religion has also distorted this concept and used it for social control which we see in the sinner/saint and reward (heaven)/punishment (hell) dogma of the Catholic Church or the hierarchal Indian Caste system.
From a bigger-picture perspective, there is no such thing as “good” or “bad” Karma, nor are there “negative” or “positive” experiences. These are dualistic judgments based on our very limited perception. From the level of the Divine, there is no judgment and division, only Experience according to unknown soul lessons each of us needs to go through and experience. The universe is continuously striving towards harmony. In that sense, there is only balance or imbalance in light of the evolution of consciousness, which manifests differently for each individual based on their unique karmic lessons. Everything we have ever set in motion via action, thinking, agreements, and beliefs in this or past lives is coming back around at some point to experience our own creation as part of the learning process in this 3D school called life. All complete esoteric traditions have pointed out this absolute universal law of cause and effect.
“Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause;
everything happens according to Law;
Chance is but a name for Law not recognized;
there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law.”– The Kybalion, The Sixth Hermetic Principle
Nothing ever occurs by chance or as a random occurrence. Every single action or effect has an underlying cause, and there are no exceptions to this — ever. There is a higher divine order. The seeming “chaos” in the world or in our personal lives at times is based on ignorance of universal laws and our limited monkey mind perception. The causes are set up in the invisible/unseen or unknown to us and then manifest in the visible as the effect. In other words, the inter-relationship between a specific cause and effect are never truly clear to us in our very limited mental perception. Hence, we all can easily mistake symptoms for causes.
That’s also how we easily can misperceive or misjudge others. Who are we to know another person’s soul lessons when we hardly, if at all, are aware of our own self, soul lessons, and unconscious inner life? If we cannot see ourselves clearly and don’t know ourselves, how are we supposed to know another person — truly? All our perceptions are subjective, filtered through our self-centered lens of projections (for the most part) until we become more objective with ourselves via esoteric inner work that cleanses our conditioned/wounded/programmed perceptions.
The more we truly know ourselves (not to be mistaken with the personality mask most people identify with) via inner work, the better we can perceive others, and the clearer we also see the world and reality as it is. This is a continuing process.
The process of awakening ties into the evolution of consciousness and ultimately into soul individualization and the process of embodiment. The word “conscious(ness)” refers to an individual sense of recognition of something within or without oneself. It comes from Latin conscius: “knowing, aware,” to be awake or awakened to an inner realization of a truth. It also relates to conscience. The word “conscience,” etymologically speaking, means “to know together.” It is derived from the Latin prefix con: “together” and the Latin verb sciere: “to know; to understand.”
Therefore the development of the evolution of consciousness means “knowing more together,” seeing things differently than previously known. However, this is not intellectual book-smart knowledge but relates to Gnosis, embodied knowing, i.e., wisdom, accumulated over lifetimes via experience. Hence the evolution of consciousness implies working/progressing towards a higher state of awareness based on karmic soul lessons. It implies to see the world and oneself more and more objectively – to see the Universe as it sees itself. “Enlightenment” or to be fully “awake” in the true esoteric meaning of the word is a state when the Observer and the Observed have become One, and there is no Separation but complete Unity, i.e., Union with the Divine (Yoga).
Art by Cameron Grey
The real purpose of karma is not to use it as a judgment or excuse but to instill real embodied compassion for self and others in light of the personal and collective suffering we all deal with. Besides dealing with consequences of past incarnations (where we could have been a different race and gender, and none of us were all just “good” people) we are also dealing with ancestral/genetic trauma, “inherited” by our family line. We also “chose” our parents and blood family based on the law of Karma.
For example, a relative young soul in its first incarnations may be focused on the material side of life, having a comparable “easy” upbringing and material riches all around (from an ego perspective). It is not concerning itself with higher knowledge because that is not what the soul is meant to experience and it also cannot receive higher knowledge/gnosis in this lifetime since it is not even internally wired to activate the higher centers (yet).
This ties into the most often very misunderstood topic of “Organic Portals – Soulless Humans.” Living life exclusively from the first three chakras, the challenges of the OP are more of the mundane ego nature without deeper “soul struggle.” But it can also easily get tempted to indulge in the material world, abuse its power and riches and hence create karma and suffering which will eventually come back around in another life.
On the other side of the coin, someone born into very challenging circumstances with early trauma and abuse, experiencing hardships and severe suffering does not imply that this soul is less developed. In fact, the soul may be very “advanced” and ready to experience these challenges as part of the deeper soul growth (and consciously choose these circumstances before incarnating). It’s a chance to heal and transmute deep-rooted karma and prepare itself to be of service, i.e., the journey of the wounded healer: someone who has healed him/herself and is then ready to be of service to others.
Then again, a young soul could obviously also have hardships, just as an old soul can also experience more “smooth” circumstances. The point is, we don’t really know. The universal law of cause and effect spanning over lifetimes is beyond our little mind’s understanding and preferences.
“Universal law is as immutable as the seasons, as inevitable as the course of the stars, and no metaphysical maestro is going to alter these inevitables in ten lessons or in ten million lessons. The law of cause and effect is as inevitable as day and night, as certain as the tides, and as constant as the ages. This law says that ‘as ye sow, so shall ye reap’. What you earn comes to you, what you have not earned can never be yours, and neither god nor man can alter the complexion of these facts.”
