Enlightenment

Therapy, Medication, Kundalini, and Spiritual Awakening

Date: October 25, 2015
Author: maryshutan
Categories: Enlightenment, Kundalini, raising your consciousness, Spiritual Awakening, Top-Down Awakening

So I occasionally get asked by someone to talk about my feelings of “standard treatments” and Spiritual Awakenings, such as Kundalini awakenings.

I am generally a reasonable person, and so my response to the person is that each person is individual and must do what is right for themselves in their own life. Which is the truth. I am not you, and I cannot decide if therapy, hospitalization, medication, and so forth is the right trajectory for you. Sometimes it is. But what is more often the case is that the current treatment options for anyone who is acting out of the “ordinary” and admits to it, or is not functional in their daily lives is medication and/or hospitalization. Basically, if it is not physical, it is mental.

That is where we are as a society, and where we still are in terms of treating diseases. Our society as a whole is just now really (well maybe for the last decade or two) understanding that mind and body are connected, and their are a gamut of new-age authors who were former doctors (or something like that) who say that they truly understand the mind-body-spirit and have discovered how they are connected. Most of them are talking about the mind-body connection, and their understandings are really surface but palatable to a wide, mainstream new-age audience who is just discovering the same surface understandings, but I won’t go there in this blog.

Most of the material about spiritual awakenings that has been introduced to a mainstream audience (well, an audience that has been interested in it, so not exactly mainstream) has been through psycho-therapeutic models. Meaning that psychiatrists and psychologists became interested in the subject and have written books, and done studies and programs about it. A lot of this material is still enormously helpful and insightful, by the way, even if it was written decades ago by this point. I do not wish to castigate this material, suggest it is not important, or that it is not essential readings and understandings for anyone going through a spiritual awakening.

But the psychotherapeutic model has its limitations.

Mainly because it considers anything deviating from “normal behavior”– meaning anything that the “normal” sleeping person (the person that just goes about their life in the repeated behavior/loops and is under a lot of conditioning and never really questions it, or gets upset if they have to) wouldn’t do is considered aberrant behavior because it diverges from that state. Meaning that anyone who is actually going through a spiritual awakening has something wrong with them because they are not acting or living their lives how a “normal” person should act.

There are all sorts of words for this– Qi gong sickness, or Meditation Related Problems, or Problems Related to Spiritual Practice. All diagnosable (some questionable diagnoses by the mainstream of psychiatry still, by the way) issues.

The difficult with this is that the Spiritual Awakening process is an aberration, but it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. In fact, it often means that something is really right. That someone is awakening beyond conditioned reality. And what happens is that the psychotherapeutic model defines this aberration as wrong, bad, medication or hospitalization worthy so that the person can return to “normal”– meaning the sleeper state.

I have read countless studies, for example, of well meaning physicians who became interested in “meditation related problems” who have blamed meditation for the cause of the issues presenting. In some cases it very much is an issue, by the way… we tend to focus on meditations that are too advanced for us (going from A to Z in one leap), make contact with spiritual truths that are too much for us to process, or focus on meditations that open us up psychically (open your third eye!) without processing any of our lower chakra stuff first. But even in those cases, what the person needs is someone to help them process, not someone to diagnose them and put them back to sleep.  

And many times, even if it is the “wrong” meditation, what is actually happening is this… the person is going through an Awakening. It is uncomfortable. It is causing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual issues. It is causing the person to become non-functional in their daily lives, or to realize that their former, sleeping lives are not who and what they want to be now. 

And this is certainly an aberration– a deviation from the norm. But we have a tendency to want to put back to sleep anything that is uncomfortable, anything that causes pain or dis-ease or difficulty in our lives. 

And many times what is happening in spiritual awakening is a healing process. A rapid, uncomfortable, healing process. 

But that is not how it is treated in the psycho-therapeutic model. 

We are so used to medicating anything that makes us feel. Any emotions that are coming up (and there will be a lot in the awakening process) that we cannot define as “our own” are treated as dysfunctions, and something to be medicated or treated.

This is because psychotherapeutic methods have only “awakened” to the family system level. It is still news, and not accepted– that ancestral patterns, past lives, societal, world, cosmic patterns (for example, there are others… you can read about them in my book) live within us and can be expressed, processed, worked through. So when someone is coming upon a pile of rage, or a huge amount of grief that does not come from early childhood, psychotherapeutic practitioners do not (by and large) have the knowledge to know how to identify these patterns or work with them. So typically what happens is that the person under their care will go through therapy (talk therapy) to go over their early childhood again and again to solve the mental aspects of this (which certainly can be helpful) or to give the person some tools to help them in their daily lives be a bit more functional… or in some cases medication or being told they will “just have to live” with things.

Because most psychotherapeutic practitioners typically have a great deal of ignorance about the spiritual awakening process, or about anything beyond early childhood type trauma or energies. Some do, by the way, and are exploring ancestral work (family constellations) or spiritual awakening (transpersonal, some jungian, for example) but even many of those still define the spiritual awakening process not as a process of growth, of unfolding, and of healing… but of one of deviation from societal norms that must be stopped. 

We do not like to feel, to experience, to grow. Growth can be painful, it can be brutal in fact. And our current society, our current cultural mindset is to make anything painful, out-of-the ordinary, or difficult simply go away. To sweep it under the rug, to put it back to sleep, to drug, drink, and screw it away until we no longer remember our existential pain.

SO I WILL SAY WITH A LOT OF CAVEATS: I am not a physician, I am not a therapist. I personally do not find those models helpful, and never particularly have. Personally, I have needed much more work on a spiritual level vs. a mental level, and have worked far beyond the context of any early childhood pain that I have experienced… and don’t feel the need to talk about it much anymore.

BUT I WILL SAY THIS: There currently is not a model in place to keep people in Spiritual Emergency safe. This is, unfortunately, the hospital systems and psychotherapeutic models. It is the limitations of our current cultural mindset that causes this. But I digress. There are some points in the spiritual awakening process that someone may need hospitalization or medication or they will harm themselves, or someone else. They are so broken down that they need someone to watch over them, and their family or friends are not able to.

I very much understand this. I also wish it was different, but for people who are in such a state of emergency, this is their only option, and it is often life-saving.

The difficulty with this option is that it goes on your “record” and you are given medication. Medication that is hard to titrate off of (despite what clinicians might say, all anti-depressants and/or anti-psychotics are extremely difficult to work your way off of, some more than others… but Acupuncture can really help with this by the way if you are wanting to do so in concert with your physicians knowledge). Once you are on medication it is intended to be for the long-term, and you are also expected to be in therapy for a long time (typically).

All of these methods may be life-saving, but medication in particular stops the spiritual awakening process. It just does– again, some more than others (I work with plenty of people on medication, by the way, and don’t pass judgement on people who are taking it, as I have mentioned, these are simply my thoughts). This may be exactly what you want or need if you are reading this, by the way. I do understand that, I have compassion for that. I talk to people weekly who I tell truthfully that I cannot help– they are too far gone into an emergency state that they need someone local (at the very least) because I work through teaching people tools and understandings to work through their stuff, and if they are not in a place to be able to process something (or anything) that I say, there isn’t much, quite frankly, that I can do.

My last caveat (I promise): Again, I am not a physician, but as someone who has gone through a difficult process I know that one of the biggest difficulties in this world is that people think that their own experiences, their own opinions and insights need to be had by everyone else. Basically, what this means is that (like I mentioned above) I do not personally suggest medication for people going through Spiritual Awakening, and I think that therapy is helpful only to a certain limited point (see limitations above) because the Spiritual Awakening process is spiritual, not mental… But I am not you. I cannot decide for you what you should do with your life. You can read my thoughts to family members of people going through Spiritual Awakening here, but I am not living your life and cannot decide what the right trajectory for you is. I am the first to acknowledge that hospitals can be life-saving. That is what they are there for. If you are at that point, that might be the best decision for you. But if you are not, you may want to consider things a bit more deeply.

Ideally, some day there will be treatment centers focused on giving people who are experiencing Spiritual Awakenings a place to really process what is coming up for them… instead of pushing it back down to the depths of their subconscious (Anyone want to give me funding for this?) But until that day, we must live in a world that all of us have co-created, and do the best that we can. There are ways to work with Spiritual Awakenings so they are not treated as a diagnosable process, an aberration, or something to be put back to sleep. There really are. The Spiritual Awakening process, despite its difficulty, allows for you to release what is not whole– what is broken, traumatized, and conditioned in you– so you can awaken to who you truly are. Just imagine if we could have that basic understanding… or if the whole world could (or at least the allopathic world could).

If you are interested in working with me, you can contact me

Critical Thinking, Conscious Thought, and Letting go of Reactions to the Sleeping World

Date: October 20, 2015
Author: maryshutan
Categories: Enlightenment, raising your consciousness, Reiki, Spiritual Awakening

There was a time in my life when I was in a state of despair– the sort of existential crisis that spiritual awakening, or traversing a spiritual path with depth– creates. I looked out on the world and saw darkness, I saw the diseases and imbalances and masks and lack of truth that people carried with them. I saw the conditioning that they were under, and how they reacted unthinkingly, and unconsciously, and based on fear and other emotions rather than any type of clarity.

