The Unfoldment: The Organic Path to Clarity, Power, and Transformation

The Unfoldment: The Organic Path to Clarity, Power, and Transformation

by Neil Kramer
The Unfoldment: The Organic Path to Clarity, Power, and Transformation

The Unfoldment: The Organic Path to Clarity, Power, and Transformation

by Neil Kramer

Paperback(First Edition)

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Overview

The Unfoldment presents a body of sacred wisdom and a deep spiritual perspective that puts real power and real magic into the hands of those who seek a path of awakening. Neil Kramer draws on a lifetime of spiritual encounters and experiential gnosis to formulate a unique synthesis of metaphysics, mysticism, and esoteric knowledge—genuine, hands-on tools and teachings for transformation and enlightenment in the 21st century.

The Unfoldment is a natural human process; a journey of growth, realization, and ascendance. For the first time, Neil Kramer's insights, techniques and, ideas are brought together in one inspirational work that has the power to change lives.

The book fuses profound spiritual philosophy and dynamic practical application, specifically designed to help you:
  • Claim your power—create a life of authenticity, resonance, and fulfillment
  • Dissolve illusions and re-pattern old wiring—liberate the mind from systems of control
  • Master emotional alchemy—transform pain and embrace flow
  • Unveil the secret teachings and hidden histories of our ancient ancestors
  • Understand the intimate relationship between light and shadow, male and female, creation and destruction.

  • Product Details

    ISBN-13: 9781601632142
    Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
    Publication date: 05/22/2012
    Edition description: First Edition
    Pages: 256
    Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

    About the Author

    Neil Kramer is a writer, philosopher, and teacher specializing in the fields of consciousness, metaphysics, shamanism, and ancient mystical disciplines. He has made a lifelong study of philosophy, indigenous wisdom traditions, inner alchemy, occultism, and esoteric world history. Kramer shares his path of transformation in writings and interviews, and travels the world giving seminars, workshops, and teachings. He has spoken at numerous international conferences on the nature of human consciousness and is a frequent guest on popular media networks. Kramer is a renowned figure in the consciousness and alternative communities, recognized for his message of empowerment, lucidity, and spiritual insight. He lives in Oregon. Find him at neilkramer.com.

    Read an Excerpt

    CHAPTER 1

    True Deeds

    I can feel sacred truth in a smooth black pebble on the beach. I can see it in patterns of chewing gum stuck to the sidewalk. I can read it in old books and smell it in the carcass of a vulture. I can taste it in steamed broccoli. I can hear it in the voice of an old woman waiting in line at the grocery store. It is always present.

    There is one universal truth from which all sacred knowledge flows. Every authentic philosophical, religious, scientific, and mystical system is attempting to rediscover the essence of that original emanation. Such is its brilliance and luminosity — that its reflection can be found in all forms, both physical and non-physical. The purer the reflection, the closer it feels. It points the way to growth and integration, and it reassures us in the adventure of separation as we live as human beings.

    Truth is always a perennial discovery. Though the language and ideas that we use to articulate it are continually changing, its core resonance is constant and inviolable. It is always fundamentally the same. We can but offer our own knowing of it.

    Each reflection of truth can be regarded as having three main elements to it: part wisdom, part thing, and part observer. The wisdom represents one strand of the original emanation of truth. It is an encoded route map back to source/the divine, lending insight and discernment to any given subject. The thing is the energy configuration that casts the reflection. It can be a poem, a piece of wood, a glass of water, or a memory. Anything. The more authentic and uncorrupted it is — the more organic — the clearer the reflection it will give. The observer is the consciousness of the person. You. Me. Your mother. The man in the coffee shop with the Salvador Dali moustache. There are countless idiosyncratic consciousnesses, each with its own customized narrative and philosophical equipment. All these things go into composing a reflection. Thus, each engagement with truth is uniquely and intimately bound to the individual experiencing it.