– Manly P. Hall
The Tunnel of Light Trap and Fringe Disinformation
This brings me to another topic I want to address which seems to have become very popular in the “fringe” scene: the idea that reincarnation is a trap of the alien hyperdimensional matrix to recycle souls to keep us entrapped in the matrix, providing more “food” for the hyperdimensional overlords. It also ties into another topic I see many people talking about: “the tunnel of light trap.” According to that theory, we should avoid going towards the Light after we die since it is a trap that “recycles” us back into the matrix and keeps us enslaved in the wheel of Samsara/Karma.
I’ve read about these concepts from various researchers/authors over the years. While I agree with much of what these individuals talk about with regards to the hyperdimensional matrix (and I don’t dismiss possible deceptions and traps in the “afterlife” as a whole. Readers of my work know that I’ve written extensively about the hyperdimensional matrix and false light deceptions over the years), I don’t fully agree with both the “tunnel of light trap” and “reincarnation is enslavement” theories. As an obvious disclaimer, what I share in my work is based on my current understanding, research, insights, awareness, and (inner) experience. It’s all a continuing learning (or remembering) process for me (as it is for all of us) based on where I’m at with regard to my level of Being.
However, the “tunnel of light trap” doesn’t make sense to me on multiple levels and I feel it’s clever fringe disinformation coming from the very source/control we try to free ourselves from. This kind of idea also appeals to the paranoid intellect in subconscious ways and can result in a “mindfuck” (for lack of a better word) and ironically can get oneself entrapped by the forces one wants to avoid/escape from. I also see that this kind of information is mostly spread and believed by people who don’t seem to be sincerely engaged in esoteric inner work towards awakening/soul individualization and embodiment but are mostly hooked on fringe sensationalizing information going overboard with the rabbit hole of the hyperdimensional matrix.
It relates to what Neil Kramer called getting trapped in the “second matrix” when the pursuit of head-centric information about the matrix over-rides the necessary inner work to truly transcend the matrix. If someone is taking this kind of unbalanced approach (when intellectual head-centric research over-rides the necessary inner work and the embodiment process), the mind can trick oneself and rationalize claims like the “tunnel of light trap.” In fact, this was also the topic of one of our recent podcasts: “Spiritual Integrity – The Importance of Both Inner and Outer Work.”
It relates to something I wrote in “Timeline-Reality Split, Frequency Vibration, and the Hidden Forces of Life”:
Truth-seekers can waste a lot of time and energy going down the “rabbit hole”, getting hooked/addicted to external information and “sensationalism” that has very little to do with “truth seeking”. In their attempt to “figure things out”, they can get lost in the “theory abyss”, especially if there is a personal lack of discernment, and Being has not caught up with Knowledge.
Gathering intellectual information alone does not help you (nor the world) in the long run, and most often results in self-delusion because Understanding/Wisdom (embodied knowledge) is lacking [as discussed in the triad of Knowledge – Being – Understanding earlier]. Another trap is to focus on just one topic or area alone, for this can create a tunnel vision of inflexibility (or even dogma, if one is very attached to a certain view).
This observation isn’t intended to invalidate the many amazing renegades who have done tremendous work in their particular field of expertise, many of whom I have learned from myself. I am simply pointing out the importance of a holistic approach that addresses body, mind, and spirit, which is more and more needed in this day and age.
To be clear, anyone who wants to awaken and seek truth needs to step into the unknown and go down the “rabbit hole”: to read, study, learn (un-learn) to the best of their abilities, and question everything they have been told and taught by official culture. This process is also different for each of us, depending on our personal lessons and talents. Hence, it’s not about all of us becoming “scholars” and study/researching everything there is to read/view, which would be ridiculous and impossible anyway.
However, if the process of intellectually gathering information in the pursuit of truth is not matched with the necessary inner work, the mind will trick you, and you will get lost in the rabbit hole, as I’ve seen with many well-meaning “truth seekers” and researchers. I got stuck in this ‘mind-minefield’ at some point myself. I don’t take myself out of the equation because I learned the “hard” way. It happens when we lose focus of the principal aim (emancipation) and get distracted by curious fascination. This is not meant to denounce curiosity, but curiosity alone is not enough.
Knowledge acquired through study in the pursuit of truth is an essential – but only temporary – stage of awakening. It helps us to de-condition ourselves from social, cultural, and educational programming (pushing through our own cognitive dissonance) while we learn about critical thinking, logic and how to use the mind properly as a “tool”. However, Gnosis (higher Knowledge) cannot be perceived by the mind alone, nor can it be intellectually understood. In order to receive and anchor Gnosis, the vessel needs to be built via esoteric self-work and embodiment.
In other words, our level of Being determines how much higher Knowledge we can access via direct experience – tuning into nature, the “universe”, and the present moment in our daily lives, where we are constantly being informed by spirit and the vast living library of interconnectedness. This Knowledge is impossible to put into the limiting constructs of language. You cannot access Gnosis via reading alone, for it resides beyond our five-sensory perception. This is also the gateway towards receiving and experiencing Higher Love of the Divine, which is beyond the love we experience (or “think/feel” it is) in the lower separate-consciousness state of ego/personality identification.
