Awakening to Wholeness
List of ArticlesAwakening to Wholeness – List of Articles
These articles are selected excerpts from the book Awakening to Wholeness by Lee Bladon.
It is recommended that the articles are read in the correct order.
All the articles are copyrighted – please read the Copyright Policy for further details.
Article A – The True-Self, the False-Self and the Ego
It has been said that “we are spiritual beings having a human experience”. The Self is the transpersonal/spiritual element; the mind, heart and body are the personal elements; and the field of pure awareness (soul) unites them all into a Human Being. The false-self is our concept of “who we think we are” (i.e. a separate individual in a physical body). The ego is the network of distorted beliefs, reactive emotions and conditioned behaviours that protect our false-self and help us to function in the world.
Article B – The Personality, Ego-Structures and Holes
The personality is a blend of authenticity and ego. Our true nature expresses itself through them both, in varying proportions (depending on our current mood and our overall level of development). The Authentic Personality is the true and unlimited aspect of our personality – the parts that are not bound up in ego structures. It is Self-expressive, radiant, generous, compassionate and loving. It comes to the fore when we are relaxed, present, sincere and speak from our heart. The Ego Personality is the inauthentic, limited aspect of our personality – the parts that are bound up in ego structures. It is self-centred, repressed, greedy, fearful and critical. It comes to the fore when we are tense, shallow, superficial and egotistical.
Article C – The Two-Fold Path of Awakening
Before we can permanently enter the “authentic” world of our true-Self we need to neutralise the “inauthentic” charge of our false-self. This is achieved by: (1) Becoming Self: Dissolving our (inauthentic) ego structures to allow our (authentic) essential qualities to unfold so that we can embody more of our true nature. (2) Being Self: Aligning with our true-Self to actively encourage our essential qualities to unfold so that we can express more of our true nature. It also develops our association with our true-Self, so that someday we may come to realise that this is who we truly are.
Article D – The Human Condition
A human being is not a single entity; we are composed of several different yet fully integrated components. Each component (Self/soul, mind, heart and body) is an independent consciousness yet they are all integrated and work in harmony, much like the different parts of a car all work together to get us from A to B. The Self is the driver (or at least it should be) and the mind, heart and body are components of the vehicle that carry us through life. Each element has perceptive (yin) qualities which allow us to perceive our environment, and expressive (yang) qualities which allow us to interact with our environment.
Article F – Destiny, Free-Will and Karma
Our destiny is not the product of our past – our past actions do no not propel us into the future; our past actions hold us back and impede our development. It is the potential energy of what we have chosen (our intent) that creates our destiny and leads us through life. Will is not free if it is bound by the effects of our conditioned behaviours. Will is only free if we have sufficient conscious awareness to use it in a considered manner. Without conscious awareness we cannot respond, we can only react. Ego structures are the primary cause of our bad karma; i.e. they are responsible for the “bad” behaviour that generates bad karma. Ego structures are the mechanism through which we experience the effects (consequences) of our bad karma; i.e. our unnecessary suffering is the result of our ego structures getting triggered.
Article G – Presence, Healing and Reintegration
Presence is fundamental to personal development and spiritual development. Presence requires our awareness to be present spatially (right here) and temporally (right now). Presence requires us to “be” – right here, right now. It should be easy to just “be”; it is our natural state after all, but it is far from easy. We have spent decades practising “doing” and have forgotten how to “be”. Effective healing and reintegration requires the soul’s presence to intimately connect with the exile, hole or ego structure. Put simply, it requires taking the “healer” (the soul) to the “patient” (exile, hole or ego structure).
Article H – An Introduction to Meditation
Meditation is practising presence; it is practicing present-moment awareness; it is experiencing what is arising without any judgement or agenda. It is as simple as that. Hundreds of books have been written on how to meditate but they are largely unnecessary, because meditation is not something that we “do” – meditation is pure “being”. All it requires of us is to stop doing everything and just notice what is occurring, within us and/or without. It is that simple, but it is not that easy.
Article I – Self-Realisation and Non-Duality
We are all suffering from mistaken identity – taking ourselves to be someone we are not. The goal of psycho-spiritual development is to correct this mistaken identity; not to strengthen or improve our false identity. The self that we think we are does not exist; it is a figment of our imagination. The self that we think we are cannot awaken – we have to awaken from that false-self in order to realise our true-Self. When this occurs, we realise that we have always been our true-Self.