---
title: "No Shortcuts to Self-Awareness and Inner Evolution (OM008)"
heading: "No Shortcuts to Self-Awareness and Inner Evolution (OM008)"
subheading: ""
updated: "2025-10-18T16:37:00+00:00"
words: 1614
url: https://ananda.icu/talks/open-musings/om008-no-shortcuts-to-self-awareness-and-inner-evolution
description: "Were you looking for a neat short-cut to self-awareness? A magic wormhole to jolt you from here to enlightenment? So many pop vendors on the internet. Cheap options abound! If only it were that easy. Just bypassing your inner chores. When you evade the real work of your cognitive purification, there's no cosmic receiver, no vehicle for mystic journeys."
...


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**Words:** 1614 ⁘ **Length:** 12:24 min ⁘ **Created:** 2025-10-16 ⁘ **Updated:** 2025-10-18

 Were you looking for a neat short-cut to self-awareness? A magic wormhole to jolt you from here to enlightenment? So many pop vendors on the internet. Cheap options abound! If only it were that easy. Just bypassing your inner chores.

When you evade the real work of your cognitive purification, there's no cosmic receiver — no vehicle for mystic journeys. Only make-believe enlightenment and shallow symptomatic relief. Some insight between the cracks — but nuggets are no foundation.

Your process of evolution is fueled and driven by your attention. If you're as serious as you sound — and as sincere as you think, then put your mind where your mouth is, into your transformation. Resolve your obstacles and overcome the bonds of your conditions.

So you cross the fence at its lowest, path of least resistance? But the whole of the fence is the veil blinding and binding you. If you seek clarity and access to the full spectrum of actuality, Clear the field and build a vehicle from the essence of your life.

_#OpenMusings #ThePath #Shortcuts #Seriously #SelfAwareness #Sincerity #Attention #Effort #Enlightenment #AnandaICU_



[ Table of Contents ]
- ¶ Groundwork Done — No Shortcut for Necessary Works ↴
- ¶ The Shallow Ascension of the Pop Spiritualist ↴
- ¶ Celestial Chariot of Living Cognitive Evolution ↴
- ¶ No Easy Bypass — Each and Every Shackle Released ↴
- ¶ Cross All of the Fence — Not the Lowest Point ↴
- ¶ Full-On Inner Process and Realistic Expectations ↴

**There are no shortcuts here** to ascension, unity, transcendence, or enlightenment. There are no such shortcuts, anywhere at all, ever. And if anyone should say otherwise... Be vigilant, be discerning — you may be hoodwinked.


### Groundwork Done — No Shortcut for Necessary Works ¶

The only shortcut here is the groundwork I have been doing for the past 30 years. Entering, immersing, exploring diverse traditions of conscious cultivation. First, in their native terms, and in time, looking into their essence.

Extracting their core patterns, axioms, their methods of practice, the mechanics underlying the workings of these traditions. Decluttering and sharing the plain universal version. If that be a shortcut, then there you have your shortcut.

But in the actual process of cognitive evolution itself, even on the straight and clear path, there are no shortcuts. There is no such wormhole that would magically jolt you to the other side, beyond all of your clutter, your subject conditioning, your hang-ups, your internal conflicts. 

Not unless you wish to jolt yourself to the yonder, non-dual, undiversified liminality, never to return to the land of the living as a functional instance of consciousness in the human world, in the realm of your origins. To import these states of high awareness into this realm, there is a process of reconciliation, of evolution, of adaptation necessary — that cannot be short-circuited.


### The Shallow Ascension of the Pop Spiritualist ¶

Then here we have our pop spiritualist, peddling quick liberation, whatever rising into a higher plane of consciousness. So very easy, effortless even, and the remaining insight, beyond the clickbaits and the catchphrases — behind the paywall, in subscription models, etc. And if not, then all woven around their personas, gratification in way of their ego establishment. 

Money or ego flattery, those are the common modes of payment on the path of pop spirituality. But what happens there is not the genuine full works of your conscious evolution. Instead, you have diluted fragments, you have any number of bypasses and weavings of imagination. Suggestions that at best provide symptomatic relief, but that do not in fact offer any real lasting resolutions to your human condition.

To the quandaries of your existence, as it is tortured in this mortal realm, in the world of countless conditions. The wheels of reality, the mean machine that grinds every subject to pulp and burns it to ashes at the end of the day — this subject that we attach to, our vehicle of suffering.


