As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’ve listened to countless spiritual teachers on my seven year journey into spirituality. The number of hours spent listening to teachers on youtube would be easily in the thousands. But one still stands out head and shoulders above the rest: my teacher of the last three years, Isira.
Now, that is saying something! Some other spiritual teachers I’ve listened to I have absolutely loved; the main other one being the American teacher Adyashanti. I used to tell my friends he was the first man I ever loved. Kiran Trace (from Mystic Girl in the City) once called him “the shit”, and it’s hard to really top that description of him. He is an incredibly good teacher.
But, as he says himself, he’s very much a “wake up” guy – he’s not a “how to live your life better guy”. And he describes his teaching method as being very “broad strokes”. Which is fine. Wake up guys are great – they wake you up! It’s also fine being a broad strokes teacher: there’s no use getting into all the nitty-gritty of spirituality when you’re just coming onto the scene; you need someone who can lay it out in general terms so you get an overall picture of what spirituality is all about.
My gratitude to Adyashanti is out of this world. If I saw him in person I have no doubt I would have tears in my eyes. He helped me along the way SO much.
But, and even though it pains me to say this because of how much I love Adyashanti, I still found someone better. Someone deeper. Someone with more breadth of understanding. Someone who could talk to anyone and offer them advice for exactly where they were at, and exactly what they needed to hear.
That teacher is a woman called Isira.
Now, I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog before, but for those who haven’t read that: When I first came across a video of Isira, I didn’t really “get it”. I came away thinking “she seems like a nice lady”, but that was about it. There was no deeper recognition. Then, about a year later, a friend recommended her to me again so I went along to one of her satsangs (a Sanskrit term meaning “association in truth”). This time I got it. This time I felt her presence, and it was powerful.
I remember walking into this room with all these people seated facing an empty chair at the front of the room. Then Isira came in, dressed all in white (“what’s with the white?” I thought to myself), and sat down in the chair. She scanned the room in silence, welcoming everyone. Then she got to awkward, little me, at the farthest side of the room, as far away from the centre of the action as I could get (this was always my preferred place in all situations). She looked me in the eyes and I instinctively looked away, embarrassed. After a few moments I looked back up to see if she had moved on, but she was still looking at me, with the same warm, welcoming face I originally saw. She wasn’t going to let me get away with my shyness.
The satsang was a success, I guess you could say. This time I got a glimpse into what she was about. I felt her presence and was uplifted all the way home.
There was an announcement that the organization was looking for volunteers, and almost immediately I began volunteering. I was the technical equipment storage and transport guy, and eventually became the tea-maker for Isira’s one-on-one consultations on Saturday mornings. I sort of fancied myself a bit like the kung-fu master who guards the Oracle in the Matrix, albeit much less skilled in martial arts. All I really did was mix tea.
I was fascinated by this woman, as many who meet Isira are. I had never met a truly enlightened person in person before, so I watched all her actions, analysed all her movements, looked at her through squinted eyes trying to figure her out. Trying to see if she really was as enlightened as she seemed.
The difficulty was, you see, she wasn’t your typical mountain-top, rag-wearing guru. She lived life. She enjoyed food. She had preferences. “Do enlightened people have preferences?” I thought to myself. Well, I guess it makes sense. She is human after all, and she’d much rather I hand her a cup of dandelion tea than a cup of dirt.
You see, the idea of spirituality has become so disconnected from everyday life we think there are only two options: you either choose the world, or you choose enlightenment. You can’t have both. Isira seemed to have both, which raised a lot of questions for me. Does she still like nice things? Does she still have relationships? Does she still have sex?? I found out the answer to all these questions was yes, which gave my mind more things to ponder.
Hmm, so it’s possible to be enlightened, and still live a completely full life in the world. That sounded pretty good to me. Most of the previous teachers I had listened to had been mostly male, and mostly just spoke about the importance of “waking up to absolute reality”. Isira talks about that too, but in equal measure she talked about issues in the world. I found that really exciting. Enlightenment didn’t mean you became just a nobody, it meant you became even more fully your natural self. Sure, the natural self was seen from a perspective of absolute oneness, but it didn’t discount the relevance of the manifest world – it celebrated it. To me it appeared she had achieved the goal I came to think true spirituality stood for: to become both fully human and fully divine.
Now, I didn’t always like Isira – in fact, sometimes I hated her!! I was so enraptured by this woman’s presence and energy that my ego wanted her attention and love to be focused on me as much as possible. Obviously this is not only an unreasonable demand on anyone, but Isira would never let us get away with these silly ego trips. She always kept herself at a slight distance because of this. Sometimes I interpreted this as her not liking or not loving me enough, but really it was just her way of making sure she wasn’t pandering to our egos, thus making the problem worse. When you spend any amount of time around Isira, your ego gets some harsh lessons. In fact, it is sometimes even hard to be around her because of this. Some people really can’t take it and react negatively to it, projecting all their blame onto her: e.g. “she’s a fake teacher!”; “she doesn’t really care!”; “she’s only interested in herself!”; etc, etc, etc. (all these examples are examples which came from myself 🙂 ). Because you see, the thing is, when an ego comes up against someone whose ego has been thoroughly removed, it can turn pretty nasty. I remember at a retreat once a woman said: “I thought I was a nice person, but I wanted to kill you! And you just responded with the same love you always did.”
I’ve got to be honest – as I’m obviously not completely free of the ego myself, there’s still a part of me that desires this attention. This can still make my ego very annoyed, and I think that will remain until I am completely free of my egoic attachment to her.
To this day it still surprises me that Isira is not more well-known than she is, but I think there are a couple of reasons for this: firstly, she has not had much of an online or youtube presence until just recently; and secondly, and maybe more significantly, I think that as in my case the old saying holds true: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” When I first came across Isira, I wasn’t “ready” for her. I wasn’t resonating on a wavelength that was close enough to be able to really get her. That changed for me in the year between seeing her video for the first time and then attending one of her satsangs. And I think this will happen on a collective level as well. I think humanity may be getting nearer and nearer to be ready to be able to hear Isira, and to be ready for the message and energy she is here to contribute.
All I can say finally is, I can’t wait! I’m greatly looking forward to a time when people en masse start to see who Isira really is, and what she is here to do.
As always, in love and light,
Will.
For more information on Isira, check her out on youtube, or visit her website at www.isira.com
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
I’ve always been a very private and quiet person. That is just my nature. I think most of my friends would say I’m pretty entertaining when you get to know me (if sometimes annoying), but in most unfamiliar situations I am often painfully shy. To give you an example, once I was asked to read something at high school, and another student yelled out “speak!” – because I just very rarely said a word, ever. I would just hang around and listen – or in my later years when things got worse, hide away in any place I could find. This would often be sitting eating my lunch in the toilets at lunch-time. It was that bad.
So, writing my story publicly is not something that comes easily to me at all. I’m not even a well-known writer and it is already causing me a great deal of anxiety just to share my story on Facebook and Medium. So it was always going to be difficult for me to write what I wanted to write. But this became much worse when the story I was going to tell became much worse.
You see, I had just quit my job as a gardener to pursue what I thought would be a career in writing because for some reason it felt like it was what I was meant to do. I had no idea whether it would work out or not, but I felt like I had a lot to say, and I felt that it was important that I share it.
Then, as any of you who have read my first blog post, “My disastrous spiritual awakening” will know, my story suddenly became much worse.
I was no longer – as I had anticipated – just going to be writing about science and spiritual awakening and the extraterrestrial reality – I was now going to be writing about a horrible event that happened in my life.
This made me question whether I could even be a writer. It took me nine months after the event to finally put my fingers to the keyboard and start typing. The ironic thing was, I was just about to sit down and start writing when the event happened nine months ago, so it really wasn’t something I was expecting at all.
I spent a long time in hospital with nothing to do but ruminate over what had happened and question everything about what I was doing and what led me to that point in my life. I initially thought my blog would be a hopeful, inspirational blog – a tale of suffering to triumph over suffering through spiritual awakening – but now my story contained this very ugly episode. I thought, “I was meant to be on a path of greater understanding and bliss and wonder, and I ended up assaulting my housemate and spending three months in a mental hospital – how did my “spiritual awakening” go so horribly wrong??”
