The integration of mind and heart is essential for the survival and development of the human race. This core message wears many masks but ultimately the same truth is expressed. Those who explore hidden realms in order to widen their bandwidth of context and experience need to remember that the journey goes beyond rejection of status quo, beyond situational aware ness of what is unbelievable to most, and does not stop at being "woke" or trying to shock people awake.
When we stumble upon a new layer of experience that shifts our way of thinking and living, we may get so excited or so enraged or so punch drunk in love with some idea that we decide Everyone Everywhere needs to know right now and boy are they lucky we're here to wake them up. That's when it's time to be careful.
The first problem is that you can't force enlightenment. People don't wake up until they're good and ready, and some will smack the hell out of you without even getting out of bed. We all get used to our routines as a function of the survival circuit. We wouldn't be here as a species otherwise, so it's a blessing, but it's very easy to abuse, so it's a curse. We normalize whatever is going on while we're enduring it, until something cracks the glass and we notice how small our world has gotten.
The other problem is that you aren't really enlightened yet, and actually nobody is. The problem with all the verbs for awakening is that people use the past tense. Once the chain reaction begins, there's a shedding of dead weight trend toward growth. It's a process that feels done from time time time but never really is. People who claim to be enlightenED are mistaken. Unfolding into eternity is a present tense thing, not a trophy or a bedpost notch. It is, therefore, dangerous and stupid to decide you are a prophet.
The stages of spiritual development are simultaneously death throes and birth pains. The caterpillar doesn't just fashion wings. It has to dissolve the body of its youth and undergo metamorphosis to progress beyond mindless consumption into flight and a new set of senses. The Monarch butterfly is so vibrant a symbol because it's raised on poison and turns it into stunning beauty with a legacy of endurance. The world is currently in a state of high toxicity in the literal and metaphysical sense, and with that classic human adaptability we have learned to survive on it. This is good in the short term but unsustainable.
To extend the metaphor, we've gone through several molts as a species and seem to have entered the chrysalis. Whether we emerge as Monarch butterflies or Death's Head moths has yet to be seen, and it depends on whether we can reconnect our thinking to our knowing. Before this integration can occur, we should observe that at the moment, we are stuck in our heads. Our world is the product of unchecked ego driven by unclean and artificial compulsions that keep us in a trance, living small and often lonely lives. It's an easy mistake, so there's no need to beat ourselves up. As it turns out it's damn profitable to cultivate the sort of psychosocial environment that breeds these weeds.
Flashback! Life in ancient days was terrifying, and we gave up liberty for the security offered to us by the proto-sociopaths who figured out how to lie and how to not feel those pesky pangs of empathy. Coercion was born when the first ape lifted the first stone with lethal intent and felt the quiver of a satisfied smile. The seed of the police state was planted when the skull-crusher subset learned to sell protection to the weaker shadow-caster types who could only manage a good lie. We named those politicians, and we let the twins of fraud and force run the same scam for a few hundred thousand years. Cut to now.
We can do without the self-loathing and guilt that comes once we realize we've behaved badly and surrendered our power to the least deserving, but responsibility remains. The time has come to be honest about our share of the blame and convert it into our share of the work to be done. We procrastinate because there's a bit of us still waiting for a beating from the surrogate parents we call "the system." It's rather teenaged and we lash out in primitive reflex. Rebellion is essential kindling, but when it's held on to past its usefulness all it does is steal the fire. Why are we still hanging on to the thrill of that first flipped bird? Ok, ok, screw this and to hell with that, but what now?
Mind is a vehicle. It's time for each of us to clean out the car. The first step is to reclaim autonomy one day at a time, one moment at a time by understanding that walking in lockstep with environmental madness is just easier, not better. The wolf you feed is the wolf that breeds. It's a question of resonance. A little bass gives your daily driving music some meat, but too much will shake the license plate off. In the same way, too much obedience removes your identity.
Part of the reason we're all so frenetic is that we're trying to get and hoard cash. Money is magic and the bill everyone in America has access to the economic spectrum is a talisman. There have been terabytes written about what that weird little eye on the back of the dollar bill is meant to be. You know, the one floating over the pyramid. I've heard 'em all, from a salad bar of gods and demons to the gland in the center of your brain. The thing is, people are missing the point. Any of the above may be true to various cults and cultures, but look at it this way: count your eyes. Haven't you got a pair, and isn't the business end of the visual sense stereoscopic vision? There's a lot of real estate in the brain devoted to sight. Why do we imagine the 3rd eye is the only one we need to see the subtler world?
For command of space, we have to understand dimension. Depth perception demands a pair working in harmony. With just one eye, then, you're seeing the image but missing the full context. This is exactly the problem we've got, for we have abandoned the intuitive sight of the heart for the sight of the mind. Intellect divorced from empathy well describes that skull-crusher/shadow-caster parasite class and the paranormal counterparts we've come up with to say it without saying it.
Now you know whose eye that is. Maybe this whole grand hustle comes down to submitting to a world where indeed we are the blind and the one eyed man is king. So what's to do? You can spend a lifetime learning the details of the prison but there's little point if you can't embrace life on the outside. You can scratch the days on the wall or scrape out a hole through the floor under the bunk.
Open your heart and you open your other eye. It may burn at first, as all new eyes do, but in time new levels of subtlety and context will present themselves. The eye of the heart sees through the projections. It doesn't have to think because it knows.
The mind doesn't like this, or rather, the parasitic resonances installed by vulture culture into the egoic level of the mind get angry when they're not pushing all the buttons and pulling all the levers. Boy, they can make a racket. Imagine toddlers on military quality speed with megaphones and automatic weapons.
In contrast, the deep heart is cool and patient because it is in touch with the eternal. It doesn't need to debate, or convince, or verbally eviscerate for a cheap hit of dopamine. It is satisfied, so the pleasures it takes through benevolent actions are not covering up pain but adding up to joy. You can, I'll tell you, get your sea legs by doing nice things for the slightly less cheap dopamine hits. It's practice and eventually becomes natural.
People can tell in the eyes when you look with the heart instead of the mind. It's a lot like the difference between the smile you do for pictures versus the smile that comes when you're focused and doing what feels right. You know, the one the paintings and statues have. That classic "archaic" smile. What's the scoop, Mona Lisa and Saint Whoever? The secret is the knowing of the heart.
So my advice to anyone who's unpacking a new world view is to listen to the mind but hold off on believing it just yet. Give yourself the time to observe and explore without judgment. Practice opening that second inner eye so you can understand what all the analytic chatter means in contrast to the reference point you carry at your core.
Another thing to remember always is that our experience reflects who we are. If you're seeing patterns and shapes and hues dance endlessly in the world, you are the source of the beat that drives them. Again, this is not the time to blame or shame, it's the time to get clear. When we feel we need to fix the world, we must dig down past the emotion and see that our duty begins inside.
It sure feels more appropriate to jump into our cause of choice, but if we're honest, we know this is procrastination in hero drag. We owe it to our shot at life to do our best, and we won't bring what we're truly capable of to the effort as long as we're haunting our present with the ghosts of our past. If we don't banish our demons first we dare not play exorcist. Astral curb stomps are a thing to be avoided.
So thank you and welcome and do speak up. Do tell us your old stories and your new discoveries. Scare us a little more awake and remind us how to see what we have learned to ignore. Show the way to the forgotten places. Shine a light on those unspeakable forms of darkness. But, and this goes out to you and me both, get all your eyes open before you fret about "the blind." We'll be ready when you are.