IF WE DO NOT LEAVE BEHIND THE OLD, WE ARE DESTINED TO LIVE OUTDATED

Existence is renewed every instant, with problems become more complex every day; and the challenge of those who want an inner evolution is growing.

People who are doing something for their own evolution or increasing their level of consciousness, choose somewhat spiritual or therapeutic methods to keep advancing and overcoming limitations. Said choices respond to many reasons, but deep down they come from people who are realising the same things, regardless of them being different or living in other countries. All of them coalesce to a same root. According to my perception, it is the feeling that something is not right, no matter the economic level we have; we are not as satisfied as we would like, no matter the sociocultural level we have; there are deep and inner matters that bother or discomfort us, no matter what we do for a living; we have thorns imbedded that hurt us and tremendous desire to remove them in order to stop suffering.

From the alternative world, (I am referring to the people who look for solutions apart from what the system offers or the official proposals related to health) we have been trying to end our ailments in the most original ways for many decades.

Suffering can be expressed in different ways, each individual configures his/her ailment in a particular way and each one can manifest it in whatever form is possible; the variety is immense. When we seek out solutions we find the clear superficial tendency that characterises that which is offered and that is demonstrated in the fact that it proposes to relieve symptoms, apparently solve the problems or transitorily repair what malfunctions or create illusory solutions. Therefore, even though the problems are diminished, they return in different ways and through different situations or moments. Deep down we feel that everything is more or less the same, but at least we feel we are doing something, we believe the fantasy that we are doing much better, but we keep trying to find the solution.

Why do the techniques not work as we need? Why do methods go out of fashion and we keep waiting for new ones? Why do the results not last or stay installed permanently? Is the proposal from the alternative world really effective?

What very few know is that behind the choice of some path of personal work there is an energetic heritage that conditions us in that search and the possibility of finding a solution. Whatever we may choose is already conditioned by the original intentions that were born in this age of Aquarius and the countercultural movement (since the middle of the XX century) in which thousands of people launched the “New Age”, characterised by a new type of pursuit focused on spirituality, freedom of expression, stewardship of nature, and coexisting in peace and love.

Although new alternative spaces and possibilities were opened since then, that were previously unknown, said age was tremendously limited by several factors. This can be appreciated in the fact that the proposed solutions to the very complex human problems still have the same limitations of all time. They change name, but deep down offer more or less the same: relief. Sometimes this relief is produced by some sort of a fairly interesting explanation to what is happening to us, other times we find comfort in good therapists that support us and know how to listen, or in the best of cases because we can unblock repressed emotions with a very effective technique, or liberate hidden values with some novel method. Everything helps to soothe the problem, but the nucleus remains untouched.

The words we “alternative” people use to define the objective of what we are looking for at a personal level are quite varied: healing, awakening, enlightenment, flourishing, connexion, change, self-knowledge, realisation, transcendence, personal growth, self-help; every one of them have a purpose to be called that, all of them belong to some extent to the inner science, I like to call it TRANSFORMATION ENGINEERING to differentiate it from a reforming work to a restructuring work, and at the same time start penetrating into a deep concept.

The structures and models over which we have created our life projects are frail and disharmonious, which is why they end up creating all sorts of unbalances and ailments. When we realise that the foundation over which we have built our lives are wrong, it is too late, for we are already living in an unstable house and on a foundation that cannot hold us and withstand what happens to us. It is then when we start doing all kinds of repairs. In fact, the alternative proposals are repairing and corrective because they try to “fix”, but not restructure. The official proposals from the system are for the most part, evidently more limited in the sense that they do not even try to fix, but just normalise and adapt people to the system.

In this journey of several decades, these questions appeared inside me many times: Are there people who want to restructure their lives? Is there a public interested in performing a transformation at a personal level? Are we willing to make radical changes? My affirmative answer emerges from within myself, for that has always been my intention, and I can confirm it in many people that I keep meeting and attracting to this path.

What is clearly seen is in a large amount of people is the need to make changes, but what is not clear is the firm choice to make them. In this moment of doubt or little clarity about what to do, the fear of loss appears, the attachment to the safe and comfortable, the urgency to have to continue with what is known, the external influences, among so many things that convince us of staying more or less the same and not delve into what is happening deep down. Therefore, we mainly choose to not change. That is the choice to which the alternative world is catering, be it through somewhat spiritual or therapeutic proposals.

The fact that a “New Age” of searching was started and that a large group of people had rebelled against the establishment, that they had manifested in favour of peace and love, that they had expressed themselves freely and set free from repressions, showed there was an intention of changing society and the system, but from the outside. Now after five decades of that initiation in the quest for freedom, we face the possibility of leaving behind the energetic heritage that such a movement created, for it is in itself a limitation. The old, the traditional, the ancient, the past is history, and as such it is a conditioning for those of us who want to make a personal transformation. That energy from way back had a lot of force to rebel because deep down they were looking to heal the relationship with authority (the father). The best way they found to substitute that authority was by leaning towards the ancestral traditions, becoming followers of spiritual masters, becoming lovers of oriental practices, en even becoming devotees for other religions or beliefs. Deep down they had to leave the father to follow other fathers. They had to rebel against a wrongful authority in order to obey more kind and comprehensive sources of authority. Deep down they were also searching for genuine love that they had not experimented from the mother and that this new brotherhood offered, even if from a superficial feeling of affinity.

