Month: October 2025

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Spiritual Enlightenment

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‘Know Thyself’ : words over the Greek Temple of Apollo at Delphi

I suppose the best place to start is to suggest that becoming aware that one is a spiritual being, is not the same as becoming enlightened. The latter is something few people ever achieve in a lifetime. The former is the first step of a long walk.

The question we might ask is ‘who is enlightened?’ There are many historical figures such as Guatama Buddha and Jesus the Christ who would qualify as ‘enlightened’, but surely enlightenment is not so rare that we have to look back two thousand years or more?

In modern times, spiritually aware people do not stand out. They are generally modest and seek actively not be achieve ‘celebrity’ status. They will not perform miracles, but if they did they would allow or manipulate things such that another takes the credit. An enlightened person does not dress up in old fashioned clothes or clothes from another culture. They are not in the game of impressing others.

There is an useful expression today known as ‘virtue signalling’. It explains that the signal is not proof of the integrity of the thing that is signalled. The performance of ‘good deeds’ is something many regard as having a spiritual benefit, but as certain stories in the Holy Quran demonstrate, harmful actions can appear to be good and good deeds can appear to be harmful. Explore this excerpt from Wikipedia;

Surah Al Kahf

  • 60-65 Moses and Joshua visit Khidr
  • 66 Moses desires to be taught by Khidr
  • 66-69 Khidr, knowing Moses’s inability to receive his wisdom, yields to his importunity
  • 71-77 He scuttles a boat, kills a boy, and rebuilds a collapsing wall
  • 78-82 Khidr refuses to communicate further with Moses on account of his protests against his conduct, but condescends to explain his conduct.

You may look up these stories that (and it is worth repeating), when examined in detail, in context, over a period of time and without bias…apparently harmful deeds can be good and good deeds can have unintended harmful consequences. It’s a possibility that needs to be explored vigorously because ignoring invites ignorance. Today, ignoring complexity is a primary tool of those who wish to deceive. The present president of the United States, who enjoys global power, promised Americans he would stop the war between Russia and Ukraine within twenty-four hours. He failed but was elected on this false promise. Since then, he has brokered several ‘peace deals’ around the world, several which, when examined in detail, are no more than temporary ‘cease fires’. He was surprised when he didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize, which one might allege is because he is not aware of himself. We have to leave him to shine that inward looking light.

Ultimately, the only person whom you have a duty to judge is yourself. Hence, the gnostic practice echoed by Jesus the Christ in his words;

“Know what is before thy face and what is hidden from thee shall be revealed unto thee; for there is nothing hidden which shall not be made manifest.”

The Gospel of Thomas Verse 5

But can a mirror reflect it’s own image? Can an eye examine an eye? Have you ever seen the back of your head?

Becoming self-aware requires considerable skill and perseverance in observation. The ‘inner eye’ has to be turned upon one’s own thoughts. This is the first step in meditation where thoughts are likened to passing clouds. Eventually it is hoped the sky clears. It rarely does because there is work to be done, not just sitting.

We have a skill where we can control and create our thoughts. When we are not doing that, control and creation of thoughts does not cease, it becomes automatic. It is like breathing, which is either intended or automatic.

Awareness is similar. Thoughts that ‘come to us’ without our deliberate intent to create them originate in the unconscious part of the individual mind or the collective unconscious. These are largely unresolved and repressed, events and emotional disturbances in our or society’s past.

Pieces of music can replay themselves in our heads for which an apt metaphor is a ‘mind worm’. Unresolved encounters with others or other sections of society in the collective mind can become loops that replay themselves. Politicians use these triggers ruthlessly to distract and ultimately control others. In the UK, the cry is ‘stop the boats’ without really understanding the causes and solutions, just reacting emotionally to whatever people imagine ‘immigration’ is and does. The dumb are leading the blind.

Becoming ‘self-aware’ is, therefore, in my view, far more complicated than sitting in meditation. Become awake in a physical world surrounded by other cognisant beings with whom we have relationships, is a vital focus for our mind’s eye. It has to be done with the concentration of a meditator, or as is said, like a cat watching a mouse hole.

