The Ostrich and the Elephant

A blog on spirituality, science, philosophy, ETs, and mental health

Tag: Oneness

  • The synchronicities I experienced

    Preface

    I was originally going to list all the synchronicities that happened to me during the time of my kundalini awakening/psychosis, but after writing the first one and seeing how long it was, then counting the rest, there was almost 80, so that would be way too long to write out, so I’ve condensed it into just a few that would make the most sense to other people without having to explain a big story behind them.

    Here we go…

    For those of you who have read some of my previous blogs, in particular “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, you will know that after a particularly profound experience at a spiritual weekend event with my teacher Isira, I slipped into psychosis.

    I was diagnosed in hospital with schizophrenia, and spent 3 months there, in mental and emotional agony.

    Now, while I agree that I had a psychosis (I’ve had 3 in total), I believe there was also something true about what I was experiencing.

    Did it go overboard? Yes. Did my mind go crazy trying to make sense of everything that was happening? Yes. But I still believe there was something else going on as well. A profound spiritual awakening which led to psychosis.

    The last seven years of my life has been trying to parse out what was psychosis and what was genuine in what I experienced.

    The American author Joseph Campbell once said: “The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.”

    I really agree with this. In the hospital I was in, I met more people with more spiritual insight than I ever have in the outside world. Were they also a bit crazy? Yes. But there was something true underlying it which they were trying to make sense of.

    A few years after my first psychosis, I decided to write down all the crazy synchronicities that were happening at the time. These were objective events that happened which I still find difficult to explain. A few of these happening? Sure, that could be put down to chance. But all of them, in the space of a few months? It seemed unlikely.

    So I decided to share that list here, and you can make up your own mind about whether these things seemed strange, or could just be put down to psychosis.

    A friend of mine I met through a spiritual group on Facebook once told me, “Don’t bother telling anyone your synchronicities, they won’t feel significant enough to anyone but you.” I think this is probably true, but regardless I thought I’d document them anyway, for anyone open-minded enough to consider their possibility.

    I’ve written them in no chronological order, just in the order in which I remembered them at the time I was writing them down.

    So here we go…

    1. “Maybe this is your teacher speaking to you…”

      About two months into my hospital stay, I was transferred to the less secure section of the hospital. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I spent basically three months doing nothing but pacing up and down the corridors. I don’t know what it was; maybe it was everything that had happened during my psychosis, maybe it was that the antipsychotic they put me on functions by reducing dopamine and serotonin (the two neurotransmitters that make you feel good!), maybe it was a combination of a lot of things, but I felt horrible. There was pretty much nothing to do in hospital, so pacing up and down the corridors was the most I could do to ameliorate some of the anguish. I had a lot of conversations with other patients doing this. I know they felt similarly, but I had a feeling no one was experiencing it to the degree I was. It never really left either. For the last seven years I’ve been pretty much the same; the only difference being I can now at least try to distract myself with my phone.

      Now for the synchronicity though: One day I was walking up and down the corridors talking with another patient there. It was the first time I’d spoken to him, and we started talking about spirituality. “I have a book for you,” he said. He went into his room and brought it out: “Be Here Now”, by Ram Dass. He said I could keep it, which I thought was nice of him, but he suggested I read it all in one go. It wasn’t a long book. I was standing with him in the corridor and opened the book somewhere around the middle. I read the words: “I am will I know what is.” “Whoah,” I thought to myself. What are the odds out of everything in this book I open on those specific words?

      I had at this point spent two months in hospital with everyone telling me I had schizophrenia. I disagreed with them of course. I agreed that some of the things I thought were happening weren’t happening, but I was convinced my psychosis was caused by, as my teacher said, a kundalini (energetic) awakening. This is not uncommon at all. I’ve met so many people in the last seven years who experienced psychosis as part of their awakening journey. But nonetheless being told for two straight months that you have schizophrenia starts to make you question things. Do I actually have schizophrenia? Was everything I experienced imaginary? I thought I was having a profound spiritual awakening and I ended up in a mental hospital! How the fuck did my spiritual awakening go so horribly wrong???

      So when I read these words, it really struck a chord. I did know what happened to me, and it wasn’t what the doctors were saying. Or at least, not totally.

      I read the rest of the sentence that I saw those words in: “Only when I know what I am will I know what is.”

      “I wish I had my teacher to speak to,” I said to my friend. “Maybe this is your teacher speaking to you,” he said with a smile.

      I know for an absolute fact that my teacher had spoken to me at least once before through another person. She confirmed it herself. So the possibility of her speaking to me through another person didn’t seem too unbelievable.

      My dad called to let me know what time he was coming for a visit, and I excitedly told him about the synchronicity. I was mindful to not be too excited: I was at the nurse’s station after all, and I didn’t want to seem unhinged. 😛

      All of this was rounded out by the fact that almost the last thing my teacher said to me before she said she wouldn’t be available for contact anymore is, “Your new name is “Here-Now”.”

      So that’s synchronicity number one… now for number two…

    2. “I might just bring a big bunch of buttercups.”

      One day, in the middle of all the craziness that was happening, a guy added me on Facebook. He was a young African guy from Botswana. He was in his early twenties, but he looked like a teenager. I looked at his page and it was all spiritual stuff; prose and poems he had written, and it was fantastic. His poetry was really simple, and really childlike, but in a good way. He’s still one of my favourite poets. His name was Godwill. That’s an interesting name, I thought to myself; I’ve never heard that before.

