Wounds as the Path to Awakening

What an utterly weird, amazing and utterly frightening time we are living through. Many people are walking around with masks on their faces, and yet inwardly we are all being unmasked. We are being confronted with all of the dark shadows inside of us—our wounds, traumas and unhealed abuse issues—that we’ve been able to postpone looking at up till now. All of these shadow energies are not only in our face, but behind it as well, which is to say that we are confronted within our very soul with the darkness of the world we live in, which is a darkness in which we all share. I am curious about how these seemingly darker forces in our world (which we see playing out all around us in the outer world) have to do with our inner experience of being wounded.

I can talk for myself. Since the advent of the global pandemic, I have felt even more intensely both the light AND dark aspects of myself, as if they are interdependent parts of a deeper process wherein one is evoking the presence of the other. Due to the feeling that there’s no time to waste—a sense of urgency—it’s as if the creative light-filled part of me has gotten more vibrant, while at the same time, the deepest darkness embedded in my unhealed wounds also seems stronger. The creative tension between the two—between the light and dark parts of myself—has correspondingly intensified to a practically unbearable degree. As my light increases, the darkness within me is simultaneously coming to the fore, making itself known to the point where it’s getting harder for me to look away from it.

It’s as if the light that I am getting in touch with is illumining everything in me that is not of the light, i.e., that is dark, which makes sense as the purpose of light is to reveal darkness. As I more deeply connect with the light of my nature, my subjective experience is that there is a seemingly darker force within me that wants to prevent me from connecting with my light at all costs.

Maybe this is just me, but I have an intuition that this is an archetypal, impersonal and universal situation. I find myself easily imagining that an analogous process might be going on for many, if not all of us (be it consciously or not). The question is: do we indulge in our coping strategies to keep these seemingly darker and wounded parts of ourselves at bay (food, drugs, Netflix anyone?)—which is ultimately to be avoiding relationship with ourselves—or do we unmask ourselves and turn to unflinchingly face the darker, wounded parts within us?

Our wounds are semi-stable resonance patterns of vibratory energy to which we have become accustomed as existing in a particular way. They are held in place by how we pay attention to and interpret them. If we intentionally start attending to our wounds in a new and different way we change their resonance pattern, i.e., the way they manifest.

Though the moment(s) of our wounding happened historically, in an actual moment in time somewhere back in the past, our experience of our wounds is something that takes place in the present moment. When we get right down to it, our wounds are not a hangover from the past (what in alchemy is referred to by the term caput mortuum - a residue left over after the distillation of a substance). The genesis of our wounds lies in the present moment; they only exist in the present moment. Our wounds are freshly constructed—with our participation—each and every moment, which is to say that it is only in the present moment that they can be “cured.” This is to say that we ourselves are complicit in the creation and re-creation of our present moment experience of woundedness.

At each and every moment that these unhealed, wounded and seemingly problematic parts of myself come up, I am confronted with two options. One is I can turn away, subtly avoiding them, which is to dissociate from a part of my experience (and hence split off from a part of myself). Once I do this, I have unwittingly granted my wounds an unwarranted substantial existence in which I’ve reinforced their “reality” (for if they weren’t real, I wouldn’t have a need to avoid them). In avoiding relationship with this wounded part of myself, however, I am unconsciously colluding with my wounds so as to sustain and perpetuate them over time, thus keeping them alive.

The next time my wounds manifest I then have all the evidence I need that I really have an unresolved problem, for if I didn’t have an unresolved problem, then I wouldn’t feel these wounds, as round and round my story goes. Once I solidify myself as having wounds, however, just like a dream, where the inner and the outer are mirrored reflections of each other, the universe instantaneously reflects back and supplies all the evidence I need to prove to myself that I really am wounded, which further confirms and validates my point of view of seeing myself as someone who has unhealed wounds, ad infinitum, in a self-perpetuating feedback loop whose source is my own mind.

If we can imagine the possible existence of “darker forces” that exist within the fabric of our universe, one of the ways these darker forces operate is to seduce us into getting hooked by our wounds. Once we fall prey to taking the bait and identify with our wounds, these darker forces can then exploit our feelings of woundedness so as to keep us stuck in our wounds. We are then unwittingly colluding with the darker forces that want more than anything else to keep us unaware of the light that we all carry. This process, which takes place in the present moment, is the real tragedy, far more tragic than any personal experience that happened in the past. Once we identify ourselves as being wounded, our wounds then instantly become obstacles to the light of our true nature (or more accurately, we ourselves become our own obstacles), instead of the portal through which we become familiar with our darker half and further introduced to our light.

Conceiving of our wounds as existing objectively instantaneously conditions us to be a separate subject—an object, actually—who is subject to our wounds. The story we weave around our wounds is an expression of how we relate to, experience—and create—ourselves. If we conceive of our wounds as objectively existing over time with their cause in the past, we concurrently conjure ourselves up and believe ourselves to be a wounded person who exists in and over time, and hence, as someone who is bound by time.

In contrast to thinking that our wounds are merely happening to us as passive victims, however, there is another perspective through which we can view our wounds that empowers us and allows us to receive their gifts. We can realize that our wounds are on-going events that we are actively participating in via our awareness (or lack thereof) that only exist—and are only ever experienced—within our present moment awareness.

This insight allows us to relate to our wounds as being ephemeral artifacts of our present perception, existing as momentary displays of our creative process in the moment we are experiencing them. From this point of view, the present moment manifestation of our wounds, instead of confirming our identity as being a wounded person with an objectively true personal history that supports our woundedness, are experienced as releasing and unwinding themselves via the very process of their arising. In other words, we can allow our wounds to manifest in the very moment of their arising as an evanescent, transitory and self-liberating revelation of what the moment before we had conceived of as existing in solid, substantial and "real" form.

A perfect symbol for this process is a mirror and its reflections. A mirror is a symbol for our true nature – it always remains imperturbably and unwaveringly the same, a presence of pristine clarity, unaffected by whatever reflections arise within it. Whereas the mirror symbolizes our higher self or true nature, the reflections, in our example, symbolically represent our wounds.

