Multidharma Book – 2

Multidharma:
A New Map of Awakening for 21st Century Spiritual Explorers

By Pierce Salguero

THE THREADS OF AWAKENING

Having covered those preliminaries, let’s now dive into the individual threads. As mentioned, a thread comprises a cluster of related experiences, flavors, interpretations, identities, perceptions, and worldviews. We have said that each is its own category or type of spirituality, whole and complete unto itself. This chapter will introduce the four main spiritual threads that form the backbone of the Multidharma model. For some people, separating them out in this way brings clarity, for others it may feel artificial. Either way, hand tight as we’ll discuss them individually in this chapter and then bring them together in the next.

The Emptiness Thread

“All conditioned phenomena are like a dream, a mirage, a bubble, a shadow; they are like dew or like a flash of lightning. One should meditate on them like this.” — The Diamond Sutra

The first thread is all of the mystical, spiritual, and religious experiences related to the emptying out, the seeing though, and the dereification of experience. The basic dynamic here is that phenomena that previously seemed to be unquestionably real are deconstructed and revealed to be nothing more than a construct created by the mind. Related phenomena include states of increased clarity, stillness, and equanimity. Some common traditional terms for the experiences associated with this thread are kensho, satori, jhana, samadhi, nirodha, nirvana, sunyata, anatta, and so forth. In English, people speak of loss of self, nonduality, spaciousness, nonexistence, nonreality, nondifferentiation, subject/object collapse, and many other terms.

The specific language people use to talk about this thread’s experiences and insights usually depend on which background, beliefs, and practice community they are coming from. This thread is prioritized in certain Advaita Vedanta circles, Theravada Buddhism, Zen, and other traditions that focus on meditation and self-inquiry as the principal spiritual practices. But the opening of any thread can happen totally spontaneously within any practice system, or even to someone with no spiritual or religious context whatsoever. For example, these phenomena might arise while undergoing a traumatic experience, as the result of certain types of introspection, or even as a sudden out-of-the-blue realization.

Each of the threads typically begins with a notable experience or realization. In this case, the initial opening of the emptiness thread almost invariably involves seeing through the narrative self or separate self that most people take for granted. There may be a gradual process of deconstruction as the self is slowly eroded away, or it may feel like a dramatic breakthrough when a large part of the self structure suddenly collapses. If one has no context for this kind of experience, it may be overwhelming, confusing, or frightening, occasionally leading people to assume that they’re having a mental health crisis or spiritual emergency. However, if one already has, or can acquire, some helpful context for this type of experience, one may accept this event as the beginning of a journey of exploring and deepening into the deconstruction and dereification of all things.

A non-exhaustive list of hypothetical descriptions of the emptiness thread might include statements like the following:

I suddenly couldn’t find myself. My body and center fell away, and when I tried to look inside, I found nothing. There was now only awareness, the observer.
I saw that everything was occurring in a deep dark void, as if the whole of reality had become as empty as a black hole. Nothing was really there anymore.
I realized that I’ve been playing this character my whole life, and I tricked myself into believing that’s who I was. I felt a sense of liberation from the weight of having to be that. Everything was spacious and free, no longer tight and constricted.

If this type of experience turns out to be epiphenomenal for you, such insights may never arise again, or perhaps they will return but won’t develop into anything very meaningful or life changing. On the other hand, if it is truly the opening of a thread of awakening, then by definition this will become the beginning of a new trajectory of transformation in terms of your identity, perception, and worldview. Your life will be thoroughly changed in light of what you discover. These transformations will not just be about understanding and deepening into the ramifications of the initial awakening event but also will involve a continuous shift over time in the baseline of your daily experience as you take in the insights and realizations this thread has to offer.

Once a thread’s trajectory has begun, this deepening might be experienced as a straightforward process, but just as often it can feel like two steps forward, one step back. Or, you might leap forward to a very deep place on this thread only to bounce back again, yo-yoing up and down the thread as you traverse the same territory multiple times. I’ve written these sections on each thread in a more sequential fashion, but the advantage of a map focused on processes is that we do not have to worry at all about discrete steps and stages. Things can be fluid and messy. We can simply say that, if this is truly a thread for you, then over the long term, you will notice a general movement toward deepening further and further down the thread.

How exactly the deepening of this thread unfolds will be different from person to person. But for many people, the initial falling away of the narrative self reveals an underlying non-personal consciousness or awareness that seems to be witnessing all phenomena. It seems that this awareness has been present throughout one’s life but has been obscured by an identification and fusion with the narrative self. Discovering this underlying awareness or consciousness is an amazing and liberating moment. One will often feel huge surges of bliss and joy, and many people will believe that they have become fully enlightened right on the spot.