We have one brief but exciting lifetime to encounter all kinds of situations and deal with them skillfully, instantly and with joy, just as a tennis player learns how to deal with the ball when it comes from any probable or possible direction; plus any other ‘wild card’ life may deal!

picture credit: wimbledon.com

I was once asked if I meditated and I replied that I meditate all the time. Whilst I may not achieve this of course, it’s an intention I try to fulfil. I was taught to become an observer of myself by being one step removed. An example of this was given as being able to hold honey in one hand and dog faeces in the other, and lick the honey.

All phobias are clear examples of how our unconscious holds us back from participating in life fully. But we can overcome the dark spaces in our minds and emotions by shining a penetrating light of consciousness into those spaces. This is the process of making the unconscious, conscious…like a baby, breaking the waters and breathing it’s first breath.

“I tell you the truth, unless you are born of water and the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

John 3:5

The metaphor used by Jesus the Christ was being ‘reborn’ which he meant as complete self realisation and, at another rarely realised level, as re-incarnation.

Enlightenment can only be achieved by opening one’s eyes and taking deep breaths and observing the world as if for the first time.

In Zen Buddhism this practice is known as ‘astonishment’. It is a principle trigger to ‘realisation’ in the same way that a joke operates mentally as ‘getting it’.

“The bamboo shadows sweep the stairs, but raise not dust”

This essay is intended to be complimentary to the previous one entitled ‘physical enlightenment’. To be a fully realised human being, I believe there must be a playful balance in oneself between the physical world and the spiritual. People, we, usually list towards one or the other.

Becoming an observer of the physical world and one’s inner world and the interplay between them, as if you were in no way involved in either, is in my view, the most important technique for self realisation.

An enlightened person never sleeps. There are many statues of Guatama Buddha where he is sitting upright with one hand resting on a knee and apparently sleeping. But there is only partial rest required for the mind; most is for the body. Being fully conscious in daytime will empower being similarly awake whilst sleeping. We all experience this to some degree as dreams when we sleep, because our unconscious is unrealised and, in effect, has a mind of its own. We generally find dreams confusing. A good dream interpreter can assist in the process of ‘observing’ and understanding what the unconscious is processing because it speaks using symbols, as described in the works of the psychologist C.G. Jung.

An advanced stage of dreaming is becoming conscious whilst asleep, known as lucid dreaming. Some hallucinogenic drugs achieve this same effect although if the conscious mind is not trained in detached observation, the effect can be a ‘bad trip’; a roller coaster ride through the ghost train of the unconscious.

There is also another level of dreaming, in which one’s spirit leaves the body at night and travels through physical reality. This once happened to me whilst sleeping in my car and I moved out through some woods to a statue in the middle of the woods. In the morning, I took a walk into the woods and found the same statue.

People who have had ‘near death experiences’ report similarly leaving the body and observing the room in which there body is, such as a hospital operating theatre.

None of these experiences are ‘enlightenment’. Rather I have tried to describe a few of the curious and infinite depths of the mind. As an analogy, not many of us of us explore the internet in a way that is possible. Instead, we revert to our favourite places again and again. The internet and our mental world become like a cage made from iron bars constructed and installed by ourselves.

Leaving the cage, whether it is the physical cage we leave to go ‘on holiday’ or whether it is a mental cage, is enlightenment. I call holidays, ‘environmental enlightenment’. They are a short lived state of mind and heart, but there is a sense of ‘new world’ in a vacation which excites us before, like Cinderella at the ball, a pumpkin pulled by rats returns us to captivity.

We live in ‘rat runs’ imagining ourselves having god-like freewill, but in fact, we are just repeating repeat. The same applies to every place and connection in the universe of our mind; a state the most imprisoned declare as ‘boring’.

The only constant is observing perpetual change. By being fully aware, we are able to deal with all encounters in any situation, physical and mental. The constantly changing point of Universal consciousness which we contain and describe as ‘the-all-knowing-Creator’ or a thousand other names survives and surpasses this temporary sorjourn in the physical world.

The Enlightened One’s will pass you in the street and you will never notice them, not unless you are also, one of Them.

“You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!

Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of this moment.”                                

     Rumi

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Physical Enlightenment

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‘To be conscious in this world is a prerequisite to be conscious in others.’

In recent years many people have ‘awoken’ to spirituality. Perhaps this from a rejection of religious dogma and the availability of spiritual ideas via the internet.

But what it appears to me is often missing in this spiritual revival is an emphasis on materiality. This may sound contradictory but read on.

