BECOMING AWAKE:
Lifting the Veil of Unconsciousness

     We enter this world as enthusiastic, alert beings with most of our awareness in the spiritual world, as we learn to ground & integrate into the physical. Rather than fully honoring this consciousness, we are socialized to rely on our rational minds & to ignore our inner world & spiritual nature. Our minds begin to close until we are using about 5% of the capacity of our brains. How do we make intelligent evaluations about the information being given, using only 5% of our brain, before it becomes accepted unconscious belief, generalizations & stereotypes?

     Our education system neglects to validate our spiritual abilities and need for connection with nature and with each other. Instead we're taught to recite back on demand the information we are fed about the physical world. We are forced to compete with our peers for grades, for attention and in sports. How do we learn to create community and cooperation when the instinct is to recoil from the invalidation of the judgement of our teachers and competition of our friends?

     We can start by a willingness to re-educate ourselves, explore & question everything we held to be true. Through meditation we can return to the source of our truth - our soul. This may turn on our abilities the fastest because it takes us directly into the world where we received the least training/validation but where our greatest creative power lies. Many who have committed their time to this endeavor have felt as if half their sight and ability had been dormant and now they could see again.

     The next step is to deepen our connection with the natural world because if the body feels denied its full level of vitality, health, safety & joy it will fight you every step. This is where regular exercise (aerobic & stretching), healthy diet, & communing in nature will recharge you with that childhood energy & enthusiasm.

     Through individual reading & research we can re-open our minds. This re-learning process was disturbing to me at 1st when I discovered that much of what we were taught was carefully controlled advertising (or brainwashing) designed to create a continued customer market for multi-billion dollar monopolies. One example is that the main source of nutritional information supplied to our school is from the American Dairy Counsel. Another is how the pharmaceutical and medical industry preaches the allopathic model and brands any competitor (alternative natural healing) as quacks or frauds through media and their financial lobbying support of regulatory agencies. Thus competitors licenses are revoked, funding denied, reputations tainted, products banned, and our freedom of information and choice denied.

     Continued reading, education, better nutrition, cleansing, fasting, meditation, exercise, or any therapy that brings light to truth, raises the energy vibration in the body. Often, we become painfully aware of what is left beneath that vibration - dense, unconscious energy we've been carrying around in the form of beliefs, concepts, images not of our own creation. It's as if the veil has been lifted, showing us what needs to be healed.

     This is an uncomfortable feeling. The immediate desire & tendency is to seek ways to lower the vibration back to that "familiar" & seemingly safe level of unconsciousness. We generally accomplish this through our addictions - anything we regularly need to avoid ourselves. This includes drugs, alcohol, overeating, consuming dense or processed foods, sleep, sex without spiritual loving connection, that great hypnotizer television and any activity in which we over indulge & puts us out of balance.

     When we learn to "hold" this higher vibration long enough & find ways to release the old dense stuff, rather than sink back into it, then we take quantum leaps in our aliveness, creativity & happiness. Rather than expelling this energy through nervous behavior, if we channel it upwards through our hearts & minds, use it to create or communicate, it will nourish our souls!

             Blessings...Jon