Paradigm Shift 1: The Real vs the Unreal: It is all One

It is very difficult to communicate the reality of the spiritual path to a new initiate. The first block to overcome is one of expanding an individual’s horizons. As a teacher once said to me, “The problem is to get your listener to realize that you are telling them something they haven’t heard before”.  It is very difficult to change someone’s paradigm, their basic assumptions about reality, especially the ones they’ve held since they were children. But that is what is necessary, even inevitable if you are a serious adept.

The root of the problem is that we will most often take what we hear and fit it into our present belief structure, whatever that may be, often so smoothly that we aren’t aware that there are much greater depths to what we are being told.  We miss a great deal because of that. This situation is often exacerbated by the fact that our lower selves don’t want us to become aware of a deeper understanding because the mask is threatened by spiritual growth. It is a conundrum only overcome when we, ourselves, are no longer satisfied with our present paradigm – when we come to a point where our inner self discovers that the paradigm that we have no longer rings true. At that point it becomes possible to see beyond it and to open ourselves to a deeper understanding of the path.  That doesn’t mean it will happen automatically but that is a point in our lives where it becomes possible.

               When we start out on the path of devotion we tend to take all the new teaching we hear and fit them into the structure of beliefs we already hold. In some ways these beliefs form the boundaries of our imagination even if that means losing important contours of the teaching, the subtler concepts and ideas, i. e. which makes those teachings worth hearing. We can lose what makes the new teaching life changing. However, it is the life changing elements of the teachings that are the important parts because it is that information that stretches us into new paradigms, that breaks up our internal dogma. And we need the new approaches which will breakup, that can stretch, can bring to life when we finally embark upon our spiritual path consciously to progress upwards on the journey. Prior to that our momentum is mostly unconscious and, therefore, not really committed. Once our commitment becomes conscious, becomes the focus of our lives, the paradigm shift looms in our future whether we know it or not. With some it happens almost immediately. It has taken a good deal of time with me and the process isn't done.

I recall sitting doing my prayers one day and I suddenly became aware that the being that I was praying to was real. I don’t mean that I had not believed in God previously. I had. But in that moment, He became very real to me personally. I finally experienced the reality that was Him and I knew that He was listening..., to me..., personally. This experience extended to other etheric beings, what Christians would call the saints, easterners would call other Gods and I call Ascended Masters. In addition, I became aware of the presence of angels as well.  I was aware as I was speaking that there were those who were actively listening. It was as though I was suddenly made aware that I was blind and there were those in the room with me that I couldn’t see but who were as real to me as anyone with whom I shared the physical plane.

               My paradigm shift involved the perception of our physical plane as a holodeck, where the real world is hidden from those who are on the deck by our five senses. But that is only one level of what I mean and a simplistic one at that.  It makes this sound like science fiction and that is not at all what I mean.  There is also a point where one realizes that everything is connected. Everything is one. That makes sense, of course, if you consider that all the universe is God. It all is of one source, one cohesive personality, one consciousness. If you can see it that way then it becomes self-evident that it would all be one, connected, unified. This perception, while it can be understood intellectually, isn’t real to you until it becomes part of your experience. It becomes more than a part of the way you view the world. It becomes a part of how you experience the world.

With real commitment we begin to realize just how extensive, how all encompassing, how all pervasive the spiritual universe actually is. We discover that the physical universe is only a small part of what exists and isn’t even the most real. And that is a discovery that takes, (and causes), a real change of perspective.

               One thing that I am NOT talking about is an emotional conversion. Often, I hear of someone converted to this or that religion, sect or whatever. Sometimes this is a positive life experience. But sometimes what has happened is that they have simply gotten a new set of emotions and they misinterpret that as having walked the whole of the path up the mountain in one experience. That can, indeed, happen but it isn’t an experience based in the emotions and it is, indeed, a rare occurrence.

               Because of the necessity of changing our paradigm we often spend a good amount of time on the path before we really incorporate the path into our lives.  But here is the bottom line, what I would like you to take away from this particular blog: the physical plane is not home.   You tend to perceive it that way because this is where you are and all that you remember but the etheric realm exists all around you all the time and is more real that the physical plane.  So it would be wise to stop making all of your assumptions based on the primacy of the physical plane.  A whole new, larger understanding awaits.