This is a summary of some obstacles we might encounter on our journey toward supreme consciousness. We are each a spectrum of various degrees of pitfalls that make up our shadow side. The shadow playing into the light and the light playing into the shadow.

Love-consciousness would be the light side that is half of who we are. The dark side would be the recalcitrant neglect of cues from body-mind-soul-muse regarding the appropriate care and love-consciousness for self or other.

Shadow is perhaps the separate-self-sense’s blind concern and focus on that which stops the heart from expanding to infinity.

Pathological regression

Retreat into infantile prerational uroboric fusion. Indulgence in dissolution and fragmentation; often due to lack of modeling, support, structure or clearly defined developmental framework of ascent that covers all sides of the whole human (ie: lines, levels, states and stages).

Desire to let ones life collapse in the hope of being rescued. Retreat into depression and grief to escape more expansive perception and profound sense of being.

Running away

Retreat and evasion through dissociation and denial. Inertial holding back to former modes of perception and being. Effort to pull energy down, back and in through substance addictions, heavy food, sedentary lifestyle and through avoidance of “opening” practices and therapy.

Secondary fear chemistry due to negative interpretation of kundalini events resulting in panic, paralysis, stagnation, isolation and avoidance. Even running away from bliss and increased wellbeing with various forms of anaesthetization, self-repression and self-destruction.

We transcend suffering by moving through it rather than away from it.

Oblivion

Bliss obsession is a preoccupation and addiction to blissful energy, using it as a form of narcotic anaesthetization to avoid real world obligations, survival and development imperatives.

Hazy, diffuse, forgetful, preoccupied, heedlessness, day dreaming, castle building, directionless. Lost in fantasy, trance, myth, symbol,
story, meaning making, synchronicities and connections.

Creativity at the expense of survival, through avoidance of rational discernment.

Diffusion

Loss of left-brain focusing and hierarchical prioritization. Chain of Being collapsed.

Codependency, dependency, false security in catering to the egos of others, coupled with lower-order giving through forms of slavery whereby ones highest contribution is lost in obscurantism, confusion, ambiguity, paradox, double-binds due to the collapse of the hierarchical prioritizing faculty.

Indistinct, labyrinthine, vague, leaky boundaries, jumbled, enigmatic.

Directionlessness

Stay focused on something to look forward to, something you want to do, build the image of that up in your mind, write it out and start making plans. As soon as you engage yourself into some future fun thing, your body-mind-spirit will come together.

Your energies cannot ascend coherently unless you are using active imagination in all five senses to visualize where you want to go, who you want to be, and what you want to do.

Problem mind

What you focus on grows. Gossiping or worrying about “The Problem” will generally only perpetuate and increase the problem and cause some form of shadowy backlash. Focusing on the problem to the exclusion of positive action, is moral-masturbation.

Problem consciousness is a kind of social conspiratorial gossip, which holds energy down into our more primitive reptilian wiring. This undermines our immune system and prevents the high-energy states that build toward visionary chemistry.

If we waste our energy in problem-gossip we lose the window of opportunity for revelation and gnosis. If a negative issue needs to be brought to the attention of others, try and use positive visionary solutions orientated language to frame the problem.

This empowers both you and the listener, creates less resistance and speeds social change.

Fixation on internal processes

Overly fascinated, morbidly curious, distracted by and absorbed in Kundalini symptoms, psychic phenomena and newfound spiritual powers (siddhas).

This compulsive obsession with symptoms and phenomena feeds inflation and interferes with relationships and functional utility. Possible secondary fear or depression over the temporary loss of adaptive functions and left-brain sharpness.

Inability to disembed to perceive emotional storms as psychosomatic events of alchemical cycles. Excessive reactivity to conditions both internal and external.

Inability to face the shadow

Freedom is only gained by facing the Shadow. Default states of fear, doubt, cynicism, apathy etc… prevent the sanitizing atonement of facing of the Shadow.

This Shadow is infects and corrupts through an infectious bad-faith and negative condemnation of the world. It is a low energy defense strategy. To gain power over the Shadow it must be faced with an open heart that exposes the lower energies without being dragged down to resonate in the Shadow frequencies.

Call this Spiritual Immunity… a priori incorruptible, perfect, sublime goodness, (ie: wisdom or Horus) and knowledge that the light of Heart-intelligence wins supreme in every battle no matter what the outcome.

Chasing the dragon

Blindly engaging in practices, stimulants, relationships and events with the aim of rapidly increasing the intensity and speed of the trajectory of kundalini opening. Thereby increasing the danger of more extreme peaks and valleys, which could result in tissue damage, depression, regression and burnout.

Self destructive use of the alchemy for thrills, novelty and status. If you find yourself earnestly desiring to be somewhere you are not spiritually, turn your attention onto your ambition itself.

Where does this spiritual lust come from and how are you creating inner violence and hurtfully rejecting your present self? The goal can only be as good as the means.

