The Perilous Path Towards Awakening (2)

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by Bernhard Guenthe

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 surrounds their latest authoritarian puppet installment, Donald Trump (and thus generating all of the resulting emotional “loosh” for the hyperdimensional puppeteers to feed upon).

“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 hyper dimensional 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 hyper dimensional 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.”

“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 be 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

Read the third part of the article

yogaesoteric
June 17, 2019