The inspiration for this dialogue comes from a dramatic crown chakra opening experience. Benjamin travels to India and while there experiences a dramatic expansion of consciousness characterized by feelings of unity and oneness, an empowered sense of being, and so on. This isn’t fluffy, ego based, crystal and granola style spirituality, this is God honest power of consciousness and Spirit lived in the internal moment of now. The experiences are visceral and powerful and challenge Benjamin on a number of levels.
This dialogue reflects on a number of advanced level topics including:
The profound reality of consciousness descending, the challenges that this presents,
System and elite ideology of positive thinking,
Proper expression of anger,
Several of the Halo/Sharp archetypes including Joyful, Sacrifice, Strength
Archetypes, creation temples, and the “structures of consciousness,”
The slippery slope of new age notions that we “choose” our slavery,
The physical unit’s remarkable power of self deception,
The growing power and facility, wisdom and knowledge, that one experiences as one begins to truly embrace the “old soul” power and divinity within.
Crown chakra pathology, the need to properly ground and prepare, and the dangers of ungrounded spirituality (which can include psychosis and schizophrenia).
The space-time tube (see Book of Life: Ascension and the Divine World Order),
Like everybody else, the boy was struck by the beauty of the woman. His secret pleasure was to hang back and look on as the woman collected the money from the passers by. She was attractive, beautiful almost, but it was the dog that drew them in. After all, how often do you see a 3 legged dog? Especially one so well taken care of by a beautiful woman.
How and where the woman and the dog lived, no one knew. But day in and day out, sitting on the curb, they sat together. The woman would pet the dog or scratch his neck, and occasionally she gave him a morsel of food.
“Look how good she is to that pathetic dog!” the passers-by would say.
Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” “We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods.’ John 10: 31-34
So, Dec 21 2012 has come and gone and the world is still here, little changed.
No major global transformation, no fantastic global spiritual shift, no big alien landing, no Nesara, no utopia unfolding.In fact to the inquiring mind (and not the mind misled by spiritual fairy tales) it seems like exactly opposite. Greed, graft, and power politics still rule the day. Sex and violence dominates the media. Global war continues unabated. And there is more debt, more violence, and more mass murder then ever before. Even our children in their schools are no longer safe.
I recently had a conversation with a fellow, a “reading” actually, where, at the conclusion, the fellow expressed a bit of disappointment. It wasn’t that he was unsatisfied with the reading, it is just that he was hoping to get magical, mystical advice on removing energetic blockages, and all I told him to do was to pay attention to the emotions of his body a bit more, so that he could get in touch with his feelings. I told him this because I could “read” a heart chakra blockage in him and it was a primary obstacle towards full bodily activation.
He agreed.
There was an obstacle, and feelings weren’t something he was typically too interested in processing.
I asked him how he felt about this advice and after a few moments he said, disappointed.
I asked “Why?”
He said “I don’t know.”
I said “where you expecting wands and starry robes and pointed magical hats?”
“Yes,” he admitted, “that’s kinda how I see you, and its kinda what I expected.”
Now I’d like to say that I was surprised by this, but honestly I wasn’t. This wasn’t the first time some body expected something like that. The first time was a decade ago when I met a physicist from India who invited me over to his home for a coffee, sat me down with his traditionally clothed wife, and waited for me to utter words of deep spiritual wisdom. It was a bit uncomfortable I have to say and when all I did was engage in small talk he thanked me, showed me to the door, and I never heard from him again.
Or then there was that trip to South Africa. I’m sure I disappointed a lot of people there. They even said that. Apparently I didn’t act like they expected a wise spiritual guru to act. It was funny, in a sad sort of way, but it kinda highlights a very important point — people have certain expectations about what “high level” mystical spirituality is supposed to be like. They have this idea that people like me (i.e. mystics) should be wearing magical robes, waving magical wands, and weaving magical incantations. Collectively we have this image of mystics and spiritual teachers as magicians or mysterious gurus, all floaty and full of wisdom, and always “different” and outside the box of normal. Apparently I should be a little less like who I am, and a little more like Eckhart Tolle, or Mahatma Ghandi, or maybe the magical Mickey Mouse.
Now, I’m not saying this to be rude. I mean, I get why there are these expectations. India has a “guru” culture and people there have been so indoctrinated into it that even high level PhD physicists can fall into it. As for us in the West, we can thank Hollywood and the media for our misconceptions. They present an image of what people like me should be like (i.e. ungrounded, vaguely psychotic, largely unintelligible, and a little fruit loopy) and then, people like me are supposed to fit into the performance mold like all the others out there who don the mantle of spiritual authority.
If I don’t, questions are immediately raised in the minds
Expectations are not being met!