In the apocryphal text The Acts of John, Christ himself said, “I would be wounded and I would wound.” We could think of Christ being wounded as his appearance via the reflections in the mirror. In saying that he will wound, he is pointing out that our experience of being wounded is a numinous event. The birth of the higher self can oftentimes be a wounding experience for the ego. The problem is when we personalize our wounding, identifying ourselves as being wounded – we then tend to blind ourselves to the deeper transpersonal context in which our experience of woundedness is taking place. The reflections in the mirror, though inseparable from—and the unmediated expression of—the mirror, are not, however, the mirror. In this same passage, Christ reveals his true nature by saying, “A mirror am I to thee that perceivest me.” The mirror is only perceived through its reflections.

The forms of the reflections are imbued with the pristine purity of the mirror, yet if we overly focus on the forms without noticing the mirror which contains them and in which they are suspended, we also tend to not perceive the mirror-like purity of the forms. When we see the reflections that arise in the mirror, we then tend to either identify with them (becoming absorbed into the reflections, thereby thinking we are wounded), contract against them, dissociate from them, judge them, etc. – all of these reactions are investing the reflections (the wounds) with a greater sense of reality than they deserve, and hence, bestowing them with power over us.

If, on the other hand, we recognize the reflections that are appearing as being the impermanent display and unmediated expression of the mirror, and that who we are in all this is the mirror itself, we have then distinguished ourselves from the reflections while simultaneously connecting with our true nature. We have then revealed our mirror-like nature while at the same time creating ourselves anew in the process.

Even if we are momentarily taken over by and identified with our wounds, this embodied experience of self-identity (as a wounded person) is itself an ephemeral reflection arising within the mirror-like nature of our mind that leaves our true nature untouched. Any sense of a particular identity—wounded or not—is similarly a transitory reflection with no substantial independent existence from the point of view of the mirror.

The reflections (our wounds), though seemingly obscuring the silvered surface of the mirror (our true nature), simultaneously reveal it, for we wouldn’t notice the mirror without the reflections. A clear mirror is empty of all qualities except its ability to reflect. Yet, it cannot reflect itself, just like the pure formless state of awareness which underlies and precedes every state of ordinary cognition can itself never be the object of such cognition. If left to its own devices, the mirror would never enter our experiential reality; it needs something seemingly outside of itself (the objects it is reflecting, in this example, our wounds) to reveal itself.

The mirror and its reflections are quantum in nature, existing in a superposition of states, simultaneously obscuring and revealing the nature of the mirror. How the mirrored reflections (our wounds) actually manifest—as obscurations or revelations—depends upon how we relate to them, which is a function of our awareness in each moment.

A polished mirror is open and receptive to the world, invisible by itself were it not for the world seemingly outside of itself that is reflected within it. Interestingly, the philosopher’s stone of alchemy (symbolic of our true nature)—the healing panacea for what ails humanity—is said to be as clear and translucent as a diamond or a crystal, considered invisible to normal vision, called lapis invisibilitatus. The Self as a mirror is difficult to understand not because of its obscurity—it is literally staring us in the face—but rather, because of our unfamiliarity with a dimension of our experience that is ever-present and yet, is practically invisible because of its obviousness.

Just like the reflections potentially reveal something (the mirror) that is transcendent to themselves and is invisible by itself, our wounds are also potentially the revelation of an invisible part of ourselves (the Self) that is transcendent to our wounds. Our wounds contain the true gold (another symbol for the philosopher’s stone) that could not have been found anywhere else.

The reflections are the energy and pristine presence of the formless mirror manifesting and being expressed in form. Hidden, encoded within the conditional appearances that are the reflections, is the doorway to the unconditional mirror that underlies, contains and transcends the reflections. Similarly, hidden encoded within our wounds is the revelation of our true (unwounded) nature in disguise. When we recognize this, we realize that our wounds are not only the doorway to our true nature, but both its covert and overt revelation, simultaneously cloaked in shadow while openly revealing both our darkness and light.

Recognizing this instantaneously dispels the darker forces that are seemingly obscuring our nature, transmuting them on the spot into secret allies. Though our wounds are seemingly the manifestation of these darker forces, by breaking us open they can potentially let in and actively serve the light. Unwittingly helping us to deepen the realization of our true nature, these seemingly darker forces wind up connecting us with a higher form of light within us that transcends the dualistic notion of light and darkness as opposing each other.

We don't cure our wounds. They cure us.

(ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul Levy is a wounded healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality. He is the founder of the Awakening in the Dream Community in Portland, Oregon. Paul is the author of The Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality (SelectBooks, May, 2018), Awakened by Darkness: When Evil Becomes Your Father, Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil and The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis. An artist, he is deeply steeped in the work of C. G. Jung, and has been a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for over thirty years.

Please visit Paul's website www.awakeninthedream.com. You can contact Paul at paul@awakeninthedream.com; he looks forward to your reflections.)

Modern Zen

One thing I’ve learned from giving lectures to audiences over the years: never meet expectations.

“Expectations” is a large container waiting to be filled up. People have these containers. They lug them around with them. They want them to be filled up.

For example, if they expect shocking information from the speaker, and they get it, their expectations are met.

Audiences train themselves to be audiences, and their expectation-containers are ready when they sit down to listen.

There is something missing. Something monumental.

The present moment. The present now. The alive moment. Because, for all its fanfare and interest, the event is not really in the present.

This is by design. No one wants the moment. People’s whole lives are devoted to avoiding the moment, because it is spontaneous. That’s what a moment is. Spontaneous.

“Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become ‘stage-worthy.’” (Viola Spolin)

No one is used to spontaneity. No one is prepared for it.

No one knows what they would do or how they would react in the spontaneous moment. That’s why it is avoided.

“Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves.” (Viola Spolin)

Yet, the paradox is: people yearn for the spontaneous moment. They yearn for that freedom. It’s not freedom as an idea or concept, but freedom as a living thing.

I bring all this up because passivity is the universal effect of living for most people. In that state, they still have expectations and those big containers, but the way they receive information—they certainly don’t intend to climb up out of their own passivity. That’s the last thing they would do.

“It [spontaneity] creates an explosion that for the moment frees us from handed-down frames of reference, memory choked with old facts and information and undigested theories and techniques of other people’s findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom when we are faced with reality, and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative expression.” (Viola Spolin)

So when I speak to audiences at live events, I find a way to remind them that we’re in a kind of false relationship. It’s interesting and false at the same time. There we are in a room, and I’m the speaker and they’re the audience. I’m active and they’re passive.