At this point I was actually well paid for seeing this, and had made it my career. People came to me for body work, for energy work, and for spiritual healing and I was able to see right through them– to see the blockages, pain, and diseases that their body and soul had made. I still do this, I still have this capability, but it no longer creates a state of angst for me.

At a certain point in my path I looked outward and all I could see was falseness. I could see my own patterns and blockages and that of the world. I could see how people were acting in a sort of play, and most of them did not realize that they were actors in their own lives.

This was a difficult crisis to reconcile, as it required me to switch my vantage point.

But what does this actually mean? It means that I sat with this pattern, this realization, this darkness. I didn’t chase it away, I didn’t tell it that it was wrong, or angry, or react to it based off of it making me feel isolated, based off of it making me want to isolate. I sat with it to understand it, to offer it my ear, to finally listen to it.

And it told me that people are doing the best they can, or the best they think they can. That I am doing the best I can, or think I can. We all are doing the best we can, or more accurately, we think we can.

The more I realized this, the better I was able to interact with others, to see where they were coming from, and to offer them compassion. We all are doing the best we can, or the best we think we can.

And more than that I am able to look out at the world and see people awakening, claiming their inner light, and realizing who they are. To go beyond what has been given to them or created for them by various sources. To want to heal and become more whole. Most of us struggle with this– we are so used to our own creations, the illusions we are under, the play that we are in, and the thoughts and understandings we have been given.

It is a rare and beautiful quality when we are able to consciously and critically think.

Because many of us simply are not capable of it. Without realizing it we think the thoughts of our father and mother, of the wounds and patterns of our past lives and ancestry, what society wishes and creates for us to think, repeat the thoughts and ideas of our teachers and gurus (who rarely have created such thoughts themselves), and allow for our minds to create a reality based on our fears, the above patterns, and what we already know to be “true”.

We unconsciously look for words, ideas, and teachers that can placate us, that can keep us who and what we are. That fit what our mind requires to feel safe– to not grow, to not unfold or move forward. This is why there is such popularity with certain teachers who tell us that all we need to do is to think positively and we will have a new car, that if we “awaken” we will be an immortal millionaire in perfect health, that there is no such thing as evil, and that if something bad happens to someone, they on some level must have asked for it.

We have a plethora of teachers out there who are more than willing to cater to this, and who are willing to make simplistic, easy to digest mentally one-for-one associations (what a particular “power” animal means, if you have thyroid issues you must hate yourself, and so forth) that will allow for us to not think at all critically about what the events, symbols, and ideas that are coming into our lives mean.

I will illustrate this with an example that not many people are aware of. Many people are aware that Reiki, an energy healing modality, did not originally have to do with the chakras. But the chakras themselves were standardized in the “rainbow” format by Christopher Hills (in the late 70’s, early 80’s I believe) through his book Nuclear Evolution. Before that time, and by the accounts of many people who can actually see the chakras and the energy bodies that surround us, the chakras do not have a ROYGBIV (rainbow) format at all (actually a really good representation of what actual clairvoyants see is Dora Kunz’ The Personal Aura if you can still get your hands on it– it shows how all energy fields and their colors are different based on thoughts, experiences, and imprints of the individual).

But we all believe this to be true. This is what we were taught in our Reiki classes and through basic exploration of the chakras and books about the chakras.

In fact, I have had several natural healers and clairvoyants go to Reiki classes and be told they were seeing “wrong” and what they were doing naturally to heal people was “wrong” because it didn’t fit their teachings, and they came out of the classes confused and much worse healers than they were to begin with. 

So we can see how easily we are taught how not to think and to take up teachings without conscious thought. Now, I know many of you reading this are saying that you are not clairvoyant, and so the idea of seeing the chakras in another manner wouldn’t be possible for you. But you can still have your direct experience of them, however you wish to.

By this I mean that once you learn something, thoroughly and respectfully (always respect teachers, of course) you can “throw out” the teachings and experience for yourself. Does this chakra really seem red? Did what my teacher tell me make sense to me logically? What do I actually think about it?

Because what we are taught comes through the filters of another and their experiences, their beliefs, and more basically… what they were taught. It is often like a bad game of Telephone (the old parlor game where there would be multiple people standing in a row and the original person would say a simple phrase like “monkey eating a banana” and by the time it was passed down to the last person in line it would have turned into “mon senior has a bastien”.

Most of us simply repeat what our teachers say, what we were taught in school, and the patterns and thoughts we have been given. If we come across a thought that doesn’t fit into our proverbial wheelhouse, we either are not able to process it (cognitive dissonance, basically), or we outright reject it with an emotional reaction (either to ourselves, or more frequently, heaping our emotions onto the speaker, teacher, book, etc that has given their thoughts that do not fit into our own constructed universe).

So how to critically think? How to Consciously Think?

This is the real question. Look to your own thoughts and ask what would happen if they were not true. This is not an easy task, so start out asking if what you believe to be true about yourself or about the world could be slightly less “true” than you perceive it to be now.

But practically, read, watch, and see things that are outside of your comfort zone. Read a book you never would otherwise. Since this is a spiritual blog, I will say that a lot of people react when I tell them that I have studied and worked with many religious and spiritual paths– including the occult, magic, Hoodoo, Vodou (this one tends to be the big one), and folk practices from around the world.

Because of what we have been taught we would never educate ourselves on what Vodou actually is. We would never learn that it actually, first and foremost, a beautiful system and path of ancestral worship. We will never learn that the occult is just as concerned with “awakening” as new-age paths are, and that it can offer things that many “shamanic” or “spiritual” paths cannot– such as an understanding of how to work with the energies that comprise the Universe, how to actually communicate with angelic presences (beyond the new-age appropriation of them). How folk magic practices are inherently simple, effective, and can improve our finances, love life, clear energies off of us, and open our “road” so that we can have more ease in our lives.

But most of us will never learn this because we fear what we do not know. I recently read a book on Scientology, which I admittedly have biases towards (especially after watching a documentary about it). I state this because all of us should be continually learning, continually unfolding, continually questioning what we as individuals think and believe, and our inherent biases.

But we can do this in many ways. Go see a movie you wouldn’t normally see, a documentary, go hang out with people from a different culture, class, or religion. Participate in an activity that you have been holding yourself back from experiencing. Find people and thoughts different than you and experience them and let them change what you think. 

Most of us are unable to think beyond ourselves and what we have been given. This means that we surround ourselves with “us” – with the books, gurus, teachers, people, and experiences (food, culture, and pretty much everything) that is within our already created parameters. Much of what is wrong with this world (racially, culturally, financially, politically, and just in general) is this– that we cannot see outside of ourselves and think that the World has to cater to our constructed illusions and beliefs that have been given to us by others.

If we do so, if we are able to do so, we become more conscious. We start to become able to think for ourselves logically. We stop reacting based off of fear, off of emotion. We begin to see the world with clarity. We begin to experience the world with clarity, instead of the unconscious emotional reactions that we normally do. We let go, we release, we become happier, more accepting, and understand more about the world around us.

 

Resolving the Fear of Death

Date: September 24, 2015
Author: maryshutan
Categories: Enlightenment, Near Death Experience

In a previous blog I talked about how new-age authors and teachers tend to capitalize on our fear of death, telling us that we can become immortal, or that they know absolutely everything about death and can tell you, or that they have a friend or loved one they channel who only gives messages of peace and love from the other side. Read that here…

It should be noted that some of the NDE’s (Near Death Experiences) are certainly real, and that I have absolutely nothing against love and light, or peace, or any of the feelings that come for many people after death. Death for most people is a release– and NDE’rs frequently have difficulty coming back to a place that is distinctly not so love-and-light to the extent that they may have difficulty carrying on their lives.

I also have confidence that there are some solid channels out there. While a few of them are popular, many of the channels who have gotten popular are fake. This is because these people learn what others want to hear (or the “channel” themselves wants or needs to hear) and they report back from their very human need, rather than anything spiritual. This is how we get silliness of channels saying that Hitler is picking posies in a field somewhere and talking about love (yes, this actually happened).

Death is a natural thing that anyone going through spiritual awakening will have to confront.

Many people going through significant (dramatic, sudden) spiritual awakenings will in fact have a near-death experience in order to release this fear. They will have this experience because they need to– on some level they think that to transcend the physical body, or to lose identification with it, significant illness and separation from the physical body need to occur.

And for some people this is very likely true.

But others will begin to think or hear that they are going to die, or even will come to realize that there is a part of themselves that in fact wants to die, and they will assume it is physical death. This can, in fact, be a freaky experience… to realize that there is a part of you bent on death.

It is rare for people the first (or seventieth) go-around of the sort of creation-destruction cycle (where in spiritual awakenings we crumble, or aspects of ourselves release, in order to make way for the new) to realize that this death is not a physical death. It certainly can be, but for most it is a psychological death.