      I bought two of his books: “Gloom to Bloom”, and “Rising in Romance”. I wrote to him to tell him how much I loved his poetry, and asked: “How come you write in English so well? Is it your second language?” He said, “Well, I’d ask you not to tell anyone this, only me and my mum are aware of this at the moment, but I had a past life as a famous American poet.” (He recently gave me permission to share this story). Okay, I thought; I was interested but naturally skeptical. “Can I ask who the poet was?” I said. He replied, “e.e. cummings.” “Wow,” I said. “e.e. cummings wrote one of my favourite poems of all time!” (the poem is “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]”).

      This is pretty strange, I thought. This guy adds me with an interesting name, I absolutely adore his poetry, and he says he had a past life as one of my favourite poets! But that’s not even the main synchronicity.

      His profile picture was him holding a yellow flower. I was a bit transfixed by this flower for some reason, and I couldn’t tell what type it was, so I looked it up online. It was a buttercup.

      A few days later my mum was going down to Canberra for a dinner party. “I don’t want to bring wine to this dinner party,” she said, “I might just bring a big bunch of buttercups.”

      What the fuck, I thought to myself. My mum has never once mentioned the word buttercup to me, and just after this whole experience she mentions it to me for the first time. What are the chances of that???

      Another interesting thing that happened was that when I was talking to my teacher about her daughter (see my blog post “Calling Lilha”), she kind of accidentally called me Godwill. She said, “Oh no I meant “Oh my God, Will.”” But the way she said it sounded exactly like Godwill. I thought later: Is that my spiritual name? At first I didn’t really like the sound of it, I thought it sounded a bit grandiose or self-important, but I got used to it, and I quite like it now. I think there’s a very strong chance that will be my spiritual name. I asked my teacher once years earlier if she had a name for me yet, and she said: “Usually names just occur at some point, and that hasn’t happened for you yet.” “That’s okay,” I said. I wasn’t desperate for a name.

      A lot of people have a bit of an allergic reaction to someone changing their name when they embark on a spiritual journey, and I agree sometimes it can be motivated by ego, but at the same time, sometimes the spiritual path is so transformative that you no longer identify with the person you used to be. At that point, a name change can signify a profound shift in your sense of who you are.

      I’m not going with Godwill yet though, I’m waiting for my teacher to tell me what my name is, given I trust her judgement more than my own.

      And number three…

    3. Lilha

      I guess the most synchronicities I experienced were in relation to my spiritual teacher’s daughter. I went over the main ones in my blog post “Calling Lilha”, but there was so much more. That post was only about a quarter of what was going on. So many little things that seemed to point in this direction that by themselves I wouldn’t have paid any attention to, but in combination they seemed hard to disregard.

      These were little things like the name of my book is going to be “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, and in reading my teacher’s autobiography, she said her daughter came to her before she was born in the form of an elephant. I identify with the ostrich (see the “About” section of my blog), which just left the elephant role to be filled. And elephants have been a big motif in my life: my mum has been buying me elephant things my whole life.

      As I wrote about in “Calling Lilha”, reading about her north node and my north node was very illuminating. It said basically she has a tendency to be a very selfish person and I have a tendency to be a very selfless person, and those two energies need to be balanced. One day I was on YouTube and a video was recommended to me: “Being In Love”, by Osho. I’m kind of interested in that topic at the moment, I thought to myself; I wonder what Osho has to say. I clicked on it, and literally the first words out of his mouth were: “I’m here to teach you to be selfish.” What the fuck? I thought. This is so weird. To understand how weird this was you probably kind of had to have been there when I was talking to my spiritual teacher about her daughter, and how this issue of selfishness and selflessness came up so much. Interesingly, when I described her daughter based on what I’d read of her, she didn’t say, “Oh no, Will, my daughter’s not like that at all.” She just laughed.

      In my manifestation book for a partner, I wrote that I wanted someone with a “strong will and a strong sense of self.” As I said in “Calling Lilha”, this was kind of interesting to me because my goal is enlightenment, why do I want someone with a strong sense of self? Reading Lilha’s north node later, a lot of what I wrote in my manifestation book reflected what was written in her north node. It said these people have a very strong sense of self – to a fault. And it said they needed someone with a weak sense of self – for example ME – to transfer that energy, and again balance it out.

      There were lots of songs I came across that really spoke to me at this time, and seemed to point in this direction. I won’t go into them here cos it would be too long to write out, but these were more things that seemed to suggest there was something to this. I usually listen to songs with pretty deep lyrics, but at this time it was SO deep. I was often thinking, “Do these people know how deep the music they’re writing is?” Often I would be say, in the shower processing something deeply emotional, and the song would match my experience perfectly. Then, just as I’d finished processing what I was, the song would end. The timing of these things was eerie.

