"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!



For millennia, it was universally accepted that all swans were white. But in 1697, Willem de Vlamingh, a Dutch explorer, discovered black swans while on a rescue mission in Australia and in an instant, a universal, incontrovertible truth was shown to be anything but. After Vlamingh’s discovery, philosophers used the term “black swan” to describe a seeming logical impossibility that could very well end up being possible. This is the black swan fallacy.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Do we really know what forces are effecting the course of our lives?
Or are our perceptions so limited by what we think we observe,
our whole concept of reality can shatter in an instant?
Can we learn to "expect the unexpected" only in hindsight,
or can we awaken and learn to do so with foresight? 

A Black Swan, (a term popularized by  Nassim Nicholas Taleb  in his book "The Black Swan"), is an event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge.

One aspect of the black swan theory suggests that upon observing 100 swans the norm is to fixate on the one black swan (the black swan event) to the exclusion of the ninety-nine other white swans.Taleb suggests that "9/11" might therefore be viewed as a "black swan event" in that its effect was to cause a fixation on the 1% of the time that there is a security threat to the exclusion of the other 99% of the time when there is no threat.

Conversely, Taleb also suggests that had an individual, on the day before "9/11", instituted a security policy that prevented the attack, the actions of that individual (a white swan) would have gone unnoticed as there would have been no "black swan event" to bring the matter to attention. Therefore, "the hero who prevented 9/11 and changed the course of history" would never have been recognized as having done so. 

So, can we know what goes on in our own little pond while only paying attention to the extraordinary black swan and the ripples it leaves in its wake? Or, can we awaken to recognize the effects the unremarkable white swan's ripples have on our little pond as well?

"Things always become obvious after the fact” 

 ~  Nassim Nicholas Taleb ~

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Spiritual Snobbery: the Dark Side of Lightworkers

Author: Syma Kharal



Elephant Journal May 5, 2015 

I recently found myself removed from a Facebook group I had joined that describes itself as “a loving community of spiritual lightworkers intended for sharing spiritual growth, support, information, resources and other helpful tips and tools.”

I believed I participated accordingly by “Liking” others’ posts and sharing helpful resources to support fellow members, such as articles I published with elephant journal and free worldwide distant healing events I offer monthly. I thus figured the removal was an error and requested to join again, but the request was surprisingly denied.

Unsure of what led to this, I contacted the administrators asking if they could share what happened. A few days later I received a reply from one of the two explaining that while she herself didn’t remove me, only admins are allowed to post events. This confused and disappointed me on several levels. First, as there were no community guidelines beyond the group description, I wondered how loving it was to abruptly remove an unsuspecting member who unintentionally broke an unwritten rule. Second, as a community aiming to foster support and the sharing of resources, I wondered how reserving the exclusive the right to post free healing events served the over 10,000 members. And finally, I wondered how kind it was to essentially ban the sensitive healer types the group is meant to serve.

While this isn’t a particularly drastic example, it did get me thinking of other experiences of snubbing in the “spiritual community.”

  (read full article ...."Spiritual Snobbery: the Dark Side of Lightworkers")