The Necessity to Surrender to the Divine and Spiritualize the Being

By Bernhard Guenther, October 9, 2019

Chapters:

Introduction

The Four-fold Approach of the Seeker

Imbalances in The Work Overfocus on the Physical Body and External Life while Neglecting Inner Work Authenticity vs Inauthenticity Overfocus on Spiritual Work without Psychological Work Overfocus on Spiritual Work/Escaping the Matrix while Avoiding/Denying Physical Reality The New Age Ascension Religion Overfocus on Psychological Work without Spiritual Aspiration Overfocus on Activism and Fighting the Matrix without Sincere Inner Work The Importance of Both Inner and Outer Work

Aspiration and Surrender to The Divine What is The Divine? The Importance of Meditation and Stilling the Mind Active Meditation and Self-Remembering

The Battle of Dark vs. Light from an Integral Yoga Perspective Spiritual Activism The Splitting of Humanity, the Supramental Action, and the Matrix The Socialist Centralized-State, Anarchism, and the Ideal of Human Unity The Blindspot of Anarchism and the Mental Fortress

The Adventure of Consciousness Continues

Introduction

“At the moment we are at a decisive turning-point in the history of the earth, once again. From every side, I am asked, “What is going to happen?” Everywhere there is anguish, expectation, fear. “What is going to happen?” There is only one reply: “If only man could consent to be spiritualized.” And perhaps it would be enough if some individuals became pure gold, for this would be enough to change the course of events. We are faced with this necessity in a very urgent way. This courage, this heroism which the Divine wants of us, why not use it to fight against one’s own difficulties, one’s own imperfections, one’s own obscurities? Why not heroically face the furnace of inner purification so that it does not become necessary to pass once more through one of those terrible, gigantic destructions which plunge an entire civilization into darkness? This is the problem before us. It is for each one to solve it in his own way.” – The Mother Mirra Alfassa

Over the past few years, I’ve gone through some more profound inner changes and realizations. Some of them I’ve shared in previous articles and essays. However, this year in particular, it has accelerated to another level. There is a deeper calling arising within me. I’ve noticed these changes in others, and maybe you can relate to them as well. This growth period also entailed accelerated suffering, igniting more vulnerability and humility within me. More “stuff” has surfaced, not only associated with present lifetime wounds and “issues” but also related to past lives, ancestral traumas and larger karmic lessons. At the same time, there have been more experiences of higher divine love/joy, which are not dependent on any external factors, that come with it as this (inner) work is getting more refined.

A big part of this inner growth period is related to my relationship with Laura. It felt like Divine Grace brought us together. Our connection accelerated my (our) internal process in a way I certainly didn’t expect, and I don’t think I could have done this by myself. In fact, I even felt (before meeting her a couple of years ago) that I’ve had hit a wall in my own process. I knew deep inside that only via meeting my “shakti” and learning through experience a true deeper human love that I’d be able to progress to the next level; which is ultimately tied to my connection to God and love for the Divine.

But this growth period and our relationship wasn’t and isn’t all love and bliss. In fact, more stuff came out of the shadows and dark for both of us, triggered in the crucible of this alchemical union, which wouldn’t have surfaced to be made conscious of for us as single individuals. It was an Ascent and Descent at the same time as “the Work” continues. The higher the love we aspire to experience, the deeper we need to go into our shadows, wounds, and traumas and heal/transmute everything that is holding us back from this.

The fundamental essence of Laura’s and I’s relationship is that it has its foundation in the Divine and our personal/individual relationship to the Divine, so we don’t use each other as our primary source of fulfillment and “happiness”. This also implies engaging in the necessary essential psychological work, shadow work, and trauma work—together and as individuals—so that we clear our vessels so that we may anchor the Divine within and don’t spiritually bypass our issues. This is not easy work at times (to say the least) let alone also having to deal with occult interferences that try to disrupt our relationship, be it working through others projecting on to us, or through thought injections from these forces working through our own minds, ego, blindspots, and wounds.

“What the Divine Mother is now birthing in all those open to her is a vision of total relationship between heart, mind, body, and soul, so that through that deep sacred relationship, we can come into the unified force field of reality, become completely embodied and present, and use that inner love to express our longing to see the world transformed. What is really at stake is this: If we continue to have a vision of relationship as purely personal, purely private, and something that we cultivate only for our own pleasure, we will keep feeding the tragic narcissism that is now ravaging the planet on every level. The real thrust and purpose and meaning and divine importance of relationship is to give us the fuel to take on the world, the energy to keep on pouring ourselves out for the creation of a new world. It is critical to remember that this crisis we are facing is a crisis in which the sacred powers of love in the human soul are being diverted by distraction, by greed, by ignorance, by the pursuit of power, so that they never irrigate the world and transform it. What is needed is a vision of evolutionary relationship as a relationship that helps us come into the real, take responsibility for it, and enact our sacred purpose with a partner, and for the world: when two lovers come together in this dynamic love consciousness, they create a transformative field of sacred energy, from which both can feed to inspire their work in reality. Both beings need to be plunged individually into a deep and passionate devotion of the Beloved [Divine], by whatever name they know the Beloved, because without both beings centering their life in God, the relationship will never be able to escape the private circle. From the very beginning it must be centered in the Divine. It must be a relationship that is undertaken in the coscious presence of the Divine for the Divine’s great work in the Universe. Only a relationship that is centered in God, and that has God as the prime actor in the relationship, will be able to bear the vicissitudes of authentic love, of dealing with the challenges of life and service in the world.” – from “Evolutionary Love Relationships” by Andrew Harvey & Chris Saade

Having said that, I’m not implying by sharing my experience that everyone needs to have a partner to do this work. For most of my life, I’ve actually been single and living in solitude—hermit style. But it has been part of my individual soul lesson and progress to find that entering a relationship like this is an integral part of my path. It felt destined. We all also have our unique path, soul lessons, and karma to work out; hence, any comparison is not only futile but counter-productive.

Over the past six years, I have also increasingly felt the call to aspire and surrender to the Divine. I clearly “see” and experience now that this surrender/aspiration is a necessity for anyone on the path towards Awakening to truly transcend the matrix (regardless if one does it through a relationship or not). This higher alignment is the essential trajectory for humanity as a whole if we genuinely want to make the “shift” so we don’t end up in another “Dark Night of Civilization”—as it has happened to past ancient civilizations—which resulted in destruction and the necessity to repeat the karmic cycle. I have felt this call within over the years, but in earlier times it was still driven partly by an “intellectual” understanding of the Divine; not an embodied inner realization.

However, we also need to acknowledge that we all are engaged in our own individual processes. We all are where we “need to be” and why this is, is based on many unknowns that our minds can’t understand. At the same time, there is also a collective process that is occurring in regard to the bigger picture of the evolution of consciousness; which we are all affected by and influenced by—and this manifests differently for each of us. Everything is connected and interrelated, nothing is isolated or separate; even though our egoic mind perceives it that way. There is a higher Divine plan/Will doing its magnificent work on unseen levels.

Many of us will experience this acceleration of breakdowns and breakthroughs. This process results in more pressure to awaken and thus can result in more suffering by its tendency to bring up “stuff” we have suppressed, sometimes, even for lifetimes. As we become more sensitized we also start to feel the suffering and pain of the collective and all of humanity more and more. Depending on how we handle the intensity of these energies, it can either break us down and cause us to spiral into more suffering and despair, or it can break us open to higher states of consciousness—if we choose to engage in this process consciously and don’t fight/resist it. Most often it’s both at the same time, the ascent and descent, as consciousness widens all around us and the process of transmutation quickens.

For the ones who decide to “answer the call” to engage in this process consciously, life takes on a whole new meaning and aim as they start to respond to something deep within them. This call often arrives as a very soft and quiet voice at first and is hardly noticeable. Yet, it is there, the lotus flower within; the voice of our psychic being, which directs and guides our evolution. This inner call inspires us to embark on the path, driven by questions like “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” “Where did I come from?” “What is life about?”. It is then that we start to question everything, looking for the truth of our being. This call is the starting point of the seeker as he/she starts his/her quest and adventure.

The Four-fold Approach of the Seeker

If we are sincere in our seeking and questioning, we soon will realize that the Work needs to happen on all levels: physical/somatic, emotional/psychological, mental/intellectual, and spiritual. Various esoteric teachings have pointed out and described the Great Work in their own language, pointing to this alchemical process that happens on the path towards awakening. But life has also become more complex in our modern, isolated, and increasingly technology-driven world. The matrix is on over-drive to keep humanity locked in a frequency prison and separated from spirit. These occult matrix architects have their teaching function in the bigger play of spiritual evolution; they are inviting us into a more holistic and integral approach to self-work. They are pushing us to not retreat from the world or look to escape it but to engage in this Work in our every-day lives. Despite the seemingly ensuing darkness taking over the earth, the Light from above is descending as well, creating more and more pockets of Light. This light anchoring on the planet will also increase instances of Divine Grace, and many of us are already bringing in the Light to this planet as anchors of these higher frequencies.