      One of the strangest things that happened was when I started to – apparently – hear thoughts from other people. Yeah, I know. Totally nuts. But I felt like I was connecting with people on such a deep level that I heard their thoughts, and was communicating with them. I want to be clear here: I do not know that this is true. This could have just been psychosis. I haven’t been able to confirm this with anyone I was speaking to (my spiritual teacher or her daughter, for example). Although my teacher’s partner told me once to make sure I was talking to Isira in the physical, not just the mental realm, which kind of indicated they thought I was doing that as well. Bashar calls telepathy telempathy, because he said it’s really connecting with people on an emotional level, and it’s not so much that you’re “reading each other’s thoughts”, but that you’re so much on the same wavelength that you’re effectively having the same thoughts at the same time. I’ve heard couples who’ve been together for a long time say they experience this. The Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung spoke about this as well, and was a big believer in telepathy. I could write a whole blog post on this experience, and especially my (possible) connection with Lilha during this time, but I don’t feel the motivation to do this at this point. I don’t think it’s necessary either, as it’s just speculation at this point.

      One thing I mentioned in the “Calling Lilha” post was that I knew for certain that Isira either knew I was right, or very strongly thought I was right about the messages relating to her daughter. It’s my opinion that she knew I was right, but I can’t know this for certain. One time I was talking to her about her daughter and all the craziness that was happening at the time and I said: “That was the only thing I wasn’t confused about.” (Meaning the messages relating to her daughter). She said, “Will, the mind can -“. “I know it’s a distraction,” I interrupted her. Her partner was there, and he said, “Yeah.” What I meant by this was that any focus I had on Lilha would actually distract me from the most important task at hand – waking up. Relationships were secondary to that, and any excessive focus on them would actually be an impediment to me reaching my goal of awakening.

      It was at this point that Isira said something to me which has greatly concerned me ever since. When we were talking about her daughter, she didn’t say, “Oh, Will, you’re reading into things that aren’t there.” She said: “Will, you’re going to experience everything this universe has to offer.” I looked away, processing what this meant. “Fuck,” I said.

      This was interesting to me though, because only a couple of months earlier I was at Budhawana (my teacher’s centre) by myself and I said, “I want to know all of life. I don’t want there to be any part of life I’m saying no to.”

      And then a couple of months later my teacher said this to me, confirming what I had said to myself earlier.

      One other interesting thing was that when I was talking to my teacher about all the signs, and worrying that I was going crazy, she said I wasn’t going crazy in that sense but instead said, “Will, you’ve learnt how to manifest… big time.”

      My teacher is the most awake and insightful person I’ve ever come across, so I really trust her judgement on these sorts of things.

    I think that’s about all I’ll write on this. As I said, there were almost 80 of these events in the space of about three months, and I found it very difficult to put them all down to chance. It’s one thing to read these on a screen, it’s a whole different thing to experience them, and all the emotional and intuitive feelings that accompany them. I guess that’s why my friend told me to never bother trying to explain your synchronicities to other people: they won’t fully get them. But I just felt like sharing this to give some idea of what I was going through at the time.

    End note

    I kind of got a bit tired of writing by the time I came to the third point about Lilha, and I didn’t feel a great urge to really write about it, so I haven’t really explained it well, or really hinted at the myriad of other signals that were happening. So take point 3 with a grain of salt. This is really just a personal thing that I don’t think I need to explain to people, I just had to make a third point to fill out the blog post. I don’t actually think about Lilha that much anymore. It’s just like a possibility that’s always in the back of my mind, but I really don’t focus on it. My goal is awakening first, and whatever comes after that, I think it will be great no matter what turns out to be true or untrue of all of this.

    Thanks for reading,

    Will.

  • Embodying the Divine Feminine

    In some spiritual circles, there is often a distinction made between what is called “The Divine Masculine” and “The Divine Feminine”. In Hinduism these are called Shiva and Shakti respectively.

    There is a lot written about these two principles, and I’m not here to write an intellectual rundown on these two ideas, not least of all because I’m not an expert in this field. Instead, I want to give a very simple rundown of how I see these two ideas relate to spiritual awakening.

    Shiva, the divine masculine, is often said to represent the absolute reality or consciousness; that which is beyond all form. Shakti, on the other hand, is often said to represent the manifest world, the life-giving energy of the universe, in all her beauty and horror.

    The type of spirituality I have mostly followed since my spiritual journey began 8 years ago is called “nonduality”, from the Hindu word advaita, literally meaning “not-two”.

    The basic premise of this school of thought is that all is ultimately consciousness, there is no true separation, and thus the separate self is ultimately illusory too.

    These teachings are really fantastic for those interested in ultimate truth and enlightenment. However, like all teachings relating to the nature of reality, they have their limitations. As far as I see it, the world is much more nuanced than can be simplistically put down into absolute statements about its nature, and too much emphasis on these teachings can lead to someone rejecting or neglecting the phenomenal world as merely “illusory”.

    As I see it, the world is only illusory in one sense – that is, its nature is very different than how most humans usually think it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s “not real”. If a magician performs an illusion, we don’t afterwards say “nothing happened”, we say “what we thought was happening was not what was actually happening.”

    This is the sense in which I see the world as illusory: It is made out of consciousness, not matter. The world is very much real as consciousness, but very much unreal as matter.

    That’s not to say we should disregard the idea of matter altogether – it is still the way consciousness is appearing so should still be taken seriously. I wouldn’t step in front of a bus just because I think matter is ultimately illusory. Illusory me would still die, and all the spiritual excuses in the world wouldn’t change that.

    So to just dismiss the world as illusory is to neglect the relative reality of the world, and often leaves people in an intellectual framework without embodying their awakening, or otherwise engaging in “spiritual bypassing”, which is using spiritual teachings as a way to avoid dealing with their issues.

