Meditation and Manipulation

Long but worth a read and some consideration:

Cults, Meditation, Drugs and Psychosis

The Many Dangers of Spiritual Manipulation

Story at a Glance:

•Spiritual practices are a double edged sword. On one hand one’s faith can be profoundly beneficial to their life, but on the other, there is a longstanding problem of spiritual practitioners becoming permanently damaged from their practices (e.g., psychosis).

•Much of this results from spiritual “teachers” promoting practices which give the participant a spiritual high (and hence makes them a loyal customer) rather than the safe and effective practices which are harder to monetize.

•One of the primary reasons cults form is because individuals (especially those in a vulnerable place) are highly susceptible to spiritual manipulation and rarely recognize when one of the common spiritual scams is pushed upon them.

•This article will discuss how spiritual manipulation contrasts with conventional forms of mind control, critical points to understand when attempting to rescue someone from a cult, ways to recognize dangerous spiritual practices, and the overlap between spiritual psychosis and drug induced (e.g., via psychedelics) psychosis.

One of the largest challenges I face with this newsletter is deciding what I want to write about, as since I have a moderately large following, choosing the “wrong “topic can ripple out into a variety of unintended consequences. Conversely, one of the greatest benefits, I have to being anonymous (while simultaneously being viewed as a credible source) is that gives me the wiggle room to touch up on more controversial topics no one else is talking about.

Despite all this, I have still had numerous topics I’ve wanted to discuss, which I have just not felt comfortable diving into. One is the subject of cults, drugs and harmful spiritual practices since on one hand, within the integrative health field, this issue comes up a lot, but simultaneously, discussing it requires you to broach a variety of topics far outside our accepted cultural discourse (which seriously calls my character into question for a more skeptical audience) and it’s nearly impossible to go into the subject without rubbing people the wrong way (e.g., people’s egos often very invested in what they are doing regardless of how harmful it is to them).

These issues have repeatedly come up in my life and every 1-3 years I end up getting involved in a fairly stressful cult deprogramming situation. Recently, I found out that my nephew whom I had not been keeping tabs on got involved with a religious group that turned out to be dangerous cult and a lot of my time over the last month went into rescuing him from their clutches (which is part of why I have not written as much recently). Reflecting on what happened, I took this as a sign that I needed to begin exploring that topic here. Conversely, however, I would like to request that if this is not your cup of tea you don’t read this article or if you do, that you don’t hold what’s in here against me or view it as the typical content of this publication.

Note: for those of you who are not spiritually inclined, many of the cult dynamics that will be discussed here were also seen with how many individuals were brainwashed into becoming fanatically devoted to the COVID-19 vaccination program. Likewise, many of the approaches we’ve used to rescue people from cults are also often applicable to other interventions (e.g., someone suffering from drug abuse).

Spirituality and Integrative Medicine

One of the rarely appreciated facets of the integrative medicine field is how intertwined it is with one’s faith. For example, I’ve previously alluded to the fact I was privileged to know some of the most talented integrative doctors in the country (all of whom stay under the radar), and the regular success with which they treat otherwise “incurable” conditions has given me a very different perspective than many of my colleagues on what is actually medically possible.

In the article where I discussed their common habits and behaviors, I mentioned that for each of them, their faith and it’s practices was a central focus of their lives. This in turn was because:

•Their devotion to their faith made them much more resistant to being swayed by all the different forms of propaganda in our society that try to hijack your minds (best summarized by the classic adage, “if you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything”).

•Their faith made them strongly prioritize behaving in an ethical manner (e.g., going out of their way to advocate for their patients regardless of the pressures they got to not do so).

•Their spiritual practice helped them develop the perceptual capacity to recognize critical but subtle things occurring within their patients (and conversely, their innate perceptual gifts often was what drove them to pursue a spiritual path).

•Since a subset of the issues patients with complex issues face are spiritual in nature, being well-versed in a faith often made them much more able to help those patients.

Conversely, however, while there are many merits to spiritual practices (e.g., I think good meditation is one of the most valuable things one can do in life), bad spiritual practices can cause a lot of problems, and both I and my colleagues have had a lot of patients who had a lot of problems from unsafe spiritual practices.

In essence, a very analogous situation exists between the wild west of “non-mainstream” medicine and “non-mainstream” spirituality. Some of it is remarkably effective, some of it is marginal at best, and some is quite harmful. This becomes a huge problem because:

1. Very few people have the background which is necessary to recognize who is a good healer or spiritual teacher and who is not. In my case, beyond being extremely lucky to have met who I did, I had decades of experience in the alternative medical field. Because of this, the people I ultimately chose to really studying under were either people a lot of competent colleagues had endorsed or a relatively unknown person I happened to spend a brief period with whom I could immediately recognize was remarkably talented. Had I not had this background (and a willingness to accept people I’d previously spent a lot of time studying under actually weren’t that great) it would have been impossible for me to find my mentors. Since my background is quite rare, most of my colleagues never found people of a similar caliber to study under.

2. No objective criteria exists to evaluate the quality of spiritual teachers or alternative healers (or even for that, often, matter conventional doctors). In the past, this problem was solved by having “lineages” that built their credibility over centuries through the accomplishments of their adherents and maintained strict criteria for who would be certified in the lineage, but that method of quality control has largely died off since:

•Modern society places much less value on a longstanding lineage.

•Many of the existing lineages, like the rest of society have been eroded by the corrupting influences of our society.

•Many of those that remain don’t advertise publicly.

3. The people who tend to be really good do not publicly advertise what they do (as more people than they ever will need come to them through word of mouth and they conversely do not wish to get embroiled in all the issues publicly advertising themselves creates). Conversely, the people who aren’t so good aggressively advertise themselves and hence end up being the people who everyone sees. Because of this, I frequently hear people (e.g., patients) state they had to go through a lot of bad people before they found someone worth sticking with and how grateful they were to have found them.

4. While many people in the alternative field are drawn it because of a genuine desire to help people (e.g., I can state with certainty this is the case for many of the prominent COVID dissidents), many are instead drawn to it because they see an opportunity for fame money and power. This in turn leads to the sad situation I frequently observe such as someone speaking the standard lines used to attack conventional medicine (e.g., doctors just profit off treating symptoms because all they care about is money) then do the exact same thing to their patients.

5. Many people who get involved in the alternative field do not fully understand what they are dabbling in and tend to greatly overestimate their knowledge or competence over the subject (which again conventional doctors often do as well). In many cases, this just wastes people’s time (generally speaking I think holistic medicine is much safer than conventional medicine), but in other cases it significantly harms them. This is particularly true with spiritual practices.

Being Influenced

Human society has always revolved around trying to get others to support one’s agenda, and as a result, we are constantly bombarded with attempts to influence us.

Some are relatively harmless. For example, one my goals has been to have this publication be read, seriously considered, and supported by a lot of people. So, I’ve:

•Made sure to consistently publish good quality (and relevant) content.
•Made a point to be compassionate and considerate to those I interact with.
•Tried to be as transparent as possible with my thought process.
•Avoided doing anything I thought was potentially unethical.

In turn, my “influencing plan” successfully met my goals.

However, while many wish to influence others, the strategies they often pursue are often much less ethical and, in turn, highly manipulative people have always existed at every level of society.

Classically, if you want to manipulate someone, there are three ways to do it:

•Psychologically

•Hypnotically or physiologically

•Spiritually

Since the core of human psyche has remained relatively unchanged over the centuries, people inevitably stumble across (or copy) the same methods of manipulation and periodically, someone (e.g., Hitler) comes along who has a great deal of success with them. As marketing is essentially the “science of manipulating people” (to buy your product), in the last century, there has been an incredible degree of systematization and refinement of those existing methods. Worse still, the propaganda industry (termed “public relations“) has adopted these tactics and weaponized against the entire society.

In my eyes, one of the biggest problems with manipulation is how resistant people’s egos are to admitting they got manipulated. For example, as I discussed recently, I am still in awe of how effective public relations (PR) is at manipulating people, best demonstrated by the fact the PR campaign used to sell the COVID-19 vaccines got a lot of people who you have never expected to vaccinate (e.g., people who actively spoke out against the childhood vaccine program or the American propaganda apparatus) to receive the most dubious vaccine in history. Likewise, one of the biggest problems with calculating the extent of the COVID vaccine injuries that have occurred is how many people are still in denial about the vaccine they took (and pushed on others) being dangerous.

The one “bright side” to all of this is that while modern science has been able to systematize psychological and hypnotic manipulation, it has not been able to do the same with spiritual manipulation as this cannot be done by a machine (rather it must be done by a human being) and hence cannot be scaled up for the entire population.

This is a “bright side” because spiritual manipulation is by far the most powerful (and hard to recognize) of the three methods but its use has been restricted to individuals who had an innate talent with it. Since individuals with that talent who have no qualms about using it for their own ends aren’t all that common, we only periodically see them rise to power, and most importantly, Public Relations has not been able to manufacture it at will.

However, they’ve tried and many groups try to scout individuals with the inherent capacity to spiritual manipulate others. For example, in the entertainment industry, they use the term “the ‘it’ factor” (defined in detail here) to describe individuals with an inexplicable charisma that talent scouts seek out to recruit and turn into stars (which has been confirmed to me by people in Hollywood). Likewise, I know of a few cases where a rising politician who had “the ‘it’ factor” began to be groomed by outsiders who entered their personal circle and eventually reached a very prominent role (e.g., the presidency).

One of the major contentions with “the ‘it’ factor” (and hence its name) is exactly where that inexplicable charisma comes from. I adamantly believe it is energetic or spiritual in nature, and there are quite a few public figures (e.g., Michael Jackson or Taylor Swift), for whom many in our circle can describe exactly what those individuals are (consciously or unconsciously) doing to influence their audience.

The major challenge we in turn face is how specific to get with elucidating the mechanisms of spiritual manipulation, as on one hand it’s helpful to everyone to know how it’s done (so they can be resistant to it). At the time however, we don’t actually want to tell anyone how to do it as it’s inevitable unscrupulous individuals will abuse that knowledge and we know of many truly tragic examples of this occurring (including some where their teacher admitted deeply regretting having taught the student who went on to do that).

Being Grounded

The importance of being “grounded” (and conversely identifying individuals who are suffering from not being grounded) is widely recognized within the spiritual field. However, while the need to be “grounded” is understood, there is much less clarity on exactly what that means or how to do it (e.g., electrically connecting yourself to the earth to reduce your positive charge will often improve your zeta potential and reduce anxiety is just one type of “grounding”).

Typically, ungrounded individuals are characterized by not being connected or integrated with their bodies (e.g., they are psychologically disassociated, poorly coordinated not in the present, or very much live in their heads). In turn, most reputable faiths recognize the importance of being grounded and emphasizes the importance of being integrated and connected with the physical body (e.g., by making the point always to feel your body).

Unfortunately, while the tendency to disconnect from ourselves has been an issue throughout history, the modern (digital) era has made this problem much worse since more and more of life revolves around rapidly transitioning images, ideas and data rather than being physically connected with reality.

In this article, I want to highlight two of the major issues with becoming ungrounded.

First, a great deal of our basic satisfaction and contentment in life comes from being grounded in our physicality. In turn, once this is lost we become lost souls desperately searching for meaning. Likewise, I and many others believe the two primary causes of anxiety (which is now the most common psychiatric condition as it affects almost half of all Americans) are a loss of physical grounding and the media relentlessly conditioning us to become disconnected from the present (e.g., much of marketing revolves around expectations in the future).

Note: many descriptions of this sense of being lost exist throughout literature. For example, I’ve seen it phrased as: “without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render their adoration.”

Second, physical grounding is one of the primary things that protects each human being from external influences. In turn, as this is lost individuals both become much more susceptible to external influences and much less able to realize what is happening to them. To illustrate:

•One of the things that always made it hard for me to fit in with society was my intrinsic resistance to hypnosis (something which often underlies the cohesion within social groups). This was because anytime I began to be influenced by something, I would immediately notice something in my body was changing (e.g., my heart rate, a muscle tightening up, an inexplicable emotion rising up or the pacing of my thoughts shifting) at which point my first thought would be to try to recognize what was triggering this and then get upset with the trigger for attempting to violate me.

This in turn is why I’ve always had such a strong interest in propaganda; I would constantly notice subliminal ways the media (e.g., music, the news, the internet, written pieces) were doing this, and as time went on I started noticing how systematically and repetitively it was done (especially by Big Tech).

Note: it’s impossible to avoid influencing someone within human communication. For example, my goal here is to empower people with what I believe to be true and to move readers into a positive emotional state where they are not paralyzed by fear, but while that is arguably “good” to do, it still is me forcing my agenda upon you, which is part of why I try so hard to (concisely) be transparent about exactly what I am doing.

Susceptibility to Influence

At any given time, a constellation of factors determine how susceptible one is to being influenced. Some (e.g., how innately grounded one is) remain relatively static, others gradually change (e.g., how stressful one’s life is or how desperate one is for a life purpose to attach themselves to) and some can change quite quickly (e.g, the current “health” of the individual or how strong of an external influence they are exposed to).

I believe one problem in medicine helps to illustrate much of this.

