Have you ever chosen to write, paint, cook or create something? Of course, you have! Whatever you chose to do you would have gathered together everything you need for success. To paint, you would have prepared the surface, to cook you would have preheated your oven and greased your pan (obviously I’m using baking a cake as the example). In other words, you would have laid down a foundation to ensure the painted surface would endure and the paint would not peel off anytime soon your cake would bake fully and you could retrieve it from the pan cleanly. As a foundation for the work to come, in the next few chapters, you will be introduced more intimately to me, given an understanding of how we get ourselves into the messes we do and how we get ourselves out of them. You’ll be guided into a paradigm that underlies every aspect of this book about life. I deliberately use words such as stance, paradigm, accept, reframe, pattern and model, because life is all about choice and these are all choices of positioning, adaption and alignment. Be aware that when I use these words I am calling on your discernment to decide what is best for your higher good.
Onward, the next part, ‘Awaken’ may be the least challenging because it is foundational. Having said that, it may challenge what you believe to be true, which is your right of choice, however, remain open-minded, it’s a great practical stance to place yourself in. The subjects covered are huge and tomes have been written about them and the reality for pretty much all of us is on a day-to-day basis we don’t need to know how a tribe in ‘goodness-knows-where’ expresses their versions of the ego and soul. Simplicity is the key here. For those not yet touched by the possibilities of experiencing life beyond just the five external senses, it can be a greatly demanding step to go within to seek the internal senses because we are taught that anything beyond them is unscientific and therefore irrelevant. I hope to convince you otherwise and suggest that you be patient with this concept of recognising you are more than a physical manifestation of life, because as we venture further along the road, if you remain engaged, the sense of it all will become more relevantly subjective. First, there are descriptions of the concepts we have available to us to journey inward. I lay out reasons why it makes sense to ‘Awaken’ to journey consciously and offer paradigms that describe how you do this. Consider it as preparation for the bigger journey. Like any journey, you can plan and get all the resources you require, yet you may not know what you will find, which is the joy of the journey! Consider the contents of ‘Awaken’ are impersonal information markers along the road. ‘Awaken’ also serves as a reminder for those already initiated and consciously journeying. For them, it may offer some fortification of spirit and an opportunity to see how another similarly journeying soul perceives it all.
Once you have answered the call to journey consciously, the next section, ‘Engage’ introduces you to methodologies that bring the physical and spiritual aspects of life together. For anyone wanting to understand the levels of intuition and how to relate to chakras, this is the place to be. Following that, there are tools such as crystals, cards, colours and so on, which are tangible expressions of old and new means of communicating with our intuitive selves. These too are patterns and paradigms. Some will resonate with you and you may choose to learn more about them and others won’t resonate (yet) which you can choose to bypass. The human experience is of a spiritually sentient being and has its expression and stance that goes beyond the physical five senses. Everything offered in the ‘Engage’ section is an introduction to various tools that engage with ALL our senses. Many methodologies are huge subjects on their own and sadly the scope of this book only allows for an ‘in a nutshell’ introduction. References to information for additional exploration are included where suitable. ‘Engage’ is the part where you gather together tools that will enhance your engagement with your intuitive self. It’s certainly the most physically practical part of this book. Aside from the tangible aspects, there’s a wonderful history of superstition, religion and magick (sic) which is closely tied to the history of humankind. The ‘Engage’ part is all about letting you recognise where you land in that rich history and the way we do this is by discovering which practical applications from various traditions, available to us today, resonate with you. This is the beginning of unravelling yourself from a subjective understanding to an objective and symbolic understanding of yourself and the world around you.
The fourth section is named ‘Become’. The stance of the ‘Become’ section can be adopted at any time on your journey. This section describes the internal and external soulful choices of engagement with the world within you and around you. It is the culmination of all you’ve learned and are now ready to apply in practical ways in the world. The lessons are designed to make the lens through which you view the world ‘wide-angled’. Having a discerning, panoramic view, or stance, as opposed to being tunnel-visioned, judgmental and closed, opens you up to greater growth through knowledge and unimpeded understanding, acceptance and wisdom. Make no mistake, intellect and academic prowess have nothing to do with becoming more panoramic within and without. Anyone free mentally to make choices for themselves adopts the stance of ’Become’. Very basically, you will learn to take full responsibility for your life in all respects through the lessons in ‘Become’. As you journey through the previous sections there will be times in life that the lessons in ‘Become’ will be advantageous for you to access, because as you evolve you will need to claim your space with balance, compassion, ecology, integrity and self-love. Those are the cornerstones of the lessons in ‘Become’ and offer templates (or patterns) you can model that are genuinely aligned with universal laws and predictive outcomes. For that reason, I highly recommend ‘Become’ as a source of guidance as you are shifting your perspectives of yourself, which will impact the people around you. For example, if you are stuck in a pattern of being a Pleaser, which is when you say ‘Yes’ to everyone who makes demands of you and struggles to say ‘No’, when you know that saying ‘No’ is better for you, then the chapter, ‘The Desert of Yes’ has a paradigm you can engage with. It includes a rich metaphor and practical examples of how to stay strong in saying ‘No’ and other little tricks to fortify you. That sort of lesson is handy at any stage on your journey, so peruse ‘Become’ anytime.