Those are our roles. Those are our functions. It’s accepted, but it’s unworkable. It’s self-defeating, unless we all want to be existing in a dead space outside the living present moment. And I don’t.

This means I have to readjust things. I have to let people know that I know they’re there. Right now. I know they’re listening, and I know they’re absorbing, and I know that beyond a certain point (10-15 minutes), they’re going to shift down into passive mode.
Finding a way, an interesting way to let them know is a challenge.

It’s really a challenge that extends to the whole world.

Are we alive or are we doing it by the numbers?

Look at any set-up, which is “the way things are supposed to be,” and “the parts that people are supposed to play,” and you can see light. The light is what could happen to upset that situation and turn it into something else. Something that would bring people in from the cold, into the moment itself.

Spontaneity means everything is created now.

That’s why I keep writing about imagination, because imagination will change a life. It won’t only change the content. It’ll change the way life happens.

Here’s something I can guarantee anywhere in the universe where beings populate planets, where they think, plan, strategize. They’re not living in the moment, but they claim they are. They’ll say, “How could I be anywhere else? We’re all in the present. That’s all there is.”

But they’re wrong. Their big containers are in the moment, and they’re waiting outside to accept the flow of information from the containers.

If a person (usually a hard-headed realist) thinks he’s already in the moment, have him go up on a stage with another person and take on the role of a galactic cop on patrol, questioning a suspect who is accused of stealing a planet. If the realist can eventually improvise and do it, he’ll experience being in the moment in a way he never has before.

Likewise, if he painted 200 paintings, something different would happen to him. He would come to the edge of what he already knows (which he’s expressing in the paintings), and then he would step off. He would do something on the paper or canvas which is not what he knows. It would arise spontaneously, and he would feel a new space, a new energy, a new now.

Imagination. Alive imagination. That’s the key. The key to the door that leads out of the Matrix.

What’s wrong with Zen?

Nothing is wrong with Zen, except the people who practice it.

That’s a joke. Sort of.

In the modern style, especially in America, Zen is mostly meditation, and more meditation, and more meditation, and the point of it seems to be to get to a zero point, where you can watch your own mind, your own thoughts, and finally, without effort, stay separate from them, separate from all that radio static, and separate also from your own unbidden parade of emotions that swing by with tooting horns and crashing cymbals and clacking drums and gawking dancing clowns.

A laudable goal.

But on the whole, how many people who do this wind up becoming passive? That’s the thing. People tend to opt for quietness.

Whereas, the whole idea ought to be: launch a tremendous amount of dynamic action from the platform of zero-stillness.

Because stillness as a way of life sooner or later begins to disintegrate.

In original Zen, there were ordeals. The teacher gave the student things to do, tasks which eventually became absurd, without discernible purpose. The teacher spoke to the student in riddles and wisecracks. The teacher drove the student into a state of desperation, because the student’s rational faculties, which were obsessively involved in systems, couldn’t supply answers to questions which defied logic.

The teacher did whatever he had to do to bring the student out over the edge of the cliff, where in mid-air, there were no foundations…and the student felt terror. But the teacher persisted.

And then, in one explosive moment, the student found himself floating in the air. He saw there was no need to explain his existence. There was no need to place a veil between himself and the present moment. He didn’t die. He was, finally, alive.

Who knows how this radical approach actually worked out in the many cloisters and huts and cottages where it was practiced, where the stories grew and expanded in their retelling.

Those old teachers were tough characters. They weren’t merely meditation instructors.

There was another aspect of Zen, which survives to this day. It could be summarized as: “become the other.” The archer becomes the target. He becomes the bow, the arrow, and the target.

The runner becomes the road and the air and the sky and the clouds. The artist becomes the canvas.

The theater of merging with the other.

And as in any theatrical setting, the actor can, by choice, merge with, and un-merge from, his role.

But again, in these times, the main thrust of Zen teaching seems to be meditation, and the culture of stillness, quietude, and passive acceptance.

I’m not saying the meditation is easy to do. It isn’t. But somehow, its environment has become circumscribed.

This is unsurprising in America, where every philosophic and spiritual import from Asia has been distorted and watered down for the seeker-consumer. The overriding intent has been to create The Quiet Person.

The world of action has been painted as too disturbing to the “student seeking inner peace.” Therefore, retreat. Therefore, set up a buffer zone within which all is harmonized and balanced.

Where is the Zen now that sends people out into the world to revolutionize it down to its core, that stimulates the desire to find and invent a Voice that will shatter delusions and create new realities that have never been seen before?

If the moment of insight, satori, doesn’t instigate this, what good is it?

How can satori be “seeing into one’s true nature,” if the result is a wan gaze out on a uniform landscape of soft-boiled bupkis?

The answer is obvious. Breaking apart, exploding the primary illusions and fears that hold an individual in check is not the goal of most Zen as it is now practiced. That objective has been replaced with the false promise that some ultimate “consciousness” will reconcile the soul with itself.

The way this promise is offered and the way it is taught and the way its surrounding social culture is embroidered is a dud. Dead on arrival.

It’s time for a few new koans.

What is the real sound of David Rockefeller? What does Henry Kissinger say when somebody finally puts him in a small bottle with a cork on it? How does an android disguise himself as a human?

If I need a Zen teacher, I’ll go to Henny Youngman: “A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn’t pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.”

In the beginning, the whole point of Zen was to shake things up, not calm them down.

The master assumed a new student was an annoying clod. But that doesn’t comfortably mesh with today’s “tolerant culture.” Today, annoying clods are a special interest group.

Silence, as a key Zen feature, isn’t only about a desired inner condition now. It’s about a synthetic attitude. So show me a temple where the meditation room is outfitted with a few dozen giant TV screens. The students do their meditation while CNN, Christingle Matthews, Sean Hannity, Oprah, news-boy-on-a bike Brian Williams, Hawaii Five-O, the Shopping Channel, Pawn Stars, Jimmy Fallon and his screaming pubescent audience, and four or five Spanish soaps are going full blast.

That would be a start.

Or throw on 20 or 30 TED lectures simultaneously—prancing grasshoppers extolling the future of technology.

I submit that if the one of the ancient Zen teachers walked into a modern American Zen cloister today, that’s exactly what he’d do. Turn on a few hundred TV sets, computers, and mobile devices and say, “Okay, try being quiet in the middle of this!”