However great it feels, it is critical to realize that this is only the first step in a very long thread, and not to get overly enthusiastic or prideful. Sooner or later your system will settle back down into a “new normal.” Most people at that point will experience a big letdown and start chasing after another explosive experience. Remembering that progressing down a thread is not about the peak experiences themselves, but rather shifting the baseline, can be helpful.

Upon initial awakening to the awareness underneath all experience, it can seem as though I am “me” having a momentary experience of being the witnessing awareness. However, over time, awareness is increasingly foregrounded and the identity as the narrative self becomes less and less prevalent. Eventually, identity may gravitate over to awareness and affix there in a more stable way. Now, I am the vast, unbounded awareness or consciousness that occasionally has an experience of being little old “me.” In other words, the gross conceptual object called “me” is gradually being emptied out. Continuing down this trajectory, eventually the very idea of “me” ceases to be meaningful at all. We could say it has become totally empty.

It’s not only the narrative self that is seen through in this way. In time, as you sink into the emptiness thread, other fundamental structures begin to collapse and dissolve as well. It seems that, for many people, the deconstruction of perception is a major part of this process. What your mind previously glossed over quickly with the concept of “tree,” for example, is upon closer examination revealed to be made up of thousands of points of color and light. What previously was quickly registered by the mind as “traffic noise,” likewise, is perceived to be a symphony of individual tones and timbres. As the conceptual overlays drop away and the underlying sensory phenomena are seen in what appears to be a less filtered way, objects seem more vivid and more alive than ever. It’s like you swapped out an old TV set with rabbit-ear antennas for a high-definition plasma screen. The clarity and vibrance can be breathtaking. . . until this, too, becomes the new normal.

Continuing down this thread, more and more concepts are deconstructed and dereified. Each time there’s a period of dismantling, it’s usually followed by a period of fascination with what’s uncovered at the next level down. Releasing fixation after fixation can give rise to bliss, joy, peace, relaxation, and other positive sensations. Inevitably, however, after some time has passed, you realize that that this next level that has been revealed can itself also be deconstructed, and the process repeats itself like a cycle or spiral. Major landmarks in this thread’s trajectory include the deconstruction of “time” into a timeless “now” and the deconstruction of “place” into a placeless “here.” Major concepts that have had lots of meaningfulness attached to them — like “life and death,” “before and after,” “cause and effect” and “this and that” — are all seen through as reified constructs of the mind.

Eventually, the subject/object distinction itself starts to be destabilized. Normally referred to as nonduality, this collapse can take place in one of two ways. The first, more likely to be spoken about in Advaita circles, is the collapse of the object into the subject. Sensory phenomena are seen to be made of awareness or inseparable from consciousness. The second case, more familiar from Buddhist descriptions, is the collapse of the subject. Awareness or consciousness is seen to be just another impermanent object or phenomenon. Experience seems to be taking place without any need for a stable witness.

As this thread deepens further still, whichever pole was still left standing — subject or object — is also seen to be just another concept. When this happens, you seem to begin to experience the whole of reality as precisely, exactly, simply what it is. There is just an eternal nowness/hereness/thisness/presence without any additional complexity added by concepts of space, time, subject, object, or any other overlays. It might seem like the work is done at this point, but even here, we can still investigate what seems real, actual, or present. Is “thisness” actually even here? Is “presence” actually even present?

Once the deconstruction/dereification process has gotten to this level of granularity and has built up enough steam behind it, it is common to start experiencing the literal blinking out of all phenomena. These blackouts (often called “cessations” in Buddhist circles) are as devoid of awareness as deep sleep or anesthesia. Many people speak of these moments as being like a “reset” for the brain, which as the mind boots back up again reveals why reification is taking place in the first place. To me, however, one of the most important functions of a cessation is the final destabilizing of any notion of a “background,” “ground of being,” or “underlying reality” of any kind. Even calling it “the void” is reifying what happens during a cessation too much. It is a suspension of perception, a complete rupture of experience. Some might even say total oblivion.

As we approach the bottom of the emptiness thread, the dereification becomes pervasive. It seems that nothing arises anywhere, ever, nor arises to anyone. The nonarising of phenomena is uncanny, like one is living in a mirage-world that blinks out of existence any time you try to perceive it. There are sometimes sensory and even physical “glitches” as the body and mind have to figure out how to live and navigate a world that doesn’t seem to exist. Particularly if they shifted into this kind of state rapidly, some people may find themselves lost in nihilism, unable to find any motivation to involve themselves in work, family, or other ordinary tasks. But again, with time and proper context, even this depth of emptiness becomes a new normal.