What does this mean? It means that most of us are only “embodied” in our minds. We look like a massive amount of energy cycling our heads and pretty much nothing else. This is how and why we self-create so much of our Universe. We are truly in our heads, and creating from that place (I could go on a rant about shamanism and mental vs. spiritual healing again, but I will not. You can view that here if you wish, though).

When we awaken we awaken those aspects of ourselves that are in a state of slumber– that are conditioned not to be awake. It serves our brain to be in control, to be in creation of everything. This way we have logical order, we have control, we can self-create based off of a sort of filter that has been created by all of our past traumas, conditioning, and that of our ancestors, society, etc (for more about these layers, you can read my book).

So in the spiritual awakening process at some point we will want to “die”. And this actually means that our brains, our mental realm being in the forefront and pretty much nothing else, our filters, all those conditioned layers… that they are crumbling down. Our brains are dying from controlling our world. And this is scary.

Because even if we want to awaken, to cast off those layers of conditioning and trauma, we pretty much are used to our self-created Universes. It is rare for people to go beyond them– this is why we have so many people saying that they are the center of the Universe, that they create everything in it. Because when you transcend that, you have to let go of control, you realize that you are in fact not the center of the Universe, and you are directly in a sort of cosmic ocean in which you are but a small drop (and the entire ocean at the same time, but with the realization that you are a small drop simultaneously).

So what wants to die is how we currently live our lives, who we currently are. Who we are might not be who we know we can become, but there is safety in the known. And it is scary to transcend that. And our brains, our mental fields that are so used to creating and filtering everything around us will scream at us to stop, to not “die”, to not let go, to not go beyond a certain spiritual point, to not walk through a specific spiritual door… because if we do… our whole world will change.

I talk about spiritual doors a lot in my work with people. A spiritual door is something we walk through that once we have the direct experience and understandings beyond that proverbial “door” we cannot go back from them. And letting go of our brains is a certain type of spiritual door, a specific “death” that we cannot go back from.

Once we realize that we are not the center of the Universe, we cannot go back from that knowledge. Once we directly feel cosmic flow, we cannot not have that understanding… and once we experience our minds not creating and filtering our Universe it would be very difficult for us to go back to having our mind be the creator again.

Some people do, of course, go back to having their minds create again… but even the ability of a singular moment of “death” of that no longer being the case… a momentary switch of identification… we will realize that it is a possibility, and our lives will never be the same.

So how to transcend the fear of death? In the spiritual awakening process, it is to realize that the “death” you will likely experience is a psychological death, a simple (or not-so-simple) switch in identification.

For others, it can be difficult. You can tell people that death is a release from your own direct experience, but people will still have the fear of it.. and it will restrict their existence to a major degree… until they are able to reach an expanded state enough to work through all of the trauma that comes from past deaths, their own fears, and so forth.

I do wish that I had a simple, concise way to transcend this, but even developing the awareness that our large, innate fear of death constricts our lives to the point that most of us don’t really live… we can begin to see the patterns and ways that it does so in our individual lives. By having this awareness (which few have) we can begin to truly live, which is why we are here and what we are supposed to be doing.

If you are going through a spiritual awakening and having difficulty with this, I can help you talk to your “fear monster”, to resolve and expand past this fear of death. You are welcome to contact me and I will see if we would be a good match to work together (I do not take all patients who contact me, you can read more about this here)

Working in the Light

Date: September 18, 2015
Author: maryshutan
Categories: Enlightenment, raising your consciousness, Spiritual Awakening

One of the thoughts that gets most sent to me (either verbally or via thoughtform) is that because I work with the dark that I must not work with the light (or something to that effect).

Others will go as far as to admonish me, or put negativity my way because I do work with the “dark”, and more than that I have compassion for “dark” things.

This is not only directed at me, but is the experience of most actual spiritual workers, shamans, witches, folk practitioners, etc. Most of these practices have been given a shiny coating of peace and love to the extent that anyone doing any actual spiritual work is perceived as “bad” while those who are play-acting and putting their puritanical ideals of what “light” means are “good”– at least in their own minds.

This is sad because historically spiritual methods and paths that have been a full spectrum of practices (in some cases for thousands of years) have now been diluted to appease the minds of new-agers. This has caused most knowledge, books, and message boards (everything from Shamanism to Witchcraft to Voodoo/Vodou and Hoodoo) to be filled with new agers who know nothing about the practices telling traditionalists or people that have studied this work for decades that anything not their own particular brand of “love and light” is bad. Due to this movement traditional practices are being represented to the outer commercial market as being this extremely surface version that has essentially been stripped of its power, knowledge, and spirituality in deference to the love and light movement.

The truth is that we cannot have the light without the dark… or the dark without the light… and anyone doing any sort of actual spiritual work will realize quickly that those labels are created out of fear by people who are not interfacing with anything of importance spiritually.

It is easy to put labels on things like a James Bond movie: James Bond= good, Russian spy (or whatever)= bad. In fact, most of the “lightworkers” who claim to work with anything dark (spirits, beings, elementals, demons) are doing so out of this dichotomy. Life isn’t this simple. The spiritual world isn’t this simple.

I have been doing spiritual work professionally for a while now, and interfacing with different spiritual realities for a very long time now. I know that once you get out of your own self-created world that the highest, shiniest angelic energy may be fierce enough to give you a headache for three days and blow out your microwave. This same energy may not care about you– it simply knows that you have the appropriate calibration/energy/ability to interact with it.

Similarly, something that is considered “demonic” can be easy and straightforward to work with– pulling no punches and telling you exactly how it is and what they need in order to leave a person, or family alone.

I am under no illusions, by the way (another new-ager favorite) that there is no such thing as evil. There is. This, like many things (curses, spirits, energy, etc), can only be denied by people who have not experienced evil and wish to remain ignorant of it. There are all sorts of energies out there that can be categorized as “dark” and “evil” because they are dark and evil.

But we are largely in a sea of thoughtforms, and most of what people encounter is either a simple spirit (former human) that they have decided is a “demon” or has told them they are a demon (kind of like someone you meet bragging at a club about how much money they make or something). Plenty of people are self-creating all sorts of demons out of fractured parts of their psyche. Even so, what I am simply stating is that something considered the darkest of the dark can be easy to get along with and understand, and something that is the lightest of the light can cause issues and may not care about you at all.

So this idea of only working in the light is false. What the person is most likely doing is creating a sort of cocoon for themselves, a sort of illusory spiritual reality of their own creation based on their own person belief systems, ethics, and emotional needs from the spiritual world.

This is why so many white people have “Native American” spirit guides (seriously, nobody has a Mexican spirit guide?) and why their guides (some from thousands of years ago supposedly) talk exactly like them, tell them what they want to hear, and are singularly and positively “light”.

The light is like anything else. There are different shades of it, different energies… and when you truly begin to work in the light, or with light beings or energies you are likely going to have unpleasant physical symptoms (at least for a while) while you work with them. They might not care about you personally, you are simply a vessel for them or someone that has the ability to work with them.

The idea that everything in the spirit world is in love with you, cares about your path, your personal belief systems (and piled on traumas, restrictions, and issues you have carried forward into this lifetime) is really odd if you think about it logically. Why would Archangel Michael have a personal interest in you? Especially if you have not developed a relationship with him, which most people simply don’t know how to do properly.

When we go beyond the constructs of the light we have created for ourselves based on our needs for the spirit world we discover real light. Spirits, beings, energies, angels, deities, elementals (you get the picture) that can bring us a lot of light, that can bring the light of pure divinity into this world. But most of us need to get over ourselves a bit and stop creating the spiritual realms out of our own needs to interface with them. And most people will not. We would rather believe that something is singularly white, pure, light, and singularly and almost obsessively involved with us than think that even the lightest beings have complex interests and understandings way beyond our own constructed illusions, and the needs of our fractured and traumatized Self.

If we are able to rise above (metaphorically) even the lightest archangel we may find ourselves directly in flow. With source. If we are going to talk about light energy, this is what it is all about. Pure flow washing through you. It is beautiful, sacred… a state of pure grace. Words are indescribable for this state which is why I (and others) simply call it “flow”. Because that is what it feels like.

The world, the cosmos, everything inside and outside of ourselves is made up of currents. When we are able to let go of our traumas, our illusions, we are able to find this place of flow.

A lot of people describe this state as being one of perfection, in which our lives will be filled with bliss and light and love. And it is. But what most people don’t understand (especially those who are still in the stage of categorizing dark=evil, light=good) is that you can have bliss and pain at the same time, despair and joy.

Dark and light is simply a continuum. 

As spiritual workers, or those interested in a spiritual path, we have one of two choices, seemingly:

1. Put ourselves in a cocoon or new-age sort of bubble where we self-create most of our spirituality. This allows for us to feel in control, to create things out of our own puritanical constructs, and to never really interface with anything outside of ourselves. In this way we can believe that the cosmos itself is centered around us, our thoughts, and our needs. We can remain comfortable and secure in our beliefs and anything (any thought, opinion, direct experience) that we come across that does not fit it we can simply cast aside as false.