The medical profession believes a doctor (and healthcare workers) should not under any circumstances engage in sexual relations with a patient. In turn, the penalties for doing so are quite strict (e.g., a consensual relationship is often automatic grounds for the revocation of a license while some states go even further and make the activity a felony) and when the occasional sexual predator who has victimized numerous patients is identified (which seems to happen every few years) the justice system makes it very clear to the public the individual will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

As a result, almost all doctors in practice believe they would not under any circumstances become sexually involved with a patient. Nonetheless, it still happens (I even know of a few cases where former patients who married their physicians).

In all the cases I’ve looked, I noticed two factors were commonly at play:

•First, the doctor (or other healthcare worker) was in a particularly vulnerable place of their life (e.g., a bankruptcy, a traumatic divorce, a new workload which was too stressful for them to handle, a recent death of someone very close to them or another catastrophic loss).

•Second, the individual they became involved with had an energetic presence the doctor had never encountered before which was overpowering and caused them to experience a lot of intense or tumultuous things (e.g., emotions) the doctor had never experienced before which was eventually rationalized as a need to be with the patient.

In turn, when both the first and second were at play and the patient was attracted to the doctor, the doctor often ended up engaging in a relationship they previously believed they would never get themselves into.

While the above example seems a bit extreme and not applicable (as most of you aren’t doctors), the reality is very similar things happen all the time. For example, I’ve lost count of how many people have lamented the relationship they are stuck in, and then noted that one or both of the above factors was what drew them into it.

In turn, I would argue there are two critical points to take from this:

The first is that individuals with “the ‘it’ factor” often have that energetic presence and hence cause many people to be drawn to them even though those drawn can’t put into words why they are.
Note: many other individuals can have weaker versions of “the ‘it’ factor” that only specific people are inexplicably drawn to (e.g., sometimes this is labeled as being convinced the individual is their “twin flame”), while even weaker forms of it are often just referred to as having “chemistry.” This “draw” in turn is often what sparks sexual relationships, and my present perspective is that while compatibility is critical in dating, the stronger this pull is, the less likely the relationship is to be healthy and sustainable (e.g., I’ve watched numerous “twin flames” rapidly transition from being madly in love with each other to permanently despising each other, sometimes in fairly dramatic ways).

The second is that a variety of ways exist to protect yourself from this (e.g., becoming more grounded). I believe one of the most important strategies is simply becoming aware that energetic influences exist so they no longer become this overpowering experience that draws them in. For example:

•One of my close friends crossed paths with a notorious public figure who was notorious for using his “it” factor to both seduce women and gain political power. When he did that to her, she first felt an overpowering draw to him and began to fall into his sway, then took a step back as she had the thought “oh this must be one of the [redacted] techniques my guru told me about,” at which point she completely lost her attraction to him (which left him quite confused for a long time as almost no one else had rebuffed his advances). After that she began to look for it, and realized he just did the same thing again and again on the young women he met.
Note: if you know who I am referring to, please do not mention his name in the comments; that stipulation was what I agreed to with her in return for sharing this here.

•When I was younger I became involved with people I just felt I had to be connected to (e.g., they had an intoxicating presence). This puzzled me as I often did not at all approve of their character, and over time, I realized that the overwhelming experience I had around them was simply a product of how a specific energetic quality they had interacted with me, at which point, like my friend, I became immune to it.
Note: It’s important to recognize this principle does not just hold true for romantic interactions—it can also hold true for platonic ones (e.g., I had friends of the same gender I felt an overwhelming pull towards, became very attached to and ultimately was involved with for years despite it not being at all healthy for me to do so).

Mass Formations

Two years ago, Robert Malone introduced Matthias Desmet’s mass formation hypothesis to this movement. It was controversial since its suggestion that much of the evil we’d seen over the last few years was something which could emerge spontaneously in the correct conditions (as this implied the psychopaths who engineered this were not the ones at fault) but simultaneously embraced by many because they felt it at last put words into what they had been observing.

This hypothesis essentially argues that:

•Crowds can take on a life of their own and before long pull their participants into an altered state of mind where many begin to do unspeakable actions no one imagined could ever be possible.

•The perpetuity of a mass formation is largely based upon whether or not a vocal minority of the population is willing to take on the personal risk required to speak out against it (which is why it’s so important for those who can to speak out against them).

•Certain conditions such as being disconnected from everything or a severe source of anxiety gripping the society make individuals much more susceptible to falling into a mass formation.
Note: these were the exact same conditions that existed during the COVID lockdowns.

•The most successful tyrants in history (e.g., Hitler, Stalin, Mao) controlled a society which was in the grip of a mass formation and enacted a variety of policies and propaganda presentations which further reinforced the mass formation.
Note: while it did not happen to those three, Desmet cited many other cases where the mass formation became a self-perpetuating entity which devoured the society (including those who had initially championed it).

I immediately supported Desmet’s position because it both encapsulated much of what I’d seen throughout my lifetime and also because he provided an unusual degree of accuracy over what had transpired in those totalitarian states I almost never see provided within the literature.

Note: much of what happened in those states is nearly impossible to put into words, and I only know of because I am close to perceptive individuals who grew up within them. The fear many of us have is that we are extremely vulnerable to repeating those mistakes of the past because there are now so few people who are still alive who directly experienced what happened in these nightmares is a large part of what motivates to write here.

Furthermore, I believe there are three important but rarely recognized aspects of this phenomena.

First, much of what Desmet described (e.g., the inexplicable sway people are pulled under, the hypnotic current that forms between them, and the rapid transmission of states of consciousness between the participants) is energetically mediated. This for example is why individuals with “the ‘it’ factor” often initiate the creation of mass formations and why (in the wrong settings such as a war zone) you can watch a malevolent emotion rapidly spread through a crowd, which is following by something inconceivable like a terrifying madness gripping the crowd or them transforming into monsters in the blink of an eye.
Note: it’s very difficult to appreciate what I am describing (or even believe it’s possible) unless you’ve seen it firsthand.

Second, less intense mass formations exist around us all the time. For example, any social group or identity will often develop a shared emotional resonance and linguistic style members of the group will adopt to fulfill their subconscious desire to belong to the collective. This for instance is why many nonsensical ideologies can perpetuate as while their specific words are relatively meaningless, they all reinforce the underlying resonance of the group. To illustrate, a recent article, “The Deadly Rise of Scientism” discussed how randomly generated text (i.e. nonsense) that mimics the cadence of post-modernist or new age writings often can pass for being authentic to members of those groups.
Note: while I strongly believe patients should be informed and have access to support groups, I now often recommend my patients leave them as I find many who participate in these groups latch onto unhealthy beliefs being continually reinforced within the collectives of those groups (e.g., “we are all so damaged” “there is no hope” etc).

Finally, whenever you start to look into cults, you will typically find some type of mass formation is at work. I share this because in a cult deprogramming I was involved in a year ago, I realized what the person was describing perfectly matched what Desmet had shared with Tucker Carlson about mass formations, and in turn, once the individual was at the place they were willing to listen, sharing that excellent interview played a pivotal role in breaking them out of the cult.

Note: one of the major social challenges I faced throughout life was how much internal resistance I’ve had to surrendering myself into the mass formation of a group—something which makes it very hard to fit in.

Cults

Anytime groups of people gather together for a shared ideology, they will develop varying degrees of cult like behavior. Exactly where you draw the line on what degree of that constitutes a cult is hard to say—everyone agrees Jim Jones (who inspired the phrase ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’) was one of the most infamous cult leaders in history, but very different perspectives exist on how to describe the zealots trapped within the COVID-19 mass formation (e.g., many still think they were completely sane, while others ofter refer to them as the “Branch Covidians”).

Note: many of my colleagues refer to modern medicine as a cult because of how deeply held many of its toxic beliefs are and because of how quickly collective psychoses can spread through the medical field (e.g., what we saw throughout COVID-19).

In turn, cults are an enduring issue with almost every faith. For example, by the criteria that exists in almost every one of them, Jesus Christ was a genuine spiritual being and a teacher of great integrity. Yet, since Jesus’s time, countless false prophets claiming to act in his name have done unspeakable acts (e.g., Jim Jones did this) that go against every single teaching of Christ, and sadly I can name individuals who have done the same for almost every other major religion (e.g., I’ve come across a few cults run by a psychopath who has convinced everyone he held the true teachings of the Buddha—and sometimes even genuinely believe he was Buddha’s reincarnation).

Typically cults form in one of three ways:

•A Cult Leader Creates It
•A Mass Formation Emerges On It’s Own
•Both happen concurrently.

Note: mass formations being linked to cults explain why these organizations (unlike other predatory businesses) often become focused on more than than just making money and why they often become so hard for their leaders to control.

Cult leaders in turn tend to come from two sources:

1. Individuals with “the ‘it’ factor” who then use their charisma to attract a following.

2. Individuals who have uncovered something inspiring, get in over their heads while promoting it, get placed into a leadership position, and then rapidly become transformed by their position (which they were not prepared to handle).

In turn, there are a few key points to take from this.

First, the degree of charisma a cult leader has varies greatly. Typically, the more innate charisma they have (due to their energetic makeup), the less they look for outside help. Conversely, as the leader has less charisma, they will resort to some combination of:

•Asking outside forces to provide that charisma (e.g., this is a common reason why people engage in channeling).

•Psychologically manipulating their group (e.g., by coming up with an endless list of reasons why people must devote themselves to the cult, doing lots of things to “unground” them such as subjecting them to sleep deprivation in order to make them easier to manipulate, or isolating them from anyone outside the group so no one can break the leader’s spell).
Note: a good case can also be made that all of the above occurs in many other areas like the training one goes through to become a doctor.

Secondly, since cults (and the energetic manipulation that maintains them) have had much more time to develop in Asia than they have in the Western World, the “marketplace” for cults tends to be more competitive and selects for people who are very good at spiritually manipulating their groups. Conversely, while individuals like that are rare to find in the Western World, modern technology (like NLP) has bridged that gap here.

For example, a common marketing technique is to combine an (often repetitive) activity that invests you in the product with something that triggers a dopamine spike, as doing these in concert with each other creates an addiction to the product.

In turn, many examples exist showing how big tech has done this to increase business (e.g., with blue light from screens creates addictive serotonin releases, I’ve observed certain music playing programs will sometimes slightly speed up your favorite songs which in parallel speeds up your nervous system not unlike a stimulant, and it is now widely acknowledged that social media is structured to create addictive dopamine spikes in the users).

Cults often use similar approaches, especially those that are focused on selling their doctrine to as many people as possible. For example, in a manner somewhat analogous to how Big Tech addicts you to their products, I’ve come across quite a few groups which covertly (or overtly) drugged their recipients with illicit drugs that caused them to have euphoric experiences cult members were trained to associate with the cult’s messages. Likewise these groups often use some type of easy method to create a spiritual high and then convince each follower that high validates the importance of the cult’s doctrines.

Positive Spiritual Practices

Since determining what constitutes a “cult” can be quite subjective, another way to evaluate the merits of one is to see if it offers the positive things known to go hand in hand with a religion or spiritual tradition.

Most longstanding spiritual traditions have served as a powerful repository of societal and cultural wisdom, and our highest ideals (e.g., the Judeo-Christian and Buddhist narratives about compassion, kindness, freedom and liberation or the Pagan and Indigenous traditions reverence of the natural world, embrace of positive feminine ideals, and the reality of the interconnectedness of all things). Cults, especially as their mass formation grows, rarely offer the same (e.g., Jim Jones initially promoted egalitarian ideals but then pivoted far away from them).

Similarly, one of the primary reasons people embrace their faith and is because it has serves as a cornerstone for their productive and worthwhile life. So, healthy spiritual practices should be expected to produce outcomes such as:

•Improved physical health and longevity.

•Improved mental health (e.g., increased happiness and satisfaction).

•Improved social health (e.g., intact families, lower divorce rates, increased kindness and greater community engagement).

•Improved spiritual health (e.g., being more grounded).

Note: research such as this large survey by Pew Research has demonstrated many of those benefits are seen from actively participating in a religious group.

In turn, I would argue that when you are engaged in a genuine spiritual tradition, you should:

1. Feel you directly experienced positive change in yourself.

2. Other people inside your community recognize and acknowledge these positive qualities emerging in you.

3. People outside of your community (e.g., those not practicing your faith and those sharing some other affiliation with you) should acknowledge these positive qualities in you.

As you might guess, it is very rare to see these benefits from being in a cult. So if you aren’t experiencing them, you may want to reconsider the merits of what you are doing.

The Problems With Being a Cult Leader

Since cult like behaviors exist everywhere, it’s inevitable they will end up in spiritual groups. In turn, like many other facets of our society, each faith operates somewhere on the spectrum between integrity and manipulation, but fortunately most of the traditions which have stood the test of time, while not perfect tend to err towards integrity.

Conversely, the newer groups are typically much more prone to becoming cults. This is usually because one or more of the following happened:

•A charlatan founded it to advance their own selfish agenda.

•Organizational structures were not in place to prevent bad apples in managerial positions from hijacking the organization for their own agenda.

•The leader was not prepared for the role (as they had not yet done the decades of hard work necessary to cultivate genuine inner humility and spiritual maturity).

Throughout my life, I’ve seen numerous cases of well-intentioned individuals that got thrust into the role of a cult leader role and due to their lack of spiritual maturity were unable to handle that role and got really messed up by it. Likewise, I’ve seen unscrupulous individuals attain that role and become much more twisted once they were within it.

