(Time as nonlinear and the mystic’s paradoxical knowing)
My belief is that time is much more plastic than that. Time is completely nonlinear and is moving (if directionality is still a metaphor that works) in all directions. Forward, backward, laterally, up, and down. This vantage point requires that we start to bring in higher dimensional structures to support the amount of variability created, which brings us into a much larger discussion. Perhaps we’ll save that one for later. Regardless of the way time works in dimensions beyond our default reality, the mystic recognizes that time is both linear and nonlinear, and lives in that paradoxical knowing that both are true and simultaneously, neither are true.
How do you offer a little (or a lot) more magic so that the conceptual and energetic anchors that ground others into “this reality” vibrate a little faster, a little hotter, a little stronger; so that, like the chemical bonds of a molecule, those connections can be redefined, reshaped in a new way so that their contextual experience of life changes?
(The mystic’s isolation and the hidden enclave of seekers)
1.4 You Are Not Alone The mystic setting out on the path may be convinced that he is all alone. Listening to esoteric podcasts alone in your car, reading ancient texts alone in bed at night, almost bringing up the conversation on sacred geometry, Ancient Egypt, or quantum physics to that person at work––but you just get the deep sense that it will be unreceived, you will be judged, adding further fuel to the pain of your perceived isolation. While you love them deeply, your partner might not get it, your parents almost certainly don’t get it, your teachers never got it, and the religious clergy or leadership seem like they almost get it or they got a piece, but it’s still just so far from what you know to be true. The mystic may find himself asking: “Am I the only one who sees the world this way? Am I the only one who looks into a person’s eyes and before too long, they dissolve, I dissolve… and while our human forms are talking about faxes, memos, and annual projections, our souls are communing and re-remembering each other. I’m so certain this is happening and I’m so certain they have no idea.
universe delivers the most potent, evolutionary thing to say––and the conversation stacks and builds on itself until, finally, ecstatically culminating in a moment of pinnacle brilliance: a transformative deep penetrative insight echoes through your body, heart, mind, and through time?
Feel us all around you in this moment, maybe not in physical 3-D proximity, but certainly sharing a mental space, sharing a heart space, and sharing a soul space. Rest in that resonant frequency, rest in that co-leveraged buoyance of the interdependent, interconnected mystic enclave across the globe and beyond. The more you can feel us out there, the more we zoom in to meet you in the tangible space.
(The mystic’s purpose — service, gifts, and evolving collective consciousness)
All of reality is riding the wave of consciousness toward the shore of deeper inclusiveness and connectedness. Today’s mystic is being called to greater depth of connection, service to humanity, raising of the collective consciousness, and drawing forth the gifts of the individual for the benefit of all humanity and for all sentient beings.
This wisdom you’ve been cultivating is someone else’s vital nutrient. The more you own that truth the quicker this person will show up with a question, problem, or dynamic that you have a very particular (and perhaps even mystical) perspective on that you’ve just been waiting to talk about.
cosmic drama playing out and recognize that you are literally at the leading edge of all time-dependent linear reality, how could you possibly ever think that you are not enough? The universe has been evolving for billions of years just to make the perfection of you right now. Let this truth explode like a supernova inside your heart. You are literally the most powerful thing the universe has ever produced. There is more nuance, subtlety, and complex perfection inside our little biological space suit than anything else we know of that has ever existed in the material world.
He feels himself in the 4-D linear vector of time at the leading edge of the unfolding present moment.
This is an invitation to commit to your moreness, to your power, to your perfection, to the fact that you are an infinite soul in a biological body perfectly seated in this time-space moment at the leading edge of all unfolding linear reality for a purpose. This purpose is the same for all of us––to be the perfect expression of the divine unfolding truth, manifesting through your individual beingness, moment by moment by moment. I dare you to say yes.
Our individuality is not the individuality that we chose to aggrandize our self. Rather, it is the perfect function of our nature as one of the puzzle pieces that transdimensionally interlocks to create the perfection of all reality.
(Shifting frequencies and the architecture of spiritual states)
As you learn to modulate your awareness to these other “frequencies,” you will start to have experiences that demand you question all of what you assumed you knew about your reality. Take it slow, it can be a lot when your experience of who you are gets turned upside down.