Zen is sacred? What? When was it ever sacred? Soft bells, empty halls?

No, you must have Zen confused with a funeral home.

Every age has its massive collection of heavily loaded apple carts, and the job of Zen is to overturn them. When up is down, and insanity is called normal, that’s where you begin…

by Jon Rappoport
August 28, 2018
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

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Sacred Agency

“Transcendence is the only real alternative to extinction.” ~Václav Havel, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 4, 1994

“We are cosmologizing the human.” ~Henryk Skolimowski, The Participatory Mind

Human consciousness has been on a long journey. Our awareness has shifted from the earlier archaic, animistic mode; to the religious and scientific; and then later to an industrial, mechanistic consciousness. Our ancestors did not live in the same world as we live in now, nor would they have exhibited the same kind of consciousness as we currently do. Consciousness is not a fixed phenomenon or static expression—it changes alongside the flows and fluxes of history, time, and environment.

An integral mode of consciousness began to emerge after the successive industrial revolutions that adapted a “machine style” perspective of control, power, and efficiency; and which eventually propelled global society toward excessive consumption and accelerated growth. This integral consciousness emerged parallel to a new era of technological innovation. That is, a consciousness that reflects dynamics of connection and communication across condensed time and space.

It can be said that we have gone from worshipping faith, then objective knowledge, to finally arriving at an understanding that everything depends upon the subjective self. Throughout this whole journey, like the hero that traverses through the underworld, we have ventured far in search of a mode of being – a state of consciousness and awareness – that can benefit us. A place of conscious self-awareness, which may be termed as sacred, has been present within humanity from the very beginning. It never went away – only we went away. This situation is similar to the behavior of individuals as observed by psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow noted how people step back from doing something important, believing others will do it instead. Somewhere along the way we made an internal agreement to stay back and not to overestimate our abilities. It appears that too many of us for too long have avoided being ‘fully human’ and content to remain as ‘only human.’

Regardless of how we may articulate it, the sacred presence within humanity cannot be denied as it is an expression of the evolutionary impulse. As such, it does not stop at transitional stages but is compelled to push toward ever higher states and degrees of consciousness. We are in the hands of a force that we can barely recognize. Throughout the long journey of our development human beings have been deeply involved in this sacred unfolding (for want of a better expression). What this means is that the transcendental yearning to go beyond one’s present state persists in each of us. All of this, our very humanism, should be an inherent part of our cultural mythology. Or at least should influence how we understand and perceive our reality.

Our experience of reality is never pure, but always mediated through consciousness in its various states of reception. The myths we hold as an individual, a culture, and as a collective species reflects our own state of mind. Unfortunately, humanity has for far too long considered itself separate from the cosmos. We feel as if exiled upon a dead planet somewhere upon the fringes of our galaxy. If we do not fully know ourselves it may be because our cultural myths (our narratives) place us within a cosmically isolated reality. To be truly integrated we must recognize that we participate not only upon the planet but also within a grander mythology. In other words, we should accept our responsibility as having sacred agency. After all, the history of human civilization is the history of ourselves as change agents.

Sacred Agency

The philosopher Karl Jaspers referred to the period from 800–200 BCE as the Axial Age. It was a time that, according to Jaspers, similar expressions of new thinking appeared in Persia, India, China, and the Western world. He indicated also that the Axial Age represented an in-between period, where old certainties had lost their validity and new ones were yet to emerge. The new religions that arose in this time—Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and monotheism—influenced new thinking in terms of individuality, identity, and the human condition. These new emerging religions helped to catalyze new forms of thinking and expressions of human consciousness. And yet, over time, we have seen how they were not wholly successful in establishing permanent developmental change.

Social thinker Duane Elgin has referred to our present time as the Second Axial Age in that religions of separation are being replaced by a new spirit of communion. Elgin says that the world is moving into a spiritual communion and empathic connection with a living cosmos. Maybe we are in need of being reminded that there is nowhere else to go when the cosmos already exists within us. This empathic consciousness that Elgin speaks of can be related to the emerging integral consciousness that reflects our increased interconnectivity through our global networks. This connects with our innate, fundamental drive to seek out communion and coherence. A mode of human consciousness that seeks coherence is itself a reflection of a universal natural order. In other words, it is a self-referencing feedback loop. And so now allow me to speculate.

My suggestion is that a purpose for sentient human life upon this planet is as a driver toward establishing a coherent planetary consciousness. In other words, to act as a channel to ‘bring in’ – i.e., receive consciousness – from the consciousness field and to manifest it specifically (that is, to project it) within our earthly reality. There is a correlation here with Aurobindo’s concept of the Supermind/Overmind, in that a form of higher consciousness can be made immanent upon the material plane. Aurobindo referred to this as human evolution moving towards a suprarational or spiritual age that exhibits an intuitive or Gnostic mode of consciousness.

The finer channeling of the consciousness field would require the adequate preparation of human receptivity. That is, our minds and even perhaps our nervous system would need to be sufficiently prepared in order to successfully actualize this potential. By raising localized aspects of human consciousness through individual perceptions and awareness we may better increase the coherence of consciousness amongst the whole—a form of collective transcendence through species consciousness. And this can be made tangible by local agents – i.e., each one of us – becoming aware and conscious in everyday acts of right thinking, right behavior, and right being. It is a mode of sensitive and balanced consciousness that comes only with considerable effort and discipline. This discipline forms part of the developmental awakening within each individual, and which then influences our perceptions and life experiences.

As such, we can come to recognize that we are no longer either isolated individuals or an inarticulate mass. We are localized consciousness acting through aware individuals who consciously seek to connect, collaborate, and care about the future. Each one of us, as localized consciousness, is a reflection of the grander nonlocal consciousness. And in this way each one of us is also a reflection of the other. No individual lives within a shell separated from everybody else, but each is connected to all through our conscious humanity.

What we are seeing emerge across the world is the early stirrings of a planetary civilization; one that is driving toward diversity and coherence. And as we connect and share our thoughts, ideas, and visions we will be helping to strengthen the signal or reception of consciousness and thus the bringing in of the grander cosmic consciousness. A planetary consciousness spread across the Earth may not only be a real possibility, it may very well be a fundamental cosmic purpose.