My story is difficult to share in a number of ways. Firstly, as I mentioned, I’m a painfully shy person. I hate being the centre of attention, and if the attention is negative attention that’s twice as bad. Secondly, my story now contains something horrible, which, if I’m going to be an open and honest writer as I intended then I have to share it. Thirdly, my story contains weird stuff that a lot of people won’t understand and will likely judge me for. Hell, I would have judged me for it five years ago. And lastly, a lot of people are going to think I’m just some crazy loon.
That’s a lot to deal with, especially for someone like me. It’s why I’ve been smoking, drinking, and taking anti-anxiety pills like there’s no tomorrow in order to cope with the angst of it all. I guess I’m just going to have to get over that and get used to it.
But I’m still going to write, even though I’m terrified of it, because I still feel it is what I am meant to be doing. Nothing else in my life makes sense except to write and tell my story as openly and as honestly as possible.
I still believe that spiritual awakening – and by spiritual awakening I mean recognizing the oneness and interconnectedness of all things – is the most important thing in the world, and probably the only thing that will save humanity from itself. So that’s enough of a reason for me to get over my own internal fears and keep writing. Because I believe this to be true.
It’s not going to be easy, but I’m still going to do it. All I can hope is that people see my intention is always positive – that I am doing this because I believe it’s the best way I can contribute to society, and that all I’ve ever wanted is a more open, more loving, more connected world to live in for everyone. A world based in understanding and compassion instead of division and hatred. One based in love instead of fear. And I believe it is possible. I’m not even there yet myself – it is still a challenge for me to always try to maintain that state, but I truly believe, to end with the words of Arundhati Roy: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
As always, with love,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
Do you want the good news first or the bad news first?
I agree, always start with the bad news first.
Okay, so, here’s the bad news:
As a former science student myself, I have a great respect for science itself and the principles behind science. The problem here is not so much with science itself, but with scientists. They’re human after all, and us humans always try to understand things, so we inevitably make assumptions about the world based on what we think is real. A lot of this we then turn into being just a collected body of knowledge we hold onto as “the way things are”. Scientists really do their best to try and avoid this, but they are definitely not immune from it. The psychological need for understanding runs deep, so when something is unclear, we usually latch onto whatever seems most reasonable.
And well, things are not always as they appear. The very foundations of the type of science many scientists fall back to by default — the Newtonian, cause-and-effect type of science — has been on tremendously shaky ground for over a century since the advent of quantum physics. You see, the deeper you look into our universe, the stranger it becomes. Cause does not always precede effect. Things appear to not really be things at all.
And this is why scientists are so confused by quantum mechanics — it’s because they’ve taken legitimate observations about how the world can behave in given circumstances (this is fine, there’s nothing wrong with this part of science), but then the problems start: They begin to construct models out of this for how the world is based on these observations, when there is no evidence for the models themselves, only for the observed phenomenon (our sense perceptions) behaving in a certain way.
Scientists have thus built castles in the sky.
But look, you can’t blame them. We actually need these castles to a degree. Even though it makes absolutely no sense from a quantum physical standpoint, when you turn the handle of a door, it almost always opens. It’s pretty magic the way that happens when you consider what’s happening at the quantum level of indeterminacy. It’s almost enough to make you think we live in an intelligent universe! (the anthropic principle is usually used as a rebuttal against this, but the probability of us standing on top of infinity is… effectively zero, so I wouldn’t exactly call that a strong argument)
But as I was saying — we can’t walk around all day not using any constructed models otherwise we’d be non-functional. But as humans — and scientists are almost always humans — our minds grasp for understanding. We think if we understand the world better then we can make it a more enjoyable place to live. At a very subconscious level, we look for security in understanding. And we can achieve that to varying degrees. I still think the answer to true happiness lies within each and every one of us, not in the external conditions, but the external conditions are still relevant to a degree.
So, scientists, use your models, make your predictions, engage in behaviour in accordance with these predictions, but just don’t make a belief system out of them. Beliefs are the antithesis of science — they are what form when you’ve decided you have an answer and stopped looking at any more evidence — but it’s what humans default back to almost every time. The reason being is that not having belief systems is very unsettling; it feels like we’re on very shaky ground (which we are). We need to get used to that. The future of physics is not going to get any simpler to understand — time and time again quantum weirdness has reared its head and it’s here to stay. We have to accept that our brains most likely didn’t evolve to have the capacity to understand our universe at its deepest level. Our Newtonian brains can’t stretch that far.
So, have some humility. Admit that we might just not be able to understand how the universe really works, but give thanks for the fact that even though it makes absolutely no sense from the perspective of quantum mechanics, at the level of the world humans generally interact in, things still seem to work as though they do, more or less, make sense.
In other words, become a true scientist. A Not-knower. A Maybe-so-er. Someone who observes the universe and attempts to make predictions based upon those, but who never says they understand the way something works, because you know what, around the next corner there could be something that says, “nah, I don’t behave like that. I don’t fit that model.”
And that is what has happened for the last 100 years. In the early 1900s, the universe said, “nah, you guys don’t get me.” And the scientists responded with, “Yes we do, yes we do, just let us think this over some more.” And the universe said, “nah, you really don’t get me.” And scientists have been struggling to pretend ever since.
I’m not saying stop trying. Definitely keep trying. I’m just saying I don’t think our brains evolved to be able to understand the universe at its deepest level. We’ll just be encountering weird shit that makes absolutely no sense to us, and we’ll just have to throw our hands up in the air and say, “Well, fuck, this science tool is really useful, but it’s not going to give us the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything.”
Because how could it? How could an investigative method *within* the system it’s investigating ever claim absolute knowledge about the nature of the system itself? It’s a logical impossibility.
So I think it’s time for scientists to acknowledge this and say, yep, we won’t ever get ultimate answers, but at least what we’re doing here is pretty damn useful for us.
There’s a great video on what I’ve discussed here by a youtuber called CollegeBinary where he does 3-minute videos on various philosophers and their theories. The one he does on David Hume is exactly what I’m trying to say here. It’s a great video; very entertaining and very short. Well worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3QZ2Ko-FOg
There is a solution to all this, and it solves all these dilemmas — it’s called the “biocentric” (or consciousness-centric) universe, championed by Robert Lanza, whom the New York Times called one of the three most important scientists alive today. His approach — coming at the universe from a consciousness standpoint instead of a inanimate physical/energy standpoint — explains away every single problem quantum mechanics has thrown at physicists for the last century. As Lanza says: “It becomes clear why space and time, and indeed the properties of matter themselves depend on the observer.”
His book, “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe”, is a fantastic read and in my opinion one of the most important books ever written. He’s not a great public speaker, so I’d really suggest buying his book (it’s very easy and enjoyable to read), but for those who don’t, here he is at the Science and Nonduality Conference giving a talk on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_F4nOKDSM&t=259s
And I’ll let Robert Lanza take over from here…
Thanks for reading, and happy sciencing!
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
“Where words fail, music speaks.” ~ Hans Christian Andersen
Growing up through my twenties I mostly listened to one band over and over again. That band was headed by a guy called Conor Oberst; the band name was Bright Eyes.
A lot of people considered this “emo” music because he was indeed very emotive, but he was different from the emo genre in a big way: He was uplifting. There was hope in his music. Not to mention he’d been called this generation’s Bob Dylan because of how great a songwriter he is.
Here’s one example out of pretty much any song I could choose:
“The Bible’s blind, the Torah’s deaf, the Qu’ran is mute If you burned them all together, you’d get close to the truth Still they’re pouring over Sanskrit under Ivy Ieague moons While shadows lengthen in the sun”
Beautiful right? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Or maybe this one:
“ I had a lengthy discussion about The Power of Myth With a post-modern author who didn’t exist In this fictitious world all reality twists I was a hopeless romantic, now I’m just turning tricks”
Like, what the fuck. How good is this guy? And those are just the first two that popped into my head out of the thousands I could have chosen.
There used to be a facebook group called “Conor Oberst has more talent in his little finger than I do in my entire body.” There was also one called “Conor Oberst is my boyfriend”. I joined both. Actually, I did more than that — I wore a shirt with “Conor Oberst is my boyfriend” on it to a festival once. It got mixed reviews.
