Sometimes I like to step all the way back. I like to bring this blog back to the beginning–to where most people are. They’re still locked in their ideas of themselves. They’re in solid glass statues or tiny capsules unable to move but completely convinced of their flexibility and freedom. Stuck in place, life continues to show them the same lessons over and over, but instead of learning from these lessons, these people assume that life is being cruel to them or that’s just how it is. They blame their bosses, co-workers, children, parents, the government, the Democrats, the Republicans, and everything else for their situation and their feelings. They are hopelessly lost in their illusions.
This is the state of the world.
Is the World Awakening?
A lot of people ask me if I think the world is awakening and so forth. I don’t use the term “awakening” in that way. When I say someone has awakened, I mean they’ve touched the truth, and it’s not going away. The awakened space I refer to abides and has an intelligence that arises on its own. The glass has been broken, and the remaining shards are crumbling.
Instead, I refer to the spiritual path that most people are on as the conscious path. This is a beautiful thing, but it’s different in that dedication and discipline are needed to get to the point of breaking the glass. It’s not just a concept to say, “I’m awake.” It’s a wholly felt experience, and most people need to focus their inner awareness to get the fire hot enough to permanently break through.
So with all that said, what people are really asking me is if the world is on the conscious path. The honest answer is I don’t know. I have no way of rating where humanity was before, where it is now, and where it is going. It’s probably true that more people are awake or choosing to walk the conscious path than ever before, but that’s only because there are now 7 billion people on the planet. But are people really coming out of the darkness or are they just finding prettier lies to hide behind?
This is no more important of a question than for those on the spiritual path who are trying to “do good” and “feel good” about themselves. If that’s you, it’s really time to turn inward and break the glass.
Finding the Walls of the Prison Cell
The first step to breaking the glass is to find out what your limitations are and your beliefs. Beliefs and thoughts should be freeing and allow for greater space for love and connection. But mostly the mind is used as an uber-protective watch dog that keeps us and others frightened. It keeps us away from connection. I often tell new students that the hardest part of working with me will be connecting to someone in unconditional love. Most people have no idea what to do with that, and as students open further, it triggers more reactions from fear to sexual craving. So, it’s pretty much a basic fact of the spiritual path that none of us know what love is when we start out, and that especially goes for the all the people who are absolutely sure they know what it is. (If you want to know what love is, please read this blog post: What Is Love?).
So another way to look for your walls is by looking at where you limit your ability to love yourself or others. Is there a line? And for others, the next step becomes how do you learn to keep your heart open with difficult people? Each step of the way, we find new walls to our abilities to love and connect with others, and we have to break through.
The Illusory Facades We Carry
But for many of you, you are still too concerned with your facade, how you look to the world, and how the world responds to you. This is part of the basis of slavery to illusion. Makeup, clothing, and hairstyles are the easiest to pick on. They have zero impact on who we really are, but so many people are obsessed with their looks and physical appearances that they invest thousands of hours and dollars into them. In turn, they are crushed or elated by the way others treat them in response. It’s such a horrible slavery to be in because the world is vicarious, and most everyone else is lost in their illusions. So they only respond to you by how they feel about themselves, and the more you dislike yourself, the more you are likely to invite in other people with same self-loathing and subsequently receive false or cruel responses to your illusion.
It’s a miserable, miserable pit of self-hatred. Why would anyone want to keep such facades around?
If you are new to the blog, I invite you to buy a journal, diary, or random notebook of lined paper and write out how you are committed to the facade you’ve created for yourself. You need to find out all the ways you are committed to this identity so that you can start to break it all down.
The Many Layers of the Facade
Of course, we are masters of creating inner labyrinths for ourselves, and our facades have many layers and booby-traps inside. It’s a cruel, cruel internal world that most of us have created, but when we start to get little tastes of freedom, love, and expansiveness, we generally feel a little extra pull inward. Something starts to ignite, and that little flame beckons us in deeper with its guiding light. I won’t say that it gets easier. The harder the identity, the more intentional discipline is required to go deeper. If the glass is several sheets thick, you’re going to need a couple solid swings of the sledgehammer, and that’s going to be jarring to say the least.
If you are at this early stage of the spiritual path, then most of this may still seem like too much. I’m not even going to mention all the other challenges that arise. This blog post may not yet be the hundredth monkey on your back that finally brings you to the point to say, “I have to follow this spiritual path.” It may be the 52nd. Or the 3rd, or God save you the 1st. But you don’t have to wait for the 100th monkey to break your ego. You don’t have to wait until a major car accident happens before you realize how ephemeral and precious this life is. You don’t have to wait to find out who you really are under the facades and the bulletproof glass shield that you’ve been living within. You have that power to change it all and break the glass with one swing right now.
But that’s up to you. It always has been, and maybe now you’re ready to make that fateful choice.
