On a planet where the humanity is increasingly distracted, anxious, upset, tense or angry due to increasing global threats and problems coupled with more and more deceitful and oppressive government, it is extremely difficult for individuals to overcome their internal barriers against entry into viable, primary Yoga for realization of the Absolute.  In the midst of a general atmosphere of emergency and catastrophe, it puts the seeker of higher realization under an internal pressure to come up with a path of rapid realization that will quickly solve all the personal problems and liberate the self into an unshakably superior cosmic and spiritual status.  Unfortunately, looking for an occult quick fix can actually exacerbate the difficulties, learning blockages and entry barriers to Yoga.  What therefore needs to happen is a sober and thorough examination of the blockages or entry barriers that keep reproducing themselves in pressured, hurried seekers of the genuine High Path, the Primary Yoga.  Of course this requires an immediate and serious meditation on the issues treated in this very article.  The blockages in the reader will tend to produce a thoughtless rush through all this “to see if it has anything”.  The blockages will therefore distort judgment as to the significance of the blockages.  So what usually happens is that the hurried reader will secretly know that at least some of the blockages are all-too-much about himself, but he will find this decidedly unflattering and rather intolerable.  The truth of the blockages will thus be planted like a seed to sprout later with greater interest after a period of escaping from it and trying to carry on with the very blockages as if they are not real and formidable blockages.  This carrying-on process is fundamental spiritual self-deception, as well as a kind of typical mediocrity that sooner or later needs to come to an end so that the Real Self within can emerge and put the seeker on a real and effective Path of Yoga.

Blockage One

This blockage revolves around trying to solve psychological problems through Yoga.  If one is lonely, one hopes to achieve companionship through association with fellow seekers of Yoga.  But mutuality of blockage does not release any of the participants from the blockage.  Tying leaky boats together does not make them float.  Instead they all sink together rather than separately.  If one is sexually frustrated, one may attempt to attract a partner or partners through promoting oneself as very knowledgeable or concerned about Yoga.  One may develop sexual relationship in the name of Yoga but that does not create an actual entry into states, experiences and developments of Yoga.  Psychological frustrations, disturbances and interpersonal difficulties are a blockage.  It is only by achieving healthy and viable social and sexual relationships that one is in position to investigate and realize Yoga.  Yoga is not there to provide social and sexual satisfactions, just as it is not against them.  The psychological problems have to be solved first.  If, for instance, one feels tortured about a hated job or lacking money, prestige or personal freedom, Yoga will not solve such problems either.  Instead, one should put one’s life and material direction in order with an eye to providing ample time in a good space for study and practice of Yoga.  Psychological problems over job, career and money must be eliminated to qualify oneself for Yoga.  If something is wrong with you and /or your life, correct it so that you may happily enter into Yoga and realize the higher aims of Life.

Blockage Two

It is the height of superficial and self-enclosed mediocrity to imagine that you can enter into Yoga and Self-realization through reading randomly purchased books on spiritual subjects without having to undertake certain necessary personal changes in one’s habits of living, or of one’s ways of reacting to people or situations.  Books and theories also fail to provide the higher energies and subtler perceptions that are indispensable for higher human development.  Lower energy personal stagnation and daily routines that merely add on book knowledge are themselves a self-deceptive pattern of superficial living.

If, however, one reacts to these facts by trying to do without studying the right books and developing the necessary theoretical foundation, intuitive insights and wisdom, one will also fall by the wayside through maniacal and inappropriate or wrongly timed efforts.  There is a necessary balance of theory and pragmatic experiential realization that must be established.  Any unbalanced approach is a blockage.

Blockage Three

Immature seekers inevitably opt-out of the search for greater spiritual, evolutionary and cosmic truth by attempting to enclose themselves in one school of thought without in-depth investigation of the alternative schools of thought.  This is sometimes accompanied by forming a psychological dependency on a magnetic figure, a famous teacher or Guru who is supposed to have all the answers and the Power of Salvation of the adherents to his cult.

Those who are aware of the debilitating side-effects of membership in a cult then imagine that they can go it alone without need of the right higher contacts or help.  This is an overcorrection of the cult or personality worship problem.  In either case, whether dependency or pseudo-independence, the seeker is trapped in an emotional prison.  Whether the egg of cosmic ignorance is boiled soft or hard, it is still a pathetically limited perspective.

Blockage Four

This is the problem that emotional seekers of mediocre intelligence will reinforce their stupidity by confusing emotional experiences with mystical or cosmic experiences.  Many people will sob with joy over the fact that they can sob with joy, whether it is over their mental projection of “God” or that the local sports team won the game.  Any so-called “spiritual” path that relies on getting a crowd of people on an emotional high will inevitably neglect or ignore important knowledge, information or private personal techniques of self-transformation that must be studied or practiced independently of emotional excitement.  There is an important place for higher emotional development in the total human development, but when it attempts to be the one and only approach to the development, the development degenerates into personally stagnant cop-out, as if some invisible higher agency (God, a prayed-to Saint, etc.)  will do all the work that the individual should be doing with their own initiative, effort and dedicated concentration.