Yet, the Divine can only express itself through us and to the extent of our inner alignment and how purified our vessel is. This process of purification allows us to bring forth the true Self and live with our psychic being at the front, instead of living with our traumatized ego-personality running the show. We are all dealing with individual challenges and lessons in order to go through this process; and we all have our own distorted filters based on wounds, trauma, conditioning, and ego-identification; that need to be cleansed into a clearer perception. In the end, it’s the same ONE Divine Force that is attempting to infuse all of us with the divine supramental consciousness, by asking us to clear our vessel from the lower egoic/animal self. By rising into this higher level of Being we give an alchemical birth to a new human—one that is a pure embodied vessel of the Divine.

To clear our vessel, heal ourselves, embrace life, and get a better understanding of ourselves and the world, the Work of the seeker is four-fold, each aspect representing one part of his/her Whole: physical, emotional/psychological/somatic, mental/intellectual, and spiritual.

Taking care of your physical body/vehicle via the right diet, exercise (including body-mind practices) and becoming a self-responsible adult in everyday life creating your livelihood. [Pyhsical]

Psychological inner work, embodiment, and engaging in somatic psychotherapeutic work to work through, heal and transmute your wounds and traumas that are stored in the body. [Emotional]

Learning about the world, the matrix, deprogramming yourself from social/cultural conditioning, and understanding higher/universal laws so you can see through appearances, deceptions, distractions and have a bigger picture context in light of the evolution of consciousness. [Intellectual]

Spiritual inner work to connect with your essence (true Self, psychic being), anchoring the Divine force and aligning with Divine Will via aspiration – rejection – surrender. [Spiritual]

These four aspects are all interrelated and affect and influence each other. It’s not a linear, step-by-step approach but an integral, holistic, and multi-dimensional process. Depending on where each individual is at and what his/her lessons are, any of these points could be a priority for a period of time. However, it all comes down to this surrender to the Divine; which must happen in order for us to fully spiritualize our Being.

Engaging in this holistic work on all levels; physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually; will also align you with your vocation and deeper soul purpose, which is in alignment with Divine Will. As you start to live more authentically from within and practice self-responsibility for your unique karmic situation, you bring forth your true essence, and this alignment within your Being results in “right action” externally; helping others and the world to awaken during this Time of Transition; according to the specific gifts and talents you have to offer the world during this period.

In other words, your creative power will increase as you become a clearer vessel for the Divine. This is the real “secret” of reality creation—aligning your little “personal” will with Divine Will. As mentioned before, it’s important to understand this process and how it manifests differently for each of us

Imbalances in The Work

If we don’t engage in the work holistically (on all levels), it can result in various imbalanced consequences. While there are many variations, I will generally outline the ones I have seen the most, including in myself.

Overfocus on the Physical Body and External Life While Neglecting Inner Work

Many people tend to be overly focused and identified (even to the point of obsession) with their physical body/appearance and physical health, fixated only on diet and exercise; but don’t engage in any form of inner psychological/spiritual work. The obsession with physical looks and youth is very predominant in this day and age. We see this trend with the continued rise of cosmetic surgeries; as people start to self-mutilate their bodies in the quest for physical “perfection”. This act of surgery from a somatic perspective creates even more trauma in the body; as the body does not know that this is merely cosmetic and takes in these experiences with the same fear as it would an unplanned violent attack.

All of this trauma done to the body has become normalized based on us accepting these distorted and socially conditioned “ideal” body images, thus we see it as perfectly “normal” to seek to emulate them; often driven by our own unresolved unconscious wounds, traumas, and insecurities. We try to “compensate” by making the external “perfect” so that we do not have to face our inevitable mortality or the false core beliefs that we may hold that we aren’t “good enough”. This topic is a big “elephant in the room” topic and is often a difficult thing to realize for those who have gone “under the knife” themselves.

Obviously, we want to be and need to be physically healthy; but staying fit, healthy, and “looking good” goes way beyond exercise and diet; so its important to not become neurotically attached and addicted to this quest, otherwise it often results in eating disorders or a disordered relationship with exercise (which keeps us from reflecting on the unresolved unconscious wounds and traumas that may be behind them). Taking care of our body via the right diet and exercise is important, but true health is holistic and goes way beyond taking care of the physical body alone. Health also relates to living an authentic life and taking care of your inner life; emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

We can also become overly focused on career ambitions and external success in the world (which can be detrimental to health), once again, most often driven by unconscious wounds/trauma and the need to compensate for “holes” within ourselves—which are often filled with unfelt/unprocessed life experiences—which we avoid feeling by seeking to fill them by external accomplishments.

Gabor Mate shares below a compelling case about a woman who got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer (even though she was successful professionally, seemingly “happily” married with kids, and physically fit/healthy) due to her people-pleaser program and avoidance of facing her childhood trauma and shadow, which resulted in her living an inauthentic life.

Authenticity vs. Inauthenticity

We start living an inauthentic life when we fall into the trap of comparison and are very concerned about what other people think of us and the way they see us, resulting in a people-pleaser program and a lack of boundaries. We then build a fake persona to appear a certain way based on the social image we’d like to portray. We then start to identify with our external ego-personality and create a further disconnect from our true self/essence. Any feelings and emotions that contradict the ideal image we have of ourselves then get pushed into the unconscious. This also results in suppression of our wounds, traumas and “negative” emotions which we don’t like to feel, express, and show.

Authenticity doesn’t mean to just express any desire or compulsion we may have or act out from our neurotic narcissistic ego—it means to act from our true self. Therefore, genuine authenticity means to be in touch with our inner self; our body, our feelings, our spirit; and express this essence through the instrument of the ego-personality. We then don’t shy away from pain and discomfort but see it as a sign to adjust, engaging in inner work without trying to escape or fill our internal emptiness through external means. There is no division between our outer and inner life.

Inauthenticity is based on an internal split; a contradiction between how we act, what we say and do, and how we feel internally. When we get stuck in inauthenticity, we lose our inner guidance connected to essence/the Divine. Inauthenticity is also the result of head-centric living and disembodiment, it is a state where we live disconnected from the wisdom of our bodies. The more severe the body-mind split, the more we look externally for happiness, guidance, and fulfillment. Most people live inauthentic lives because of social and cultural conditioning.

The goals, desires, needs and wants they have and the lives/careers they pursue because of these needs/wants/desires, are most often not their own based on who they truly are within, but have been programmed into them via official cult-ure and/or are the result of trying to fill their emptiness/holes within based on unfelt wounds and trauma (that they might not even be consciously aware of). These needs/wants/desires are also based on growing up in a world where pathology has become normalized, and their programming from growing up in this toxic culture.

These conditioned/programmed goals and enjoyments in life serve as buffers to avoid facing the pain they are holding on an unconscious level. They don’t know who they are and don’t know that they don’t know. There is no true individuality on that level of being but only mechanical living under the illusion of free will; influenced by group/hive mind mass consciousness and matrix occult forces. Over time, living an inauthentic life can result in depression and even illness and dis-ease—no matter how much care you may take of your physical body with the prescribed “right” diet and exercise.

Overfocus on Spiritual Work Without Psychological Work

People who are only focused on “spiritual work” and neglect psychological work and avoid facing their early childhood wounds and traumas can easily fall into spiritual bypassing. Even though they may have some spiritual peak experiences at first, they will find themselves repeating the same ancestral patterns within their own lives without understanding what drives these patterns. This is particularly important for anyone who is very attracted to Eastern spirituality. These old esoteric traditions have their place and contain timeless wisdom and gnosis, however, the times have changed and Westerner’s (and Western-influenced cultures) now need a more holistic integral approach to self-work; which considers the modern times we live in and the complex psychological pathologies that have arisen out of them. Unlike tribal communities, many people now live disconnected from their bodies, nature, and live in isolation without the support of or connection to the people who live on the land around them.

This “first world” style of living, with all its technological advances and comforts, has become almost completely disconnected from spirit and nature. With the rise of materialism and science, which has become the modern “religion”, we are now faced with the dawning of the A.I./Transhumanism “God”. As a result, we’ve become traumatized simply by trying to adjust to a world that doesn’t recognize Spirit but is based on a head-centric mental consciousness. Many of the issues and problems we’re dealing with were unknown in ancient times as spirituality was still an integral part of everyday life.

Hence, we need to look at our basic psychology as well and address how these changes have affected us, even to the point of changing the wiring of our nervous system and basic biology. Any spiritual realizations we have will not create any lasting changes if we don’t find ways to integrate these realizations into one’s whole being and practice them in every aspect of daily life.