Presently, I believe there are a few key reasons to explain why cults are so damaging to their leaders:

•First, history has consistently shown that having the absolute power to do whatever you want is extremely corrosive to the soul as it causes you to stop considering how others feel or the consequences of your actions (e.g., this was a well-known problem with the Roman emperors) and frequently, I observe that when people attain the ability to manipulate others with ease this occurs. For example, if you consider the politician mentioned above, he became so used to being able to use his “it” factor to seduce woman, they in many ways became objects to him and as best as I can tell (as I never knew him personally) his sex addiction consumed him.

•Secondly, anytime one taps into a core need people have (e.g., their purpose in life) they will reciprocally project all their needs onto that person (e.g., to be saved or to be manipulated by someone they “trust”). This is why the most advanced spiritual teachers tend to rebuff or dodge the praise they receive from their students whereas the other teachers often take that validation to heart, gradually becoming addicted to it and distorted by it, and in many cases, eventually succumbing to the desire within every human being to be a god. This amongst other things is why MD’s are sometimes mockingly referred to as “minor deities,” and why many celebrities “live for the applause” (Lady Gaga even made a song about it).

Note: one of the primary reasons I am anonymous on here is because I do not want to have a cult of personality form around me. Had I not had that anonymity buffer, I probably would have never touched upon many of the core issues that lie deep within many of us.

Third, once leaders become (consciously or unconsciously) addicted to the role of the leader who receives the adulation of their flock, they naturally want to maintain it. This for instance makes them much more prone to temptation (e.g., to accept the “help” of an outside force that will help them control their flock). Likewise, teachers (especially those who are not that advanced) will inevitably run out of material to teach their students, and at this junction, those who have become addicted to maintaining their position will switch from providing their students with value to manipulating their students to stay with them.
Note: this is why similar lines are seen again and again when more conscious students begin to recognize their teacher has nothing to offer them and begin to drift away to new teachers (e.g., “unless you follow me you will go to hell,” “without my practices you will never purify your karma,” “our church is the only way you can repent for your sins,” “my teachings are the one true way to obtain enlightenment; anything else is a fraud,” “I am offering you a direct connection to god and the infinite,” “fate has brought you here; if you squander this opportunity, it will be thousands of lifetimes before you get another chance to wake up” etc).

•Fourth, interactions (particularly energetic and spiritual ones) are always a two-way street, and as one influences someone else, they inevitably are influenced as well. In many cases, what cult leaders take on from their flock is much more than what they can handle and in far too many cases, completely destabilizes the innermost core of their being. Of the four points, I believe this final one is the most important.

Spiritual Psychoses

pOne of the things I have always been fascinated by is the overlap between psychosis, illicit drug usage, and spiritual disturbances (which are resulted from unsafe spiritual practices). To illustrate:

•The psychoses I’ve seen from harmful spiritual practices often resemble specific types of drug psychoses (and respond to similar interventions).

•With a significant number of psychiatric patients I’ve worked with, I noticed I they had some type of Chinese medicine diagnostic pattern which would cause the exact symptomology they were experiencing. Without exception, this was never recognized by their psychiatrists.
Note: I and numerous colleagues believe short circuits in the energy channels of the body is a common cause of mental illness.

•A significant portion of people who go into the spiritual field do so because they unresolved mental illness, and seek spirituality out in the hope it will help them. Sadly, while they tend to be much more sensitive to spiritual experiences, this almost never works out well for them and I know far more people who got worse than those who get better by using mediation to fix their minds (including quite a few who had psychotic breaks in the middle of a retreat).

•I’ve met many patients who turned psychotic after doing what is classically considered to be a dangerous spiritual practice.
Note: there is now some recognition of this issue. For example, in China, psychosis triggered by a bad Qigong practice is referred to as Zouhuorumo or “Qigong deviation,” while the equivalent in is Yoga termed the Kundalini Syndrome, both of which are analogous to the “Cultural Concepts of Distress” which were recently introduced to psychiatry.

•I’ve met many extremely sensitive patients who I felt were erroneously deemed to be partially psychotic because they were simply perceiving things in the environment others were not (and in many cases also not able to functionally process everything they were taking in). At same time however, I’ve also met many sensitive people who were absolutely certain they were perceiving things I assessed (and in some cases concretely verified) to be hallucinations—which speaks to how incredibly tricky this issue is for even an extremely open minded psychiatrist to handle appropriately.

•Segments of the shaman community believe that many severe mental illness are the result someone becoming awakened to the spirit realm but not being able to have a functional integration with that process. The most well-known article on this subject detailed the experiences of an African Shaman who observed this issue throughout an American psychiatric hospital he visited. That shaman spoke throughout the USA, and remarkably, the Washington Post published an article that somewhat corroborated his claims.
Note: both I and colleagues have observed cases of psychoses (e.g., with schizophrenics) which fall into that shamanistic model, but do not believe it is appropriate to apply it to all of them.

There was a very controversial article published by the Washington Post 8 years ago (e.g., see this rebuttal) where an academic psychiatrist from New York discussed his experiences working with exorcists throughout the United States who consulted him on their cases. The psychiatrist shared that while the majority of cases were classical mental illnesses, a subset existed which he could not explain as anything besides demonic possession, and recounted a variety of compelling stories (and four years later wrote a book synopsizing his 25 years of work in this field which is summarized in this interview).

•I had quite a few spiritually inclined friends from medical school who went into psychiatry specifically because (like me) they recognized that many psychiatric patients were sensitive individuals with issues outside the medical model and it thus offered them a way to productively engage with this realm.
Note: as you might have guessed, some of them contribute to this publication.

Universal Persuasions

Years ago, I read a book which argued that to be successful, any party (e.g., an institution) wishing to market itself must use “universal persuasions” as these hold the highest chance of capturing people (e.g., customers) who will support it. For example, I would argue the reason why the mainstream religions have stood the test of time, whereas the cults I described which appropriated their teachings rapidly faded into memory was because their message had much a much narrower appeal (and hence only was embraced by those already trapped within the mass formation of the cult).

That book argued there were two universal persuasions:

•You are special.

•Everything that is wrong in your life is not your fault.

In turn, if you think about it, so many ideas which have gone viral throughout history used both of these. For example, consider how much the modern left utilizes both of these to recruit its zealous adherents (e.g., by pushing DEI on the world you are saving it and everything that’s wrong in your life is the result of structural oppression).

Having thought this over, I believe there are three other universal persuasions:

If you want something of value (e.g., something which will cultivate your self-esteem) if you do what we tell you to do, you can get that with minimal work on your part. For example, in the previous article about scientism, I argued that much of its “hook” has been to tell everyday members of society if they mindlessly repeat whatever the scientific authorities say, they are “smart” too.

Note: one could argue this universal persuasion is a correlate of the first two.

Utilize someone with “the ‘it’ factor,” which while highly effective, as discussed above isn’t scalable and in many cases (unless the individual is exceptionally charismatic) only appeals to those who have an energetic resonance with the individual. As a result, this ends up being used on a case by case basis rather than being the default.

Provide people with something that feels profound and true, as it’s what people are always searching for but can never quite attain (which for example is part of why “the ‘it’ factor” is so appealing to people as it gives them a taste of what they’ve always been searching for).

Dangerous Spiritual Practices

On this Substack, I have repeatedly complained about how the practice of mainstream medicine is often shaped by business interests rather than what is best for the patient. Regrettably, this also often holds true for many other fields including holistic healing and spirituality, and I hence repeatedly see them adopt business approaches which cater to the universal persuasions rather than helping their customers.

Within spirituality and meditation, much of this comes from the fact it is relatively easy to give people a strong spiritual experience but much harder to teach them a practice which can productively cultivate their spiritual growth. So as you might expect, many chose to have a way to create that experience and then package it with an (often ego inflating) story which means you must devote yourself to the teacher providing it. Furthermore, since the people who tend to seek out spirituality often do so because they are ungrounded and searching for a meaning, they are much less able to protect themselves from predatory sales tactics or recognize what is being done to them (whereas grounded individuals immediately have their critical thinking kick in).

Note: typically groups which focus on superficial appearances (e.g., having a spiritual teacher dress in an extravagant manner and encouraging each member of the group to copy the teacher’s dress and demeanor) do so because the teacher lacks the ability to offer anything of genuine spiritual value to their students. Likewise, cult leaders who wish to control a group typically do so through manipulating the external images each member of the group follows as it is much rarer to find cult leaders who have enough spiritual knowledge to manipulate the spiritual core of their followers (rather people who can actually do this typically only want to help their students).

My primary objection to pursuing “experience based” spirituality is that it can often be quite dangerous (e.g., I’ve know a few people who developed major issues after an intense Kundalini yoga retreat taught by unqualified teacher).

In turn, over the generations, each spiritual tradition has identified specific mind-body practices that are not good to do, but inevitably get reused up again and again because they offer the experience (and hence promise) of enlightenment in return for very little work. Some of the most common examples I (and many others) have come across in clinical practice are:

•Aggressively forcing physical structures and energy channels in the body to open (especially within the brain).

•Channelling spirits or guides.

•Pulling energy from deep within the earth up through the body.

•Using powerful drugs in conjunction with a spiritual practice to increase the experience of a practice.

Note: I’ve also run into many people who had issues with inappropriate “spiritual” sexual practices, including people who belonged to somewhat infamous western sex cults. However, these rarely turn people psychotic like the previously listed items. For those more interested in this NSFW subject, recent exposés on OneTaste (e.g., this one and this one) are both accurate (as they match what people who belonged to the group shared with me) and synopsize many of the common “business” tactics cults use. Additionally, they highlight a common marketing tactic cults use—having attractive individuals who are fully committed to a cult use their sexuality to entice members of the public into the cult (especially if that member has “the ‘it’ factor”).

In my eyes, one of the biggest problems with all of this is that not just the students but often the teachers as well lack the experience to understand the dangers of the specific practices being done. This is then compounded by four critical problems:

•People tend to develop big egos about what they are doing and hence become extremely resistant to considering the possibility what they are doing is not wise or that they wasted their time pursuing it. This is some analogous to how countless brutal conflicts have happened throughout history because people on both sides could not accept the notion their god was second best and there was a valid reason to worship something else.

•Since unsafe spiritual practices mentally destabilize people, both students and their teachers gradually lose the ability to recognize the practice is harming them.

•These practices are combined with other practices which often further unground the individual. For example, the fruitarian diet continually goes in an out of fashion, since it “cleanses” the body and gives people a high on life, but over time makes them become ungrounded and often somewhat mentally ill (e.g., I know a few groups within the raw vegan community have experienced significant difficulties from confrontations initiated by militant fruitarians).

•As mentioned above, many of those who are seek out these practices are ungrounded to begin with. The additional correlate to this is that frequently those individuals will bounce from one questionable teacher to another who offers them the promise of salvation but instead provides damaging spiritual practices which further un-ground them.

In short, I believe that if you want to do an intense spiritual practice, you need to have a clear understanding of exactly what you are trying to do, what can go wrong and how to fix things if they do go awry. Sadly, like many things, this issue is not at all unique to spirituality. For example, in a recent series, I discussed the many issues with SSRI antidepressants. One point I emphasized was the horrifying experience many patients have when they discover that the doctors they trusted (and who put them on these powerful drugs) actually understand very little about the SSRIs and that the safety net they assumed would exist to fix an SSRI injury simply doesn’t exist—an experience almost identical to what many have had with the COVID vaccines.

Note: our culture also has a longstanding issue forceful physical practices (e.g., gymnastics) coming into vogue and then being abandoned once too many people get injured by it. This for example is what’s recently happened with CrossFit, and what has somewhat happened with Yoga (as many people who teach it have limited familiarity with the traditional practice and are instead doing aggressive routines they came up with that they “think” are a good idea).

Finally, to further illustrate how challenging all of this is, we’ve had quite a few cases where I introduced someone to what we considered to be a moderately safe spiritual practice. That individual (due to their ego or them being fairly ungrounded) did something different from what they were told to do, ran into issues, did not listen to when I told them to stop, then ran into more issues and it ultimately took an immense amount of work to bring them back to a functional state.

Note: One of the major challenges in medicine is that there just aren’t enough healthcare workers available to sufficiently look after every patient, and likewise, in most spiritual groups, unless the leader is quite talented, it’s simply not feasible for them to keep an eye on every student and continually intervene as needed. This in turn is why now I almost never introduce students or colleagues to the majority of spiritual practices—it’s simply not possibly for me to be involved enough with them to provide the supervision necessary to prevent things from going awry.

Psychoactive Brews

Within our culture, the concept of using psychedelics has become intertwined with spirituality, and in turn, many of the same issues I’ve described above can be see within the psychedelic field. At this point, I believe psychedelics have a lot of promise when used in moderation within an appropriate setting (e.g., I have psychiatrist colleagues who are getting remarkable results from combining them with psychotherapy) but unfortunately, it is rare that setting is available.

Ever since the psychedelic scene started in the 1960s, many in my circle have observed the same general pattern:

•People will have strong experiences on psychedelics which are spiritual in nature and often makes them more open to consider a broader spiritual perspective in life.

•People often develop immense egos about the experience they had.

•Most of the benefits seen from the psychedelics are quite fleeting and rarely cultivate the same type of growth seen with a sustained spiritual practice.

•A significant number of people develop varying degrees of mental (or neurologic) illness from these drugs, especially when they use them for a prolonged period (which often happens once they believe the drug is their path to spirituality).