In many spiritual traditions, one of the first realisations for the aspirant is how important the physical world is. The physical does not cancel out the spiritual and visa versa. From a non-dualistic perspective, the two are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

So before heading down the yellow brick road on one spiritual path or another my personal advice would be to take time to embrace everything practical and become healthy, wealthy and wise in the process. Controversially, I will say that to aspire to physical poverty as do many monastic traditions, is to aspire to spiritual poverty, as in the Hermetic law of ‘as above, so below.’

For me, aestheticism is a poor role model for those seeking enlightenment. Nevertheless, monasteries and nunneries in many countries are occupied by people who avoid being ‘in the world’ presumably in the belief that this puts them ‘on a path to enlightenment’. In practical terms, it is substituting difficulty with institutional routines. The intention to ‘be spiritual’ is sometime the root cause of never finding spiritual meaning in life.

In the Zen Buddhist stories from the East, a young person enters a monastery with an expectation to become spiritually enlightened, perhaps in the first few months or a year or two! Spotting this, the Zen teacher sets them to work in the monastery kitchen. When the meals are over and before the preparation of the next, the novice is given a broom and told to start sweeping. This carries on for years. If the aspirant’s ego gives in after years of being excluded from the spiritual rituals and routines of the monastery, they are appointed Abbot. The teaching was and is, learnt in the kitchen and dusty hallways, not the temple.

The Zen Master Dogen, wrote a practical manual entitled ‘How to Cook Your Life’. It drew parallel lessons between cooking in the monastery and spiritual training. It is available from Shambhala Publications.

It is easy to take physicality for granted, but this three dimensional ‘reality’ is a place where spiritual beings are sent to learn faster and more profoundly than it is possible in other dimensions. This process is known by Christian gnostics as ‘the Creator self knowing’. Certainly, physicality is not a life of ease. Whilst there is beauty and happiness, there is also ugliness and despair.

We would do well not envy the lifestyles of the wealthy and powerful in society who appear to have an easier life than those who have little money or power.

The love of money, as is said, does not bring happiness. Often we see that the poor have a much better chance of growing spiritually than the rich. Possessions are supposed to be bad for spirituality but the benefit is more in your attitude towards possessions and how this is reflected in yourself. Dressing up as a spiritual person, does not make you one. The best philosophy is to be in, but not of, this hologram of physical illusions.

For a person living in our time in a ‘developed’ country, what could be a rewarding spiritual path? As a perhaps unexpected metaphor, consider the ‘boot camp’ style of military training. This starts with the aim of breaking down the ego of the recruits with repeated humiliation. Only after weeks of physical and mental ‘beasting’ is the pressure reduced and replaced with constructive learning. This focuses on polishing boots, pressing uniforms, and keeping personal space clean and orderly, to a level of almost impossible perfection. The point is clearly not the physical tasks but mental resilience in order to excel in an endless cycle physical challenges. What is life if it is not a similar tumble drier of trials?

Members of Royal families face similar challenges, but in contrast to most of us, in an environment of opulence and wealth. Royal children are brought up to serve their nation within the parameters of strict protocols, not personal desire. In return, their every physical need is gratified by servants. Running the bath and cleaning up after the Corgis, royals do not learn. Here, ironically, having few or no physical challenges can be as spiritually disruptive as having too many.

A similar regime of service combined with wealth, governs the lives of high ranking officials in industry, government, and even religious orders. Wealth and power, can become an enormous distraction and many fall from office and spiritual grace through selfish greed.

So what of the ordinary human being who is not wealthy or powerful?

We might start with two aspects of our lives. Consider the physical body and the environment in which the body lives.

The human body is a miraculous and superb creation. You are only given one per lifetime so in my view it is important to treat it with the deepest respect. Jumping from aeroplanes and bridges for excitement is in my view disrespectful to your most sacred gift. Surely, we should be treating our body as if it were a prize race horse?

‘Horse Race’ picture credit: Museo Nacional

For the same reason, every aspect of the physical world is important to the spiritual aspirant. Simply put, every life lesson learnt in a human body, is a lesson that can be applied to the astral or spiritual body.

At the present time there are many ‘spiritual advisors’ advocating moving from this present three dimensional ‘reality’ into a fourth dimension or ‘new Earth’. Dolores Cannon had many insights on this process when she was alive. It is held that those not ready for this transition will not notice any change, and those who are prepared will move quietly ‘on’.