In this manner we do not progress, but we are comfortable and secure with what we believe to be true about our spiritual reality. Many of the people in this category talk a good game about their “shadow” and doing personal work, but you will often find them judging others, not spiritually progressing, and not really understanding anything of a spiritual nature. This is because they don’t want to. The self-created is comforting, illusion is comforting. We feel in control, we feel like we are the center of the Universe, we can tell ourselves that we understand everything, we do not have to go into the beautiful, wild free-fall of category #2

2. We can work with a full spectrum of consciousness and continually unfold. We can realize that we are not the center of the cosmos, that the spirit world does not revolve around us and our needs or puritanical constructs. We can be wild, we can experience freedom. We will continually progress with the knowledge that whatever we know, however much we know, that we do not know very much.

The more light that we become the more darkness comes to us. Either our own or from outside sources. We begin to realize that the lighter you are the more you actually interface with darkness as well as the full spectrum of reality. Rather than hide from it, ignore it, or insert ourselves into a bubble we go beyond simple duality and constructs such as dark/light and realize that things are exceedingly simple, and not-so-simple at the same time.

We can directly experience the light, the dark both within and outside of ourselves. We can comfort the darkest parts of ourselves and feel compassion for the darkest elements of the Universe. We can realize that the dark and light are just constructs and that the darkest thing can also be light. We can work directly with the light and feel a flow state that goes way beyond anything that we could even imagine or self-create for ourselves.

The light is wonderful. But it is beyond our constructs, our own needs for the Universe, our own needs for individual guides or Gods. It just is.

Engaging the Primal Self

Date: July 25, 2015
Author: maryshutan
Categories: Enlightenment, raising your consciousness, Spiritual Awakening

In our pursuit to become intellectualized, “higher” animals, we have lost our inherent primal nature. While we all appreciate the modern appliances and way of life that allows for computers, air conditioning, and educational pursuits, we have in our pursuit of such things demonized, ignored, and cast away a vital aspect of ourselves.

Our primal selves. The animalistic force that is within all of us. The energy that does not wish to think, to reason intellectually. The energy that wishes to act, to claw, scream, whimper, stomp its feet on the ground, have sex, make love, be in nature… the aspect of ourselves that may be murderous, basic, evil, hate, and is our primal, natural, animal instinct.

So why return to this? Why acknowledge this? Most of our spiritual pursuits are about finding and acknowledging our “higher” selves. We find angels and discover ourselves as divine. We may find joy. We go after that which is “light and love”. We begin defining anything that is not “light and love” as not spiritual.

But that is not all there is. That is not all spirituality is. When we ignore any aspect of ourselves, when any part of ourselves is subconscious it will act out its most subconscious desires in patterns that may confuse us. We may chastise ourselves for “awakening” while thinking poorly about someone who cut us off in traffic. We may pretend to be “love and light” and still gossip, judge, and hate those different than us. We may be spiritual and create animals and earthly “spiritual helpers” that are fuzzy, warm, and deprived of any animal instincts. We may begin to believe that “awakening” is about “ascension” and is completely separate from our physical lives, our sexual instinct, our primal needs and emotions.

When we separate from our primal selves that aspect of ourselves begs to be noticed. We gravitate towards the activities and patterns that will satiate it, but without understanding these patterns will simply repeat. In mundane terms, there is a reason why the states in the U.S. that wish to teach only abstinence education to children and teenagers, that are anti-gay marriage, and anti-abortion are also the states that have the highest rates of pornography usage. In mundane terms, there is a reason why as a country and as a world (for the most part, some countries excluded) we are so sexually deprived and fixated on young girls as beacons of sexuality because the idea of adult sexuality creates fear. In mundane terms, there is a reason why we are always at war, creating violence, and spewing hatred towards one another.

When we do not recognize and work with our primal selves this energy goes out into our lives as individuals… but it also goes out into the world as a whole.

Until we recognize our primal selves and learn how to work with even our most base instincts in this world we will not fully be conscious. Until we recognize that our spiritual natures are not all “love and light” but can include even the most murderous, scratching, clawing, sexual, primal instincts we are not awakened. As a culture, as a world, when we do not work with, understand, and love the aspects of ourselves that are animalistic, sexual, primal in nature we as a culture and a world unconsciously create scenarios to satiate our primal selves.

When we as individuals are able to recognize our primal selves we can begin to feel compassion for this thrown away, scolded, and judged piece of ourselves. When we are willing to come away from this idea that spirituality is all things– higher self, lower self, divine, animalistic, fierce, smooth, flowing, kind, compassionate, violent, angry, sexual, peaceful, loving, hating, energetic, emotional, mental, spiritual, physical– we can transcend the illusions that are so commonly perpetuated in the awakening community and truly awaken. And more than that, we can recognize, reconcile, and love a piece of ourselves that we have cast away… and in doing so we can become more embodied, more awakened, and more compassionate towards ourselves. We can fully become who we truly are.

Making peace with our most violent instinct, our most primal may seem like the least “spiritual” idea to many of you. If this is true, question why. Question why spirituality needs to be about a certain brand of illusory light… the same light, the same rules, the same illusions that are commonly taught to make people believe that spirituality is anything but physical, anything but right here and now, anything but emotional… anything but your every-day lives. There is an agenda to this illusion. There is a reason why this illusion has been perpetuated for centuries. It is because it keeps us from ever becoming whole, it keeps us from going from seeker to sought, and it keeps us from truly awakening. We are never truly satiated by these illusions because they are not what we need to truly awaken, to truly become whole. So we continue looking and buying the same illusion again and again, the same books and thoughts from different gurus/teachers again and again… but we never find what we are looking for… which is wholeness, reconciliation of all parts of ourselves, and our true divine nature… which is rooted in love for all aspects of ourselves.

Our primal selves are playful, joyful, devious, fun… they can teach us a lot. When we engage with them, when we make them conscious we no longer have the repression, the rules and restrictions that have been handed to us by ourselves, our families, by society, by others who consider themselves “spiritual”. When we can make peace with the inner violence, with the sexual currents within us, with the hatred, with the desire to scream and slash and run, when we are conscious of every bit of ourselves we no longer subconsciously (or consciously) lash out at the world… and we have taken responsibility for that small parcel of energy that has gone out into the world making our world such a violent, unconscious, unfeeling, and quite frankly, brutal, place to be.

My first book, the Spiritual Awakening Guide, is available on Amazon now. It goes over types of spiritual awakenings, the spiritual journey as a whole, and symptoms of spiritual awakening in a pragmatic, non-dogmatic way. You can get it here or here (kindle version). You can contact me for inquiries about sessions and the work that I do.

The Positive Aspects of Spiritual Awakening

Date: July 20, 2015
Author: maryshutan
Categories: Enlightenment, raising your consciousness, Spiritual Awakening

Many of my blogs, I realize, are utilized to deconstruct popular myths or illusions about spiritual, psychic and shamanic practices as well as the true, complex, and multifaceted process that is spiritual awakening. I do find this necessary work, and am passionate about it, and hope that it helps many of you to critically think in your own way about the world you live in and your own awakening process.

But in dispelling illusion and being critical I do recognize that there is seemingly a focus in my blogs on the difficult, or perhaps even negative aspects of awakening. In dispelling the illusions that are so pervasive in this world, especially in many spiritual organizations, communities, and teachers/gurus… the exact place you would think we may be looking for truth… the positive, profound, and even blissful aspects of awakening tend to get lost.

Awakening is blissful. It is beautiful. Its purpose is for you to know exactly who you are, why you are here, and what you as an individual can bring to this world uniquely and individually. It is also about merging with source, God, light. As we realize our own divinity we are able to feel, see, and sense divine flow as a whole.

We realize that we are a drop in the ocean and the ocean in a drop.

This means that we realize that we are divine, we are light, we are much more than what our physical bodies are, what even our family is, or society, or even the world is. We realize the entirety of the flow that permeates every reality (divine flow), we can hear, taste, and sense this flow. We merge with this flow, with oneness.

I have written critically about oneness before, and how it is different than what is perpetuated in modern spiritual thought. And it is. The total dissolution of individual identity is momentary. It is important. But we are not intended to walk around as undifferentiated blobs of oneness, thinking that we are the same as every person around us in abilities, characteristics, and other attributes.

This dissolution into oneness allows for us to get over ourselves, basically. To lose the fear of physical death. To let go of identification with a temporary, physical body. We do not realize how much fear we have wrapped up around the fear of dying and death until we transcend it. It is enormously freeing, and allows for us to act and be in this world in a much different way than we once did.

Oneness also allows for us to feel connected to others around us, but more importantly, to God/source. It is wonderful if we feel connected to people, it really is. But the entire spiritual awakening process is about realizing how we are a part of source, and we have actually never left source.

We have a huge wound in ourselves because we believe the illusion that we are separate from source. We look for ways to fill this void. On the surface physical levels this may be drugs, sex, shopping, tv, technology, etc. When we awaken it is through taking workshops, reading books, and entering seeker mode– perpetually looking for something that we often cannot define and can never find.