The most recent psychedelic which has become extremely popular is ayahuasca, a traditional psychoactive brew made from the leaves of a plant containing DMT and the stems of a vine which inhibits the breakdown of DMT (as typically DMT produces very brief highs due to how rapidly the brain metabolizes it).

A lot of people I know have used it, and the pattern matches there much of what we’ve observed with the other psychedelics. For example, many have had very interesting experiences on the drug and quite a few developed a massive ego about it, but to at this point in time, I only know of one person who I believe developed a clear and sustained psychological benefit from it.

Conversely, since ayahuasca forcefully opens people up (which is essentially why they perceive so many unusual things around them) you often run into many of the same issues seen with unsafe spiritual practices. For example:

•I know a few people who became extremely ungrounded after their ayahuasca experience, lost the ability to perform a job they’d effectively done for decades and were simply unable to receive any guidance from their co-workers who genuinely wanted to help them (e.g., this happened to a nurse I know who had worked in a very holistic medical practice).

•I know of many instances where people on ayahuasca (due to their open state) picked up an outside influence which caused a lot of issues for them until it was removed.

•I know of a few cases where part of their nervous system effectively “short circuited” and the individual lost the ability to do specific tasks they had previously been able to perform.
Note: LSD is notorious for doing this, and I have occasionally seen psilocybin do it as well.

If you study the history of ayahuasca, it’s clear that it’s really benefitted the indigenous communities which used it. However, I believe much of the harm we are seeing now is a result of it having been commercialized (which in turn is resulting in a lot of tourists flocking to South America to receive it alongside ayahuasca “churches” opening in the USA) and because of that money, many people are entering the business who are not qualified to administer it.

Some of the common issues we observe are:

•Some of the shamans in the ayahuasca scene travel through dark places in their shamanic work and they take that darkness with them when they leave (in many cases without the shaman even realizing it), which then transfer to individuals working with the shaman (e.g, in their ayahuasca ceremonies).

•When the group settings are used, it’s much harder for the shaman to supervise and protect each participant and likewise much more likely pathologies will be transferred from the unhealthy members of the group to everyone else. Because of this, the most experienced and reputable people we know in the field typically will only administer it to a few people at a time and completely avoid those group settings.

•Many people who claim to be qualified to supervise these events have very little knowledge of what’s actually going on or what needs to be done to prevent things from going awry.

In short, this is not that different from the pattern that is seen in many other spiritual groups, and I know from mutual friends that many the top people within those indigenous communities feel awful about what has happened to their sacred medicine.

Note: Individuals who aren’t grounded tend to be much more likely to end up in groups which offer a way to provide that meaning they have lost or “heal” them, which is unfortunate since these individuals also tend to be the most susceptible to being manipulated or destabilized (e.g., this is a huge problem in the ayahuasca because this characterizes many of the people who journey to South America for it). Similarly, I feel this very much holds true for the modern left, as it offers the tantalizing promise of providing that meaning by “saving the world” but since those who get tricked into it lack the grounding which begets basic critical thinking and skepticism, they often get pulled into fanatically supporting ideas which are completely at odds with reality and common sense.

Cult Interventions

When working with someone you believe is trapped in a cult, I believe the most important thing to remember is that most attempts to break someone out of a cult fail, so you need to immediately question if what you want to do is actually going to help.

Note: the challenges of rescuing people from cults led to the creation of a cult deprogramming industry which (with tacit support from law enforcement) would violently abduct people and forcefully try to break their attachment to the cult . Despite a lot of money being spent on this (essentially illegal and frequently harmful) approach, decades of research showed it didn’t really work and it gradually went out of vogue.

Much of this I believe comes from how people react to emotional confrontation (e.g., consider how defensive people often get when they are overtly challenged). More specifically (as I tried to describe in detail within this article), whenever we (consciously or unconsciously) dislike something, something inside our body mind or spirit will tighten up and close down. In turn, I would argue the the most common issues which arises within interpersonal communication is that this tightening occurs within the communicator and then triggers a tightening within the listener.
Note: cult leaders also often pre-empt this approach by giving their prey a story which causes them to become even more defensive over criticisms of the cult (e.g., they see it as a sign the world is against the cult’s “one truth”).

Many different methods have been developed throughout history to solve this enduring challenge of human communication, and many of them essentially encourage the speaker to completely lose their attachment to the situation. This is because it is only when one is at peace with whatever happens that they can engage stressful situations without having their insides tighten up in response to whatever happens.

To illustrate—I had a few times where someone very close to me got involved in a cult which had an extremely strong grip on them and based on my relationship to them, their being involved with the cult would have essentially been catastrophic for my life. In these situations, the very first thing I did was completely make peace with that happening (which was not easy to do) and did not engage with them until I had. This ultimately worked, and they told me had I done anything else, they would have stayed with the cult.

Note: I have heard almost identical stories of how critical a non-judgmental attitude is with drug or alcohol interventions being done by family members of someone whose life is being destroyed by addiction.

So, rather than attack the cult directly, an indirect approach has to be used. Some of the things I’ve found were the most helpful were:

1. Say something along the lines of “I really don’t think this is a good idea, but if this is what you truly want, I will support you in doing it.”

2. Do something completely outside their expectations (e.g., if you’ve had a lifelong habit or addiction they disapproved of but you would never quit, at some point nonchalantly inform them you aren’t doing it anymore). This is important because by the time someone has committed to joining a cult, they will have a fairly detailed story in their mind about why that is the correct decision and often have planned out how they will refute each argument from those close to them about why they shouldn’t join the cult. If you break a few foundational mental conceptions they had of you (e.g., that you’d fight with them over the cult), that will begin to create doubt that can ripple into their mental conception of the cult and begin to give you a weak point the ideology can be attacked at.

3. Try to figure out what weaknesses made them vulnerable to getting pulled into the cult. For instance, if you see someone describing their group in a very culty (i.e. disconcerting) way, this is often linked to them being heavily disconnected from their body. This in turn suggests the issue was them having a weakened connection to their and them needing to do some type of practice which physically integrates them. I first realized this after someone I knew who was trapped in a cult spoke to me and I realized what they were telling me (that they wanted to devote themselves to the cult) was in complete conflict with what their body was communicating.

4. Similarly, individuals often join cults because they are looking for a community or a connection, so as it is feasible, having a support group of people who can (non-judgmentally) give them a sense of connection and community can help counteract that weakness the cult preys upon.
Note: Cults are well known for coming up with and endless number of reasons to isolate its members from anyone outside of the cult (e.g., consider how much fear the vaccinated and masked were conditioned to have of the unvaccinated or unmasked) as they both alleviate the isolation the cult thrives upon and provide a contrary message which breaks the mass formation of the group. Sometimes this results in truly remarkable things happening (e.g., I’ve forgotten how a longstanding family business I worked in during college imploded because the aging patriarch began to develop cognitive impairment and was then preyed upon by a cult leader who unbelievably convinced him to cut everyone off and then torch the whole company).

5. Once it seems that they are at least a bit open to questioning the cult (e.g., because you’ve made them stronger and sown a little bit of doubt which has made the cult’s story which crystalized in their mind become more malleable), expose them to people who publicly point out common cult issues that match what victim went through. This for example is why Desmet’s previous interview was so incredibly helpful; it came from someone with no connection to the situation and simultaneously sounded quite objective and insightful about the specific situation they were trapped in. Likewise, the primary reason why I wrote this article was so you could show it to people trapped in similar situations to the ones described throughout this article.

6. At this point, precisely targeting the cult’s anchors (in a confrontational way) tends to be the most helpful.

Note: In the final part of this article I will discuss the most controversial aspects of this article (e.g., specific dangerous spiritual practices and some of our perspectives on exactly what some encounter within the spiritual realm) as I feel they are necessary to tie the previous points together. If the darkness around us is not your cup of tea, please do not read further and if it you do, please do not view what follows as the typical content of this publication

 

from:    https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/cults-meditation-drugs-and-psychosis?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

Open To Your Own Wisdom

Higher Self: 11 Ways to Connect With Your Soul

August 17th, 2020

By Aletheia Luna

 

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. ? Ralph Waldo Emerson

Through the ages, the Higher Self has been given many names: the inner Self, Soul, Christ-consciousness, Beloved, Buddha-nature, and Spirit. Regardless of what we call this fundamental inner Core, it is our deepest, most Divine essence.

Yet despite being familiar with these concepts, many of us still struggle to understand the Higher Self and its role in our lives. In other words, how can we transform this topic from an intellectual concept into a feeling that we experience

What is the Higher Self?

The Higher Self is your True Nature: it is your wise, unconditionally loving, creative, Whole, and eternal inner Center.Deep down, we all carry a certain level of resonance with these words. We recognize that there is something mysterious within us, something sacred. What few of us manage to come to terms with, however, is that our Higher Self totally goes beyond our conditioned fears, limiting beliefs, wounds, and ego fixations. It actually represents our most authentic state of being that we’ve lost touch with in modern life. While our Higher Selves are completely free, they can be blocked, repressed, and denied by the limited ego (or small self).

The Shaman and the Lake Story

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

? Alan W. Watts (The Book)

I want to share with you a story that will help illustrate what the Higher Self is:

Once there was a Great Ocean. All of existence was birthed from this Great Ocean, lived off this Great Ocean, and returned back to this Great Ocean. In the beginning, millions upon millions of tiny rivers sprung from this Great Ocean. Each river snaked across the land like delicate veins. But one day, a great drought came. No one saw it coming. The scorching sun dried up each snaking river so greatly that they all turned into lakes. No longer were they connected to the Great Ocean, so they felt great loneliness and isolation. As time went by, each little lake became more and more depressed, forgetting the Great Ocean.

One day, a shaman came to drink from one of the lakes. He noticed that it was depressed. “Why are you so sad?” he asked. The lake, despondent and gloomy responded, “Because I am nearly dried up and there is little water left. Time is running out. Soon I will be gone forever.” The Shaman peered intently at the lake and laughed hysterically. “Silly lake, don’t you know that you are connected to the Great Ocean? Although you change, you are changeless. Your water evaporates and returns back to the Great Ocean. It is then reborn, repurposed, and redistributed. How can you live or die? You are birthless and deathless. You are in all things. You are all things.”

This story is the best way I can think to describe the Higher Self.

We are all like the lakes in this story. We believe that we are separate, isolated and cut off because of the ego. But something within us (the Shaman) continuously drives us closer to the truth through the voice of intuition, instinct, and deep knowing.

Eventually in life we have an illuminating moment of self-realization or remembrance: that we are rivers that are connected to the Great Ocean. The river represents the Higher Self. The Great Ocean represents Spirit, Source, or Oneness.

‘Benefits’ of Connecting With Your Higher Self

Here are some inevitable benefits of reconnecting with your True Nature. In fact, I prefer to think of these “benefits” as “semi-permanent to permanent shifts of being” depending on how strong the encounter is:

  • Lowered or completely diminished anxiety
  • Lowered or completely diminished depression
  • Openness and receptivity to life
  • Creativity and inspiration
  • Enhancement of intuition and spiritual/personal gifts
  • Greater tolerance and patience
  • No longer fearing death
  • Developing a mystical perception of life
  • Cultivating unconditional love for self and others

These “benefits” touch only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to experiencing your Higher Self! Because the experience is so individualized and personal, we all taste different benefits to varying degrees.

11 Ways to Reconnect With Your Higher Self

I first encountered my Higher Self during an intensely traumatic shamanic experience. In this encounter, I lived through what felt like hell.

All of my deepest fears were exposed and laid completely bare in front of me.

For about an hour or more I experienced waves of the purest forms of anxiety, paranoia, terror, insanity, and loneliness imaginable.Despite constantly feeling on the verge of madness, I managed to surrender and accept what was happening. This shamanic experience awakened me to the existence of my Higher Self, or what I prefer to call “Divine Nature.”

Thankfully traumatic experiences aren’t the only way to reconnect with your Higher Self, however!

Other people encounter the Higher Self during activities such as meditation, fasting, wilderness retreats, dreams, visions, or even near-death/out of body experiences.However, for everyone the situation or technique is different — there is definitely no one “prescribed” way to experience the Higher Self. Sometimes, we experience our Higher Selves in completely spontaneous and ordinary circumstances!

Here are some paths and practices that may help you reconnect with your Higher Self:

1. Discover the face of your Higher Self

What does your Sacred Self look like or resemble? You might like to use visualization, inner journeying, or self-hypnosis to help you with this. Although your Higher Self is ultimately beyond all labels and forms, it helps to have a visual depiction to aid the human mind.

2. What does your Higher Self feel like?

For example, when you have a mystical experience or a spontaneous meeting with this deeper part of you, what sensations arise within your body? How does your chest, belly, head, and body as a whole feel? You can also connect with your intuition to help you answer this question. As your intuition is the voice of your Soul/Higher Self, it provides direct access to this eternal part within you. Pay attention to what the voice of your intuition feels like within you. Is it a soft whisper? Perhaps it is a feeling of inner stillness, calmness, compassion, or deep knowing.

3. What message/s does your Higher Self have for you?

You might like to explore automatic writingdream analysis, and even the use of oracle cards to connect with the messages of your Higher Self. You can also try developing more body awareness and use inner visceral mindfulness as a way of tuning in to present moment guidance. Meditation is another powerful way of connecting with the insight offered by your Higher Self.

4. Make time for silence and contemplation every day

Start with a minimum of 10 minutes daily. You can use this time to meditate or to simply revel in nature and the wonders of existence. What feelings or thoughts do you have during this time? You might like to record them in a journal.

