The spiritual landscape has been evolving over the years. And this reflects the evolution of consciousness that’s underway.
When I was a young meditator, many spiritual circles placed an excessive emphasis on renunciation and withdrawing from the world. The Dark Ages and Shankara‘s monastic revival had swung the pendulum towards a monks path when most of us are householders. Gradually, a more balanced view emerged, but some remain in an overemphasis of escaping the world.
So few people had moved beyond awakening then that many teachers didn’t talk about more. That became a message that awakening was it. There was a lot of resistance to talk of further stages. I was invited to speak on stages at a conference, but I was dubious that the audience would be receptive. Then more people began experiencing more, and the message became more accepted. I presented at SAND in 2015. Then, in a similar presentation in 2017, attendees warmly received me. I published Our Natural Potential (on stages) then, too.
As more and more lived higher stages, the message began to come out about coming back down and in, about embodiment. At some point, that process comes down to what is unresolved here, and we’re called to healing work. For me, this came first as energy healing, then later more directly as somatic work.
It’s become clear to me that doing somatic work sooner will improve quality of life and make the awakening process easier, particularly the embodiment part. Facing our humanity will also make the process more real. What’s the point of exalted states of being if we just use them as an escape? If we don’t do the work, can we really expect to be done with human life? What’s unresolved is what’s going to draw us back again for completion.
The idea is to optimize your process so it’s smooth and productive, while allowing for the cycles of time and our humanity. Don’t assume that what’s unconscious doesn’t exist.
Davidya
If a person doesn’t awaken until they are 80 and they die the next day, is the karmic imprints/shadow work carried on after death?
Hi Mary
I’d say there are no hard and fast rules. Someone who has done healing and spiritual practices for multiple lifetimes is going to be further along than someone who hasn’t. The attitude they’ve brought to their life makes a difference. And the style of awakening, too.
For example, someone with a long spiritual practice who has a clear awakening is more likely to roast their entanglements more completely with the awakening. A softer shift may take a little more time.
But in any case, what clearing the unresolved experiences/ karmic entanglements/ identification does is eliminate the need to come back in a human life to clean up. But that doesn’t mean our evolution is done. We might say it sets the grade we enter next/ the heaven we reach. And of course, there are dharmic influences too.
There are rare souls who seem to reach a far more complete state, but they’re deeply embodied, able to express what the Yoga Sutra describes, and typically have a global impact.
Can’t say I’m an expert though as I’ve never died awake. 😅
„ It’s become clear to me that doing somatic work sooner will improve quality of life and make the awakening process easier, particularly the embodiment part.“
I was pondering that question the other day on how much one can “front load” stored emotions, trauma and stuff to soften intense periods after awakening (a la dark night of the soul). I would imagine if there is plenty of stuff beforehand that causes one to start to work through it, there might be still even more popping up out of the unconscious. But it would be probably worse not having done the work in the first place. Or awakening wouldn’t happen because of it anyways.
You have seen and heard from many people waking up, have you seen a pattern? Have the people who have done lots of work beforehand actually a softer transition or is there even more stuff stored that is surfacing then. As you write, there seem to be complexities with karma and maybe what is to be learned and how fast the incarnation does the learning…
Hi Torben
The pattern I’ve seen with the awakening process is the stages – the process in consciousness and in shakti. The purification process varies widely. How sensitive? How smooth has our life been? How much karma did we take on? What past lives are influencing this one? What kind of ancestor scenario were we born into? And most importantly, how are we responding to our challenges? That’s what determines how our experiences land. Do we have the capacity and attitude to allow processing, or do we resist and lay in more trauma (aka suffer)?
But yes, trauma clouds the system, so it reduces clarity for awakening. It also impedes the smooth flows of energy. So it influences both aspects of awakening.
But life events and what comes up for healing also have a kind of timetable in the cycles of time. It happens when it happens, so doing healing work prior has its limits.
Still, it’s more than worth doing the work for quality of life and shifting our habits of being.
And yes, I’ve been exploring this with various people.
