“Wokeism” and woke culture is rampant today. Everywhere you look, there are conversations about being woke. It's all over social media. It's in mainstream news media. And it's become regarded as a really virtuous thing, but it's actually quite literally the opposite of spirituality and of being spiritually awakened. So let’s take a moment to dissect that.
First I have to give a little bit of context so that you understand where I'm coming from. Reality is an illusion. This world that we see around us is an illusion and the only thing that's true is unconditional love. Since love has no opposite, fear is part of the illusion. What's all-encompassing can't have an opposite and this comes from all the spiritual traditions. This comes from A Course In Miracles, from Dolores Cannon’s hypnosis subjects, and from countless numbers of people who have had NDEs (Near-Death Experiences).
ISKON educational services explains it well when they talk about how the Hindus call the world “Maya”, which means illusion. They talk about how the illusioned soul has come apart from the atman, which is their real soul, their cosmic unitary self, and instead it's become attached to the illusion. So it thinks thoughts like “I'm white”, “I'm a man”, “this is my bank balance”, “this is my sectarian religion”, “this is my country”, “this is my job”, and your whole identity becomes wrapped up in this. Now this is the doing of the ego.
The ego is part of the illusion. It's a kind of the software that comes with being human. The ego thinks that what we perceive with our five senses is all there is. It doesn't understand that you are a divine being that is incarnated here as a human being, and that just part of you is incarnated and the rest of you exists as your higher self on the other side of the veil. The real you is a powerful spiritual being.
The ego tries to keep you safe because it believes you are only a body and a mind - it doesn’t see the great spiritual being that you are. It thinks in terms of doubts, worry, fear, guilt, shame, judgment, blame, and placing blame on others in order to protect you.
Now, part of becoming spiritually awakened is transcending the ego. Contrary to popular belief that doesn't mean getting rid of it - you can't get rid of it - but rather it's about learning to not identify with it, understanding that even though you have an ego, you're not your ego. Even though you have a body, you're not your body. Even though you have a mind, you're not your mind. You are something far greater. You are something that sits back and uses the computer of the mind, and it runs the software program of the ego, and it uses the body, the Avatar, to navigate this world. It's kind of like you've been dropped into a video game world, a simulation. You get to choose your avatar, the level of difficulty, and the circumstances you'll be born into.
The ego is all about seeing us versus them. It thinks that everything out there around you is separate from yourself, but that's not actually true. The truth is we're all connected. We're all part of the same thing, which is source, and we are all mirrors of each other. We're all reflections of each other, and you are consciously creating the reality that you see around you all the time. You are a creator. And you are always creating reality. Whether you're doing it consciously or unconsciously is another question.
So many people wallow in doubts of fear, doubt, and insecurity, in fact, psychologists say that 70-90% of people's thoughts are negative and redundant. Because people are thinking these things, they're feeling these emotions, they're caught in this negative loop, that's what they're projecting out into the world using the Law of Attraction and that's the reality that they're getting mirrored back to them. That's what the universe is reflecting back to them.
If we can get conscious, that's what spiritual awakening is and it's using the Law of Attraction to manifest what you want into your life, it's taking control of your thoughts, your emotions, your beliefs, the lens through which you view the world. The woke culture uses fear tactics to force the masses to see things from their perspective and they do this by threatening cancel culture.
Cancel culture is when people will attack another person, usually from the safe anonymity of behind their computer and phone screens, with the sole intention of bringing them down, harming their reputation, or hurting them. And cancel culture also shuts down opposing groups' ideas. So it's this idea of “my way is right, and everyone else's way is wrong.” This is the definition of bullying, threatening anyone who has a different idea of you, threatening to ruin their reputation and their life because they have a different idea.
This is how forward growth happens: we have conversations and are open to other points of view. Spirituality and being awakened says that everyone that you meet in your life is a teacher. But with wokeism they've put a wall up, they're completely blind and deaf to any other points of view besides their own. And not only that, they take it a step further and they threaten to attack people who have different points of view. Wokeism claims to be about social justice, but they are literally doing the same thing that they are fighting against. It's like creating a war to fight for peace. They're doing the same thing.
Most people are jumping on the bandwagon of wokeism, not even because they believe in these social justice causes, but more so so they can feed their own ego and win social approval because it's cool to be woke, it's “in” to be woke. It makes people feel righteous. It makes people feel superior to others because they're in the “ in-group” and they've cast out all these other people as “others” and less than. They think that they are superior to everyone else, and it's like a performance that they put on when they share these memes and they post, but most people don't truly believe in what they're fighting for. They're just doing it because they think it’s cool.
And because this reinforces this “US vs THEM” mentality, it seeks to divide humanity further. That's not what we want to be doing right now. We want to bring humanity together. We want to bring the collective together so we can help raise the vibration of humanity, and raise the vibration of the planet. Remember, everyone is connected. There's no us. There is no them. It's all us. We’re all one.