We should be mindful not to forget the most important part of seeking truth and its purpose: to assist us in our personal embodiment/self-work and collective “ascension” process so as to align with Divine Will (via anchoring to higher frequencies) in order to TRANSCEND the Matrix, and not get caught in shadow dance/projection, or willfully trying to “fight” it. As embodied frequency anchors, we have far more positive effects to offer to others (and the Collective) than just sharing information and trying to wake up others via intellectual discourse alone. Again, it’s all about frequency and vibration.
The process of “Awakening” is not just about gathering information and becoming a walking encyclopedia of how the world is controlled. Of course, having a solid understanding of the Matrix Control System (in particular the hyperdimensional Matrix) and how it operates is a key aspect of the journey (“know thy enemy”), but when we get caught up in trying to figure everything out intellectually, we’ll hit a wall, especially since we are subjected to manipulation that is outside of our five sensory perception.
It is about making the darkness conscious, NOT dwelling on it to the point that we only see darkness in the world, thus getting stuck there.
This can also result in seeing “evil” and “conspiracies” where there are none (as a result of shadow projection and paranoia), and this will keep you trapped in the lower frequencies – which is where the Matrix Control Systems wants your consciousness to reside. You can only transcend it, you cannot transform it. After all the rabbit-holing you do, if you don’t get stuck and lost, you will ultimately face a mirror, looking straight at yourself – and that is where the real work begins: with yourself.
– from “Timeline-Reality Split, Frequency Vibration, and the Hidden Forces of Life”
The whole idea of mentally imagining in your current life what to do after death (“Am I gonna take a left or right turn after I’m dead to avoid the light?”) doesn’t make sense if you look at it from a soul evolutionary perspective; let alone that the mind can never truly grasp the death experience. The death process is a highly individual process based on the individual’s level of being and soul integration as well it is based on HOW one is going to die and what state of mind the person is in at the moment of death. Even so-called NDE (Near-Death-Experiences) cannot be taken as “objective” evidence since it’s “tuned” to that person’s level of being who is experiencing the NDE (even if there are similarities among various NDEs). In other words, it doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone.
All the people (as far as I’m aware) who talk about and promote the “tunnel of light trap” and what happens after death miss the essential factor mentioned above: the level of being and state of soul integration/individualization which determines the death experience and what happens after death. The whole point of inner esoteric work and consciously engaging on the path towards awakening in this physical body is about soul individualization, working through Karma and lessons from lifetime to lifetime.
Reincarnation has its purpose from a higher soul evolutionary perspective and for that reason, it is not a “trap”, it’s a tool/school. The more embodied you are (soul integration) – the more you are SINCERELY engaged in the inner work to anchor the Divine (which implies working through traumas/wounds/issues that we all have to varying degrees) – the higher your Level of Being rises, the more Free Will you actually gain/earn and the more awareness/consciousness you will have – all of which will determine what you experience after death.
In other words, by working on yourself and anchoring the Divine (your true soul essence) within you to raise your level of Being, you will “know” where “to go” after death. You make the “right decision” based on where you are at in your soul evolution and frequency resonance vibration. For example, people with a low level of being and who are just starting to develop a soul (like Organic Portals) re-incarnate mechanically for they don’t have yet an individualized soul to choose the next incarnation consciously.
On the opposite end of the coin, there are highly developed souls who actually do not need to come back into a body but they do it voluntarily with a mission profile to be of service, yet they understand that by incarnating they also run the risk at creating more karma which they need to work out. There are many levels of in-between, uniquely tuned to each soul.
It’s entirely self-defeating to “worry” about what to do after dying to “avoid the light” or anything else. In a sense, all the esoteric teachings are about growing/preparing the soul in a body in 3D reality (since that’s the density where most progress can be made because of the law of duality and limitations) so the soul knows where to go after death; until we are at a point of evolution where we are able to transcend death itself.
So, personally speaking, I don’t worry about anything about what might happen after death. I don’t project any thoughts into the “future” about that, let alone any thoughts based on worry/fear. What I am doing is my best to be sincere in my own process in the NOW of everyday life, to learn my lessons, heal wounds, trauma and gain more awareness with surrender and aspiration towards the Divine, bringing the soul to the front and not letting my ego-personality “run the show”. This process is actually about facing death every single day and moment and not waiting for it and then “deciding” what to do.
Contemplating and meditating on death is an excellent practice that teaches us to use our lives wisely and consciously, and not waste the opportunity that life gives us. It is not about what to do after death, but as Gurdjieff explained it in his exercise “The Last Hour of Life”, what we do in each moment. When we realize that life is impermanent, that we all will die and don’t know when, we can use that contemplation within each moment to realize that what is most important is grounding/resting ourselves deeper and deeper into our true self.
We cannot escape our karma (the consequences of our past based on cause and effect), trauma, and wounds until we heal them and learn our lessons, taking full self-responsibility for our specific karmic situation (which is terrifying to the ego mind). Much of what we experience after death is not necessarily alien entities tormenting or deceiving us, but our own (unconscious) traumas and pain manifested as “entities”:
“I am going to talk about death. It is not something many people like to talk about. Do you know why? There is a fear we all feel. They say it is fear of the unknown. I say it is fear of the known, but not realized consciously. When we go through life, the traumas we experience stay in us as painful knots, and are tightened by the spirits of trauma. If we don’t untie these knots during our lives, we are going to have this done after our physical deaths. It doesn’t matter if we believe in the afterlife or not.