    I recently came across a great spiritual teacher called Louise Kay, who I think embodies the balance between “masculine” and “feminine” perfectly. She is in part a nondual teacher, and simultaneously helps people come to terms with and embrace their emotions.

    A lot of nondual teachers reject the usefulness of meditation practise. They say, “you already are what you seek, all you need to do is recognise this.” And this is true at an absolute level, and in my opinion can even be a useful teaching at a relative level, but it often leaves people sitting around “waiting for enlightenment”, with no change in their everyday life.

    It is a paradox as far as I see it. Yes, you already are what you seek, and yes all you need to do is recognise this, but at the same time practises may be useful in helping you see this. I say “may be” because in my estimation there are no rules for awakening. Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie both woke up in the midst of severe depression, without any previous spiritual path.

    The way I approach it now is to keep reminding myself that I already am what I seek, but at the same time, I’m going to do the practises because I feel they help my relative life, and who am I to say that helping my relative life won’t help wake me up? Anybody who says they have a simple answer to that question I think is deceiving themselves.

    I had some sessions with Louise and she actually told me that I’m already awake, just that it hadn’t sunk in fully yet, which was great to hear. I still struggle with a lot of depression and anxiety, largely related to my experiences over the past couple of years, so it’s a bit hard to be excited about while I’m still suffering so much, but it’s nice to think that my path is paying off.

    In conclusion, I think the Buddha’s teaching of “the middle way” is most appropriate here. Don’t get stuck in absolutes, and don’t get stuck in relativity – embrace both and see where it leads you.

    I’m personally excited to see where this path of opening up to my emotions will lead me. I’m only a beginner on this path but I feel it’s perfect for me, as my emotions were what so often made meditation difficult to maintain. A meditation practise that specifically focuses on embracing your emotions in unconditional love feels perfect for me.

    I’ll see how it unfolds from here…

    Much love,

    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!

  • There Are No Others

    I’ve been reflecting on this a lot lately. One of the greatest enlightened sages to ever live, Ramana Maharshi, was once asked, “How should we treat others?”

    He replied, “There are no others.”

    To a lot of people, this won’t make any sense. But when you look closer, what he’s pointing to is that what you really are deep down – consciousness itself – is not different for any person.

    The consciousness that is shining out of my eyes is exactly the same consciousness that is shining out of your eyes.

    It is all one. Literally.

    The reason most people don’t see this, apart from the enlightened few, is because we have been taught from the time we were little babies to regard ourselves as separate and distinct from everything around us.

    But this isn’t how we start out.

    When a baby is born, they have no sense of me vs other. Their experience is just a whole bunch of sights, sounds, tastes, smells and touch.

    They’re hard-wired to have preferences. They like the sound of their mother’s voice and dislike loud noises. But they don’t see themselves as separate from these experiences.

    Then people start pointing at them and saying this weird sound that they eventually come to know as “my name”.

    A mental construct of them as a distinct and separate self then starts to build.

    This is very convincing. The mind is extremely powerful at clouding over the blatantly obvious fact that everything is one.

    And this is reinforced and reinforced by society to the point that it really feels like we’re a separate self, distinct from everything around us.

    Then some people start to question this through various means.

    Maybe they see that it doesn’t make much sense from the point of view of neuroscience that there’s a special place in the brain where our “self” resides.

    Maybe they come across the teachings of an enlightened person and start to examine what experiential evidence there is for this self.

    Maybe they have a spontaneous awakening where they see this clearly with no clear “path” to this realization.

    Whatever the case, these awakenings are taking place in greater and greater number all around the world. There really is a great rise in both the realization and discussion of this topic.

    So what about you? How would your life change if you were to see clearly that everything is one and there is no true separation? How would the world look if a great mass of people started to realize this?

    As the late comedian Bill Hicks once famously said, “What’s going to happen to the arms industry when we realize we’re all one?”

    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!

  • Simultaneous Truths and the Logic of Love

    Where the mind fails, the heart reigns supreme.

    One of the reasons I find it difficult to write sometimes is not that I have writers block — there are lots of things I could write about — but instead, as I’ve moved along my spiritual path, I’ve begun to see degrees of logic and validity in what almost everyone says. I can see their point of view, even if I think it’s only a fragmented view, or missing the bigger picture, I can still see the truth in it.

    I mentioned in one of my previous blogs that there’s a quote which says: “An appreciation for paradox and ambiguity are a good measure of spiritual progress.” I think this is very true. The more I delved into any topic, the more I could see the logic of both sides of most arguments. Some were better arguments than others (some are obviously totally gibberish), but in almost all of them I could still see the valid point they were making.

    Which leaves me in an interesting position, both with writing but also in social situations. I’ve always been a pretty quiet person, but now in conversation there’s so much more silence coming from my end because I find myself disagreeing with people a lot less. I may not agree 100% with what they’re saying, but I can agree with it partly.

    So when someone asks me my opinion on something, it’s always a tricky thing to answer.

    Some questions are easy, “Do you prefer apples or oranges?” Answer: oranges. Easy.

    But when the conversations become more complex, there are so many different perspectives to consider, and so many contradictory truths coming from both sides that I find myself in a very odd position of not really being able to answer concisely. I usually end up with a long response which goes something like the article I’m writing here.

    Take politics for example. I used to consider myself a left wing type of person, and I think many people would still consider me that today, but over the years I’ve gained a lot of appreciation for the opposing side of politics and the valid points they make. (they also make a lot of invalid ones in my opinion, which is why I don’t consider myself a right-winger).

