Speaker 1: There is a most uncomfortable phenomenon that occurs during spiritual awakening,
Speaker 1: and it is one that people rarely speak about openly
Speaker 1: because it seems to contradict everything we have been told
Speaker 1: about what it means to become more spiritual, more evolved,
Speaker 1: more conscious. The phenomenon is this, you begin to find
Speaker 1: that you cannot stand being around most people any more.
Speaker 1: Friends you once enjoyed now exhaust you. Family gatherings that
Speaker 1: you used to tolerate now feel unbearable. Colleagues whose company
Speaker 1: was once pleasant now great on your nerves. The majority
Speaker 1: of human interaction begins to feel hollow, draining, deeply unsatisfying.
Speaker 1: And this troubles you greatly?
Speaker 2: Does it not?
Speaker 1: Because surely you think, if you are becoming more spiritual,
Speaker 1: more awakened, more enlightened, you should be becoming more loving,
Speaker 1: more compassionate, more accepting of all people, regardless of their
Speaker 1: level of consciousness. You should be like the book or
Speaker 1: the Christ, embracing all beings with unconditional love and understanding. Instead,
Speaker 1: you find yourself withdrawing, avoiding, feeling irritated and exhausted by
Speaker 1: the very people you are supposed to be learning to
Speaker 1: love more deeply. So you wonder, have I become arrogant?
Speaker 1: Am I judging people? Am I falling into spiritual pride
Speaker 1: thinking myself better than others? Or perhaps the awakening process
Speaker 1: has gone wrong somehow, Perhaps I am becoming less human
Speaker 1: rather than more human, less connected rather than more connected.
Speaker 1: Something must be amiss because this dislike, this aversion, this
Speaker 1: inability to tolerate most people. Surely this cannot be a
Speaker 1: sign of spiritual growth. But I want to suggest to
Speaker 1: you that what you are experiencing is not only normal,
Speaker 1: it is virtually inevitable during certain stages of awakening.
Speaker 2: And it is not a sign.
Speaker 1: Of failure or spiritual pride or loss of humanity. It
Speaker 1: is a natural consequence of a very specific shift that
Speaker 1: occurs in consciousness. If that temporarily creates a kind of
Speaker 1: incompatibility between you and those who have not undergone this shift,
Speaker 1: let me explain what I mean. Before awakening, you are
Speaker 1: largely unconscious. You live in a kind of trance, a
Speaker 1: collective dream that humanity shares. And in this trance you
Speaker 1: relate to other people through shared illusions, shared beliefs, shared
Speaker 1: assumptions about reality. You bond over complaints about life. You
Speaker 1: connect through gossip and drama. You find common ground in
Speaker 1: your mutual pursuit of success, status, pleasure, security. You commiserate
Speaker 1: about problems, you compete for achievements. You perform various social roles,
Speaker 1: and everyone else performs their roles, and there is a
Speaker 1: kind of dance that everyone knows the steps too. And
Speaker 1: in this state, socializing is relatively easy because everyone is
Speaker 1: playing the same game, everyone is speaking the same language,
Speaker 1: everyone is operating from the same basic assumptions. You may
Speaker 1: have preferences for certain people over others, you may find
Speaker 1: some company more pleasant than others, but fundamentally you can
Speaker 1: get along with most people because you are all inhabitants
Speaker 1: of the same dream. But then something begins to shift.
Speaker 1: You start to wake up, and as you wake up,
Speaker 1: you begin to see through the illusions that most people
Speaker 1: are still living in. You recognize that the things people
Speaker 1: are obsessing about are ultimately meaningless. You see that the
Speaker 1: dramas they are caught up in are self created. You
Speaker 1: understand that the goals they are pursuing so frantically will
Speaker 1: never bring the satisfaction they imagine. You perceive the unconscious patterns,
Speaker 1: the mechanical behaviors, the reactive emotional loops that drive most
Speaker 1: human interaction. And once you see these things, you cannot
Speaker 1: unsee them. It is like watching a film and suddenly
Speaker 1: becoming aware that you are watching a film, that these
Speaker 1: are actors on a screen, that the story is not real.
Speaker 1: And once you have this awareness, you cannot simply go
Speaker 1: back to being absorbed in the plot as though nothing
Speaker 1: has changed.
Speaker 2: The spell has been broken.
Speaker 1: So now when you interact with people who are still
Speaker 1: deeply identified with their roles, still completely absorbed in the drama,
Speaker 1: still chasing the same empty goals and complaining about the
Speaker 1: same self created problems, there is a fundamental disconnect. They
Speaker 1: are speaking a language you no longer speak. They are
Speaker 1: playing a game you no longer play. They are asking
Speaker 1: you to participate in a shared reality that you have
Speaker 1: seen through and can no longer pretend to believe in.
