Read the Preface to Revolutionary Spirituality!
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This book is about spiritual awakening—mine and yours. It’s about using your own
understanding to free yourself from the bonds of wrong thinking and discovering for
yourself the Place so many have talked about in scriptures, spiritual literature, poetry,
and inspirational books—the Place where you and your Creator meet, embrace, and
begin to walk together evermore. Although I have read the writings of many
awakened souls, I speak here from my own life experience as one who has awakened.
The purpose of this book is to awaken you! By reading the words I wrote as I worked
through my own awakening, you will be able to leap ahead on your own path. No
matter where you are on your spiritual journey—whether you wonder if there is a God
at all, or you live and breathe spiritual power down to your very bones and marrow—
you will find something in this book to bring you farther along on your path.
What is awakening? It has nothing to do with lotus trees or lotus positions, incense,
incantations, or speaking with an accent. It is not the exclusive domain of people who
wear robes to the store or engage in obscure rituals or swear off of sex (gasp!) or sit
in meditation for hours on end.
Enlightenment and awakening describe the same experience, which can go by other
names as well: emotional growth, releasing negativity, spiritual awareness, self-
development, human evolution, higher consciousness or awareness, God-
knowledge, the Narrow Path, liberation, understanding, joy, happiness, freedom, and
other labels all describe the same process and/or state of being.
Awakening is the process of overcoming your false self and discovering your True
Self.
It begins when you decide to grab the tiger by the tail and ends with the tiger tenderly
licking the sweat off your brow and face. It means learning who you really are instead
of constantly distracting yourself with exterior matters. It means gaining control over
aspects of yourself that you thought were outside your control, or maybe never knew
existed!
Enlightenment also describes the resulting state of mind, in which you live in the
present NOW moment with a (more or less) correct understanding of who you are,
what you’re doing here on this Earth, and what your relationship is to the world and
people around you. It is a very pleasant and powerful state of love, peace,
enjoyment, and ease.
Awakening is ultimately the journey of an individual toward an understanding of the
nature of the Ultimate Reality behind the illusion that we only think is ultimately real. It
is the highest calling of man, for the destination is what many call God. As such, it is
the Narrow Path, and those who dare to walk it will find themselves without human
companionship for much of the journey. Only the most spiritually-minded people will
even set foot on this path, and fewer still will follow it all the way to its end. Those who
do will find endless and true Love.
Although this book is about enlightenment, it’s not like the typical book about
enlightenment. Like other books, it presents a unique perspective of the Universe
and life as seen from a spiritually aware author’s point of view. It’s unique, though, in
that it presents a view of the awakening soul, as it is awakening, during its most
crucial and dramatic periods of transformation: the times during, after, and between
crises and catharses.
That’s right: those words are all plural. Rather than being a sudden flash that whisks
you away from total ignorance to complete understanding, awakening is a process. A
single, dramatic jump would overwhelm the psyche, so the individual must be given
time to adjust to the present level and allowed preparation before each quantum
leap. The many steps on the path of enlightenment take time so that the individual
can endure the necessary psychological and emotional changes comfortably and still
function reasonably well in society between advances.
The book you are about to read presents a view of my own mind and the
development of my understanding during the period between my first dramatic
awakening experience and my most recent, as of this writing. At the outset of the
book, I was enduring marital separation and the pain involved with my ex-partner
moving on to other relationships. As such, the first part of the book deals with some
negativity and might seem depressing. Don’t worry; I included these things to give a
baseline for the development that follows. It gets better, and there’s even a happy
ending!
Since I come from a religious background that includes a traditional Christian
upbringing, throughout this book I refer to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the
Bible, and some other early Christian writings. I do not try to conform the
enlightenment experience to the expectations of religious writings, as so many before
me have done! I do, however, use the understanding I gained in order to shine light
on these writings and interpret them in an honest, candid, and at times blunt (or even
harsh) manner.
From a spiritual standpoint, religion leaves much to be desired, including much
religious literature. Some is quite good and useful, though. If you wonder what’s
beyond your current religion, or how to have a more fulfilling spiritual experience in
your life, this is the book for you! That’s where I was, years ago, and I can tell you
from personal experience that there is a rich life to be had from a spiritual
standpoint—but to get there you can’t let yourself be bound by blind religious
teachings.
Since this book deals with the first few years after marital separation, it might be a
good read for the recently separated or divorced person who desires self-repair or
seeks a way out of their current pain. I encourage this use of my words. But the
subject of self-improvement is not, of course, limited to the recently single! Anyone
who feels the nudge of Spirit in the direction of self-discovery or uncovering the
mysteries of the Universe would do well to read this book. Age, life experience,
conditions, marital status, social standing, occupation...none of these qualities make
any difference if the soul is thirsty for understanding.
I humbly offer you this intimate view into my mind and my life via a collection of short
messages that I wrote during this process—the process of destroying my own life and
rebuilding it anew, with the fresh understanding of Life that can be had only by
traveling one’s own right path. Some of these messages, in short essay form, were
taken from my journals and edited into essay format. Others were written as is,
including footnotes , on my computer.
It would be fair to say that writing these words, to a large degree, was the process of
awakening for me. This process was helped greatly by Joy, my spiritual partner,
whose impact on my spiritual growth will be obvious to the reader by the end of the
book.
While writing these words, there were many moments when I felt the most alive, the
most energized, and the closest to the Divine that I have felt in my life. Feeling that
you are somehow a mouthpiece for Universal Truth is a very special honor, and it
makes you want to share the words you’ve written. If they helped me, they can help
someone else. I hope you are that someone, and I hope you share what you learn
from these pages.
Simply reading and pondering this material can help to awaken your True Self,
enabling you to perceive and learn spiritual truth on your own—which is your Divine
right!
If you have a hard time focusing on and understanding material like this, it might be a
defense mechanism that the conditioned part of you—the false you—uses to keep
itself intact. It fears its own death. It’s O.K. to kill it, though. That’s how you get free!
Bless you.
Spiritual Awakening | Spiritual Journey | Spiritual Growth | Emotional Growth | Releasing Negativity
This page copyright July 4, 2007 by Steven E. Baxter.