Something must be wrong.
Perhaps I am not not legit.
Honestly though, wizard and wand stuff has nothing to do with spirituality or empowerment or even mystical connection to The Fabric. That is, at best, the childhish fantasy creation of an undeveloped or atrophied right brain, or at worst propaganda pure and simple. It’s reality control stuff really, and intended not only for you, but for people like me as well, for “gurus” as well.
Think “as above in consciousness, so below in matter here.”
Your will and intent has an impact on our collective reality, and even my individual one.
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Your expectations about what I should be like may not force me to act a certain way, but they do put pressure on.
It works like this.
Hollywood propaganda gives you a set of expectations about what a spiritual person should look like, these expectations get translated to will and intent, and this will and intent impacts reality, putting pressure on me to live up to collecive expectations.
I’ll feel it as peer pressure, or guilt, or maybe a desire to please (esp. If my ego is damaged).
You’ll feel it as happiness and satisfaction that I am living up to your expectations,
If I want to release the pressure, I’ll have to change.
I’ll have to be different.
And if I’m not?
If I don’t give in?
Well then I run the risk of being seen as illegitimate.
If I don’t wear the right robes…
If I don’t utter words of guru like wisdom…
If I don’t live up to appearances, if I don’t meet up with your expectations, if I don’t fit into the box provided, then I lose legitimacy and impact.
It is a very subtle, and very powerful, form of reality control and it puts your average spiritual teacher in a bit of a quandary.
We must either perform according to expectations, or risk being made irrelevant, un-viable, and not popular.
It is a problem, I admit, but not primarily for me, primarily for you. In fact, especially for you because frankly I don’t care what your expectations of me might and I’m not about to give into them just to fit into the box provided. In fact, I gaurantee you I’ll work against that mould (like I’m doing now) because I want to break your expectations so that together we can smash the invisible ideological force field that surrounds your mind and keeps it tucked safely away from authentic spiritual insight and growth.
Bottom line, my concern isn’t being popular, my concern is making sure that your path forward is as clear, grounded, rationale, and effective as possible, and I can’t do that if I follow Hollywood’s fantastical guidelines, or India’s guru expectations (like some others have done in the past).
And I won’t.
So, given my resistance to “fitting in” to your expectations, the problem with the expectations is primarily yours, and no where is this more apparent than at the “advanced” level of spiritual study where you will begin to apply your Hollywood expectations about mystical magic to yourself, and you will likely come up short.
You’ll get to the advanced level and you’ll wonder, where are the starry robes an the pointed hats?
You will ask yourself, shouldn’t I be having profound visions and magical experiences?
Shouldn’t I be channeling the lord high command of the intergalactic “white brotherhood” (a euphemism for freemasonry if ever there as one) by now?
Oh sure, by the advanced level of LP study your health will probably have improved, your self esteem and ego may be healed (or healing), your relationships (those that remain anyway) may be better than they have ever been, your understanding of spiritual concepts might be off the scale, and you may even be having “gentle” insights, ideas, and visions, but the moon and the stars, the personality disorder, and the borderline schizophrenia that you see in some lizard obsessed spiritual authors, will missing.
But because your expectations might suggest they should be there, you’ll be wondering, “did I do something wrong” or “is there something wrong with me?”
You’ll wonder if you’ve wasted your time, and your money.
“This can’t be right,” you’ll think.
“Shouldn’t I be floating off into hyperspace by now?”
Well, the categorical answer to that is no, you shouldn’t, because all that stuff is spiritual pathology. Like Hollywood expectations, or the guru culture, it is about social control and nothing more. In fact, if you want my opinion, healthy spirituality is represented by the simple things like improved health (of the physical unit), improved relationships, greater sense of well being, healthy self esteem, increased power to make changes in your life, and so on. It is not about robes, pointy hats, psychedelic colors, or mystical incantations, it is about awarekness, empowerment, efficacy, and health (mental, emotional, spiritual).
If your health has improved at the LP advanced level, if your personal care and relationships are better, and if your understanding of spiritual concepts is off the scale, then you have done everything right. The spiritual journey itself should NEVER lead to paranoia, ungrounded ideation, fear, anger, hatred, confusion, or even dramatic mystical revelations or profound and sweeping visions. Healthy and authentic spirituality should be grounded, healthy, normal, and without fireworks. The goal isn’t to be different, special, dramatic, deep, mystical, or whatever, that’s just your bodily ego talking to you, the goal is calm centered spirituality of the type that blends into the world in a gently insistent, but powerfully transformative, way.
When the body and mind are healthy, when you have established right thought, and right environment, when you engage in right action, and when insights and glimmerings come to you as you walk barefoot in the park, or sit quietly in a chair with a tea and a biscuit, then my job is done and you are where you are supposed to be.
