By Wes Annac, Culture of Awareness

“To be free, you’ve got to be brave.” – Ziggy Marley

On an individual and collective level, we’re all undergoing a profound transformation that most people don’t realize is occurring. We stand on the cusp of a new era, and various signs point to the inevitable and ongoing destruction of our current way of being.

This destruction will lead us all to make some intense changes to the way we’ve lived our lives, and the transformative process has to be lived out individually before it can become apparent in the world.

We have to transform as individuals before any kind of worldwide transformation can take place. We can’t deny that our current way of life won’t be sustained for much longer, and in order to change anything about the world, we have to be willing to make the inner changes that help us align with our Selves.

I couldn’t tell you how this intense transformation will manifest for you, because we’re all unique and we’re all going to experience this paradigm shift differently.

I can, however, explain where this transformation is taking me along my journey into a higher consciousness. When pondering how much progress I’ve made on the evolutionary path so far, I realize that in reality, I’ve made very little progress.

I really haven’t achieved much in regards to personal evolution or enlightenment, and it’s because I’ve looked to external sources to dictate how my work and my spiritual evolution should be.

When it comes to work, I’ve been too busy sharing other people’s material on the blog to focus on developing these articles (and music, can’t forget music) so it helps even more of you.

I’m reaching a point in life where I want to be consistently creative, but I’ve failed to do this so far because I’ve convinced myself that running a daily news blog, as opposed to writing more, is a better way to stay financially afloat while I write.

This decision was made out of fear to begin with – the fear that money will somehow run out if I don’t stick to my usual way of doing things, however outdated it now appears to be – and it’s being replaced with the desire to work hard in a new way.

Instead of writing one or two articles and using the rest of my time to scour various spiritual websites day after day for other people’s posts, I want to invest that energy in writing more of my own original material.

I don’t know how much written material I’ll produce from here on out, but I do know that I want to start writing a lot more and posting other people’s work a lot less. If it means I have to give up whatever position I may have held as the moderator of a daily spiritual news website, then so be it.

Clinging to a certain position or identity binds us to the illusion anyway.

I think I’d rather write full time, while making time for other essential aspects of life, and I know I can produce a lot more magic through the power of the written word if I commit to it and start writing more.

The writing channel, like any other, can open far and wide if we stick with it, and it requires the willingness to believe in ourselves and let any doubt about our creative abilities fall away as we open the mind (and heart) and let our creative expression pour like water.

My heretofore acceptable reliance on the external has caused another noticeable manifestation in my life, and it’s my tendency to write report after report around what spiritual teachers or even channeled sources like Ra through Carla Rueckert have said.

I’m not saying it’s bad to listen to these sources, and they can help us along our journey into the higher consciousness we seek. When I examine my own spiritual and creative habits, however, I see that I’ve relied too heavily on them for knowledge and inspiration.

When I don’t feel like I have anything to write about, it’s easy to look to the various texts from various spiritual teachers for a topic. It’s easy to crack open the Ra material and find something to write about, but I don’t know if I want to keep going down that road.

I’ve been inspired by Terence McKenna to find my own evolutionary freedom in the form of direct experience, as opposed to the beliefs and philosophies of another person – however close they might be with spirit or our creator.

It might seem contradictory given that I received this inspiration from an outside source, but I’ll repeat that there’s nothing wrong with gaining the occasional knowledge or inspiration from a teacher, a speaker or anyone else who sincerely wants to contribute to the elevation of consciousness.

What’s important, in my newly forming opinion, is the extent to which we rely on the external for our perception of our own spirituality, which, as McKenna has said, is something very personal that nobody else can interpret or guide us through.

I’m acting purely on inspiration from McKenna with what I’m about to say, but this journey into our higher consciousness, while a collective experience, is deeply personal and simply can’t be defined by another person – again, even if they’re closer with spirit or Source than us.

However difficult or scary it might be, we have to make this personal journey without relying on anything except our own intuition and our heart-centered perception of the higher reality that’s revealing itself.

We can read the spiritual texts every now and then, and if we resonate with concepts some people call ‘new agey’, which is a tad judgmental in my opinion, we can even find a channeled source or something similar to satiate our drive for knowledge and understanding.

Or, we can go on to YouTube and listen to McKenna or various other socially and spiritually revolutionary speakers like Alan Watts, David Wilcock, etc.

There’s nothing wrong with it, and I wouldn’t be so inspired to make the huge transformation that, little did I know, was inevitable all along, if McKenna hadn’t given me the exact advice I needed via the two videos that I shared to the blog today.

