Personal upheaval

    "Between 1930 and 1990,  a convenient and superficial brand of spirituality has been circulating and pretending to be the real thing.  This form of spirituality has been most sharply characterized by a pervasive ego-gratifying and materialistic series of assumptions.  The marketing of spiritual approaches to life during the 1970's and 1980's became highly sophisticated in conveying to consumers that a spiritual path or dimension is the icing on the cake of life,  and does not require any deep soul searching or inward changes.

    In the late 1980's and early 1990's,  a counter-movement has been emerging which is much more Earth-real and  oriented toward core spiritual values.  As this counter-movement gathers momentum, the truth that every spiritual aspirant must move through major and extended upheavals will become basic to our evolutionary planetary shift into the 21st century.

    [Our aim]  is to give support and encouragement to those who find themselves faced with a call to die to their old selves and to come alive in a vibrant new way. We wish to affirm with glad hearts that each individual is equipped with  all that is needed to move through the planetary identity crisis and their own personal struggle and change.  In no way can we float along with the comfortable insinuation that these radical transformations will be easy,  or simply a matter of changing the paradigm of the way we look at things.  Now is the time to set to work and serve [Mankind] with a whole heart."

... from the book Inside Planets by Elias Lonsdale. Thanks to Laurie.

Note the expression "major and extended upheavals"... I can attest to that, as can many of my friends and many of the teachers who I have studied. We're not talking kindergarten problems when we approach the real spiritual center. It counters the popular belief that as you make spiritual progress, your life will become better and better, easier and easier. It may do so for a while, and then one day the express bus smacks you as you cross the street. The Self's resistance to Truth is very, very strong.