Now compare them with the known architecture of reality traversed and codified by the countless mystics who have taken the path before you.
Some definitions become helpful at this point, not to bog down the mind, but rather to liberate the mind into a perspective that could add critical architecture to what otherwise may be a sea of undifferentiated spiritual experiences.
Additional work in Integral Theory by Dan Brown, and later Dustin DiPerna, clarified the viewpoint we hold on reality from each of these realms as “vantage point.” These realms and vantage points are associated with specific brain wave states that occur when a person is having these specific experiences.
You see, exploring these realms are critically important at a stage of our development, and they can be a trap. They are infinite fractal rabbit holes of endlessly fascinating content that either build up or break down the self, but always with a focus on the self. There is a point where that tendency to self-identify as “me” can be so healthy and so full that it can be dropped with ease and a larger identity as a soul-spark of Source creation energy emanating from the heart of the Divine can be realized.
As the keyhole expands and you get this fuller perspective on your reality as a soul––as a journeying spiritual being––just know that there will be a time for that too to drop away, and we can then invite an identity as the nondual, unitive I AM.
(Saying yes to evolution — breaking safe trajectories and opening to catharsis)
Most people use their yes and no to keep life where it is, along a hopefully familiar trajectory, a safe trajectory. They use yes and no to limit the amount of energy and novelty occurring in their lives to protect them from too much growth, too much change, and too much uncertainty. They say yes to what will keep them the same, to what will keep them safe. While that is important as a strategy some of the time, if it is your only strategy it will kill your evolution. Because evolution is generated from a constant source of energy seeking to express through us. Evolution that is avoided will generate turbulence in your life, forcing you to address the fear and challenging the safety you’re clinging to anyway.
Many mystics have cracked the seal on their transdimensional awareness in moments of cathartic release and in the face of pure suffering. This level of emotional energy is so much higher than what we normally allow ourselves to access that it seems to “squeeze out the sponge,” so to speak, and to open up more space in the neuroenergetic system to access nonlocal data.
As a mystic, you might choose to make yourself allergic to the ordinary. It is a successive string of nonordinary, supraordinary, and “I don’t even know what ordinary looks like anymore” moments that will create the contrast that will allow to you be fully present in the ordinary moment and celebrate its complete extraordinariness and exquisiteness. Give yourself these experiences, get out of your standard way of doing things, create novelty, feed yourself with a steady diet of supraordinary experiencing.
It is easy to let your mind chime in and suggest you diminish your level of energetic investment because it is too weird, too peculiar, too much. The level of energy you invest here does have a ripple effect. It does help set the tone for your devotion to your path as a mystic, your willingness to invite those experiences from the universe––from the Divine, that help you truly part the veil of the ordinary and get a glimpse behind the scenes on how this place really works, what we are all doing here, and the true nature of Reality.
(Talismans, rituals, and taking a soul name)
You may think of this object as a talisman. In tribal traditions, talismans were magical objects that created certain boons for the wearer. They might create protection, luck, love, or intelligence. A talisman operates on numerous levels. It is a 3-D physical object in a 4-D linear time space imbued with a 5-D resonant energy. They operate at both a mental and energetic level. The energetic bridge to the 5-D energy signature is transmitted through the field of energy that is all pervasive to all reality and us.
This has a natural effect of keeping this attribute or characteristic (love, luck, protection, etc.) “top of mind,” so that we notice it when it arises and reinforces our belief that the talisman is working, thereby continually increasing the overall “effect” of its potency.
I’d invite you to consider that any ritual you infuse with love though, and a dedication to service of the greater whole, is a ritual that is blessed and sacred.
Another aspect of this mystic initiation ritual is to choose a new name. A private name. A soul name. Giving yourself a new name offers another mental-energetic container to hold the newly emerging version of you that is more fully identified with the mystical aspect of yourself. There are many naming rituals and structures for how you might choose a new name. In the postreligious context we are exploring here, I’d invite you to choose a process or ceremony that most powerfully speaks to you. You can choose from a religious tradition, an esoteric science like numerology or astrology, or a channeled or intuitive process. What matters is that your mind has something to grasp onto for why this name and therefore this identity is important. When the mind can hold that truth, it leverages the emotion of excitement and a sense of purposefulness that will allow even more energy to be shuttled into this new version of you.