    Depending on where we find ourselves on this planet, we are apt to perceive truth through the various social, historical, and political filters that have shaped our lands and peoples over the centuries. There are Western paradigms and there are Eastern paradigms, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. There is highbrow metaphysics and there is homespun commonsense. Scholars and mystics have grappled with the truth since time immemorial, producing enormously differing conclusions. Yet despite the singular circumstances of these men and women, were they not all looking upward to the same stars? Were their hearts not warmed by the same sun? Certainly, we each have our own personal way of approaching and interpreting truth and no single way is necessarily right or wrong — though undoubtedly, some are purer and more elegant than others.

    When a small child looks into a mirror, he or she may be forgiven for thinking, "That is me!" The image behind the glass depicts a very faithful (albeit reversed) image of the child, one that is easily confused with the form of the actual child. In a similar manner, becoming confused by reflections of truth — rather than the truth itself — is not at all uncommon.

    The pursuit and glorification of reflections is a game that even the brightest may inadvertently find themselves playing, sometimes for embarrassingly long periods before they finally catch themselves doing it. This wild goose chase might even be optimistically regarded as some sort of initiatory trial through which the eager spiritual student must pass. It only really becomes a problem when the reverence shifts up a gear, and the observer's consciousness becomes infatuated with the thing that casts the reflection. The mirror. The goblet. The person. The page. When this occurs, the vision of truth can become hopelessly distorted. Legions of well-intended souls can be seen prostrating themselves on cold floors, morosely clutching their talismans, and venerating effigies of forgetfulness. To witness the adoration of symbols, shapes, books, buildings, personages, bones, and relics is to witness the human mind falling into misapprehension. Though everyone finds their way back in the end, it can take an awfully long time in thick fog.

    Whether or not we consider truth to emanate from, and lead back to, an ineffable divine source is a matter for personal contemplation. It's handy to use the word God, but that word is so loaded with eons of divisive religious baggage that it may confuse more than it clarifies. Regardless of the nature of that source — which remains necessarily enigmatic from our third density vantage point anyway — the observance that it is an intelligent source is becoming more and more self-evident. The sublime synchronistic universe, the staggeringly coherent interpenetration of all forms, and the ever-incrementing fractal hurricane of conscious evolution do not arise without an epic knowingness at their root. Whispers of this magic are everywhere. Physics and mysticism hold hands far more often than they would like anyone to know about.

    Still, there are those who claim to have no interest in such fascinating expeditions of consciousness. In our everyday life, we cannot help but notice that an undeniable majority of folks do not appear in the least drawn to the enriching truths of the world. They conceal themselves from their unfoldment using all kinds of clever tricks, reasonable excuses, and encumbering diversions. They believe that if they just keep their heads down and lead a steady, productive, moral life, they'll get away with it. But deep in their hearts, they know this is a dishonest way of being. Everyone, sooner or later, must face their truth. We must all encounter that which casts its reflections into the world. Even a whole lifetime of sleek truth-dodging will simply result in a reboot incarnation — different scenery and personnel, but identical challenges and teachings, all over again. It is inevitable.

    If truth is relative, might it therefore be relatively meaningless? How can it serve as a reliable guide to sacred wisdom if it's different for everyone? For example, is it true that Ernesto "Che" Guevara was a freedom fighter, or was he just a terrorist? Can both of these statements be true? Relativism holds that all criteria for judgment are relative, being variously influenced by belief, knowledge, environment, and historical precedents. If this is the case, and anything and everything could be true or untrue, then how can there be a single emanation of truth? The answer is visible only when viewed multi-dimensionally. In short, the closer our consciousness is focused upon ourselves, the more relative it is. We have our own personal truth and we have universal truth. When we shift perspective, we affect the universality of our truth. Zoom way out from your own concerns, and your sense of truth takes on a more universal aspect. You are compelled to know a truth that is not only valid for you, but for others, too. The further you zoom out, the more consciousness and creation that truth will have to encompass and respect. The opposite is also the case: The more you zoom in on your own personal affairs, likes, and dislikes, the more relative and less universal your experience of truth becomes.