Human Purpose in the Sacred Order

Recent scientific discoveries indicate that our reality is coded from beyond cosmic space-time; and as such our reality behaves in a way consistent with what we know as a holographic projection. That is, the totality of our reality is in-formed from a deep consciousness beyond it. The known cosmos thus acts as a nonlocal consciousness field, of which sentient life forms as localized manifestations. It has been inferred through various religious and sacred texts, and various wisdom traditions, that the universe (material reality) came into being as a way for its source to ‘know itself.’ This is reminiscent of ‘know thyself,’ the famous maxim from the Oracle of Delphi. Or, in modern language, we can say that we are the eyes through which the cosmos contemplates itself.

Self-consciousness is generally attributed to those sentient organisms at a high peak of mental development. Self-reflection is one of the prized attributes of self-consciousness. Furthermore, self-realization is something we credit to each attained individual consciousness. A realization of the self is part of the path of human actualization. It is a path in which purpose and meaning are core drivers and potentials. Human beings – or we could say human becomings – are naturally driven by a longing, a purpose, and this signifies a connection with a sacred impulse. In our times human civilization has shifted into an unprecedented era of self-actualization. The psychologist Abraham Maslow, who originated a scale of self-actualization, recognized that one of the characteristics of self-actualizers is that they have far less doubt about what is right and wrong than normal people do, and they act upon this inner knowing.

As we further speculate, what would self-realization upon a greater scale be like? That is, self-realization as a planetary consciousness? Or as a galactic consciousness? What would a fully realized and self-conscious cosmic consciousness operating through all of its localized manifestations be like? This would constitute a state of coherent self-aware consciousness beyond our imagination. We can only speculate, or internally gaze upon the possibility.

As a recap then, human consciousness is a localized expression of the greater nonlocal consciousness field. As sentient beings we receive aspects of this consciousness that pervades our space-time. We are animated by it, and we then manifest this through our own minds and human cultures. Our individual expressions of consciousness also reflect back into the greater nonlocal consciousness field. The greater our individual perceptions and conscious realization, the greater the total realization of the entire holographic field consciousness (as if in a feedback loop). To put it another way, cosmic consciousness is ‘in-formed’ through the emerging awareness of each of its conscious subparts, or components. The art of the sacred then is that we each have a role in bringing the unfinished world into existence through conscious participation.

As each one of us wakes up (to use a common metaphor) the cosmic net shines that little bit brighter. If enough individual consciousnesses awake upon this planet we may catalyze a localized planetary field into collective conscious awareness. In this case, we are each a conscious agent of cosmic realization and immanence. We each have an obligation in our existence on this planet to raise our individual, localized expressions of consciousness. In doing so, we both infect and inspire others in our lives to raise theirs, as well as reflecting back our conscious contribution into the cosmic consciousness. In this way, we can act as both citizens of the cosmos as well as caretakers for the sacred order.

We have now arrived at a place where we can recognize and accept that our reality is not a static affair but an active, fluid realm that makes demands upon us. And in knowing this we are compelled to embrace the obligations and responsibilities that come with this role. We are on a path of completion – of conscious completion and communion – which is the eternal path of the sacred. Through this sacred journey of completion we connect and commune with everything else in our reality, and beyond. As human beings we have been tasked with this sacred endeavor. We can become aware of our creative contribution to reality and this can give us meaning and purpose. Perhaps this will finally provide us with our place in the cosmos. And how can we walk this path?

We can take this journey through our small acts of conscious awareness – our thoughts, attitudes, behavior, and our everyday actions. Upon the next level, our social changes and emerging technologies may form part of this process, establishing an extended mind and empathic embrace across the face of the earth. Magic is alive; magic never died. Everything is ultimately a technology of the soul; and all magic, all science, and all human expression is a part of this soulful technology. And with each step forward we move closer to soulful communion with a grand conscious and sacred order.

The sacred impulse animates the expression of consciousness at the individual, collective, and planetary level. And one day we may witness a grand awakening, unprecedented upon this planet, and this may very well be the purpose for sentient life, as conscious agents of the sacred order. This is likely to be more reality than fantasy. The hidden treasure that is at the very core of our existence wishes to be known – for us to know ourselves – by our individual journeys of self-realization. We are not alone. A great planetary future awaits us, as a great treasure that wishes for communion. Welcome to the new story.

“Truth has to appear only once, in a single mind, for it to be impossible for anything ever to prevent it from spreading universally and setting everything ablaze.” ~Teilhard de Chardin, The Heart of Matter

20 December 2017
Kingsley L. Dennis, Guest
Waking Times

About the Author

Kingsley L. Dennis is the author of The Phoenix Generation: A New Era of Connection, Compassion, and Consciousness, and The Sacred Revival: Magic, Mind & Meaning in a Technological Age, available at Amazon. Visit him on the web at http://www.kingsleydennis.com/.

Suppose you're an errant knight on your mission

"The cosmos is a forgery of the individual." (Visions of the Empire, Jon Rappoport)

If, late at night, or upon rising in the morning, a person can think of nothing that differentiates him from "the way the world thinks," if he can imagine nothing that distinguishes him from "the culture," then what does he have?

Well, he has passivity. He can be a spectator. He can be audience.

Or suppose he has a "vision" for his future that comes from somewhere else? It isn't his. He imported it like a rug or a car or a block of cheese.

A personal vision implies action.

It doesn't depend on a group.

A personal vision isn't disconnected from self. It comes from self. It's dreaming inside deep desire.

A personal vision is a person's conscious entrance point into the world. It spells out a person's difference from what "the world is proposing."

Or...coming at this from a somewhat different angle:

"There are some people who hear the word CREATE and wake up, as if a new flashing music has begun. This lone word makes them see something majestic and untamed and astonishing. They feel the sound of a Niagara approaching. CREATE is a word that should be oceanic. It should shake and blow apart the pillars of the smug boredom of the soul. CREATE is about what the individual does when he is on fire and doesn't care about concealing it. It's about what the individual invents when he has thrown off the false front that is slowly strangling him. CREATE is about the end of mindless postponement. It's about what happens when you burn up the pretty and petty little obsessions. It's about emerging from the empty suit and empty machine of society that goes around and around and sucks away the vital bloodstream."

Yes, that's a little better.

Could you handle living as Gulliver in a land of Lilliputians?

Suppose you already are?

Suppose the Lilliputians are Gullivers who have misplaced that core fact?