One thing you need to believe is that, with death, the experience of time changes radically. To enter death is, in a way, to enter time itself, and there you’d better be ready. There are many accounts of light and bliss, but this is only a beginning. What comes afterward is also described, but it is just not as well publicized. Angry, malicious spirits come next; they come to suck your blood and torture you by all possible means, but they are your own spirits of Trauma.
They will torture you until you untie the knots in your memory and become free. Again, it doesn’t matter if you believe in the afterlife or not. I am talking about the subjective psychological process of restructuring your memory. Would it make a big difference for you to know that it all happens minutes after death, even though you may personally experience it as ages of torture?
Many of you think that this subject is far from your actual interests. Many of you find yourselves attracted to magic, thinking that, in it, you may find powers and insights that will change your life once and forever. Who would think about death when there are so many exciting secrets that life can share with us? Well, people who are close to real magic would think about death and what is beyond it, because they know that most of life’s secrets come from mastering that space beyond death.
The only way to pass through their gates [after death] was to look to them in their disguised faces and say, ‘I know you. I know your name.’ You do this, then they have to let you through. You fail, they tear your limbs apart, suck your blood, tear your flesh. If you recognize their names, then are saved from a second death, from annihilation, and your existence will continue. So what am I talking about?
Any guesses yet? I expect that, at this point in my lecture, you will recognize who I am talking about. The spirits of trauma, of course, our psyches’ creations, our representations of hurts and suffering which we have, accumulated, and which we didn’t have a chance to heal.
The only thing I can tell you now is that we all have the space inside of us where the healing work can be done and is being done all the time for each of us—even though we are completely unaware of it.
The purpose of my talk tonight is not only educational. It serves to make some of the aspects of our work known to Western culture. The reason is that the critical time has arrived. I told you that the unhealed traumatic experiences which gain status of their own and become spirits of trauma continue their existence throughout generations. If they are not healed, they build up, connect, accelerate, enforce and support each other, and become collective entities.
In traditional cultures, rituals of transition are very important. Before going to another of life’s stages, a person must go through a deep initiation ritual, one that basically cuts off all traumatic knots from the past and clears a path for the future. Modern civilization, as you call it, has lost all its psychological rituals. It doesn’t have the means to clear its members of traumatic memories. Therefore, at some point, these accumulate on the collective level and become very dangerous.
This dangerous time has come. It could become many times more dangerous now than in previous times, when world wars were induced by the accumulated spirits of traumas. The purpose of my visit is to tell you that there is a great danger for all the people on the planet, but there are effective means to overcome it.”
– from “Master of Lucid Dreams” by Olga Kharitidi, M.D
The higher your level of Being (based on soul individualization/integration), the less you are subjected to karma and the more free will you gain until you can fully transcend the wheel of samsara, i.e. “transcend/escape the matrix” — which is just a school, even though it seems like a “prison”. On that note, people who firmly believe that this 3D existence is just a “prison” also fall into the victim trap which keeps them entrapped in the “prison,” ironically. By perceiving the world this way, they may also fail to recognize and connect with the immense beauty of life. I see the matrix control as a prison and school at the same time, but no one is here against their “free will.” According to Universal Law, an agreement and choice was made to be “in the matrix” at some level in the “distant past” (even if done via deception/temptation which is symbolized in “The Fall from Eden”). In the end, we are all here to experience soul evolution and the greater evolution of consciousness.
The Law of Agreement
The law of agreement is another universal law: This is the law hyperdimensional occult/alien forces are using to manipulate is into agreements of entrapment which we could have made by “calling in beings/angels/deities/forces” via rituals/ceremonies (in this current life or past lives), getting tempted by our lower nature (appealing to greed, lust, power). They can also gain access to the human vessel through trauma, alcohol/drug abuse (including cannabis, psychedelics, and medicine plants: once you enter another dimension forcefully via drugs, you automatically give permission for the beings in that dimension to potentially enter you) and various other ways, as only with this law of agreement can they gain access to human bodies. The law of agreement ties into the law of free will, for they do need our “free will” consent, even if it is based on unconscious deception or our ignorance of not being aware of universal laws.
An agreement of entrapment is a deal/pact with the “devil” (negative occult entities) and can be made consciously or unconsciously. Sometimes these negative entities appear to disguise themselves as “positive forces,” appealing to the belief system of the person they want to get the consent/permission from. For example, to someone conditioned with Catholic religious beliefs, they may appear as “Mother Mary.” To someone caught in the New Age and the “space brothers are here to save us” deception, a negative entity may appear as a Pleiadian, Blue Avian, etc. It is like a legal contract that can be active over multiple lifetimes until revoked/canceled. It is symbolized in Vampire mythology when a Vampire needs permission to enter the house of his/her victim. All universe agreements are valid in all dimensions, through time and space eternally. All agreements can be changed, only through the awareness of the universal laws of their creators.
“To say that all light is good is as if you said that all water is good – or even that all clear or transparent water is good: it would not be true. One must see what is the nature of the light or where it comes from or what is in it, before one can say that it is the true Light. False lights exist and misleading lustres, lower lights too that belong to the being’s inferior reaches. One must therefore be on one’s guard and distinguish; the true discrimination has to come by growth of the psychic feeling and a purified mind and experience. The word “Appearances” refers to the forms they take in order to rule the world, forms often false and always incarnating falsehood, sometimes pseudo-divine. Often, representing themselves as divine powers, they mislead, give erring suggestions and impulsions and pervert the inner life.”