Now, having said this, does this mean that you won’t have grand visions, mystical experiences, or body rocking kunadlini activations?
No.
You can have these things.
In fact, you can work towards them by healing chakras (including the heart charka, and especially when it is “blocked”) and doing the kundalini visualizations provided in the Book of the Triumph of Spirit. At the advanced level, and once you’ve gone through ALL the LP intermediate materials (esp. the stuff on archetypes), you can even jump start the process with entheogens if you like (though this should be done with care and guidance). Either way is fine and either way should be safe so long as you have done your LP intermediate study, have dealt with fears and misconceptions, have processed and integrated new archetypes, have healed bodily ego, and grounded firmly in the 3D reality that you live in.
Now, we’ll explore the more “mystical” side of spirituality going forward at the advanced level of study. Next time we’ll start that discussion by talking briefly about the idea of shortcuts, and by that I mean there are none. Although the LP is billed as a fast route forward, it is so because the foundations are solid, and the pathways well layed out. It is the difference between walking though a thick forest with no path, and a yellow brick road towards the emereld city. In both cases you got to walk The Path, only in the former case it will take longer and be a lot harder.
Now before closing I hav one more comment. If my sugestion of entheogens bothers you, keep an open mind. Entheogens have been a part of the sacred canopy of this planet ever since the human brain was developed enough to respond to them. You could say they are part of the “tool kit.” Altough I have to say they are misued about 99.9 percent of time, when treated with the proper care and respect they can be powerful enhancements towards creative, artistic, even mystical experience. It is really no different than drinking coffee or tea, eating greens for the nutritional value, or ingesting the seeds or lentils that your body needs as nutritional fuel and gastrointestinal fibre. It’s natural, its herbal/fungal, and it Gaia’s gift to you. So consider. Although I will say this in closing, stay away from acidic psychedelic stuff because it is too easy to lose your footing (especially if you don’t discriminate your information source), don’t do anything illegal (always look for legal options in your area), and if there is a history of abuse, boundary violations, bad relationships, and old energy archetypes, step slowly and with guidance. The biggest danger in jumpstarting the mystical side of things is a damaged bodily ego. Be careful, go close, and follow the oft repeated advice to get help if you seem to be losing your ground and getting loose into fear, confusion, shock and awe, or just plain egoic stupidity.
In the dark hallways of our schools,
At the black board, and now the white,
In the corridors of wealth and power,
In the bloody room of Love’s de-light.
In the basements and the alleys,
In the board rooms high and low.
While the adagio pain of dying,
Grips our fate from space below.
In the valleys off the Shadows
Of walking dead who gasp for air.
In the hallows and the burrows
Where undead wraiths breathe hatred’s prayer.
In the still black, benighted shadows,
Of your chained and blinded mind.
In the depths of wounded heart song, You need no longer be confined.
And if hearing makes your heart skip
If realization brings strange delight.
If you blink and wonder softly,
Is this the end of darkest night?
Well it really all depends, dear.
On the things that you do next.
Whether messenger brings freedom,
Or accelerates lord Shiva’s breath.
So as end of line approaches,
Does the light comes shining through.
Or does fear, anger, and hatred.
Spin you round in witches brew.
In the last LP core podcast I talked about some things you can do to facilitate the enlightenment process. In particular I spoke about discipline, fortitude, and boundaries. These enlightenment/awakening facilitators are very important factors that you have control over and that can help you along your awakening away, so make sure you are aware of them. Next up I want to talk about two more things that you can do to keep making forward progress along your merry way. These things are 1) be positive and 2) be truthful. We’ll start our discussion today with the notion of being truthful and end in the next column with the right way to be positive (and yes, there is a wrong way to be positive).
Now, in this process of spiritual awakening, learning to be truthful is very important. This may seem like a no brainer and in a conceptual sense it is. Enlightenment or spiritual awakening is very much about the Truth with a capital “T.” It is about the truth about yourself, the truth about the world around you, the truth about the cosmos, and so on. And the really great thing about all this truth is that at core the truth about you, the truth about the world, and the truth about the cosmos are all really wonderful truths, and here they are.
The truth about you is that you are a spark of divine consciousness incarnated in a physical body.
The truth about this world is that it is a total creation of the love and abundance of spirit.
The truth about the cosmos is that it is an expression of pure divine will.
These are awesome truths, no way around it. But there is also a significant problem and that problem is that often between you and these awesome truths there are walls of funky ideological rot and rivers of putrid, fetid, lie that keep you far away from seeing, realizing, and being with these truths. Some of this rot and lie is applied externally, and some comes from within you.
