A New World is Taking Shape…Are You In?

A New World is Taking Shape…Are You In?

Simply think the highest thoughts you can; feel the deepest love you are capable of; reach up or down to the highest, or deepest, Divinity that you can experience; treat others with the tenderest of kindness and the most caring of compassion that you possibly can; and if you are anywhere near the leading edge of evolution, you will directly, immediately, and instantly contribute to what Whitehead called “an ultimate of the universe”—namely, the “creative advance into novelty.” In other words, you will contribute to evolution itself.

~ pg 219-220 “The Religion of Tomorrow” by Ken Wilbur

I’m reading this book right now. It’s very interesting. The detractor that it weighs as much as a boat anchor is lessened considerably by the fact that I have always been passionate about the contents—consciousness evolution. 

I was struck by this quote due to the fact that it makes important commentary in light of the COVID-19 crisis. What this quote is calling for, written in 2017, is even more apropos today. 

We all have the ability, through our thoughts, to influence reality.

That’s just a given at this point, so if you haven’t caught up to that, I encourage you to dive into the Upanishads, or better yet the Dhammapada, or some other wisdom teachings that suit you from something older than the NY Times best-seller list. Remember—if it’s still published after thousands of years, there’s probably a good reason. That’s why they’re called ‘wisdom traditions,’ right?

As Lightworkers and harbingers of the New Paradigm (i.e. Shamballah, as we like to refer to it in the Western Mystery Tradition), we have the added responsibility to carefully curate our thoughts in service to molding the kind of future that we want to live into. 

We make a choice every day to live in alignment with God, Unity, Source, Creator, Universal Energy—whatever you want to call the highest and most expansive, ineffable power that makes this reality possible. 

The dominance of rational thought as a predictor of our lived reality was debunked thousands of years ago, by initiates in the Mystery Tradition, of course. See any commentary on Zeno’s Paradoxes for the weird and unpredictable places that rational thought and logic can take us. In short, rational thought does not lead to a rational reality.

With passion and intention, we increase the power of those thoughts.

Our emotional state has the ability to affect how DNA expresses (see most of Bruce Lipton’s recent work). Metaphysically we know that the emotion of Bliss, specifically, has an impact on how your DNA enfolds/replicates. Long story short, you are more powerful when in a Bliss state because your DNA can enfold/replicate most purely, with less (genetic) information loss, and you are more YOU as each generation of cells replicates. 

This is what I really mean by ‘with passion.’ When you are passionate, you are literally and physically more YOU! Your energy flows without interference.

Any delay or obstruction to you being YOU is interference. When there is no interference in your energy flow, there is no loss between information in (i.e. intention) and information out (i.e. manifestation). This is what we mean by creating your reality—matching intention with manifest reality by reducing/eliminating the information delay/obstruction caused by you not being fully YOU. 

That’s the metaphysical reason why we say, “Follow your passion.”

I’m Conscious, Right?

But not every part of us is under conscious control. In fact, we are conscious of only about 5% of our cognitive activity. The conscious mind actively pushes information processing to the subconscious to free up valuable cognitive resources for novel information. The subconscious just plays back what it’s programmed to, it’s not creative like your conscious mind. 

How much of your thinking each day is novel? It takes less energy to think the same thoughts we did yesterday, and so your body is rewarded for doing so—physically and energetically.

The subconscious and conscious mind work together to mold our experience. It’s just that we spend most of our day responding to the same autonomic thoughts from our subconscious. But when we do interrupt those subconscious processes, bringing a new awareness to our reality, we see things differently. 

Whatever the conscious mind focuses on, it can control. Thus, intention is necessary for us to control our reality. What we have control over, we have power over. So intention also increases the power of our thoughts.

COVID-19 is a transformational agent calling on us to create the conditions for a new world—Shamballah.

Yes, of course I acknowledge the tremendous pain and tragedy due to the pandemic. As I write, the outbreak is still getting worse in the USA. The markets are in a terrible state, and you have to arrange your grocery pick-up at least 10 days in advance to have a chance of getting anything on your list. We have to look the truth straight in the face in times like these in order to take empowered action.

I see this time as a transformational opportunity, to slow down or halt certain businesses, cultures, systems and try to recreate a new way of operating coming out of the experience caused by this virus.

As Ken Wilbur notes above, when we can direct our thoughts to the highest energy, deepest love, grandest compassion, we can find something truly novel, something truly evolutionary, something new that this world has never seen.

Are you making choices based on low vibrations of fear and worry? Or are you looking for what you can give? Are you looking to be in service? Are you looking for how you can be open to Spirit? Are you thinking high, deep, and grand thoughts? Or are you thinking small, closed, fragmented ones?

This is a choice you’re making right now that will direct the course of your life for many months to come. Will the new world you create be a slightly modified version of the old, or will you try something completely new this time? Will you stay operating from the old programming of the subconscious, or will you enlist that help of your conscious, creative mind and envision a new way of living?

Meditate on that. I look forward to what you create…

How Do You Make Sense of Altered States of Consciousness?

How Do You Make Sense of Altered States of Consciousness?

