In Order To Reach Enlightenment
There’s no way to reach “enlightenment” — higher consciousness, inner wisdom, ascended awareness, or whatever you call it without facing and dealing with your trauma: your phobia of disempowerment, marked by insatiable appetites for power in the forms of validation, authority and acquired rage outlets.
In order to face and deal with your trauma you first have to assess and itemize everything you think “power” is, and then all of the things that represent power to you — e.g., money, material possessions, status markers, allure, sexual conquests and/or having people to exploit at your disposal, etc.
In doing that you’ll ultimately have to face your fears of not having enough, not being enough, and not doing enough to keep yourself and those you love and feel connected to safe.
In facing trauma you’ll necessarily be forced to confront psychological damage that traces back to life events in which you weren’t powerful enough to protect yourself from harm, or powerful enough to capture things you felt you needed in order to keep yourself safe.
Overcoming trauma, that is, getting past your phobia of disempowerment begins with understanding where it comes from and how it got there.
In other words, you have to a) first admit to yourself that you’re scared, and then b) figure out why.
And then you’ve got to figure out all of the ways in which your phobia of disempowerment has taken shape in the form of personality traits and characteristics, and attitudinal, behavioral and outlook presets that shape both your worldview and your systems of interactions with others, i.e., your relationships.
You’re going to come across some questions that really make you examine yourself on a deeper level, such as:
Why are you easily triggered and/or always teetering on the edge of cognitive dissonance? Why are you suspicious of people who actually do work to make you feel valued and safe, but then drawn to and constantly seeking approval and validation from those who demonstrate a willingness to abuse, damage and exploit you for self benefit? Why do you only feel safe when you control others, but then falsely equate being used and abused by people to being in control of them on some level? Why do you feel the need to look important to others and/or feel more valuable than those around you? Why do you always need to win, and why will you go to any length to do it? Why do you have to be the loudest, or the most colorful, interesting or dynamic personality in the room? Why do you feel threatened when you’re not being threatened? Why do you need others to worship and validate you? Why do you need others to believe in you and/or why do you feel the need to be the authority to other people? Who made you feel invisible and alone? Whose self-indulgence made you fear for your life, safety and wellbeing? Who or what made you afraid of not having or being enough? Why are you afraid to be alone? Why are you afraid of rejection and humiliation? Why do you equate selfishness to safety and rationality? Etc…
When you start asking these deeper questions, and in so demystifying all of the meanings, belief structures, habits, practices, proclivities and propensities, and all of the psychological scars and (still) open wounds and the barriers you’ve erected around them to keep others from touching them and causing you pain, your mind will gradually start to shift towards a settled state, and function more cleanly and efficiently.
You can finally attain higher awareness and ascended thinking by finally escaping from the prison of the identity.
This is why the path to enlightenment begins with reasoning and honesty.
Bravado and deep social acting allows people to pretend to be confident, capable, and mentally and emotionally balanced when they’re not in reality.
Self awareness begins with admitting to yourself: “I’m scared. I’m afraid of being or becoming powerless. I’m scared that I’m not enough, and that don’t have enough, don’t know enough, and that I don’t do enough to protect myself — and I’m exhausted from being scared all of the time.”
After this you can start using reasoning to dissect your social character, and reverse engineer all of the defense mechanisms and identity features you’ve collected through the course of your life and cocooned yourself within in efforts to shield yourself from danger and harsher elements of reality.
Once you start realizing that status is an illusion, and that competition doesn’t make you any safer, and that stealing power from others by tearing them down in efforts to build yourself up doesn’t actually empower you, you can start seeing the fundamental weaknesses and limitations of your identity.
Once your identity is broken you can start tapping into your true potential.
You’ll finally see the difference between what you actually are and who you only pretend to be to others.