– Sri Aurobindo
However, as I have mentioned numerous times, the occult hostile forces have a teaching function in light of the bigger picture of the evolution of consciousness:
“These [occult] adverse forces have been given all sorts of devilish and “negative “names through the world’s spiritual history, as if their sole aim were to damn the seeker and give decent people a hard time. The reality is somewhat different, for where is the devil if not in God? If he is not in God, then there is not much left in God, because this world is evil enough, as are quite a few other worlds, so that not much would remain that is pure, except perhaps for a dimensionless and shadowless mathematical point. In reality, as experience shows, these disturbing forces have their place in the universe; they are disturbing only at the scale of our constricted momentary consciousness, and for a specific purpose.
Firstly, they always catch us with our defenses down—yet were we firm and one-pointed, they could not shake us for a second. In addition, if we look into ourselves instead of whining and blaming the devil or the world’s wickedness, we find that each of these attacks has exposed one of our many virtuous pretenses, or, as Mother says, has pulled off the little coats we put on to avoid seeing. Not only do the little, or big, coats conceal our own weaknesses, they are everywhere in the world, hiding its small deficiencies as well as its Enormous conceit; and if the perturbing forces yank the coats a bit violently, it is not at random or with wanton malice, but to open our eyes and compel us to a perfection we might otherwise resist, because as soon as we have grasped hold of a grain of truth or a wisp of ideal, we have the unfortunate tendency to lock it up in an hermetic and impregnable construction, and to refuse to budge from there.”
– Satprem
More about this and related topics in my course Occult Forces of Hyper-Dimensions – Entity Attachments and Interferences: Discernment, Clearing, and Protection.
Understanding and applying the universal law of cause/effect and the law of agreement implies taking full self-responsibility and not getting stuck in victim/blame consciousness, which is the real trap that can keep us trapped in the matrix over lifetimes and lifetimes. Getting stuck in this state leaves us disempowered, unable to complete and learn our lessons. We then constantly externalize our journey by blaming people, circumstances, aliens, or entities; or we look for saviors outside ourselves (gurus, leaders, politicians, deities, Jesus, aliens, etc.), getting trapped in the Matrix savior program. However, it’s essential to understand that not falling into the victim/blame trap includes not blaming yourself either. The mind will have some trouble with that because it is always mentally analyzing and caught in either/or – black/white dualistic thinking; always wants to blame others or itself. There is a state of being (your true self) that rises above and beyond that space of blame and can see the Truth: that there is no good/bad experience and no one to blame either, as there are only lessons.
By “default” most people tend to blame others (people, situations, entities, etc.) while other people tend to excessively blame themselves for why they got themselves into a particular situation, made mistakes, or attracted an entity via an unconscious trap of agreement, etc. The latter scenario of blaming oneself excessively is partially based on how the Law of Attraction has been distorted; where we can often find victim-blaming behaviors in others who feel they have the spiritual agency to tell other people that “they only attract what they are.” There is as well an over-simplification and limitation of shadow work that is common-place; and eventually, we find that not everything needs to “integrated”; but some aspects needs to be REJECTED as NOT part of one’s true nature. People who tend to be very hard on themselves (lack of healthy self-love and boundaries) can easily slip into the guilt and shame downward spiral which is a very low and toxic frequency.
Karma in the Body and The Law of Ascent and Descent
Our Karma is also stored in the body and needs to be released through the body. Karma, in that context, is an “unprocessed experience” going back lifetimes, which gets crystallized in the body, creating tension and restricting the flow of life force. Thoughts and emotions set up in the past and present affect the cycles of the future. These events, thoughts, and emotions can then become trapped in the body. We can see how this “stuck” cyclic energy causes us to repeat life patterns as these traumas become trapped within their own dimension of time.
Many issues we deal with are traumas that are stuck in time (and have become crystalized energy), which we relive in the present over and over (as reoccurring “issues”) — until we go back to the creation point and release the trapped energy. As I mentioned before, a lot of stuff we carry in our bodies is not just related to whatever happened in childhood and this lifetime, but ALL of our ancient memory (including past lives) are held on as unprocessed experiences and are stored somewhere in the body.
Throughout the years, I’ve been able to release trapped emotions stored in my body from past experiences through bodywork, yoga, breathwork, and dance. However, the most effective way to dive deep into my body and process wounds and trauma has been via somatic meditations. This is a form of body scanning by putting awareness on any tension held in the body. The key in this process is not to analyze anything, nor judge or try to change anything, In short, it’s about getting out of the head and tuning deeply into the body. At first, it’s not always that easy because we have become so disconnected and desensitized from our body. Usually, there are many layers of armor in the body (defense mechanisms that have built up over time) to work through before we can access the core emotion trapped in the body.
A few weeks ago, I went into such a process of releasing these trapped emotions after I had a fall out with someone I thought was my friend. I had found out that he has been passive-aggressively attacking me on FB, and seeing him as a friend, I wished he had talked to me directly about the issues he was having with me in person. An issue like this may seem not that big of a deal, and there are plenty of times that I receive troll and hateful mail/comments and am not so affected.
