The Great Awakening - Webpage of Michael Sharp

So last year I wrote a scholarly paper entitled The Death of Newton: Consciousness, Spirituality, and the Second Scientific Revolution. In addition to detailing my own conflicting experience as a scientist and mystic, it (the paper, a.k.a. me) also made a clarion call to scientists to jettison what I call “naive materialism.” Naive materialism is, as I define in the SpiritWiki, the unquestioned belief in the primacy of the material world. In my opinion, as stated in my article, it is high time for science to get rid of naive materialism and begin developing a more nuanced and spiritually sophisticated science. You can read the paper by following the above link.

So far the gatekeepers of the scientific establishment have not been to so impressed with the paper. Nevertheless, it is being picked up within the halls of the academy and it a good way. One sociology honors student has even based a paper of hers on the article. The paper (which you can read by following this link), picks up the case that science needs to jettison it’s naive materialist ontology. She goes farther, however by distinguishing between my theoretical position and other positions (i.e., intelligent design) that makes the same sorts of points but with a less critical, and more faith based, approach. Despite the fact that the student called me “brilliant,” something no self respecting scholar could ever ignore, I nevertheless think the paper is excellent on substantive grounds because it clearly shows how, once we break out of the “either or” box of “either” Darwin “or” Intelligent Design, lucid alternatives to the current ontological deadlock in science can be envisaged and discussed.

Anyway, there you have. The revolution is underway and just like the first scientific revolution could not be halted by the gatekeepers and priests of the church who excommunicated those whom committed the heresy of questioning the fundamental teachings of the church, this second scientific revolution will also not be halted. The gatekeepers no longer have control over the flow of scholarly information and a new generation of ontologically and epistemologically sophisticated scientists and practitioners is being nurtured within the halls of the academy.

In the immortal words of John Donne, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls…”

Namaste

ms

Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city. Rev 22:14

Ever since I started writing my mystical books I’ve been claiming to have a powerful system of awakening, and empowerment. The system, which I call the Lightning Path^TM, is based on chakra activations, in particular the Great Invocation, careful guidance, archetypal revision, and some good old fashion mysticism. The system has been in development since my own rather dramatic clearing experiences in 2002 and is now maturing to the point where it is beginning to attract professional attention. In particular, I have begun working with a registered clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst by the name of Robert Rigby. Robert has begun using the central activation meditation, the Great Invocation, in his private practice with an eye towards providing case study assessment of the efficacy and power of the Great Invocation used in isolation from, or in combination with, other therapeutic interventions.

Why use the Great Invocation in clinical practice? Well, it makes perfect sense. Unlike a lot of other spiritual teachers out there, in fact probably unlike all other spiritual teachers out there, I conceive of spirituality not as a “spiritual” process dealing with your soul or essence or inner being or whatever, but a physical process, a therapeutic process, aimed at repairing your damaged physical unit and preparing it (i.e. preparing the vessel) to contain higher proportions of your own powerful spiritual consciousness–my assumption being that only a perfectly matured, perfectly healthy, strong mind+body (i.e., physical unit) is capable of handling the awesome light, love, and power of your own higher consciousness.

And how is the Great Invocation relevant to the therapeutic process? Well, that is difficult to explain within the current psychological and sociological nomenclature and paradigms. However, I can explain it within my own nomenclature by saying the that Great Invocation functions (among other things) as a crown activator, much like entheogens function as “crown activators” or “brain amplifiers.” Activating your crown chakra provides you with enhanced mental function which, when combined with full chakra activation, provides salient opportunities to clear energetic blockages in all chakra conduits with a power and facility somewhere between the dramatic revelatory healing provided by psychedelic or psycholytic therapy (see Grof, Realms of the Unconsciousness) and traditional psychoanalysis.

Now what’s really nice, in my opinion, about the Great Invocation meditation and the Lighting Path^TM system is not it’s potential utility within a therapeutic setting, though of course this is interesting, but its utility in our general life. As I have conceived of the system, I never really considered it something that would be used by therapists. I conceived of it as something that we, (and we I mean everyone on this planet) with our damaged physical units would use to heal ourselves. Call it “personally administered psychoanalysis” if you want. The LP provides you with the tools you need to identify all the issues and blockages that arise as a result of the pathological and damaging socialization process that we, without exception, go through. And I have seen it work. Many individuals who pick up the Lightning Path^TM Core books, and who study the concepts and put into practice the spiritual technique report dramatic improvements not only in their understanding of the world (awakening) but in their ability to control (within the limits of the currently imposed “system” of energy control) reality around them. It’s a big claim and although I do keep testimonials, and we do share our experiences on the Lightning Path^TM in my online forums, nevertheless it is anecdotal and potentially biased. Now, however, we are in position to remedy that with actual evidence of the efficacy of the Lightning Path in a clinical setting.