We do will not understand how much energy we have put into seeking until we find, and directly experience, what we are looking for. The realization that we are with source… that despite our outer wrappings that we have never left… allows for us to transcend seeker mode and become sought. Seeking is exhausting, when we become sought we have a lot more energy. We may not need to sleep as much, and the fatigue that is so pervasive in the spiritual awakening process begins to lift.

Being awakened really is bliss. It is being held. It is being loved. One of the biggest spiritually based issues in this world is that we are looking for bliss and love and safety in the wrong places. We continually cast our nets out looking for anything to help us become less isolated, less afraid, more loved, and more safe. We create illusions upon illusions to try to convince ourselves that we are safe, we are in control, we are not alone. Awakening allows for us to see that human love, human safety, the very human act of coming together and being in our external, physical, daily lives will never provide us the type of love that we truly crave. Humans are all flawed (even those who are awakened or pretending to be) and are not capable, in their human physical wrappings, to provide the depth of love, bliss, and sensation of being held that we really require to feel whole.

Awakening allows for us to be held by source, by the spiritual mother. When we reach this point we realize that humans are flawed (again, all of us, otherwise we wouldn’t be here), and that our hunger, our yearning, our perpetual seeking for someone/anything to hold us and tell us we are okay is a call out to source.

The interesting thing about reaching this place is that we are scared of this type of love. We may reject it. We may not feel worthy of it. But even if we are able to radiate a single drop of love towards a spiritual mother or source it radiates back exponentially to us, letting go of our fear, our anger, and allowing us to finally fill up with what we have been seeking for so long.

One of the more useful but “mundane” (well, at least compared to feeling infinite love of source energy) aspects of awakening is to be able to see illusion and falsehood. This can be a bit isolating, but I have found it is quite helpful. When this happens you can see what books are worth your time, what workshops, what pursuits, and generally what in your life has meaning. This also oddly has the aspect of making you really compassionate and even loving towards the people around you. Most people are really struggling. They have so much chaos and confusion and trauma and illusion around them that they are like someone at the edge of a cliff hanging on with their fingernails.

This means that you can have compassion for them. They know not what they do, as the saying goes. This also means, generally, that you can see or sense other awakened souls, especially if they are around. This at the later stages is simply a recognition, but in early stages in severe awakenings (such as Kundalini awakenings) you may not be able to be in the same room as someone else if you both are in an active K cycle.

The opening of spiritual doors occurs. This again, can be difficult in some ways. Most of the world sees, thinks, and operates the same as one another. Thinking deeply, questioning, realizing beyond the norm is not generally thought of as a positive attribute in this world. But it is. Most people walk around sleepwalking, simply reciting what they have been taught by others as their truth. They don’t question it, they aren’t able to see beyond it. They see the world as it has been given to them, and they do so without questioning. Even if they are, or claim to be “awakening” they are simply reciting the words of others and are repeating ad naseum the same recycled new-age memes and the same information in books, lectures, and ideas. Being able to move beyond this type of illusion, this type of belief that what you have been given by others is your own without questioning allows for you to become fully individualized, fully unique in a world where most people simply copy one another and live fairly unremarkable lives. It gives you the opportunity to fully realize who you are and what you independently think, free from the constraints that have been given to you. This allows for you to create in this world in a unique way, in a way that no one else but you can do.

The ability to feel peace. Many of us, again, go about our lives in a state of quiet desperation. We are worried about the present, the past, the future. Some of this may be entirely appropriate worry, by the way. But awakening brings the ability to finally settle into our bodies, to be okay with being quiet and being still, to know that who we are and what we are doing is exactly what we should be doing. Gone (well, for the most part) are the lectures internally about how we should be doing something else when all we want to do is eat a piece of chocolate cake. We eat the chocolate cake when it is time for chocolate cake and fully enjoy it.

Full embodiment. This cannot be stressed enough. One of the most pervasive myths in the awakening community is that anything spiritual is somehow separate from our daily lives and our physical bodies. There are in fact whole cultures that would do horrible things to their bodies to prove that the physical form was a temporary vehicle– starvation, creation of pain, sitting on funeral pyres. And while I do not question that some of these were necessary for the people who believed they needed them, the physical form is important, and past a certain point in the awakening process we begin to realize that we can be fully embodied, fully sensate people who enjoy our physical presence on this earth. Most of us are disassociated, disembodied, and truly hate our bodies and our lives (this may be subconscious). Awakening allows for us to process that self-hatred, and we come more into our physical bodies. We are able to taste, sense, feel and utilize all of our senses in a way that we never had before. We no longer want or need to “go anywhere” because our lives are what they are, and we realize that death is simply a release of the physical form,. and that in life our physical forms should be cherished because they bring us opportunities and understandings.

Spiritual realization. Do you know what a chakra feels like? Do you know what it is like to travel in other dimensions, to realize that time is not linear, or to simply understand that the world is not just made up of supposedly concrete, physical matter? That we inwardly have a constellation? Through the awakening process we come out of intellectualization and into direct experience. We no longer need to study the chakras and their colors (or whatever) because we can feel our chakras… and we may feel twenty-five of them and be able to interact with them through direct experience. We realize that much of the material out there is for beginners. There is nothing wrong with this, all of us were beginners (and still are in many respects no matter how far we have come). But through direct spiritual revelation we can discover our individual path.

We can enter a state of grace. This is typically a later stage, but building up to the oneness experience we believe (and want to believe) that we are powerful, we are strong, we are Gods. While this may all be true (and it is) if we are able to recognize how small we are, we become humble. This allows for us to enter a state of grace, where we know with certainty that we are being held by something much greater than ourselves, but also answers that question of existential despair: “am I going to be okay” once and for all. With humility we can realize that we are a single drop in the entirety of divine flow.

We can be fully who we are without excuses. I used to hide my “darkness”. It was not considered “appropriate” and frequently got me chastised or even chased out of spiritual circles in my early days. My questioning of things, my ability to see differently (and generally more deeply than others), my thinking differently, and the direct spiritual experiences I have had caused me to be ostracized. As I have mentioned, people really love their illusions, and anything that goes against or questions their personal cosmology creates enough fear that they will lash out to protect themselves. This still happens. I just don’t care anymore. I am doing what I am here to do, and saying what I need to say because it is different than what others think. I share this not to shift focus onto myself, but to say that whatever you are struggling with that you think that people won’t accept, that deep dark, primal place that you are hiding in fear of, scared that others will not find out… this is likely your strength… your power. People do not want you to have power because they do not have their own. They fear anything different. Once you are able to reconcile those parts of you that are afraid, that care what people think, that care about people discovering those deep dark aspects of yourself, once you realize those deep dark aspects of yourself are fine, and even beautiful… you can be fully who you are.

You love all aspects of yourself. This is a difficult one to understand, because in most spiritual communities the focus is on the “light” and anything else is “bad”, but we are intended to have emotions, physical experiences, and be in touch with even the most primal aspects of ourselves. Once we get out of the heap of trauma and chaos we are all under we realize that emotions are just currents of energy, and the emotion of grief can be as beautiful as the emotion of joy. We can fully realize our physical, sexual selves. We can come to love our primal, animalistic selves. We can fully integrate all of these selves and just be one whole person, with no parts of ourselves villified. 

This is certainly not a comprehensive list, but I wanted to introduce this topic because most of you who come to me are in a state of panic. In a state of fear. In a state of recognizing the illusions of the world, the illusions of the spiritual communities. In a state of recognizing that most of the books and gurus and teachers and workshops out there are just meant to perpetuate a state of illusion rather than break you from it. It is hard when you are going through the true struggles of awakening to not feel cursed, like the universe is out to get you, to blame yourself and God/source, to look out at the world of fake gurus and see them espousing spiritual awakening as a state of simple bliss without having any sort of direct experience of it. The more that we move through our awakening the more that the blissful, the wonderful, and the truth about spiritual awakening come through. It just may not be like the brochures said it would be.

If you would like to contact me, you are welcome to.

Realization of the World being an Illusion

Date: July 17, 2015
Author: maryshutan
Categories: Enlightenment, raising your consciousness, Spiritual Awakening

One of the most difficult things on my spiritual path (beyond surrendering and coming to terms with the illusion of control) has been the letting go of layers of emotions related to the realization of the world being an illusion.

Many of my clients have felt the same way. This realization first comes as a sudden, irrevocable moment. We may have intellectualized about it before, or heard others speak about it (or intellectualize about it) but there is a sudden, direct experience of understanding the outer, exterior world (our day to day reality) as being an illusion that is difficult, if not almost impossible, to integrate.

At first this direct experience may come looking outward at the world. We see that not only individual people but our town, our state, our society, and our world are repeating loops of patterns and behaviors again and again. We may be in a public place and realize that most people are like actors engaging in a play they do not know they were cast in. That the behavior of a group, or of people in a restaurant or a movie theater is to be expected because it is looping. We may have deja vu of experiences that we have never had before (that are not based in interior constructs like past lives or something we actually have experienced before but do not remember).