The furthest endpoint of each one of the threads results in the most all-consuming and totalizing realization of the insights of the thread in question. In the case of the emptiness thread, one arrives at the point of complete nonexistence where nothing whatsoever can be said to exist. Even saying that “things are empty” seems to be reifying too much, as it suggests that there are things that can be said to have an attribute of emptiness. The only plausible comment to make on reality at this point would be complete silence; anything else is simply adding too much.

It is an inevitable feature of all the threads that, when you are immersed in them, they are utterly convincing that their perspective is ultimate truth, that this is the highest form of realization, and that this thread is the whole point of awakening. It is also common that the mind makes up all kinds of worldviews and ontological frameworks in order to try to make sense of these events. For example, deep in the emptiness thread, you might say something like: The ultimate truth is that all things are completely empty, unfindable, non-existent, non-arising, and it never could be otherwise.

It seems that we tend to put the insights of the thread we are enmeshed in up on a pedestal, and they always seem indisputably and obviously true. Attaining the realization that all things are empty simply has to have been the whole point of the awakening process. However, as we will see in the pages to come, there are other threads with other lessons to teach us. As it turns out, for many of us, emptiness is not the ultimate truth or the only perspective.

The Oneness Thread

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. — Meister Eckhart

Many Asian traditions enshrine perceiving the illusory nature of the self and phenomena as the sine qua non of awakening. In other words, they feel that if you have not deepened to the far end of the emptiness thread, then you are by definition not awakened. However, this book defines the word awakening differently, referring to a wider range of experiences that reveal profound insights into identity, perception, and worldview. If we use this broader definition of awakening, the vast majority of people undergoing an awakening process experience a range of phenomena and insights that are not limited to just emptiness. The first thread is thus not the only component of awakening, or even always the most salient or significant one. There are other kinds of experiences that can, for many people, be more central to the process of spiritual development.

Along with emptiness, the oneness thread is one of the most common for people to experience. However, it is not universal: it is entirely possible to go through the complete awakening process without the oneness thread ever being very active. Or, it is entirely possible to experience epiphenomena of this type that don’t amount to a thread because they have no trajectory of development. That being said, if oneness does emerge as a proper thread, there will be a fundamental shift in identity, perception, and worldview. There will be a trajectory toward an ending point where this thread becomes the whole of existence, just like in the case of emptiness.

You can think of the oneness thread as including the whole gamut of spiritual, mystical, and religious experiences relating to discovering the underlying intimacy, connection, and nonseparation of all things. This can often include feelings of profound love, being held, being protected, being supported, being cared for; and also feelings such as extending love, protection, and support to others. Many describe their experience in terms of being connected with divinity, sacredness, holiness, mystery, benevolence, or healing; or with a god, goddess, angelic beings; or with a benevolent universe or cosmic intelligence; or with the highest good imaginable; or awareness or consciousness; or the totality of the cosmos, the ground of being, or the All. Others will experience a oneness or a wholeness that is impossible to explain or to put into words.

The specific language people use to talk about this thread and its implications will depend on their backgrounds, beliefs, and practice communities. This thread is prioritized in Christian mysticism, Sufism, Mahayana Buddhism, devotion-based Hinduism, and goddess traditions worldwide, among others. Each of these traditions holds up different ideals or paragons, including the mystic, the bodhisattva, and the bhakta or Hindu saint. When speaking of this thread, a given person might speak of God, Goddess, Christ Consciousness, Guan Yin, the Buddha, or any number of other specific names for deities or higher beings. Or they might use more secular-sounding terms like the unity consciousness, the interconnected nature of the universe, or the evolutionary quality of the cosmos. Of course, this thread can also open up spontaneously for people with no religious or spiritual context, and they may choose entirely different language that resonates for them.

Whatever we call it — and we might change what we say and how we understand it as we deepen into it — when this thread first opens, it often arrives in the form of a clear, obvious, tangible experience. This may involve strong emotional states such as universal compassion, motherly love, or divine presence. Or distinct body sensations such as bliss, warmth, or tenderness. Or a visual or auditory experience, such as seeing a vision or hearing the voice of Jesus or Ramana Maharshi calling to you. Or, a more nebulous intimacy that you can’t really put your finger on but is still undeniable.

