The Emperor is Naked – Part 2 – Awakening is Slow

“You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was.”
~ Anthon St. Maarten

Press play to hear an audio enhancement as you read.

 

In the last blog, we discussed The Emperor’s New Clothes, Danish story teller Hans Christian Andersen’s well known tale of denial. Now, let’s find out what we’re most afraid of seeing.

The evolution of individuated consciousness, a progressive process into wholeness, is slow. The measure is self-awareness, wakefulness, and the challenge to “making progress” is to mutely go along with the consensus in the collective consciousness, because we can’t see anything different.

It’s something of Catch 22: we can’t see what we can’t see.

Why don’t we easily gain a level of awareness where we are able to see and perceive things from a truthful perspective? Because we are mired in egoic levels of consciousness, lost in illusory separation. Of course, this creates conflict between us because we all inhabit our own customized delusional states.

The primary illusion, one that we all share, is separation. I am the subject … you and everyone else, everything else, is an object. We perceive ourselves and others that way. We are separate. This is not in fact true but we believe it is true. As long as I/we maintain separate identification, there is conflict between me as the subject and all the objects I encounter.

So, how do we change this?

Regardless of our optimism, awakening to the truth beyond separation is a very slow process. In fact, now faced with evidence on every hand that we may be de-evolving as a species, the most important question becomes: who am I choosing to be in relationship to the happenings of life?

In other words, the process of awakening itself has changed from a solitary affair in a meditative cave, perhaps, to something that happens collectively, simply because of the massive changes in our modern world.

Here’s the new acid test: Confronted by mass shootings, climate disasters, political chaos, can I remain a detached witness, maintaining peace and equilibrium and – in that way – demonstrate an alternative to illusory stories about what’s transpiring? Can I connect with my fellow human beings beyond conflict and not add to the suffering?

Here’s a turning point realization: I am the creator of my experience in relationship to what’s happening. I can choose to be loving and forgiving, or I can pile on with blame… pointing a finger at others without realizing that three more fingers are pointing back at me!

Shamans contemplate the current world situation and acknowledge that it takes a crisis, a series of them, big enough to get our attention and catalyze awakening. We can now easily acknowledge the truth of their perspective.

What happens when hurricanes strike, when wild fires rage, when earthquakes shatter our reality? People come together. We leave our isolated caves of individuated separation and fear to recognize that we’re all in this together. Catastrophes force us to help each other and, through that experience, we explode the myth of separation.

It’s the same with guns and mass shooting. The latest horrifying newscast prompts an immediate expansion of awareness. Wait a minute, what are we doing? How can we stop this and deal with our crises? This kind of concern lasts a little while. Some change may actually result, but if it is not a big enough crisis, then everyone quickly returns to complacency. We go back to sleep, content again with status quo.

Until the next disaster strikes.

Awakening is a very personal matter. Some of us simply open our eyes and get out of bed. Most of us linger awhile, perhaps day dreaming about what’s waiting for us. Some of us are difficult to rouse. Teenage boys, especially, might require vigorous shaking to complete the shift from deep sleep into functional wakefulness.

Overall, humanity seems to be a teenager. And, we’re being shaken. Every day brings more news stories of disasters near and far. Of course, it’s academic until they touch us personally but these days that’s happening with increasing frequency.

Fire may not force us to evacuate, but we have relatives and friends who lose everything. We may not be shot in a domestic terrorist attack but we know someone who was. We may not lose our home when the mortgage interest rate skyrockets but our neighbor does. And, sometimes the crisis does land squarely on our own lap. What then?

Plato said that necessity is the mother of invention. Author John Ashcroft expanded on this. He ventured that “if necessity is the mother of invention, it’s the father of cooperation. And we’re cooperating like never before.”

Evolution in consciousness from separation to connection may indeed be slow but it’s accelerated by crises. It’s safe to say that today’s crises aren’t likely to recede. So, it follows that the process of awakening within our human species may accelerate.

Apparently, this is what it takes to awaken us from the self hypnosis that blinds us to the awareness and experience that we are one with God!

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