Today we ask that you work toward integration.
For many spiritual people who are open to these words, there is a sharp divide in their lives.
When engaged in spiritual activity, there is a sense of well-being, and wholeness. One feels the goodness of reality, and a loving order to the universe.
And then… there is the rest of life.
Paying the rent, paying the mortgage. All the countless cares and worries, fears and doubts.
You get caught up in mass consciousness. You read the news, you check Facebook. You listen to friends and family members, people who are not spiritually open and cynical, or who are perhaps caught up in religious dogma, with its orientation toward guilt and shame. You believe in scarcity, you believe in lack. You believe the world is doomed, going to hell in a handbasket.
All of this makes you feel awful.
So life takes on this bipolar quality. We know for some of you, this is literally the label placed on your mental condition. But for many, many people, whether or not they are labeled “bipolar,” life has a deep bipolarity.
You live in a dualistic reality, in which all things separate into poles: up/down, left/right, male/female, black/white, pleasure/pain, and so on. Everything breaks down this way, down to the smallest particles of matter, and antimatter. One could say that bipolarity is fundamental to your reality.
But the specific dualistic conflict being described here is that between what might be called “expanded consciousness” vs. “limited consciousness.”
In expanded consciousness, there is a sense of connection with a good and loving universe. Reality is intrinsically good, and you are intrinsically good. This creates a feeling of deep well-being, and wholeness.
Limited consciousness is defined by a sense of separation, fear, and struggle. The universe is perceived as cold and uncaring at best, and hostile at worst. It is a “dog-eat-dog” reality, in which aggressors thrive and the weak are victimized. Reality is intrinsically broken, and you are intrinsically broken.
Limited consciousness feels terrible. It is associated with feelings of despair, depression, anxiety, and panic. Paranoia is here. Suicide is here.
So — these are the two poles that many of you are flipping between now: expanded consciousness, vs. limited consciousness.
Some of you may be noticing that limited consciousness feels worse than ever. For many, it is becoming quite intolerable.
This is because for those of you who are really at home in expanded consciousness, limited consciousness simply doesn’t work for you any more. It is like wearing a terribly tight pair of shoes. It hurts!
If you are wearing a terribly tight pair of shoes that really hurt your feet, what do you do? If you’re sensible, that is.
You take them off.
Likewise, the pain and unpleasantness you may be feeling around limited consciousness is meant to be a goad to you to drop it, once and for all.
This is easier said than done. You are living in a world where almost everyone is walking around in horrible tight shoes and suffering, but they believe that this pain is somehow normal. Everyone wears tight shoes, so it doesn’t occur to people that there’s any other way to live.
But most of you reading this know otherwise.
Most of you have experienced expanded consciousness. You know what it feels like.
You are being asked, at this time, to drop limited consciousness once and for all.
It may seem incredibly frightening, but really, it is just taking off those tight shoes that are hurting you.
Every one of you has the power to do this.
You are asked to be whole. You are asked to be integrated. You are asked to be divided no longer — no longer the open spiritual self wrestling with the cramped limited self, but just plain open.
If you choose expanded consciousness, you will be supported in that choice. Please know this.
Take off the tight shoes. Don’t keep doing what hurts you.
wordfromthewell 