We may realize this on a societal or world level– that the same pop star but with a different face comes through every 5-10 years. We may begin to realize that political, social, and societal events repeat themselves ad nauseum in some sort of effort to break the cycle or change. But change is difficult, and requires many members of society to change, including ourselves.

We will then look inward and realize our own loops, the ways in which we are an actor cast in our own lives. Everything from crossing the street the same way every time to conditioned responses to how we emotionally react we will realize are ingrained patterns from conditioned reality, our belief systems, our traumas, and our thoughts.

Realizing that the world is an illusion first results in a sort of disbelief. A daydream state of feeling like you are watching something on television. This is much different than the sort of disassociation that occurs with trauma– it is the understanding that while out at a restaurant that you are the only person that realizes that everyone else is acting, that everyone else are like poppets repeating the same behaviors again and again.

Next comes anger. At first this is anger at the outer world– how can people not realize they are actors, that they are asleep, that they are part of this illusion?

After comes internal anger– how were we asleep so long? How were we sleepwalking through our own lives? How many ways and which ways are we still false? How many ways are we still sleeping, are we still acting through part of most of our lives?

Then comes grief… this is a difficult grief. To realize that the world is essentially false, that the world is created through our thoughts and through the conditions and thoughts of society/world. It is a difficult phase to go through to look at the world and realize from this vantage point of grief that most people are really struggling. Most people are really asleep. And many people lash out again and again in these loops without realizing it, most people are acting out their wounds and traumas and thoughts and the traumas, wounds, and thoughts of society again and again without realizing it.

Again we may be able to turn inward– what parts of ourselves is latching on to this grief? What parts of ourselves are still reactive to this grief? It is completely appropriate to feel sadness when looking at the world, but to let it consume us is another matter. We are intended to feel emotions, even the deepest layers of grief, but all emotions are like a wave form that can flow through us… or they can stagnate because we want to catch them, to hold onto them, to resonate with them.

The realization of the world being false, the numbness and emotional reactions that occur are all phases many of us who are truly awakening go through. The difficulty is that while we are all awakening, in small or large ways, in spiritual communities many of us do not come to this phase because we get stuck in the emotional aspects (totally understandable) which can be overwhelming… or we prefer the illusions of awakening to actually awakening.

When we work through some of our emotions the next level for many people who have gotten here is anger and grief at spiritual communities or people within them. Truly waking up allows for us to see that most spiritual materials are simply illusory– they are created by those who are repeating loops of behavior and thoughts like anyone else.

When you are truly awakening it is hard to look at the state of spiritual propaganda out there and not get upset. At first this is a natural reaction, but upon questioning… upon truly looking at this anger and grief two things come up.

1. That many people, including many gurus, are just as asleep as anyone
2. That many of these people, including many gurus, are doing better in this world than you are

This all boils down to a simple, but interesting fact: Most people want to remain asleep. They prefer illusion.

If I were to tell you that spiritual awakening is difficult, that most of the people I have worked with who are truly awakening lead difficult lives and have to work through many physical, emotional, and spiritual crises how many people would sign up?

If I were to tell you that spiritual work means complete surrender and seeing through the world in a way that most people will never understand? That seeing and thinking differently than others results in being ostracized rather than accepted?

What if I were to tell you that you truly can know who you are, what you are here to do, claim your power, understand spiritual power, know that magic is real, that spirits are real, that shamans truly can traverse realms, that your thoughts do manifest into reality (with some interesting results), and that you can feel oneness with source, that you can be fully embodied, that you can feel blissful in nature and in your lives… but that it comes through continual struggle, continual surrender, and walking through certain spiritual doors and having certain spiritual initiations that cause you to feel oneness and at the same time feel isolated because of these initiations/understandings?

Now, if I were to tell you that you just have think positively and nothing bad is going to happen to you… if I were to tell you that if you just create a vision board with a Mercedes on it you will receive one… if I were to tell you that if you think positively enough you will not get cancer, or die, or have diseases… if I were to tell you that awakening just means bliss… if I were to tell you that you will be a millionaire or CEO if you awaken… if I were to tell you that awakening means no longer having any emotions or human experiences (in which you are likely struggling as we all do)… if I were to tell you that you are in control of all of the spiritual realms and you just have to imagine white light to make anything frightening go away… if I were to tell you that everything is an extension of you and if something makes you upset, it is your fault, and if you see a spirit it is just an extension of you and you can simply think it away… if I were to tell you that awakening is somewhere else that you “ascend” to… if I were to tell you (this one is one of my favorites) that we are on the verge of a big world paradigm shift and aren’t we special to be a part of it because we will all transform… If I were to tell you that there is no such thing as darkness, or evil…

That last paragraph sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? 

Much of the spiritual world and the current and popular gurus are illusory. They are feeding into the cycle of looped behavior. It does not take a genius to look at one particular new-age publishing house and see that they print the same book again and again just with different faces on the back covers. It is not surprising when one of the most “enlightened” channelers  who has made millions off of her followers suddenly goes on an anti-Semitic tirade and the conditions of her “camp” are finally brought to the light of day as being deplorable. Most people are simply pretending. Some realize it, many do not.

Many followers are looking for something to make themselves feel better. They want to be awakened because they want to be rich, healthy, beautiful, and in a constant state of bliss (and yet not feel anything oddly). Our lives are difficult, and so this message that is continually perpetuated that the whole world is under our control, and if we just think right nothing bad will ever happen to us is difficult to witness for anyone who has actually awakened beyond this.

It can be difficult to realize that most people want illusion, and that faced with anything of “truth” they will become emotional, upset, or reactive… allowing for themselves to close off from any understandings outside of their own constructed illusion. It can be difficult to see, and is one of the more difficult spiritual initiations to traverse in the awakening process.

But if we begin to see that the world is false, it is full of illusions and thoughtforms and people who are asleep, and we continually work on the sleeping parts of ourselves, we can move past the anger, past the comparisons, past the disgust at the newest trend in spiritual literature being the same illusions recycled again and again with different names and faces on the back covers.

We can begin to realize that it is okay that most people are asleep. We can have compassion for the fact that most people are really struggling and need to feel in control… because the idea that if they just think right that nothing bad will happen to them may be all that is getting them through their days.

Awakening is beautiful, it is blissful, it is fully recognizing and realizing who you are. It is claiming your own power and having realizations and understandings that few do. But it is also difficult. And continually surrendering patterns such as this one, and participating in external reality (our day to day lives) after letting go of the anger, of the grief of the world being false means that we can surrender and unfold in source like we are intended to… without getting wrapped up in the reaction to the illusion. We can realize that others need their illusions, that they at least think they do, and have compassion for that. We can have compassion and love any person who is willing to take one step forward or break any sort of looping they have… to clear any sort of chaos or sleep out of their lives… most people do not and someone taking personal responsibility to take one piece of that chaos and clear it, or become one step closer to becoming conscious is admirable. We can become a conscious actor in the play, we can make peace with the isolation and oneness occurring simultaneously… we can continue to examine ourselves and our own loops that arise and truly and continually awaken.

 

Selling Enlightenment: The Commoditization of Kundalini and Spiritual Awakening

Date: June 25, 2015
Author: maryshutan
Categories: Enlightenment, ethics, money and spirituality, Spiritual Awakening

Recently someone sent me an article about someone who had had a supposed Kundalini awakening and was now selling courses to teach people how to become “enlightened”. This sort of sales pitch is far from rare. I regularly see or get sent literature, websites, and articles about kundalini, spiritual awakening, enlightenment, or really anything spiritual for sale.

I do think that it is wonderful that people want to become more aware, more in tune with their spiritual side. If each one of us could awaken to the point of holding multiple perspectives– meaning that not only our perspective but that of someone much different than us– as both being valid and true, this world would be a much, much better place.

Just in case you have not read my other blogs, I personally operate under the realization that we all are awakened or enlightened. We just do not remember or realize this… and we have layers and layers of conditioning, trauma, and belief systems on top of that awakened state. So I am not suggesting that if you have had a Kundalini awakening you are a member of some super secret club… but true Kundalini awakenings are rare. The ability to remove or have multiple layers of conditioned reality removed within a single lifetime is really rare.

Most of the people that I see selling enlightenment are not enlightened themselves. They have not had Kundalini awakenings or another awakening to the extent that they have gone beyond the lower layers of understanding– meaning going beyond the Self. All of the material I have seen from people selling kundalini, spiritual awakening, and so forth, are from people who have had a few spiritual experiences (maybe even a singular kundalini experience and not a full awakening) who do not realize what a kundalini awakening actually is, or what awakening really is like.

I realize that in some ways this sounds a bit harsh. But anyone who has truly experienced a spiritual awakening of any sort realizes that you can do all the mantras, hypnotherapy, meditation, yoga, read all the books, and visit whatever workshops, gurus, teachers you like and the end result for you and the person sitting next to you in said workshop is going to be entirely different. I used to go to workshops and wonder why the person who came up to me making sure that they told me how they had taken years of teachings or followed certain gurus or teachers around for decades were still so traumatized and still needed to be so spiritually competitive. There is a reason for that, I found out later.