There is a note of caution for your consideration when contemplating the ‘Become’ stage and its relativity to the other sections. Consider the ‘Become’ stage as infinite because you keep on growing, evolving, adapting, accepting and letting go to grow again. If you truly are in the ‘Become’ stage you will know that spiritual evolution never ends, whereas the ‘Awaken’ and ‘Engage’ stages are finite, they have their limits. They contain information that, in the case of ‘Awaken’ sets you up to experience life beyond its usual material and physical expression. ‘Engage’ gives you easily acquired practical tools, which too are finite. Both the ‘Awaken’ and ‘Engage’ stages reach their end, although you can go back to them to acquire more understanding and knowledge (I went back to Aura-Soma about 20 years later!). Many people who have been seduced by the New Age movement have remained stuck in the stance that the ‘Engage’ section describes. On a quest to know more, to find peace within and meaning, they will choose something practical that they can do that resonates with them. There’s money to be made with the tangible tools that are on offer and there are very few selling the wares of the New Age who are focussed on assisting you to move along into eternal ‘becoming’ because when you do step into the ‘Become’ stage, you don’t need the tools of the ‘Engage’ stage. True be told, you don’t need them at all. Being a book hoarder, what happened to me was a sense grew in me that many of the books I had, with all their richness, carried an energy of their creator’s ego (being the human part of their books). I felt I had absorbed as much as I could of their divine guidance but I needed to distance myself from them to be able to grow into my human expression of fortified wisdom, soulfulness and love. I boxed the books, placed a Rose Quartz Crystal (for Unconditional Love) on top of them and put them away. Once I felt fortified and truly engaged with that stage of my growth I brought the books out again and my appreciation of them had matured and I received more from them than before. The caution is this: do not get caught in the idea that you have entered the ‘Become’ stage because you do your daily Tarot or meditation, follow your vegan diet, parade your crystals and so on. There is nothing wrong with any of that, but if you feel superior because you engage with tools of the ‘Engage’ section regularly and/or you observe yourself justifying, talking about, announcing or listing to others what you do in this area, then you are not aligning with your soulful self, you are engaging your ‘lofty ego’. The problem is there’s a trick within you that occurs, which is orchestrated by the ego, where the ego, which is always seeking the limelight, will associate your engagement with the tools with being soul-filled and take the credit for it. The indicators are: You will feel the need to share what you are doing with others and one-up them; you feel self-satisfaction (instead of still quietude) when you have completed your ‘Engage’ task; you still do the same thing over and over and not evolve; you get angered easily if someone’s opinion differs from yours.
The expression of the ‘Become’ stage is warmth, humbleness, humility, stillness, patience, compassion, balance, harmony, empathy and love. They all sound rather gentle, don’t they? Make no mistake, they are not weaknesses, because their companions are courage, bravery, acceptance, detachment, fortification, discernment, non-judgmental observation, wisdom and total presence. The more you are like this, the less you need the tools of the ‘Engage’ stage and when you do, it will be a part of your process and the need to tell people what you have done will be diminished. You will never hear me brag about my meditation practice or vegan diet, because I do neither. There is a meditative stillness and stance that defines the ‘Become’ stage. It is everything and nothing and when it is something it ceases to be! It’s paradoxical. There’s a wonderful thing I heard author, teacher and Medical Intuitive, Caroline Myss once say that sums up the stance of the ‘Become’ stage, which is: ‘You know you are in a state of Grace when you cease to be blinded by your own Light’. Perfectly, that doesn’t take anything away from your potential, while it cautions you about how you perceive your skills.
The ‘Become’ stage being infinite, organic, continually evolving, changing and renewing itself has been a challenge to contain within the written word in a book, because of the finite nature of the delivery method. Your story will evolve and although I have attempted to include as much as possible, I’m sure in some areas you will find it lacking. My apologies in advance and perpetuity for the shortfalls.
Lastly, quite separate yet intimately bound to everything before it is the section ‘feel REAL love’. Close to my heart, this section is not a stage but a pattern for you to follow. It is a very simplified version of the problem-solving and creative process. As I said, there’s nothing new here other than the delivery process. What I pray is the case for you is that you have journeyed so earnestly that what you bring to the ‘feel Real love’ section is greater vulnerability, acceptance of self, awareness of self and responsibility to self, so that you embrace the pattern fearlessly seeking the Truth of your Self. At any time you can utilise the ‘feel REAL love’ pattern because it is one of renewal and healing and it’s worth taking a look at it so it’s kind of implanted in you from the start. Because everyone and every story is different it includes cross references to little tricks I’ve planted in different sections that you can throw into the pattern to enhance your success using it. Out in the world, I use, ‘feel REAL change’, because my stance needs less explanation when I use ‘change’ instead of ‘love’, however, I believe that if we are to choose any change, REAL love is what we should always choose.
By the by, not at all by my intention, the structure of this whole book follows the feelREALlove pattern, which was a revelation to me when it was near complete.
As mentioned, my own story is intimately bound with what I am sharing with you. Initially, I was fearful of it all being an exercise in ‘me, me, me’, but others convinced me that sharing my story would let others engage more with their own and feel less alone on their journey.
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