Are You Going to Ascend Soon?

Some time ago I had a person come to me for some spiritual counseling. Let's call him Jack, and he was about forty years old. Jack was not a happy chap. He hated his job and was planning his escape, a nice trip around the world. In particular he was going to visit all the great spiritual destinations out there. 

Nothing wrong with that, you might say. Good on him for having the goolies, so to speak. Yet as I spoke to Jack it became quite clear to me that he was living a fundamental delusion. This delusion is common in alternative spiritual circles, so I am going to discuss it briefly here today. It also mirrors a psycho-spiritual delusion that is the foundation of many religions across the world.

Jack had been told by a certain spiritual teacher that he was going to ascend one day, and this formed the basis of his spiritual belief structure. 'Ascension' is the idea that you are going to be pulled up and out of the body and into a higher dimension. This other place is trypically seen as having a higher vibration, being more blissful, and generally just a lot nore groovy than the mundane world of the earth plane. Sound familiar? Well, to me this other place sounds a lot like the Heaven or paradise of most religious philosophies.

Here's the problem. Ascension is a false teaching. It is not going to happen. There are two reasons why this is vitally important to understand.

Firstly, what generally lies behind the belief in ascension (and Heaven) is the rejection of what is here now. There is a subtle desire to escape. In this sense ascension entails a rejection of the life that is before you, and also the 'you' that you are now. You are saying that this life is not good enough, this 'me' is not acceptable.

Secondly, this rejection of your life makes it impossible for you to be fully present, and it is in presence that the true joy and love of "God" is found. If you speak to those who have experienced strong transcendent experiences they will tell you that they almost always emerge when the mind is in a deeply embodied state of silent presence. Thus the great irony is that the belief in ascension actually cuts you off from presence, from God, and from Heaven on earth.

What is now before you is the truth of life. There is tremendous simple joy to be found in just being here now, in the body. You were not put here to escape. You were put here to be here.

What drives the delusion of ascension is the dissociation of mind, body and spirit - and the trauma this entails. Your mind feels this pain at all times, but it doesn't know quite what is wrong. In fact if you stop and become fully present, you may actually find yourself falling into a state where you begin to feel this pain within you. If you have the courage to give it a voice, it rises from belly and into the throat, expressing itself as a sad whining sound, like a lost child which cannot find its mother. It is the fundamental feeling of being lost and unloved. Empty. This is how I have experienced it.

The mind, in its dissociated state, is unable to recognise that it has created the pain by itself, by not being here fully. Instead of stopping to be here, it runs. It tries to escape. It finds solace in entertainment, fiddling with gadgets, 'romance', eating, drugs and alcohol, sex, gossip, reading blogs like this... Or going on a spiritual journey. It might even believe that it is going to be lifted out of the body and beyond the mundane world into a better place. In this endless seeking it turns toward a hoped-for better future, and away from itself. Yet in all this there is no relief. The pain does not heal.

The quest is doomed to failure, for it merely perpetuates the split, the separation. 

This is what I told Jack. I told him that he was already a being of light, love and compassion. There was no need for him to ascend, merely to deepen into presence. In that moment Jack didn't understand. He didn't want to. His final words to me where that he had arranged the meeting to check to see if my knowledge was coming from a higher plane. But alas my understanding is not higher, merely deeper. He decided to keep aiming for the higher place.

Yet one day, one lifetime, Jack will get it. Maybe that little seed God planted in him that day as we talked will find fruition soon. It is not for me to judge.

The only way to heal your pain is to be here now. That's it. One of the great mysteries of our species is that this is so very, very simple. Yet only a few extraordinary individuals have ever been able to master the process.

Marcus

A Profound Simplicity

I simply love the message of Leonard Jacobson. Leonard's message is deceptively simple, but truly profound: embrace the present. If you have a few moments to spare today, I think you would get a lot out of watching at least some of this video, below. I don't know of any spiritual teacher today who is as  wonderful, warm, humble and wise as Leonard. He really does walk the talk. The best thing is that he provides people with very simple tools to transform their lives, and free them from the grip of the "mind" and its illusions.
 

Here is Leonard's latest video webcast. 

Blessings,

Marcus

Kony 2012, Yanks & Their Dirty Oil

Most likely you are by now familiar with the Kony 2012 video on YouTube. Just in case you haven't...

I was informed by my Pakistani friend this morning that the video is all a conspiracy. It’s not really about young people trying to save lost children in Uganda from the warlord Joseph Kony. It’s about the American empire and their lust for oil.

Again.

Uganda, it seems, has a lot of oil. That’s why the yanks want to go in there.

Here’s my take. The way we talk about the world tells us a lot about our deepest belief structures. We see the world not as it is, but as we are. It’s not that the world is an illusion, as some new age and India philosophies mistakenly claim (call it what you like, you still die if you step in front of the bus). It’s that our judgments are so heavily distorted by what lies buried in our psyches.

Maybe Kony 2012, or the American government’s interest really is about the oil. But the fact is there is not a shred of evidence for this at this point in time.

As I have stated often on this blog, I am no fan of conspiracy theories. They are mostly projections, emerging from unresolved anger at not getting what we want as children – and especially our fathers. Most such theories have little evidence to support them, and are based on incredibly implausible scenarios. I mean, how have they kept the 400 000 NASA employees involved in the faked moon landings quiet after so many years? Impressive!

One of the things I liked about WikiLeaks documents is that they show that many diplomats – yes, even some evil Americans – have genuine concern and compassion for human beings, although they are often constrained by complicated systems and protocols.

Consider this. The capacity to rape and kill is biologically built into human beings. “Kill it or fuck it” is the prime drive of testosterone. But let us not forget that compassion is also an innate human quality. The discovery of mirror neurons confirms this. When we see another human being feeling sadness or joy, mirror neurons in our own brains fire. We feel their pain and happiness. This is also the reason we are able to ‘enjoy’ a movie, story, or empathise with a great play on the sporting field. When the player scores, we score with him. When he gets smashed, we feel it just a little bit. In a sense, we ‘love’ him as our experience merges with his.

So what are we to make of human beings? Are we just a bunch of fuckers and killers, or are we compassionate and loving?

The answer is that we are all these things. The choice we have is in the beliefs and attitudes we are willing to develop as we experience life and in turn, the worldview that we create from this choice.

Of course in reality it is not so simple. The human mind is a swirling ocean of psychological forces pushing and pulling each other. Our conscious thoughts are deeply affected by our personal biographies. The loving embrace of your mother or her scolding rejection imprint themselves into your consciousness. What is more, your pain and joy do not die with you. They are contained both within your personal consciousness field beyond death, and they form part of the human collective oversoul. The pain, fear and love of the ancestors is carried with you. This much I have seen again and again.

This is why it is so important to do an inner journey, and commit to a spiritual path that allows you to see who you are, who we are at a deeper level. In this way you can become more ‘enlightened’ about what drives you, and what drives the human species. Such wisdom grants us the capacity to be more truly responsible for who we are, and to become spiritually mature.

Your worldview also determines the kind of consciousness field you carry through your life. You cannot heal, and your 'light' can never shine while you carry with you anger, blame and a sense of being a victim. By believing that you are disempowered... you disempower yourself. And the truth is you make the world a slightly worse place just by existing. You become part of the problem, not the solution. A shadowy part of the darkness.

So when I look at the Kony 2012 video I note that my innate reaction is one of gratitude that there are still young people in the world who are willing to do something to make the world a better place. They are driven by compassion, and I can understand why. It is to be expected. And I note the reactions of those who look at the same video and find cynical judgment rise within them, and equally understand where they come from. For all of us have created the 'world' that we experience.

Marcus