Spiritual lust

At the Unified Field level evolution is occurring at faster than light speed. You don’t have to lust after Spirit, for you are It and God is evolving at faster than the speed of light.

Spiritual ambition in this context is a misunderstanding that blocks the natural unfolding of Spirit. For the vibration of spiritual craving prevents the realization of the a priori wholeness and limitless of Spirit. Spiritual craving is a self-inflicted deprivation state—drop it, and you are already home.

Once there is a marriage between the subconscious and conscious minds the tension and urgency of spiritual lust disappears.

Spiritual ego

Spirituality pursued as an end in itself is simply the unctuous spiritual ego at work—which is fundamentally an issue of bad self-esteem. If we were raised to have good self-esteem, then spirituality just “is” and doesn’t need to be chased after like some lost thing that is forever over the event horizon.

Hopefully humanity will soon start operating from a mode of “just don’t break it and it will remain whole.” Then we can all stop wasting our time pursuing something that is already innately ours.

Wherein we can finally get down to the business of living that which we ARE without the need for permission, excuses or apologies.

Inability to “stop”

In order to move faster, you have to slow down further… if you slow down enough you can move as fast as the Universe… faster than light speed.

With any degree of urgency or tension however you will never melt into the Unified Field enough to marry the subconscious and conscious minds. This schism constitutes suffering, dissonance, chaos and lack of progress (evolution).

This division between the inner Self and the outer conditioned personality leads to the homogenization of humanity into a painful Borg-like conformity where one can only “react” and learn to fit in through monkey see, monkey do.

Inflation – Self engrandizement

Expanded psychic ability, high energy and siddhas inflate the ego to feel overly special, superior and unique. This feeds into the separate-self-sense’s illusion of an independent existence and promotes selfishness or “my enlightenment for me,” or my enlightenment is “better” than yours.

World savior, grand mission, martyr, new religions, global ideas, evangelical crusade. Visionary over-estimation of reality and potential, generating the propensity to forcibly impose ones will on the world.

Reality moves at “its” pace not ours, if we try and urgently push our agenda it is counterproductive, the world of human ego forcibly resists us.

Deflation – Self diminishment

Self criticism is a reverse or negative egoism that generates paradoxical intent. Paradoxical intent being a con-voluted self fulfilling prophesy of reverse-will. Self doubt is a surefire way to abort the possibility of success.

We thus generate the level of success we feel we deserve by our degree of self-acceptance, degree we have resolved the tension in our pain-body and the degree to which we can love through the separation between inner and outer, self and other.

The transparency to spirit in avoiding either egoic inflation or deflation helps us to simply be Present and to see through the multiple escape routes we use to be anywhere else but here now.

Belligerent over-sincerity

Only the coolest most elite teachers and teachings will suffice. To be worn as badges of power, prestige and manipulation. This is a mean spiritual materialism that beats others over the head with its sense of righteous superiority.

The insensitivity to the universal principle of “Necessity” in spiritual unfolding, prevents a sensitive appreciation of infinite diversity of paths and of allowing others their own unique process free from critical disapproval.

Spiritual Nazis spend a lot of energy keeping their ideology intact and inflict it on those around them; whereas no human can presume to know the path of another.

Idle speculation

False stimulation of the bodymind’s appetite for excitement through wild, misinformed, confabulations of alternative realities like the 12th planet, alien intervention in human evolution, reptilian illuminati, UFO’s, past lives, communicating with the dead etc…

When in Reality things are so much more exciting, unbelievable and interesting than anything that could be contrived at by the sensationalist imagination.

Internal exploitation

Turning the sacred into the profane. Lack of integration between the levels, coupled with disillusionment about achieving “higher goals.” Hence exploitation of sex/kundalini/muse energy for “worldly goals” of power, status or monetary gain.

“Using” oneself is an introverted symptom of inflation. The more we exploit ourselves the more others exploit us. Treating ourselves as a resource without regard for our spiritual welfare.

External exploitation

Using powerful psychic and siddha powers to exploit others in order to fulfill ones own drive for power, status or monetary gain.

Lust, usurpation, manipulation, dominator-hierarchies. Power mongering is an extraverted symptom of inflation. The more we exploit others, the more we exploit ourselves through turning the sacred into the profane.

Treating others as a resource without regard for their spiritual welfare.

Projecting spirit

Transference onto Gurus, lovers, alien or channeled entities, angels, saints etc… in disownership of ones own alchemical process, soul and muse. Feels like a powerful force enacting on us from outside, sometimes seeming too great for mortal endurance.

Externalization of internal archetypal aspects (Great Attractors) ultimately resulting in our reclaiming them as our own through the pain generated by the projection.