Cancel culture and wokeism also leads to falsely accusing others by making up stories, so that people can play the victim because it's become cool to be the victim in American society. It's victim mentality. It's blaming others, it's assigning yourself as judge. The Four Agreements talks about this in length - that people are so good at assigning themselves the judge and playing the victim. The Four Agreements also says that so many people are not impeccable with their word. Instead of using their word for good, they use it to hurt others and cause pain. They use it to spew their personal poison of anger, resentment, guilt, jealousy, envy, and rage.
They justify it to themselves and think, “well that person deserved my poison”. They tell themselves that person received the ‘proper’ punishment for their ‘perceived’ wrongdoing. But of course, this isn't true. All they're doing really is hurting another person. They're consciously causing another person harm. They're choosing to cause someone harm. They're choosing to spread hate. They're choosing to attack another person. Think about a time when you were angry at someone that wanted revenge. In order to seek that revenge, you said something to or about another person with the sole intention of causing them harm. It's like the modern-day Salem witch trials. That's what wokeism is, because so many people get attacked just for having an opposing point of view.
There are a lot of perceived payoffs to being the victim into placing blame on others. When you place blame on others, you get to claim your own innocence and indulge in self-pity. You get attention from others. You get showered with sympathy. You get pity for being the victim. You get honored for being a martyr. And you also get to avoid feeling guilty by staying in your comfort zone of playing small.
But what doesn’t come from blame is true healing and the release of negative emotions. It takes the power away from you and puts it into outside hands. It's playing small. You don't get to step into your power and take responsibility for your own life. You're keeping yourself stuck in this negative loop by reacting to a situation that you perceived as negative, with more negativity. You're continuing the cycle.
And in the long run, this does nothing for you. You don't grow and expand into an even greater soul and you get off in the wheel of karma. You don't get to reincarnate as something else. You don't get to move on to the next level. You get to come back to Earth, be a human again, and keep doing the same lessons until you learn them. You don't have freedom from this exhausting cycle of drama and negativity, forgiveness and letting things go, and seeing everyone else as you, treating others how you wanna be treated, that's how you step off the wheel of karma.
On the other side, being awakened means that you've accepted that reality is an illusion that is run on programs of fear, doubt, worry, anger, jealousy, and revenge - all of these egocentric things. And instead you’ve released all that, you've moved into a state of unconditional love and acceptance for your fellow humans, for fellow creatures everywhere. Because love is the only true thing that there is.
Fear, separation, guilt, blame, it is all part of the illusion… being awakened means that you understand that we're all connected. We're all reflections of each other, and you can't say something about another person without saying it about yourself. You can't do something to another person without hurting yourself as well, because we're all connected. Everyone that you meet is a mirror of you. So if you see a lack in someone, you're really seeing a lack in yourself. If you see others as innocent, worthy, deserving, and whole, then you are helping to spread that into society.
Because when you forgive another person, you help teach them a new lesson about life. Maybe they have done bad things, but if you see them as loving and deserving and you send them love and you're teaching them a new lesson about the world, you're helping them heal because people that hurt others are coming from a place of deep inner pain. They are in a terrible place inside. They feel lost, and helpless; they feel broken and they have self-hatred. And they've probably never had true love. If we turn away from them with coldness and reinforce to them that the world is a cold, dark, cruel place, we're just reinforcing that cycle of pain. But we can teach them another lesson about the world and we can forgive them. We can shower them with love.
There's a tribe in Africa called the Babemba tribe, and anytime a member of the tribe does something ‘wrong,’ they put them in the middle of the village, and everyone in the tribe stops what they're doing from young people to elders. They form a circle around them and tell them everything they love about them. They go around in a circle and tell them all the good they've done, all the helpful things they've done. They remind them of their strengths. They tell them what they love about them, and then they ceremoniously welcome the person back into their tribe because they know people who hurt or cause others pain are disconnected from source, love, and their higher self and they remind them of that. They remind them of who they really are, and that's how we heal a sick society. By first healing ourselves and then healing others with love.
Your inner world creates your outer world. To heal society, heal yourself first because the universe is like a big canvas or hologram and whatever you project onto that, gets mirrored back to you. Everyone projects onto that and their collective emotions and beliefs get projected back onto the world. So if people are thinking thoughts of duality, of ‘Black vs white’, of ‘US vs them’ or whatever, they're helping to call that paradigm into reality. If everyone is projecting peace and love and harmony, that's what the world gets.
Start with yourself, that's how you do it. You start with yourself. You heal yourself. You love yourself, you love others, and project love out.. When you have peace inside of you, you can only project peace and love onto the world. And that sends a ripple effect out to your friends, your family, and your community and then they grow and they send that ripple effect out as they heal.
Soon there's a tipping point that's reached and all of humanity can step forward into love and peace and harmony and a more harmonious existence. Heaven on earth. Because we are all connected, and what one person does deeply affects everyone else. Rise first and then give others a helping hand to lift them up. Wokeism is not true healing and true awakening. So choose love, choose kindness way over cancel culture. Forget cancel culture, forget ego.