Blockage Five

This is blindness toward truly developmental teachers or individuals carrying on higher work which does not advertise itself or put on an outer show of exotic symbols, costumes or peculiar behavior.  Show-offs attract people who want to learn how to also be successful show-offs, for how else can they make money in the “spiritual” field or acquire desirable sex-partners?  Then the immature seeker imagines his or her choice is to make a selection from the array of show-offs, the advertised teachers or groups, that supposedly specialize in occult developments.  While this circus goes on and on and millions of people try out the various trips on offer, the real human development is taking place with unknown people in unknown situations that appear for the most part as rather ordinary or at most creatively artistic.

There can be no rule of what-to-look-for which can be given to the spiritually blind.  Only those with spiritual sight can see what is there to be found.  There is no substitute for direct perception through heightened intuitive awareness.

Blockage Six

Strongly believing that one is wise, spiritually developed, a guide for others, or that one already knows how to develop and is making great progress, does not make any of these things necessarily true.  The tendency to overestimate oneself in some dimension of human authority or aspiration is an all-too-common blockage.  It is the nature of human beings to find ways to delude themselves for the sake of their self-confidence at the expense of their Self-realization.  The vanity of the social self is always ready to capitalize on any promising awakening or emergence of the Spirit Self.

Blockage Seven

People try to make Ancient Traditional Ways work that were often developed by monks or ascetics operating in foreign cultures.  Important elements often can and should be extracted from many such sources, but they must be fitted into a contemporary pattern in one’s own direct and immediate language, learning and existential modes of thinking and experiencing.  This requires a holistic intelligence beyond mere imitation and conformity to obsolete cultural formulations designed for people in another condition in another time and place.  An ancient traditional way is more likely to become an ineffectual set of beliefs coupled with an emotional identification than an actual dramatic personal improvement of the committed believer.

Blockage Eight

This is when a person cannot tell the difference between a real direct experience, feeling or insight and an imitation or merely simulated or imaginary experience, feeling or insight that he or she has been trained to have through hypnotic suggestion or sheer emotional effort.  Until the person learns to be a directly authentic individual capable of original thinking and genuinely direct experiencing and empowerment, such as true raising of the Power-of-Development in the body, nothing real is going to happen.

Blockage Nine

Higher Learning does not take place through picking out certain personally appealing parts of an important teaching without engaging in total comprehension of the dynamical system of the entire teaching as a system in its own right.  The bee goes to a variety of flowers and extracts their comprehensive essence, the nectar that will become honey.  This is not the same as Western consumers buying bits and parts of this or that and trying to fit them together into a working machine that actually produces something significant.  Ignorantly random selection only leads to confusion and sometimes outright insanity.  The pseudo-independent human brain likes to imagine it can do anything if it can just accumulate some things that seem to make sense to it, that seem to be exotically or occultly meaningful elements.  What the brain does not want to do is understand its own limitations and tendencies to error in metafields beyond its ordinary cognitive functions.  It rarely recognizes the need to acquire supracognitive faculties and skills for supracognitive projects.

Blockage Ten

This is the problem that the physical brain self will greedily rush or clutch at anything of occult, spiritual or cosmic phenomena.  The physical brain self finds it difficult to question the true nature of its own assumptions and motivations, even though it is those same assumptions and motivations that drive it into repeated episodes of disappointment, self-doubt, frustration, illusion and deluded hopes or expectations.  It will call any assumption “truth” and any motivation “spiritual aspiration”.

Blockage Eleven

Unusual higher experiences or witnessing of miracles is often bestowed on individuals to see whether they will react with emotional greed of the physical brain self or actually awaken in their evolutionary Cosmic Self.  Most people will fail this test, not knowing that it is a test rather than an automatic blessing or a sign that they are “chosen” and therefore important.  Other-dimensional bestowals are not there to create excitement of social importance.

Blockage Twelve

Desperately longing for the return of some previous personally important experience, blessing or breakthrough will block-off potential new experiences, blessings or breakthroughs of necessary kinds for one’s understanding and progress.  Clinging to any past experience, however high and great, is a barrier to entry into Primary Yoga of Self-realization of the Absolute.  All relative experiences must merge into something beyond them all.  Higher experiences, however great, are not there for obsession or self-glorification.

This list of twelve (12) blockages is not exhaustive of all blockages that happen in the spiritual beliefs, aspirations and efforts of human beings, but if these twelve in particular are overcome, other unnamed blockages will tend to fall off as well.  So, I can only hope that some of my readers are unblocked enough to see the truth of these blockages and take real steps to correct them.

©2005 Kevalin Absoluto