On a positive note, there have also been groundbreaking advances and discoveries in psychotherapy, and new modalities like somatic trauma therapy can help heal us our bodies in a more holistic fashion by showing how our childhood wounds get stored as trauma in the body and then proceeds to affect our adult lives (the inner affecting the outer) which can certainly help us to implement our spiritual realizations in a more lasting way. John Welwood (who originally coined the term “spiritual bypassing”) talks about the importance of combining psychological and spiritual work in his article The Psychology of Awakening:

“Spiritual realization is relatively easy compared with the much greater difficulty of actualizing it, integrating it fully into the fabric of one’s daily life. Realization is the movement from personality to being, the direct recognition of one’s ultimate nature, leading toward liberation from the conditioned self, while actualization refers to how we integrate that realization in all the situations of our life.[…] Many Westerners have tried to take up this model, pursuing impersonal realization while neglecting their personal life, but have found in the end that this was like wearing a suit of clothes that didn’t quite fit. Taking on the challenges of a fully engaged personal life—finding right livelihood in a complex materialistic world, being involved in a committed intimate relationship, dealing with the social and political concerns facing us at every turn—inevitably brings up unresolved psychological issues. For this reason, Western seekers may also need the help of psychological methods to help them more fully integrate spiritual practice and realization into their lives.[…] Psychological and spiritual work address different levels of human existence. If the domain of spiritual work is emptiness—unconditioned, universal, absolute truth—the domain of psychological work is form—our individual, conditioned ways of experiencing ourselves and the world—or relative truth. Spiritual practice, especially mysticism, points toward a timeless trans-human reality, while psychological work addresses the evolving human realm, with all its issues of personal meaning and interpersonal relationship.[…] It can be difficult to understand or appreciate why we might need to resort to psychological work when many Asian spiritual practitioners have found liberation solely through the profound teachings and practices of Buddhism for thousands of years. But it helps to recognize that the highest, nondual Buddhist teachings, which show that who you really are is absolute reality, presume a rich underpinning of community, religious customs, and shared moral values that the West mostly lacks. Modern Western culture is marked by social isolation, personal alienation, lack of community, disconnection from nature, and the loss of the sacred at the center of our lives. And the Western self is riddled with inner divisions—between self and other, individual and society, mind and body, spirit and nature, or the guilty ego and the harsh, punishing superego—that were mostly unknown in the ancient cultures in which the meditative traditions first arose.[…] While spiritual traditions generally explain the cause of suffering in general terms as the result of ignorance, faulty perception, or disconnection from our true nature, Western psychology provides a more specific developmental understanding. It shows how suffering stems from childhood conditioning; in particular, from static and distorted images of self and other that we carry with us in the baggage of our past. And it reveals these painful, distorting identities as relational—formed in and through our relationships with others. Spiritual traditions that do not recognize the way in which ego identity forms out of interpersonal relationships are unable to address these interpersonal structures directly. Instead, they offer practices—prayer, meditation, mantra, service, devotion to God or guru—that shift the attention to the universal ground of being in which the individual psyche moves, like a wave on the ocean. Thus it becomes possible to enter luminous states of trans-personal awakening, beyond personal conflicts and limitations, without having to address or work through specific psychological issues and conflicts. This kind of realization can certainly provide access to greater wisdom and compassion, but it often does not touch or alter impaired ego structures which, because they influence our everyday functioning, prevent us from fully integrating this realization into the fabric of our lives. Thus, as Sri Aurobindo put it, “Realization by itself does not necessarily transform the being as a whole. One may have some light of realization at the spiritual summit of consciousness but the parts below remain what they were.” For psychological and spiritual work to be mutually supportive allies in the liberation and embodiment of the human spirit, we need to re-envision both paths for our time, so that psychological work can serve spiritual development, while spiritual work can take into account psychological development. These two traditions would then come together as convergent streams, furthering humanity’s evolution toward realizing its true nature—as belonging to the universal mystery that surrounds and inhabits all things—and embodying this larger nature as human presence in the world, thus serving as a crucial link between heaven and earth.” – John Welwood, The Psychology of Awakening

In the same article mentioned above, Welwood describes a case of how “spiritualizing” our issues and suppressing negative emotions (in this case, anger) can lead to blind compassions and avoidance of healthy assertiveness and boundaries. If we just view things from an absolute perspective (“higher truths”) but don’t take into account the relative situation we can easily fall into spiritual bypassing and miss this opportunity to heal trauma and childhood wounds.

“A client of mine who was desperate about her marriage had gone to a spiritual teacher for advice. He advised her not to be so angry with her husband but to be a compassionate friend instead. This was certainly sound spiritual advice. Compassion is a higher truth than anger; when we rest in the absolute nature of mind, pure open awareness, we discover compassion as the very core of our nature. From that perspective, feeling angry about being hurt only separates us from our true nature. Yet the teacher who gave this woman this advice did not consider her relative situation—that she was someone who had swallowed her anger all her life. Her father had been abusive and would slap her and send her to her room whenever she showed any anger about the way he treated her. She learned to suppress her rage and always tried to please others by being “a good girl” instead. So when the teacher advised her to feel compassion rather than anger, she felt relieved because this fit right in with her defenses. Since anger was threatening to her, she used the teaching on compassion for spiritual bypassing—for refusing to deal with her anger or the message it contained. As her therapist, I had to take account of her relative situation and help her relate to her anger more fully. As a spiritual practitioner, I was also mindful that anger is ultimately empty, a wave arising in the ocean of consciousness, without any solidity or inherent meaning. Yet while that understanding may be true in the absolute sense, and generally valuable for helping dissolve attachment to anger, it was not useful for this woman at this time. Instead, she needed to learn to pay more attention to her anger in order to move beyond a habitual pattern of self-suppression, to connect with her inner strength and power, and to relate to her husband in a more active, assertive way.“

Many Eastern spiritual traditions talk about the necessity of ego dissolution to pierce through the illusion of separateness to re-connect with our true Divine nature and embody Spirit. While there is truth to this process in the context of the awakening process and the evolution of consciousness, it is necessary for many to also develop a healthy ego-personality and individual self before they look to dissolve their sense of who they are.

Many people have been wounded and not “seen” by their early attachment caregivers to the point where they lost this sense of self and it didn’t develop, to begin with, and this often results in their adult lives from issues of insecurity, low self-esteem, and sometimes they may even consciously or unconsciously dislike or hate themselves. This is often fueled by guilt and shame that they carry from these early experiences, resulting in them blaming themselves for any lack of love they received, rather than facing the truth of what happened and the suffering it caused for them.

Building a healthy ego is the necessary prerequisite before trying to get rid of it. You cannot get rid of something you didn’t have to begin with. For some, this seems like a paradox, but it is a natural part of this process of soul individualization. We first need to separate ourselves from the group/hive mind and mass consciousness before we can engage in the Great Work of ego dissolution to unite with the Divine. As Carl Jung said: “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”

“But this spiritual truth and true aim of his being is not allowed to appear till late in his journey: for the early preparatory business of man in the evolutionary steps of Nature is to affirm, to make distinct and rich, to possess firmly, powerfully and completely his own individuality. As a consequence, he has in the beginning principally to occupy himself with his own ego. In this egoistic phase of his evolution the world and others are less important to him than himself, are indeed only important as aids and occasions for his self-affirmation. God too at this stage is less important to him than he is to himself, and therefore in earlier formations, on the lower levels of religious development, God or the gods are treated as if they existed for man, as supreme instruments for the satisfaction of his desires, his helpers in his task of getting the world in which he lives to satisfy his needs and wants and ambitions. This primary egoistic development with all its sins and violences and crudities is by no means to be regarded, in its proper place, as an evil or an error of Nature; it is necessary for man’s first work, the finding of his own individuality and its perfect disengagement from the lower subconscient in which the individual is overpowered by the mass consciousness of the world and entirely subject to the mechanical workings of Nature. Man the individual has to affirm, to distinguish his personality against Nature, to be powerfully himself, to evolve all his human capacities of force and knowledge and enjoyment so that he may turn them upon her and upon the world with more and more mastery and force; his self-discriminating egoism is given him as a means for this primary purpose. Until he has thus developed his individuality, his personality, his separate capacity, he cannot be fit for the greater work before him or successfully turn his faculties to higher, larger and more divine ends. He has to affirm himself in the Ignorance before he can perfect himself in the Knowledge.” – Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

Overfocus on Spiritual Work/Escaping the Matrix while Avoiding/Denying Physical Reality

[Note: This section relates to the chapter “Avoidance of every-day responsibilities” in my essay/ebook “The Perilous Path Towards Awakening”]

The rejection of the material world is another area where people come to a distorted understanding with regards to living a spiritual life, while the flip side of that coin is using spiritual concepts as a justification/means to obtain more and more materialistic objects, fuelling consumeristic addictions which often results in hedonistic physical indulgence (like you see distorted in the rise of “the Secret” and many various “manifestation” techniques and aims).

Many religious traditions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Judaism, have promoted the practice of Asceticism. Ascetics live a life characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures and renunciation of material possessions for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. This old dogmatic religious approach is based on the idea that life on earth is misery which one needs to escape from.

The Christian Catholic church infuses its followers with the guilt-trip that one is born in sin and the flesh (body’s sensual desires) are “evil” and that one needs to be saved (by Jesus) to be raptured into “heaven”. The ascetics of the Eastern dogmatic religious traditions view life and physical reality all as “Maya” (illusion). For some ascetics, they feel that in order to get out of the wheel of karma and the cycle of rebirth they must reject physical reality. The more extreme forms of asceticism may also include severe body self-mutilation, and often include meditating in graveyards covered in the ashes of dead bodies, which they practice to demonstrate that they can and will completely transcend the physical world in order to achieve Nirvana; often living in seclusion and isolation from the rest of the world.

The New Age Ascension Religion

Interestingly, we can see a similar ascetic approach of trying to escape the world in the “the New Age fringe movement”. Over the years, more people have become aware of the hyperdimensional matrix and occult hostile forces controlling humanity on unseen levels. There is a lot of talk about the earth being a “prison planet” and that the “tunnel of light” that is said to be experienced after death is a “trap” that keeps us enslaved via “soul-recycling”. In other words, they view that reincarnation is a trap that we need to escape from. [I have written about the “tunnel of light trap” and “reincarnation trap of recycling souls” before. It’s a theory I don’t entirely agree with for reasons outlined in my article Soul Evolution, Universal Laws, and Karma in The Body.]