    A woman I once knew often complained that her husband would repeatedly shut down any discussion that questioned his beliefs by saying, "Well it's true for me and that's that." Despite her numerous optimistic attempts to open his mind to alternative scientific, cultural, and political outlooks, he would not budge. She used to call him a relativist Nazi. Like many people, he had established a set of easy truths as a young man and decided to stick with them. Forty years later, his stone tablets remained virtually untouched, with only rare booze-sodden self-acknowledgments of his bigotry and regret. His wife was a fan of Dorothy Parker and was the first to quote the immortal lines to me (with reference to her own dear spouse), "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

    Men are more predisposed to prematurely hardwiring their personal truths than women are. The female psyche sustains a flexible mental architecture for longer, because very wisely, women do not automatically associate their identity with their thinking, unlike men. This gives them a distinct advantage in terms of their capacity for personal transformation. It operates at both extremes however, in that the most fabulous individual unfoldments and the most spectacular psychic calamities, both consistently present themselves in the feminine aspect.

    To maintain a knowingly limited set of undeveloped personal truths, with no real inclination to evolve them, is to hide under the bed. Though this may temporarily help to appease the weird convolutions of the world, it really only serves to magnify them. The monsters get bigger, the darkness gets thicker, and the truth becomes more incomprehensible. And it gets worse the longer you hide. When we recognize that our experience with truth is always changing and always refining, we can stop worrying about wrong answers. We can stop trying to identify ourselves by our collection of right answers. What we have, ceases to be so very important. We simply continue to live as truly as we can. We consciously allow a little more clarity and truth into our thoughts, feelings, and deeds each day.

    Our truth deepens as we deepen. No experience of it will ever be repeated in quite the same way, ever again. Even on the same kind of day, with the same kind of thinking, when everything looks much the same as it ever was, truth is always created anew from one moment to the next. As Heraclitus observed, "No man ever steps in the same river twice." Though its reflections are forever moving, at its root, truth is perfectly still. It is the mind that moves. This is why it touches us so deeply when we find our own truth. We find our center, a place of inner knowing that transcends the comings and goings of life. Its stillness cuts through everything. We feel a sense of acquaintance with something greater than ourselves — something we once knew intimately. Herein lies the great romance of the unfoldment.

    CHAPTER 2

    Covenant of Amnesia

    To be a human being on Earth is to undergo the toughest spiritual endurance training conceivable. To be voluntarily marooned on this singular blue orb is to be among the providential few. It is to be granted the opportunity to master the effects of consciousness in the third density by being thrown deep into the coagulum of physical pleasure and pain, arising and fading, knowing and unknowing. It is a one-of-a-kind experience. If you can do Earth as a human being, you can do anything.

    We don't arrive with much. The physical vehicle of the body is the only piece of hardware we get, and we are vitally anchored to it for the duration. The tone of our relationship with the vehicle is not constant. Sometimes we recognize the ingenious gracefulness of this marvelous body, and through it we channel our unique consciousness and dream new creations into being. At other times, we feel painfully ensnared in this disintegrating meat-sack and can do little more than drag it around from one day to the next. This love-hate relationship with the body is experienced by most people at some point in their lives. Even when there is no pain or ailment, there is often some sort of awkwardness or heaviness about it. But this is all part of the training. The challenges of the body are pre-ordered especially to provide optimal growth potential for the presiding consciousness. Regardless of whether we perceive it as a biological machine or as a divine vessel, the body does a stunningly good job of transporting us around this realm.

    So it is that, other than the corporeal form, we come in with absolutely nothing. No objectives, no history, no maps, no rules, no instruction manual, no evidence, no homing beacon. Like a commando parachuting naked into alien territory, we are obliged to gather and fashion whatever tools, information, and skills we can as we go along. To make matters even more interesting, the mission itself is totally unspecified. For all intents and purposes, it appears that there actually isn't one.

    All right-thinking men and women, sooner or later in life, take a moment away from the hubbub of their day-to-day affairs and wonder: What is it all about? I mean, what is it really all about? In time, they may come to certain writings, both ancient and modern, that ponder this fundamental question. They are told that these writings are authored either by God, gods, prophets, or, at the very least, exceptionally clever people. In Western Europe, the Gods and prophets have become passé at the present time, so it's fallen upon the physicists to look after the secret keys of reality. Physicists like to measure things, so they present their measurements as a description of the world. How one set of measurements interacts with another set of measurements is what they call the laws of physics. Gods and prophets do the same kinds of things and produce their own laws about the world. It is notable that many of these different systems of laws disagree with each other — sometimes a little bit and sometimes a great deal. Some of the more radical devotees believe that the laws that they ascribe to are the only true laws and that those who don't believe in them have no right to be alive. Hence, it is not uncommon for people to kill each other regarding how strictly a particular set of laws should be observed.