Speaker 1: And this creates a kind of exhaustion, a feeling of falseness,
Speaker 1: of strain. You are being asked to meet people in
Speaker 1: a place where you no longer reside. You are expected
Speaker 1: to care about things you have recognized as ultimately unimportant.
Speaker 1: You are supposed to participate in conversations that feel utterly
Speaker 1: empty to pretend interest in dramas that you can see
Speaker 1: are entirely self created to support pursuits.
Speaker 2: That you know will lead nowhere.
Speaker 1: Moreover, most people are operating at a very low level
Speaker 1: of presents, a very high level of mental noise. They
Speaker 1: are not actually here, not actually present in the moment.
Speaker 1: They are lost in thought, in worry, in planning, in regret,
Speaker 1: in fantasy. And when you interact with someone who is
Speaker 1: lost in thought, there is no real meeting, no genuine contact.
Speaker 1: You are speaking to their mental construct of themselves, to
Speaker 1: their idea of who they are, not to their actual being.
Speaker 1: And this too becomes exhausting, because you have tasted genuine presents,
Speaker 1: genuine contact, genuine meeting between beings who are actually here,
Speaker 1: and once you have tasted this, the alternative feels deeply unsatisfying.
Speaker 1: It is like having eaten real food and then being
Speaker 1: offered plastic replicas of food. You can see that they
Speaker 1: resemble food, but you cannot actually eat them, cannot actually
Speaker 1: be nourished by them.
Speaker 2: There is also the matter of energy.
Speaker 1: Before awakening, you likely gave your energy away constantly, without
Speaker 1: even realizing it. You allowed yourself to be drawn into
Speaker 1: other people's dramas to take on their emotional states, to
Speaker 1: be affected by their moods and opinions and judgments.
Speaker 2: You were permeable in.
Speaker 1: Ways that allowed people to drain you, to pull you
Speaker 1: into their patterns, to use you as a receptacle for
Speaker 1: their unconsciousness. But as you awaken, you become more sensitive
Speaker 1: to energy, more aware of these dynamics. You can feel
Speaker 1: when someone is trying to draw you into drama. You
Speaker 1: can sense when someone is attempting to offload their emotional
Speaker 1: state onto you. You can perceive when interaction is actually
Speaker 1: a form of energy vampirism, where one person is feeding
Speaker 1: off the attention and reaction of another. And once you
Speaker 1: become aware of these dynamics, you naturally begin to protect
Speaker 1: your energy, to maintain boundaries, to refuse to participate in
Speaker 1: these draining exchanges. But this means that many interactions that
Speaker 1: were once possible are no longer tolerable. People who are
Speaker 1: unconsciously using you as a source of energy, as an
Speaker 1: audience for their drama, as a mirror for their ego.
Speaker 1: These people now feel uncomfortable, draining, even toxic to be around.
Speaker 1: Let me be very clear about something. This is not
Speaker 1: the same as judging people or thinking yourself superior to them.
Speaker 1: You may have tremendous compassion for people who are suffering
Speaker 1: in unconsciousness. You may wish them well, hope they find
Speaker 1: their way to greater awareness and freedom. But compassion does
Speaker 1: not require you to sacrifice your own well being, to
Speaker 1: allow yourself to be drained, to participate in unconsciousness simply
Speaker 1: because others are still caught in it. It is rather
Speaker 1: like someone who has recovered from a serious illness. They
Speaker 1: may feel great compassion for those who are still sick,
Speaker 1: but they do not deliberately make themselves sick again in
Speaker 1: order to keep the sick people company. They maintain their health,
Speaker 1: and from that place of health they may be able
Speaker 1: to help others, but they do not sacrifice their own
Speaker 1: well being in the name of solidarity with suffering. Now,
Speaker 1: there is another aspect to this phenomenon that deserves attention.