However, in this instance, something about this event triggered me deeply and I became very reactive, much to my own surprise. I experienced a lot of pain in my chest; with feelings of sadness, anger, and betrayal arising from that space. My partner Laura helped me to process it and suggested to practice a somatic meditation called “The Somatic Descent” based on Reginald Ray’s work and the esoteric Tibetan Buddhist teachings.
It was a potent meditation that lasted for one hour. It helped me to go out of my head and deeper into my body, opening the tightness and restriction I felt in my chest. Right after the meditation, the “flood gates” opened up in the heart area and I started to cry intensely, weeping in agony, feeling I had unearthed a deep-rooted pain/trauma that went beyond the experience that held the original “issue”. It felt like an ancient and deeply embedded wound from a past life got released, which was likely mostly stuck deep in my body before – beyond the layers of my conscious mind. I haven’t cried that intensely in years and it was a good and necessary release. My body also started shaking involuntarily, which is a common symptom in somatic trauma release therapy of trauma discharging from the body.
Besides my own trauma being triggered, I also could clearly sense how the occult hostile forces augmented it, coming in from the “outside” and intensified the experience. It felt like they were trying to keep me in a “reactive” fight/flight mode and keep me in my head, feeding off of my detrimental thought projections and emotional triggers. However, the issue/wound that got triggered within me had essentially nothing to do with this friend I was projecting upon. By truly feeling into the physical pain within my body (in this case, in my chest/heart chakra), without projecting it externally (or getting caught up in my mind and the story) I could release the pain of the experience.
There were different layers of armor and defenses held as tension within my body that I had to pierce through until I was able to feel/get into the core suppressed emotion/trauma. In this space, I noticed that there was no story attached to it; I didn’t have any flashbacks to a particular past life, but I knew and felt deep in my being that this had nothing to do with an old childhood wound or had anything related to this current incarnation. The emotional release of processing it somatically through the body is more important than “knowing the story.” In other words, you can heal anything through the body without needing to know “what happened”. Many people can actually get too attached to their story, which prevents them from truly healing and letting go.
Our own unconscious wounds and traumas are precisely what the hostile forces target in us; luring us into acting out and thus recreating that traumatic pattern by externalizing or internalizing the suffering by blaming others or ourselves. This is the suffering upon suffering that through our own unconscious wounds we perpetuate (“mechanical suffering” according to Gurdjieff), and is exactly the “loosh” and energy that they feed upon. Pure non-reactive consciousness is about staying in the body and feeling every experience; allowing that feeling to go on a journey within our own body and not letting the mind interfere by acting out or suppressing that feeling (“conscious suffering”).
“Emotional reactivity almost always precludes conscious awareness. On the other hand, restraint and containment of expressive impulse allows us to become aware of our underlying postural attitude. Therefore it is the restraint that brings a feeling into conscious awareness. Change only occurs when there is mindfulness and mindfulness only occurs when there is bodily feeling (what’s happening in my body?). The uncoupling of sensation from image and thought is what diffuses the highly charged emotions and allows them to transform fluidly into sensation- based gradations of feelings. This is not at all the same as suppressing or repressing them.”
– Peter Levine, In An Unspoken Voice
This process is definitely easier said than done, and I had a hard time getting out of my head as the thought injections/loops triggered more emotions (anxiety/anger) for them to feed off of. The somatic meditation I engaged in and praying to the Divine (not “calling anything in” and not to be confused with the religious dogma of an external “god”) with sincere aspiration helped tremendously in resolving these thought loops and releasing the pain. I also received a clear sign that the Divine/Spirit was present, but I still had to learn the lesson myself by processing the entry point internally. It was emotionally extremely painful, and there were moments of terror and torment and a feeling like I was in hell. I even received suicidal thought injections coming in, which I was able to reject.
After going through this process resulting in the somatic release I came through the other side and experienced a new/higher state of being. I can only describe it as body, mind, and spirit fully synchronized, no internal division and no thoughts but being fully in the present moment with clarity and heightened awareness. I felt light, focused and joy in my heart. It was not an overwhelming feeling of bliss but an embodied grounded state of love in touch with what seemed to be my divine nature, my true self. I felt naturally inspired, light, and fully alive. It was like a huge weight got lifted off my heart. At that moment I also realized how often we get used to our discomfort and wounds we carry, having “forgotten” how it feels when body, mind, and spirit are fully aligned and synchronized within us.
This was also a humbling moment for me, experiencing another universal law: the law of ascent and descent. The misconception of many New Age and pop-spiritual teaching is that the “ascension” or “awakening” process is a straight road up to ever more bliss and love. That’s why many people get hooked on peak experiences and can create what is called in esoteric science, a false foundation, resulting in faux “enlightenment” experiences.
These deceptive peak experiences can be installed via psychedelics/medicine plants or even with certain meditation techniques, resulting in dissociation which can create an artificial “bliss” experience by going out of the body. In fact, if you meditate “correctly” and you are able to dive deep into your body, dissolving all the tension, armor and defenses you are holding on to unconsciously, it will bring you your wounds and pain which can be very uncomfortable. But it’s only in this state of discomfort where real healing happens, facing your fears and wounds.
You can only truly rise into higher levels of being as deep as you are willing (or able) to go into the shadow and darkness of yourself, revealing all trauma and wounds that have accumulated over lifetimes. That is the law of ascent and descent. The path towards awakening spirals up, down, in, out, back, and forth; expanding on all levels and bringing up everything. Anything that is asleep within us (unconscious) will be put under the spotlight of Truth.