It’s also possible that the experiences associated with this thread will be subtler than all of that. Someone may, for example, feel a diffuse and general sense of connectedness or intimacy or unification with all things. Or, perhaps, a quiet sense that everything is sacred or holy or benevolent. Rather than a big flamboyant vision of the Virgin Mary radiating love, for example, you might just have a quiet sense that her divine presence is always in the background.

As with all threads, the initial opening to oneness may come as a surprise from out of the blue, or it can appear gradually and thus feel less dramatic. Either way, the opening of the thread is usually experienced as a personalized event. By this, I mean that the experience — whatever it is — will be something that happened “to me.” Some hypothetical and representative examples of this opening experience may include:

I felt the presence of a loving angelic being beside me, and knew that no matter what, everything was going to be okay.
I saw that the entire universe is Awareness; everything unfolds inside of and is made out of Awareness.
I felt a tremendous upwelling of compassion building up in my chest, and then it burst out of me like an ocean of care flowing to all beings.
I felt myself to be small and insignificant in the presence of an unspeakably holy and powerful consciousness.

If the unity/heart/love/divinity type of experience is a true thread and not just an epiphenomenon, your life will over time come to be transformed in light of what you have discovered. Many people who undergo a strong mystical, spiritual, or religious experience go on to develop an ontological view about what it means. After the opening of the oneness thread, it’s possible that someone’s belief in materialism will collapse, or perhaps their previous agnosticism will capitulate to a newfound faith in God. These are natural reactions as the mind attempts to grapple with this new data, understanding how to fit it into one’s worldview or mental landscape.

As thread deepens, the baseline of your experience of the thread will move from the more localized or specific to increasingly more general and universal. In time, more and more of reality becomes infused with, enfolded into, or synonymous with love, divinity, sacredness, holiness, God, Awareness, or the One. The realization may arise that everything has been designed or preordained or is manifesting in a way that is utterly perfect. You may discover a kind of non-resistance where you can trust in the benevolent nature of the universe and can give up the need to control or question reality.

Even though the trajectory is seeming to move int he opposite direction as the emptiness thread, at a certain point, oneness eventually also becomes nondual, meaning that it will overcome the separation of subject/object or self/world or consciousness/phenomena. This will happen when everything has been brought into a single unified field, but you perceive that there’s a very subtle sense of self, a presence of some kind, that is experiencing or witnessing or aware of the unified field. It’s like a reflection in a mirror, a subtle sense that there is seeing or feeling being done, or that the field is being seen or felt. This means there is still some kind of very subtle observer that is separate from the observed. Sinking into the field and trying to find that boundary will likely dissolve this final division. Suddenly or gradually, you will come to see that there is absolutely nothing in the universe that is separate from the unity, including anything that you could possibly call yourself. In other words, whatever you were calling “you” dissolves into the One. You are the field. You are Awareness. You are Brahman. You are God. You are the Goddess.

At the very bottom of the thread, even this identification of “you are” is seen as a separation. It becomes too much to even say I am the One because it posits two things, me and the One that simply can’t be separated out in the first place. The identification that’s inherent in the “I am” part of that sentence drops away and the “I” surrenders into the totality, leaving only nonseparation. What a delicious irony that a certain amount of separation was always required in order to experience states of oneness! But now, there is nothing that is separate, nothing that is left out of the totality.

From this thread’s perspective, the tremendous value of these realizations is obvious. There is no higher truth than the realization that the entire universe is all one inseparable thing. The whole purpose of spirituality, obviously, is to release all beings from the suffering of separation, compassionately helping them to realize they are part of this loving wholeness. It could not be otherwise.

The Energy Thread

O Divine Mother Kundalini, the Divine Cosmic Energy that is hidden in men!…. Thou hast manifested as Prana, electricity, force, magnetism, cohesion, gravitation in this universe. This whole universe rests in Thy bosom. — Swami Sivananda

Energy refers to yet another cluster of experiences that often arise in an awakening process. Like with the oneness thread, these are common but not universal, and many people go through a complete awakening process without them ever amounting to anything more than epiphenomena. However, as before, if this is a proper thread, there will be corresponding shifts in identity, perception, and worldview along the way. And there will be a trajectory toward an endpoint where these kinds of experiences become the whole of existence.