Speaker 1: When you begin to awaken, you also begin to see
Speaker 1: your own unconsciousness, your own patterns, your own ego structures
Speaker 1: with greater clarity, and this can make you intolerant not
Speaker 1: only of unconsciousness in others, but of any remaining unconsciousness
Speaker 1: in yourself. You may become quite harsh with yourself when
Speaker 1: you notice yourself falling back into old patterns, acting from ego,
Speaker 1: getting caught in mental drama. And this harshness toward yourself
Speaker 1: can sometimes get projected outward so that you become harsh
Speaker 1: and intolerant toward others who are displaying the very patterns
Speaker 1: you are struggling with in yourself. This is important to
Speaker 1: recognize because it is one form of this dislike of
Speaker 1: people that is actually problematic, that does stem from judgment
Speaker 1: and spiritual pride rather than from genuine incompatibility. When you
Speaker 1: find yourself of feeling superior to others, contemptuous of their unconsciousness,
Speaker 1: annoyed by their spiritual immaturity, there is likely some shadow
Speaker 1: work to be done, some recognition of your own remaining
Speaker 1: unconsciousness that you are avoiding by focusing on the unconsciousness
Speaker 1: of others. But even accounting for this shadow dynamic, there
Speaker 1: remains a legitimate incompatibility that develops between those who are
Speaker 1: awakening and those who are deeply asleep. And this incompatibility
Speaker 1: is not a failure of love or compassion. It is
Speaker 1: simply a recognition that genuine connection. Genuine relationship requires a
Speaker 1: certain level of mutual presence, mutual awareness, mutual willingness to
Speaker 1: meet in reality rather than in shared delusion. You cannot
Speaker 1: have a real relationship with someone who is not present,
Speaker 1: who is entirely identified with their thoughts and emotions and roles.
Speaker 1: You can have a functional relationship, perhaps you can perform
Speaker 1: the social dance, but there is no depth to it,
Speaker 1: no real intimacy, no genuine meeting of being to being.
Speaker 1: And once you have experienced what real meeting feels like,
Speaker 1: the shallow connections feel not just unsatisfying, but actually painful,
Speaker 1: like a kind of betrayal of the possibility of genuine
Speaker 1: human contact. Moreover, there is the simple fact that interests
Speaker 1: change during awakening. Things that once fascinated you now bore you.
Speaker 1: Conversations that once engaged you now feel trivial. Activities that
Speaker 1: once brought pleasure now feel empty. And if your relationships
Speaker 1: with people were based primarily on shared interests in these
Speaker 1: things that no longer interest you, then naturally those relationships
Speaker 1: become difficult to maintain. You cannot force yourself to care
Speaker 1: about things you no longer care about. You cannot manufacture
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for pursuits you have seen through you cannot pretend
Speaker 1: to be absorbed in dramas that you recognize as illusions.
Speaker 1: And if people are expecting you to be the person
Speaker 1: you were before to participate in the shared reality you
Speaker 1: have left behind, then naturally you will feel a kind
Speaker 1: of friction, a sense of wrongness, a need to withdraw.
Speaker 1: This is why awakening so often involves a period of solitude,
Speaker 1: of withdrawal from social life. It is not antisocial or misanthropic.
Speaker 1: It is simply that the old ways of relating no
Speaker 1: longer work, and the new ways have not yet fully formed.
Speaker 1: You are between worlds, no longer able to participate fully
Speaker 1: in the unconscious social reality, but not yet established in
Speaker 1: a conscious way of relating that can include others. And
Speaker 1: during this transition period, solitude is not only preferable, it
Speaker 1: is necessary.
Speaker 2: You need space to.
Speaker 1: Integrate the shifts that are occurring, to allow the old
Speaker 1: patterns to fall away, to discover who you are when
Speaker 1: you are not performing the social roles you have been
Speaker 1: conditioned to perform.
Speaker 2: You need time.
Speaker 1: Alone to feel into your own being, to learn to
Speaker 1: be present with yourself, to develop a relationship with your
Speaker 1: own consciousness that is not mediated through the mirror of
Speaker 1: other people's perceptions and expectations. This does not mean you
Speaker 1: will be alone forever. As you stabilize in awakened awareness,
Speaker 1: as you become more established in presence and authenticity, you
Speaker 1: will likely find that you begin to attract different kinds
Speaker 1: of relationships. You may find other people who are also
Speaker 1: awake or awakening, people with whom genuine meeting is possible,
Speaker 1: people who can relate from presence rather than from pattern,
Speaker 1: from being rather than from role. These relationships feel entirely
Speaker 1: different from the relationships you had before. There is an
Speaker 1: ease to them, a naturalness, a lack of pretense and performance.
Speaker 1: You can be yourself without adaptation or defense. You can
Speaker 1: speak honestly without fear of judgment. You can simply be
Speaker 1: together without needing to fill every moment with activity or conversation.
Speaker 1: There is a recognition, a resonance, a sense of meeting
Speaker 1: in a shared reality rather than in shared illusion. But
Speaker 1: such relationships are rare, at least initially, and you may
Speaker 1: go through a long period where you feel quite alone,
Speaker 1: where you have few, if any people in your life
Speaker 1: with whom genuine connection is possible, and this can be difficult.
