Waking up is not about self-actualization

or just becoming an “Individual”

One of the biggest realizations I’ve had and hard-hitting truth I had to face and accept over the years was that not everyone is “ready” to wake up, nor will there be a collective awakening anytime soon, for there are vastly different levels of being and soul potential among 8+ billion people on this planet and that there is also nothing wrong with it in light of the evolution of consciousness.

We are all one, but we’re not all the same. As the esoteric axiom states: “There is no such thing as equality in the entire universe.”

No one can be awakened by another, nor can anyone force another to “wake up.” Free will needs to be respected, even if it is the “free will” to stay asleep (dreaming to be awake). You can only “give” to the ones who “ask” sincerely and spread some seeds of awareness. Some may blossom, some won’t.

Moreover, the ones of us who are sincerely engaged in the awakening process and truth-seeking know that it is far from easy for a true awakening goes way beyond any intellectual/external understanding of the Matrix, which usually ends up externalizing all evil – a trap in itself.

It takes inner struggle, conscious suffering, effort, integrity, self-responsibility, radical self-honesty, and sincerity with patience and humility to cross the threshold out of the ego slumber of the false/conditioned/wounded personality to awaken and free oneself from the entropic forces of the matrix which also work through us.

It’s not what most New Age/corrupted spiritual teachings and motivational self-help advocates talk about who promise you health, wealth, love, and bliss. It’s not a “mindset” or about “being the best you can be.”

“Awakening” is also not about self-actualization, chasing dreams, seeking pleasure, and fulfilling desires, nor is it simply about being an “individual” or a self-improvement program (which most often tried to improve the false self) but becoming INDIVIDUATED (big difference).

The former is still a slave to the ego personality with all its desires; the latter has become a vessel for God and merged personal will with Divine Will, acting our God’s Will beyond ego gratification.

As Bud Harris wrote in ‘Becoming Whole’:

“It is much more than firming up, losing weight, having more positive thoughts, or solving problems and getting on with your life. Individuation is not self-actualization. The mythologist Joseph Campbell noted that self-actualization is for people with nothing better to do—people who don’t know their personal myth or deeper purpose in life.”

But no steps can be skipped. Many of us still need to work on becoming an individual, separating ourselves from the consensus of the masses and past attachments, and even exhausting all personality-based desires before the soul makes the call, takes charge, and embarks toward the path of individuation.

And there is nothing wrong with it, either. The path is just the path unique to each of us. But there are detours, distractions, and sometimes dead-ends, as well as many temptations that test the seeker.

Most often, emotional “high” experiences are mistaken for “enlightenment” or “love,” yet it is merely another dream, mistaking an overriding emotional center for higher states of consciousness, and the ego always likes to hijack these experiences for its own agenda.

Moreover and most importantly, before we can “wake up,” we need to admit and truly SEE how asleep we are, realizing our mechanical, conditioned way of thinking, feeling, and doing (which is also influenced by our unconscious shadow, trauma, and wounding) under the illusion of control and “free will” with various (occult) forces working through us, moving and manipulating us like puppets on strings.

It’s what Gurdjieff called coming face to face with the “horror of the situation,”…..which then leads to the necessary disillusionment, the shamanic descent into the underworld in order to engage in the Great Work to be reborn in the true Self.

Godspeed.

Bernhard Guenther

For more on the process of Individuation