This also ties into the popular New Age idea of “ascension” in order to move into 5D, 6D… all the way up into 12D (whatever that is). The focus of some of these ascension teachings is on getting away from this physical existence and even out of the body (or not reincarnating because “the earth is a prison”) to “ascend” into another “higher” existence/world. Many of these New Age ascension teachings are based on spiritual bypassing and overestimating one’s level of being by creating peak faux enlightenment experiences. Some of these New Age ascension fringe ideas sound very similar to the old ascetic dogmatic religious ideas mentioned before: denying the physical world, seeing physical existence as “evil” (a prison), needing to escape into “heaven” and exiting the reincarnation (enslavement) cycle. Same idea, just different package in New Age lingo.

Our body is truly the vehicle for “ascension,” but we must anchor the divine force within ourselves by being grounded in this body and the earth in order to bring this plane of reality into a higher level of being. Through this process of soul integration, we essentially transcend death itself. This is a long evolutionary process and ties into what Sri Aurobindo meant by stating that man, in his current state, is a transitional being.

We are in a transition and our state of being, including all the matrix manipulation/interferences (seen and unseen), are part of the evolution of consciousness. There is no error in or anything wrong with reality, nor are we trapped here. Everything we experience has its teaching function in light of the process of soul individualization. The idea that the earth is a prison planet we need to escape from and that reincarnation is a soul-trap also instills the victim/blame consciousness in us—which is exactly the disempowered state that the hyperdimensional occult forces want us to get stuck in. Ironically, it may as well be that the hyperdimensional matrix forces are behind these life-denying ascetic ideas and “escape the matrix” theories. In order to truly transcend the matrix we must spiritualize our being and the world—not escape life.

As I wrote in the aforementioned linked article Soul Evolution, Universal Laws, and Karma in The Body: People who firmly believe that this 3D existence is just a “prison” also fall into the victim trap which keeps them entrapped in the “prison,” ironically. By perceiving the world this way, they may also fail to recognize and connect with the immense beauty of life. I see the matrix control as a prison and school at the same time, but no one is here against their “free will.” According to Universal Law, an agreement and choice were made to be “in the matrix” at some level in the “distant past” (even if done via deception/temptation which is symbolized in “The Fall from Eden”). In the end, we are all here to experience soul evolution and the greater evolution of consciousness.

Many truth/spiritual seekers wear their inability to function in the “3D world” and inability (refusal) to manage ordinary daily affairs like a badge of merit—as proof of their awakened state (“I am too spiritual/woke to…”) This ties into the martyr complex as well. The Zen saying, “Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water” applies here, which basically means for us to have humility before/after any “spiritual experience” and continue on with our “ordinary” lives.

This also applies to the trap of “fighting the 3D matrix”. While the matrix control system mines us for our energy and keeps many of us preoccupied in survival mode and “making a living” (while stealing from us (taxes) and/or manipulating us into debt), we need to be strategic planners in order to avoid attracting unnecessary negative attention from the matrix that could compromise both our ability to function and to be of service to others. When we refuse to deal with ordinary life affairs; often stemming from an inflated sense of being “too spiritual”, or an emotional reactive “fuck the system” attitude (projecting at the symptoms/shadows on the wall of the 3D matrix)—the “matrix has us”. In this case, it keeps us in a primary state of reactivity where we get stuck in a sort of ego/survival/poverty/scarcity consciousness, which is precisely the frequency where the matrix overlords want us to be in.

Some people focus their whole energy and life trying to get “off the grid” or look for loopholes and ways not to pay their taxes, mostly trying to live “under the radar,” which can compromise their ability to be of service to others by keeping them focusing too much of their energy on avoidance/survival. It can also be used as another “escape” from the 3D world. While I’m obviously not condoning the tax (theft) system, nor am I against those who feel they are drawn towards striving towards self-sustainability or living “off the grid” (quite the contrary), what I am pointing out is that we need to be cautious not to fall into the “3D revolutionary mindset trap” (trying to save the world), nor into reactionary black & white thinking and behavior.

As it is mentioned in various esoteric teachings, such as “Gnosis” by Boris Mouravieff:

“From his first steps on the track [way of access towards awakening – transcending the General Law/Hyperdimensional Matrix], man must apply the principle: ‘feed the crocodile so that we are not devoured.'”

In other words, sometimes we need to feed the “crocodiles” to keep them calm, i.e. play by the matrix “rules” to an extent in order to protect ourselves so we can continue with the Great Work and not draw unnecessary negative attention upon ourselves.

Overfocus on Psychological Work Without Spiritual Aspiration

When we focus on psychological work alone and don’t aspire to something higher beyond our ego-structure via a consistent spiritual practice, we can get “stuck in the mud” of the unconscious, constantly looking for more trauma in our lives and then engaging in never-ending “processing” to heal from it. We can also get addicted to our suffering because of identification with our “story,” forgetting that these wounds and traumas don’t define us. Psychotherapy also usually only uncovers childhood wounds and traumas in this lifetime (most often related to our parents) and the process “ends” there—but it doesn’t take into consideration spiritual/universal laws (like karma), ancestral, past life trauma, as well as agreements of entrapment with occult forces which could have resulted in entity attachments that we may have been carrying with us for lifetimes.

Having said that, we don’t necessarily need to engage in past life regressions either since the cumulation of every lifetime is happening within this present lifetime, and all previous lifetimes are therefore somatically accessible through the body of this present incarnation. We also have the power to reject/eject entities ourselves via healing/closing the entry point for these forces—which was often created through trauma. The most progressive psychotherapeutic works widen their perception of reality to include the multidimensional spiritual domain.

Psychological self-work can become an endless loop of rabbit hole-ing because there is always more to dig into—especially in light of hyperdimensional attack possibilities where thoughts/emotions are injected into us. There are also many instances where what Western Medicine would deem as a “mental illness” is merely a spiritual crisis (rather than a psychological pathology), and these identifications with “psychological issues/labels” and perceiving these “chemical imbalances in the brain” as a “life sentence” makes us identify with these states as “us”, rather than work to understand the hidden workings/spiritual components behind them.

Even worse, being stuck in these tunnel visions of psychology (especially when it comes to solely “treating” them with psychiatric medications and being subject to their myriad of side effects) can make things worse in the long run by killing our “soul”, so to speak, and cutting us off from our Essence; when the reality is that any crisis is simply part of the healing process and there is nothing “wrong” with it. While these medications can be a useful “band-aid” for a period in certain cases, they present no long term solution.

Through my own process and experiences dealing with severe depression, despair and suicidal tendencies in my early twenties; I realized that depression, anxiety, and many other “psychological issues” people are being labeled with are in fact a normal reaction to growing up in a society that is very much removed from nature and spirit. It’s a sign of a healthy “spiritual immune system” to reject the pathogen of cult-ure and influences of a pathological society. These “psychological issues” are not pathologies in the sense that mainstream culture/society interprets them, where it sees people from a purely biological perspective and then treats these “chemical imbalances” in the brain with pharmaceuticals or cognitive-behavioral approaches. Depression, for the most part, is a cry/call from the soul/spirit begging for attention. It’s a healthy response to the normalized pathology of the world we live in. As Krishnamurti said: “It’s no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Depression is, most often, a spiritual crisis; and it doesn’t get healed by focusing on and then treating the symptoms rather than the causes.

I also noticed and have experienced throughout my life that if you have faith and are sincere in your questioning and efforts to seek truth, no matter what it turns out to be or how much you suffer, the “universe” (Divine) will respond with help, support, and guidance in whatever form is necessary for you in that moment; whether it be through a book, a person, healer, or teacher; coming into one’s life at the perfect moment. That is also the true meaning of the esoteric phrase “Ask and you shall be given”. The “New Age” and Oprah-style “pop-spirituality” have distorted this idea into gaining more material fulfillment (ie: millions of dollars, a mansion, the perfect relationship, etc) which is based on the ego’s socially conditioned desires of what people believe will bring them happiness.

In fact, lots of popular self-help style books are based on adjusting a person to the workings of the matrix ideas of “success,” rather than helping them to become truly sovereign and transcend this matrix programming altogether. A lot of deeper esoteric truths have been distorted, diluted, corrupted or even left out entirely so it can be morphed into emotionally appealing and oversimplified “sales bits”; which we also see a lot in the so-called “New Age Movement.”

Getting into the body is a fundamental part of the Work as well, which means not getting caught up in the intellectual “analysis-paralysis” which many head-centric “top-down” psychotherapeutic focus upon. It is also essential to watch out for the victim-consciousness states that may come as a result of getting “stuck” and identifying with our story and trauma, which happens when we look to blame others for our circumstances and the way our lives have gone. We all have our own unique experiences to learn from in the process of awakening and our unique karmic situation was designed by the Divine exactly to facilitate this process within us. In the end, all there is are lessons for the purpose of soul evolution.

