You’ve probably heard the expression, Ignorance is bliss from one of Thomas Gray’s poems. Maybe you’ve even wished to go back in time to avoid the pain of certain awareness or during challenging times. But how true are these words taken out of context?
The poem refers to the carefree stage of childhood in contrast with the awareness of the responsibilities and the complexity of life we must deal with to become functional, productive adults. Just thinking about it may give you chills… Ah, the lightness of your long lost childhood!
But is childhood truly blissful? Is ignorance really a better choice than knowledge? And what kind of ignorance or knowledge are we talking about? From a spiritual perspective, ignorance is suffering, because anything that is not Consciousness is temporary, thus leading to a sense of loss and pain.
But for the ego-mind, which is what separates you from Divine Consciousness, ignorance is essential, since its goal is to veil a deeper awareness, to avoid change and trap you in the illusions that make you feel “safe” because they’re familiar. Unfortunately, the price you pay for such avoidance is that the ego remains in control of your life, disturbing the clarity and freedom inherent to your soul.
Now, there is something magical about being a kid, especially in early childhood when the ego hasn’t fully congealed the emotional patterns you’re meant to work on for the rest of your life. You were in bliss in your mother’s womb, still immersed in Divine Consciousness before landing in physical reality, but whether you’re aware of it or not, you were feeling her emotions as well and absorbing them as if they were yours.
This blissful state dissolves as you gradually understand what it means to be human and engage with the external world. From the demands of family and school to the mystery of relationships, you are pushed on a fast track, trying to navigate this world without falling apart, yet often feeling confused, even anxious and overwhelmed.
The main role of a parent is to protect their children and help them go through increasing phases of individuation, which means keeping them away from certain things until they’re ready to understand and handle them, but there is no such thing as a perfect parent and no parent can compete with the level of dysfunction in this world or the karmic tendencies of their children’s individual soul.
Your Perception Shapes Your Reality
We each go through what we need to go through to heal and evolve. Ignorance of the world is needed in childhood to preserve your natural innocence, but as you get older it creates blind spots that keep you confused or stuck in the past. As you acquire experiences and learn new aspects of life, you give yourself opportunities to grow mentally and emotionally, which cannot happen if you simply bury your head in the sand.
Depending on your karma and temperament, you may have become stronger from undergoing difficult situations growing up or you may still be trying to come to terms with past painful events. Since your perception shapes the experience of life as a self-centered life-movie directed by the ego-mind, self-awareness and self-knowledge are essential to find meaning in it.
Understanding the script behind it is key to resolving the issues you reincarnated to work on—to be able to return to the blissful state that is your true nature. Everything in your life-movie is a reflection of the past, both from this lifetime and previous ones, because you’re here to heal and integrate a long trail of unresolved energy. This makes your self-exploration challenging, but it also gives you the power to transform layers and layers of outdated patterns of perception.
You are an eternal soul on a complex journey of Consciousness exploration—of spiritual evolution and involution. Healing the past in this lifetime takes care of wounds from previous births, since this lifetime is a concentrated version of all your past: the things and people you feel drawn to, those you feel aversion toward, as well as the cultures, languages, stories, myths, music, art, events, world and spiritual traditions you’ve encountered, they’re all crystallized expressions of your soul journey.
Some aspects carry small amounts of energy, because the experiences they reflect didn’t leave deep imprints, but others hold a lot more energy in your reservoir of soul memories and karma, and become more prominent in your life-movie; some are pleasant and positive while others create limitations and pain. The way to reduce the energy of those that bring you suffering is to release their energy through awareness and self-expression.
Self-Knowledge Leads To Emotional Freedom
There is no way to be happy if you hold painful or negative energy brewing inside you, because it will invariably show up in your reality in unpleasant ways, to disconnect you from yourself and rob you of any joy. Denial (whether rationalizing or in the form of addictions) pushes away uncomfortable emotions for a while, but it doesn’t take care of the issues they reflect; in fact, it creates more disruption on physical, mental, and emotional levels—a much higher price to pay for your ignorance.
This doesn’t mean you have to dwell on those emotions either. Happiness comes from developing the flexibility and maturity that leads to emotional freedom and then to deeper aspects of your soul. For this you need to look within: to discover, express, and let go of what brings you down and you’ve been dragging for a very long time. When you do this, you open up to a higher experience of life.
You can be aware of the chaos and dysfunction in the world without drowning in it with the fear and discouragement it promotes. This fear is what compels most people to remain ignorant of themselves and develop addictive behaviors. You have the power to direct and focus your attention on the things that connect you to yourself or you want to contribute to the world. But you must know your ego-mind to shed light onto what gets in the way of emotional freedom and fulfillment.
At the entrance of the ancient temple of Apollo—the Greek god of music, truth, healing, and the Sun—at the Oracle of Delphi, it is written: Know Thyself. Because without self-knowledge you can’t access deeper layers of your soul and tap into your true nature, which is happiness, love, abundance, and peace. So contact me today to begin your individualized journey of self-exploration and develop the emotional and spiritual freedom leading to the realization of your true Self!
© 2017 Yol Swan. All rights reserved.