And sure, his voice was often quivering, he often sung like he was scared to sing, but that’s part of what touched me so deeply about him; his vulnerability and his rawness. And even though a lot of other people found him depressing, I didn’t. I saw past the quivering fragility and saw the fervent spirit inside him. The same goes for Leonard Cohen. Yeah, it’s sometimes sad music, but it’s the beautiful kind of sad. Not just sad for sad’s sake, but sad for honesty’s sake.
I heard about a study on death metal music recently. I’ve never been a fan of death metal at all; I couldn’t understand how people could enjoy listening to that type of music, but apparently they do. All I hear is rage and darkness, and I don’t want to feel that. But the fascinating thing about this study was that people who reported liking death metal said they didn’t feel anger or darkness when listening to it — they felt peace and joy.
Peace and joy while listening to someone scream like the devil? Apparently so.
And, contrary to what a lot of people claim, listening to death metal doesn’t make you more prone to violence.
I guess this is what we love about music. It evokes emotions in us that are otherwise unexpressed. And music is a very healthy way to do that. So I’m not against death metal or its fans, because I now understand where it’s coming from — it’s coming from a place of truth for them.
But it’s easy to get trapped. It’s easy to just have one type of music you listen to that you listen to all the time even when it’s not really what you’re feeling inside. I’m sure death metal fans don’t want to hear the devil’s voice every minute of the day, just like I don’t want to hear Conor Oberst’s voice every minute of the day. Sometimes I actually much prefer silence to music. It changes all the time. And so should our music — so it accurately reflects what we’re feeling in that moment, and so we don’t get stuck in a set pattern of feeling because we just always happen to have the same playlist on repeat.
This is why I have now broadly expanded the types of music I listen to. I’m still not a fan of death metal, but I now appreciate where it’s coming from. And my musical tastes over the years have now expanded tremendously. It used to be just sad, beautiful songwriters. Now it’s everything from Rudimental, to Kali Uchis, even to some chill EDM. (Okay, I guess my taste hasn’t changed THAT much. But it’s still constantly expanding).
My point with this article is that, because music has such a powerful influence on our emotional states, I think we should try and be more conscious of those emotional states when we’re listening to music (or when we’re in silence), so that we’re not reinforcing an emotion we don’t want, but we’re also not avoiding an emotion that is there and needs to be expressed, lest it comes out in unhealthy ways.
As John Cusack’s character said in the movie “High Fidelity” (yes yes I know it was a book first blah blah I’ve even read it so bite me) — “Did I listen to pop music because I was depressed, or was I depressed because I listened to pop music?”
I think the answer is a little bit of both, John. My advice is: Listen to what speaks to your soul, whatever that is, at any point, but don’t get stuck there because you just always put on the same type of music.
Which brings me to the main topic of the article: high vibrational music. I’m now on the look-out for music that’s positive and inspiring that matches where I am at in my life right now. There are a few I’ve found: The self-titled Radnor and Lee album which is so good I made a whole post on to itself (link here: https://theostrichandtheelephant.com/the-best-spiritual-album-i-have-ever-heard/ ), Rudimental, and a few tracks here and there that I really resonate with. An album called Known Odyssey I’ve also liked, which is a bit more new-agey but I’m beginning to appreciate that type of music more too, and it has some beautiful piano compositions. I’m still only on the beginning of the journey in finding high vibrational music though, so if you have any suggestions please leave them in the comments and I will check them out. Thanks!
But I think it’s also important to remember, with all this talk of sound and music… as someone has probably said once, silence itself is the most powerful sound you’ll never hear. Or, as in The Simpsons when Lisa is at a jazz bar and the patron next to her says: Ugh, sounds like she’s hitting a baby with a cat. And Lisa says: You have to listen to the notes she’s not playing. The patron: Pfft, I could do that at home.
Thanks for reading,
In love and light!
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
This story was originally going to be titled “The importance of listening to high vibrational music”, but I felt that this is such a good album it deserved a post all of its own. The album is the self-titled album “Radnor & Lee” from Australian musician Ben Lee and American actor Ted Mosb… I mean Josh Radnor… the lead character from How I Met Your Mother.
How these two people (one of whom has never played an instrument) ended up coming up with the most inspiring, soul-touching album I’ve ever heard I will never know, but somehow they did it.
As some of you may know from one of my previous blogs “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, I ended up in a mental hospital for 3 months.
These places are not fun. Not only are you in a mental hospital, you also have literally nothing to do all day but ruminate on how you ended up there and pace up and down the corridors.
The one thing we were allowed (no mobile phones, no internet, no coffee) was a small mp3 player, which was the one saving grace in this oppressive environment.
During my three months there I almost did nothing but pace up and down the corridor listening to this album, which gave me some reprieve from the soul-crushing monotony of life in a mental hospital.
Also, as some of you may be aware, I had just had a partial spiritual awakening (my spiritual teacher called it a kundalini awakening), so I had enormous amounts of energy flowing through my body and no way to let it out in that environment. This led to me, for 3 months almost non-stop pacing up and down the hallway either in silence or listening to my mp3 player. I joked with the staff that I think I had done about as much walking as the girls from Rabbit Proof Fence.
For those who don’t know that reference, it is a beautiful but sad story about a young aboriginal girl, her sister, and her cousin, who were taken (part of the “half-caste”, “stolen generation” as it’s known in Australia) from their families to be integrated with “civilized” Western life and have the aboriginal blood bred out of them. These three girls didn’t like that situation, so they decided to make a 2,400 km (1,500 mile) journey along a rabbit proof fence to be reunited with their families. It took them nine weeks of walking to return home, despite being tracked by a professional aboriginal tracker, the girls managed to cover their tracks effectively and stayed in hiding with their families once they made the journey back.
I’m quite sure, in my 3 month stay in hospital, that I did about as much walking as those three girls, while listening to mainly just one album on my mp3 player — Radnor and Lee’s self-titled album. And also a little bit of Kali Uchis’ Por Vida, which is also a *great* album. I feel I learnt a lot about women listening to that album.
But back to the Radnor and Lee album, aside from some Bright Eyes music, I haven’t found any music that has touched me so deeply or inspired me so much.
A couple of songs you might like to listen to are:
So I just wanted to say a public thank you to Ben Lee and Josh Radnor (and Kali Uchis) for helping me get through one of the most difficult times in my life. You three people made is *slightly* more bearable in that horrible place.
So, thank you, and I hope your albums spread far and wide so other people can experience the same thing I did with it.
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
I write about a lot of things on my blog: mental health, spiritual awakening, the reality of the extraterrestrial phenomenon; but at the end of the day it all really boils down to one thing: Love.
I believe love is the highest emotion a human can experience, and I believe it is what we are all deeply searching for. All our actions to attain pleasure, success, fame, money – it all comes down to a deep desire to experience love, to experience connection. To love, and to be loved.
If the content I am posting does not share more love, more freedom, more joy, more truth, then I think what I’m writing is a waste of time. Or, worse than that, it is actually harmful to those reading it.
I think as humans we are really so much more powerful than we think we are, and we have a much greater influence on the world around us than we think we do.
One of my favourite quotes by one of my favourite spiritual teachers is by a guy called Adyashanti (his name is a Sanskrit word meaning “primordial peace”). He once said: “If most human beings truly realized the impact that they have on the whole, they’d be crushed by the realization of it.”
I experienced this during my spiritual awakening. At a certain point I began to realize just how much fear and sadness and pain I had been causing and was causing to those around me by my actions and by my state of consciousness. This led to me one night alone in a park, lying on the grass with my hands on my heart just repeating “I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” I’m sorry for all the pain and hurt I have caused by my actions, and I’m sorry for not realizing what I was doing at the time.
You see, as humans we often think in a very simple, linear way. In mathematical terms, we think we either add more happiness or subtract more happiness, but it is so much more than that. So so much more. Not only is our effect on the whole not just a simple additions or subtractions, it’s not even a multiplication or division: Our effect on the whole is exponential.
Someone once told me a little fact: If you give a compliment to three people, and each of those three people give a compliment to three more people, etc etc, then by level 15 every single person in Australia has received a compliment. That’s almost 10 million people (although the population of Australia has grown significantly since then). So, in just 15 simple steps, every single person in Australia is happier.