    But let’s take a look at one simple example: unemployment benefits. I’m lucky enough to live in a country where these are available for those unable to work for various reasons. It provides something to fall back on when times are tough, and I think this is a great service offered by our government. However, there’s a counter-argument which also has some validity: If you hand out free money to people, they’re not going to be as motivated or proactive about getting a job and getting back into the workforce. For some people, this could actually be doing them a disservice, because a lot of our self-worth is derived from what we do for a living and what we contribute to society. It may make people lazier, thinking “Well, I’ve got enough to live on, I can just lay back and take it easy for a while.” I don’t think many people would consider this the recipe for fulfillment or happiness. So you see, one simple issue, two opposing points of view, tough love or soft love, both with their own degree of validity.

    Or how about the gender pronoun debate? Yes it’s crazy to put people into boxes and say, “You’re this gender therefore that means you must be a, b, and c.” But likewise, it is also crazy to say that there are no biological differences between the genders. So how can you really provide a concise opinion on something as multi-faceted as the gender pronoun debate when there are so many intricacies and subtleties that go into the debate?

    Or another: the question of whether humans have free will. On the one hand you could say, everything is pre-determined by physical laws governing us, therefore there’s no such thing as true free will. On the other hand, we make (relative) choices all the time. Some decisions we have a lot of choice in, some decisions we have less choice in, but it’s still what could reasonably called a “choice”.

    And this simultaneity of truth or “relative truth” perspective goes down to physics itself. Look at the double slit experiment in quantum mechanics: when not observed, the electromagnetic spectrum behaves as if it were a spread out wave of possibilities. When observed, this wave function collapses to a single point giving us a determined set of characteristics for a given particle. So in answering the question, is light a wave or a particle the answer is: both. Or one, depending on which measurement you’ve taken or chosen not to take.

    The physicist Leonard Susskind thought up a conversation which took place between Alice from Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter. It went like this:

    Ever since her last science class, Alice had been deeply puzzled by something, and she hoped one of her new acquaintances might straighten out the confusion.
    Putting down her cup of tea, she asked in a timid voice, “Is light made of waves, or is it made of particles?”
    “Yes, exactly so,” replied the Mad Hatter.
    Somewhat irritated, Alice asked in a more forceful voice, “What kind of answer is that? I will repeat my question: Is light particles or is it waves?”
    “That’s right,” said the Mad Hatter.

    I see this pattern in all of human thinking and human endeavours, which is why philosophers, despite going hard at all these problems for millennia, have never come up with any good unifying theories for how to explain life or any other issue they were discussing. They’ve merely been circling around the whirlpool trying to sneak a look in at truth.

    But truth is multivariant. There are so many different layers to truth that to put in down in words — in the language of humans — is an almost impossible task.

    Right now there are many ways to discuss what’s happening here while you’re reading this. First, there are subatomic particles which were set in motion at the beginning of time and were all pre-destined to make it to this point and to having this conversation. Second, we’re having this conversation because of the cultural situation we find ourselves in. Third, there are electronics within our computers which are processing the input and transferring it to your phone, allowing for communication. Fourth, at the level of quantum mechanics, we have very little idea how this functions but it seems like an infinite wave of potential is collapsing in every moment giving us this exact experience.

    All of these are simultaneous truths, and one doesn’t discount the other, which makes it difficult to really discuss exactly what is happening. You have to first set up a premise which is never ultimately true, in order to have a conversation within defined parameters.

    I personally believe this will always remain the case. When you look at how our minds evolved, they are basically like those little labeling machines from the 80s. We think if we stick enough labels together we can come up with a coherent story to explain things. But those labels are still just labels. In Zen there is an expression: “Don’t mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself.” That’s the mistake our minds always make. In order to simplify things and find a “yes” or “no” answer to every question, we dumb down reality (and ourselves) by clinging onto these simplistic solutions.

    And us humans hate this. This “yes and no” response. We want set and defined answers we can guarantee on and thus know how to navigate this world we find ourselves in a bit better (or, just as often, to feed into our egoic self that we’re right and we’re smart).

    So what should we do in a world that’s so contradictory and holds so many valid but opposing points of view? Well, this for me is where the logic of love comes into play. I believe we are all really on a search for love; a search for unity and connection. So why not just start there, where we’re all aiming to reach anyway? Why not just love the person or situation as they are without the need to label them as good or bad, useful or useless, right or wrong.

    I have found in my own journey, as my mind’s fixed positions began to crumble more and more, I experienced more empathy and compassion for those around me, and I also funnily enough became smarter. I became smarter because I was looking at each situation with an open mind, and considering whatever the proposition was entirely on its own merits, not relying on my mind’s previous conclusions about the subject in question.

    And this is still happening to me today. My mind is still crumbling and crumbling, but I’m getting smarter all the time. I’m definitely not the smartest person in most rooms, but I can seem like it because I have such an open mind and can see things from a bigger picture than I used to be able to.

    That’s why I think love is not just an ideal to hope we run into, but one we cultivate through expanding our awareness and understanding those with different points of view.

    As one of my idols Helen Keller said, “The highest result of education is tolerance.”

    Imagine the world we would live in if people everywhere started to consider all possibilities when having discussions, rather than doggedly arguing for their set point of view, with all its inherent limitations and contradictions.

    At the end of the day, when the mind begins to break down, and you can see people who are still totally enslaved by their own mind, compassion arises. Love arises. This is why I consider love not just an emotion but the most logical position given the circumstances we find ourselves in.

    So, as always, and to the best of my ability, 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!

  • The Great Spiritual Awakening

    I believe there is a great spiritual awakening happening on Earth.

    If you had told me this ten years ago I would have stared at you blankly and thought you were a bit nuts.

    How times have changed.

    The reasons for this are many, but I think it boils down to two main reasons: 1. People are ready. People can sense there’s something wrong with the way life is being lived on our planet and they are looking for alternatives; and 2. The conditions are just right now for the spread of information and therefore wisdom to occur (the most obvious avenue for this being the internet). There is a third factor of technology that I will discuss, but I see it as secondary to these first two reasons.

    There are two sides to spiritual awakening itself though. One side is about waking up to absolute reality, what Jesus called “God”, and what many others have called “enlightenment”, “self-realization”, or “awakening”. And the other side is the progression of life on our planet: our cultural evolution, if you will.

    To deal with the first aspect: A lot of people don’t know this, but there’s this crazy little thing called consciousness which makes up literally everything we experience.

    Don’t believe me?

    Try and find something in your experience that is *not* made of consciousness (i.e. your sight, taste, smell, touch, etc). Pretty difficult isn’t it?

    Well that’s because everything we know of the world IS made of consciousness, according to our direct perception of it. Everything, in a very real sense, is just in your head. And this is now being backed up more and more by modern physics, which for over a hundred years has been suggesting to us that things are not really things until they are observed – i.e. until they appear in consciousness. In fact it suggests that things are not even things when they do appear in consciousness. It suggests our whole world is made up of nothing but consciousness. This is what the Buddhist teaching of emptiness points to – empty of substance.

    This is an amazing fact, and often overlooked because of its simplicity.

    But people are beginning to take notice. Not just of the physics, but of consciousness itself. People are starting to question more than they ever have, “what is the truth of all this?”

    You see, as Morpheus said to Neo in the Matrix – one of the best documentary series ever made by the way 😛 – we’ve been living in a dream world. A kind of trance state created by our minds, which says with absolute certainty that things are things whether or not we are looking at them. Physics says “nu-uh”.

    And for some inexplicable reason, there is a massive amount of interest gaining in areas which treat consciousness seriously. Ten years ago you could go to a 10 day silent meditation retreat whenever you wanted; now you have to book months in advance to reserve your spot.

    The second part of our cultural evolution and awakening is about ideas and questioning our assumptions to come up with better ways of living. This is the natural selection of ideas which Richard Dawkins coined “memes”. You see this everywhere. How many people do you know who are suddenly interested in the gender pronouns debate? 10 years ago this topic was unheard of. Now, debates are happening all over the place. And, even though it may look crazy and dysfunctional on the surface, what people are really trying to do is make sense of things: refine our ideas so we come up with better, more inclusive ideas.

    It may look like not much progress is being made on the surface: Just two people stubbornly arguing for their point of view, but really there is much more going on. People are at least considering the other person’s perspective, even if they won’t willingly acknowledge this during the debate. They are starting to see that there could be some truth to both sides of the argument. There’s a quote which says the progress of spiritual maturity is gauged by an appreciation for paradox and ambiguity. I think this is very true. Take the gender pronouns issue as an example. There is no cut and dried answer to this, just as there isn’t to most questions in society. It’s ridiculous to claim to that gender differences are an entirely social construct, just as it’s ridiculous to claim that social constructs don’t play a major role in gender identification. It’s all about, as Richard Dawkins also once said, “consciousness raising”: appreciating that there may be another side to the story which you haven’t fully understood yet. (note: Richard Dawkins is not a favourite intellectual of mine, but for some reason he popped up twice in one article, go figure).

    And the third aspect I mentioned – that of technology. Technology is going to drag us into the 21st century whether we like it or not, and it’s also going to radically change our way of life, as if it hasn’t enough already. The warning that comes along with this is that when a culture develops highly advanced technology, it had better be mature enough to be able to handle it! Which is why I think we are seeing more and more mature debates being held all around the world. People are becoming fascinated with thinkers like Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson and many others. I noted that, off the top of my head, there are not as many influential female speakers, and this is something that will definitely need to change: we need to listen to the feminine more if we’re going to evolve as a spiritually mature, advanced species. Women may not always speak the same language as men; they may not always give your mind as much of a bone to chew on, but their contribution is just as important, if not more important, given the imbalance that currently exists within our society.

    So in general I think people are starting to pause and say, “Hang on, this isn’t working.” “Something’s not right.” “Things aren’t how they’re meant to be.” “I’m unhappy.”

    And when people start to realise they’re unhappy – or at least, not as happy as they could be – and usually after a long period of wallowing, they start to look for cures. They begin “the search”. They look everywhere for this thing called happiness, in people, places, ideas, things, but never seem to be able to find it. Or if they do, it’s only temporary. This is when a lot of people start to look at the bigger questions of life, and start to look into spirituality. This is the beginning of the end of their road of unhappiness.

    Not that enlightenment is just about curing unhappiness. That’s just a byproduct. Enlightenment is about truth. Truth, it seems, just brings a lot of happiness along with it (eventually).

