ANDINA'S BLOG
Changing The Narrative Of Our Lives
We are living at a time where many are reviewing their lives and place in the world.
Although sometimes very challenging, this also brings with it an opportunity to explore a number of narratives that are currently shaping the world as we know it.
Business as Usual
One narrative is that of ‘Business as Usual’ which is enthusiastically supported by governments and public media, and which promotes global corporate capitalism and the industrial growth economy, both of which underpin much of the challenges facing us today.
The Great Unravelling
Another narrative is that of ’The Great Unraveling’, the natural result of ‘Business as Usual’ when it reaches beyond what is sustainable or can be propped up. Ecological, biological and societal systems cease to be able to maintain the ever-increasing demands upon them and begin to falter and crumble.
The Great Transition
The next, and newest, narrative is that of transition, moving away from limitless growth and the subsequent collapse of living systems, and instead moving towards a regenerative, and actually life-sustaining, culture.
Great transitions are not new to us as a species and have spanned all of our history. Where once our ancestors lived underwater we made the massive transformation to walking on land and breathing air. More recently we have been through immense societal transitions including the agricultural revolution around 10,000 years ago and the industrial revolution a few hundred years ago.
In all cases, a radical transformation took place in how we lived as well as our relationship with the planet. Today our challenge is to survive the first two narratives in order to bring in the third narrative, a truly humane world for all.
Looking Deeply
To do this demands something special from us if we don’t want to revert to more of the same.
We are going to need to get to the underlying roots of what made the first two narratives even possible.
This is not an either/or position. We will need to do work to change the external world - after all as who wouldn’t want to help make sure that everyone has clean water to drink, that thousands of animal species are not driven to extinction, that food is uncontaminated by toxins and that climate disruption is reigned in, but to stop there, at merely the visible and surface level, means that the underlying causes can still remain.
People who tend gardens know that the health of a plant depends on the health of its roots since it is these that nourish the plant’s life.
For our successful transition into a new future not only do we need to address what is happening on the surface, but also to look deeper into the roots of this because, like a plant unfurls from it’s roots, the society we are living emerges from the root of how we see ourselves, each other and the planet.
Separation
What we find when we look into the roots of our being are still predominantly based in an underlying sense of separation, separation from each other, and separation from all life. It is this sense of separation that brings with it a yearning for completion through more goods, more production, more shoes, more Facebook likes, anything to fill the internal sense of incompletion.
The sense of separation and wanting more also allows for the treatment of people and the planet as ‘other’ and therefore more easily ripe for plundering to try and fill the void.
Integration
However the narrative of separation is not the only one and for thousands of years there have been teachers around the world who have consistently pointed out that rather than this sense of separation being the full picture, our fundamental nature is actually a unified wholeness.
In addition to describing that this consciousness exists, many also share how it is possible to discover our divine nature directly for ourselves, sometimes called awakening into spiritual enlightenment or nondual awareness.
However this profound wisdom has been, until recently, marginalized as something interesting but somehow other worldly and therefore not much to do with real life or the healing of ourselves or the planet.
This is a really common mis-interpretation, and deep misunderstanding, of the nature of awakening fully into the transcendent.
Awakening
Awakening into our underlying and unified true nature is to at last open into our wholeness.
This escalates the healing of our sense of separation and transforms our inner being from rooted in the sense of separation to rooted in divine unity - from which the blossoming of ourselves and a healing and regeneration of our world finally becomes actually possible.
More than ever we now need to reclaim our divine nature, not through scriptures, dogma, belief, concepts or wishful thinking, but rather through the authentic experience of the consciousness that is beyond everything that we have previously known ourselves to be.
Want to know more?
What I am describing is entirely experiential so what you can do is to make time and energy to either start, or deepen, your exploration of your own spiritual awakening.
Nowadays new, and very direct, ways of awakening are coming online and this could be as a response to the environmental and humanitarian crises we are now facing, but it might equally be that it is simply emerging from the shadows more clearly and coming to the forefront of our awareness as part of our human evolution.
Either way, spiritual enlightenment is now becoming more accessible for everyone, and YouTube and Podcasts have free teachings available, and there are numerous books and courses.
Whatever way you choose to approach what is beyond the surface appearances, a useful stance is one of radical openness to the unknown
November 18th, 2020
What Awakening Will Mean For Us
We are experiencing the dying off of our old ways, and the birth pangs of a new type of human being.
Upgrades are taking place in our relationships with each other as the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements demonstrate, as well as in our relationship with the planet as shown by the worldwide response to Greta Thunberg’s Schoolstrike and Extinction Rebellion’s rallies to highlight, and transform, our response to the climate disruption we are all facing.
These are all symptoms of a deeper, and more far-reaching, change - the emergence of a new type of human.
This is a person for whom individuality, relationships, community, ecology and spirituality are understood to be inextricably linked together as a unified whole.
Ahead of us is a future where our underlying spiritual unity is coming more and more to the forefront of our awareness, no longer as dogma, wish or belief, but through the direct transcendent awakening beyond any separation.
As this awakening happens it will begin to naturally reshape all our lives for the better, including our financial, political, religious, health, farming, work and education systems.