But it’s not just compliments, it’s our simple, everyday interactions with people. Are we approaching other people from a place of love and openness, or are we approaching other people from a place of fear and contraction?
You see, thanks to good old mathematics, we really are actually so much more powerful than we think, and simple acts of kindness, or simply being in a positive state of being has a profound impact on those around us, who then pass on that profound impact onto the other people they meet that day.
Now, I believe there is a great awakening taking place on planet earth. It doesn’t really matter whether you also believe this to be true or not for what I’m saying to be true. But I believe through a range of avenues – technological, social, economic, environmental – we are becoming much more aware of our effect on the world around us, and are beginning to make big changes in these areas. But here’s the greatest thing: the changes we make don’t need to be huge, they just need to be little, as often as we are able. Like the Australian musician Paul Kelly sung, “from little things big things grow.”
There’s a quote that says: “In an avalanche, no snowflake ever feels responsible.” But the flip side is also true. A whole bunch of snowflakes rolling down a mountain, grows exponentially and can produce a significant impact on anything that gets in its way.
So, like the late comedian Bill Hicks once said, we have a very small, simple choice to make in each moment whether we are living from love or whether we are living from fear. That may sound cliched and oversimplified, but I think most profound things are simple.
There are two sides to this awakening thing though. On the one hand, waking up means you finally start to see where all the problems are coming from. You start to see the fear and the anger and the sadness that has always been suppressed and swept under the rug. So it might not always seem like things are going *great* during this waking up period. Just look at American politics right now for a perfect example. But on the other side of the coin, the great thing about this awakening is that it’s happening all over the place, so as more and more people begin to wake up to these things and to their own contributions, it becomes easier and easier for others to do the same. This is why it is so important to “find your tribe”. Find people who have a similar outlook on life as you do, and this connection will amplify the awakening process happening in both of you. As Jesus once famously said, “wherever there are two or more gathered in my name, I am there.”
The sad thing is, this means you may need to cut ties or keep your distance from people you no longer resonate with, or who have a very pessimistic view of life, because they will only bring you down and slow down your own evolution into who you really want to be.
This is why I think things on earth are going to transform much quicker than most people realise. It is because of this exponential effect of those with similar visions joining with their little contributions into making in the end massive contributions.
So while things may seem to be getting even darker and more chaotic at the moment, the opposite effect is also happening, and all we need to do, as Bill Hicks said, is choose love over fear. It really is as simple (and sometimes difficult) as that.
But for those who find it difficult, remember what Jesus said when he was being crucified on the cross: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” That I think is the case with every negative action in the world. Every negative action comes from a place of misunderstanding – a misunderstanding of the interconnectedness of all life. If you truly begin to see life as all one, as one web of life, then how could you do something that would harm your neighbour? It would be like cutting off your own hand. It would no longer make sense. It really does start to become as clear as that. Or, as one of my idols, Helen Keller once said, “The highest result of education is tolerance.”
Scientists have often stated that we live in a kind of “middle world” of the universe. We’re small enough, and move slowly enough, so that the effects of time dilation and space contraction don’t appear obvious to us, and we’re big enough so we don’t experience the quantum weirdness of things, where things appear to not really be things at all. But that doesn’t mean we’re not affected by these things, it’s just not as obviously apparent to us in most cases. The consequence of this is that our brains really only evolved for relatively simple things: find food, shelter, sexual partners – we didn’t evolve to understand concepts like infinity or to truly appreciate the effects of exponential growth. But these things are real whether we are able to conceptualize them effectively or not. I’ve included a picture of infinity below for your perusal.
A picture of Infinity* (*not to scale)
So, next time you’re out interacting with people, or even just by yourself in your room, just remember how powerful you are. You are exponentiallypowerful. You are so fucking powerful that your brain didn’t even evolve to be able to understand how powerful you are.
How cool is that?
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
I was going to delete this post because I thought it made me sound a bit “crazy”. There were a lot of crazy things happening at the time of my kundalini awakening/psychosis, and at this point 2 years later I still haven’t found out the exact truth of what happened to me. Nevertheless, I have decided to keep this post up because it at least displays some of what happened to me and the process I went through trying to work out the truth of it. I feel I will work out the truth of it in the coming years, but as of this moment I still haven’t. As always, thanks for reading. 🙂
The post
As some of you may be aware if you have read some of my previous blog entries (in particular “My disastrous spiritual awakening”), I had a spiritual awakening event with some very unfortunate consequences which landed me in a mental hospital for three months.
Part of what I will be discussing in this blog is my diagnosis there, and part of it will be my first-hand experience of the symptoms. Some of it may be repetitive where necessary for those who haven’t read my previous blogs.
First, let me get my version of the events out of the way. I believe, based on my reading of other people’s experiences, and my spiritual teacher also telling me this is what happened — I had what they call a “kundalini” awakening. Kundalini is a Sanskrit term which refers to a usually dormant coil of energy located at the base of the human spine. In most humans this is coil of energy is usually suppressed by all our bodily conditions and thoughts (as emotion and thought are interlinked). In some people, and for various reasons — some out of intention, some out of types of yoga practise, some seemingly out of the blue, and some, like mine not consciously intended, but as a result of a particular yogic exercise I was doing while at a meditation weekend event — this energy can become activated or released.
This energy is known as “Shakti” energy — what is often termed the “Divine Feminine” energy that moves through the entire universe (and therefore, by inclusion, all humans).
When this energy wakes up, lots of things can happen. If you have a very light karmic load and are a very easy-going person, it may be a relatively smooth experience for you. If you do not have a light karmic load, or have a lot of resistance to life, as I did, it can be (and still is to this day for me — nine months later) a very challenging experience. To this day I find it difficult to sit still. I have to take anti-agitation pills and drink a beer or two just to be able to sit down and write this. I’m smoking about 20 cigarettes a day just to calm the nerves (stupid I know but what can you do). It’s an energy that I’m still trying to integrate properly, and, judging by other people’s experiences, this can take a number of years. In some circles this is known as “kundalini syndrome”, in others it is known as “kundalini psychosis” — these are just labels for the types of experiences people can have while going through this experience. Here’s an article by a guy who does great work especially with sexual energy called Mantak Chia on “kundalini psychosis” and the importance of grounding your energy so it doesn’t get stuck up in the head and cause these symptoms such as voices or hallucinations: https://realization.org/p/mantak-chia/most-effective-cure-for-kundalini-psychosis.html
I highly recommend his work on harnessing sexual energy — something I was working on (also called “no fap” on the internet) before this big shift happened in me. The two may have been related — i.e. the buildup of sexual energy may have resulted in my kundalini being awoken. I haven’t been able to maintain my no fapping trial because the energy in me has been too intense I’ve just needed to get everything out, but I highly recommend doing no fap as a spiritual practise, the benefits are tremendous. I may make a post on that later, but I don’t feel I am an expert on it just yet so I would suggest listening to Mantak Chia for that stuff, or there’s a great guy on the internet called “Gabe Dawg” who’s a kind of spiritual motivational person. Great guy and very much on the path of awakening, so I highly recommend him.
Anyway, some of the symptoms that can be experienced with kundalini syndrome are: physical symptoms, such as spasms of the body due to the energy movement; some can relive past traumas that have been unresolved; some can have visions (real or imaginary); some can hear voices. I had all of these, as well as a near constant agitation in the body, so that I couldn’t sit still properly.
My teacher told me that I had a lot of resistance, but also that I was moving through it all very quickly (likely as a result of the previous seven years of studying and practising techniques for spiritual awakening). But even then it was, and still is, intense for me. It’s a daily struggle to cope with the energy, and I’m not exactly a poster boy for a spiritual person at the moment. Meditating for an hour only to get straight up and have a cigarette and a coffee isn’t exactly the image you see at yoga camps, hehehe. But even meditation for the most part has been too intense for me to do, it seems to amplify the agitation. I’m mostly just drinking a heap of coffee, smoking a heap of cigarettes, drinking a bit, and taking a lot of anti-agitation pills. I think my local chemist is concerned, but my situation is a bit hard to explain to her: I can’t exactly say, “You see, there’s this Divine Feminine energy that runs through the entire universe, including me and including you… etc etc…” I imagine that would be met with a blank stare and a concerned call to my parents. (Note: some may say my agitation is linked to my high coffee consumption, but it isn’t. We weren’t allowed coffee in hospital and the energy was just as bad while I was there.)