This is because awakening is a multi-lifetime process, and it is something that is not in our individual control. Once you get beyond the “Self”– meaning our direct experience of life (this is typically where most people who commoditize spiritual awakening are), we begin to process the layers of family, ancestors, and past lives- meaning the beliefs and traumas that we have been given to us through them. We then leave the Self and process societal energies, world energies, archetypes, thoughtforms… all the stuff that is communally created. When those layers lift we discover that the world is simply in a sort of cosmic flow. When you experience the cosmic flow state you realize that things like spiritual awakening are intended to happen within an individuals lifetime. Or they are not. And no guru, teacher, Oprah show, or the like is going to awaken you if you are not intended to awaken.

People really do not like to hear what I wrote in the last paragraph. We are used to living in an aspirational, goal-oriented world, and the idea that we cannot have something even if we really want it, and we want it now, causes our egos to throw tantrums like a two year old. There is a reason why so much aspirational material is out there– we want to be shamans, enlightened, have our kundalini awakened. We want to buy it. We are spiritually competitive– we want to be more awake and more enlightened than the person sitting next to us. We would prefer that it be easy, and that we do not have to do much work (certainly not lifetimes of work) and that the end result is us being a multi-millionaire.

We create a whole huge mythology around “if we were only enlightened our lives would be perfect.” And the people who are selling enlightenment are only too happy to oblige by wearing a mask of enlightenment, repeating memes and meaningless phrases that superficially sound good to anyone who cannot see through them. This creates a vicious circle of false enlightenment, where people go around congratulating one another on how enlightened they are, or follow and copy a teacher who is saying they are enlightened and promises enlightenment… meanwhile the teacher is typically miserable because they are typically stuck in a specific phase of awakening and cannot humble themselves to ask for help because then they would not be “enlightened” to their followers, and the followers can never be enlightened like their teacher/guru because that enlightenment is an illusion perpetrated by the teacher.

We can only come to a certain point with our teachers and healers– the point they are at personally. This means that if they are still stuck at the layers of the Self, even if they are presenting an illusion that they are not, they will not be able to guide anyone past those layers. Someone who had a single kundalini experience (a one or two time experience of the energy) will not be able to guide someone who is having a full kundalini awakening. Someone who is an aspirational shaman teacher will not be able to provide much for someone called spiritually through multiple generations to be a spiritual healer. And this is unfortunate, as people truly having these awakenings have to go through a lot of b.s. in order to find someone that can actually help them and find material that is not ego-based, aspirational, spiritually competitive and by someone that has actually had or understands these experiences.

In fact we may have spiritual experiences and ignore all facts to the contrary (or simply not know/be educated enough to know) that we have had a profound spiritual experience according to our own direct experience of spirituality… but that it is not in fact enlightenment, kundalini awakening, or so on. Direct experience is tricky, and kundalini has become a bit of a buzz word to the extent that it is rare that people actually in our modern culture know what it is. But kundalini has specific symptoms, phases, and experiences that are really easy to spot. Most of our culture is so filled with aspirational information and people who really want to believe that they experienced (or are experiencing) kundalini that what kundalini actually is has been lost.

As a side note, I get contacted by many people, and as I mentioned Kundalini awakenings are very easy to spot. Basically they are like having a huge fireball in your energy field (this happens even if you do not have a heat-oriented Kundalini awakening). I have regularly had people contact me who are powerful channels, high-level empaths, and/or have a variety of beautiful, special gifts that could be nurtured and developed to profound effect. But some of them really want to believe they are experiencing Kundalini– because it has entered our cultural grids (those middle layers I talked about) as the most intense, advanced, spiritual experience, and fulfills the cultural need for ego-based spiritual competition. Kundalini awakenings are quite intense, by the way. They are certainly not the only intense spiritual experience… they are just the only one people know about. Some of them have disregarded anything I had to say to them about what kundalini is, what a kundalini awakening actually looks like and feels like, because they wanted to believe that they had or were experiencing one. The irony of this, of course, is that their awakenings (if they were willing to understand what was going on) were beautiful, and wonderful, and meant specifically for them. But most of them will not continue awakening because they prefer the illusion.

There is a huge mythology in the “awakening” community that enlightenment is the end point, the peak experience, the most “advanced” you can be. It is sold as such– that once you do become awakened your life will be perfect, you will be rich, beautiful, and svelte. Becoming awakened is actually the end… the end of seeking… but it is the beginning of true understanding. No matter how “awakened” you are, how far and wide kundalini flows through you… there will always be someone better, faster, more awake, more aware, differently awake, etc. than you. Realizing this takes you out of that spiritual competitive mode, and that idea that you can purchase enlightenment.

Real awakening creates humility… a realization of how small and unimportant you really are. The aspirational community hates to hear this, because most of us come to spirituality to fill a sort of emptiness, a void of not feeling or sensing our own divinity and hunger to merge with divinity. Most people come to spirituality to feel big, to feel important, to recognize the Self as God. This certainly is true… we are all divine… we all are aspects of divinity… but we are also very small. I mention this because it is again a specific phase to look for in the awakening community– if the teacher does not show this or recognize this directly they are not as enlightened as they claim.

It is of vital importance to realize that becoming awake, enlightened, or having a kundalini awakening is not something that can be purchased simply because you want it. We can and should all become more awakened– meditating, doing yoga, reading, learning, visiting teachers and workshops. Meditating daily will change the life of anyone astronomically. But there are many things that are not under our direct control– despite what aspirational teachers and gurus want you to believe. Becoming a spiritual worker/shaman is one, becoming enlightened is one, having a kundalini awakening is one. We all have a spiritual path here. We can all consciously work to become less traumatized, to open our minds, our hearts, and our belief systems. We can consciously create compassion for one another, to hold multiple viewpoints and understand where they are coming from even if they are not in line with our own. But we should be happy with who and what we are. No need to aspire, no need to compete, no need to be the guru down the block. Real spiritual awakening is becoming as much and as fully who we are as we are able to within our lifetime. Discover who you are as an individual, be compassionate and love yourself, and realize that most of the books, the gurus, and the aspirational material out there is an illusion based on the ego-based, spiritually competitive and unrealized notion that kundalini or enlightenment can be bought and sold like a used car.

By the way, I do realize that it sounds contrary that I do work with people (yes, for a sliding scale fee) who are experiencing spiritual awakening, kundalini, and so forth. When we are awakening, especially when we are going through an intense awakening, we can all use tools to help us, understandings of what exactly is happening, and healing to help us work through the layers that are coming up. That is what I offer. My appointments are based on people currently having these experiences (non-aspirational) and are struggling with some element (or many elements) of it. I do so in an honest, ethical, and straight-forward manner and simply do not take people on who contact me that I am unable to help (for whatever reason) for any of my services. You can read more about my ethical practices that I abide by in my practice here

Surrender and the Spiritual Path

Date: June 23, 2015
Author: maryshutan
Categories: Enlightenment, raising your consciousness

One of the things that my Kundalini awakening taught me was how to surrender. And surrender again. And again…

This is not a rarity for anyone on a spiritual path. In order to awaken we must surrender the layers and layers of conditioning that create what we consider to be a fairly concrete, external reality (our day to day lives). The trauma, beliefs, and understandings that we have developed, that have been given to us by others, that society and the world has given us. Our reality is an illusion… what we consider to be reality is an illusion I should say… and when this reality begins breaking down… when we must surrender a layer of it or choose to surrender a layer of it… we become more of who we fully are. Our selves without obscuring elements.

This is a powerful thing. The more layers we cast off, the more we surrender, the more we become who we truly are. Who we were meant to be. We become embodied, we become truth, we become light.

Our minds/egos tell us not to surrender. Our minds create elaborate tricks to keep us where we are. Our minds create initiations, tests, illnesses, and circumstances in our outer reality when we think about changing. There was a time that when I would plan to re-start my yoga practice (yet again) and I would wake up that morning ill… or when a layer of conditioned reality, a belief or understanding was lifted off of me, that I created an illusion of huge spiritual tests to make logical sense out of no longer having that belief color my world, no longer constrict my view of the world, to make sense of that limited view no longer being present.

Surrender can be a difficult thing. It can shake us to our core. Because even though we may be in pain, we may be in misery, we may feel alone on a planet filled with billions of people, we are used to our circumstances. We are used to our pain and despair and isolation. So the idea of change is scary for us. It is especially scary for those of us when we seemingly do not choose to surrender… the surrender is forced upon us. In significant or sudden awakenings we can have totally different identities, beliefs, and understandings of the world from one day to the next, one hour to the next, even five minutes from the present moment if a blast of energy goes through us, releasing some of the layers quickly.

But surrender is really a beautiful thing. It is change. It is divinity. For long periods of time I heard the phrase “let go and let God” reverberate through my world. At the time I was resistant. I was antagonistic towards it. I did not see that surrender is the divine current of change– it allows for us to become who we truly are in this world. The more we allow ourselves to surrender the more we realize that we are not alone, that our pain and separation does not define us, and that change need not be frightening.