Spiritual/esoteric work aims at connecting us with our true Self, the soul. This is the essence of who we truly are. Our true Self/psychic being is the part of us that is untouched by all the trauma, wounds, or occult hostile forces that we may have been subjected to. It is our eternal Self; a pure expression of the Divine. Psychological work, when used wisely, will help us to clear the “vessel” within; so that we come more into contact with our Divine nature. This process transforms the conditioned wounded ego-personality into a clearer expression of Essence, bringing the psychic being to the front and not letting the lower self (with all its unconscious programs) run the show anymore.

But we need to make an effort to “self-remember” by engaging intentionally in spiritual work in order to facilitate this process of bringing forth our Essence, as well and both aspire and surrender to the Divine so we don’t get stuck or lost in the mud below (ie. constantly digging in the subconscious). Ultimately, the trap of doing psychological work alone is that it is mostly based on going back into the past; without realizing that our current state of (spiritual) evolution and the current state of man is only transitional—we are evolving towards a fuller expression of being as we are being pulled by the Divine Light from Above and into “the future.”

“I find it difficult to take these psychoanalysts at all seriously – yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. . . . They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities, but the foundation of these things is above and not below. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analyzing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms forever in the Light above.” – Sri Aurobindo “Here we touch upon the fundamental error of our modern psychology: it fails to understand anything because it searches below, in our evolutionary past. True, half the Secret may be there, but we still need the force above to open the door below. We were never meant to look behind, but ahead and above in the superconscious light, because it is our future, and only the future can explain and heal the past We appear to progress from below upward, from past to future, from night to conscious light, but this is just our small momentary understanding that obscures the whole, for otherwise we would see that it is not the past that impels us, but the future that draws us and the light above that gradually pervades our darkness – for how could darkness ever have created all that light? If we had been born out of darkness, we would end up only in darkness. “This is the eternal Tree with its roots above and its branches downward,” says the Katha Upanishad. (VI.I) We feel we are making great efforts to progress toward more understanding and greater knowledge; we have a sense of tension toward the future. But this is still our limited perspective. If we had a different perspective, we might see the superconscious Future trying to enter our present. And we would realize that our sense of effort is just the resistance put up by our denseness and darkness. The future does not move only from below upward, otherwise there would be no hope for the earth, as it would end up exploding in the sky from a supreme psychic tension, or falling back into darkness. The future moves also from above downward; it penetrates deeper and deeper into our mental fog, into our vital confusion, into the subconscious and unconscious night, until it illuminates everything, reveals everything, heals everything – and ultimately fulfills everything. Yet the deeper it goes, the greater the resistance – for this is the Iron Age, the time of the great Revolt and Peril – but also the time of Hope. At the supreme point where this Future touches the rock-bottom past, where this Light bursts into night’s nethermost level, God willing, we will find the secret of Death and of immortal Life. But if we look below and only below, we will find mud and only mud.” – Satprem

Overfocus on Activism and Fighting the Matrix Without Sincere Inner Work

This topic ties into the “Trap of the Revolutionary Mind” and the “Trap of Fighting Evil” which I have addressed in more depth in my essays/ebooks:

If we don’t engage in both inner psychological and spiritual work, our well-meaning efforts to fight the matrix, injustices, atrocities, and any activism will be reactionary and driven by unconscious impulses driven by our own wounding. We then easily fall into the trap of projecting our shadow and anything we have not healed within externally onto others in an “us vs. them” or “me against the world” mentality. These unconscious shadowy parts of ourselves are our blind spots; the unhealed traumas that we may carry are then also used by occult entities to tag into, manipulating us like puppets on strings by fueling our reactive behaviors and feeding off all the emotional “loosh” we create when we get triggered and then project those emotions outside of us.

Many people also tend to use activism as an avoidance to face themselves and easily fall into the “victim/saviour/persecutor” trap, blaming the system/matrix for their suffering/misery or becoming a “rescuer” whose ego feeds off the idea of “activism” to make them feel better about themselves (egoic self-importance). These reactionary behaviors are also based on a lack of knowledge of universal laws and how the matrix actually works through us and humanity on unseen levels. We can then also fall into the Trap of Identification and feeding into the Divide & Conquer agenda of the Matrix forces.

The Importance of Both Inner and Outer Work

While there are other imbalanced variations of the four points mentioned above, it all comes down to engaging in both inner and outer work. Inner work in this context relates to emotional, psychological, somatic, and spiritual work that helps us to get more in touch with who we truly are behind the layers of wounds, traumas, and social/cultural programming/conditioning. Ultimately this internal process is about Individualization and Embodiment. To be embodied doesn’t mean to simply be in “touch” with the physical body (like through paying attention to diet/exercise). Embodiment (from a spiritual/esoteric perspective) is the process of soul integration, connecting to one’s “higher self” and becoming a conscious vessel for spirit to work through our bodies; it relates to the alchemical marriage of the inner male and female, where Being and Doing become one.

Based on various esoteric teachings, the soul is something human beings need to develop or grow from a consciousness seed, and then we work to embody the fullness of our soul via spiritual/esoteric work. In the average person in today’s post-modern maze, the soul remains in an embryonic state and is thus not fully individualized. Until the soul has matured, one’s identity lies in the mechanical false personality and is open to manipulation on all levels. An embodied soul, on the other hand, becomes the seat of the real self’s creativity and dynamism, and the personality blossoms as an expression of one’s higher (immortal) identity, connected to spirit and the Divine within.

Outer work relates to taking care of our physical body, being a responsible adult with the practicalities of our lives, creating right livelihood, and being able to provide for oneself. It also entails learning about the world, the matrix, and understanding higher/universal/occult laws so you can see through appearances, deceptions, and distractions (while applying critical thinking and using your intuition) and hence can make wiser decisions that are aligned with Truth. Inner and outer work need to go hand-in-hand. The more that we are embodied and understand/apply universal and metaphysical higher laws, the more we become aligned with our vocation and soul purpose and have a more positive impact in the world and in our lives.

Laura and I have explored this topic in our 4th episode of the Cosmic Matrix podcast. We discussed spiritual integrity and the importance of engaging in a balance of both inner and outer work. In spiritual communities, this imbalance shows up in a variety of ways. For example, many well-meaning “truth seekers” tend towards being overly focused on the external world while lacking a balance of sincere inner work and embodiment. On the other side of the coin, there is also the New Age trap of too much “self-work” which often results in narcissistic tendencies; whereas people are overly focused on their internal experience without understanding the world around them. This can create an excessively solipsistic world view by taking a truth and distorting it into a lie like you see in the “You Create Your Reality” scene.

Furthermore, many people who call themselves “spiritual teachers” make no effort to understand the external forces that affect us; like the matrix, universal laws, and how occult forces manipulate humanity. Despite their well-meaning intentions, through their ignorance, they end up supporting a negative agenda and often even end up worshipping occult forces who disguise themselves as “positive” ones or they allow these forces to act through them by tagging into their own thirst for money/fame/power. Other topics addressed in this episode include the trap of ambition on the spiritual path and seeking fame and recognition (along with other ego temptations), the fear of speaking out and much more.

Aspiration and Surrender to The Divine

However, all the necessary inner work (relating to healing wounds, traumas, shadow work) and “external” work of intellectually understanding how the matrix operates (or any form of activism) is futile in the long run if it is not eventually matched with this sincere aspiration and surrender to the Divine. At the same time, if we are really sincere in our internal process and truth-seeking (within and without), we’ll inevitably ignite the divine spark within us (the psychic being), and the aspiration/surrender to the Divine will follow this natural call—when we are ready. This is not a rational decision but an embodied inner call and drive.

This necessity to surrender to the Divine has become more apparent to me as well via the emergence of something within me, a higher guidance, as I realize the illusion of control of my ego-personality and the illusion of personal will which often results in will-full doing (trying to “force” what “I” want into creation). I also sense the immense resistance my ego and lower nature puts up at times (which I wasn’t always aware of in the past or justified/rationalized away), including the occult hostile forces which try and interfere with the process—especially during leaps in consciousness. I truly understand now what Sri Aurobindo meant by saying, “This yoga is a battle”. It’s very humbling and this process has opened me up to deeper compassion; for myself as well as for others.

Over the past few years, I’ve gotten deeper into the work of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga. To be clear, for me, this is not about worshipping him like a “guru” or making a dogma of his teachings (which is more of a revelation.) It’s way beyond that. Anyone can verify this for him/herself when studying his work. I can’t possibly summarize here what he has done for humanity and the effect his work has had on me (and continues to have on me); which also resulted in profound inner realizations (and confirmed my own insights and experiences) on what “needs to be done” to anchor the Divine within. It’s all very humbling, and there is much work ahead.

Yet, “Truth is a Pathless Land” (as Krishnamurti said) which also goes back to the four points of holistic work and our individual lessons and process. Regardless of where we are at as individuals and what teachings or modalities we currently follow and work with, ultimately it’s about this surrender to the Divine—whatever that may mean for each individual.

Talking about the Divine and God is a tricky subject and most often a triggering one (especially for those who have had bad experiences with Catholicism and the church). In fact, when I was introduced to Sri Aurobindo’s work five years ago by a friend, I first rejected his work without even looking into it, simply because I got triggered by his name. It sounded to me like “just another Indian Guru” based on my aversion to any “guru” types, the western commercialization of India and distortion of yoga, along with the exposures of various pathological gurus.