But anyway look, even to call this the “Divine Feminine” energy is just label, but it’s the same reason we call “Mother Nature” *Mother* Nature — because this energy can be tremendously life-giving and nourishing, but it can also be very brutal and uncompromising (ever heard the term “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?” Yeah. That kind of hell.) It’s the play of duality. For there to be light there must be its opposite: dark. This is what the Sanskrit word “Leela” refers to: The Divine Play.
I’m getting a bit sidetracked here because there’s lots to talk about, but back to my original point – when this energy woke up in me it was *intense*(!!!). There was a time I was walking down the street with a friend and my body suddenly did a 90 degree spasm so my whole top half was horizontal, and he was like, “dude, what the hell is wrong with you?” I tried to explain it to him and he has a bit of knowledge of the area so he kind of got it. But that degree of intensity lasted weeks. Before this all happened I also thought I was getting messages — in particular relating to a future partner of mine which I won’t go into much detail on because I don’t know if it’s true and it involves someone else so I’d prefer to keep them out of this story at this point.
During this period though, is when I started “hearing voices”, although “hearing voices” doesn’t really describe it well, it was more like I was receiving thoughts that weren’t my own. It wasn’t an audible hallucination; they were just thought forms that appeared to come from someone other than myself. Some I knew — my spiritual teacher for example — and some I didn’t — this future partner person for example. At one point it also felt like I was connecting with what I would call “cosmic consciousness”, as if I was talking directly to “God”. And I don’t really believe in God as an entity type thing, but more as the innate intelligence of the universe. The innate intelligence that lives inside each one of us. As Jesus said on the cross: “Is it not written in the Scripture I have said ye are all gods?” You don’t hear that quote coming from Christians too often do you… they like to keep godhood only for Jesus. *eyeroll*
But anyway, because of these symptoms I was diagnosed by one doctor with schizophrenia, another doctor said he couldn’t be sure, but we all agreed that what I had was a psychotic episode, we just disagreed on the cause. I tried to do a lot of research on schizophrenia and listen to other people’s experiences but mine never seemed to really match up to theirs very well. I never felt like I was being bombarded with thoughts — it felt like a normal conversation. And the only time it was ever “negative” was when I would come into contact with certain people who had very dense, negative egos, and I felt like I could feel their energy, which came to me in these thought forms as well. That only happened three times though, the rest was entirely positive or neutral, just like a conversation with a friend except they weren’t physically there, although I could also *feel* the energy of the person while these conversations were taking place, which is how I “knew” who it was coming from.
Now, I really don’t know what to make of all of that. I don’t know if I have schizophrenia — I don’t really believe I have — but I also don’t know if it was psychic communication — I haven’t been able to verify that yet with the people I felt I was communicating with. I am also open to the possibility that this kundalini awakening opened up aspects of my subconscious that needed to be integrated, so these “other thoughts” were in effect re-integrating disconnected parts of myself that I had previously closed off. I really don’t know the answer to these questions, all I can say is that I don’t really feel that I have schizophrenia. And my gut feeling is that a lot of people are in the same boat as me — having had a significant spiritual awakening (albeit sometimes with very unfortunate consequences as in my case) they have been labelled as schizoprenic or psychotic. The interesting thing was, in the hospital I was in I met more people I would say were spiritually switched on than I ever have in the outside world. Maybe that was because it was a place we could have deeper conversations, but I don’t think that was all it was, I think there is a link between spiritual awakening and having what some people would call psychotic breaks. Just look at Suzanne Segal’s story — she “lost her self” getting on a bus one day and was terrified and had no idea what had happened for 10 years! Counselor after counselor couldn’t help her out. All she’d had was a spiritual awakening with no one to guide her through it. It must have been terrifying for her. Her book is called “Collision with the Infinite” if you’re interested in reading it.
As a side note, I also believe there is a great awakening taking place on earth at this time, and I think that it would be very wise for governments to invest a lot in mental health care because I think things like this are going to be happening more and more. Hopefully it won’t be as bad as mine, but that’s my prediction.
I’m not sure if there’s a whole lot more I can say on this topic, as it sort of depends on what happens in the future — i.e. if my future predictions about this partner comes true, then I’m inclined to think it was psychic communication with her; if not, I’m inclined to think it was either kundalini psychosis, schizophrenia, or aspects of myself that I was re-integrating.
Just as a last note, I was also experiencing *crazy* levels of synchronicity at this time. I was seeing double numbers everywhere, even other people around me were like “whoah that’s weird”. And I was like, “yeah it is fucking weird!!!!” I did a science degree at university so I’ve always been a very skeptical person, but it was happening some days up to 90% of the time and I was thinking “this can’t be real!” Others have described similar things. One time I was at lunch with a friend talking about how I was seeing double numbers everywhere, and the three times I looked at my phone to check the time it was on a double number. I said, “Dude, check this out, it’s just happened three more times, what are the chances of that happening while we’re talking about it!” I did the calculation: 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 = it’s a 1/1,000 chance that it could be coincidence, but the fact we were also *talking* about it at the same time — what are the odds of that??? Stuff like this was happening *all the time*.
There have only been two times since hospital that I’ve heard the glimmer of a voice — they died down around the time I went into hospital. One was when I was worrying about my hair falling out from stress so it looked like I was going bald and the voice (which seemed to come from this future partner) said, “Oh Will, I don’t care about that”. The second time was also seemingly from this future partner where it asked if I would marry her. The connection I felt I had with this person in conversations before made my reply: “I would marry the fuck out of you.” So again, I may be crazy, but I’m also just going to wait and see.
In conclusion, this whole area is something I don’t really feel I’ll have much more clarity on until time unfolds and whether the messages I felt I was receiving come true or not.
Only time will tell.
And I promise I’ll let you know either way! 😛
As always, in love and light
Will. ❤
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
After beginning my life in a very “rational” and “scientific” (or so I thought) way, when I was 25 my life changed in a big way: I suddenly realized I knew very little. I also realized there was a whole field of inquiry I had previously disregarded – that of “spirituality”.
Spiritual is an interesting term. To me, it doesn’t really mean much, but you have to use some word to describe what we’re talking about, and if we changed it to a new word it would just ruin that word as well.
Having been a science student at university, I was always interested in the biggest questions of life – What is it? How does it work? Where did it come from? – and I thought studying a science degree would be the best way to work these questions out. And don’t get me wrong: science is an incredibly powerful and indispensable method of inquiry for investigating how our universe *behaves*. But… it doesn’t exactly tell us what it *is*.
There’s a very famous thought experiment (philosophers love to have these) by an Australian philosopher, Frank Jackson, called “Mary’s Room”. The short version of this thought experiment is: Imagine you have a girl, Mary, who is born into a black and white room, but she is an amazing scientist. The best scientist in the universe. She knows everything. Mary is like a little human God. But… she was born in a black and white room.
The thought experiment is one of knowledge. In philosophical terms this is called epistemology, the study of knowledge – what is knowledge, and how do we know what we know?
The thought experiment goes like this – if Mary knows everything in the universe, she knows all about colour. She knows all about the electromagnetic spectrum and photons and how the retinas in our eyes receive this information and transform it into electrical signals which are interpreted by our brains, thus producing the experience we know as “colour”. But again, Mary only lives in a black and white room. The thought experiment then poses the question: If Mary leaves the black and white room into the outside world and actually sees colour for the first time, does she learn anything new that she couldn’t have learnt from just studying the physical mechanics of light and nerve processing alone?
In other words, is there anything about life that cannot simply be reduced to its physicality.
The answer to me quite obviously is yes, she learns something new that she couldn’t have learnt if she hadn’t left the room. The thing she learnt was not based in physicality but in experience – what philosophers call “qualia” – the subjective, conscious experience of a phenomenon.
This to me really gets to the heart of what the term “spirituality” is all about: What is our direct perception of life, what is our experience of life, when you take away all the mental labels and models our minds have placed over the top of everything.