5. Explore what things you can surrender or let go of

One of the biggest reasons why we struggle to connect with our Higher Selves is that we are carrying too much mental and emotional baggage. What needs to be surrendered and removed from your life? How can you practice letting go more? Introspect and examine what beliefs, ideals, assumptions, and/or conditionings are causing you to feel separate and unhappy.

6. In what ways can you accept and love yourself (and others) more?

Love opens your heart, and your heart is a direct doorway into your Soul. What could be a more powerful way of reconnecting with your True Nature? The more love you feel, the more life expands, and the more deeply you can embody your Higher Self. Learning how to love yourself is a crucial way to experience your True Nature. Ask yourself, “What within me needs to be held in the loving arms of compassion and self-forgiveness right now?”

7. Try non-resistance (“going with the flow”) for one day

Here’s an experiment: commit to allowing everything to happen as it happens, including your thoughts, emotions, and external circumstances. Try this for at least one day. How do you feel? The more we resist life, the more we are stuck within our dualistic minds. Non-resistance doesn’t mean being a push-over or doormat (it’s important to create boundaries and say no). Instead, non-resistance is a philosophy toward life. It honors reality – and the more connected we are with reality, the more access we have to our Higher Selves.

8. Discover who (or what) your Spirit Guide is

Spirit Guides are powerful beings that help us to connect with the truth, courage, wisdom, and love within us. Whether you believe them to be archetypes or actual independent energies is irrelevant: they can help you connect with your Higher Self by guiding you into rediscovering who you really are.

9. Find your soul place

We all have at least one soul place on earth. A soul place is a special site or spot where we experience unique feelings of belonging, empowerment, and energetic rejuvenation. Finding your soul place will help you to connect with your True Self by relaxing and slowing down your nervous system, as well as inspiring you to be introspective and mindful.

10. Practice mirror work

When you stare gently into your eyes in a mirror and call on the presence of your Soul, what do you feel? What do you experience? The eyes, after all, are the mirrors of the soul. See if you can gently move past the voices of self-judgment that naturally arise when doing this activity, and tap into your inner Source. This is a powerful and rapid way of reconnecting with your Higher Nature. Read more about mirror work.

11. Connect with the present moment

Awakening to your True Nature can only (and ever) happen right here, right now, in the present moment. This is the secret passed down through ancient traditions and spiritual teachings: Paradise is here within you, the Kingdom of Heaven is Now.

The difficulty we face is the monkey mind that is constantly running around, trying to get us to some special future place. But the beauty and ultimate compassion of Life is that you don’t have to find your Higher Self/Soul in the future: it’s right here within you!

Unfortunately, most of us struggle to settle into this simple but sacred truth. Our minds have such a strong grip on us that we can barely sit still for two seconds without squirming and trying to avoid how we feel. This is why a combination of spirituality and psychology is so important. We need psychology to help untie our inner knots, and we need spirituality to help loosen the mind….

To connect with your Higher Self, try establishing a regular meditation practice. Explore different meditation techniques (such as following the breath, open awareness, body scan, self-inquiry, etc.) and see what works for you. Sometimes a combination of techniques works the best. If you need help, try downloading a free meditation app such as Calm, Headspace, or InsightTimer.

“Higher” Self is Not Exactly True

In fact, any label that describes That-Powerful-Presence-Within-Us isn’t correct as it both transcends and integrates all labels. On an absolute level, our True Nature simply is – it is beyond time, beyond duality, beyond even thought.

However, for the human mind it does help to refer to that Powerful Presence within us with a phrase such as Higher Self because it does indeed feel ‘higher’ than the ego (and so it is in a sense). But that is not all it is and we need to be careful of making the mistake of associating spirituality with nothing but the ascending, transcendent path.

Remember that true spirituality, your True Nature, encompasses everything.It is here in the dull moments just as equally as it is in the ecstatic and blissful moments. It is here while you’re scrubbing dirty pans in the sink just as much as it is while you’re gazing at the stars.

Terms such as ‘Higher Self,’ ‘Buddha Nature,’ and ‘Soul’ are useful, but they’re ultimately limited. Who you are is so much more than a concept. Remember that as you seek to reconnect with the Truth of Who You Really Are.

Higher Self Q&A

How to listen to your higher self?

The best way to listen to your Higher Self is by learning how to trust your intuition. Your intuition is like a conversation between your mind and heart: it communicates the deepest and wisest truths that you need to be aware of in the moment. Start by journaling about any intuitive ‘hits’ you’ve received during the day and check back on them. What happens when you listen to vs. ignore these intuitive tugs or gut instincts?

Is the higher self the same as the soul?

Yes. The ‘Soul‘ is just another way of saying Higher Self. These words can be used interchangeably.

What is my lower self vs. higher self?

Your lower self is your small, limited ego. It is the self that believes itself to be separate from existence. Your Higher Self, on the other hand, is your True Nature that recognizes itself as one drop in the Ocean of Life. While your lower self is defined by fear, isolation, and paranoia, your Higher Self is defined by love, interconnectedness, and expansion.

What questions should I ask my higher self?

When reconnecting with your Higher Self, try to think carefully of deep and significant questions you’d like to be answered. Questions might include, “What is my life’s purpose?” “What are my gifts?” “Why do I keep repeating this negative pattern?” and so on. Remember that the answers may be revealed to you slowly, so be patient but receptive.

How to connect with your higher self?

There are numerous ways of connecting with your Higher Self. Some paths you may like to consider include meditating, going out in nature, practicing dream work and mirror work, using oracle cards, doing guided visualizations, and so on. Choose a path that resonates with you.

from:    https://wakeup-world.com/2020/08/17/higher-self-11-ways-to-connect-with-your-soul/

Are You Listening?

You Are Always Connected But…

The first thing to understand is, even though you may not feel connected, you are always connected to your higher self, spirit guides, and spiritual family — you are never alone.  They are always listening and always answering you and sending you messages.  It’s just a matter of whether you are receiving the messages or not, whether you are hearing the information being communicated.

The communication mode can vary.  Some people can literally HEAR the messages — they hear the sounds of words (this is called clairaudience).  But this is not the case for most of us, at least not yet.  For most people the communication and guidance coming from their higher self and guides comes in the form of intuition — thoughts that come to your mind, ideas that pop into your head, and associated feelings.  What some have called “the little voice in their head.”

Keep in mind that spirit usually communicates to us in a whisper — gentle whispers in our head and our heart, it will almost never shout.  Because the messages are so subtle, it is very easy not to hear them, or to dismiss them as your imagination.

Many people are so busy, and their analytical minds are chattering away so loudly, that they don’t notice or hear the subtle messages coming from spirit.  If they do notice their rational minds are likely to reject or ignore them.

Hence, it feels like there’s no connection! And indeed there is no FUNCTIONAL connection — but only because you are failing to receive the messages.

Another way that spirit can communicate with you is through signs and symbols delivered to you via the outer world.  Often this mode of communication is more concrete and unambiguous than the messages coming through your intuition and spirit uses it as an auxiliary communication channel as appropriate.  As usual, you need to be paying attention and trusting what you see and feel for this channel to be effective.

More on this later in the article but first let’s explore the reasons why you are not receiving your intuitive messages and what you can do about it.

The Top 3 Reasons Why You Aren’t Receiving Messages

The top three reasons why you aren’t receiving the messages being sent to you are; (1) You’re not noticing them because you are too busy and distracted, (2) you’re not hearing them because they are getting drowned out by too much mental noise, or (3) You’re not trusting them and simply ignoring or rejecting them.

Let’s dive into each of these in more detail and explore solutions.

#1 – Busyness and Distraction

People often DON’T NOTICE the intuitive messages coming from spirit because they’re so busy — and DISTRACTED — by their hectic day to day lives.  They’re immersed in dealing with issues and chores; interacting with friends, family, coworkers; and dealing with any manner of things and are simply not paying attention for messages from spirit.  And these messages are generally very subtle, so you really have to be paying attention to recognize them.

We all have busy lives to some extent or another, and we can get very busy for periods of time, and that is to be expected.  But if you want to have a good connection with spirit you need to set aside some quiet and alone time, preferably every day.  A spell of time where you slow down and relax and allow yourself the opportunity to hear and feel your connection and the messages coming through it.

This could be some form of daily meditation if that resonates with you.  But any kind of quiet time will work; solo walks in nature, trail running, gardening, whatever.  Anything that you enjoy doing that relaxes you and that is relatively mindless will allow the relatively subtle thoughts and feelings of your intuition to be heard.  If you can’t manage to get some quiet time on a daily basis, don’t worry — semi-regularly is just fine.

In my personal case, I do not do well with sitting still and quiet, so meditation is out for me.  I prefer to take solo walks in nature and in the hills.  I don’t do these every day but quite frequently.  Getting exercise and being in nature seems to reenergize me and some of my best insights, inspirations, and obvious messages come to me before, during, and after these.

What works best for you?  Please share in the comments section below the article because it might help others with ideas.

#2 – Mental Noise

People often CAN’T HEAR the messages from spirit because their minds are so busy churning away coping with the problems of everyday life.  If you are not hearing the voice of your higher self and your guides it may be that you are never quieting your mind enough to hear it.  The constant chatter of our analytical and egoic mind is mental noise that can drown out the incoming messages that are being delivered through our intuition.  The messages from spirit are like whispers and can be easily be overpowered by our other thoughts, fears, and worries.

One must make time on a regular basis to quiet the mind so you can hear the guidance and information coming through from your higher self and guides.  Any kind of quiet time will work but the less physical sensory stimuli, the better.

Of course, meditation can serve this purpose very well if it resonates with you.  It turns down the volume on the mind and reduces worry, stress, and anxiety which are the major sources of noise that interferes with us hearing our divine messages.  In meditation you tune out the external world and go inside, which is your portal to the field of consciousness, making it easier to hear the messages from spirit. The eternal essence of all beings is pure consciousness and we are all parts of the one field of consciousness, that’s why going within is your connection point.

If meditation doesn’t work for you then anything that allows you to relax and lets your mind get quieter is good — absolute Zen-like clear mind is not required.  Often any repetitive relatively easy mindless task that you enjoy can serve this purpose.  Quieting your mind by whatever means on a regular basis it the best first step.  This will allow those relatively subtle thoughts and feelings of your intuition to be heard.

#3 – Not Trusting Your Intuition

Perhaps the biggest problem in receiving the messages from spirit is that we will notice an incoming message but our rational minds will reject or ignore them.  We won’t trust that they are meant for us and are meaningful.

This is one of the main reasons that people don’t FEEL like they have a connection to spirit.  They are NOTICING the messages but are promptly ignoring or rejecting them because their rational mind doesn’t understand and trust intuitive communication or deems the thoughts and feelings as impractical, unrealistic, silly, or whatever.

Developing Trust In Your Intuition

To establish a functional communication channel with spirit you must learn how to trust your intuition.  This is very challenging for many because of the very rational approach that our culture ingrains in us.  You can’t expect the communication process with spirit to follow rational rules — the rational model of the world was devised from our study of the material world and we are not dealing with the material world here.  Try to keep an open mind and pay more attention to your thoughts and feelings as well as things that you see and hear around you.

Firstly, It really helps to know that your higher self and guides are always with you (in fact, within you) and that their primary mode of communication with you is through your intuition.  You must trust that you are being listened to and answered.  And you must trust that you are able to know the answers.

Don’t expect this trust to develop overnight.  It could, but it might require a little time.  If you set the intention to achieve a better connection, it will come.  Go ahead and tell your higher self, guides, and spiritual family (out loud or in your mind) that you want to establish a good connection with them.  Then all you need to do is start paying attention to your thoughts and feelings and things happening outside.

Most likely it will start with small coincidences and synchronicities.  Make a habit of looking for these and to make note of them.  Also, begin to make a habit of asking for what you need.  Start with small things that you want to happen that day.  The goal is to experience small successes that build your confidence that your communication channel with spirit is open and working.

After asking for help with something pay attention to what shows up.  Sometimes the answer arrives as the thing you needed, other times a helpful person will show up, or you might stumble upon some relevant or useful information.  Often you will be answered by receiving an inspired idea or thought.  Sometimes it will be blatantly obvious that the idea must have come from spirit because the idea had absolutely no precedent in your prior thinking — it just came out of the blue.  Trust that these are truly messages intended for you from spirit and let yourself gain confidence and experience in how communication with spirit works.

Ask For A Sign of Their Presence

One way to build your confidence and trust is to simply ask them for a sign of their presence.  They will deliver a sign to you that they know is the best way to convince you — and it might be something very personal — since they know you better than you know yourself.

Some traditional signs that are offered by your angelic guides, as silly as they seem, are putting a coin or feathers in your path, perhaps repeatedly.  But honestly, it could be anything so keep an open mind and pay attention.

Another way they may indicate their presence to you is through repeating numbers.  If you are seeing numbers like 11:11, 444, or any other number that is showing up repeatedly and more often or in quick succession in ways that seem improbable this is very likely a high five from the other side.

Repeating numbers are how my guides got my attention initially.  After they knew I had noticed the frequent and improbable repeating numbers, then they nudged me to stumble across the book Angel Numbers 101 which explains what they mean.  I only had to read the first paragraph of that book, and I realized that this must be what was happening to me.  As the book points out, not only will your guides get your attention with the repeating numbers but they can then be used as message codes and allow for an alternate channel of communication that complements and is a fallback to your intuition.

