The Patriarch Distortion: Breaking Into Enlightenment

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

In moving fully towards and into Enlightenment, there is often the sense of something much bigger supporting and guiding us. And it can feel so benevolent, so caring and so patriarchal when it’s there, that there often grows an incredible craving for it. However, as you move deeper and deeper into presence, closer and closer to the Source within yourself, there’ll come the point where your soul yearns to drop into it. You actually become ‘the father’ so to speak. You become that openness which is the source of all authentic experience. Hence, paradoxically, the ‘father’ must disappear; the sense of external guidance must cease. It must all come from within. And this can be a very lonely place… at first…

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Breaking Into Enlightenment

Those on a truly spiritual path will know that we are all ‘of the One’. But what does this mean in practice? It means there must be a place where there is no separation between you and life: at some point, inside of yourself, all must merge into pure presence.

Up to this point, you’ll have probably had the support of benevolent guidance, helping you forwards on the path – a more highly evolved consciousness perhaps, that has been assisting you along the way. But as we break into Enlightenment – into pure presence – this sense of external help must at least temporarily disappear. In fact, often, on the brink of Enlightenment, guidance comes and goes, waxes and wanes, as all is integrated within.

This can be a very painful experience, generating lots of disappointment and heartbreak (by the ego). It’s not that guidance will permanently disappear, not at all, but it will frequently feel that way, thus encouraging you to drop ever deeper inside yourself. Then guidance can re-emerge once more, but this time, you realise it’s YOU that’s manifesting the outer mirror, drawing people, guides and experiences that reflect who YOU really are.

True Benevolent Guidance on the Path

So this breaking into Enlightenment can leave one feeling lost at times, stranded on the beach with nowhere to look or to hide. If you experience this, work not to worry. Everything is okay. You are still progressing.

Just feel into the tightness – the sense of separation that the experience creates – soften into it, and keep reaching through into presence.

And if you are working with some kind of teacher or guide, that’s fine, but know that only YOU have the complete picture for your own path. You will at times be uncertain, and they can help point you to the Inner Gateways yes, but your path is unique, and ultimately, on the edge of Enlightenment, only your soul knows what works best for you. So let others reflect to you yes, but find your own alignment, your own reflection. This is essential in breaking into the pure presence of Enlightenment.

The world’s major religions have seen God in a very paternal way. And on the journey, this can be comforting. But also, the risk is, that it can be very limiting too. Ultimately, we must not be separate from God, we must become the presence of that comfort that we seek. Inside of us.

For me, the best kind of guidance at this point does not build itself as an identity to follow. Rather it ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes within the flow of life itself, pointing to distortions and authentic beingness, but then fading into the background again. It’s about coaxing souls into that hallowed space of their own true self – their own experience of ‘the father’. To me, this ancient benevolent presence has been sensed by people on the path for eons. I call it Openhand.

The Non-Duality Delusion

At this point, we also need to be careful that another key distortion doesn’t build itself into our consciousness – I call it the ‘non-duality delusion’. There’s a realisation that to be in presence, the sense of anything outside of yourself must cease – you must become as one with it, because you are that.

But life is a heavenly paradox. There is the presence of infinite potential – non being – which then separates into relativistic flows of consciousness – souls having an experience. If there was no relativity, no ‘this’ and ‘that’, then there could be no experience at all. You can’t know ‘you’ (as a soul) for example, in the absence of what you are not. Just as you cannot know hot without cold, up without down or love without fear. All such experiences are relativistic.

This is what I call the ‘dynamic equilibrium of life’. In pure balance, pure equilibrium internally, there is presence, absolute stillness and emptiness. This is the infinite potential of which I speak – paradoxically that which you are. But to experience this, there must be a dynamic flow of energy from it and through it – a flow of consciousness. The flow that is experienced as ‘YOU’, is your unique expression of that. It is YOUR soul. And to deny that, actually establishes separation from the source – the presence – that you’re ultimately coming into. So there has to be an acceptance of your uniqueness, of your flow, in order to truly arrive at the ocean.

For inspiration, check out this video… Who are You and How to Be That.

The ‘Holy Trinity’… Pure Balance in Life

Of course the religions sometimes speak of the ‘Holy Trinity’ – the father, son and holy ghost. Is there some kind of clue here, which can lead to pure balance and harmony in life? I believe there is.

For me, to find pure harmony in life, is to be continually ‘meditating’ in three directions simultaneously. Firstly, it is to be in pure presence, from which all authentic experience arises. But this must be allowed to flow into being through you (it does anyway, if the ego is not resisting constricting or attaching to it). This flow is what would be the ‘soul’, sensed as an arising impulse within you. The soul then flows into a vehicle of experience – the bodymind for example.

To me, to be aware of this continually reshaping dynamic and to be aligned with it the whole time, is true Enlightenment. It can’t be distancing yourself from experience, because that would be denial – an identity that is resisting. But also, frequently, the ego will own the arising flow of soul, which again cuts one off from the enlightened state, by causing interruptive eddy currents in the flow (inside yourself). It could be always needing the sense of bliss and love for example.

Continually Arriving on the Shore of Pure Heaven

For me then, there needs to be this focus on continual opening out, continual breaking through any tightness; allowing the soul to come through in any moment. Any sense of separated self – any need of some kind of patriarch for example – must then dive fully into this experience of emerging soul, as an unlimited, unrestrained expression. It’s a wave that carries you all the way back to the source – inside yourself.

So in any moment, within any uncertainty or sense of separation, seek to soften inner tightness and resistance, look for and ‘dive fully into’, the emerging expression that is your Soul.

You’ve arrived. You’ve come home. And you’re continually arriving on the shore of pure heaven.

Open

Previous articles by Open:

About the author:

Openhand is the name we’ve given to the Benevolent Consciousness of the Universe. It is that energy which works within the weave of the fabric of life, helping to unravel karmic blockages, infuse soul and thereby catalyse spiritual evolution. Openhand works as a synchronistic mirror, revealing what is holding us back and how we can take our next evolutionary leap. Openhand Foundation works on behalf of this energy, helping ground its presence in this realm.

Connect with Open at OpenhandWeb.org and Facebook.com/OpenhandFoundation.

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