You are under constant instruction. You are constantly guided. If you ever feel like you’re out on a limb and things are devolving into a senseless chaos––first, relax into the perfection of the moment and then fully accept that things don’t make sense. A logical mystic to whom everything makes sense is not mystic at all. Having everything make sense hardens our reality into a mental construct and strips it of wonder and the awe of surprise. There is a magic both generated and invited by awe and constant nonmental appreciation for the “what is-ness” of the present moment.
This is training in the art of the subtle attunement to the fine vibration in the field around you, catching the scents and nuances of what is to be and then trusting and testing your hypothesis until you’ve developed a syntax for how the universe speaks to you.
Pay attention to your environment, watch for repeated themes. Listen for those words, phrases, ideas, and memes that come up in conversation continuously. Then, as the serendipity presents itself, commit to following that thread. It doesn’t always lead us to an obvious linear conclusion.
Instead, researching and choosing a martial arts studio to look at may put you right in the same class with a person that you have to meet to make a business breakthrough or fall in love. The universe is nonlinear and has endless efficient ways to put you in direct contact with the source of your next evolution. Watch for her signs.
The extreme version of this is confusion turning to fatigue and eventually you wanting to fall asleep. Confusion of this sort is a mechanism by the mind to say, “This is too hard,” “Don’t pay attention to this,” “Resist here.” What the mind is really doing is protecting you from something that may have been dangerous or injurious in the past but now you’ve developed unconscious avoidance to. Perhaps the idea, belief, or implications of each were too threatening to your safety or current mental construct. This avoidance seeks to keep you safe from whatever it was in your past that was tied to this dynamic that was emotionally, mentally, or relationally challenging.
This is the gift of emotion––it pulls parts of you that may have been stuck in the past in an old resonant structure back into the current moment, unifying your energy and your identity into a more accurate representation of what is.
This allows the mystic to hold the fullness of the present moment in one hand and the highest expression of purpose and committed service in the other, and consciously mix surrender and directed action to draw forth the most perfect combination of Earth and Heaven, action and flow, and inspired action. If you allow yourself to observe these moments as teachers, it offers the ability to cultivate a gratitude for these “challenges” that can lead to a deep equanimity, a sage level calm in the face of chaos. These teachers offer the mystic portal into the next version of you, if you choose to experience them in that manner.
I realized that people who were in pain, stress, and disease were out of alignment with their life and with what life was asking of them. I recognized they were an ideal population to help me see how to move back toward an overall alignment with the truth of who we are. I was also keenly aware that a big aspect of this alignment is spiritual.
Basically, I think there is a certain way that the Universe most effortlessly and easily moves through you to express itself in the most perfect and powerful way. When we are in alignment with the Shape of Our Soul, the work, relationships, diet, movement practice, we choose that all become an embodied prayer to the Divine until the next season of our life when it must, like all things in nature, shift again in the next most perfect shape, following the natural rhythm and oscillation of an unfolding universe.
I went through everything I knew about myself. I looked at and reviewed personality profiles like the Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, EPI Energetics, and the DiSC profile. I looked at more esoteric systems, including astrology and Human Design. I observed the archetypes at play in my life, and saw which were being fed and which were hungry for a greater role, for greater expression. I looked at what I already observed about my life path, what had worked well, and what was challenging. I looked at my primary wounds and sought to understand what gifts they might hold for me, for those I love, and for all of humanity. I dug deep and did the work.
knew that if I were to strive for perfection, this would become a never-ending Sisyphean task. All I was looking for was something close enough that I could test as my “life purpose.” What I got was so much more.
I had this sharp sense of potency in the field, of an aliveness turned on inside me. It was a familiar feeling, a feeling I now get when I’m working with my coaching clients: it’s a sign something important is about to happen. “Come, come, sit and have some tea,” I invited him.
To pull data from the mouth of God, through hyperspace, translate it through a dream, and speak it into word and onto page is pure magic. I don’t say this to boast: I say this as proselytization. I say this to shake you awake if you’ve lost the wonder of these novel experiences and to convert you to the deep belief in the magic of what this is. Like all sacred magic, it should be honored and used to serve those we are most uniquely designed to serve.
say, “Who the fuck am I to hear someone else’s soul call and then have the audacity to set them on any path?” When I focus on the plainly evident, it becomes linearly apparent that that is what seems to happen when I serve my coaching and retreat clients but that linearity flattens it out. Somewhere in at the crossover of these two themes, magic happens. Maybe, just like at the crossroads in that rice paddy in my dream. I choose to hold the paradox of “I am not worthy” and “I must.” I’ve learned that holding the space of full commitment to paradox is the only fertile ground for magic to emerge amidst the chaos.