“No one can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.” – Sri Aurobindo
Throughout my life, I noticed that the deeper and lower I fell and was able to work through and transmute the suffering, wounds, and trauma, the higher I was able to rise; the descent and ascent at the same time. I also realized how little control I who I “think” I am actually had over this process. The suffering also initiated a deep longing within me to (re)unite with the Divine, the only true source of Light, Joy, and Love (in the true meaning of these words beyond the New Age distortions).
It also created more embodied compassion, love, and kindness for myself and others. In other words — pure unconditional love. I also realized that the more sincerely I aspired towards the Divine – my true self – and engaged in the necessary inner work to anchor the higher frequencies of soul-individualization (embodiment), the more my lower nature resisted (and in fact, the Light(Divine) shined a merciless light into the darkest corners of my psyche/Being, bringing all up that needs to rise and be transmuted). At the same time, the less I am/was able to lie to myself, engage in spiritual bypassing or rationalize it all away, but the more I took responsibility for everything in my life.
In our podcast episode “The Ascent and Descent – Suffering as a Catalyst for Awakening”, Laura and I talk in more depth about the law of ascent and descent, the role of suffering in light of the process of awakening, its teaching function, and how to catalyze suffering into deeper healing.
How to Measure Your Progress
Regardless of what is occurring in one’s outer life, the TRUE measure of how developed one’s soul is how integrated and embodied we are, and this is mirrored to us by how we REACT to ordinary every-day circumstances, by our emotional reactions (or suppression) and how easily we get triggered and thus blame others and external conditions.
The point of esoteric, spiritual and psychological, and somatic work is not about eliminating challenges (even though they might be alleviated to some degree), but rather how we change, transmute and transform by facing life and reality directly; becoming more objective with ourselves and the world. This is also the gateway to real Love. Childish and immature love is conditional and demands attention and validation from others. If it doesn’t get what it wants, it blames others for it, or it blames itself for not “being good enough,” getting stuck in self-pity, guilt, and shame.
Mature love is unconditional, takes self-responsibility, and loves even if it doesn’t get what it wants or prefers. We all have the immature child within us, acting out at various times. If we can spot it, it’s a chance to heal this wounded child, which can also relate to past life trauma and not necessarily related to your current childhood in your present lifetime. It’s important we create a safe container for this child to experience, express, and feel emotions of sadness, rejection, fear, anger, abandonment, shame, etc. without projecting it externally. This process can only happen somatically — through the body. You cannot think yourself through it as this only results in more self-deception. The intellectual recognition of your “issues” is not enough and is only the very beginning of a much deeper emotional and somatic inner process.
Therefore, you can gauge your own progress change by witnessing changes in your reactions to the troubles and difficulties you face. Life keeps going onwards and keeps expanding, handing us challenges according to the law of ascent and descent, lessons which are different to each of us. It’s part of choosing this 3D experience of duality and essentially not getting attached to either “positive” or “negative” experiences, going beyond hope and fear, thirst and grasping, pleasure and pain. The more you are embodied and integrated on a soul level, the more these challenges in life will no longer have the power to throw you off, upset you, make you stressed out, fearful, worried, etc., and the better you are able to process what comes up in the moment.
Your only yardstick for progress is your reaction to anything that is happening in your life. This relates to the meaning “to be in this world but not of it”. This state of being doesn’t imply that there won’t be any challenges anymore, but that you know how to respond to them and recognize their teaching function. It’s like becoming like water and adapting to wherever the river of life is taking you while staying grounded in yourself and your inner guidance rooted in the body. It also relates to staying in zero-point non-reactive consciousness.
However, we can also deceive ourselves to be in zero-point non-reactive consciousness and get stuck in surface pseudo-calmness and fake non-reactive consciousness. For instance, people who are very head-centric and disconnected from their bodies and inner somatic experiences may not react emotionally to challenges externally and keep a “poker face” by dissociating, while the real emotional reaction gets suppressed in the unconscious and rationalized away.
This is a mechanical reaction which can be the result of lifetimes of suppression or severe trauma in the past. Or, you may feel the friction internally, but deny the feelings and emotions coming up (or judge them as “bad”) and hence suppress them even more. Many people then keep up a superficial mask of “calmness” which results in more armor and tightness in the body where suppressed emotions are stored. The fear of feeling emotions is worse than actually feeling them. This can result in living an inauthentic life externally while your inner experience gets suppressed and shoved into the unconscious, creating merely a buffer and band-aid, giving the illusion of “happiness” on a superficial level which will create more pain in the long run.
In fact, most people in the world live in this disembodied state, having become desensitized from life and themselves. In other words, they are suffering, but don’t know that they are suffering because they are shut down emotionally. That’s also why compassion and empathy are so important towards ourselves and others (not just intellectually but genuinely feeling it) while not falling into blind/idiot compassion when boundaries need to be made.
Everything you have suppressed within emotionally needs to be felt and transmuted at some point, be it in this lifetime or the next ones. The only way out is in, and through. This process also depends on the “ripeness” of the soul/psyche and when it is ready to “go there.” The more sincere you are with yourself and your inner work the more you can “accelerate” the process of your soul evolution. However, no steps can be skipped, and there are no short cuts.