It actually took another friend to give me his book “The Hidden Forces of Life” with quotes from Aurobindo’s work about occult forces to open my mind and pierce through my resistance (clearly the Divine was trying to reach me since all this was very synchronistic as several outside sources tried to introduce me to his work). Reading this book dissolved my previous judgment—which I can admit was based on ignorance, assumptions, and projections. As I started to learn more about his life and work, there was definitely a deep resonance; and once I began studying his (and the Mother’s) writings more deeply and I immersed myself in Integral Yoga.

For a brief overview of the work of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother watch THIS.

However, in the beginning, I also had trouble with a concept he mentioned often; this “surrender/aspiration to the Divine”. I also got triggered by the words Divine and God (side note: there are always lessons in anything that you get triggered by). I felt like I was giving my authority/sovereignty away to an external force/being; at least that’s the way I initially perceived it. My aversion to the word “God” was related to the historical abuse by corrupted dogmatic religions who have externalized this “God” figure into a punitive man in the sky. The word “surrender” also has a different meaning (from a spiritual perspective) to the way that the word is used in common English language, which is most often associated with defeat, passivity, capture, or even imprisonment.

Yet, deep down inside, I knew I had to work on my connection to God/the Divine. Something deeper within me was calling for it. I started to meditate daily with this increasing inner call to aspire and surrender to the Divine, engaging in prayer and stating “this is not about my will but Thy Will”, in order to align myself with the Divine Will of the descending higher Force. It’s not about what “I” want but my life is in service and only in service to the Divine. For a long time, I encountered a strong inner resistance opposing this surrender. Parts of me didn’t want to give up control. As I deepened my meditation practice, I realized that this resisting “voice” was not coming from my true Self, conscience, nor was it positive resistance/rejection of Falsehood, but it was clearly coming from my selfish ego that “wants what it wants” and which also lives in fear of not trusting life, the Divine, and can’t let go of control.

Even though I have had breakthroughs since then and experienced the Divine doing His work through me, I still need to keep reminding myself of this full surrender—every day—for there is still resistance, not only coming from ego, but from my unresolved wounds, conditioning, the lower nature of the vital, the physical body, and via thought injections of the occult anti-divine forces. It’s a constant practice of Aspiration – Rejection – Surrender:

“There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and difficult thing which is the aim of our endeavour, a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a supreme Grace from above that answers. But the supreme Grace will act only in the conditions of the Light and the Truth; it will not act in conditions laid upon it by the Falsehood and the Ignorance. For if it were to yield to the demands of the Falsehood, it would defeat its own purpose. These are the conditions of the Light and Truth, the sole conditions under which the highest Force will descend; and it is only the very highest supramental Force descending from above and opening from below that can victoriously handle the physical Nature and annihilate its difficulties . There must be a total and sincere surrender; there must be an exclusive self-opening to the divine Power; there must be a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and integral rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature. The surrender must be total and seize all the parts of the being. It is not enough that the psychic should respond and the higher mental accept or even the inner vital submit and the inner physical consciousness feel the influence. There must be in no part of the being, even the most external, anything that makes a reserve, anything that hides behind doubts, confusions and subterfuges, anything that revolts or refuses. If part of the being surrenders, but another part reserves itself, follows its own way or makes its own conditions, then each time that that happens, you are yourself pushing the divine Grace away from you. If behind your devotion and surrender you make a cover for your desires, egoistic demands and vital insistences, if you put these things in place of the true aspiration or mix them with it and try to impose them on the Divine Shakti, then it is idle to invoke the divine Grace to transform you. If you open yourself on one side or in one part to the Truth and on another side are constantly opening the gates to hostile forces, it is vain to expect that the divine Grace will abide with you. You must keep the temple clean if you wish to install there the living Presence. If each time the Power intervenes and brings in the Truth, you turn your back on it and call in again the falsehood that has been expelled, it is not the divine Grace that you must blame for failing you, but the falsity of your own will and the imperfection of your own surrender. If you call for the Truth and yet something in you chooses what is false, ignorant and undivine or even simply is unwilling to reject it altogether, then always you will be open to attack and the Grace will recede from you. Detect first what is false or obscure in you and persistently reject it, then alone can you rightly call for the divine Power to transform you. Do not imagine that truth and falsehood, light and darkness, surrender and selfishness can be allowed to dwell together in the house consecrated to the Divine. The transformation must be integral, and integral therefore the rejection of all that withstands it. Reject the false notion that the divine Power will do and is bound to do everything for you at your demand and even though you do not satisfy the conditions laid down by the Supreme. Make your surrender true and complete, then only will all else be done for you. Reject too the false and indolent expectation that the divine Power will do even the surrender for you. The Supreme demands your surrender to her, but does not impose it: you are free at every moment, till the irrevocable transformation comes, to deny and to reject the Divine or to recall your self-giving, if you are willing to suffer the spiritual consequence. Your surrender must be self-made and free; it must be the surrender of a living being, not of an inert automaton or mechanical tool. An inert passivity is constantly confused with the real surrender, but out of an inert passivity nothing true and powerful can come. It is the inert passivity of physical Nature that leaves it at the mercy of every obscure or undivine influence. A glad and strong and helpful submission is demanded to the working of the Divine Force, the obedience of the illumined disciple of the Truth, of the inner Warrior who fights against obscurity and falsehood, of the faithful servant of the Divine. This is the true attitude and only those who can take and keep it, preserve a faith unshaken by disappointments and difficulties and shall pass through the ordeal to the supreme victory and the great transmutation.” – Sri Aurobindo

I also noticed that this surrender to the Divine is the crucial aspect missing in most people that are engaged in self-work and truth-seeking—as it was in myself for many years. For some people, self-work can turn into an isolating activity of complete self-absorption or in an act of trying to escape the world. Even though at times, we may need to exclusively focus on different areas in our lives, it all goes back to the four points of holistic self-work. On the other side of the coin, there are many activists and truth-seekers who are overly focused on fighting/exposing the dark forces in the world without any spiritual foundation or engaging in any sincere inner self-work.

Finding the balance between both inner and outer work, fully embracing life and surrendering to the Divine is the highest form of spiritual activism, and doing so will naturally assist humanity in anchoring higher levels of consciousness onto this planet. This process requires inner sincerity and outward action in alignment with Divine Will, a powerful force. We are all transducers of this Divine Force, each in our own individualized way.

“The process of the integral Yoga has three stages, not indeed sharply distinguished or separate, but in a certain measure successive. There must be, first, the effort towards at least an initial and enabling self-transcendence and contact with the Divine; next, the reception of that which transcends, that with which we have gained communion, into ourselves for the transformation of our whole conscious being; last, the utilisation of our transformed humanity as a divine centre in the world. So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujga, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the Sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga. In the end his own will and force become one with the higher Power; he merges them in the divine Will and its transcendent and universal Force. He finds it thenceforward presiding over the necessary transformation of his mental, vital and physical being with an impartial wisdom and provident effectivity of which the eager and interested ego is not capable. It is when this identification and this self-merging are complete that the divine centre in the world is ready. Purified, liberated, plastic, illumined, it can begin to serve as a means for the direct action of a supreme Power in the larger Yoga of humanity or superhumanity, of the earth’s spiritual progression or its transformation.” – Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga

Surrender, from a spiritual perspective, means to fully trust life. There is nor error in creation/reality, and there is a teaching function in every aspect of our lives. It is all guiding us closer to the Divine and our true Self. This implies to see through the appearances of reality and not getting caught up in shadow projections and victim/blame consciousness.

“In spirituality, we constantly meet this concept of “surrender”. Meaning, to be truly devoted to spiritual work, the divine asks us to completely surrender our sense of who we are (our small ego self) to a higher power, to see that we are mere instruments of that power. Yet, to surrender we have to learn to trust. We have to learn to trust reality completely. This does not mean to trust our reactions to reality, which are another thing altogether. Our reactions to reality -could- be telling us the opposite of what is true – because these responses are rooted in trauma. Many of our strong emotional reactions are traumatic responses that were triggered by the present moment. The present moment is just the messenger. These responses disable us from a wide range of reactions available. They keep us limited and stuck. It also doesn’t mean to trust reality as it appears, for things are not always what they seem on the surface. Trusting reality means trusting that exactly what is happening in your life is exactly what is supposed to be happening. No matter how bad it is. To trust reality is to trust God. To recognize that there is no error in creation. That the divine has delivered you exactly the experience you need in this very moment. This does not mean to stay in an abusive relationship or situation. Not at all.

This is actually an invitation – to learn your lessons. By trusting that the circumstances of your life exist exactly for your evolution.

This means that -everything- in your life, no matter how dark, no matter how messed up, it also has a divine purpose. The catch is that only by trusting the reality of your direct life experience can you discover what its purpose is. How much you trust reality is equal to how much you are capable of learning. You are finally participating in your own unique karmic situation. You are not just facing life – you are embracing it. How much do you trust reality?

How much are you willing to surrender?” – Laura Matsue

What is The Divine?