This is not a ruse or a cosmic joke the Divine plays on us. We are always given as much as we can handle, no more, no less. We operate at this level of reality because our consciousness is fragile. We have been born into the mutually agreed upon, syntactically supported illusion because it matches the amount of Divinity we can drink in at this moment of our personal and collective evolution. Opening up to more Divinity is simultaneously critically necessary, and for those who are not prepared, overwhelming and potentially dangerous.
Don’t mistake my language as a suggestion that we are victims to this mechanism. We are a generator of this mechanism. Reality congeals around us in this way so that we may have a soft bed in which to land and experience ourselves before we climb up to a less stable, more responsible position. The mystic knows all reality is both created by him and existing on its own separate from him. The mystic embraces this paradox and enjoys and sustains his growth on the tremendous amount of energy generated by the perfection and impossibility of this and these types of paradoxes. So what is the mystic to do? Where does one place his attention when every place you allow it to rest, it rests in illusion? It is simple. You allow your attention to rest everywhere and nowhere at once.
This is not to say that reality is to be avoided as “not good for you” but rather to be so wholly embraced––without filter, without desire, without attachment to outcome––that it can be viewed as it truly is: the balance of paradox and perfection. From that place of balanced neutrality and liberated energy, reality can be transcended.
When we let reality be what it truly is, beyond the bias of our mind, we liberate that energy and invite Divinity to dance its most natural dance through us instead of on us. The mystic deeply enjoys this.
(Nested truths, levels of consciousness, and inclusive reality)
The greatest truth of reality is still bounded by the observer. This means that our highest level of consciousness determines our highest experience of truth. In section 1.7, we unpacked the structure of spiritual states (gross, subtle, causal, and nondual). If a person has subtle realm awareness, their spiritual truth is determined by the internal subjective truths they experience in that state. It is both fully true and relatively true. It is absolutely true to them and their experience, and a greater (causal and nondual) reality and truth does exist––they just can’t see it. This absolute truth is the enlightened state of the historical Buddha, Christ, and other masters of historical religions. In Christianity, the ultimate truth is “I Am.” The Bible states Jesus saying, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). This is a classic descriptor of the Real Self (Witness Consciousness) or True Self (nondual consciousness).
We see how seemingly conflicting truths all have their own home in reality. All truths have their own place in the mosaic of consciousness and the human experience.
There is danger here of what Ken Wilber calls “aperspectival madness,” if we just let all truths be true. That is not the recommendation. Instead, recognize that consciousness development through stages, and spiritual development through different states of experience, all offer unique vantage points through which truth is claimed. Each and every one of those is important in a nested, hierarchical whole to create the fully experienced truth.
Wayne Dyer said, “If you have to choose between being right and being kind, be kind.” I would add, “Then work together toward a mutually inclusive truth,” but that doesn’t seem to roll off the tongue as easily. Be a leader for inclusive truth, for clarity, and specificity. And constantly seek to climb higher, and to find vantage points and perspectives that help more, love more, explain more, and invite larger and larger opportunity to appreciate the mystery.
(The mystic as love — nonattachment, romantic union, and God’s delight)
The mystic is Love. Be clear on this language. The mystic is Love. It’s not that the mystic doesn’t love as a verb, he does; but at his core, the essence of how he shows up in this world is as Love.
Love is the vanguard of the Absolute. The Absolute is the truth of all reality, the unity, the oneness, the emptiness, the void. Love is the space that creates space. It is the force that generates force. It is the ground substance of reality. This means that the Universe is Love––and as the mystic shows up in what most people consider to be “reality,” he personifies this Love.
When you are not attached to the comings and goings, the arrivals and leavings, and fully appreciate the energetics of the moment, you observe the beauty of both without polarized excitement or pain. This is not detachment, which is withdrawn and apathetic. This is nonattachment, which is fully participatory and invested in the process of life without a demand on the outcome manifesting in a specific way.