Say, for example, you’re eating an apple. You could say you’re eating an apple, but really there’s just this roundish, red, crunchy, delicious (if you like apples) blob of sensation in front of you. Now, obviously to communicate we need to use these labels. We can’t say “could you please hand me that roundish, red, crunchy, delicious blob of sensation on the table there?” It would be a great waste of time. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that all we ever really experience is the blob of sensations, never the actual “object” we call an apple. As Morpheus said to Neo in the Matrix: Neo: This… this isn’t real? Morpheus: What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste, and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
The thing is, we live in the same universe that apple lives in, so this also applies to us, and the labels we use to describe ourselves are only labels for a collection of sense perceptions we have called our “self”. To me, this is the essence of what spirituality is really all about. It’s realizing that the labels we use to describe things are only labels, and they don’t get fundamentally to the actual nature of the thing we’re describing. In other words, things are not what we think they are, and we are also not what we think we are.
Try this experiment:
Without referring to your mind for information, and just look into your direct experience, ask yourself the question who or what are you? Your mind may say, “Oh my name’s Greg.” Yeah, but that’s just a name, a label given to you at birth, what were you before you were given that name? Or you might say, “I’m a landscaper!” Yeah, but that’s just your profession… if you changed jobs I’m pretty sure you’d still say you were you. So what exactly could you be if you really go deeply? Well, you might eventually come to the conclusion that you are your mind, but what is the mind? Just a collection of thoughts that come and go. What if you stop thinking? Are you still you then? So it needs to go even deeper than that. You might then start to touch upon that which is in you that never changes, that which is always there, the conscious witness of all your experience.
This is why enlightened master after enlightened master has always repeated the phrase: you are consciousness itself! And when you look deeply into all of your experience, you realise that everything you experience is actually made up of this consciousness: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste… the whole world, as far as our actual experience of it goes, is nothing but consciousness. And you are not a separate part of it, you are a collection of sensations, just like the apple.
This might sound depressing to some, but really it is liberating – it means you are no longer tied to any of the mental identifications you had with yourself. All your previous thoughts about yourself, your faults, your struggles, is all just consciousness blobbing its way through existence. And when you start to let go of all those previous thoughts about yourself and the world that you had, and start going with the flow of your direct experience, without the mind getting in the way with its constant chatter, the blobs start to blob a whole lot better. The reason for this is because when you’re perceiving things more directly as they are, rather than through the filter of the mind with all of its preconceptions and belief systems about how you think they are, you are more directly in touch with what is really happening.
In one way, spirituality is a very simple topic. It’s just a case of mistaken identity: we have mistaken ourselves to be the body or mind we perceive in front of us instead of seeing ourselves as consciousness, the witness of these bodies/minds. In another way though, we live in a very large and very complex world, so spirituality can also be a very large topic, and I’m not going to be able to cover everything in one blog post (especially because I don’t know anywhere near everything about it!), but essentially that’s what spirituality means to me – realizing that you really are one with the universe, and that, again, as far as our direct experience goes, the whole universe is made out of what we could call “consciousness”.
It might sound like a big leap to say that just because our direct perception of life can only ever be consciousness that the universe must only be consciousness, but this position is also being backed up by modern physics as well, which, while confusing the hell out of almost every physicist in the world, points to the fact that the “physical” world we think we perceive is actually a construction that depends on the conscious observer of the event. That things are not things until they are witnessed by an observer! There’s a great video on this by someone on youtube called Inspiring Philosophy – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM&t=225s. Now, I don’t agree with his religious conclusions at the end – I think he is making a leap in reasoning there that you can’t make, but it is still a great video up until that point.
Probably the best physicist I have found today discussing this topic is a person called Robert Lanza. He was called by The New York Times one of the three most important scientists alive today, just to give you a bit of an idea of how good a scientist he is! He is a much better writer than speaker, and his book “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe” is a fantastic read and very accessible even for those unfamiliar with physics. But for those who don’t have the time or inclination to read a book, here he is at the Science and Nonduality conference giving a talk on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_F4nOKDSM&t=47s
As I said, spirituality is also a very broad topic and covers a whole range of issues, but this is what it means to me in its most basic form, as a former science student and advocate of the scientific method (the method based on direct evidence!). I may make some more blog posts on the broader topic of spirituality in future but I think that’s all I have to say for now.
Thanks for reading,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
I’ve listened to many many spiritual teachers over the last 7 years since my spiritual journey began. As I mentioned in my first blog post, “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, I consumed endless hours of youtube videos, read books, and watched interviews with teachers from all around the world, the best I could find. Below is the chronological list of teachers who I have found most helpful to me on my path.
Gary Weber
I was initially attracted to Gary because he seemed very down to Earth and came from a scientific background just like myself. He was also very involved in brain research on the differences in brain wiring that so-called “enlightened” people had compared to “regular” people. He is also a subject in the new book by Dr Jefferey A. Martin which is a research book on this topic called “The Finders”, which I highly recommend for the scientifically minded among you!
Eckhart Tolle is a great teacher for a general audience, and one of the best introductions for learning to live from a place that is not so dominated by the mind’s chatter. I highly recommend the interview series he did with Oprah where they went through his book “A New Earth”. (His first book is called “The Power of Now”)
I don’t usually like telling people that I have loved listening to Osho because there is so much controversy surrounding him and what happened at his ashram (ashram is a Hindu word which basically means a spiritual hermitage or monastery/community). I don’t know the details of exactly what happened, although I think a lot of the negative stuff that happened was actually perpetrated by the person he left to run his commune, Ma Anand Sheela, while Osho went into silence and seclusion for 3 years while his ashram was being built. But despite all that, and despite his often (intentionally) provocative and playful nature which some can find confusing, I found him to have an incredible amount of insight in spiritual matters, and I do consider him someone who was enlightened.
Note: I will just add that if Osho were indeed responsible for any of the crimes or allegations leveled against him, then I would just say that his enlightenment was not as complete as I previously thought. Enlightenment is a process just as much as it is a “shift of perception”, so you can still get some “enlightened” people behaving badly – all it means is that they haven’t fully integrated their awakening yet. However, I am very skeptical of the claims against Osho, because a lot of people had reason to dislike him. I should also add that he was never charged with a crime (unlike Sheela), despite the FBI doing their best to do so. That’s all I’ll say on that matter. His teaching remains great in either case.
Well, what can I say about Adyashanti… Aside from Isira, who I mention in the end of this post, Adyashanti is the teacher who had the most profound effect on me, and who I considered my main teacher for most of my journey. Another teacher I listened to a bit, “Kiran” (aka Mystic Girl in the City), once described Adyashanti as “the shit”, and I think that’s about the best description anyone has ever made of him. He is an incredible teacher, and would be one of the first I would recommend people listen to, along with Eckhart Tolle and Isira.
I never really read much of Ramana’s work – not that he had a whole lot to read – what I know of him mostly comes from quotes I have seen, but I still consider him one of the greatest enlightened masters to have ever lived. His presence even just in photographs is palpable.
Fred Davis
Fred has a bit of a checkered past: He was charged (40 years after the fact) of indecently assaulting 2 of his nieces when he was a teenager. Not a very nice story, but he was charged for the crime and sentenced, and today he is now a very good spiritual teacher. He has a very direct, straightforward way of explaining concepts that can be difficult to grasp, so I highly recommend him for that. Some people refuse to listen to him because of his past, which I understand, but I believe people can make amends for their pasts if they are truly remorseful, which I believe Fred is.
Bentinho came onto the scene as a young, fresh-faced nonduality speaker a few years ago, and he was great at what he did. He was certainly very clear in his teachings. He then moved into more empowerment/manifestation style teachings, at which point a lot of people (including me at the time) started to not resonate with him as much. I now see the value those teachings can have, and I now consider him a fantastic teacher of both nonduality and empowerment/manifestation teachings. He has been accused of being cocky and egoic, and I can definitely see why he rubs some people up the wrong way – to me it’s still possible that he has a bit of an enlightened ego – but regardless, as far as his teachings themselves go, he’s one of the best in my opinion.
This is where my interest in spirituality took me a little bit more… out there. As I mentioned in my previous blog, “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, I came across this person who claimed to channel an extraterrestrial being called Bashar on an interview program called “Buddha at the Gas Pump”. I was very skeptical at first, but was soon blown away by the clarity of his teachings and guidance. He ties in nondual philosophy with empowerment teachings, and really opens up your mind to the possibilities of the world we live in. Fantastic teacher!
