What does it mean to have taken the proverbial red pill from a psycho-spiritual perspective in the process of awakening?
Let me share a little bit of my personal journey and experiences to put it into perspective. Perhaps you can relate.
Over the years, as I dove deeper into my process of engaging in psycho-spiritual work, I uncovered all kinds of suppressed parts, exiles, soul fragments, the imprisoned inner child, and many protective layers, sub-personalities, and „armor“ that covered up trauma, wounds, and shadow aspects going back lifetimes.
All these sub-personality parts I mistook for the „true self.“ They also served as entry points for occult forces and malevolent entities to come in.
People often ask me what the most important realization on my path so far was. It was in the late 90s when I was first getting into Jungian Shadow work and started to make more effort to observe myself.
I realized that I was acting out parts of my father and mother that I actually externally disliked in them. In other words, I realized I had the same traits that I blamed my parents for – deep in my shadow, and I was not aware of it but acting them out mechanically and unconsciously.
I also projected these shadow traits onto others and the world at large, and judged them for it but did not see them in myself. Moreover, I realized that whatever triggered me or irritated me in another person, I was actually carrying the same trait in my shadow within.
These unconscious projections also polluted my view of the world and conspiracy research when I first got into it 30 years ago. I was lying to myself that I was awake, lying to myself to know how the matrix works, and making fun of anyone I deemed „asleep,“ getting caught in the superiority trap.
It was a visceral „enlightening“ experience of disillusionment and facing my shadow that I’ll never forget. That’s when I also realized that trying to figure out or fighting the matrix externally is futile when it is not matched with the inner work, otherwise I’m just fighting shadows on the wall of my unconscious projections.
As I deepened the inner work of making the darkness conscious within, facing the potential for evil within myself, and integrating the mother/father wound, I also experienced flashes of my true Self, the impartial witness.
For a brief moment, the real „Self“ made its appearance, still, eternal, embodied, non-reactive, non-attached, non-identified with any belief, desire, like or dislike or label, seeing the Divine in all, and grounded in joy (Ananda), that didn’t depend on anything external in my life. It laid the foundation and aim for the ongoing inner work.
In fact, this higher experience opened up more below in my shadow and asked me to face everything I have denied or avoided within myself. Once you face the automated mechanical nature of many of your feelings, thoughts, actions, projections, and behaviors where there is no „free will,“ you will also see this robotic mechanical behavior in others.
You will realize that the outside world directly reflects your inside and humanity’s collective unconscious. There are occult forces in non-physical realms that feed on and control humans through their unconsciousness.
As within so without. As without so within.
You will also realize the futility of looking for any significant change externally or trying to „escape or fight the matrix“ externally for the matrix is within you and works through you, tagging into your blindspots, ego, unconscious wounds and shadow.
It’s a humbling experience. It is dark, disturbing, yet liberating and enlightening at the same time. It’s impossible to put it into the limited constructs of language and words.
Once you cross that threshold and start to „see the unseen“ as it is called in esoteric occult science, there is no turning back to your „normal“ life. At that moment you really took the „red pill“ – when you face yourself with full self-responsibility and you stop blaming the external world or what you think the matrix is. It will prioritize what truly matters in your life.
That is the starting point of the process of individuation, where you will also need to face isolation, loneliness, and alienation as part of the process of escaping the sleepwalking consensus state of humanity. This phase of alienation and isolation are lessons to test the sincerity of the seeker.
They have been symbolized in many esoteric metaphors of „crossing the moat threshold“ to „enter the Kingdom,“ with guardians providing riddles and tests for the soul that wishes to find and realize itself and leave the „wilderness“ of the matrix, which is not a physical place somewhere in the world but a state of being that has profound effects on the outside world once it is embodied and lived as you become more aligned with Divine Will.
Many people tend to get stuck in this stage. The alienation and loneliness can make people become hardened, cynical, and nihilistic. They tend to blame the world for their misery in a victim mentality, getting caught in the mental realm of the conspiracy abyss in Plato’s cave in a futile attempt to figure out the matrix intellectually and fighting it externally like battling their own shadows augmented by occult forces they are not aware of but who want them to live in fear, anger, anxiety, and paranoia where everything is a trap and psy-op.
They can get caught in doom & gloom, negativity, and they resist the necessary [internal] death-rebirth process to individuate as they project their pain externally instead.
Embarking on the process of Individuation is „taking the red pill“ from an esoteric perspective. It requires deep psycho-spiritual inner work.
Another very common trap of skipping the process of individuation is spiritual bypassing when the wounded ego tries to take on a spiritual identity, needing to be seen as special. As David Hawkins said, there is nothing more dangerous than the spiritualized ego.
We can see that happening when people identify strongly as Star Seeds, light workers, Christians, take on spiritual names or anything else to create a new spiritual persona to avoid the necessary disillusionment within. It can also be an unconscious trauma response based on narcissistic wounding – a compensation for what we didn’t receive in childhood.
A vital component of the path of individuation is facing the mother and father wound within yourself and what Carl Jung called anima and animus integration. The anima is the feminine part of the male psyche. The animus is the male part of the female psyche. In my experience, integrating and healing the mother-father wound is the most important work and foundation you can do for yourself and the world at large.
Godspeed.
Bernhard
www.lohas-magazin.de/veil-of-reality