The external lie and rot comes from people who are either a) confused themselves or b) do not want us to know the truth about things. The truth will set you free, as they say, but a few people on this earth do not want to see us free, alive, and in touch with our true divinity. A few people would rather have us locked to our devices and confined to our role as workers and consumers, than have us open, aware, empowered, and connected with our divinity. The reason is simple enough. The world “as it is” does not require your full divinity and so the truth is repressed and suppressed. Getting through to the real truth of things requires you to get through the layers of ideological nonsense that corrupt your self perception and interfere with apprehension of reality. It can be done, but it is a bit of work.
On the other hand there is internal lie and rot. The internal lie and rot comes from our own self-deception and repression. The truth is, we’ve all experienced a lot of bad things while on this earth. How many reading these words were beaten as children, or bullied in school, or sexually assaulted by “trusted” adults? And how many have repressed these events, or are pretending they didn’t occur, or that they aren’t as bad as all that? On the other hand how many reading these words have hit or hurt others, calling names, excluding, or have been bullies. In both cases the truth is difficult to face. But how many prefer a fantasy lie over the difficult and toxic truth? And how many reading these words excuse these behaviors by telling themselves the victims deserve it, that it makes them stronger, or that it builds character? We lie, we pretend, and we create fantasy worlds to cover over all the ugliness that we’ve experienced, or we have committed, since birth. Like the walls of ideological sludge that block us from the truth, our own self deception gets in the way as well.
Now I do not mean to judge or accuse here. We certainly do not live in an ideal world and as a result there are no innocent adults on this planet. We’ve all done things we are ashamed of. This is just to point out that there is a lot of “untruth” in our lives and if you are serious about spiritual awakening, or enlightenment, then all that untruth has to go because untruth is absolutely and 100 percent incompatible with enlightenment. It is the anti-thesis of spiritual awakening, the “anti-christ of consciousness,” and the hellish prevention of utopian ascension. The bottom line is, if you accept lie and untruth into your life, you are not enlightened and you are not spiritually awake. You simply can’t have one without the other.
Now, if this seems dramatic and harsh, I get it.
However there can be no compromise on this point.
Think of it like this.
Imagine standing by yourself in a dark room. Your eyes are open but you cannot see anything. Suddenly someone starts to slowly turn on the light. As this happens you start to see what is in the room. What you see is not pretty though. You see dog poop and cat poop, cloths strewn everywhere, dirt, filth, busted furniture, roaches, holes in the walls, and so on. It is a bloody and probably toxic mess. Nevertheless the light comes fully on, you see the truth, and as a result are now “enlightened” because the light allows you to see the truth about everything around you. But now as you become “enlightened,” as you see the truth, you start to have some ugly feelings. You look at the mess and you are overwhelmed. You wonder who put this here and why? You slowly turn in circles shocked. It’s too much work and you do not feel like you can deal with it. So what do you to? Well instead of starting the cleanup work, you turn the light down, close your eyes, and go back to the darkness you had before. Of course, going back to darkness can be hard once you’ve seen the truth, so now you might have to engage in a active cover up. You step gingerly around the disaster, kick a few things out of the way, put up a couple of pictures to cover the holes in the walls, dress things up a bit, and pretend the room is in better shape than it is. You even solicit the help of friends and family in this, getting them to participate in your fantasy just so you do not have to deal with the mess around you.
And it works of course. Humans have a remarkably developed ability to lie to themselves and others, and if that’s what you choose, that’s fine. But if the light is down in your room, and your eyes are closed, and you’re avoiding the truth, and dressing up the mess, you’re not enlightened, you’re repressed and self deluded. Of course you can stand there and claim enlightenment, but nobody with eyes open and lights on is going to believe you because they’ll see and recognize the truth about your room even if you do not.
And this is a problem why? Well besides the fact that turning the light down and pretending is exactly the opposite of turning the light on and facing the truth, doing that leaves you in a toxic mess that’s not only bad for your health, but that also saps your energy. All work you put into fantasizing and pretending and covering things over saps your energy and prevents you from doing the work you need to do. It prevents you from cleaning up, it prevents you from healing, and it prevents you from seeing the deeper truths about your self not because you cannot see these truths, or because they are difficult truths to grasp, but because of the layers of garbage that cover them up. It’s a bit of an “enlightenment” trap and in a world of demolished self esteem and superficial appearances a lot of people fall into it. But you don’t have to. Getting out of it easy. All you have to do is make a commitment to the seeing, perceiving, and facing the truth about things no matter what it is. Facing the truth is the first step towards seeing reality, cleaning up the mess, and moving forward into full light, consciousness, and awareness of the glorious truth of your inner divinity, power, and light.
And that’s all I have to say today. Next time, the importance of positivity.