Formalism

Entrenched preoccupation with appearances, rules, forms, formulas, dogmas, details, rituals and traditions of religious sects. Fanaticism, orthodoxy, fundamentalism, letter of the word, conservatism, conventional, spiritual materialism, elitism/ exclusion, need to “belong.”

Formalism feeds into power, pride and defense systems of the psyche. It is sacrifice of the inner living truth to an external ideology.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Perpetual seeker

Looking for wholeness and Self outside oneself. Fragmentation due to lack of coherent integration, individuation and boundary definition. Spirit always over the horizon, without serious intention of achieving Self, due to resistance to sovereignty and autonomous choice.

Tendency toward projecting Spirit and formalism. Need for parental figures as there is an unconscious commitment to remain immature, obsequious and surrender ones personal power.

Bottom dog trying to gain power through connection to a Guru or power figure.

Addiction to cognition

Inability to relax into the spaciousness of the transrational due to tenacious drive of the mind to “know.” Unwilling to let go of focal, associative, analytic mind in order to transcend and include it in “whole-seeing” and full spectrum consciousness.

Resistance to relinquishing the myopia of the representational mind and thus avoid uniting the relative will with the Absolute Will; perhaps due to lack to lack of faith or knowledge that there is anything higher than intellect.

Absolute knowledge

Loss of growth potential by closing off to new information due to the hubris of a premature claim to enlightenment. Rigidified bubble of the known as a defense against chaos, dynamism, dissolution and breakdown—thereby preventing resurrection to a higher order.

Bombastic grandiose omniscience. Cults, obdurate, implacable, inflexible, rigid, unshakable, stagnant. Dogmatic scientific orthodoxy. Arrogance, self-righteousness, self-justification, vanity, pride, top of the heap.

Forgets beginners mind due to inflation, hence pride makes one ignorant of ones ignorance—growth is suspended.

Fear of stepping outside the box

Giving oneself license to be oneSelf in a conformist world that is probably not going to appreciate what we have to offer anyways, now that is the challenge.

Our spiritual vocation ultimately boils down to what is “fun” and natural for us. We each have to “do” what we “are.” It doesn’t really matter if someone’s flights of fantasy are a little “out there.” Consider if Gaudi, Tolken or Mozart had limited their expression to what had been done before.

The spiritually integrated “decision making process” happens from beyond the linear mind and self-identity. Thus there is a higher order of discernment that arises subliminally from soul and universal connection itself… this is genius.

All geniuses path the way for us to polish our substance and show up as bright as we can be.

Guilt over awakening

We need not fear retribution or persecution to be leaving “what was” behind. We need not fear punishment for being who we are to become. For guilt over higher consciousness is itself a thing of the past dogmatic information age, not the wisdom age to come.

We do not have to apologize for fully showing up, because more and more of us will be brave enough to admit it. The psychic heat of self-realization creates an a priori subliminal activism that works to dissolve the fear-culture from the interiors of man.

Thus the structures of flatland material enslavement will voluntarily dismantle. And a flowering of freedoms will erupt from the fertile luminal soil without the anticipated cataclysmic war of wills.

Missing the mark

Kundalini and our conceptual beliefs about God and spirituality are not what is important.

What is of ultimate value to us is life, love and relationship. If the preoccupation with our kundalini and our beliefs are interfering with our life, love and relationship then we must do everything within our power of awareness to rectify this situation and set our priorities straight.

Spiritual bypass

“Premature transcendence—high level denial. Avoiding painful psychological issues by immersing oneself in a rigorous spiritual practice, or focusing on experiences of transcendence within the Kundalini phenomena to the exclusion of processing trauma from the past.” Michael Dubois

Abiding in the absolute

“Holding the absolute dimension so tightly that we can’t see all the relative learning that we still have to do. Trivializing the sense of relative impermanence amidst the artificial perfection of what can seem like a permanent awakening.” Michael Dubois

Blinded by clarity

“When inner Vision and Intent become so clarified and overpowering, that the clarity itself fixates attention on a limited range of perceptions / interpretations / possibilities. Polishing the interpretive lens so thoroughly, that the lens itself becomes invisible as an object of perception.” Michael Dubois

Threshold unreadiness

The ability to move from one mode of being to another requires a certain kind of state necessary for broaching thresholds. “Threshold crossing readiness” is itself is a condition of heart-mind best represented through say the symbol of Percival.

Unless we are in a luminal state of receptivity we cannot shapeshift from one layer of consciousness to embody the next. The vibratory-resonant-energy of the new “higher” condition needs to fully impress itself on our atomic structure, reorganizing the physical form to accommodate the new zeitgeist and associated worldview.

If we do not have adequate energy, plasticity and openness of tissue and consciousness, then we remain in stasis not able to respond fully to the cosmic evolutionary force that moves us.

Spirit will give you what you need for your development, but then you have got to be “ready” and to open to Eros, or you simply do not get the benefits of the evolutionary impulse.

Text: Jana Dixon