So interesting! Thank you for the explanation and observation!
Thanks David. What’s been arising to me recently is how renouncing codependency and relational enmeshment is the new asceticism of our time. I think it is that radical for people and I believe it is needed for the full embodiment of our awakening, especially at the collective level. This is part of the developmental journey to interdependence. I’ll probably write something more about this soon.
Fully agree, Dara. Being complete within while acting in relationship is where this is going. We’re in this together.
The Trillium Awakening (Waking Down) people talk about this too.
This came up as a topic in todays somatic practitioner discussion too. 💖
Glad to hear it! ☺️
I’m sure there’s lots of old trauma and karma that just needs to be understood and lived through, but eventually I think getting out of that endless healing loop is about coming back to the body, taking care of it, getting empowered as a physical being. Exercising and eating what your body needs, getting more into an action-oriented mindset without the need to know and understand every single mechanic of creation, karma or whatever. All of this has pretty much turned my life around in a good way.
Hi Olli
hmmm – I’m not sure I’d frame it quite like “understood and lived through.” We don’t need to live through our traumas, nor understand them. We just need to process them energetically. This is the advantage of somatic work. That may come with an understanding or not. But it’s not the goal.
I very much agree with being aware of the potential for “healing loops,” seeing ourselves as broken and needing fixing, etc.
And yes, taking care of the body, etc. With healing and care, the body feels safe and comfortable. Then further, a happy place to live, to the degree we can in this life.
I laughed at your comment “need to know and understand every single mechanic of creation.” That has certainly been the orientation here and is the topic of the 3rd book. But yeah, we have a life to live here, not in some subtle nuance. 🙂
Hi David,
In my research, I think tensegrity is the structural explanation for why somatic work is so important.
We have this fascial web that spreads from our skull to our feet. Every trauma hits our web and leaves a physical record. The connective tissue would tighten and create high-resistance points that warp the geometry of our body.
So that means you can have a genuine breakthrough mentally but body would still be physically organized around the original trauma. The body would hold the old prediction model mechanically regardless of what the mind now understands and fulfill that prediction model.
Agreed, Stephen, though I’m less familiar with facia.
I see it as multi-leveled. The unresolved experiences/trauma are stored physically, as in the mechanism you describe, somatically, in the pre-physical, energetically in the emotional body, and mentally as narratives to explain away the emotions and sensations so we can cope and avoid feeling them.
A good somatic process starts with regulation, so we’re in a safe, calm, neutral space. Then what has been repressed can be allowed to complete. After it’s released, the experience must be digested. Then the reorganization can take place. People may find yoga asana, massage, chiropractic, or facial work helpful in coming back in alignment. These tools can also help facilitate the release itself.
Most of us have to relearn how to be with the body as our culture has overemphasized the mind and how to escape how we feel.
I am totally with Olli on taking care of the body and doing sadhana “without the need to know and understand every single mechanic of creation, karma ” – David – can you clarify what is meant by ” After it’s released, the experience must be digested. ” I though the release was the digestion. I have felt the release – I do not know how or what digestion of experience looks like or if it has been ongoing. Thanks
Hi K
It’s very much like food digestion. Everything we experience has to be processed or digested. Much of that happens in the background and at night, while we sleep. But when we resist experiences, they don’t get digested and create indigestion, so to speak. Making this resistance conscious, we can let the experience go; then it’s digested and completed. As with food, we experience the release but the digestion that follows is often not conscious. It’s mostly automatic. But it’s why we sometimes get a “healing hangover” when a large volume has been released.
Also, karma seems to clear the same way.
It’s held in the causal body (I feel it most heavily in the mental causal though) instead of physical body, and it dictates like a blueprint how the mental/emotional/physical/energetic is to express here.
You just need awareness of it to work with it. Otherwise it isn’t the boogeyman many seem to think it is haha
Agreed, Stephen. It’s basically the same thing but from rebalancing action rather than resisting experiences, although karma and trauma are often entangled.
The fundamental principles and processes are seen repeating in various ways, on various levels.