By Wes Annac, Culture of Awareness

The journey back into a higher consciousness is usually fraught with pain and hardship, but we’ll find the light at the end of the tunnel if we can persevere. If we can look to our own higher consciousness before listening to what anyone else has to say about enlightenment, spiritual evolution or anything else, we can discover the inner secrets that we shielded ourselves from as we prepared for our sojourn in these lower realms.

Often on this journey, we’ll find trusted sources of external spiritual information that help us greatly. This information might seem to validate things we’ve always felt about our existence and our journey back into ‘full’ consciousness, and by all means, we should embrace them if they help us. Even if others don’t think they’re genuine, we’ll know they are by the help they give us and we’ll have no problem walking our own unique path and letting others walk theirs.

If, somewhere along the way, the teachings stop helping us or we become uncomfortable with them, we don’t have to cling to them in hopes that they continue to help us like they once did. We can simply let them go, and the experience can serve as a lesson not to rely too much on anything external and to connect with our inner guidance before we seek any kind of teachings.

The validation of things we know or feel within can cause us to devote ourselves entirely to the teachings that validated them, because in our minds, they’ve given us what we were looking for. They’ve helped us access the sacred truths we couldn’t find elsewhere, but little do we know, those truths have always existed within.

When we intuitively connect with our higher consciousness, we no longer need anything external to show the way. We rely purely on what we know and feel within, and opening the mind, connecting with the heart and allowing our intuition to guide us will give us access to all kinds of insights and revelations. We’ll see life and spiritual evolution for what they really are: completely independent, personal experiences that we can’t let others dictate for us.

We’ll realize that we can’t keep living our lives based on the opinions or preferences of others, and we have to evolve in the most unique, personal way possible. We have to access our inner spiritual guidance, because without the intuitive discernment it gives us, we won’t be able to filter any external guidance and take what works for us.

We might just blindly accept every teaching we’re given – especially if it feels ‘good’, or again, it seems to validate our own feelings or musings about spirituality. Discernment’s healthy when it comes to anything, especially spiritual material, and discernment becomes a lot easier when we have our higher consciousness by our side.

Our higher consciousness goes by plenty of different names, and some people call it the higher self. Some people call it the intuition, but I think the intuition is the inner pathway that connects us with the higher self. When we open the mind, we open up our intuitive pathways and allow our greater awareness to make itself known. We connect with the higher self in the realest sense possible, and we allow this connection to become naturally apparent in our everyday life.

Then, our discernment grows and we no longer rely on anything external to connect us with something we’ve realized we can only find within. Life opens up for us in a greater way than it did when we found external truths that validated our beliefs, because we’ll have opened up to our own truth, which is the best, most valuable thing we can do for ourselves and the people on this planet we want to help.

Once we have this valuable intuitive connection, we can hear what other people have to say about life, growth and spirituality without latching ourselves onto any teachings or vehemently denying their value or legitimacy. We no longer feel the need to mentally or emotionally attach ourselves to anything we learn, because we’re secure enough with our own higher connection that the things others express, which usually come from their connection, don’t hold as much value as they once did.

We still see them as valuable since they come from a higher place, but we no longer use them to determine our personal truth, which will flood our perception when we’re connected.

I believe the time will soon come when everyone’s awake, aware and willing to tap into their intuition and connect with their higher consciousness, and the external spiritual teachings we’ve been given throughout the ages can help them. Once everyone has finally connected and we can look to the future as a united, spiritually driven people, all of the heated disagreements we deal with in this day and age will be a thing of the past and we’ll finally know harmony.

I look forward to this time as much as anyone else, but I recognize that we have a lot of inner and outer changes to make before it can happen. The responsibility rests with each of us to illuminate our inner connection and emerge as examples for the rest of the world to live by, and when we can change within, we might notice a change in the world around us.

From my experience, one of the best things we can do is open the mind and find peace in our heart. Once the mind’s open, the heart’s peaceful and we can maintain some kind of inner intuitive connection, our creative rivers will flow and our ability to help others will significantly increase. It starts with the willingness to leave the realm of the limited mind and become conduits for our greater awareness to express itself, and it’ll get easier as we continue to seek the enlightenment we’ve had all along.

We’ve forgotten how enlightened we can truly be, and we won’t change much about our world until we bring our enlightenment back to the surface. Like I’ve said before, all of the societal changes we make will be temporary until we can heal the inner ails that have caused the negative and oppressive circumstances we’re ready to change, and while we can protest to change an unfair law that works against the people, protest alone won’t solve the greed or uncaring that caused it.

Greed, uncaring and hatred live in everyone – not just politicians whose corruption are more apparent because they’re in the spotlight. We can (and should) talk about the things the corrupt elite are doing to keep us from advancing – as a society and as spiritual beings – but until we can illuminate and change the qualities within ourselves that cause greed and corruption, we’ll continue to feed them in the collective consciousness and the world will go unchanged for another millennia.

Once we recognize where we’ve each gone wrong and make a personal change, our external reality will reflect this change and we’ll finally be able to create the world of our dreams. The first steps are for each of us to open the mind, understand the ego for what it really is (before freeing ourselves from its grip), connect with love, and live consciously.

Once we can do this, I think the world will quickly catch up.

It all comes down to how open we are to the personal changes that can enable collective ascension, and if we’re open and we can live a conscious, somewhat selfless lifestyle, the troubles that once stopped us from making progress will fade and we’ll triumphantly take the next step into an enlightened existence.

The time has come for the world to wake up and begin living by the example set by various enlightened people throughout our past (and present) who cared more about the wellbeing of others than themselves, and it starts with us. It starts with our dedication to the spiritual path and our willingness to put this path over our own selfish or misaligned desires, and others will eventually live by our example – even if the very notion seems naïve right now.

It will happen, but only if we can make it happen.

Share freely.

I’m a twenty-two year old spiritual writer, blogger, musician, 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 .