This is because it will become abundantly clear that. We. Are. One
As we open directly into our mystical true nature and see the face of the sacred in each of us, and in everything, life on the planet will never be the same again
October 2020
Where the Individual Rubber meets the Infinite Road
Many people are beginning to question the old narratives about life and wonder if there is more to their lives than merely going along with what they have been told.
The old stories would probably have hung on a bit longer if we had not had to stop ignoring the impact of them on the environment where the repercussions have simply become so great that a line is now being drawn.
Many are also intuiting that there must be more to life the simply eating, sleeping, working, watching television and taking holidays. Below the surface of our lives we feel a vibration that calls from our very depths….calls us to look beyond our everyday life, calls us to discover who, and what we really are, and the true purpose of our life…it calls us to awaken.
Most people hear the call to awaken more than once before realisation gradually dawns that, despite what we have been raised to believe the answers to life’s deepest questions and longings are not to be found in earning more money, a new partner, a thinner waistline, a better job, updating our IT, remodelling our home or upgrading to a new car.
By the time we realize this, our quest for answers has actually been underway for some time, we have just been looking in the wrong place, been looking outside of ourselves for the answers when what we really need is to turn our focus and seek within….where discover something way more profound than merely everyday life, we discover that we are each a point where the rubber meets the road, where the divine individual meets the sacred infinite.
June 7th, 2020
Spiritual Enlightenment ~ For Everyone
As we grow up we learn about who we are by watching and listening to other people, in the same way as we learn a language.
I don’t know either Mandarin or Portuguese because I was raised in an English speaking household and saw and heard people speaking that particular language.
We naturally take on the culture and customs we are raised in, and someone else born and raised in Japan will see, hear and learn that one.
In exactly the same way as we learn a language, we also learn about who we are, and what our life is about, as we watch and listen to the people around us.
Currently, most people see and hear very little about direct Spiritual Awakening other than in stories about people such as Jesus Christ, the Buddha, the prophet Mohammed or Lao Tzu, all beings who, in the distant past, had such a direct experience.
There are currently few cultural messages that make it possible for you to think that Enlightenment is for you, right here and now.
If you have any doubts about this, ask yourself how do you actually know that Enlightenment is not your natural state?
If your answer is that it just isn’t, then check these out:
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Do you have a belief that you are not good enough for such a profound awakening?
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Do you think that it is somehow wrong, or even maybe, arrogant to believe that you could awaken into our sacred source?
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Does it maybe seem unthinkable?
If your answer is yes to any of the above, then you are living out an old narrative that you were taught at the same time as you learned language, one based on a deep misunderstanding of who you really are.
You don’t actually need to be limited by your upbringing, these are new times with an updated narrative - that direct spiritual enlightenment is in fact your natural birthright.
June 3rd, 2020
Awakening Directly Into The Infinite ~ Why It Matters Now
We are experiencing the dying off of our old ways, and the birth pangs of a new type of human being.
Upgrades are taking place in our relationships with each other as the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements demonstrate, as well as in our relationship with the planet as shown by the worldwide response to Greta Thunberg’s Schoolstrike and Extinction Rebellion’s rallies to highlight, and transform, our response to the climate disruption we are all facing.
These are all symptoms of a deeper, and more far reaching, change - the emergence of a new type of human.
This is a person for whom individuality, relationships, community, ecology and spirituality are understood to be inextricably linked together.
Ahead of us is a future where our underlying spiritual unity is coming more and more to the forefront of our awareness, no longer as dogma, wish or belief, but through the direct transcendent awakening beyond any separation.
As this awakening happens it will begin to naturally reshape all our lives for the better, including our financial, political, religious, health, farming, work and education systems.
This is because it will become abundantly clear that We. Are. One
As we open directly into our mystical true nature and see the face of the sacred in each of us, and in everything, life on the planet will never be the same again.
May 30th, 2020
Women's Enlightenment ~ Lesser Children of God
Women have as much ability to awaken into Enlightenment as men.
However, the message that Enlightenment is for men still persists in at least four significant ways.
One is the overt message, handed down through many traditions and generations, that simply states that women are lesser beings and can't open into Enlightenment.
The other ways are more subtle but equally powerful,
The first is best seen encapsulated in the common images of a man holding forth about Enlightenment and the devotees, mostly women, surrounding him at his feet.
The second is that we still have a male driven model of Enlightenment which focuses on the transcendent half of Enlightenment, and excludes the embodied, grounded and relational ~ the other human half of the fullest Enlightenment.
The third of these subtle aspects is that a woman may not want to teach in the overtly hierarchical, and masculine model, preferring instead to share with others in a more inclusive circle, and so she is passed over by mainstream attention, and remains unrecognized, even if her awakening is broad and deep.
Nowadays there are more and more women awakening, and many are stepping up to share about Enlightenment, but the myths persist and a women teacher can still be seen as different from other women and so not really an inviting mirror, but rather a special case.
We are all equal aspects arising from the One undivided. sacred, and nondual source of all life, and that life is living itself through, and as, us - male or female.
If you are a woman, then Enlightenment is for you too...and behind what seems like 'you' reading this page is the source of all life and what you have been seeking.
May 14, 2020