Speaker 1: Because humans are social creatures, we are wired for connection,
Speaker 1: and the lack of it can feel like a kind
Speaker 1: of starvation, even when we understand intellectually why the old
Speaker 1: connections no longer work. The key is to not make
Speaker 1: yourself wrong for what you are experiencing.
Speaker 2: Do not force.
Speaker 1: Yourself to maintain relationships that feel draining or false simply
Speaker 1: because you think you should, because you are afraid of
Speaker 1: being alone, because you do not want to hurt people's feelings.
Speaker 1: It is far better to be honestly alone than to
Speaker 1: be falsely connected. It is far better better to withdraw
Speaker 1: than to continue participating in unconscious patterns that you have outgrown.
Speaker 1: At the same time, be careful not to become rigid
Speaker 1: or closed. Not everyone who is still asleep is draining
Speaker 1: or unbearable to be around. Some people, even in their unconsciousness,
Speaker 1: have a sweetness, a kindness, an openness that makes their
Speaker 1: company pleasant. Some people, though not awake, are at least curious, questioning,
Speaker 1: moving in the direction of greater awareness. These people you
Speaker 1: may still enjoy, may still learn from, may still have
Speaker 1: genuine exchanges with, even if the full depth of meeting
Speaker 1: is not yet possible.
Speaker 2: And remember that awakening is not.
Speaker 1: A fixed state, but a process, a journey that unfolds
Speaker 1: in stages. The period of intense intolerance for unconsciousness is
Speaker 1: often a.
Speaker 2: Phase that passes as you stabilize.
Speaker 1: More deeply in awakened awareness, you often become more able
Speaker 1: to be with all kinds of people without being pulled
Speaker 1: into the the patterns, without being drained by their unconsciousness.
Speaker 1: You develop a kind of spiritual immunity, so to speak.
Speaker 1: You can be in the presence of drama without being
Speaker 1: drawn into it. You can interact with people who are
Speaker 1: asleep without falling back asleep yourself.
Speaker 2: You can meet.
Speaker 1: People where they are without needing them to be somewhere else.
Speaker 1: This is not because you have learned to tolerate what
Speaker 1: is intolerable, but because you have become so established in
Speaker 1: your own center that you are no longer vulnerable to
Speaker 1: being knocked off balanced by the unconsciousness of others. And
Speaker 1: from this more stable place, genuine compassion becomes possible, not
Speaker 1: the false compassion that sacrifices your well being for others,
Speaker 1: but real compassion that sees clearly accepts what is and
Speaker 1: offers what is genuinely helpful without attachment to results. You
Speaker 1: can be present with people suffering without taking it on.
Speaker 1: You can see their unconsciousness without judgment. You can offer
Speaker 1: truth when it is asked for and silence when it
Speaker 1: is not. But even from this more state, you will
Speaker 1: likely find that your social circle has changed dramatically, that
Speaker 1: most of the relationships you had before awakening have either
Speaker 1: transformed or ended. That the people you now choose to
Speaker 1: spend time with are very different from the people you
Speaker 1: once surrounded yourself with, and.
Speaker 2: This is as it should be.
Speaker 1: You have changed, and your relationships naturally reflect that change.
Speaker 1: So if you are in that uncomfortable phase where you
Speaker 1: find yourself disliking people, withdrawing from social contact, feeling irritated
Speaker 1: and exhausted by interactions that once seem normal, do not
Speaker 1: make yourself wrong. Understand that this is a natural part
Speaker 1: of the process, a temporary incompatibility that arises as you
Speaker 1: shift from one mode of consciousness to another. Give yourself
Speaker 1: permission to withdraw, to be alone, to protect your energy
Speaker 1: and your peace, and trust that as you continue to awaken,
Speaker 1: as you stabilize in presence and authenticity, the right relationships
Speaker 1: will emerge, connections that are based not on shared illusion,
Speaker 1: but on shared reality, not on unconscious pattern but on
Speaker 1: conscious presence, not on mutual ego reinforcement, but on genuine
Speaker 1: meeting of being to being. These relationships are worth waiting for,
Speaker 1: worth being alone, for worth letting go of all the
Speaker 1: false connections for because in the end, it is not
Speaker 1: about how many people you know, or how popular you are,
Speaker 1: or how full your social calendar is.
Speaker 2: It is about the quality of your.
Speaker 1: Connections, the depth of your meetings, the authenticity of your relationships.
Speaker 1: And one genuine connection with another conscious being is worth
Speaker 1: a thousand superficial relationships with people who are still asleep.