This inevitable question often comes up: “what is the Divine?”, and who is the “I” that needs to surrender to it? It all becomes very paradoxical as we’re confronted with the limitation of language since “the Tao that can be named is not the Tao” (as it is said in the Zen tradition). The Divine/God is nothing external outside of us, and it is certainly not some guy with a beard in the Sky who judges you based on the misinterpretations of Sacred knowledge that the old dogmatic monotheistic religions are centered upon. It is far beyond any mental concepts and neither the left-brain “thinking” mind nor the egoic mind cannot come close to perceiving it, as it can only be understood through direct (inner) experience. “God” can only be truly felt when the mind is silent (which is very uncommon for most people). I’ve already written about this topic in the section “What does it mean to be “Awake”?” in my essay The Perilous Path Towards Awakening where I also mentioned some signs that can show how you are becoming more aligned with the Divine:

Ambition, vital desires (based on wounds/conditioning/lower nature), vanity, the need for attention – to be “liked” or “desired”, the notion and pressure to “become” something/someone, any comparison/competition with others, or even “dislike” of others all fall slowly away, as do any triggers and reactive behaviors.

A deep and embodied sense of peace and trust, of faith and “being taken care of” (as in trusting the flow of life), knowing that any challenge that will come up serves as a deeper lesson for the purpose of a true awakening.

It is the end of fear and blame, the death of ego-identification, and re-birth of the real “I AM” – embodied spirit (soul individualization) – expressing itself uniquely through “you”, connected to all that is.

Will-full doing dissipates, to be replaced by an embodied responding to what is – and what life brings – that is uniquely tuned to your soul lessons and talents; it guides you from an embodied inner place without expectations and attachment to outcome.

Goal setting and ambition are replaced by a quiet aspiration with intentions coming from a higher guidance but without expectations or need to control.

Making choices and decisions don’t stem from a thought process anymore or any head-centric analysis of “should” or “shouldn’t”, but emerge from a gut-level of nonverbal intuitive knowing, deeply tuned in with your soul and the Divine.

Life becomes like a dance in the river of life as we don’t fight the current anymore. This is often described as being in the “zone”, a state where we are locked into the rhythm of life (Tao) and completely aligned with Divine Will. Contrary to popular belief, this awakened state is not a constant feeling of “bliss” or ecstasy (even though there can be peak experiences like that), nor is it a “feeling” of love or happiness. It really transcends anything we usually experience in ordinary consciousness and is not necessarily related to any particular emotion or feeling. Ultimately it transcends the duality of pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering—as it is a state of inner peace.

There is deeper, silent, contentment, a grounded calmness, a sense of peace and joy, one which is not dependant on any external circumstances or occurrences. It is a sense of slowing down and simplifying. It’s a place of true freedom. Thoughts may still come and try to attach themselves, but it becomes easier to detach from them; we can effortlessly release ourselves from believing in these passing thoughts and we no longer identify with them. This sense of detachment is much different from more common forms of dissociation, like escaping into the intellect or going out of body, but it is an embodied recognition of one’s true nature in contrast to the illusion of thought (and who we “think” we are).

One recognizes that the mind is just a tool, a servant; not be looked upon but also not to be treated as the dominant master/guide of our existence. It’s not about demonizing the intellect but illuminating it with wisdom, for it needs to go through its own transmutation process to become an instrument for the Divine in order to access the higher knowledge (Gnosis) that is available for us—beyond the five senses. We can also still “use” it in practical ways to live out our daily routines, since we can’t nor is it a good idea to just “check out” of our existence here on Earth; on the contrary, we are more involved with reality—more embodied and fully-embracing of life—and whatever this dance may bring, we are in full conscious participation with the rhythms of life, we are active instruments of this divine play (“Lila”); without attachment to any outcome or any will-full doing.

Laura and I have also explored the question “What is Your Relationship to The Divine?” in this podcast:

Below are some excellent insights by Adyashanti (linked video clips) on the limitation/illusion of personal will and the reluctance of the ego to truly surrender to the Divine and letting go of control because it is stuck in this mode of “I want this, I’m afraid of this, I don’t want this, I’m attached to this, etc.”, essentially trapped and identified by thoughts, stuck to grasping to them with either hope or fear.

It also relates to the human drive to succeed and “be something” by constantly doing something, having something, etc. This is what Adyashanti calls the “personal will”. “When I get the right job, car, have enough money, find the right relationship, etc., only THEN everything will be alright.”

Even in our spiritual life, that same egoic personal will can “hijack” spiritual aspirations: “When I have attained peace, find the bliss, master the pose, have healed everything, etc… THEN I’ll be (insert your own pay-off here) satisfied, happy, fulfilled, enlightened, self-realized.” Our egoic nature yearns to grasp onto its own agenda and tries to take control of the process.

That’s why true surrender is so hard because the egoic “I” wants what it wants and resists letting go of control. In most of us, it is so habitual, mechanical and even so “normal” that we can’t see this deception because we are so identified with and attached to who we think we are and our desires. We are often even attached to suffering. Adyashanti makes an excellent point that any effort from personal will trying to escape suffering and samsara (you can also see it in light of trying to escape the Matrix) will get you even more stuck in suffering (the Matrix). The only way out is a truly total surrender; which is frightening to the egoic mind as it resists it this process of necessary disillusionment—which is what leads to true freedom.

The Importance of Meditation and Stilling the Mind

For most of us, we live our lives on the surface of the mind, the outer superficial consciousness of our Being. We do this by constantly being engaged with our minds, keeping them always in thought and pre-occupying ourselves by the “doing” that accompany these thoughts and their nearly endless desires. What most people know as “relaxation” is often still a state where their mind is engaged in the “doing” of something; be it watching movies, browsing the internet, reading, listening to music, etc. To some extent, we are always engaged with something. Even at night, we often don’t truly rest but still are active in Dreamtime.

The Divine within us, the psychic Being, our true Self is behind all thought and mental chatter, our identifications with our thoughts, and the external distractions that surround us. Every spiritual/esoteric tradition has emphasized this truth. For most of us on the spiritual path, this is nothing new. Yet we still get distracted because stilling the mind is not something that happens easily. In fact, even when we attempt to still the mind through meditation the first barrier we often will notice is our own active resistance against doing so. This is because our ego is terrified of this inner silence as it experiences it as a type of “death” to its fixed sense of reality and concepts that make who it thinks it is up. Yet, stilling the mind is the prerequisite to come in touch with who we truly are, the real “I.” This real “I” has nothing to do with the ego-personality we identify with or the image we have of ourselves and that we portray to the outside world.

The first step to connect with the Divine/true Self is related to the esoteric self-inquiry and asking this eternal question: ”Who am I ?” In other words, it begins our quest to “Know Thyself.” The more sincere you are with this internal inquiry (which is often an ongoing process), the more you will realize that “your” thoughts, feelings, desires, wants, needs, etc. are not your own but have been conditioned or inserted “externally”. The “I” who you think you are (and identify with) is made up of these programs, memories, biological drives, wounds, traumas, and experiences (“good” and “bad”); accumulated over lifetimes, embedded into your DNA ancestrally, and influenced by the collective/environmental consciousness (humans/culture/society/places, etc.).

“In a certain sense, we are nothing but a complex mass of mental, nervous and physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations – an amalgam of many small self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations.” – Sri Aurobindo

At the same time, we are also influenced by the forces of nature and conscious forces from the higher and lower realms. We are subjected to the suggestions of occult hostile forces of the vital world, but we also receive insights, creative and inspirational impulses from Spirit, the Higher Self and divine forces which also manifest as thoughts. Creative, sensitive people, writers, artists, and musicians get their ideas from these lower/higher realms.

We all receive a mixture of these impressions/thoughts from the whole range of lower to the higher realm depending on many factors. Based on our level of Being, our intentions and aspirations in life can either be guided from the lower nature or we can choose to align them with higher ideals. The direction we bring out awareness towards determines which realm we tune into. As long as we live on the surface of the ego-personality, the majority of this will be unconscious and mechanical.

(On a side note, some people (left-hand path practitioners, Ritual Magick Occultists, Wiccans, and even certain New Age rituals) understand aspects of these laws when working in the metaphysical realm, and then make conscious efforts to connect with the forces of the lower vital world in order to gain more power or to forcefully “manifest desires,” resulting in entrapments of agreement. It’s the “Faustian Pact with the Devil.”)

But none of the impressions, ideas, and thoughts we have are “ours”—even though the ego loves to identify with them. We’re also not able to distinguish where these thoughts/impressions come from as long as we are identified with them and act on them mechanically—until we establish the Inner Witness, connected to the true Self which lies deep inside behind this outer crust. This Self is behind all thought and our grasping and identification with them.

“Constantly and unknowingly, we receive influences and inspirations from higher, superconscious regions, which express themselves inside us as ideas, ideals, aspirations, or works of art; they secretly mold our life, our future. Similarly, we constantly and unknowingly receive vital and subtle-physical vibrations, which determine our emotional life and relationship with the world every moment of the day. We are enclosed in an individual, personal body only through a stubborn visual delusion; in fact, we are porous throughout and bathe in universal forces, like an anemone in the sea.[…] Each person will receive according to his or her capacity and needs or particular aspiration. All the quarrels between materialists and religious men, between philosophers and poets and painters and musicians, are the childish games of an incipient humanity in which each one wants to fit everyone else into his own mold. When one reaches the luminous Truth, one sees that It can contain all without conflict, and that everyone is Its child: the mystic receives the joy of his beloved One, the poet receives poetic joy, the mathematician mathematical joy, and the painter receives colored revelations — all spiritual joys. However “clear austerity” remains a powerful protection, for unfortunately not everyone has the capacity to rise to the high regions where the forces are pure; it is far easier to open oneself at the vital level, which is the world of the great Force of Life and desires and passions (well known to mediums and occultists); where the lower [hostile] forces can readily take on divine appearances with dazzling colors, or frightening forms. If the seeker is pure, he will see through the hoax either way, and his little psychic light will dissolve all the threats and all the gaudy mirages of the vital melodrama.” – Satprem, Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure of Consciousness

Who is the “I” that is thinking? It all gets a bit paradoxical to ask yourself this question. If you are not who you “think” you are; your thoughts, your name, your job, your ideas, what other people think of you, then who are you—really? The answer can be discovered only through direct experience. Therefore, a consistent meditation practice that helps to still the mind is an integral part of answering this question. This practice slows down the way we relate to life, so that we stop acting/thinking/feeling mechanically, and become more internally oriented and embodied, learning to relate to the world from the depth of this inner experience.