Here’s a dirty little secret…”altered states of consciousness” is a total misnomer.

Altered states of consciousness are necessary and inevitable milestones on the path to enlightenment and consciousness development. 

In this series of blogs (this is the first), we’ll dive deeper into why consciousness expansion and altered states of consciousness are necessary on your spiritual path.

Let’s take a look at what’s going on…

What’s actually altering in your brain

Our real-time experience is colored or informed by our prior experiences. Whenever we experience something new, our physical brain ‘expands’ by strengthening neuronal connections, essentially voting for that perceived reality next time our brain has to discern what’s happening to us. If we encounter something similar in the future, our brain will go ‘Aha!’ I have a file for that, and will go activate that set of neurons in the brain. 

This happens again and again until we’ve experienced that same experience so many times, we don’t even ‘think’ about it anymore. Our brains quickly fill in the gaps, so much that we’re likely to miss out on details from a new event that reminds us of a past event. If there is anything different about the experience, our brain will actually filter that information out and replace it with what it thinks is happening instead, and we misperceive our reality.

If we do happen to notice what doesn’t ‘belong’, and if our expectations are very different than the actual experience, we experience stress. This is your brain trying to figure out how it possibly could have made a mistake, because in its world, everything should be continuing to advance along a continuum toward sameness, predictability, and stability.

You see, the brain is trying to conserve resources. If we perceived and had to think about every detail of our experience all the time, it would be just way too much information. Our brain is constantly programming the subconscious to be able to take on responses and reactions to our environment so the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain engaged in conscious processing, can focus on more ‘important’ matters, like novel experiences.

What is consciousness?

Consciousness expansion can sometimes be misinterpreted to mean simply paying more attention, or mindfulness by people outside the industry. If you’re a psychonaut, shamanic journeyer, or other regular ‘explorer’ of conscious states, you’ll note that there is nothing really expanding here. We are simply using the full capacity of our current resources to better perceive our environment, ‘raising’ our awareness rather than relying on subconscious processes to navigate reality. Humans are notorious for underutilizing their existing resources.

Consciousness expansion, rather, is about whole new perceptions in the field of information and stimulus around us. It’s not about perceiving what we already CAN perceive, it’s about perceiving NOVEL stimuli we didn’t previously have access to before. It’s like perceiving a new color all of a sudden. The color was always there, yet we didn’t have the faculty to perceive it or discern it from the information field we are accessing through our consciousness. We didn’t see it as novel or unique.

For example, in Homer’s the Odyssey, the color blue is not mentioned once in the book. This is striking in that much of the book is about a sea voyage. Homer uses the term ‘wine-dark sea.’ Blue was also the last color to appear in many ancient languages like Greek, Japanese, and Hebrew (where the oldest sample of anything blue is less than 2,000 years old). It seems that Ancient Egyptians were the first to have a word for ‘blue’ in that they were the first to produce blue dye.

Does this mean ancient civilizations didn’t see blue? Or did they just not perceive it as unique or novel in their environment? I argue that ancient people needed, and we need now, to expand our consciousness in order to experience the full spectrum of what’s available to us as human beings.

So what about this misnomer?

Consciousness expansion is actually about shifting OUT of our consciousness and into pure awareness. Wisdom traditions of old have studied this shift in humans for millennia, and the Tibetan Buddhists, in particular, have extremely well-developed systems for helping humans make this shift. 

If we shift too far out of reality into pure awareness, people think we’re crazy. If we never leave our current reality, we cannot grow. This is where NOT having a solid footing in social norms established by shared agreement with other humans can result in various types of psychological diagnoses related to levels of psychosis. If we can’t come back to a shared reality, we get locked up by today’s mental institutions.

Regardless of your ability to come back to this version of reality, however, it’s helpful to have a guide.

So where do I find a guide? 

Go no further than the Western Mystery tradition. The reason why we call it a ‘mystery’ tradition is not because power-hungry white guys have a need to keep secrets (they may, but not because of mystical knowledge). On the contrary, we are in the ‘age of no more secrets.’ The information is available to all who would seek further knowledge and Light. 

As a Guide in the Hermetic lineage of King Salomon, I’ve given my life to serve those who truly seek ‘consciousness expansion,’ or whatever you think that means. Now we know what I mean by that at least—for me, and for the mystery traditions, it’s about embodying limitless divinity, not doing more mental gymnastics with your brain (such as reading a bunch of books and thinking you understand ritual, or memorizing a bunch of correspondences but not applying them).

The term ‘mystery’ is used simply because no one has the right to tell you, a unique expression of divinity, how you ultimately will perceive reality through your pure awareness because we all have unique DNA. Thus we all have a unique perspective, both physical and spiritual, on the world. The opportunity is for you to discover your own uniqueness. To ‘Know Thyself’ (in the words of the Oracle at Delphi) and to thrive in your unique strengths and proclivities that make for a fulfilling life…for you and you alone to judge (with that know-it-all brain of yours).

Ready to dive deeper into the mystery? Download my complimentary tool, the Rapid Transition Workbook and get started on your transformational journey today!

Tune in next month for the follow-up on this topic.