Origins are murky and always ancient.
In the new age community, ascension is a popular word used to describe many different experiences and processes. I’ll define ascension as broadly as possible for the purposes of this article in the hopes that it will include most perspectives.
At its core, ascension is the realization that we are more than a physical body, and our consciousness is a multi-layered perceiver that is distinct from the body and can ascend into non-physical dimensions. This ascension is not necessarily an after-death experience or process, but can begin at any time that the individual has an awakening or activation.
This belief goes back a very long time. Original Sin, coupled to redemption, is related to the concept of ascension. We have “fallen” into a physical body, into sin, into darkness, into ignorance, and we are redeemed by some form of grace—Christ, God, Spirit, etc. The grace of redemption is an activation, awakening or rebirth. Following this activation, we set a course for spiritual destinations of a higher vibration, a purer state, a state of love and harmony.
All of this sounds good until you realize that the destination is selfish and consists of abandonment. It’s selfish because you are focused on your own spiritual goals and not the whole. It is abandonment because you desire to leave the human levels of earth to explore the higher domains of heaven. You are abandoning earth in favor of heaven. I am not criticizing this orientation. I’m merely pointing out the reality.
The Issues of Selfishness and Abandonment
Let’s take the first issue: selfishness. Most of us have heard of the concept that in order to help others, you must first help yourself. In other words, focus on yourself, learn, learn, learn. We must learn the lessons in order to ascend and keep ascending, or we unhappily return to human (or lesser) form. This is how karma connects to ascension. Karma is the gravity that holds one in bondage to the lower dimensions of experience. It is the countervailing force of ascension.
If we live as an infinite being within a human form, if we truly believe that we are one and equal with all life, where exactly are we hoping to go when we ascend? Can one ascend and leave another human being behind in the clutches of karma and confusion? Can one have enlightenment in a world where wars, poverty, depression and abuse thrive, and truly call it enlightenment?
Ascend into heavenly bliss or nirvana. Is this not selfishness? My point is that you cannot hold the frequency of equality in your heart and focus on ascension for yourself. If you embrace the I AM WE ARE consciousness, if you live to the best of your ability as a Sovereign Integral, you are of the people. You are one and equal. You operate in the interest of achieving realization for all life, and therefore you are not ascending as an individual, but rather gathering the realization of our shared infinite self for all to understand. You are bringing this realization to earth and humanity therein in whatever way you can.
Ascension is a personal deployment of energy and time for personal interest. It can serve a positive purpose, but my point is that it can also deceive you into thinking that you are doing it for the benefit of all, when indeed ascension is birthed from the construct of separation.
Think about it. I ascend apart from those who stay mired in the grip of karma. It makes me better than those who remain stuck to the “spider web” of deception and illusion. It makes me separate. I am with the spiritual elite instead of the enfeebled humans who slog it out in the muds of ignorance. I’m climbing the ladder of consciousness and improving myself. How can that be bad?
It’s not. I’m not judging it as bad or wrong. I am pointing out that the perspective of the Sovereign Integral is that we are equal in our infinite selves. The covering of our infinitude is the human instrument that we all don on earth and this human instrument was designed to refract all quantum objects as being separate from ourselves. The human instrument—its perceptions of experience—reveal only the program, not the infinite being that it so cleverly conceals.
Thus, embracing ascension, as a process, encourages us to be separate. There is no eliteness in the consciousness of the Sovereign Integral. In fact, it is the opposite. It is recognizing that we all live in oneness and equality, and to the best of our abilities we express this in our behaviors. This requires us to pull down pretenses that might otherwise seem advantageous and even transcendent, so we can express our virtuous heart authentically without barriers and judgment.
Let’s take the second issue: abandonment. If we abandon earth and humanity for the sake of spiritual ascension, and that higher place to which we strive remains a fixture of illusion, we abandon one place of illusion for another. How is that improving us?
We’ve all heard the phrase, heaven on earth. It is a very real construct of the Sovereign Integral consciousness. It is the notion that living in a state of realization of one’s infinite self is possible within the human instrument. Until one is realized of their infinite self, they are deluded into thinking that the higher worlds, the light of enlightenment or heavenly realms are their goal.
They are like the woman who leaves her children to experience love with a stranger in a strange land. The love is not real and therefore does not last long, and when she returns to her children they have left her. The maternal bond has been disconnected. When we abandon the material world for the grasp of the spiritual, we lose the bond with the human dimension and the possibility of our role in birthing heaven on earth. We forget that we are all midwives for establishing heaven, or the Sovereign Integral state of consciousness, upon earth, for all human beings to share.
I realize many see the human instrument as the reason why heaven can never occur upon earth. As long as we are human, we are limited and vile. We seek pleasure and survival. We are animals. I understand this belief, but the scope of this process—of birthing the Sovereign Integral consciousness on earth—is not left to chance. It is the purpose of our species to free itself of our delusions, illusions and distortions and look clear-eyed into our depths, and to do this while living on earth in a human body.
This is our calling. Our collective purpose. However long it takes. However hard it is to achieve. It will happen.
A paraphrase of Captain Jean-Luc Picard seems appropriate: we will make it so.