### Celestial Chariot of Living Cognitive Evolution ¶

Then take, in way of a case example, something like Merkabah, the celestial chariot in biblical visions, and very pop in the contemporary new age spirituality. Rehashing whatever ancient symbols, in a manner that only lends itself to hallucination. There is no such celestial chariot, vehicle of consciousness, that you might simply invoke from the otherworlds.

No, rather all of that is a product of your conscious evolution, your encounter and reconciliation of different aspects of your being. Here and now, the bits and pieces of your celestial chariot are collected from the many roads of your life, out there and in here, in your mind. As you reconcile, as you harmonize the spectrum of your existence, it is naturally woven into a harmonic vehicle of consciousness. Your vessel for experiencing whatever the universe has to offer.

In that vehicle, by all means, journey whatever angelic realms, visit every other heaven. Because with your reconciled awareness, with the opening of perspectives, with the dissolution of your self-effected boundaries, you have the access. If you do not have the access, if you yourself are the obstacle, then there is no magic that would ever get you somewhere to yonder realms.

There are not yonder realms, there are only realms of awareness. Some concrete, some more subtle, underlying, but they are all aspects of your awareness and as such, there is no short-circuiting the process of your cognitive evolution, the overcoming of your inner obstacles that hinder the process of ascension, of unification, of liberation, of enlightenment, what have you.


### No Easy Bypass — Each and Every Shackle Released ¶

Any framing of spirituality, of lofty philosophy, that bypasses the need to directly address the core of the problem, the conditioned subject — you. Your illusory identifications, your fixations with the temporary as if it were your forever identity and frame of existence. These need to be handled, they cannot be bypassed — and it's not an easy process. 

You have to release, let go of each and every attachment on each and every plane of your internal existence, of your external framing of existence. There is no other way, there is no shortcut, there is no override to that necessity. There is also no easy and effortless path forward, when your effort itself is the determiner of your pace of evolution. Why is that?

It's not a performance sport — but it is a sport of your attention. The more you concentrate, the more you attend, the more you infuse with your consciousness the field of concerns. Naturally, the more you expedite the evolution of your consciousness.


### Cross All of the Fence — Not the Lowest Point ¶

And if you're hoping to score some points in between the cracks, then that's all you get — you get little bits of cracks that will again revert to your conditioned mainframe. It will reassert itself, when you do not invest the greater part of your attention into your inner cultivation and refinement. 

When 90% of your attention is still lingering in the frame of your old world, then do not hope that with the 10%, you will accomplish great feats of spirituality and enlightenment. Invest your attention to where your priorities lie. Take that step, cross the threshold.

Do not seek the fence at its lowest, because this here fence is the fence that veils you, and it needs to be crossed from the lowest to the highest to the middle point, at each and every one of its points. When you have crossed the fence across the whole of your perimeter, then and only then you have crossed the fence. Not with a single leap after which all is clear — because it's not clear when you drag that fence along with you down the road.

It's not enough to convince yourself in your thoughts that you're serious about this. It's not enough to say the words, "I am serious about my spiritual progress, my cognitive evolution". Your behavior, your actions, are the markers and the measures of where your attention is invested. Take the time, make the effort, invest the attention necessary.

If it's a priority, then prioritize accordingly. Do not leave it as a footnote to the rest of your existence. Rather, make it the major heading that governs the rest of whatever it is that you are up to. Then you will see the tables turn, you will see the essence rise to the fore, and you will see the clutter fall to the side.


### Full-On Inner Process and Realistic Expectations ¶

Yes, this is a full-on process, we do not muck around. If it feels like a mouthful, if it feels like it's too much — then that's all right. Take the bits and pieces that support you in your current frame of life, in your current state of awareness — but be realistic, have the self-awareness.

<q>"I am at this time adding little bits of essence into my life. May it help me, but let me not expect significant bursts of insight and enlightenment from my trivial samplings of the full spectrum of assets I should be digesting as a matter of my continuous evolution." </q>

What you find here in what I share, the drops of insight that are put on the table, these are significantly mellow, these are at ease. If you went into a classical context, into any one of the traditions that I have studied and immersed in in the past, in comparison, the paths in there are die-hard. They are not for the weak of spirits — and for the weak of spirits, there is a popular practice that really does not lead you much beyond feel-goods.

For those who are true to death, there is progress, there is access. For those who do not, there is not. Here we are mellow, but it does not change the fact that you must transcend your conditions. You must break beyond your subject sphere, and you must put your attention to where it is due — if progress ye seek.