Change is accelerating now in the 5D Shift. The 3D world is in terminal decline due to accelerating climate change and environmental destruction, but we don't have to be contracted by that. It’s vital to let go of attachment to needing things to look and be a certain way. You have to be inspired to transcend the physical: find the beauty in the reflection out there where you can, but always feel the expansion into 5D on the inside - paradise is to be found within. This piece of essential shift philosophy was doubly important for me recently, in a layover on Hawaii, during the current Openhand World Tour, where I experienced close encounters with subliminal expectation...

Anyone truly embarking along the spiritual path, must quickly give up the idea that it's easy, or especially, that it will somehow build you up into something. And it's definitely not all 'love and light' - not the true path anyway. In my experience, both of my own journey and in working with countless others, Spiritual Mastery is a shattering, breaking down process, that causes you to reconfront past-life trauma and source pain. It's also reflective of the current state of our reality right now. How to work with this?

In moving fully towards and into Enlightenment, there is often the sense of something much bigger supporting and guiding us. And it can feel so benevolent, so caring and so patriarchal when it's there, that there often grows an incredible craving for it. However, as you move deeper and deeper into presence, closer and closer to the Source within yourself, there'll come the point where your soul yearns to drop into it. You actually become 'the father' so to speak. You become that openness which is the source of all authentic experience. Hence, paradoxically, the 'father' must disappear; the sense of external guidance must cease. It must all come from within. And this can be a very lonely place... at first...

I observe in the work we do here at Openhand, that when a person finds the right alignment in life, which incorporates self-realisation, then our perspective on life changes immeasurably for the better. It can be said, that in actual fact, there is nothing else but self-realisation going on.

It strikes me that the biggest problem humanity faces right now is a case of mistaken identity. People mistake themselves for something they are not; and this generates all manner of false lifestyles and suffering. And even when a person discovers they are not the ego, there frequently follows all kinds of attachment and identification with qualities of the soul: like "I am love" for example. So what about ditching all kinds of conditioned identity completely?

What about surrendering into the infinite vulnerability of the moment
and allowing the real you to effortlessly arise?
How might that positively change your life and the world around you too?...

I’d say one of the biggest problems humanity is dealing with right now, is something I call “The Pain of Existence”. It’s the disconnection from the sublime feeling of unity with the divine, and therefore unconsciously seeking some kind of substitute in the outer world: distraction, entertainment, relationship, sex, drugs etc etc. It’s not that we shouldn’t enjoy life, the problem is identification with the outer mirror: we need it to be a certain way, rather than realising it as the mirror to the inner perfection of the divine. How does that mirroring work? How can we locate the divine through all these kinds of circumstances in our lives?...

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying: "there are two ways you can live your life...as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is a miracle". The matrix we live in can be challenging. Everywhere around you there's oodles of reasons why to be invested in the drama - it seems everybody else is doing it! And the world of physicality is so alluring, with its tantalisations and temptations, society has really perfected the art of pulling you into some illusionary 'entertainment'. But what if you resist that? What if instead, you look deeply into every moment and challenge the alluring seduction that would contract you down. What happens if you always look for the deeper meaning?

To truly realise the depth and majesty of our expanded self, we have to master the direct confrontation of the moment. It's all about performing inner alchemy. There's essentially two forms of consciousness that make up our existential being: the separation consciousness that forms the bodymind, and the unity consciousness that forms the soul. If you include various disruptive energies of society's matrix, everything we experience from thoughts, to emotions and feelings are caused by the interaction of these various flows of consciousness. How might 'we' - as presence - be able to positively influence the internal dynamic?...

I can feel a shift going on in the 'matrix' at this moment. Although it's a very positive shift, it's also very painful, dragging up much debris from the ancient past. Before we come into the bright lights of the new paradigm, we must venture through the darkness. So those on the path, are dredging up much density which is being unwound and released. It's painful yes. It seeps into our thoughts and emotions yes. But the only way out is through. So how do we sail through the stormy waters with the clearest possible foresight? How might we minimise any undue suffering?…

Due to escalating distractive nature of society, it's easy for the lower and higher self to get separated - to be living a life that is not truly aligned with your divine purpose. If this is happening, you'll feel dissonance internally as triggering, tightness or dis-ease. The internal separation happens as a result of programmed behaviourisms that took root early in life - neediness in relationships, poverty consciousness, or a lack of self-worth that then derail into some external need of gratification.

We're living in an illusion. But it's a very real illusion, a very noisy one. Our lives are full of busyness and external distraction like no other time in the history of mankind. It's as if everything created has been purposefully designed to pull us into the external drama, to tempt us, to invest us, to entrap us. The paradox is, that every external 'entertainment' is but a reflection, often quite a distorted one, of an end goal that each soul is really, ultimately looking for. It's a place of absolute perfection, crystal clear clarity. It is infinite potential yet absolutely empty. It is the beginning and the end of every inquiry and journey. It is the Void of Silence.

The taste of presence
From the Openhand perspective, we all border on enlightened states from time to time, it's just that as soon as the experience arises within, the tendency is to associate it with something else (like bliss for example) and lose the experience. Alternatively, a part of us is not comfortable with the experience and therefore creates once more the condition of internal separation from it. But this experience of non-identified presence is there in the background of everything we do and informs into every experience.

It is the guiding light and the faster we surrender to its inevitable pull, the more harmonious our lives will become. So what is this state of Enlightenment like? How can we recognise it and surrender into it?