The kingdom and the gateway to the Divine is within ourselves if we can only still the mind for long enough to experience the total peace of this experience of emptiness. The deeper you go within, the more “you” will see and experience that all thoughts literally do come from the “outside”, while the inner witness just observes them and does not identify with any of them. You realize that the mind is only a receiving station for this information and there is no “you” generating any thoughts.

In the silence of the mind we connect with who we truly are, a whole new reality opens up. We find ourselves in tune with a descending higher force (the Divine) and the innermost being within us (the psychic being) which is guiding us and doing Spirit’s work through “us.” We then also perceive the occult anti-divine forces of the vital worlds; which try to inject us with thoughts, temptations, and vital desires of the lower nature, all of which need to be rejected so that we may keep ourselves in alignment with these Divine realms.

This process of deep self-inquiry is certainly not a pleasant one at first. If you succeed in stilling the mind for long enough, you’ll first come face to face with what Gurdjieff called “the horror of the situation”. You will realize your mechanical, programmed behaviors/thinking and identification with any thought, the lies you tell yourself, the resistance of your ego, the buffers you have created, the illusion of free “personal will”, and that most of your “doing” are mechanical reactions based on unconscious drives stemming from the lower nature, social programming, wounding and trauma, occult interferences, as well as just habitual responses based on your conditioned preferences (likes/dislikes).

If you are sincere, this internal process of deep self-inquiry often time will result in disillusionment where you must first come face to face with your “nothingness” (which is how the ego perceives emptiness). Coming in tune with this emptiness is the necessary threshold to cross before you can be “reborn” in your true Self, for the true self is to be found only in this non-local experience of space. And once we establish Inner Silence, we can then consciously choose to accept or reject specific thoughts and vibrations.

We then realize on an embodied experiential level that we are just transducers of higher energies, forces, and beings working through us. We recognize that there is no separation between us and the world around us, that those forces of nature merely flow through us. We experience varying forces somatically but it is our resistance/identification to these experiences that keep us trapped within their limited scope of reality.

When we are experiencing life as the true self there is no feeling, emotion, or thought we attach to because none of that is us. The true self does not grasp or hold onto any of these passing states. Its constant state is one of true freedom.

It all comes down what we align ourselves with based on how much we have cleared within and our aspiration/surrender to the Divine Force as embodied frequency anchors of Divine Will.

“In this silent transparency, we will soon make another discovery, of capital importance in its implications. We will notice that not only do other people’s thoughts come to us from the outside, but our own thoughts, too, come from outside. Once we are sufficiently transparent we will be able to feel, in the motionless silence of the mind, little swirling eddies coming into contact with our atmosphere, like faint little vibrations drawing our attention; if we pay closer attention in order to “see” what they are, that is, if we let one of these little swirls enter us, we suddenly find ourselves “thinking” of something. What we had felt at the periphery of our being was a thought in its pure form, or rather a mental vibration before it enters us and comes to the surface of our being clad in a personal form, enabling us to claim: “This is my thought”. ‘Where is the I in you that can create all that?’ Mother used to ask. It is just that the process is not perceptible to the ordinary man, firstly, because he lives in constant tumult, and secondly because the process through which vibrations are appropriated is almost instantaneous and automatic. Through his education and environment, a person becomes accustomed to selecting from the Universal Mind a given, narrow range of vibrations with which he has a particular affinity. For the rest of his life he will pick up the same wavelength, repeating the same vibratory mode in more or less high-sounding words and with more or less innovative turns of phrase; he will spin around in a cage, the illusion of progress being given only by a greater or lesser extent and sparkling range of vocabulary used. Once the seeker has seen that his thoughts come from outside, and after he has repeated this experience hundreds of times, he will hold the key to the true mastery of the mind. For while it is difficult to get rid of a thought we believe to be ours, once it has become entrenched in us, it is easy to reject the same thought when we see it coming from the outside. Once we master silence, we necessarily master the mental world, because instead of perpetually picking up the same wavelength, we can run through the whole range of wavelengths and choose or reject as we please.[…] If we follow [a discipline for mental silence], and remain perfectly transparent, we will soon notice that not only mental vibrations come from outside before entering our centers, but everything comes from outside: the vibrations of desire, of joy, of will, etc. From top to bottom, our being is a receiving station: Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us. If we say: “I think, therefore I am,” or “I feel, therefore I am,” or “I want, therefore I am,” we are like a child who believes that the disc jockey or the orchestra is hidden in the radio set and that TV is a thinking medium. Indeed, none of these I’s is ourselves, nor do they belong to us, for their music is universal. ” – Satprem, ibid

Considering the vast majority of humans live on the surface consciousness, driven by unconscious impulses, wounds, traumas, conditioning, and identified with every thought that arises; we can see how easily we can be controlled/manipulated by the occult hostile forces tagging into our blindspots and lower nature of the vital via temptations appealing to ego or via identification with particular groups and labels (political, religious, cultural, etc) by feeding the Divide & Conquer frequency, pitting humans against humans and constantly engaged in a play of separation. This is how the matrix works, the battle of Dark vs. Light is through us as we are the expression of higher forces and beings influencing us. It’s like Joseph Campbell said, “All the Gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.”

The more we engage in the Great Work to come in alignment with our true Self and the Divine, the more we’ll have a positive impact on the world and in our lives because we will be guided by Truth. By transforming ourselves we transform the world we create. Conversely, the more we identify with our personality and ignore our shadow, wounding, and traumas and are only focused externally; projecting on the outside world by falling into victim/blame traps, the easier we can be used by the anti-divine (asuric) forces for their agenda—without us even being aware of it.

“Always indeed it is the higher Power that acts. Our sense of personal effort and aspiration comes from the attempt of the egoistic mind to identify itself in a wrong and imperfect way with the workings of the divine Force. It persists in applying to experience on a supernormal plane the ordinary terms of mentality which it applies to its normal experiences in the world. In the world we act with the sense of egoism; we claim the universal forces that work in us as our own; we claim as the effect of our personal will, wisdom, force, virtue the selective, formative, progressive action of the Transcendent in this frame of mind, life and body. Enlightenment brings to us the knowledge that the ego is only an instrument; we begin to perceive and feel that these things are our own in the sense that they belong to our supreme and integral Self, one with the Transcendent, not to the instrumental ego. Our limitations and distortions are our contribution to the working; the true power in it is the Divine’s. When the human ego realises that its will is a tool, its wisdom ignorance and childishness, its power an infant’s groping, its virtue a pretentious impurity, and learns to trust itself to that which transcends it, that is its salvation. The apparent freedom and self-assertion of our personal being to which we are so profoundly attached, conceal a most pitiable subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in universal Nature. The self-abnegation of the ego in the Divine is its self-fulfillment; its surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation from bonds and limits and its perfect freedom.[…] Behind this petty instrumental action of the human will there is something vast and powerful and eternal that oversees the trend of the inclination and presses on the turn of the will. There is a total Truth in Nature greater than our individual choice. This apparently self-acting mechanism of Nature conceals an immanent divine Will that compels and guides it and shapes its purposes. But you cannot feel or know that Will while you are shut up in your narrow cell of personality, blinded and chained to your viewpoint of the ego and its desires. For you can wholly respond to it only when you are impersonalized [embodied] by knowledge and widened to see all things in the self and in God and the self and God in all things. The state of ignorance in which you believe that you are the doer of your acts persists so long as it is necessary for your development; but as soon as you are capable of passing into a higher condition, you begin to see that you are an instrument of the one consciousness; you take a step upward and you rise to a higher conscious level.” – Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga

Active Meditation and Self-Remembering

However, a passive meditation practice alone, while essential, is still not enough. We can easily use meditation as a type of medication, using it to escape from life and (spiritually) bypass relating to our lives directly. It’s relatively easier to find this stillness in isolation, at meditation retreats, at a monastery/ashram, in nature or on your meditation pillow at home. Essentially, we need to stay connected to this inner stillness and to the truth of our Being in our everyday life; in any circumstances and place. By anchoring the Divine within, we see the Divine in All. We then realize that the ego we used to identify with is only an instrument, in service to the Divine—doing His work through us.

“But exercises of meditation are not the true solution to the problem (though they may be necessary at the beginning to provide an initial momentum), because even if we achieve a relative silence, the moment we set foot outside our room or retreat, we fall right back into the usual turmoil as well as into the familiar separation between inner a