    But this transition won’t be easy. There are a lot of hard truths we’re going to have to face up to as a society to make it through this. A lot of really horrible shit has gone down while we’ve all been sleep-walking our way through life. Enlightenment is sort of like shining a torch in the darkness. When you shine a torch, the first thing you see is all the rats, so you’re horrified. But the next part is the part that’s worth it: the rats hate the light so they begin to flee. So that’s all we’ve got to keep doing; keep shining our torches (mostly on ourselves, because as Adyashanti once said, “enlightenment is an inside job”). I won’t go into the details on what these hard truths will be because a. I don’t know them well enough myself yet; and b. my intention is not to fear-monger here, only to raise awareness, so I don’t think it’s necessary to go into the specifics just yet. Let’s just say, to use a quote from Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” In other words, there have been more things going down on Earth than most people have realised.

    My prediction is that we’re going to be in for a very rough ride when we finally start to see all the rats that have previously gone unnoticed, but it’s the first step to a life free of these rats. There’s no other way to go about it. You can’t just keep living pretending the rats don’t exist. Well, you can, but it will only continue the suffering we all experience. As the song by The Clash says, “If I go there will be trouble; if I stay there will be double.”

    So we all have a choice now. I say go. Even though it’s going to be painful and difficult, the alternative is much much worse.

    Which decision will you make?

    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!

  • On Pedophilia and Oneness

    Content warning: This post contains references to pedophilia, which may be upsetting for some people. Apologies if so. ❤️

    This post was inspired by a conversation I had with a friend about the spiritual teacher Fred Davis, who – about 40 years ago when he was a teenager – indecently assaulted some of his younger nieces. This created a bit of a storm within the spiritual community: some coming to Fred’s defence; others lambasting him and saying he shouldn’t be allowed to teach spirituality.

    Well, Fred, after spending much of his life as an alcoholic, and at times being homeless or in mental institutions because of this, finally joined Alcoholics Anonymous to try and fix his drinking problem. He did fix it, and ended up becoming a much-in-demand AA guide for others who were trying to do the same.

    As part of the 12-step program in AA, one of the steps is that you need to connect with and apologise to all the people you have wronged in your life. Fred did this, and obviously one of these things was writing to his nieces to apologise for his actions. He offered to talk to them too, if they wanted to. Four years later, a couple of them did, and they recorded the conversation and gave it to the police. Despite this being some 30 years in the past at the time, the state where Fred lived, South Carolina, had no statute of limitations for sexual offences, so he was brought before a judge and convicted of the crimes. The judge took into account his recovery from alcoholism and the good work he was doing being a guide for others to do the same, and sentenced him to weekend incarceration for a period of 90 days in jail, registration as a sex offender, and some other strict provisions for five years. Some may say this was too lenient, but I’ll let others be the judge of that. Fred wrote a blog post about this back in 2014 when it all came out, which can be found here, and it is an interesting insight into the nature of what happened. I recommend reading it:
    https://awakeningclaritynow.com/glass-houses/

    Which brings me to the topic of this post, and WHOAH, what a heavy topic it is. Probably the heaviest topic you could possibly discuss: An adult taking advantage of a young, innocent child for their own gratification, thereby causing untold grief and trauma to the victim. Like I said… heavy.

    So where to start with such a topic? How to start with such a topic?

    I have always found myself in a peculiar situation whenever the topic of pedophilia comes up. I obviously feel great remorse for the victims and the amount of suffering they must have endured as a result of their experiences, but I always also felt something else simultaneously: compassion for the perpetrators. I always felt, wow, this is considered the most reprehensible crime you can commit in society, and this person just committed it. That must be a horrible thing to experience, regardless of their guilt.

    This is not to say it’s not a horrible thing that they did – it is. It’s just to say: these people were so mentally unwell that they committed what is considered to be one of the worst crimes in society. And pedophilia, it must be said, IS a mental illness: There is no biological reason why an adult should be attracted to a pre-pubescent child, it makes no evolutionary sense. Therefore, the cause must be a psychological illness which has made them act in this way.

    Which leaves us in an interesting position. Most people who are mentally unwell are usually treated with compassion, even those who commit crimes. I myself committed a crime during a psychotic episode (assault), and I was treated (mostly) with compassion and understanding. But not pedophiles. Oh no, their crimes are just too egregious to have any compassion for whatsoever.

    I think this is wrong. I think every person deserves compassion and understanding regardless of the crimes they have committed. And yes, this too includes Hitler, the one person who is often singled out as the example for the most evil man in history.

    The reason being: I consider all life as one, you see. Not just as an idea, but as a fact. So I consider anything anyone does to another person that is harmful to the other person as a sign of a kind of mental illness on their part, a misperception about the nature of reality. If they saw clearly, I argue – if they saw truly that life was all one, then they would not have done it. But they weren’t seeing clearly, therefore they had some degree of mental illness.

    In fact, I consider 99.99% of the population to be to some degree mentally unwell. If you look into your own life, I’m sure you can find examples where you’ve acted a bit crazy or a bit irrationally. Sure, you may not be as mentally unwell as some people, but it’s still a sign of mental illness. In this sense, I consider everyone who doesn’t clearly see the oneness and interconnectedness of all life as, to varying degrees, mentally ill. This includes myself. I haven’t yet reached a point where I see life as all one all the time. I have had glimpses of it, which is how I am able to write this, but I don’t walk around all day seeing oneness. There’s still too much mental activity clouding my seeing of this simple fact.