Now, a couple things about that.

First of all, let me say that this is only the start of clinical trials. Our methodology at this point is ill formed and tentative. I suppose this is to be expected. We are charting untravelled territory here. Generally, spiritual practices are not put to scientific test. There is some interest in investigating energy medicine, and I believe some work has been done with meditative techniques like transcendental meditation, but as far I know, nobody has ever thought of putting a spiritual framework (the Lightning Path^TM) and spiritual technology (the Great Invocation) up for clinical evaluation. So, we tread carefully here knowing that we are clearing a new pathway. We remain open to positive criticism and additional expertise.

Second, we see the clinical evaluation of the LP and the Great Invocation as only the first step in a full scientific evaluation of the spirituality and technique of the LP. Following the development of an appropriate clinical methodology, it is my intent to develop an appropriate psycho-metric framework for the quantitative evaluation of the LP methodology. As I see, it this will involve the use of a battery of psycho-metric assessments that will provide a solid, scientific evaluation of the claims made for the efficacy and revolutionary nature of the Lightning Path^TM and the associated technologies.

Of course, this is a longer term project and I see it unfolding over a period of several years but it has begun and I hope that it will be revolutionary in nature. Although demonstrating the efficacy of the Great Invocation and the Lightning Path^TM are important, in the long run the greater contribution that I see will be in the shift this brings in our perceptions and approach to spirituality, spiritual knowledge, and spiritual practice. Rather than seeing spirituality and spiritual practice as an arena where “anything goes” and where even questionable spiritual techniques hold global respect and admiration, hopefully we will develop a critical sensibility towards spirituality and, more importantly, an expectation that we, as scientists, citizens, and Immortal Spirit inhabiting a physical unit, have a right to demand empirical verification from the teachers, gurus, churches, and spiritual systems of this world. Hopefully, from it will no longer be enough to simply claim “guru” status by channeling famous dead people (Ra, Thoth, Archangel Michael, or claiming divine revelation through the burning of bushes or the study of ancient texts. This is new world spirituality. Fruitful, grounded, epistemologically sophisticated, scientifically grounded, accessible, and embodied.

ms

Today I want to talk a little bit about the nature of your physical body and through this, I want to encourage you to stop identifying with your body as if it was your identity and start seeing it for what it really is. You see, as many spiritually inclined writers have pointed out over the millennia, your physical body is not your identity. Your physical body is not who you are. You are not a collection of cells and neurons and fluids haphazardly put together in a freakish accident of nature.

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Elizabeth A. Phelps of Yale University, Janet Metcalfe of Columbia University and Margaret Funnell, a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College, have found that the two hemispheres differ in their ability to process new data. When presented with new information, people usually remember much of what they experience. When questioned, they also usually claim to remember things that were not truly part of the experience. If split-brain patients are given such tests, the left hemisphere generates many false reports. But the right brain does not; it provides a much more veridical account.” (Gazzaniga, 1998: 54).

Alright so in my last blog post I had some things to say about a neuroanatomist’s interpretation of her trauma induced “right brain experience.” What happened basically was a stroke shut down “something’ in the left hemisphere. This “shut down” subsequently opened the scientist up to a rather dramatically different way of looking at things. The variation from the “normal” experience of the scientist was striking and while she went on and on in effusive terms about the “glory” of the experience, I suggested that it was inappropriate to view her experience as anything other than as a kind of “awakening inner child” experience. After years of left brain dominance and right atrophy, suddenly the censors were turned off and the “child” (the higher processing facilities of the right brain) where exposed to reality with obvious and predictable results, i.e., childlike apprehension of reality and childlike affect

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http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/229

So, a couple days ago a friend of mine sent me a video to view. The video is a video of a neuroanatomist by the name of Jill Bolte who had a “left brain” stroke. As she describes in her video, the effects of the stroke were rather dramatic shutting down her left brain in a pre-emptory fashion leaving her, as she describes throughout the course of her video presentation, in the “la la land” of the right hemisphere.

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