If this is possible and if this is what they want I wish them well. However, personally I regard the greatest challenges and rewards to be firmly here on Earth. Changing the scenery in a theatre does not change the characters or the plot.

In my view, having a deep respect for nature is probably the most important spiritual quality for individuals and human collectives at this time. To watch forests and animals and precious ecosystems be destroyed to support human ignorance and greed is heartbreaking. Similarly, war against one’s brothers and sisters on earth is anathema to spirituality.

We occupy the human learning fields in the present time. To leave this full-on learning environment at the time of it’s greatest need, is to leave an unpaid debt to future generations. I suggest that if we cannot master the fine balancing act between physicality and spirituality, we should at least give our children a chance to do so. Nature rebuilds eco-systems without help from humans, it is all a matter of how much damage has been caused and will an ethical case be made for protecting nature whilst it recovers?

To stroke an elephant or watch a lion sleeping in a tree are both physical and spiritual blessings; one gives life to the other.

picture credit: Pinterest

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Getting into a Spin

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‘Everything in the Heavens is just through one unique Chi’    Zhuangzi

Please suspend judgement for a moment on what I am about to suggest; that it is my belief that much is missing from our scientific understanding of energy. Certainly the Unified Field Theory remains elusive to conventional science, but what of the energy that flows within living, conscious, nature? Is there a bond between electromagnetism and gravity, and whatever force powers life itself?

The ancient Chinese called the energy of living things, Chi. This is not the electricity that powers our muscles, organs, nerves and brain, although we are certainly electrical and magnetic. There is a more subtle energy within us but why do we understand it so little?

My suggestion is that Chi is always in constant motion and for that reason, hard to observe and measure. A propeller on an aeroplane becomes just a blur when it spins; it almost becomes invisible. Suppose then as a theory, that our chakras are always spinning. Perhaps the Hindus called them ‘wheels’ for this reason. To spin brings seperate elements together into one unity.

The analogy would be a child’s spinning top that when at rest has the full rainbow of colours visible. When it spins a rainblow of colours blurs into white.

If chakras spin, then it must be possible to increase their speed and balance. Imagine looking down through all the chakras in the body, perhaps in the body of a ballet dancer spinning on one foot. They would become a blur of white light.

Imagine also the feeling of being that ballet dancer. Because of the spinning motion, gravity has a reduced effect on a body. You have become a gyroscope. When spinning on an axis, a human body is generating and experiencing Chi, as well as centripedal force, and weighs less. Light has become a white blur to the human eye. The weight of the body is so reduced that the dancer can stand on just one toe, but only whilst spinning.

Consider a more extreme example. When a high level of Chi is achieved by mystics and adepts of various disciplines such as Yoga, the less effect gravity has on the body. Mystics such as Padre Pio and adepts from the East such as yogis, demonstrated levitation through their high level of Chi. Some even had to be held down to prevent them from floating.

Saint Alfonso Liguori

Undertakers will tell you that a deceased body is heavier than a living body. Four men are needed to carry a corpse, while one person may lift and carry a living body. After death, Chi leaves.

‘Life is the gathering of Chi. When it disperses, we die.’          Zhuangzi

The most well known example of spinning for spiritual experiences, are the Whirling Dervishes. The dance represents the planets spinning and moving around the sun, the Sheikh. It raises the personal Chi of the dancers and induces ecstatic states of unity with the Divine.

Consider the same principles of nature at a different scale.

The weather patterns across the globe are vortexes of high and low air pressure. These spin constantly and the churning of the moisture and particles in the air creates static electricity.

Tall buildings on Earth, attract lightning and modern buildings are earthed for this reason but the ancients wished to direct high charges of electricity into and from their sacred buildings with associated Chi.

At the Great Pyramid of Cheops for instance, there are pavements of fulgurite, a rock created when sand is melted into glass by lightning.

The Ancient Egyptians were masters of Chi energy for it’s various benefits in sustaining mind and body, ritual and intitiation, communication, construction and fertility in fauna and flora. The scarab beetle is an intriguing choice of archetypal symbol until it is considered that it rolls spheres of dung, similar in essence to the movement of the sun and the solar system.

Many of the ancient buildings and cities were constructed so as to produce the best benefit from natural and artificial lines and confluences of Chi. The Chinese were adept at this and perhaps the name of their country contains a reference to this! Certainly their science of Feng Shui meaning Wind Water, was carried out with particular attention to the local environment, the earths magnetism and the planets and stars. Even in modern times, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank was placed and aligned according to the principles of Feng Shui, for prosperity in the exchange of money.

