The High Price of Unconsciousness

2024 is the year to find what you have hidden

Asking to awaken, to become conscious, is an act of pure rebellion. It’s also not for the faint of heart.

I was 22 years old when I started asking to be awakened. Every year, for Christmas, I ask the energy of the holidays to wake me up. I knew I was only seeing a slice of reality and wanted, and still want, to see more.

35 years later, I still ask for this, but now I ask daily.

Here’s why - when we have to force ourselves into denial or go unconscious/tune out our bodies and intuitive abilities, it costs us enormous energy.

I believe aging comes with the tiredness of holding the lid on the pot or the closet door closed for decades. The people I know who are unapologetically authentic don’t have the weary old person feel to them. They might be moving slower but are incredibly alive and radiate dynamic energy!

Regardless of age, unapologetic people glow with pure, unobstructed life force energy.

We are compelled to gaze at infants and babies of all kinds because they have that glow. Hopefully, you’ve encountered an elder or two who also has that glow. I certainly intend to grow brighter as I grow older.

Why do we lose the glow of life?

We lose it the moment we have to disconnect from our bodies. When energies are too intense for our immature nervous systems to handle, we shut down the awareness of sensation if we don’t have someone there to hold us through it. Which most of us didn’t.

We shut it down when we get messages from the people around us that A is acceptable, B is not and C will get you exiled. We’re all taught very quickly which behaviors and expressions will keep us in the circle and which ones will get us cast out.

We will because we have to do whatever it takes to stay within that circle, no matter how dysfunctional. Wr’re writer to survive and that’s ok until it isn’t.

To avoid external exile, we exile parts of ourselves internally.

This costs us because the body is a conduit for energy, and we have now pinched it off. By forcefully tuning out the awareness of how awful some things feel physically, we are turning a blind eye to our bodies. Again - everyone has to do this to some degree, but over time, holding that state of denial is exhausting.

In my opinion [not a medical professional, yo!], this leads to autoimmune symptoms, migraines, depression, and a whole host of other maladies that defy treatment. And, of course, my belief is not in any way new. We’ve known forever that internal states produce external results, duh.

The longer the tuning out goes on, the more exhaustion builds and the further the body deteriorates.

How do we know we’re asleep?

All new meditation students report that their lives go to hell in a handbasket after they start meditating. Some mistakenly blame the meditation itself, but the meditation practice opened their eyes to what their lives had been like for many years. Meditation creates the space for awakening to begin.

We assume what we can’t see isn’t there, and if we don’t know there are large areas of our being we’re asleep to, then we can’t even ask the questions needed to awaken. Clients will say so if I do this technique, then ABC will come to me? If I do this, then I’ll get the money, find the love, see my Team Invisible, and see Earth spirits?

No, nothing will come, BUT you’ll be able to see, feel, and perceive what already lives in and around you 24/7! All things start in energy land, and becoming aware of the physical sensations of money, love, and your Team Invisible’s presence can be overwhelming in the beginning.

It makes sense why once we learn how to ignore our body's sensations, we never go back to them, doesn’t it?

Many things can slowly or shockingly wake us up, and then we can decide to stay awake or go back to sleep. A death, a divorce, a natural disaster, job loss, sudden illness, the birth of a baby, learning a new language, living in a new area, falling in love, setting time trackers on your phone, etc.

In Buddhism, these are called satori, which are moments of sudden realization or insight. Those moments where we see in crystal clarity how fucked up things are and how precious life is!

Often, people feel a rush of euphoria or intense energy in these moments. They will say, “I feel so alive!”, “I have my family, and that’s all that matters!”, “I see now how I’ve been sleepwalking through life.” “I remember what really matters to me.” “Oh Lord, I have GOT to change the litter box.” “WTF, I just spent four hours on TikTok?!”.

The issue is keeping that awareness going takes effort because resistance and inertia and our Familiar Bad Feeling Place are non-stop clamoring for us to to return to safety.

But if we return to the illusion of safety, we lose the clarity of aliveness and go back to a zombie state of existence.

So, what to do?

The first step is to allow for the very real possibility that you’re walking through life unaware of how much energy you’re spending, keeping yourself numb to physical sensations.

The most common order that comes through when I’m channeling a reading for someone is to stop it already with what they call “sedating substances”: sugar, alcohol, weed, cigarettes, and high-carb foods.

Next in line is overdoing TV, the internet, and social media, following the news too closely, being dazzled by conspiracy theories, and not exercising enough.

Waking up requires you to feel things in your body that you may have been unconscious of for decades. Unwinding constrictions in your system can be painful, similar to the pins and needles in your legs when you sit crooked for too long, but the discomfort doesn’t last forever, and it’s necessary for optimum living.

Take it step-by-step:

• Ask to be awakened

• Ask for your Team Invisible to make themselves known to you

• Invite your Team, give them permission, to actively participate in your life

• Establish a daily practice of SILENCE for at least 5 minutes, and 15 minutes is more than enough - walk or sit, but do it in silence. Sorry - guided meditation and music don’t work for this - you need to be able to hear/see/feel some pretty subtle “voices.”

• Be patient. Falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep, and waking up is normal, and in time, the times you’re awake get longer and longer.

• Use I Wonder lists - I wonder if I’m tired because I’m holding back awareness. I wonder if I’m in denial about decisions I need to make. I wonder if I avoid ________ because it, he, she, they make me feel sensations I’m not comfortable feeling. I wonder if I need to train myself to feel intense energies in my body.

Sooner than you think, if you make this a daily practice, you’ll experience satori more and more often. You’ll suddenly see things you never knew were there. It’s like driving a familiar road and thinking nothing is up ahead, but then, as you drive around a curve, an impressive rock formation comes into view, an interesting old house gets your attention, or you see horses in a field.

Those were always there, but you never noticed them.

On the heels of these noticings, your nervous system may begin firing, especially if seeing those things triggers emotion, positive or negative. Then, you can shut down awareness again or investigate why seeing that magnificent rock formation made you tear up or why noticing the horses filled you with such intense joy.

And finally - you choose to stay with those emotions and sensations for as long as possible so they can educate you and bring you information for the next step to take.

In these ways, you create the conditions necessary to unpinch that conduit, stay aware of how life forces flow through you, and stay connected to the sensations that zip and zing through your body.

When you do this practice regularly, every day reveals a new view of your life, and your energy, your glow, returns - seeing new things, feeling new things, awake to the different energies all around you, and aware of your incessant mind chatter. Life becomes the most fascinating kaleidoscope [my favorite toy!], and living in awe has much more appeal than anything Netflix offers.

Let 2024 be the year you become awake, aware, and fully alive!

XO,

LMW

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar:         
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come,
From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

William Wordsworth. 536. Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood