Already awakened?
You can awaken more.
Occasionally I encounter people who are closed to the idea that they can grow further. They already have it “figured out” and they don’t like to be told that they can advance even more, “No, I’ve already done the work. Of course I love myself unconditionally -- I worked on that for years! I’ve accepted everything I need to accept. I’m good.”
Yes they are! They're perfect! They are on their own path, and I love them unconditionally.
For the rest of us, we know that there’s no end to our awakening journey. And to those of you who know this to be true, I salute you! I’m excited for you! I want to know you. I want to share in your journey. I’d love to learn from you and teach you and celebrate our growth together!
Some say that awakening is a painful experience. Having your illusions crushed. Having to let go of long-held perceptions. Like the truths about our power structure, our corrupted school system, our oppressive history and the way we hurt, abuse, suppress and torture our fellow man and fellow animals. How we are destroying the Earth habitat with our greed. Awakening to conspiracy theories like chemtrails and alien cover-ups! Awakening to the suffering that is happening across the globe. People being made homeless, bombed, starving to death, and otherwise persecuted. Animals being factory farmed, suffering from disease, and being milked to death. Our empathy toward all of them is almost too much to bear.
But if you feel that awakening is painful, then I encourage you to keep going. It gets better.
After getting over the initial hump, the remainder of your awakening journey takes you to higher and higher vibrational experiences and higher consciousness. You can step out of emotional pain and into enlightenment, and other blissful states like ananda and paramananda (more on this later) despite all that is happening in this world.
While finalizing my talk,The Final Lesson, I realized that there was a disparity between the highest highs and the lowest lows. It became obvious to me that the lowest lows are way worse than the highest highs.
Think about it. What’s the highest high you can picture in this life? Being the winning Quarterback in the Superbowl? Winning the Nobel Peace Prize? Having a type of sexual ecstasy that you can only imagine? The birth of your first born child? Bringing an end to corrupt government? Nourishing and housing all of the impoverished?
Now consider the lowest lows. (Trigger warning) Your child becomes addicted to Heroin and lives a destroyed life before finally dying from an overdose. Your entire family is murdered in front of you. You suffer from a severe chronic illness with nearly unbearable pain most of your life. Thanks to a choice you made, someone close to you was killed. You and the people you love are tortured at the hands of a corrupted foreign government (See Hitler and the Nazi regime.)
I’m sorry, but none of the positive things that I listed above outweigh the negative ones I listed. And most of those immensely positive things are either not possible or reserved for very few people on Earth.
I put together a quick list of roughly equal positive and negative experiences so we could see if there was always a comparison. I ran out of positives at the end: (Also, no need to debate on the order of these things. I'm sure for some, being diagnosed with cancer has no positive equivalent. It's just listed to illustrate a point.)
It got me to thinking... why? Why are the negative things so much more painful than the positive things? In a world of incredible balance and unconditional love, why does the greatness of the positives stop before reaching the same level of intensity as the horror of the negatives?
It’s because we’re missing something very important in human potential, and it’s only starting to become understood again after being lost for centuries – especially in the west.
Enlightenment.
That word has been used so much it no longer has the same meaning. But if we think about the highest vibrational emotional states, Unconditional Love is often listed right alongside Enlightenment.
Wait a minute, since when is Enlightenment an emotion?
It is a type of bliss that emerges when you recognize SELF in others. When you truly love them unconditionally. All of them. This is the direction we’re headed with my online class. (More on that later.)
In Sanskrit, there are two higher levels of bliss that we humans can achieve, and there are no comparable English words. Ananda is transcendental bliss. It is considered to be thousands of times better than the best tantra orgasm you could ever achieve. Meanwhile, paramananda is the bliss from recognizing and loving the SELF in others. It is considered to be thousands of times better than the best Ananda experience you can achieve.
Achieving Ananda can be done through prolonged dedication to meditation practices or kundalini, because Ananda is achieved when the kundalini works itself up through the spine and chakras. Ananda often comes with many physiological effects like sweating, shaking, heart palpitations, extreme lightheadedness, etc…
Paramananda is only possible when you have released your childhood burdens, realized your divinity, accepted the world exactly as it is, acknowledged your own perfection, and loved yourself unconditionally. And still, even after achieving all of this, you must recognize and love the SELF in all things. Paramananda comes with no physiological effects. It slowly builds, softly and calmly. It is a peace, a bliss, a silence and unconditional love – all at once.
That means you are no longer fooled by the concept of separation. Even when someone cuts you off in traffic, you recognize that it was you who cut yourself off in traffic and your initial response is to love them rather than curse at them.
I can honestly say I’m not quite there yet, but here’s how it goes for me, “What the heck?! Why’d that guy do that?” And then I immediately chuckle, smile, and love him anyway. And sometimes the love I suddenly feel brings me to tears. So I’m getting closer, but it takes a lot of practice, patience, and trust in this truth.
Trust in the truth that there is actually no evil in the world. Only love.
Trust in the truth that there really is only one. And it's YOU.
Class Notes
So can my class deliver Paramananda to you? Believe me, if I could push a button or say a word, (Like maybe AWAKEN) and unleash Paramananda in you, I would! But at the same time, the journey is yours! You wouldn’t want me to take that away from you, would you? (Stop nodding. You don’t really want that. You really don’t.)
But here’s what I can do: I can set you up for it. The rest is up to you!