But when it comes down to it, we have to rely purely on ourselves, even if it’s frightening, if we want to enhance our spirituality and creativity.

The higher consciousness we seek lives within us, and while we can use the awesome power of words to convey thoughts and musings related to our exploration of this omnipotent consciousness, we can’t rely on someone else’s words to get us there.

You can’t rely on my words to find what you feel like you’re missing (though I sure do appreciate you reading this), and I can’t rely on Krishnamurti, Ramakrishna, Bodhidharma, McKenna, Wilcock, Ra, the Marleys, Hendrix, Lennon or anyone else to help me find what I feel like I’m missing.

Their words and music can help us greatly along our journey, and perhaps we can look to them as spiritual entertainment that uplifts us and helps us learn or feel new things.

Instead of sitting down to watch television at the end of a long day, maybe we can crack open the Bhagavad-Gita, watch a Krishnamurti or McKenna talk on the internet or put on some reggae to uplift our spirits.

These things will help us if we can change our perception of them, but to rely solely on them or the philosophies each of the names mentioned above represent is to trap ourselves in the same external attachment that, in my opinion, put us here in the first place.

We have to do away with any external reliance by recognizing that our higher consciousness lives within us, and the next step after that, beyond, in my case, making creativity more of an independent pursuit, is to directly explore that deeper awareness in any way that works for us.

Only in this manner can we liberate ourselves by understanding ourselves, and for me, some big personal changes will probably result from this realization. I sincerely hope that those of you who’ve enjoyed my work so far will hang in there and see what comes next, because I don’t even know what’s going to happen now.

In a way, I’m as unsure as ever, and yet, I also feel more certain and solidified in my understanding that I want to spend all my time writing and exploring other forms of creativity. Not only that – I want to be able to write without always incorporating what other people have to say.

Like I said in a previous article, if I feel the need or desire to write about what someone else says, be them a teacher or a social/spiritual commentator, then I will. The difference will be that I don’t rely on these things to produce articles, and this will require me to look within a lot more for creative inspiration.

This transition will require me to have courage and take some risks, but if I can be honest, my current way of doing things has left me unfulfilled, to the extent that I’ve actually felt guilty being so unfulfilled when there are so many things I define as blessings all around.

I’m realizing that this missing fulfillment has resulted from my failure to explore myself or allow myself to creatively flow without the constant assistance of a spiritual source, and I have a big leap to take that I hope you’re all willing to take with me.

We’ll see where things go from here, and I can only hope that whatever results will help all of us. Our work has to be fulfilling if we want to get the most out of it, and everything changes when we learn to look within for our creative inspiration.

We’re the only ones who can embark on this sacred journey back into the Source, and I’ll continue to contribute to our spiritual revolution, which is resulting from our individual awakenings, in any way I feel inspired to.

Hopefully, wherever this journey takes me from here will inspire all of you to find what changes need made in your lifestyle and aptly make them, because we need freedom and self-empowerment more than ever.

Update: After I finished writing this, another realization hit me. The realization is completely personal, like most of this article was, so you’ll have to bear with me.

If I want to write more and post less, I can incorporate other people’s material by providing more researched reports alongside articles that come solely from me, without any quotes from other people.

Daily researched reports about various social and spiritual subjects could fill in whatever void might be left if I stop posting ten to fifteen spiritual/alternative news articles each day, and however contradictory it might sound, it seems like a good way to go.

I don’t want to appear to contradict what I wrote in this article about relying solely on ourselves, but even if it does require me to feature quotes from other people (spiritual teachers, social/spiritual commentators, etc.), daily researched reports could be a great way to make up for the lack of, again, ten or fifteen news articles on the blog every day.

And so, the journey continues, and in some ways I still feel unsure. I am sure of one thing, though, and it’s that I want to write a lot more and post daily news a lot less. I want to expand the writing channel, and even if I do rely on external sources to an extent in the beginning, I’ll still have taken a crucial first step.

Everything else can flow from there.

Share freely.

I’m a twenty-one year old spiritual writer, blogger and channel for the creative expression of the inner universe, and I created The Culture of Awareness daily news site.

The Culture of Awareness features daily spiritual and alternative news, articles I’ve written, and more. Its purpose is to awaken and uplift by providing material about the fall of the planetary elite and a new paradigm of unity and spirituality.

I’ve contributed to a few different spiritual websites including The Master Shift, Waking Times, Golden Age of Gaia, Wake Up World and Expanded Consciousness. I can also be found on Facebook ( and ) and , and I write a paid weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to for $11.11 a month .