Well, as with Adyashanti, what can I say about Isira… I think she is hands down the greatest spiritual teacher I have come across in my seven year journey into spirituality. I have not yet seen anyone who has both the depth and breadth of understanding of spiritual matters (aka life matters!) as Isira does. Like Adyashanti, she is essentially a “middle way” teacher – able at one point to direct someone to the absolute truth of who they are (consciousness) and then in the next moment provide pin-point guidance on any topic I have ever heard someone asked her a question about. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I was volunteering with Isira for 2 years before a big shift happened for me, and in that two years I was constantly amazed by the clarity and truth expressed through this teacher. I find it hard to imagine finding another teacher as good as her. A+!
To end with, I’ll just add special mentions to some other teachers who I’ve loved listening to: Byron Katie, Mooji (unfortunately now in his own controversy, although I am very skeptical about this because the article written on him was written by someone who intentionally sets out to defame spiritual teachers), Gangaji, Rupert Spira, Jac O’Keeffe, Nisargadatta, oh and of course Jesus of Nazareth 😉 (another pretty controversial guy there too! 😛 )
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
This article is the result of more than three years of personal research into this subject, where I went from being someone who was vaguely interested in the possibility of life outside of our planet to someone who is now convinced that: yes, extraterrestrials do exist, and, yes, they also know that we exist. I hope you find the information contained in here as compelling as I did, and if you do, please share it so we can get the message out on what I think is the most important topic in our world today. Thanks!
The Story
I was never very interested in UFOs or the possibility of extraterrestrial life growing up. I mean, I knew how unfathomably big the universe was, and how it was very possible there were other lifeforms living within it, but as for them visiting us or communicating with us? I was very unconvinced. I used to think what a lot of people do, that it’s either people with fanciful imaginations, mistaken sightings, or Star Trek nerds who want to make their life more interesting. (no offence to Star Trek nerds, I have never seen the show 😛 )
However, as I spoke about in my last blog “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, along my spiritual path I came across a person who claimed to channel an extraterrestrial entity called “Bashar”. Despite being very skeptical about this in the beginning, I soon became blown away by the clarity and wisdom he shared, and this opened me up to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I could have been wrong about this.
I wasn’t content to have my belief in extraterrestrials based on a channeller though – I would need a lot more convincing than that, and a lot more “down to earth” evidence that pointed in that direction.
This initially came through a researcher called Richard Dolan, someone Bashar had actually recommended in one of his channeling sessions, along with his book, “A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact”. I’ve since come to buy any book that Bashar recommends, because his insight is so great; the other book he recommended being a series called “Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsch, which is fantastic, and I highly recommend reading or listening to the audiobooks. The more recent fourth volume of this series, called “Awaken the Species” actually specifically deals with the topic of extraterrestrials, or as he calls them “highly evolved beings” (HEBs), and it is just as good as the previous three volumes.
Nevertheless, my first introduction to “earthly” research on this topic came through Richard Dolan, when I watched his After Disclosure lecture, which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYYcWcENEEM&t=5526s
In this lecture he takes a hypothetical look at what will happen on Earth once this truth finally comes out.
One of the notable inclusions in this lecture is when he mentions the famous “Twining Memo”, otherwise known as “The estimate of the situation”, where U.S. General Nathan Twining responded to an inquiry by another general about the phenomenon of “flying discs” that were being witnessed. His estimate is revealing:
He states: “It is the opinion that: a. The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious. b. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft. c. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors. d. The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and motion which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely. e. The apparent common description is as follows:-
1. Metallic or light reflecting surface. 2. Absence of trail, except in a few instances where the object apparently was operating under high performance conditions. 3. Circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top. 4. Several reports of well kept formation flights varying from three to nine objects. 5. Normally no associated sound, except in three instances a substantial rumbling roar was noted. 6. Level flight speeds normally above 300 knots are estimated.
He ends the memo stating that the observed phenomena represent something “not known to this command”.
The real issue with talking about the ET subject is not “what evidence is there to prove this” it’s “what evidence out of the abundance of information out there should I start with?”
I’ve never really been very interested in UFO sightings, and I’m still not really. I think they are the least reliable sources of evidence. What I am interested in is government and military documents which prove that government and military personnel have been VERY interested in this topic for a very long time.
As UFO researcher Grant Cameron said, “The problem is not that we don’t have the evidence; the problem is we have a hard time getting it out to the public.” Or, as ex-nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman said, “There is no doubt in my mind, after 37 years of study and investigation, that the evidence is overwhelming that planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled vehicles whose origin is extraterrestrial. There are no acceptable arguments against the flying saucer reality, only people who either haven’t studied the relevant data or have a strong will not to believe that Earth is at the bottom of the heap sociologically and technologically in our local galactic neighborhood.”
Dr J Allen Hynek, the scientist appointed to head the seemingly “official” Air Force inquiry into this matter (project “Blue Book”) said to Dr Steven Greer that despite the efforts of the project to dismiss anything unusual, that there were an “embarrassment of riches” in terms of the evidence. And, despite the official report that there was “nothing to be seen here”, Dr Hynek later became a UFO believer himself.
I just finished rewatching the 2017 Netflix documentary “Unacknowledged: An Expose of the World’s Greatest Secret” by Dr Steven Greer, which, I don’t think is an exaggeration to say that it is one of if not the most important documentaries ever made – not only because it shows there has been a cover up, but because it delves into how and why this cover up has gone on for so long. On the second time of viewing it, I went to the trouble of listing all the significant quotes mentioned in it by very high ranking people, including former presidents, military generals, and a director of the CIA. They are as follows:
“The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously.” – Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of Russia
“I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth.” – President Harry S Truman
“I feel that the Air Force has not been giving out all the available information on these Unidentified Flying Objects. You cannot disregard so many unimpeachable sources.” – Honorable John McCormack, Speaker of the House
“I believe that these ET vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets, which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on Earth.” – Astronaut Gordon Cooper
“I knew that we didn’t have any vehicles of that kind, the Russians didn’t have any of that type either. At that point in time there was no doubt in my mind that this vehicle was made at some other place than here on Earth.” – Gordon Cooper again
“Yes, there have been ET visitation. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bodies recovered. And there is some group of people somewhere that may or may not be associated with government at this point, but certainly were at one time, that have this knowledge, and have been attempting to conceal this knowledge.” – Dr Edgar Mitchell, 6th man on the moon
“I believe the American people are entitled to a more thorough explanation than has been given them by the Air Force. I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs, and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment of the subject.” – Former President Gerald Ford
“Of course flying saucers are real, and they are interplanetary” – Air Chief Marshall Lord Dowding
“We have indeed been contacted – perhaps even visited – by extraterrestrial beings, and the US government, in collusion with the other national powers of the Earth, is determined to keep this information from the general public.” – Victor Marchetti, former Special Assistant to the Executive Director of the CIA
Document from the
Canadian government:
“a. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States government, rating higher even than the H-bomb. b. Flying saucers exist. c. Their modus operandi is unknown, but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush. d. The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.”
“I am convinced
that UFOs exist because I’ve seen one.” – Former President Jimmy
Carter
“It is time for the truth to be brought out. Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. I urge immediate Congressional action to reduce the dangers from secrecy about unidentified flying objects.” – Former CIA Director Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter
As part of the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI released a memo sent from special agent Guy Hottel addressed to J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, three years after the Roswell crash. This is now public record and has become the number 1 document viewed on the FBI website since its release. The memo states:
“Subject: Information concerning Flying Saucers
An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centres, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots.
According to Mr [blacked out] informant, the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area, and it is believed the radar interferes with the controlling mechanism of the saucers.”
There is a great youtube video done by the screenwriter for the films “21” and “The Social Network”, Ben Mezrich, called “Why I believe in UFOs and You Should Too” where he discusses, among other things, the famous “Roswell” incident of 1947 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urKhVssiygA&t=4s
The Roswell incident was actually a very interesting event, and not many people know the story, because it has been so clouded in secrecy and ridicule for so many years. Basically, there was some type of crashed craft retrieved, and the Air Force (amazingly) released a statement saying, “We now have in our possession a flying saucer”. Two hours later they retracted that statement and brought out the now-famous “weather balloon” photograph. The interesting thing about that weather balloon photograph is that every person involved in taking that photograph: the cameraman, the person in the photograph, and the person who ordered the photograph be taken, all later came out and said that it was a fake and what was found was not a weather balloon. Not to mention that this doesn’t even mention the three bodies that were recovered and detailed in the Guy Hottel report. To this day the Air Force has not released the files related to this event.