In all other parts of the world Chi is associated with the patterns of flow of underground water and aquifers. This affects every building however humble and is particularly relevant to sacred buildings. The effect of Chi a the high levels that these buildings generate, is to induce a feeling of Divine love and spiritual initiation in congregations. The coloured light and rituals were only ever distractions. More cosmic energies were at work. The clever use of natural light through alignment of windows and doors with solar solstices and equinoxes into sacred spaces is found even in the most ancient of constructions such as New Grange in Ireland and the Temples of Abu Simmel in Egypt.

Of course the energy of the Sun and the stars are vital to the welfare of life on Earth, and much has been written on their influence in the field of Astrology and Astronomy. The former includes the energetic effects of cyclic stellar gyrations, whilst the latter observes matter through the electromagnetic spectrum.

Nicola Tesla, the great prophet of electrical phenomena such as radio, maintained that electricity is a degraded form of Chi. As we understand there is an electro motive force associated with a wire carrying electrical current, it is possible that the currents of rivers and oceans attract Chi in a similar way? Is Chi transfered to humans from the landscape by induction? It is interesting that humans are attracted to such places for leisure and restoration. In the context of this essay, the generator uses this principle to convert a rotational force into electricity. Could not all spinning motion be generators of Chi in a similar way, even as we observe in the nucleus and spinning electrons of sub-atomic matter?

Could the ancients raise Chi in a huge stone block so as to make it levitate? If so, this would certainly explain how pyramids and megalithic sites like Stone Henge were constructed. There is a record of Tibetan Buddhists using sound from horns and chanting choirs to lift large stone blocks.

The fissures in the rocks beneath our feet naturally fill with flowing water. Where two such water courses cross, they create a vortex sometimes apparent as a spring. Wells are dug in such places. What is interesting is that such underground water creates Chi in a particular place. This was controlled in ancient times by the placing of massive stone – preferably containing high levels of mineral crystals. Different crystals give off electromagnetic waves at differing frequencies as in radio technology today. The pyramids of Giza were capped by a crystal above a gold pyramidion, according to John Michell in ‘The View Over Atlantis.

It is speculated that the anti-gravity effects of Chi could have been used to lift the massive stone blocks to build such structures as the pyramids.

If one examines the simplest principals in ‘anti gravity’ flying machines such as Schaubergers shown below, the vortex is fundamental to the effect that Earth’s gravity has on matter; gravity can be reduced to zero.

Victor Schauberger’s Vortex Engine picture credit: Xaluannews.com

The scientist Wilhelm Reich designed a box to store Chi or, as he called the elusive energy, Orgone. The box was made of layers of organic and inorganic material. A person sitting in the box received a slow charge of orgone. Unlike heat, which goes from a high source to a lower place, orgone moves from a low source to a higher place in a manner that constantly builds up a charge and requiring a discharge.

Ancient structures such as cathedrals appear to have a knowledge of this. The spire in a cathedral concentrates orgone as it ascends up to the point of the spire where Chi is discharged into the atmosphere. The effect can be neutralised by earthing the energy with a copper strip connecting the top of the spire to the earth below.

The pyramids of Egypt and around the world functioned similarly using the principle of the ascending whilst narrowing geometry of a pyramid. The Chi was concentrated at one-third intervals of it’s height where in Giza the Cheops pyramid was constructed without a peak and pyramidion. This was to cap and retain Chi within the sacred chambers of the pyramid.

The King’s chamber is positioned and constructed geometrically as a double cube, so that the effect of a high exposure to Chi induced change in the brain of initiates. Kings, queens, priests and gnostic aspirants would have undergone this as a powerful spiritual initiation. Chi was clearly linked with the ultimate goal for ancient Egyptians, a prolonged and prosperous life outside of the deceased body.

Ultimately, everything is energy – even matter – and the understanding of the effects of all types of energy on human beings is as important as it is for a surfer to understand ocean waves.

Although it is easier to observe the inanimate, material, and stationary, the next step for science, in my view, is to observe the energetic effects of movement in the vast and tiny gyrations of life.

I nature the vast and flowing Chi…it is immense and powerful. When cultivated with integrity and without harm, it fills all space between Heaven and Earth’          

Mengzi