Asking for a sign of presence isn’t something that you only do when you are initially trying to establish a connection.  You can do this whenever you’re feeling of connection is waning or when doubt is creeping in, and you need reassurance of their presence.  They will be very happy to give you a sign of their presence any time you need reassurance.  They want you to trust their messages, and they know how important it is for you to trust their presence.

I’ve done this numerous times myself.  I occasionally get busy or stressed out and distracted by my work and the world and I feel like I’m disconnected. When I get in that state I just say out loud… “you know you guys (that’s how I refer to my guides.. as you guys) I’m feeling really disconnected and it would be very reassuring to get a sign of your presence.”  A sign always comes and sometimes in the most amazing and delightful ways!

That wraps it up for how to master your primary channel of communication to spirit — your intuitive communication channel.  But there is an alternate communication channel that you should be aware of.

Alternate Channel of Communication — External Signs and Symbols

Another way that messages can be delivered to you is via signs and symbols in the outer world.  Your guides frequently use this mechanism by presenting to you a picture or symbol, a word or phrase, a song, meaningful numbers, or anything else that serves as a symbolic message.  These may appear on license plates, road signs, music playing on the radio, and the like.  Unfortunately, most of the time people are not even paying attention to things like this.  If they do happen to notice something they’ll usually just write it off as a meaningless coincidence.

Start paying more attention to the symbols in the outside world and your first impressions of what they might mean.  With practice you may perfect recognizing them and begin to trust this symbolic communication channel.

Start asking questions and pay attention to what form the answer comes in — it may show up through your intuition as a hunch or inspired idea, but it might come as a sign or symbol.  For example, you might see a license plate with some pertinent and meaningful words on it that feels like your answer — trust your feelings and the message.

Solidifying Your Connection

With trust, patience, and practice using the techniques described you will firmly establish your communication channel to the Divine as many thousands and thousands have already done. And many more are coming online every day, one of which will be you.

Spirit is delighted when each of us becomes aware of, and then firmly establishes a connection.  It allows them to start guiding us more effectively — and this is what they signed up for, and agreed to do for us when we decided to dive into an incarnation in the Earth game.  So they finally get to execute their purpose fully, which is very rewarding and satisfying for them!

from:    http://divine-cosmos.net/improve-your-connection.htm

A Time to Become

Transforming Uncertainty into Loving Possibility

In the midst of a crisis, big or small, you may find yourself feeling afraid of what’s next because things seem uncertain. What if rather than becoming wrapped in the fear of uncertainty, you use these moments as an opportunity to grow in love?

Meditation from home

When events of global impact occur, you may feel confronted by the limitations of your control in the physical world. You may find yourself questioning your power or feeling uncertain about your future. The vacation trips you planned, conferences you scheduled, playdates/events you arranged—everything suddenly halts, and it is as if time itself has come to a sudden stop.

It is within this in-between state of things that is precisely the right time to turn inward and plant seeds with the lessons you’re learning. It’s a time to learn so much about what is important to you and who you might become.

A Lesson from Improv Comedy

In 2016, I was living in Washington, D.C., and effectively experiencing a quarter-life crisis while working at an environmentalist organization. I felt as if I let life fly by while being too afraid to chase my dream of being a professional artist and entertainer. My job sent me to a content marketing conference in Cleveland, Ohio, where I sat in on a session about creativity in business. In the session, a comedian explained to us the difference between someone who is incredible at improv and someone who struggles with it. He told us, “The comedian who is incredible at improv silences the fear in their mind.” Improv is all about stepping into the unknown with curiosity and enthusiasm; the game asks its players to agree to whatever is happening in the scene and to build on top of that.

The comedian who is great at improv has an idea and they bypass their fear of, “Will this be funny? Does this make sense?” They simply move into the idea on stage and perform their next action, whatever their comedic contribution is to the scene. A great improv comedian makes a choice to transform that moment of uncertainty into an opportunity to explore and create. A pro at improv answers the question of “What will happen next?” with a determination through humorous thought and action.

Moments in your life may sometimes feel like improv scenes because you share this world with others, almost like characters in a story, and you impact others but you don’t always know what’s coming next. I left that conference session with a lot of questions about the future of my career. The truth is, I had been afraid to ask myself, “What do you want?” There was a fear of failure and the uncertainty of success that made my heart pound. But there, in Cleveland, I found myself listening to the comedian daring me to be courageous.

3 Questions for Self-Transformation

In the session, I scribbled in my notebook as much as I could about the advice he gave us. When I got home, I meditated using lavender oil and cosmic music. I breathed naturally and closed my eyes. I asked myself, “What do I want? Who am I? Who do I want to become?” Images of a joyous me, a secure me, a me that is reassured about who she is and where she is in life—that’s what I saw before my eyes. I cried and asked myself aloud why I didn’t feel that way already—and I wrote it down. Then I began journaling regularly, “How do I feel right now? How do I want to feel a year from now? What experiences will create that feeling? What can I do right now?”

I followed the answers to these questions. They included things like wanting to feel at peace and whole, seeking experiences of community and support. I discovered that I needed to pour my love into the world if I wanted the world to pour love into me. I wrote poems to my loved ones, words of affirmation for the universe and myself, I took the time to listen to strangers. And while I quit my job and left D.C. without any certain idea about what would happen next, I still found myself in places filled with care and among people who received me with love as I made my way to living in California.

From Chaos to Peace

Now when I come across any defining moment in my life—a crisis, major transition, or advancement—I ask myself these same questions. I breathe. I visualize. I dream.

And it feels as if in an instant, the uneasiness of uncertainty dissipates. I return to my higher self, back to wholeness, and back to love. If you seek beauty, love, abundance, and peace, you will find it. Even in turmoil.

There is no doubt that suffering is happening as people seek appropriate healthcare, children are out of school, and people make ends meet to feed their families. There is also a great awakening happening inside of us. We are awakening our power of compassion, gratitude, and creation. Over the last month, air pollution in Los Angeles has cleared up, fashion designers have shifted their production from couture gowns to facemasks, and even certain CEOs have forfeited their salaries to make sure that their employees are supported.

In Portland, where housing costs have been trending upward for years, a landlord has elected not to collect rent from his tenants for the month of April. And in fact, when he discovered that one of his tenants was in need of food to feed her family, he surprised her with groceries on the front porch. In New York City, an advocacy group called Transportation Alternatives encourages people to donate unused bikes to essential workers. These are just a few of many stories that have emerged through this time of uncertainty.

It is easy to look at today’s circumstances and simply see what is lacking. But these people have seen the situation for what it is, and they visualized ways to contribute something meaningful, something that would make a difference. What they’re doing is something that you have the capability to do. You have the power to transform chaos into balance, it simply requires intention and practice.

The next time you become aware of uncertainty, ask yourself, “How can I help? How can I contribute? What gifts may I offer?” Watch what happens next. Soon you’ll find yourself creating ideas and giving support, feeling empowered. The uncertainty will dissipate, and a vision of love will arise in its place that will help you rediscover who you are meant to be.

from:    https://chopra.com/articles/transforming-uncertainty-into-loving-possibility

Whitley Streiber in Pine Ridge

It is our privilege and pleasure to welcome the world-renowned author Whitley Strieber as our featured author for May.

Whitley has dedicated many decades of his life to investigating the paranormal and detailing his profound supernatural experiences for the world to read. In this excerpt from his book ‘A New World’ Whitley explores his extraordinary encounter with a hidden landscape during his stay on the Lakota Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota; and the messages he received about the nature of the universe and the mysterious visitors that interact with our world.

Chapter Four, The Fields of Asphodel

During the weekend of July 19–22, 2019, I went to a place of great human suffering and incredible power. While there, I had extended, days-long access to another world, an experience that went far beyond anything else that has happened in this lifetime of strange and extraordinary experiences. I think that what happened offers a major clue about the origin of the visitors, and possibly also of their enigmatic human allies.

I had been invited to a small conference at the All Nations Gathering Center on the Lakota Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where I was to give a talk about The Afterlife Revolution. It was hosted by Dallas Chief Eagle and his wife Becky and organized by Mia Feroleto, publisher of New Observations Magazine.

Before going, I had learned some of the reservation’s history, but it had offered no clue about what was actually going to happen to me there. Like most people outside of American Indian culture, my awareness of the spiritual power of their religions was very limited. Being a Texas German, I was aware that my ancestors had a high opinion of their religion and spiritual development. Why, I did not know. I do now.

I also knew that Pine Ridge was the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre and the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973. On December 29, 1890, the US Army had opened fire on a group of 300 Lakota Sioux, killing 90 men and 200 women and children. In 1973, Wounded Knee was occupied by 200 Oglala Lakota and members of the American Indian Movement in protest over corruption in the tribe’s government. This led to a siege that lasted two months that left two Lakota killed and fourteen wounded and two federal officers injured. I also learned that Oglala Lakota County was the poorest county in the United States, with an average annual income per person of just over $8,000. Officially, the average life expectancy on the Pine Ridge reservation is 66.81 years, but statistics attributed to the Pine Ridge hospital cite a life expectancy among women of 55 years and men 47 years. Suicide rates are high, especially among teens, driven by the sense of hopelessness that infects their lives like a virus. During the winter of 2015–2016, one 12-year-old girl killed herself because her family could not afford heat, and she could no longer bear the cold. Alcoholism affects 85% of the population. Drug abuse and crime are rampant, and living conditions are dreadful beyond anything I have ever seen in my life.

None of this is an accident or due to laziness or any such issue. It is because of the location. During the 19th century American Indian wars, the Lakota Sioux were intentionally confined to this place because it is so lacking in resources. Distances are long, so work off the reservation isn’t economical for most residents. Because of its isolation, lack of good farmland and general scarcity of exploitable resources, there are few jobs on it, contributing to a chronically high unemployment rate.

While I found an oppressed people there, I also found that it was a place of great human spiritual power, in fact, power beyond anything I have ever known anywhere. I have some idea of what this power is, which I will discuss in depth in a later chapter. I had not been on the reservation for more than a few hours before I began to feel it. And when I say feel, I am not talking about something vague—some sense of unusual energies. Far from it.

On my first morning there, when I happened to close my eyes during a drive of half an hour or so, I saw movement behind my closed lids—what looked like shadowy trees and rolling hills, but not the ones we were passing. Surprised, I opened them immediately. I couldn’t understand why I’d been seeing anything at all. When I closed them again, what I saw simply took my breath away. I sat there watching an entire second landscape flow past the car. Although it seemed to be twilit rather than sunny, the effect was so vivid it was like wearing a virtual reality headset.

I was flooded with strong, poignant and yet contradictory emotions. There was at once a sense of homecoming and homesickness. It wasn’t as if I was in two places at once, but rather looking out the windows of my heart into two worlds that have been locked forever in a secret embrace and seeing that wonderful, sweet thing for the first time.

As we drove along, I sang out the different features I was seeing. “There’s a creek over there, we’re passing under an arbor of trees, there are long hills on the horizon. Oops, the road’s gone off down the hill.” Among those in the car who heard me doing this was our very kind driver, Kevin Briggs, who unfortunately could not close his eyes and look as the others did. Conferees Alan Steinfeld, Ananda Bosman, Mia Feroleto and others did close their eyes. Some saw it vaguely, others not at all. Only Ananda and I saw it clearly.

Even though the image was shadowy, it was extremely detailed. I could pick out individual trees, fields, even a narrower version of the road we were on.

After a few moments, I realized that I was watching not another world altogether, but another version of the landscape we were passing through. It was a bit more rough, with occasional gorges and generally wider streams. The other road was not only narrower, it wasn’t graded. The result of this was that it sometimes wound off down a hill while we continued along the graded version in our world. This would leave me with the uncanny sensation that the car had taken flight.

The vision didn’t go on for just a few minutes, but for the entire time I was on the reservation. It continued whether I was riding in a car, walking, sitting or standing. For those three days, I was living in two landscapes at once. After I closed my eyes, it would take about thirty seconds for the other world to appear, but it did so reliably. When I was standing somewhere, I could look down and see grass and gravel that was not present in this world. I could bend down and look closely, even to the point of being able to count the number of petals on flowers and observe the details of grasses and the discolorations on stones. I could touch and smell nothing of the other world. In this sense, it was very much like out of body travel, which detaches you from those senses. I was not physical in that world, and I have to wonder if that might not be how our visitors experience this one. I tried using the sensing exercise as a tool for physically moving into the other world, but it didn’t work. Nevertheless, it is my strong sense that what we think of as technology is not what enables things like this to happen. I think that it’s something to do with attention, concentration and the brain, and possibly also requires the cooperation of an outside energy that is itself conscious. My thought is that my lifetime of doing the sensing exercise and the changes in my brain that have resulted have made me more able to see this other universe and, to a limited extent (so far), interact with it.

The changes I am referring to involve a brain area called the dorsal striatum. It contains two regions, the caudate and the putamen, which are connected by an area of white matter called the internal capsule. There is a study under way that suggests that the density of the white matter region may govern the degree to which an individual possesses intuitive sensitivities.

To read the rest of the article, go to:    https://grahamhancock.com/strieberw1/

Steven Greer’s New Movie

New Documentary Explores How Humans Can Make Contact With Extraterrestrials

By    CE Staff Writer

In Brief

  • The Facts:Dr. Steven Greer’s new film Close Encounters of The Fifth Kind teaches people how they can peacefully make contact with ETs. As of April 7th, you can watch it on major movie rental platforms.
  • Reflect On:Is it time humanity makes contact with ETs ourselves as opposed to having government control that process? Are we being made to think ETs are a threat to us?