Love of your beingness simply for the gift of that alone. The mystic recognizes there will be a next moment where an outcome (seemingly) flowing from the beingness of the prior moment occurs, and he does not have a need for that outcome to look a certain way to serve him.
The mystic romantic union is like two waves, side by side, dancing their way through the ocean to crash beside one another on the shore––fulfilled and complete.
Now that you feel the Love in your body, in the open space, can you also feel it infusing and inhabiting all of the “things” around you? The meditation cushion you’re sitting on, this book you’re holding in your hands––can you feel it emanating with that very same Love? If your body, the empty space, and all matter are infused with Love, then where is Love not?
We get to watch God rediscover God’s love unendingly and celebrate its newness and novelty. No wonder God ripped apart perfection and cast forth the Big Bang. It allows the delight of waking up to the fullness of Love over and over and over in each one of us, eternally.
There is no story a human can live that doesn’t end in Absolute Love if you observe it on the proper timescale. You may as well surrender into the truth of it now, relax all those tender places that believe they can’t, shouldn’t, or don’t want to be drenched in the completeness of Love. The mystic is all of it. All of it is Love.
(Sexual energy as alchemical doorway and the spinning of the Tao)
Sex is an alchemical crucible replete with magical incantations, spells, elixirs, explosions, and state transformations. For the mystic it can be one of the most profound training grounds for the practice of wielding love, vulnerability, connection, service, honoring, and so many other of the attributes of mystical embodiment. Simultaneously, it can help us to observe attachment to other, attachment to the urges and urgency of our own body, and confusions of our self-identity as a multibodied, multidimensional being.
Repression leads to stagnation, a slow-building, burning intensity that seeks outlet and can show up as anger, force, frustration,
Taoist, Tibetan Buddhist, Hindu, and many other wisdom traditions have deeply researched systems on this transformation of sexual energy. If it speaks to you, some study here may be valuable. Simultaneously, sex can be a doorway into something transcendent and Divine. All highly energized states allow for the possibility of receiving reflections on the true nature of who we really are. There are mirrors stacked on mirrors that create unique opportunities for us to leverage desire as a mechanism to pick the body up to the level of soul and merge with our partner in the presence of the Divine itself. There is a perfection available in balancing the masculine and feminine poles in sexuality, a spinning of the Tao, a fractal unfolding and infolding that generates unique alchemical possibilities for manifestation and evolution that are challenging to attain by oneself.
(Wealth, ego, and the fullness that allows self to drop)
Wealth is a generative property of reality. It is abundance, it is the flower blooming, pushing through the snow earlier than it should just to brighten the world and reach toward the sun. Wealth is the universe demonstrating that it is constantly self-creating. Wealth is the storehouse of gifts, skills, and talents you have latent inside of you.
The mystic recognizes that when you truly value the universal force of abundance, money is an on-demand quantity. If you need money, access your abundance and generate value for others, simple. The need for most people’s insatiable drive to accumulate the dead 3-D matter of money is twofold. First, they desire safety. Safety through money is an illusion that money generates our “okayness.”
The ego is critical for a certain range of our conscious development and then it may be integrated and transcended. The ego is also another form of protection. It protects against annihilation through nonindividuation. When the ego starts to catch wind that all beings, all life, all reality is really just a great oneness, it recognizes that the story it’s been telling about you as an individual, important, powerful person is really in jeopardy.
While you may be in a phase of life where the Mystic archetype is highly resonant, you have an entire pantheon of archetypes in your psyche and field. There will be a child, a warrior, a lover, a father, a teacher, and potentially dozens of other archetypes. Watching the rise and fall of the presence and resonance of the mystic archetype in your own inner pantheon may create awareness of when it is time to leverage the wisdom, skills, and resources of that archetype.
The amount of energy invested in avoidance of certain, inevitable phases of a cycle, certain beats of the rhythm, is astonishing. There is no ease without work, there is no light without dark, there is no love that doesn’t invite pain to deepen a bond so love can show up again.
Stasis creates stagnancy, stagnancy creates illness, and illness leads to death. Endless days, weeks, years, and decades have been spent with certain parts of life flat and dying for the simple fact that we destroyed novelty, we shamed an aspect of the rhythm and turned our back on it.