This thread is meant to encompass all of the diverse spiritual, mystical, and religious experiences relating to energetic phenomena. Such things are spoken about extensively in Asian traditions. Qi, ki, prana, loong, lom, and other “winds” and “forces” are foundational concepts in traditional Asian medicines and martial arts of all kinds. Spiritual systems that have a lot to say about energy include most traditional forms of yoga, Daoism, Vajrayana Buddhism, Kashmiri Shaivism, and other tantric traditions from across the Asian continent. These systems hold forth ideals of energetic perfection such as the Daoist immortal, the yogic body of light, or the Tibetan Buddhist rainbow body. These days, there are a ton of Western types of energy work that mix together traditional ideas with modern frameworks like electricity, magnetism, and quantum fields. Again, the specific language people use to talk about energy — meridians, dantians, chakras, auras, koshas, kundalini, rays of light, astral realms, quantum entanglement, bioelectrical fields, and so on — will depend upon their particular background, belief system, and which vocabularies and ways of conceptualizing they most resonate with. As with the previous threads, it’s also quite possible that someone has no context with which to explain or understand this thread, and they struggle to put it into words of any kind.

Like other threads, when this one initially opens, it will often announce itself in the form of a notable personalized experience. That is to say, body sensations, visual or auditory sensations, or other clear and tangible phenomena that seem like they are happening to “me.” However, this thread can also initially manifest as more subtle “vibes” or feelings that are hard to pin down or name. Some hypothetical experiences — again, not intended to be comprehensive — could include things like:

I felt a rush of electric sparks running up my spine and shooting out the top of my head.
I was at the shore listening to the waves on the beach, when suddenly I felt them inside of me, as if they were washing away the impurities inside my body.
I experienced a sensation of burning in the center of my chest, and then it exploded like a supernova radiating light outwards like the rays of the sun.
It felt as if my body was shrinking, growing, expanding, contracting, disappearing, or dissolving into a field of sensations.
My senses gradually pixelated into tiny, pulsing flecks of light buzzing all around like fireflies or champagne bubbles.

The onset of such phenomena can be sudden and surprising, and especially if someone has no context for what is taking place, they can sometimes be deeply unsettling or even overwhelming. Energy fluctuations frequently are experienced as physical or mental maladies, and thus the opening of this thread may introduce a whole cluster of health problems into the awakening process. (One of the most popular ways of talking about more intense or problematic energy phenomena is using the terms kundalini syndrome or qi deviation.) As with all the threads, strong ontological views are often created as the mind struggles to make sense of what is happening. Sometimes these ontologies themselves create further problems, as one’s ideas about “what is” or “what should be” crystallize around fixed views and assumptions.

If these kinds of experiences are epiphenomenal, then they may intermittently occur throughout the awakening process but they will not develop into a trajectory. For example, just because your body feels tingly when you meditate doesn’t mean that you have an active energy thread. If this is a proper thread, then the energetic phenomena will transform your identity, perception, and worldview. They will become increasingly central to your awakening process and eventually will become the entire universe. Again, this unfolding can take place straightforwardly, in spurts and starts, or in a more chaotic manner. But, in the aggregate, over the long haul, there will be a shift in your baseline as the thread becomes a more and more fundamental feature of your daily experience.

As you continually orient toward this thread, everything that previously seemed to be solid will eventually be seen to dissolve into energy, aliveness, dynamism, and creativity. For example, it might initially seem that energy is flowing inside of your body, but eventually, the body loses its boundaries as well and becomes a field of vibrating energetic sensations. One by one, your other senses follow suit. Your vision breaks down into millions of tiny fluxing points of light, like the flickering snow on an old TV set or an impressionistic painting. Your hearing does the same, every sound fizzling and crackling like a staticky radio. Deepening into this thread, all of reality seems to synesthetically dissolve into vibrations. Everything you once took to be stable is perceived as clusters of flickering pixels in a dynamic dance; nothing in the universe is static.

Like all the other threads, this trajectory eventually becomes nondual too. This happens when you perceive that there’s a subtle sense of self, a “you” of some kind, that is experiencing or witnessing or aware of the whole field of energetic phenomena that are arising. It’s as if there is a stable observer doing the seeing and feeling, while the energetic fluctuations are being seen or felt. In other words, consciousness or awareness is still separate from the field of energy, still seemingly static. Sinking in, inquiring, or feeling if that’s really true will likely eventually dissolve that duality as well.

Suddenly or gradually, you will come to see that there is no such thing as stable consciousness. Awareness itself is just as pixelated, flickering, and fluctuating as anything it perceives. Every discrete moment of consciousness is like a single pixel arising, lasting ever so briefly, and then flashing out of existence. The whole of reality is a creative, dynamic, vibratory burst of birth and death every nanosecond. And, what’s more, there is no continuity whatsoever between each blip of experience. The whole cosmos comes into existence and collapses back into the void every instant. Nothing whatsoever could ever be permanent, continuous, solid, or static.