A Newspaper from 1947 headlining the Roswell crash
For those who say, “if this were true then where are all the whisteblowers? How could they keep this secret if people knew?”
Well, Steven Greer released another great documentary a few years ago called “Sirius”, which is interview after interview with air traffic controllers, pilots, military personnel, etc all testifying of their personal experiences of this phenomenon. Here is the link for that documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYIk2kfiL0Q
One of the most interesting cases of a mass UFO sighting occurred in Phoenix, Arizona in 1997. About 10% of the state of Arizona was outside one night looking up at the sky to witness the Hale-Bopp comet that was meant to be passing by that night. Instead, a formation of lights appeared above Phoenix belonging to a ship about a mile wide, flying low and slowly on a trajectory crossing all major cities in Arizona. At the time, Arizona governor Fife Symington denied witnessing the event, and went along with the official Air Force explanation that these were “military flares” (he now admits this was not true, he did witness the event, and acknowledges that they were not military flares). Given that about 10% of the state witnessed this, there are obviously countless testimonies, including from quite prominent people, some of whom are included in this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAsEBtICIWU&t=2404s&fbclid=IwAR3CG-lZCNF6JPyiQIFKOwWYXSsIRdFR8fBgrHABUBuS1W788dJ2oiRRT3o
Fife Symington now believes he, along with all the others, witnessed a UFO.
Another former government official, Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer has now come out as a whistleblower for the reality of the extraterrestrial phenomenon. He’s pretty old now so his approach is rather… straight to the point! See him here at the Citizen’s Hearing for Disclosure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgUYEQ_2QpU
Now I will discuss more recent events circulating around the 2016 election, including some very interesting remarks from Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta.
Part 2
“The implications of this are so vast and so profound that no aspect of life will be unchanged when it comes out.” – Laurance S. Rockefeller to Dr Steven Greer
2016 was a big year in the field of UFO research. With the U.S. election and Wikileaks revelations, a lot of things began to come out of the woodwork. Notable among these was Hillary Clinton’s expressed interest in the topic through her campaign manager and former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta.
John Podesta has been a long-time advocate for the disclosure of the UFO files. In 2014, upon leaving his position as Counselor to the President in the Obama administration, he tweeted: “Finally, my biggest failure of 2014: Once again not securing the #disclosure of the UFO files. #thetruthisstilloutthere”
Some people may have passed this off as a light-hearted comment from someone having a little joke at the end of his role in office, but Podesta was serious, and has been serious about this topic for a long time.
Here he is at the National Press Club where he says: “I think it’s time to open the books on questions that have remained in the dark, on the question of government investigation of UFOs. It’s time to find out what the truth really is that’s out there. We ought to do it really because it’s right. We ought to do it because, quite frankly, the American people can handle the truth. And we ought to do it because it’s the law.” Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ttSXYwZsg
This is not the only time he has spoken so candidly about this either. When Hillary Clinton was interviewed by Lena Dunham, he tweeted, “Great interview, @lenadunham. But Lena, ask her about aliens next time!! #TheTruthIsOutThere”
And here he is speaking to Jake Tapper on the issue: Podesta: I think that the U.S. government could do a much better job in answering the questions, the legitimate questions, that people have about what’s going on with Unidentified Aeriel Phenomena, and they should – you know, the American people can handle the truth, so they should just do a thorough search and open it up. Tapper: What is the truth, is there evidence of alien life? Podesta: You know, that’s for the public to judge once they’ve seen all the evidence that the U.S. government has. Tapper: What do you think? What do you think personally?” Podesta: What do I think?…. I think there’s a lot of planets out there.” Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLeH7Ujj9vw
Here are The Young Turks responding to this interview, where Cenk Uygur says: “When I read this story I thought it was tongue-in-cheek and, you know, largely kidding, but kind of serious at the same time… Wow that was not tongue-in-cheek! Wow that was totally serious! Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5rBPgzLZCo
One of the most damning and revealing pieces of evidence for this came through a Wikileaks revealed email between John Podesta and Eric Brys thanking Podesta for his work on uncovering the truth about UFOs for future generations, with Podesta then thanking Brys for the email, saying “Thanks for your support. We will keep at it.” Podesta’s leaked emails were littered with references to UFOs and disclosure, and this to me seems like a smoking gun admission that John Podesta is working very hard on this issue. The email can be found here: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/33010 And remember, Wikileaks has a 100% record for producing legitimate documents.
Now we come to a more light-hearted but very interesting part of what happened during the 2016 campaign. Those who know Hillary Clinton know she has had a long-standing interest in the topic of UFOs, and was pictured at the Rockefeller Ranch with Laurance S. Rockefeller holding a book by Paul Davis entitled, “Are We Alone: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life”.
Clinton (left), with Laurance S. Rockefeller holding Paul Davis’ book, “Are We Alone? Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life”
The reason this became more light-hearted was because both Clinton and Obama were asked directly about this issue on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night TV show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
Anyone who understands politics will understand that politicians on these talk shows are given what questions they will be asked prior to appearing, so they can prepare their answers. This means that what both Clinton and Obama said were very carefully worded replies, which makes them all the more interesting.
Given the context of all the available evidence, their replies are quite interesting. If there was no evidence there, why would Obama respond to Kimmel’s question of whether he looked into the UFO files by saying, “I can’t reveal anything”? It seems to me that is suggesting there is something there and he is answering honestly: that he can’t reveal it. Because how could he? How could he come on national TV and come out straight with, “Oh yes Jimmy, I looked and there is literally mountains of evidence supporting the fact that we are not alone in the universe.” He could never say that. It would panic the public. What he said seems to come as close to indicating there is something there without coming straight out and saying it. And think about it from the opposing perspective: If he looked and there really was nothing there, would he ever say on national TV “I can’t reveal anything”, and risk worrying the public that there is something there? What reason would he have to do that?
In Hillary Clinton’s case, it is just as interesting. Kimmel says: “I asked your husband this and he said there was nothing there.” To which Clinton replies: “Well…” and Jimmy, shocked, says “Oh!” Clinton then continues: “I’m going to do it again, right?” Something else interesting happens here: she tries to move away from the acronym UFO (an acronym with a lot of psychological baggage attached to it) and uses a new, fresh term: “UAP” – Unidentified Aeriel Phenomenon. Again, here it appears she is saying yes this phenomenon is real, and yes we take it seriously enough to have come up with a new term for it to move away from all the spookiness of the term “UFO” and all the little green men that term conjures up in the mind.
And finally, here is a news report from the 2016 campaign detailing Podesta and Clinton’s interest in UFOs. In it, it quotes Clinton as saying: “I think we may have been (visited already). We don’t know for sure.” And, “Maybe we could have, like, a task force to go to Area 51.” Why the president would need a task force to go to Area 51 is beyond me – unless of course presidents have asked for information previously and been denied (which has been claimed many times). Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3qZbXbTxfI
So the question remains WHY then? Why after all this evidence is the public still largely in the dark on this issue? Well, I think there are a couple of reasons. Firstly, there has been a lot of disinformation and ridicule of this topic, which has ingrained it in our psyche that this is not something to be taken seriously. But more importantly, I think it’s a deeper psychological issue: People will only open up to and accept what they are psychologically ready to open up to and accept. There’s a phenomenon in psychological research called cognitive dissonance, where, if people are shown evidence that is contrary to their particular belief or behaviour, they will disregard the evidence, even if it is credible, just to avoid the discomfort that goes along with having their beliefs or behaviours brought into question. We really like to think we know how the world works, it makes us feel comfortable in a world that’s often difficult to make sense of. So we hold onto our beliefs, even in the face of significant opposing evidence, just in order to avoid feeling uncomfortable.
There is really a lot more I could write on this topic, but I think that this post is enough for now. My challenge to you, the reader, is to go out there and look for yourself! Keep your mind open (although still use your own discernment obviously), and consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, we as a collective society have been very very wrong about something very big for a very long time.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