    And it is a fact, even just from a logical point of view. When you think about it logically, life has to be all one, ultimately speaking, because it all comes from the same source. It is a logical impossibility that there could be more than one source for existence. Why? Because if there was more than one source, then it wouldn’t be the ultimate source, it would only be a relative source. If there was more than one, then there would have to be another source from which those two sources sprung. You can’t have a split at the base of existence. This is where the philosophy of nondualism is so accurate and so valuable. It is not the only truth, there are still other relative truths – but it is the truth. This is why it is called in Hinduism: advaita vedanta – which translates to “not-two”, and “the end of the vedas”, indicating this is the highest teaching.

    But please don’t take offence to what I’m saying either. I’m not labelling you personally as mentally ill, I’m just saying it is the nature of the mind, because of the way it evolved, to often misunderstand things. You see, as I’ve mentioned numerous times in my blogs, our minds really did only evolve for basic biological functions and to survive in the apparently physical world we inhabit. It didn’t evolve to understand reality, only to survive and reproduce in it. There’s some great work done by the cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, where he computer-modeled evolutionary scenarios to see which conditions would win out. To his surprise, the one determining factor in evolutionary success was survival – i.e. passing on your genes – not perceiving reality as it really is. Here is his Ted talk on the subject (20 minutes), called “Do we see reality as it is?” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY He ends the talk with the quote: “Dare to recognize that perception is not about seeing truth; it’s about having kids.”

    So how does all this relate back to pedophilia, you might ask? Well, as I mentioned, I think we are all, to some degree, mentally ill, because we do not see reality accurately. Some of us function well in this survival-oriented paradigm, others function less well, but in neither case are they seeing reality accurately. And this I believe is where all harm stems from: not seeing things clearly. If Fred Davis, or Hitler, or anyone else you want to mention, saw clearly at the times they were committing their crimes, they would not have done them. Why? Because they would see that it was really just another aspect of themselves they were harming. As the nonduality teacher Gary Weber once said, “It would be like cutting off your own hand – it just wouldn’t make sense so you wouldn’t do it.”

    So I believe everyone deserves compassion and forgiveness. Not because their crimes don’t matter or the victims suffering doesn’t matter – it does, and people should still be sent to prison if they commit these acts in order to protect others and to act as a deterrent for others. But everyone deserves compassion and forgiveness, because when we harm another it is only ever because we are not seeing clearly. We are acting from a deluded perspective, and thus are deserving of sympathy, not hatred and judgment.

    What a world we would live in if people saw those who committed heinous acts as deserving of understanding and compassion rather than hatred and derision? A much nicer one, I think.

    Something else came up when I was talking to my friend about this, and that is the idea of “what you resist persists”. Eckhart Tolle – another great spiritual teacher – once said that he thinks a big part of the reason there is so much pedophilia in the Catholic church is because of their demonization of sexuality. If you demonize something, you often, in a strange way, make it somehow more appealing. Just like the illegalization of drugs. If someone says you can’t do something, you kind of want to say, “Oh yeah? Why not?” Tolle noted that the suppression of sexuality in the Catholic church often led to it becoming distorted and manifesting in perverse ways. I agree with his judgment on this (although I accept there are most likely other factors too, but I don’t want to make this post any longer than it already is). [Important note: I just want to be clear here: I am *not* saying that we should accept pedophilia and then it might go away; we should *always* as a society say that pedophilia is wrong and immoral, I am only talking here about the demonization of sexuality in the Catholic church (and, to a lesser extent, society as a whole) which has led to sexuality manifesting in perverse ways.]

    The spiritual teacher Adyashanti once said this too: “Whatever you resist you become. If you resist anger, you are always angry. If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion, you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.”

    I think the same goes for things like pedophilia. In the case of the Catholic church, they have resisted human sexuality to such a point that it has become a taboo perversion for them, rather than a natural expression of love and unity (or whatever else you want it to be, so long as it’s done with mutual respect and consent).

    But it’s not just the Catholic church who do this: we do this all over society. Imagine a society where instead of demonizing and hating pedophiles, we treated them with understanding and compassion. Imagine the effect that would have on the pedophiles themselves? If you’re told by society that you are the lowest of the low, beyond forgiveness, you are more likely to act in that way. If society instead treated them with understanding and compassion, the would-be pedophile might instead think, “oh, I am just mentally unwell, it’s not that I’m an evil person”, and they would be much less likely to commit the act in the first place – they would seek help and feel supported.

    This is not to say it is wrong to feel anger, or wrong to feel sadness when things like this happen. That is a misunderstanding of what I’m saying. Anger and sadness are legitimate responses to bad or unwanted situations. So I’m not saying don’t feel anger when things like this happen. I’m just saying, look to see if you can’t also find the part of you that contains forgiveness. The part that has understanding and compassion. The part that knows this person acted out of their own illness, not out of a conscious decision to harm another person for no reason.

    Thanks for reading, and as always,

    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!

  • The Best Spiritual Teacher on the Planet!

    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!

  • The Difficulty I Have Sharing My Story

    A lot of the time I would prefer to be this cat.

    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!

  • My Message is Really Just Love

    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 exponentially powerful. 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!

  • The “Voices” I Was Hearing

    Preface

    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! đŸ˜›

    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!

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