At the very bottom of the thread, it’s too much to say that the cosmos ever even arises. To say that any of those minuscule blips actually come into existence is to give them some kind of solidity or static quality, even if only for the briefest moment. At the most microscopic level of granularity, what previously looked like pixels are actually more like little bubbles that pop right before they can be caught. Because each phenomenon is its own minute bubble, and awareness too is its own little popping bubble, nothing can ever actually be aware of anything. Each phenomenon is its own universe, which disappears before it can be pinned down. It’s all alive, moving, vibrating, fizzy, ephemeral, scintillating, and gone before it can be apprehended.

At this point, rather than a field of tiny buzzing particles, reality seems to have dissolved into a potential energy that never actually resolves into any kind of object. The whole cosmos is nothing but unmanifested creativity that can never be successfully collapsed into anything stable. Again, this realization may provoke all kinds of meaning-making and ontological speculation — with language varying from Shiva-Shakti to quantum physics, and everything in between. Whatever sense you make of it, however, from this thread’s perspective, the realization that the entire universe is a dynamic, alive dance of creativity is the ultimate truth. It is the very definition of awakening.

The Psyche Thread

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. — C.G. Jung

The fourth thread refers to a final cluster of experiences and phenomena that are common in awakening. Like the others, the name of this thread is meant to be evocative, but you could use other terms. Here, we are talking about spiritual, mystical, or religious experiences relating to the unconscious layers of the mind. Any kind of process or influence that lies beneath the level of conscious awareness, and that emerges in the course of an awakening in order to be seen and dealt with, can be considered part of this thread. As usual, however, it’s the emergence of a trajectory of transformation that marks a cluster of experiences as a proper thread rather than epiphenomena. If it’s a thread, there will be profound changes in identity, perception, and worldview, as well as a movement toward an endpoint where the unconscious mind is seen as the whole of existence.

In my personal opinion, the psyche thread is not often dealt with skillfully in premodern religions. In most traditional forms of Buddhism, for example, the whole range of unconscious materials is lumped together as “defilements” or “karmic traces” (kleshas or samskaras), and these are talked about as things that simply need to be “purified.” Christian notions of sin (original and otherwise) are, in my view, even less helpful. I think there are more skillful ways of navigating these waters in certain Tibetan traditions, with practices such as dream yoga and dark retreat, but these typically require initiation. In my view, there are a more accessible and equally helpful range of approaches to be found in psychotherapy, Jungian-inspired active imagination and shadow work, and various forms of shamanism, paganism, and other indigenous traditions.

Like all threads, this one initially can open with grosser experiences that can be intensely blissful or challenging, or with subtler ones that are less dramatic. By definition, the onset of this thread almost always takes one by surprise — it is about surfacing materials that were previously unconscious, after all — and the phenomena accompanying the revelation of these materials can be deeply disturbing if someone has no context for their sudden emergence. One example of unhelpfully jumping to conclusions is the assumption that the arising of darker unconscious elements automatically represents a “dark night of the soul,” a “spiritual emergency,” or a mental health crisis — ideas that can lead to this thread being met with fear and anxiety.

Many spiritual teachings in the contemporary West recognize that resurfacing and releasing trauma and conditioning commonly takes place during the awakening process. When I refer to the psyche thread, I too am thinking about these kinds of things. However, that is just the tip of a huge iceberg. To me, the psyche thread goes way beyond one’s personal psychology, unfolding in increasingly deeper layers. These layers include:

Biographical. All of the traumas, memories, and conditioning amassed through the events in one’s individual life. Examples include anything that happened to me in the past that has an unconscious role to play in how I experience the present.
Preverbal. It’s worth thinking about the experiences of the prenatal period, during birth, and early infancy as a separate category because they are often stored at a deeper level than memories of events that took place later in life. Examples include in-utero trauma, birth troubles, early childhood trauma, etc.
Ancestral. All of the ways that one’s own individuality is unconsciously shaped and influenced by patterns related to one’s parents and ancestors, whether living or dead. Examples include inherited traits, intergenerational trauma, family traditions, etc.
Cultural/social. Beyond one’s own family tree, one is shaped in countless ways by the society and culture around them. Examples include customs, cultural traits, ethical and moral systems, gender roles, sexuality, and other influences both negative and positive.
Conceptual/cognitive. Your own thought patterns and habits filter your experience, leading you to interpret things in certain ways that are peculiar to you based on your beliefs, ontologies, worldviews, intellectual leanings, and biases (explicit and implicit). Even the mental or emotional state you are in makes you more inclined to accept or reject certain ideas. The language you speak also structures your thoughts in countless unconscious ways. Other influential examples include religions, political beliefs, philosophies, academic theories, and other maps and models (including the one presented in this book).
Transpersonal/archetypal. All human minds are shaped by universally shared archetypes, metaphors, and ways of understanding that seem to be baked into the human psyche at the species level. Examples include the metaphorical associations of light as good and dark as bad, the notions of heavens and underworlds, angelic and demonic beings, animals as teachers or spirits, and more — whether received through dreams, visions, creative inspiration, or other experiences.
Psychic/paranormal. There may be capacities, skills, or talents that are latent in the psyche below the conscious level, which when activated seem to extend beyond the normal range of human abilities. Examples include all types of action at a distance, precognition, clairvoyance/clairaudience, extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, communication with spirits, and so forth. These may also influence one’s experience in subtler ways through intuition, vibes, and synchronicities.
Mammalian. All mammals, including humans, are unconsciously driven by certain fundamental instincts. Examples include the ways that we are driven to seek warmth, social interaction, sexual activity, food and other resources, etc.
Biological/physiological. Even more fundamentally, as biological entities, our lives are shaped by countless physiological processes, including the effects of chemicals, cells, and molecules that are constantly moving through our system. Examples include how our behavior is influenced in unseen ways by our hormones, gut microbiome, chronic health issues, sleep cycles, etc.
Elemental. Our bodies ultimately are built out of the same material elements as the rest of the world. Traditionally, it was thought that our bodies are in constant resonance with those elements throughout the cosmos. Examples of these kinds of entanglements include astrology, fengshui, various forms of traditional medicine, etc.
Astral/cosmic/soul/etc. Many spiritual and religious teachings hold that we are deeply influenced by invisible forces, structures, or relationships with subtle beings in other realms. Examples include past lives, karmic influences, God’s will, your soul’s mission, or blessings or curses placed on us.

It’s not important that you believe in any or all of the things on the list above; my purpose is not to make any kind of ontological assertions about the existence of any of these layers. The point is simply that, regardless of your belief system, you certainly can recognize that there are countless ways that we are conditioned by forces beyond our conscious control, going way further and deeper than just traumas that happened in our own biographical past. Many people in an awakening process assume that they are completely beyond being impacted by any unconscious forces, but the list above should make it clear just how inescapable they actually are. (Will you ever be able to rid your psyche of the conditioning you have around the fact that you speak one language instead of another? Of course you can’t!)

If this thread is an active part of your awakening process, at some point, you will begin to viscerally experience many of the above types of unconscious influences spilling out into the daylight. (It’s not necessary that you experience them all.) These forces may come to the surface in dreams, in waking life, in artwork, in writing, or in the therapist’s office. They may emerge in the form of seeing visions, hearing voices, feeling presences, or remembering memories. They may come as blessings, nightmares, or uncanny coincidences. You might interpret these arisings as internal to your own psyche, or you might experience them as separate entities — being visited by spirits, demons, aliens, or angels, for example.

If these stirrings of the unconscious parts of the mind are epiphenomenal, then such things may occur intermittently without a clear trajectory or sense of meaningful deepening. However, if this is a proper thread, the importance of the unconscious in your awakening process will become increasingly clear and increasingly magnified. As with the other threads, this deepening can be experienced as easy or difficult, proceeding in a straight line or in a twisted and convoluted way. However it manifests, as the thread deepens over the long term, more and more of your psyche will gradually emerge into the daylight, as wave after wave of unconscious materials demand to be seen, to come alive, and to be recognized as autonomous parts of the whole.

The psyche thread is definitely not one size fits all. Since it is filtered through so many different cultures, beliefs, symbols, and life experiences, people experience and discuss these materials quite differently from one another. Some examples of the kinds of experiences people might report include the following (again, this list is not meant to be comprehensive, just suggestive of some of the diverse ways people can talk about this thread):

I’ve begun to realize how much I am limiting my own freedom due to the beliefs and patterns I internalized as a child.
These days, my meditations are filled with visions of past lives, spirits, and other astral beings, who bring messages for me.
My body moves spontaneously, working out old traumas in its own way through movements that are beyond my control.
All the light and bliss of my awakening has been replaced by a dark night of the soul, in which I seem to be experiencing the suffering of the entire world.
I feel like my genetic code is in direct communication with the entire matrix of information permeating the universe.
I was on a walk, and a circle of rocks seemed to beckon to me. I could tell that they had something to teach me if I was willing to listen.
I feel like my thoughts create reality. I simply think of something, and it manifests into being.