Suppose the world is a giant repetitive game of tic-tac-toe, and you find yourself looking in from the outside, and you perceive your job is alerting the hypnotized players?

Suppose in the fog of your subconscious, there is a vision and a dream moving toward the surface, at which point, if you choose to pay attention, nothing will ever be the same?

Suppose you're an errant knight on his mission, and you're approaching, in a forest, a secret threshold, beyond which you'll immediately apply all your years of training and discipline, to a series of mysteries also requiring you to respond with an undetermined number of absolutely spontaneous inventions, the potential for which has been waiting in silence inside you for centuries?

Suppose what has been commonly been called reality has been waiting for you to revolutionize it down to its core?

Suppose THESE questions are the actual substance of an education which is about to begin, and is solely in your hands?

Might that exceed a wide-screen movie at the multiplex and a slice of pizza?

By Jon Rappoport on July 11, 2017

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.

The trick behind Occult systems

It should be obvious to readers who’ve been with me for a while that I attack delusion in more than one place. Political systems, medical systems…and so-called spiritual systems.

That’s because I happen to believe in legitimate limited government, healing, and the unbounded life of the individual spiritual being.

Occult systems, which propose they have a hidden secret at the core, which will be revealed after a long and exhaustive search, are, at best, deluded, because they are concealing CONTENT.

By content, I mean information, knowledge, pattern, some facet of what already exists. This is a dead-end.

There is nothing wrong with truthful information. But….

Suppose we had a secret society called The Inner Core Flame X42. And we sold our members on the idea that, after a series of ascending initiations, they would arrive at the X, the secret of secrets.

Well, what could X be? Some nugget of information, some formula or phrase or fact or made-up fact about existence that is supposed to solve problems and enlighten consciousness.

But consciousness is dynamic. It isn’t a key looking for a lock.

Consciousness is dynamic because it creates. It creates new realities.

It isn’t primarily a container for What Is, for what already exists.

If there is a secret about consciousness, that’s it. IT CREATES.

So no matter what X we cooked up, it would become obsolete, of minor value.

Humans are ripe for buying an X because they are trained, and train themselves, to place the highest value on What Already Exists.

That’s mind control par excellence.

Occult systems deliver what controlled minds expect, and that’s why they’ve flourished. That’s the only reason why.

But there is another way.

When a person sees the “artistic” blow-by-blow creation of these power structures, in progress—rather than the finished product—an entirely new consciousness arises.

“If they can create Reality for me, I can create my own.”

“If they are artists, I can be an artist, too—but in an entirely different direction.”

The Matrix ceases to be a monolith. It is revealed as an ongoing weave, and one can see the process at work.

Then, one’s own insight operates on behalf of liberation.

A person can actually see how he cooperates in the progression of accepting “the weave.”

And he sees other options.

Therefore, as I put together The Matrix Revealed, I made sure to show Matrix as a work in process, an ongoing enterprise, a work of art, as it were, that can be dismantled—as a person takes another road of his own.

This is vital. It transforms victimization into inspiration.

In my work, I was assisted by interviewees who profoundly understood all this.

July 6, 2017
by Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

The Control System is Revealing Itself

This is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for. This is the moment when we can choose to be truly free, or choose our enslavement.

We’re watching a split in the deep state which is undermining the oligarchical grip on our shared resources and systems, illustrating how weak they really are.

We’re watching huge droves of people slip deeper into deception and delusion, whilst many others are enacting on their courage to face both personal and impersonal truths – as hard as it might be – to raise their level of awareness.

And we’re also watching most of humanity unconsciously meander towards a crossroad; one path will lead us to decentralize and localize our management structures, and the other will ensure the further erosion of our personal and community sovereignty by a corporatocracy disguised as a government, which falsely alleges it takes care of ‘the people’.

Which path will we collectively decide to walk? Will it go only one way, or will we have larger breakaway communities who choose sovereignty over enslavement, whilst the majority of people unconsciously bow to a global, centralized dictatorship?

Unfortunately the latter seems more likely at this point, but stranger things have happened.

As hard as it might be to see, the truth and freedom network have more in their favour then the shadow control structures. Whilst it’s true we don’t have the political power, we don’t have the money, we don’t control important mechanisms of the system and we don’t have the support of the masses, we do have something more powerful.

It’s called the evolution of energy.

The most potent gift we have is the natural explosion of consciousness which characterizes this moment of so-called time. Everybody is a part of it, everybody feels it, no matter how hard they fight to deny and suppress it. This is why so many people are experiencing so much inner and outer conflict, as they’re being forced to truly face themselves, and the world they live in.

Then of course there is basic mathematics. Put simply, the conscious society has the numbers, so all we need to do is put our perceived differences to the side and we’d be unstoppable with whatever we wanted to achieve.

The support of family and friends would come not long after too, ironically.

Hopefully we will soon capitalize on this awesome power. In the meantime, there has and will continue to be so much good work done by independent researchers and grassroots movements. The false narratives have long been exposed, as has the theft of our public utilities. Solutions to the problems are being created and evolved as you read.

There are also many people who add themselves to the list of authentic truthseekers every day, even though dogma and division is rampant among them. After all, this ancient fight for freedom is not without its own challenges and complications.

For example, being conscious of both the spiritual and systemic components of the awakening is vital. Unfortunately, many people choose one at the expense of the other, ensuring an imbalanced perspective and associated action. Yet the most problematic dysfunction is that we have been purposely distracted and divided, which we’ve unfortunately fell for. There’s simply no need for the gross amount of infighting, especially when we have the same fundamental goal.

That goal is the pursuit of truth and freedom.

As I’ve written about previously, we can unite over some primary focal areas to really amplify the momentum we’ve created:

“In terms of the systemic issues, let’s see if we can at least agree on the Four M’s as our primary targets for change, which are Money, Medicine, Media and Management:

1) Money should be a sovereign public utility, not hijacked by private stakeholders and converted into a transnational banking cartel.

2) Medicine (including food) should be as natural as possible, as well as be inexpensively available to all who need it, not monopolized by the multinational giants and perverted into the toxin-rich, addictive and unnatural substances we have today.

3) Media should be based on truth, authentic journalism and what’s best for the people, not propagandized to create minions of the failing system.

4) Management of our society should be designed by and for the people, not by and for the corporate and oligarchical structures.”