I leave you with this excerpt from a lecture by Eva Pirrakos:
“There still exist many defenses against the full experience of accumulated feelings in you. Keeping this in mind will help you to focus your attention and awareness upon these defenses to overcome them more and more. You can systematically lower the threshold of defending against your deep accumulated experiences which have become poisonous from not being released. These painful experiences cannot be released if they are not felt, known, expressed, and lived through as fully as possible.
When feelings stagnate, energy stagnates; and if energy stagnates, you cannot move. As you know, feelings are moving energy currents. They transform constantly from one set or type of feeling into another, as long as the energy flows freely. Not experiencing feelings stops the movement of those currents and therefore stops the living energy. The stagnation of energy currents traps not only feelings but concepts as well. You generalize from single occurrences and hold on to the resulting false beliefs. It is rare that stagnant feelings do not also include stagnant conceptualizations of life. These may exist in the deepest recesses of the soul, totally hidden from consciousness.
Over and over again you are entrapped in the cycle of reproducing the past in one way or another until you can summon the courage to choose to live through now what was not lived through before because of your defenses. You cannot come out of these repetitive cycles, no matter how good your intentions are and how much effort you use in other ways as a substitute for experiencing your feelings, unless you really fully reexperience your earlier feelings. You must cross the barrier behind which you still harbor deep feelings so tucked away that you are not at all aware of them. And for that reason you can still delude yourself that unhappiness and bad moods just befall you out of nowhere, or that you have bad luck.
The human predicament is the dualistic split, which is nothing but a delusion of perception. This delusion has many facets, one facet being a split in the human consciousness itself. Human beings may feel one thing, believe another, and act without knowing how both these functions govern them. Lack of awareness of what you feel and what you really believe creates another manifestation of the split. When you unify knowing and feeling, you work toward mending and integration, which manifests as a wonderful new awakening and sense of wholeness.
When feelings are not experienced in their full intensity, the inner life flow must become stagnant. People will find themselves inexplicably paralyzed. Their actions will become ineffectual; life will seem to obstruct all their goals and desires. They find closed doors to realizing their talents, their needs, their selves. So-called laziness may be one manifestation of this paralysis. A lack of creativity or a feeling of general despair may be another. In this latter instance, people may often use a current event or difficulty to explain away their inner state. The truth is that a sense of futility and confusion about life and your role in it must envelop you when you resist living through the feelings you harbor; you go on harboring them because you delude yourself that avoiding the feelings will hurt you less than exposing them. There are many other manifestations.
The total experience of a feeling is as available as your willingness and readiness to venture into it. These feelings are often accumulations of centuries and millennia—not just decades. Each life incarnation presents the task of cleansing yourself by experiencing and understanding them. You are purified when there is no more waste material. After you terminate this life cycle, the conditions, circumstances, and environment of your next life into which you are drawn by an inexorable law of life will afford you the opportunity to bring to the fore any previously accumulated waste material. But memory of previous incarnations is blotted out, so that you have only this life’s past experiences to draw on.
The dimming of memory is a byproduct of the life/death cycle in which everyone is caught who denies feeling experience. When you go on denying awareness and refusing to feel the experience of what you have lived through in this very life, you perpetuate the process of dimming memory. Thus you perpetuate the cycle of dying and being born, and this process always manifests as a break in the continuity of awareness. Conversely, you eliminate this discontinuity of awareness, and with it the entire cycle of dying and being born, by living through whatever has accumulated from this life wherever it is possible to re-establish the links of memory. If all the feelings of this lifetime are fully experienced, all residual matter of previous lives will automatically be dealt with because the trauma of the now is only a trauma because the previous pains had been denied.
Fighting your feelings and defending against them creates a whole extra layer of experience that is alienated from your core and therefore artificial and more painful than the original experience it fights against.
Stating in your meditation your intent and wish to experience all accumulated feelings and rid yourself of waste is the best and most effective beginning. Through this meditational approach, energy is released that can be directed to this all-important purpose. You often persuade yourself that you lack the energy and the time to go into the depths of your feelings. At the same time you spend a lot of energy on other activities which may well seem more important at the moment. No matter how vitally important the other activities are, they can never be more important than this exploration, for attending to this life task is your true reason for living. In addition, it is the key to productive living for you right now.
Your spiritual self with all its joy, safety and peace is right behind the sadness and pain. It cannot be activated by a direct act of will, nor by practices and actions that leave out the necessity to experience all your feelings. But your spiritual center does manifest inexorably as a byproduct, the result of the direct act of will to go through your denied feelings.
Through these gateways you will find true life. All the many temptations that beckon you to follow paths which imply that it is possible to find the spiritual reality of yourself without going through these gateways are wishful thinking. There is no way around what has accumulated in you and has poisoned your whole system—your spiritual, your psychological, and often also your physical system. This poison can be eliminated only by feeling what you hoped you could avoid feeling. Then a new energy influx comes in ever greater measure. Many of you have experienced to some degree what I am saying here, and therein lies your growth. But you all have to go further in this regard. The self-punishment for hatred and spite, for cruelty and greed, for selfishness and one-sided demands upon others must be released so you can go into the terror of your fear, your shame, your pain. When you stop fighting this, you will become real, open, and truly alive.”
– from “Dissolving Your Fears – Importance of Experiencing All Feelings” by By Eva Pirrakos