Grappling with the unconscious can be amazing, mysterious, thrilling, blissful, painful, uncomfortable, unsettling, weird, destabilizing, terrifying, or existentially threatening — all of which are normal reactions to this material. As with the other threads, the mind will often rush to formulate ontological views about what is happening, which can turn out to be more or less helpful in managing your emotions. One kind of ontological question that comes up for many people going through a psyche thread process is whether the phenomena taking place are related to awakening or to a mental health crisis. On the surface, there are many similarities between a psyche thread awakening and certain types of mental illness such as psychosis, schizophrenia, depersonalization-derealization disorder, and so forth, and carefully discerning the difference is important. In my opinion, there are certain red flags — suicidal ideation, committing violence or purposefully harming others, inability to fulfill major daily life or family obligations, inability to navigate conventional reality safely — that are indicative of a problem. I am not qualified to weigh in on these kinds of issues other than counseling you to seek evaluation from a professional therapist if you feel like things are going awry. I might perhaps suggest you find one with a background in awakening (or at least a Jungian analyst), since they will have more likelihood of being able to recognize a psyche thread awakening without assuming it’s a mental health crisis.

In the Multidharma map, a proper thread is never something that only comes up in a particular portion of the awakening process. It’s never about “finishing up” the thread so you can get back to your “real” awakening. Therefore, from the viewpoint of the psyche thread, language that talks about “clearing out,” “purifying,” “resolving,” or “reconditioning” unconscious material is not particularly helpful. Proper threads are always developmental projects that end with the thread’s lessons being accepted as the ultimate truth, the totality of the universe, and the very definition of awakening.

Deepening into the psyche thread therefore is not about processing or otherwise dealing with the unconscious materials. It is certainly not about deconditioning. Yes, a good portion of the tension and angst that comes up around unconscious conditioning will resolve itself by virtue of being met with patience and authenticity. For example, in the case of trauma or repressed sexual orientation, it’s the inability to accept these aspects of the psyche that cause most of the pain, consternation, and destructive behavior around it. By accepting and welcoming these parts of ourselves, sooner or later, we will find that our suffering related to these issues starts to evaporate.

This process often requires supporting, healing, and nourishing the mind, body, emotions, and nervous system over a long period of time. As more and more of our woundedness, our humanity, our animality, our vulnerabilities, our dark sides are liberated, we more and more embody the wholeness of our personhood. We might even discover through this work that our most painful wounds are actually our greatest gifts in disguise.

However, not everything in the psyche can be released or processed in that way. Many of these unconscious elements mentioned above are baked into the system, so to speak. They are indelible parts of what it means to be this individual person. For example, I can see and accept and welcome the countless ways that my male biology unconsciously shapes my mind. I can understand how I internalized socially and culturally prevalent notions of masculinity throughout childhood via various social pressures and can release some of the trauma I may have experienced around that. But, I’m never going to be able to decondition all of the maleness out of this system, nor should I feel like I need to take on that mission. In a similar vein, how could I ever decondition the mammalian features of this body, the transpersonal archetypal structures common to all humans, the fact that my ancestors were who they were? It can’t be done, nor should I expect it to be.

Therefore, progressing on the psyche thread does not mean getting rid of the unconscious dimensions of the psyche. What falls away is simply the resistance to them. What falls away is the impulse to deny, repress, and avoid what emerges from the unconscious. As you deepen into this thread, you learn to welcome and accept more and more of the layers of the unconscious. And as you do, they are each liberated to fully and naturally manifest.

Like the others, at the deepest end, this thread also becomes nondual in its own way. After much work on the psyche thread, the moment will come when you realize that every single thing you could possibly think of as being “me” is actually just layer upon layer of conditioning. In fact, every thought, feeling, or behavior you could ever exhibit is a projection or a manifestation of the unconscious. Absolutely everything you experience is nothing but the psyche playing itself out. From this thread’s perspective, then, we ultimately come to realize the truth that there never was a self or an ego to begin with. There is no one in charge, nobody minding the store, no “you” that was ever separate from your conditioning in the first place.

An important milestone in the trajectory of the psyche thread is seeing that even the very process of awakening itself is also nothing but a projection of one’s own unconscious beliefs, desires, and fantasies. Every aspect of the awakening process has been wholly determined by some force that has lain below the level of consciousness all along. From the perspective of this thread, awakening from your own awakening in this way is, of course, the whole point and the highest realization.

Multidharma: A New Map of Awakening for 21st Century Spiritual Explorers