As promised, here’s some questions I had for Michael Mirdad, author of ‘You’re Not Going Crazy…You’re Just Waking Up! The Five Stages of Soul Transformation Process’, and his answers.
1. You say that nearly every process of learning is ultimately about understanding and experiencing greater levels of unconditional love (p. 14). What do you mean by ‘unconditional love’ and how would you describe it?
Unconditional love means to love everyone and everything unconditionally. This means loving all without a hesitation of whether or not they are worthy of this love. It also means having respect for everyone and everything. It isn’t the same as the love we often feel as human beings, including romantically. When we love unconditionally, we are expressing the highest form of love that a human being can experience. It’s a Divine expression that exists in the heart and soul of every being–although not yet developed in every being.
2. You say there are three states of mind or levels of consciousness. Can you explain the difference? And how does one avoid over estimating the ‘level’ one is at?
There are basically three levels of consciousness that you will reside in as you go through the soul transformation process: Victims, Students and Masters. Victims allow crisis to destroy them and fail to see any lessons to learn from the ordeal nor do they allow themselves to heal whatever brought the crisis to them. Such behavior of denial usually keeps attracting similar lessons to the Victim–again and again.
Students do their best to participate in the changes life throws at them to improve their lives. This allows them to learn their lessons, as all good Students do, which in turn more likely allows them to move across the bridge to the new, re-building phases.
Masters are individuals who have developed enough spirituality within themselves that they have graduated, more or less, from being mere Students on the path. Masters can be so courageous that they actually don’t wait around for the next change that life throws at them. Instead, they know how to recognize what exactly it is in their life that needs to be dismantled and brought to a new level of experience. Masters choose to initiate changes of anything that would hinder their greater good.
3. You quote a variety of spiritual teachers from East and West, but your main inspiration is ‘A Course in Miracles
‘. What’s the most important thing the Course has taught you?
Well, ACIM is certainly one of the most powerful books available and is referenced in the “Crazy” book, I generally don’t associate with it more than other similar materials. Nevertheless, a couple things that the Course shares that almost nothing else has effectively done, is the difference between the ego and the soul, as well as the difference between reality and illusion.
To understand more completely the difference between our Spirit, our soul, and our ego, let’s use the human body as a roadmap of sorts. Our Spirit then resides in the upper three chakras (located in the head and neck); Our humanness resides in the lowest three chakras (located in the root, navel, and solar plexus chakras); and our soul is then located in the remaining center (heart chakra) that sits directly in between our Spirit and our humanness. Our Spirit is the Divine spark or I Am Presence that resides in us all, untouched by our wounds or limiting belief systems.
This is why, how, and where we can literally say that God is within us and yet is also in Heaven. Heaven in this case is high up in the heavens–the heavens that float up above our body and soul–in the upper chakras.
Our soul, on the other hand, is the part of us that believes it can separate from Spirit and is therefore off on some journey down into the “Garden of Eden” (within our hearts) and has begun a journey into the universe. Having then bought into the idea that we have separated from Spirit, gone into the universe on a journey of learning and experience, we fell (from the Eden-like state within our hearts) into an even great state of separation and created the world of our humanness, wherein our newly densified identity (ego) was given the reins to rule and control who we believe we are and chooses for us what is real and valuable and what is not.
So, where we are now is as follows: Spirit is forever sending a loving call for us to return to our True Identity. Our heart and soul hears the call and is always doing all that it can to speak to our fear-based humanness and convince it to release its beliefs and attachments and to rise up and go Home. The ego part of our humanness resists at all costs, knowing that when we rise into love, fear (and its source–the ego) ceases to exist.
Nevertheless, every time we allow ourselves to listen to the higher calling of our Spirit and soul, making healthy choices in our lives and doing all that we can to be loving and forgiving, we dismantle the ego’s hold on us and rise into a higher level of consciousness–closer and closer to our True Nature–God.
4. The three early stages (dismantling, emptiness and disorientation) all sound very painful. Can one speed up the process?
Yes, we can usually speed up the process by practicing responsibility and by learning the lessons that got us into the crisis in the first place. In other words, since we are there to learn, the sooner we do it, and with humility, the sooner we will get to the other side. One of the dangers though, is in our refusing to let go of control. This is certainly the issue that slows us down the most.
5. You describe the goal of the five stages as ‘waking up’. What do you mean by that?
The term “waking up” is meant on a few levels. First of all, it is referring to our need to wake up on a personal level and become more active, conscious participants on our spiritual path. Second, it refers to our need to wake up from the hypnotic control that this illusionary world has over us. In other words, the crisis’ in our lives are literally “wake up” calls to help birth us into becoming spiritual beings and not just human beings.
6. You use the word ‘God’ a lot, but from your occasional references to It, I gather that you’re not talking about a personal God. What’s the meaning of the word ‘God’ here?
As you’ll find in my books and teachings, I often say that God is more likely to be experienced by humans as a feeling–such as love, peace, and joy, rather than seen–such as an actual Being. So in some ways, it’s not personal at all, in the sense that God is not personified or made into a limited being with form. And yet, God is indeed personalized in that it is literally brought into your very heart and soul as a feeling that is tangible and indeed very personal.
7. What’s the relationship between us and God?
Simply stated, God is the part within each of us that remembers our Divine Nature. This Divine Nature is sometimes referred to as our I Am Presence but, by any name, it is all that really exists and is constantly knocking at the door, meaning calling to us from the center of our mind, asking us to wake up and rediscover who we really are.
8. Surrender plays an important part in your book. What does one surrender to? Why is surrender important?
Surrender is crucial in so many ways. Surrender demonstrates that we are open to learning and are willing to release our ego nature. Surrender means that we are open to being guided from a Source that is higher than our limited selves. Surrender is an essential ingredient to get us over the bridge between our old, limited lives to the new life that awaits us when we learn to follow Spirit as our Guide.
PS. I noticed in Katinka’s blog that the Re-Building Stage is not totally understood. The main point here is not that we will now move on the new lessons and problems. The point of making it over that bridge into a new level of love and trust is that when we learn to function from this new level, we tend to attract less problems. Also, if indeed we do have a crisis, we tend to be able to move through them far more quickly and with greater ease. Love & Light, Michael Mirdad
Don’t worry. I’ll put her back after the holidays.