This heritage cannot take us very far in the path to transformation because in the very roots of the New Age movement is this decision: I want to escape, substitute, but not change! Though it is true that everyone had to some degree the intention of doing it, but not from the inside.

Many years of trials and experiments have passed. Many new things emerged. The energy was renewed and the conditions for something to happen in humans were created. Now we can prove that everything is more or less in the same situation as before, or worse. For this reason I feel that it is time to go beyond what was initiated by the New Age, creating proposals focused to real change leaving behind the conquests of this movement and not relying on that energy. It was useful for its moment, but now it is outdated among the enormous complexity of the problems we have. It has been an initiation of aperture, but not to inner change. Lighting candles, burning incense, having a spiritual altar, listening to relaxing music, sing mantras or wear cotton clothes are useful for creating an aura of peace and relaxation, but not useful to take the next evolutionary leap towards the inner world. Going to India, having a master, taking psychoactive substances and train ourselves in novel techniques can enrich us at a personal level and create a sensation of wellness, but that will not transform us.

For new proposals that go beyond what the New Age has offered it is necessary to leave the outlines that supported it. Basically there are several points we must abandon or main aspects we have to transcend.

1. Stop searching outside, focusing on tools. Techniques are peripheral and not the core of the matter.
2. Leave behind traditions and the known ways to do things. Models and ideals have broken down.
3. Leave behind preferences, attachments and dependency to the methods we dominate and the masters we trust.
4. Leave behind the syncretism and mixes, for they still contain the energy of the parts that compose it.
5. Let go of the superficiality expressed in the need to relieve and repair, reform and improve.

In the next post I will delve into each of these points, because we can see how all that is offered for inner searching is in some way conditioned and contaminated by the past. All that I offer is contaminated by the past, but I work hard daily to clean every trace that I find or detect from the past in that which I offer to people.

To sum up, there are three clear objectives to where the proposal of leaving behind the old and past is pointing: 1- EMPOWERMENT: the power is within me, not in the techniques or methods I use. 2- DEPTH: I am the method and the process of my own healing. 3- INTEGRATION: everything that is separated or fragmented outside is reunited and unified within me. In conclusion: I TAKE CHARGE OF MYSELF, I TAKE RESPOSABILITY FOR MY HEALING PROCESS.

WHY HAS THE CHANGE NOT WORKED?

I am very grateful for all that the initiators of the New Age have done, but I also recognise that at that moment THE GREAT MONUMENT TO SUPERFICIALITY WAS BUILT, and that it is still a referent to every initiative one can have for inner work. From there all kinds of specialisations were developed to evade the core of the matter: Change of religion, of beliefs, of diet, of clothes, of sexual behaviour, of image, of friends… but very little true inner change. Change all sorts of things outside so that the change inside does not happen.

It was beyond obvious and logical, that if at that moment of rebellion and adolescence as a species, we humans have come out from an uncomfortable place from nonconformity and complaints to throw ourselves into a quest for liberty and alternative option, which would be guided by internal dissatisfaction, thus, the only thing we could find in this impulsive quest of solutions were possibilities to evade ourselves and get distracted, but not to delve on the roots.

Throughout the New Age, the alternative became a toy factory that created a spiritual wellness and a sensation of freedom in the rebellious searchers. In fact, hippies were the perfect representation of children playing a game of wanting to change the world.

My vision is that this moment is to mature, come out of the adolescence of a spiritual searcher that needs to depend, to start an age of deep therapeutic initiation, sensitive, and acute, that allows each of us to reach with absolute sincerity to the most intimate part of our original conflict.

It is time to use the therapeutic technology we have, create more and new approaches, and develop projects of transformation engineering. And above all be open to depth. It is up to us now to turn the page and leave superficiality behind.

If we dare to delve, we will face the threshold of magic and the sense of all this; the courage to delve will take us to that which we have always been looking for, those of us who acknowledge life as a means to reach the mystery.

Welcome to the age of Inner Evolution, through a process of authentic transformation, in which the most appropriate techniques, substances, approaches and methods for each person and moment can be used intelligently and without identification.

Many searchers have received spiritual, shamanic or mystical initiation, but now it is time for an initiation in processes of inner transformation. This decision will mark a new time with new forms and goals. My contribution to this whole project is the impulse that I am generating in many people so that they delve into this path, the way is well defined to know how to arrive step by step to the depths, because this path is already being walked by many people, delighted with what we are discovering.

Alberto José Varela

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