These four areas are the hegemonic mechanisms of the material control-matrix, which is why they deserve special attention. We can also use this template to help the uninitiated to become initiated, because most people would agree with it, regardless if they’re conscious of these realities or not.

In any case, building unity within the consciousness expansion network can only be a good thing, regardless if we peripherally or even fundamentally disagree on where we should go and how to get there.

There are other mechanisms for unification too, such as some simple values. Valuing love over hate, freedom over enslavement and truth over lies are three basic examples. Yet probably the greatest principle or philosophy we can connect over is that of natural law, meaning do no harm except in self-defence, as well as honor and respect the sovereignty of each other, just as we should for ourselves.

Accordingly, all governments and their employees should be expected to uphold natural law – the only real law – and be held accountable for it too.

So there are definitely some strategies that we could implement to make this process more efficient, but so far the divide and conquer tactic has us in its grip. Nevertheless, there is plenty to be hopeful about.

The meltdown of the control-system is good fun to watch. It offers some hopeful relief for the activist community, even though we cannot lose our focus and become complacent. Yet we do deserve a laugh too; experiencing the core controllers and their brainwashed minions scramble to maintain their relevance is a damn good feeling.

How do we know this is happening? We can tell by their actions. For example, the fake news attack has put the final nail in the coffin of the mainstream media, even though most people don’t yet understand it. History will show, however, that George Orwell’s ‘1984’ did manifest in many ways, and the propagandized press and their sell-out journalists had a lot to do with facilitating it.

On that theme, recent algorithms by Facebook have suppressed independent media and researchers, clearly illustrating their panic regarding the truth getting out. YouTube is demonetizing channels that aren’t in line with the official narratives, or the hypnotism of specific entertainment. In addition, the droves of trolls hired to discredit researchers and therefore hide the truth is a reflection of how hard they’re trying to win the fight, even though they’re losing the battle.

After all, we uphold the virtue of truth, which will ultimately set us free.

Furthermore, political and corporate corruption is being exposed more frequently. The two-party tyranny is falling apart at the seams of support. The global paedophile network within the ‘excrete’ classes is under the microscope by a decentralized citizen investigation. Certain countries are attempting to detach from the transnational banking cartel and other tentacles of their slimy scam. Long established power structures, such as the unelected and anti-democratic institution called the European Union, are losing the faith of many people, even if its demise is a tricky agenda designed from the inside. And rising populism, which is simply the collective voice that ‘the people’ matter, is forcing the world to change, even if it’s not in the most ideal way.

So the collapse of the control-matrix is very real, on so many levels. Even though it’s becoming more obvious, it’s been happening for a while and will continue to do so for some concept of time. It won’t be as calm as this moment right now either, so try to not just enjoy it, but capitalize on it too.

The fact remains that the parasitically sick people at the top of the power pyramid – as well as many of the poor lost souls who implement their agenda – will fight to the very death, which means they’ll try anything they can, including more war, orchestrated disaster, economic collapse, societal destabilization or an array of other tactics to maintain and expand their empire. However, they will lose.

In fact, when you’re fighting yourself, you already have.

So from this point forward, our individual role has shifted dramatically. Get busy locally. Join forces with like-hearted people and play your part in ensuring that your family and community not only survives, but thrives, regardless of what happens in this sick, beautiful world.

In the end, there is no greater legacy to leave behind.

Phillip J. Watt, Contributor

Waking Times

About the Author

Phillip J. Watt lives in Australia. His written work deals with topics from ideology to society, as well as self-development. Follow him on Facebook or visit his website.

Like Waking Times on Facebook. Follow Waking Times on Twitter.

This article (The Control System is Revealing Itself) was originally created by Phillip J. Watt and is re-posted here with permission. 

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The free individual returns

Freedom isn’t merely an idea. When an individual feels and knows he is free, all sorts of changes take place, even on a physical level:

Brain function increases and quickens. Endocrine levels optimize. The cells of the body awaken to a higher degree, and energy output rises.

From the point of view of the free individual, things are upside down. It is HIS power that is primary, not the monolithic corporate State’s.

From his point of view, what does the social landscape look like?

It looks like: THE OBSESSION TO ORGANIZE.

If you want to spend a disturbing afternoon, read through (and try to fathom) the bewildering blizzard of sub-organizations that make up the European Union. I did. And I emerged with a new definition of insanity. OTO. The Obsession to Organize.

OTO speaks of a bottomless fear that somewhere, someone might be living free.

People tend to think their own power is either a delusion or some sort of abstraction that’s never really experienced. So when the subject is broached, it goes nowhere. It fizzles out. It garners shrugs and looks of confusion. Power? Are you talking about the ability to lift weights?

And therefore, the whole notion of freedom makes a very small impression, because without power, what’s the message of freedom?

Every which way power can be discredited or misunderstood…people will discredit it and misunderstand it.

And then all psychological and physiological and mental and physical and emotional and perceptual and hormonal processes undergo a major downward shift, in order to accommodate to a reality, a space in which the individual has virtually no power at all.

It’s my aim to change all that. This is the basis of my work, and it has been, for the past 30 years.

That’s why I authored my three Matrix collections. Here are the contents of my third collection, Power Outside The Matrix:

These are audio presentations. 55 total hours.

* Power Outside The Matrix and The Invention of New Reality (6.5-hours)

* Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation (11.5-hours)

* Writer’s Tutorial (8.5-hours)

Then you will receive the following audio presentations I have previously done:

* The Third Philosophy of Imagination (1-hour)

* The Infinite Imagination (3-hours)

* The Mass Projection of Events (1.5-hours)

* The Decentralization of Power (1.5-hours)

* Creating the Future (6-hours)

* Pictures of Reality (6-hours)

* The Real History of America (2-hours)

* Corporations: The New Gods (7.5-hours)

I have included an additional bonus section:

* The complete text (331 pages) of AIDS INC., the book that exposed a conspiracy of scientific fraud deep within the medical research establishment. The book has become a sought-after item, since its publication in 1988. It contains material about viruses, medical testing, and the invention of disease that is, now and in the future, vital to our understanding of phony epidemics arising in our midst (and how to analyze them). I assure you, the revelations in the book will surprise you; they cut much deeper and are more subtle than “virus made in a lab” scenarios.

* A 2-hour radio interview I did on AIDS in Dec 1987 with host Roy Tuckman on KPFK in Los Angeles, California.