You may be sitting in stationary Zen meditation and feel stuck, but you move in an intuitive flow art and you feel connected to the entirety of the Universe. There are limitless paths to the Divine––be careful of getting stuck in a system that limits your most natural expression. There is, again, a paradox at the heart of this. If we attach to “my” most natural expression, it is likely we get caught in the trap of ego and separate self-identity. As long as it’s “yours” as an aspect of you––a separate self, separate from the Divine––it must inherently be limited.
Comparison is a killer. The mystic who judges himself based on the spiritual “attainment” of others will naturally limit his own capability to allow the Universe to move through him as naturally as possible. The fixation on “less than,” is an external, presumed, and subjective experience (not to mention typically inaccurate) of another person is a massive energy drain on that natural power.
One unmistakable quality of the mystic is the palpability of their presence. Without saying a thing, being near a mystic can be a transformative experience. There is a gravitas, an energetic momentum in their proximity that is unique, potent, and transformative.
You live in a universe that is constantly being specifically designed for you to receive everything you need to for you to come into self-awareness, and even greater levels of wholeness and autonomy. What’s in it for God? The mystic knows that the greatest delight of God is the constant forgetting and remembering of the truth of it all as it unfolds in each sentient being. God basks in the beauty, the infolding and unfolding, the deliciousness of the duality as it screams forward, literally at the speed of light from the Big Bang, to paint all of reality in its reflective illusion––all the while containing the perfectly obvious and perfectly concealed key to unlock it in any given moment.
The mystic knows that dimensions are not “other places” that he travels to, but rather, frequencies of present reality, perpetually available if he has the ability to tune into it. These frequencies are hierarchical and inclusive. This means that a 5-D reality is not experienced without a 4-D or 3-D reality, although each higher state of reality will critically alter our experiencing of the lower dimension. As this terminates in the Ultimate Reality, all previous conceptions and perceptions of reality will be eradicated in the ultimate truth of nothingness and everythingness, no timeness and all timeness, which exist simultaneously as one merges into true Oneness.
This transdimensional ability is also the seat of “miracles.” Miracles are really just a higher dimensional phenomenon pushing into a lower dimensional space.
If the mystic falters and believes that he is not meant for this greatness, he is lost. This faltering is committing to this 3-D/4-D reality as “the” reality even though higher dimensions are existing, sewn into all of reality right at this very moment. Do not falter, do not succumb to the most worn groove but find a new groove that allows you to taste the miraculous, to feel the permanently impermanent truth––that it’s all miracles all the time.
(Dimensional map from causal realm to nondual absolute)
6-D space is equivalent to the causal realm. The causal realm is basically an informational, postenergetic space. It is often experienced as a great void or vast emptiness. Where the “self” is often fully realized in the subtle 5-D space, the self as a separate individual entity starts to drop away in 6-D. This is the “location” of the storehouse consciousness spoken of in the Buddhist Lankavatara Sutra, sometimes referred to as the Akashic records. There is a further differentiation sometimes made of this space from the subjective experience called “witness consciousness.”
The 7-D space is the Absolute, Nondual realization of Ultimate Reality. This is the fullest experience of enlightened transcendence currently known to man. It is becoming One with all things, with the personal identity transcended and included (not dropped). It is to be fully resting in the infinite and omnipresent heart of God. The mystic is existing in all of these dimensions simultaneously, all humans are.
When all senses of self are dropped completely, we gain access to the Nondual Unity awareness. Your work, my dear mystic, if you should choose to evolve and grow through these states of consciousness, is to understand what level you are at––Gross realm (3-D/4-D), Subtle realm (5-D), Causal realm (6-D), or Nondual Ultimate enlightenment (7-D)––and to first solidify your awareness at that level. This is a critical step missed by most. If your awareness at a given level is weak, it will falter and sway and your progress will tumble down to shore up that level before climbing again. So find yourself on this map and commit to being a master at that level. The investment of energy here will eventually overflow into the next level in a natural inviting evolution. And remember, you are already there, you are already in all space and all time, and no space and no time, and your job is the remembering of that space and inviting it into your present, moment-to-moment experience.