    If you happen to be born in a relatively free and enlightened country, you may find yourself in the privileged position of being able to study several different kinds of laws. Indeed, it is incumbent on those who enjoy freedom to take it upon themselves to focus their consciousness on such things; to pore over these words and ideas; to weigh them, reflect on them, and experiment with them in real life. The wisest individuals will combine the most resonant knowledge, disciplines, and practice, and formulate their own cosmology and spiritual wisdom. Even so, no matter who wrote them — quite honestly — when you place all the variables to one side, you come away with the sneaking feeling that the end result is that we get no confirmed answers while we are here. We never really know. Faith is all we have. Faith in God or gods, prophets, or physicists. It is up to us who gets the collective vote from our mind, body, and spirit. We can't bank on anything for sure. Nothing is going to get confirmed until later on, perhapsmuch later on. In the meantime, we are philosophically blindfolded and must fire our arrows into targets that we cannot see.

    One of the most significant phases in the unfoldment is to deeply acknowledge to oneself that no one knows anything for sure. Not me, not you, no one. Ignorance is a strange thing to come to terms with in a world that pretends to know most things. Close on the heels of that realization is the further recognition that it's okay that we don't know anything. It is totally fine. In fact, it is a prerequisite for deep spiritual realization that we become comfortable with a state of unknowingness. Still, many people struggle with this. They think that it's better to look like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. For those who can't quite bring themselves to that level of theatrical chicanery, they instead choose to jump on someone else's bandwagon of belief, assuming that that will excuse them from the personal imperative to know. It does not. Everyone is accountable for their own choices, whether they like it or not. Just because that accountability is not necessarily hovering over our heads every day, does not mean that it's not real. Everything we do is permanently recorded in what some mystics call the akashic record, or the a-field, or the quantum vacuum. It is like a hard drive that operates at the most fundamental level, persistently chronicling every nuance of electro-magnetic energy that passes through our system. Every whisper, dream, thought, joy, pain, and creation is known. Although the forms themselves do not endure, the journey that they took — their energetic signature — is never lost.

    The sooner we realize that we have assented to a covenant of amnesia, the better. Rather than constantly wondering what's going on and what it's all about, we begin to appreciate that we can't know what's going on, under the terms of our pledge. It would spoil the whole thing; the virtue and integrity of the teaching would be lost. The reason for coming in blank, without any sort of foreknowledge whatsoever, is to ensure that everything we attain in life is a personal attainment, because everything can only be arrived at through the discernment of our own freewill. The only real answers arise from within ourselves.

    (Continues…)


    Excerpted from "The Unfoldment"
    by .
    Copyright © 2012 Neil Kramer.
    Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
    All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
    Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

    Table of Contents

    Introduction: Spiritual Insurgence 7

    Chapter 1 True Deeds 13

    Chapter 2 Covenant of Amnesia 19

    Chapter 3 Breaching the Narrative 27

    Chapter 4 Holding Feathers 35

    Chapter 5 Russian Dolls 49

    Chapter 6 Knowing the Field 55

    Chapter 7 Imperial Secrets 67

    Chapter 8 The Distortion 81

    Chapter 9 Silent Consent 91

    Chapter 10 Touchstones 99

    Chapter 11 School Bus of Selves 107

    Chapter 12 Word Bondage 113

    Chapter 13 Projected Images 117

    Chapter 14 Cult Indulgences 131

    Chapter 15 Glad Tidings 141

    Chapter 16 Input, Output 155

    Chapter 17 Ogres Bearing Gifts 163

    Chapter 18 Paradox 173

    Chapter 19 Something From Nothing 189

    Chapter 20 Sublime Flux 203

    Chapter 21 Undoing Woundedness 213

    Chapter 22 Mystical Utterances 227

    Chapter 23 Within and Without 235

    Resurgence 249

    Index 251

    About the Author 255

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