When the world learned of a fact UFOlogists have known for decades, that UFOs have been visiting earth for many years, suddenly the UFO question went from “are UFOs real?” to “who is manning them?” Now, the public has a choice: either we continue to listen to mainstream media and government to inform us about the issue or we start listening to the UFOlogists who have been accurately talking about this for decades. Which one we choose will have a huge impact on where this goes.

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In 2018, footage obtained by the To The Stars Academy from the US Navy showed unidentified flying objects being tracked on a military jet radar and camera. The footage revealed quality images of an incredibly fast-moving object that the Navy knew nothing about. This footage hit mainstream news everywhere, disclosing to the public that UFOs have in fact ben filmed by a credible source. Fast forward 1 year, the US Navy confirms that the video footage was, in fact, authentic and did show a UFO flying by, and once again mainstream media was all over it.

But along with the admission of UFOs came a threat narrative. The idea that these crafts could be dangerous, our enemies and that we should be careful about how we respond and prepare. Of course, this narrative was coming from the same organizations that had lied to the public about UFOs for decades, and now that they were admitting this reality, they also intend on controlling the narrative that goes along with it.

Dr. Carol Rosin was the first female corporate manager of Fairchild Industries and the spokesperson for Wernher Von Braun in the last years of his life. She founded the Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space in Washington DC and has testified before Congress on many occasions about space-based weapons. In testimony with Dr. Steven Greer, Rosin claims that in the later years of his life, Wernher von Braun was trying to warn humanity about an emerging narrative that aliens were a threat to humanity.

Dr. Wernher von Braun was a top-ranking SS officer who headed the Nazi rocket program during WWII. He was brought to the US via Operation Paperclip where the US seized Nazi scientists to come work for them after the war. During testimony, Dr. Carol Rosin stated the following about what Von Braun told her:

“The enemy at first he said, the enemy against whom we’re going to build a space based weapons system . . . First the Russians are going to be considered the enemy . . . then terrorists would be identified and that was soon to follow . . . then we were going to identify third world crazies, we now call them nations of concern. . . . The next enemy was asteroids . . . [and] against asteroids we’re going to build space based weapons.

And the funniest one of all, was against what he called aliens, or extraterrestrials, that would be the final card. And over, and over, and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving his speeches for him, he would bring up that last card.

‘And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We’re going to have to build space based weapons against aliens,’ and all of it, he said, is a lie.” (source)

According to Rosin, Von Braun knew that it was the interest of intelligence agencies to lie to the public about aliens in order to push forth a space weaponization agenda. And right now, here in 2020, this is precisely the agenda we are seeing play out as UFOs are disclosed to the public.

This is why I stated at the beginning of this article, that who we decide to listen to when it comes to the ET story that is emerging is very important. Leaving it to those posing a threat narrative may lead us to destructive ends, whereas listening to those with a different message, who have been proven to be correct over the years, might lead us to peace.

The bottom line is, up to this point, human governments have been the face of how humans contact and engage with ETs – is it time the people take this task on by themselves? And send a different message to ETs?

Enter Dr. Steven Greer’s new film Close Encounters of The Fifth Kind.The film not only discusses quite clearly exactly what this threat narrative looks like and how it’s being used to keep humanity in the dark about what’s really going on with ETs, but it also explores how humans can make contact with ETs themselves.

The first aspect of what this film covers will truly give viewers a much better understanding of how to navigate ongoing ET disclosure narratives as they come from the government. It will help viewers unlock a sense of discernment within themselves and begin to see through many narratives coming from popular voices and institutions who may be knowingly or unknowingly spreading a false threat narrative.

The next aspect of this film is where we dig into solutions from a point of consciousness. Information spreading around the world to wake people up to the reality o ETs is one thing, but affecting global consciousness and creating unity is something else. And this film lays out a plan to make that happen.

Personally, I have been practicing contact with ETs for about 11 years, and the content shared in this film does align with the experiences I have had and methods I’ve used. Never had I had a “bad” or “threatening” contact experience, and thus I do not resonate with the general narrative coming from government on this.

I truly believe people should check out this film so regular citizens can be the face of extraterrestrial contact on behalf of humanity – not governments. Now is the time, not next year or the year after, now. Especially with us all being on lockdown, what better time than to go out at night and choose to connect?

In the movie you will also learn:

  • CE-5 contact techniques and show the amazing evidence of Contact as never before!
  • the consistent results that people doing CE-5 experience.
  • the connection between consciousness and space, time and matter.
  • the nature of consciousness as an unbounded field of awareness that transcends the limits of space, time and matter — and yet is fully present in every point of space and time. This infinite field of consciousness is present within every awake, sentient being — human and ET.
  • how ET electromagnetic communications systems interface with our consciousness and coherent thought in such a way that any human with a peaceful, sincere intent can make Contact. NOW!
  • remote viewing — a way to view non-local events.
  • scientific evidence that proves that Mind-Consciousness is not limited to your body or brain but is a seamless field of awareness that connects all times, places and matter.
  • how 1% of the population meditating and making peaceful contact can cause a “phase transition” shift that transforms the entire planet and moves humanity onto a peaceful future that is Interstellar.
  • and take you behind the “Alien Mask” of deceptive events and phenomena.
  • how deceptive events are created by shadowy Unacknowledged Special Access Projects in the military and intelligence community that are designed to sow fear and division among humans regarding the ET presence.

You can watch Dr. Steven Greer’s brand new documentary here.

from:    https://www.collective-evolution.com/2020/04/07/new-documentary-explores-how-humans-can-make-contact-with-extraterrestrials/

Look Elsewhere!

6 Ways to Break the Hypnotic Spell of the Mainstream Media

Mainstream Media They Live

Here’s six steps to filter out media noise, break the hypnosis of the mainstream media, and get to the information that truly matters.

There is no information age. It doesn’t exist. There is only the Age of Noise. Because although we now appear to have an infinite ability to see everything that’s going on in the world at once, from photos of the world from space to the fact that our friends are indecisive about what to eat tonight, we have no ability to filter that information and sort for what matters. We have no reliable media gatekeeper. We only have the so-called “mainstream media,” which is just the advertising wing of multinational corporations.

We used to pay people to filter information for us: these were called professional journalists, writers and artists, whose job it was to dive into the sea of information and come back up with pearls for us. But we don’t pay those people anymore, because the media conglomerates that have consolidated into only a few massive holdings since the 1990s have realized that they don’t have to.

They don’t have to because their interest isn’t providing real information or truth, their interest is in providing content that gets as many people as possible to look at it, in order to get the most advertising money possible, because that’s how they get paid and can afford the salaries and insurance costs of the large staffs they need to do what they do. That’s their daily reality. And so they’re in the business of giving people what they want.

Since the 90s, the trend has increasingly been to cut out professionals and get people to generate their own content. That means reality television, YouTube, Facebook. No big budgets needed and far more profit gained. Since everybody is a star now, everybody is constantly generating more free content than we can ever consume. And so professional creatives have gone the way of the dinosaurs, and instead of getting reporting on, say, Karen Silkwood blowing the whistle on nuclear power, or Gary Webb’s expose of CIA drug trafficking, you’re getting reporting about how some celebrity is in a Twitter feud.

We have no more professional gatekeepers. We are scattered to the four winds, drowning in Facebook feeds or aggregation blogs. These mega-blogs, which we have mistakenly expected to replace mainstream media outlets, are in the same position: largely beholden to the tastes of their audiences, and stuck having to keep people happy with unchallenging, crowd-pleasing content to drive traffic to their site advertisers so that they can eat.

So where does this leave the information-poor individual who hopefully wants to get their head over the waterline enough to start to see the things that actually matter?

It means you have to be your own media gatekeeper. Flat out. You can’t outsource that job to somebody else anymore, because the mainstream media, or the alternative media, or Blog X, Y or Z, are not going to comprehensively do that job for you the way you need it done. They’re too beholden to economics, ratings and their own viewpoints and reality tunnels. And more and more, they’re probably not able to do that job because they’re not properly trained for that job, and I don’t mean just bloggers, because these days very few people who work in the mainstream media have any journalistic training at all. Nobody can get the information you need for you, you’ve got to do it yourself.

Luckily, we’ve got tools that can help us do that. Here’s a few beginning steps:

1. Decide what matters.

Faced with infinite information, you’ve got to decide up front what you’re going to filter for, at least initially. You’ve got to restrict your data to some extent, which sounds counterintuitive, but is necessary. You don’t need more information, you need more information about the things that matter. I suggest that the things that matter are, simply, information that can directly positively effect the welfare of you and your family, and information about the general welfare of the planet.

2. Use web tools to automate your info intake.

Everybody on the web is largely in the same position: grab info from a few news sources (like AP or Reuters) and then recycle it into blog content. They’re using the same tools as you to get their info. So cut out the middleman. I recommend setting up Google Alerts, for a start, to give you info about the issues you actually care about instead of waiting for somebody else to. Beyond that, I highly recommend using an RSS aggregator like Feedly to dump a lot of media outlets into an easy-to-digest feed. Work done upfront will pay off in time saved later. Reddit is also an excellent tool, as long as you stay off the dreaded, time-sucking front page and keep to subreddits pertinent to important topics.

3. Expand outside of your demographic bubble.

Whoever you are, you fit a demographic, which means that the mainstream media specifically tailors content that it knows you will like for the shows you watch and blogs you read, so advertisers can sell you products they’ve determined your demographic buys and use the language and images they know you will respond to, all in order to get you to make that purchase.

Expand out of the box they’ve decided you fit in. Read blogs and consume media from sources outside of your demographic, and that definitely means outside of your political and religious persuasion. Otherwise you’re blinkered not only to things that are going on around you, but also to parts of life you might be ignoring.

4. Read a book.

You still won’t get nearly as good of an info download from months on the Internet as you will from reading a well-researched, info-dense book, a book which, never forget, can represent years or decades of professional research and experience rather than an afternoon spent dashing off a blog post to throw out into the netherworld. Don’t stop reading, and reading better and more challenging books. The Web is really only a menu of culture; don’t forget to eat the meal.

5. Think critically.

Understand what confirmation bias is, and always consider the source of an article. Who wrote this, and what’s their agenda? What are they selling? Do they cite their own sources? Is this from a professional journalist/writer or from some wackadoo or salesman spouting off on the net? To dig deeper, get this excellent, comprehensive primer in critical thinking skills.

6. Meditate.

Sounds potentially hokey, but there is no better discipline for learning how to shut off what is pointless bullshit and go only for what actually matters than meditation, because in learning to control one’s own thoughts internally, dealing with external noise becomes immensely easier.

Information is power. Know how to get it. Don’t outsource it to the mainstream media to do it for you.

(The image and clip above are from They Live. If you haven’t seen this classic film, you must; it’s actually the best primer on seeing through social hypnosis and the mainstream media that you could hope for. Watch it here!)

from:    https://ultraculture.org/blog/2017/05/03/mainstream-media-hypnosis/

Just Be Quiet!

How Silence Awakens Your World

November 26th, 2019

By Paul Lenda

Staff Writer for Wake Up World

Enjoy the silence. It’s hard to find these days. It really does seem like you need to go up a mountain and climb into a cave to find silence. Even then, you will have the intruding sounds of airplanes overhead. What is a person seeking relief from this loud, loud world to do?

Would Siddhartha Gautama have been able to spend several weeks alone in the forest meditating without being bothered by the sounds of modern industry and crowds flocking to him and building a village around him, as happened to Ram Bahadur Bomjon, aka the Buddha Boy, in the mid-2000s?

Silence is more precious than ever today, and also more needed. Look around you. Most people seem to be stressed and anxious about something. About 43% of Americans are on mood-altering prescription drugs, which is not counting those who are going the route of plant-derived substances to get help with relaxing and just being in silent presence. There’s lots of doing, but hardly any being.

This is unfortunate, since silence awakens your world. People oftentimes find it difficult to just sit in silence, with themselves and with others. However, when you are utterly silent, a wave of peace washes over you. The secrets of the universe open up to you because you have become quiet enough to be aware of them. You connect with your inner being that connects with the Source Supermind of Reality.

How to Practice Silence

In today’s demanding and noisy world, it can be difficult to get truly silent and be at peace. Here are some tips on how you can cultivate silence for yourself.

Find a Place to Retreat Into Silence

Come up with a place outside, or a location within your home, where you can retreat to and become silent. You can consider this a sacred space where you will come to specifically practice silence. Make sure to leave your technology behind, or at least turn it off. Do what you can to make sure any intrusive sounds are not going to distract you.

If you hear the various modes of noisy transportation, incessant leaf blowers, or people shouting, you should probably find another space. If this is simply too difficult for you to do, get yourself a pair of noise-canceling headphones and put those on.

Set a Time for Silence

It may seem strange to schedule quiet time, but it really does help make this a new habit for you. Set a calendar reminder on your phone or write it down somewhere in an agenda so you will remember to go into silence at the same time, every day.

Close your Eyes and Listen

When you finally sit (this will help you avoid falling asleep), get comfortable and close your eyes. This is when you start the practice of silence awakening your world. Become open and receptive to the subtle voice of your inner being and the all-permeating field of consciousness that is All that Is.