As your reality deconstructs, there is a tremendous gift. All the energy that had been committed to your job, your relationship, your identity, your hobbies, and whatever else was considered a part of “you” now becomes liberated. That energy generates a sense of freedom, of possibility, of wonder, and that delicious taste of a fresh start. That which is torn down metabolizes, composts, and becomes base energetic nutrient material for you to regrow and rematerialize your new reality. All of this feels like death, and it is in a sense, but it is the precursor death necessary for rebirth.
This has been born out of two decades of immersion in books and internal dialogue on metaphysics, spirituality, and the nature of being. This is my background state and that is what I bring to the work I do, the talks I give, the retreats I run, and the coaching with my one-on-one clients.
I offer “the most dangerous prayer” with this caveat. The interesting thing about saying “whatever it takes” is that it gives the Universe permission to set wheels in motion in the most efficient way to turn the ship in the direction of destiny. Just know that if you seek change, and the Universe is inviting change, and you say yes to change––be ready for all the changes in whatever way they show up. They might be scary, they might be unexpected, they might even look like exactly what you don’t want.
This natural progression of self moves through predictable stages. As an infant there is no perception of self. The consciousness is completely fluid and absorbed with what it is experiencing in its environment. That is why babies get so fascinated with their own body. They can play for hours with their own fingers. They are coming to the mind-blowing observation that they are a “thing,” they have persistent existingness. That basic existingness has very little inherent consciousness––it is at a foundational level of awareness of self. Many people love to deify this state as the ultimate awareness. To be “childlike” has been confused as a state of “perfection,” or “awakening.” This is a dangerous belief as a relative truth and often embraced by those who seek to “free themselves from the cultural conditioning.” It is true in an absolute sense, but in an absolute sense all things are inherently perfect just as they are, so this belief loses relevancy from that perspective alone.
When the self is full and satisfied with a healthy ego, it can overflow into a place of dropping the ego. If this natural progression occurs, there is a greater tendency to let the ego drop without as much life turbulence. We have become saturated with the novelty of being a “self” and must move toward experiencing ourselves as a “Self” or a “no-self”; which are, again, ultimately part and parcel of the same experience.
This truth is so patient, it has been existing forever and will exist forever, waiting to bestow the endless gifts of a new and transcendent experience of the self, without expectation, without urgency, and solely for the beauty of the Universe moving toward a more whole wholeness. When we transit through no-self, we prepare for an identity of self as all things and nothing simultaneously. This is the God identity. This may sound heretical for those holding more traditional perspectives, and yet it has been the assertion of mystics for millennia. We are “all of it” and “none of it” at the same time. This is the nature of God. It, again, cannot be understood from the mind, it can only be experienced in a moment of blazing glory with light streaming through us and the universe systematically dismantling us for the sheer joy of evolving our awareness into the absolute perfection of the All.
(Internal alchemy — transmutation, death, and rebirth of the self)
Base material into gold. This is the promise of the alchemical process. It has been the obsession of scientists for millennia. It has been the secret practice of metaphysicians for even longer. The nature of transmutation is to let a seemingly destructive force reshape, transform, and tear away anything that stands in the way of this material becoming something even greater.
The alchemical process is a metaphor for the internal spiritual process. I mean, if you’re obsessed with chemical processes for creating gold in a laboratory, you can rest easy––that’s already happened but it’s far less fascinating than mystical internal alchemical process.
The greatest advice I can give mystics who are awaking to the immensity of everything described here is to hold it all loosely. It can be all consuming if you let it. You can spin out on perspectives and rabbit holes of, “How does it all work?” It can be maddening. Hold it loosely, and allow life to happen in between the moments of deep exploration and introspection. Delight in the commonplace without it needing to be deep. There is a disease of depth addiction among mystics and spiritual seekers and it costs a lot to many. They cast aside anything that is not on their “ascending” trajectory, but they end up miserable. There is a time for casting everything aside for the single-focused pursuit of truth. There is a time for the four-minute solo dive to pick up pearls at the bottom of the ocean. And, that is not everyone’s path. Mystics can fall into the trap of glorifying extremes, seeking absolutes. This often ends in chaos.
The Infinity actually ends up being bounded as an unfolding series of probable outcomes distributed under a bell curve for which a standard set of energetics apply. Culture and current states of unfolding consciousness in humanity both exist as evolutionary forces, and the divine thread of destiny drawing the whole system into the future acts as the involutionary force.