"It is not until you awaken and become fully present
that you will realize that you have not been present.
It is not until you awaken that you will realize you have been asleep,
merely dreaming that you are awake."

~ Leonard Jacobson ~ 

Spiritual Awakening

We burst forth from the womb awake and ready to apprize life as our own minds and bodies experience it. From that moment on the world around us tries to put us to sleep.

We live in an illusionary world with false perceptions of who we are. From the time we are born we are programmed with the thoughts and expectations of our parents, our teachers, our religious leaders and even our friends to become what they want us to be and we grow up to believe the propaganda that their perceptions of how they view life are how we should view life as well.

Any attempt that we make to view life from a perspective that deviates from what society calls its “norms” is rigorously beaten out of us so that we do not call into question and disturb the illusory world that others have created for themselves. We are taught to be quiet so as not to wake anyone else up from the dream world imposed upon us.

We ourselves often put ourselves to sleep in order to hide away in our “happy place”,  a pleasant and addictive false reality where we convince ourselves we feel safe, but in actually we are in a dream world of self-deception, a form of  "self-propaganda” where we are willing to dream a reality that hides behind partial truths and ignores questions of critical thought  that would reveal the often unpleasant truths of the real world around us.

The word "occult" has become somewhat generic and the study of the occult has come to generally be taken as the study of hidden or secret wisdom that is only revealed through divine masters or messiahs who claim to possess the knowledge of "secret" magickal and mystical arts, or who profess to have access to supernatural powers or agencies which they have told you are beyond your ability to understand.

The truth is that this “hidden wisdom” is often not hidden at all, but in plain sight, in places you have been told not to look, or are afraid to look.  While you may find bits of it in the study of astrology, alchemy, numerology, or in seemingly magical and mystical writings, a great deal of what you find is often presented in such a way as to make the presenter appear to be mystical and profound in order to make you believe that they are the only keepers of the knowledge you seek. They want you to believe that whatever knowledge these "annointed ones' possess can only be revealed to you in return for your devout adoration , (and for a fee ), just like the more "conventional" forms of religious indoctrination that got you lost in the first place.

Very likely, this "hidden wisdom" is not beyond your ability to understand at all 

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.

~ Victor J. Stenger  ~

There are phenomena in the universe that while appearing to be supernatural are really quite natural, only we do not as yet have the capacity to understand the natural laws through which they operate.  Indeed, the study of quantum physics  would seem to be implying that the entire universe is held together by some sort of consciousness, operating within incredible laws of nature that we cannot as yet even begin to comprehend. 

The key to even beginning to understand these mysteries is to summon the courage to experience “an awakening” that will take you on a journey of discovery. It means starting out on that journey with the realization that you will not know where you are going and you will not know what you will find. What you will know is that it is time to question the "knowledge" with which you have been programmed, no matter how disturbing that may become. For, it is not just a few of your comforting beliefs that you need to question to be fully awake ...

...you need to question everything!

Awakening Links

Awakening

The Black Swan

Spiritual Snobbery