You may find it difficult to get silent initially It may take you 15, 20, or 30 minutes at first to get to that place of inner calm, especially if you had a long day and are busy rehashing everything that happened to you that day. If you have difficulty breaking free from the distracting thoughts, focus on your breath or on peace. You can even visualize a calm lake with gentle ripples. Whatever works for you will work best, so just take these as suggestions.

Once you become truly silent, your world becomes alive in a way that brings you the clarity of insight, as well as a profound sense of inner peace. In a world which is becoming increasingly loud, it is imperative to give ourselves the gift of silence.

About the author:

Paul Lenda is a conscious evolution guide, founder & director of SHIFT, author, writer, speaker, meditation teacher, life coach, and ambassador for the New Paradigm wishing to provide an integral role in personal transformation and the collective social transformation of humanity. Paul offers private one-on-one holistic life counseling & conscious evolution sessions, via Skype or phone. Paul takes into account all aspects of the hyperdimensional matrix when providing guidance, counseling, and coaching.

from:    https://wakeup-world.com/2019/11/26/how-silence-awakens-your-world/

Finding Guidance Within

Taking a Leap of Faith – 5 Ways to Trust Yourself More

July 31st, 2019

By Tom Crawshaw

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

We all have to make many, many decisions in our lives. Some big, some small. Some decisions completely change the direction of our lives, while others fade away into insignificance. How many times have you ignored that hunch or gut feeling, convincing yourself, through logic and reasoning, to choose something different?

We often disregard our body’s intelligence and guidance, only to look back and realize that it was trying to steer us in the right direction. Instead of trusting ourselves, we reach for tools, systems, strategies, books, or anything outside of ourselves that can convince us that a different approach is going to be more effective.

Call it your intuition, inner guidance, higher self, gut feeling, or whatever label works best for you. I like to think of it as being similar to the GPS in your car. You have to set the end destination and drive the car, but the GPS will find you the quickest and easiest route to take. Just as when we are driving and fail to listen to our car’s GPS, when we ignore our internal GPS, we might end up taking a longer “route” with more “traffic,” obstacles that might even cause us to get frustrated and angry. I’ve often found myself swearing deliriously at my GPS for adding an extra twenty minutes to my journey after taking a wrong turn.

The truth is, you already have all the answers you’ll ever need. Your internal GPS is waiting for you to input your destination so it can help guide you towards your end goal, purpose, or mission. Why is hardly anyone talking about this? Why aren’t we all taking time out of our busy days to seek guidance from our internal GPS so we know where best to focus our efforts?

Conditioned To Mistrust Ourselves 

All throughout our lives, we’ve been conditioned to seek guidance outside of ourselves. At home, our parents took care of us for many years before we had to start making decisions on our own. At school, the teacher was always right, even if we held an opposing viewpoint. I remember, when growing up, I always wanted to be one of the cool kids. So much so, that I would hide my unpopular music tastes and lack of interest in football, just to try to fit in. We often make decisions to please others, to fit in, or to improve our images in the eyes of others. It’s this kind of misguided motivation that can lead us astray.

You know how easily kids get swept away by some new craze or trend, just because everyone else is doing it, right? It’s pretty much the same for adults too. I remember some friends at school all deciding to attend the same university. Not because it was the best option for their chosen course of study, but because all their friends were going. Think about how many people aspire to be artists, musicians, comedians, writers or inventors, only to end up settling for an office job, just like everyone else.

When I look around in the entrepreneurial business space, I see people everywhere shouting about their new course or program that will take you from zero to hero in a matter of weeks. All you have to do is fork out $5K and follow their system, explicitly. So, why then, do so many people fail to get their wonderful new business off the ground after implementing everything from their new program? Although there are many reasons for this, one of them has to do with ignoring their inner GPS. They are trying to chase money and success, and just because it’s worked for someone else, they believe it will work for them, too. This is not how reality works. I’ve experienced it myself. You might achieve some short-term success, but you’ll still feel empty and unfulfilled because you are not advancing closer to your true purpose. You are not acting in accordance with your values.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that teachers, universities, office jobs, and business courses are inherently bad or useless. They are all amazing tools that you absolutely can use on your journey. Sometimes, getting that office job or buying that expensive business program is the best thing you could have done. Often, they will give you new experiences and opportunities to learn and grow. Usually, however, if you’re acting out of alignment with your internal GPS, more discomfort will come to the surface, trying get you to pay attention.

Ultimately, the buck stops with you. You will keep making decisions every day whether you listen to your internal GPS, or not. Some people spend their whole lives chasing cars, money, women, and fame. The famous actor Jim Carey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” What he’s really saying is that if you let money and fame become your purpose, you will not find happiness and fulfillment. When you trust yourself to go all-in on your passion or purpose, devoting enough time, patience, and trust to pursuing it, the money and success will follow, even if that means eating shit for years until it happens.

When Life Gets Easy

Imagine, just for a moment, how it would feel to wake up and tune into your internal GPS to get guidance on where to place your focus for the day. Life would start to happen with more flow and ease because you would not be second-guessing yourself or obsessing over what other people are doing. When you make decisions from a place that is in line with your purpose, you are able to let go of the desire for instant gratification. You may not see results immediately, but you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you’re heading in the right direction.

So many people today, especially in business, are chronic overthinkers. Analysis paralysis happens when we struggle to make a decision when too many options exist. Often, we place too much emphasis on the outcome. We compare this option to that option, trying to determine which will yield the best results, ending up stuck in round after round of comparisons. The fear that we will not make the optimal decision creeps in, often sending us scurrying back to the known and familiar. The result may be that no consciously thought-out decision ever gets made. When we can stay clear-headed and connect to our higher purpose, however, making that scary decision will seem like the only option that feels right.

Logic and reasoning can be useful, at times, to help us focus on what’s really important, so we can identify when we’re being hijacked by our emotions. Making decisions fueled by fear, greed, anger, or desperation never ends well. Usually, when these emotions show up, we’re reacting to something or someone that has triggered us. It’s important to calm down, center yourself, and get clear on how to move forward, consciously.

Listening to your internal GPS naturally will bring up a lot of fear and discomfort, because you’re going against your usual way of doing things. Your mind and body have been conditioned to act in certain ways based on your past behavior. When you recognize whenever your past conditioning is trying to take over, that awareness, coupled with some kind of positive action, will help you reclaim your power.

Is There Any Proof? 

Steve Jobs once said in the famous commercial, “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” You only get called crazy when your ideas make other people uncomfortable, when you’re going against the grain. It’s likely that your internal GPS will guide you toward decisions that will not make sense to most people, maybe even yourself!

Intuition has guided the decisions of many influential and successful individuals like Henry Ford and Elon Musk. They both made what appeared to be irrational decisions early on in their careers. People thought they were crazy and that they were destined to destroy their companies. But, over time, they were proven to be right, time and time again.

I found this story about Henry Ford on Inc.com that demonstrates one of the bold leaps of faith he made:

“Henry Ford faced falling demand for his cars and high worker turnover, so in 1914 he did something that probably made other barons of industry go pale: he doubled his employees’ wages. Crazy? Well, within a year, turnover dropped by a factor of more than 20 while productivity nearly doubled, and demand for Ford cars boomed because Ford’s own workers could now afford the product they were making.”

When you make decisions based on your intuition, you might be labeled as crazy or unpredictable, but you are making leaps of logic and sensing new connections that others miss. This is where new ideas and innovation stems from. Being able to zig while everyone else is zagging will open up some amazing opportunities in your life.

The Intelligence In your Body

On a physiological level, in both the heart and the gut, we know there is a concentrated cluster of neurons that have the capacity to process and send information to the brain. So by definition, these areas in our body possess an innate form of intelligence, thus, we can use this type of intelligence to guide our decision-making. It’s hardly any wonder why we hear people say, “listen to your heart,” and “trust your gut!”

I don’t want to dive into this topic in too much depth as I’ve already discussed it in way more detail in another post on my blog. To read more about the fascinating science of our heart intelligence, click here to go read my detailed article on this topic.

How To Tune Into Your Internal GPS

Ok, so if you’ve stuck with me this far, you must be dying to know what practical steps you can take to start receiving guidance from your internal GPS. I will warn you now, it’s going to require a whole lot of practice, consistency, and trust before you will start to get reliable guidance on the things that matter in your life. Also, I do not claim to be an expert in this area. The method outlined below is what I’m currently testing in my life. In fact, it was my internal GPS that gave me the drive to start writing again, opening up a whole new area of my life that I had never considered before.

So if you’re down for putting in the work, here’s what you need to do.

1 – Meditate Daily

I’m a big advocate for daily meditation practice. To be able to listen to your internal GPS, you must be able to quiet your mind so you don’t mix up your own internal ramblings with the intelligence that is available for you. If you want to get your hands on a free 12-minute guided meditation I recorded to help you manifest what you want, click here.

2 – Just Ask

After you have been meditating for some time, say 15 or 20 minutes, solidify one question in your mind that you would like answered. Repeat this question several times in your mind and then let it go.

3 – Be Receptive 

Next, you want to shift into a receptive state. Place your attention outside of yourself, into the space around you. You want to lose all sense of your mind and body and drift out into the vastness of space. Stay there for some time. If any answers or insights come, try and remember them for the next stage.

4 – Start Writing 

If you received some answers while in your receptive state, make sure to write them down immediately. If not, no worries. Sit there for a few more minutes with a pen and paper, and just write down whatever comes to mind. The idea is to write continuously, without stopping and without judging what’s coming through.

5 – Trust 

This step is the biggie! You now have to decide if you’re going to trust the guidance you have just received or to continue with your life as it is. It’s going to take some time to differentiate between the information that is already in your mind and the information from your internal GPS. My advice is to trust whatever comes through and see where it leads. Or, you can ask the same question again, in a subsequent session, to see if you get the same answer. If you do, then you know what needs to happen!

from:     https://wakeup-world.com/2019/07/31/taking-a-leap-of-faith-5-ways-to-trust-yourself-more/

Changing Perspective

The After-Effects of Awakening

AwakeningSteve Taylor, Ph.D. – As a psychologist, I have been studying what I call “awakening experiences” for a decade, and have recently published (with a co-author) a new study of 90 such experiences in The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.

Awakening experiences are moments in which our awareness expands and intensifies. We transcend the worries that normally preoccupy us and feel a sense of elation or serenity. Our perceptions of the world around us become more vivid, and we feel a sense of connection to nature, other human beings or the whole universe in general. We feel a sense of love and compassion, and there is a strong sense that we have transcended a limited state, and that awareness has become more authentic than normal. At higher intensities of awakening experiences, we may even feel that we have lost our normal sense of identity and somehow become one with the whole world.

My research has found that there are three contexts that consistently show up as major triggers of awakening experiences. Around a third occur in situations of stressdepression and loss. For example, a woman described how she was devastated by the end of a seven-year relationship, “facing a suffering that I didn’t imagine could possibly exist.’” However, in the midst of this suffering, she “began to experience a clearness and connection with everything that existed…I was in a state of such pure happiness and acceptance, that I was no longer afraid of anything. Out of that depth arose such a compassion and connection to everything that surrounded me.”

The second major trigger of awakening experiences identified by my research is contact with nature. Around a quarter of the experiences take place in natural surroundings, apparently induced by the beauty and stillness of nature. People reported awakening experiences that occurred while they walking in the countryside, swimming in lakes, or gazing at beautiful flowers or sunsets. And the third most significant trigger of awakening experiences according to my research— with a similar frequency to contact with nature—is spiritual practice. This primarily means meditation, but also includes prayer and psycho-physical practices such as yoga or tai chi. The relaxing, mind-quietening effect of these practices seems to facilitate awakening experiences.

Enduring Transformation

However, perhaps the most significant thing about awakening experiences is their after-effects. Even though they are typically of a very short duration—from a few moments to a few hours—they frequently have a life-changing effect.

Many people described an awakening experience as the most significant moment of their lives, reporting a major change in their perspective on life, and in their values. In our 2017 study of 90 awakening experiences, the most significant after-effect was a greater sense of trust, confidence, and optimism. For example, one person reported that even though “that whole experience was brief, it left a little piece of knowing and hope. While I still was and am on a journey of self-reflection, it left me knowing that your inner truth is always there for you.” Another person reported that, “To know that it’s there (or here, I should say) is a great liberation.”

One person had a powerful awakening experience while suffering from intense depression during which she “felt the most intense love and peace and knew that all was well.” The experience only lasted for a few minutes, but in its aftermath, she found that the feeling of dread had disappeared from her stomach, and she felt able to cope again, which led to a new, positive phase in her life. As she described it, “I looked around and thought about all the good things in my life and the future. I felt more positive and resilient.” Another person described how her awakening experience “allowed me a glance into the other side and opened me to the knowing that I am never separate, alone, nor unheld.”

Such changes in attitude sometimes led to significant lifestyle changes, such as new interests, new relationships and a new career. Some people reported becoming less materialistic and giving up high-powered professional careers for a simpler, more altruistic lifestyle.

This shows that awakening experiences have a powerful therapeutic effect. They make us realize that the world is a much more benign and meaningful place than we normally perceive it to be. And once we have glimpsed this, it becomes a permanent reality to us. As the great psychologist Abraham Maslow noted – in relation to what he called peak experiences — ‘A single glimpse of heaven is enough to confirm its existence.’

from:    https://www.shiftfrequency.com/the-after-effects-of-awakening/