When we allow for ourselves to simply unfold into divinity, without stopping ourselves and blocking ourselves, simply surrendering what comes up without the creation of elaborate illusions, we can remember and reveal our light… our true selves… our power. We can continually be who we are meant to be, and continually become more of who we are. The obscuring layers can simply release without chaos.

When we truly let go… not of our physical circumstances and not even of our mental constructs but on a deep, cosmic consciousness type layer… allowing ourselves to feel the fear rise, to not feel in control, and realizing that when we let go like this all of those beliefs that are harming us, that are keeping us restricted into limited identities and limited realizations can release. We truly can release our trauma, release the layers of conditioning that have been given to us. We only need to understand that we can… and that beyond what we consider to be our selves, beyond what we have been given… we do not need to feel alone, afraid, and out of control. We can simply unfold with grace, with humility, with ease, and with the full knowledge of being held by something much greater than ourselves.

Ego Death and Dissolution

Date: June 7, 2015
Author: maryshutan
Categories: Enlightenment, raising your consciousness

There are a lot of odd, ill-conceived, and often brutally violent thoughts out there when it comes to the concept of the ego.

  • You should kill your ego
  • You shouldn’t have an ego
  • Destroy your ego
  • If you didn’t have an ego you wouldn’t judge
  • If you didn’t have an ego you would see everyone as the same
  • Basically, that the ego is a bad thing that should be killed, maimed, murdered, or brutally attacked until it is no longer present in ourselves

I have watched this sort of brutality when it comes to talking about the ego with interest. The above sentences are all ones that have been quoted to me or said by people who I have conversed with in some manner. We are brutal to our egos. 

I am of the general opinion that we should love ourselves, and love all aspects of ourselves (yes, even our darkness, our primal natures, our emotions, and our physical bodies). And yes, even our egos… There is no need for brutality.

What is needed instead is expansion. By talking about what ego expansion is (and yes, the phase of dissolution) we can understand what a healthy non-murderous type of relationship to our egos can be like.

Most of us are stuck in the “I” phase of spiritual awakening (or lack thereof). We are unable to see outside of ourselves. The whole world is centered around ourselves. Any opinion, insight, or action that goes against our personal sense of ethics, our personal cosmology, our personal direct experience of this world is simply wrong.

As an aside, in many, many cases of spiritual awakening people get stuck. This is because they are afraid to move any further (to unfold), because they are claiming to be enlightened or know the totality of the cosmos (which means that they cannot learn any more, of course), or they are so stuck on what classes they have taken, what courses, with what teachers and a sort of intellectualism without direct experience that they simply have not progressed. This is called an Ego Awakening.

Ego Awakenings are way too common, and unfortunate. They are the number two reason why people do not spiritually progress (fear or perhaps lack of surrender being the number one).

Many of us begin to expand a bit out of the “I” phase. This is where cute kitty and puppy videos come in. We are able to have compassion and perhaps even see the view (a bit) of both our own illusory reality we have constructed out of “I”– our thoughts, needs, fears, emotions, and traumas– and have expanded to consider the plight of kittens and puppies. This is where most people are, and where they remain.

Some of us expand our “I” even further– and form the ability to see the world through the eyes of our children, our community, or generally people just like us– from the same race, culture, and educational status.

It is a rarity, and a beautiful thing when we can expand our “I” any further of this– and see people who are not “I”– meaning the same education, sexual orientation, cosmology, thought patterns, political status– and whatever other illusory constructs we have come up with for our own personal “I” centered universe. It is a rarity to have an open enough “I” to consider the beliefs, direct experiences, and understandings of people essentially different than us and the illusory constructs we have chosen to create for ourselves as valid, and true. It is difficult for most people to even read the thoughts or interact with people in this category. It would disrupt our illusions, our cosmologies to do so.

This is why there is so much anger and hostility in the world (one of the largest reasons, anyway). When we get confronted by other thought patterns, other understandings, beliefs, other “I”‘s– people who have also constructed their own illusory universe out of their “I” and it is so much different than our own we react. We get angry, we get fearful. We realize, even if for a momentary second (or at least until we return to our own comfortable sphere of “I”) that we are not as in control as we thought, that the world may not be as we have constructed it to be. Anything that threatens our illusions of the world causes a reaction. We react, and then we go back to the safety and illusions we have constructed– often constructing even more illusion after each reaction to ensure that our personal cage… our person “I”… our beliefs and illusions we have created for ourselves and our version of the world… remain intact.

Some people are able to expand beyond this layer of “I” and it is beautiful to witness. They are able to sit with dissimilar opinions, thoughts, and people without it causing a fear response. They are able to see where others are coming from who are dissimilar to them– in thoughts, in beliefs, in understandings. This is still true even if they do not agree with them. There no longer is that backlash to keep themselves encaged. People in this category do not need the cage of believing that only their universe that they have created is right. They no longer need to understand themselves as the sole creator of the universe, and are able to recognize that they have many co-creators of the universe.

This stage of “I”, if we allow it, expands until we can have understanding for everyone and everything in our world. It is easy to understand someone who has the same exact viewpoint as us. We often surround ourselves with those people. We read materials that are not “scary” to us– ones that come from people who have similar cosmologies to us. It is also easy (but also difficult emotionally, I realize) to see the world from the viewpoint of a kitten who needs a home. It is much more difficult to understand the worldview of someone who is a highly violent alcoholic, someone who is homeless, or someone who is incredibly close-minded (such as people who picket funerals). To understand who they are, to understand their point of view, even if we don’t agree with it allows for us to expand our “I”. 

We then go through the phases of expanding our “I” with compassion. Again, it is easy to feel compassion for others who have the same view, the same socio-economics, the same race, culture, location as our own. It is more difficult to feel compassion for someone who dislikes you, for someone who has murdered someone, for someone who is filled with hate.

At a certain point we do expand our “I” enough that we encompass the world. We have reached oneness and there is a brief dissolution. This is actually a really disorienting time where we feel and breathe with everything. Without our egos we have no concept of “I”… of who we are as individuals. We are intended to have egos, to have “I”‘s. When our ego returns after a brief (or somewhat brief) period of time after dissolution it is with the realization of “I” and the realization of all “other” and oneness at the same time.

After this point we no longer create illusions (or don’t to the same extent). We are still an individual, with an individual purpose, beliefs, and understandings. But we have compassion and understanding for other beliefs, even those diametrically opposed to our own, at the same time. We can love the people who hate us. We are no longer encaged by our own “I”, we are no longer creating a cage for ourselves that shuts out any other views or any other “I”. 

There are a lot of illusions that are created about the dissolution or “killing” of the ego. What it really means is that we have expanded to the point that we can see ourselves in all other people… that we can see the divine in all other people… that we can see the same divine in ourselves and other people… even if they cannot see it in themselves. Even if they are still encaged, enraged, and filled with illusions.We can sit with dissimilar opinions with compassion, with understanding, and there is no longer polarity between two opposing thoughts. They do not make us feel rage, and fear, and have us crawl back to our personal cage of beliefs we have constructed for ourselves.

One of the biggest myths is this idea that we no longer “judge” once the ego has been “killed”. This is false. What happens is that we may see someone filled with fear, anger, and hate… someone so afraid that they cannot sit with any other opinions than their own… someone unable to grow past who they are. We are able to see all of that and have compassion for them. It must be really hard to struggle with all of that. It doesn’t mean that we do not see those things– it just means that we have compassion for the unique cages that people construct for themselves out of their “I”– their personal illusory universe.

I encourage people to see how they are reacting to others. People can be our greatest teachers. Are we reacting out of anger to them because they are threatening our own “I”? Are we reacting out of fear because our “I” wants us to? When we come to a state of peace, of compassion, of expanded “I” within ourselves those reactions to individual people will be gone. They will simply be seen as people struggling with their “I”… their cages. We will still have emotions (all of them), we will not be vapid and shallow beings who never feel anything, but the anger at individual people and our internal reactions to them will cease. Anyone that does cause that reaction is a teacher, and can be looked at to reconcile some small or large part of ourselves… to expand our “I” even further.

I encourage people to visit, make friends with, and read things from people of different cultures, belief systems, and understandings than our own. We grow not by reading something that tells us what we want to know, what we already believe, and what we want to hear, we grow through reading and learning from people who have different views, different understandings, and much different “I”‘s than our own.

Most of us are still in the stage of only reading things that we agree with– anything else creates a reaction of disdain, fear, or we are simply unable to process it. We come up with surface understandings of why it may be wrong without even allowing ourselves to read it or or to listen to someone who has a different “I” than us. This is our ego protecting itself. If we want to grow we will question if our reaction is one of fear, of not wanting to change or grow, of wanting to protect ourselves and our illusory “I”. We will read anyway, we will listen anyway, if we are at a point we are able to consider other beliefs than our own… and deeply consider them… and then take what works for us to help us grown.

And feel compassion for your “I”. Your ego wants to protect itself. It is deeply afraid. It wants to protect you. It does not need to be “killed”, it needs love, and gentle expansion. It needs to be thanked for attempting to protect you. Have compassion for it, have love for it, and let it know that it is okay if it expands… even just a little.