* My book, The Secret Behind Secret Societies

(All the audio presentations are mp3 files and the books are pdf files. You download the files upon purchase. You’ll receive an email with a link to the entire collection.)

At the core of consciousness, there are two impulses in the individual. The first is: give in, surrender. The second is: express power without limit.

The teaching of every civilization and society is: don’t use your power. When you follow the second path, when you express your power without limits, remarkable things happen.

The veil of illusion melts away.

You meet yourself on new ground.

You know what your freedom is for.

Without imposing on the freedom of others, you live the life you always wanted.

That’s what Power Outside The Matrix is all about.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Living from Our Deepest Knowing

Experientially, there is no realization without Being, which is a cessation of becoming. Paradoxically, there is no flowering of that realization without becoming, which is our willingness to be transformed by our realization. Realization is not an attainment of ego. It is the end of trying to get somewhere, be somebody, arrive somewhere else. What is realized is what is ever-present, what is here, what we are, and have always been when we are no longer identified with our conditioned mind. What is here now looking out, looking in, aware of this moment’s unfolding?

When we deeply realize the mystery of our own awake being, and do not move away from the Unknown we encounter, our mind ceases its searching, its separation, and its belief that it can end illusion. Egoic thought does not know itself as “pure awareness,” rather it is Awareness that sees egoic thought. The infinite ocean of Awareness awakens Itself within its own expression of being. And it is that same awake beingness that will transform our way of being in the world. If we are looking for a “permanent” state of embodiment, or a knowing of “pure” awareness that is “remembered” every single moment, we are still operating from the mind of separation.

When there has been a true awakening, it is the Mystery and not the “me” that then begins to transform our thoughts, our heart, and our actions. It is at this point that many seekers move away from what they have realized and return to the mind to try to figure out how to live from this truth. However, as soon as we go back to the mind’s thoughts about “how,” we have departed from the mystery of being, which is the source and agent of living more deeply, directly, and simply from what we are. So, this often becomes a source of confusion, and many either return to egoic transformation techniques, which are now directed by a spiritualized ego, or they become passive rather than grounded in being, which is simultaneously alive, present, intimate with the moment, and functioning with wisdom and compassion. In either case realization may not truly flower due to our attempts to either control or avoid acting.

When we begin to realize the truth of what we are, we may feel that we are free, but our minds, emotions, and our bodies may be acting and reacting from old identifications. It is our deep and sincere devotion to truth, and to living from truth that opens the heart and mind and creates willingness for all false views to be deconstructed. Our greatest ally is our own integrity. No one can give us our integrity or take it away. It is ours to care for. The truth within sees untruth, but without self-judgment–seeing, as it does, no separate self to be judged. This process begins when we realize what we are. But how far are we willing to let that realization take us? Realization does not create a new identity; it keeps shedding old ones. In the spiritual life, we are not seeking to transcend our human experience, but to fully express the truth of our Being through it. When we want authenticity more than we want to maintain an “image,” freedom will lead the way.

Enlightenment as intimacy

Zen Master Dogen, considered the 51st patriarch of Zen, once gave a very simple description of enlightenment: “Enlightenment is simply intimacy with all things.”And he went on to say: “Not knowing is most intimate.”

We think we know something when we can name it, pull a word or concept from memory to describe a thing, a person, a feeling, a flower, a self. Without making words and concepts wrong, can we investigate experience before adding the mind’s likes, dislikes, judgments, associations and concepts to the bare and intimate reality of Now? What is our experience when we are deeply present to what is present before us or within us?

Intimacy cannot be a memory because memory is imported from past experience and true intimacy is touching the world exactly as it is Now, without separation. Can we touch with our own intimate awareness the stars exactly as they are, our skin exactly as it is, a feeling exactly as it is, an encounter exactly as it is, without the need to add a story or create a drama, or claim a “self” being intimate? Can we live with the usefulness of memory without using it to prop up another concept about awakening or about a separate “self”? Can we allow judgment to gently be replaced by the intimate experience of Now, knowing that transformation of our habitual patterns of mind do not end with a moment of awakening, but gradually become more and more transparent as we return again and again to the realm of the timeless, to the willingness not to know something only as a concept. “Not knowing,” in this sense, is most intimate, indeed.

Living without a map

To the Western mind, living without a goal, without a map, having “nowhere to go and nothing to do” sounds like sheer madness—boring at best, lazy, irresponsible, uncaring, and an invitation to chaos at worst. But nothing could be further from the truth. It might mean we are finally available for Truth to move spontaneously within us, allowing action to come from the dimension of our being that is at peace. Doing is coming from Being. It does not mean living stupidly, or passively, or being unable to make plans. It means not being attached to those plans. It means being open to what is here now rather than judging it, being curious rather than fearful about this moment’s expression. It means being authentic, real, engaged, and intimate with experience.

To live from our natural state means discovering that there is no map for how to live. The voice that always asked “how?” has been quieted, and we are living more and more directly from the Mystery that is whole and undivided. This mystery of our Being is deeply and unflinchingly present to the moment as it appears, and thus can move with an intelligence, wisdom, compassion and love unknown to the mind that seeks to be in control.

We always imagined we would find peace and happiness when we had perfected our ego. What a shock to learn there isn’t one! We never imagined that what is awake is what is free, not some shiny image of how the world or the “me” should look. The mind that is always attempting to be in control, improve the world, self and the so-called “other” frequently serves as the agent of division—even when it is trying to “help.” When we realize there is no separation, “help” will automatically be transmitted by the quality of our being, not by our assuming a superior role of “helper.” When we have seen beyond a broken world or the dream of a wounded identity to the Wholeness beyond being or non-being, that in itself invites more healing than can be told. Perhaps we can begin to realize that living from our deepest Knowing is being truly alive in the present moment and being intimately aware within it. Maybe life is neither a problem to be solved nor a destination, but an endlessly unfolding creation moment-to-moment.

By all means, if you want to drive to an unknown destination in your car, use a map. But if you want Truth, be guided from the deep silent Source within that gives the mind no security, but rather continually invites it to the Unknown, and to the lifelong adventure of living openly, Now.

SOURCE

Dorothy Hunt is the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy, and serves as Spiritual Director and President of Moon Mountain Sangha, Inc., a California non-profit religious corporation. http://www.dorothyhunt.org