the dis-ease of cognitive dissonance

In a world where the pictures don't match the words, "cognitive dissonance" is perhaps the dis-ease affecting humanity the most.... yet, despite its highly "contagious" nature, many cannot see how cognitive dissonance affects us until we take a step back and observe ourselves in action.

What we know about this state of dis-ease is that it causes perpetual stress in the psyche and therefore, in the mental, emotional, energetic and physical bodies as well. For years I couldn't see how I was affected by stress. At times there was even a sense of pride in "being stressed" from "work" and the like...attaching to the programming I had received as a child about "working my butt off to make something of myself...”, I believed stress was my friend until, exhausted and drained of all energy, I couldn't get out of bed anymore...

Cognitive Dissonance is not easy to explain but I am going to do my best because I know that as soon as we begin to recognize it and discover its source, we begin the first steps back to reclaiming our sovereignty and alignment with our true Divine Nature - we reconnect with who we truly are and the cognitive dissonance we were experiencing can no longer exist within us; we can resolve the conflicting energies we were simultaneously trying to hold, and instead, consciously align with what is evidently and experientially true...

To "cognize" something is to become aware of it and process it into knowing.. to know, perceive or recognize.. "cognitive dissonance" is the internal conflict that is created when one is asked to hold two opposing or dissonant beliefs.. it happens when we are asked to "know" and believe in something that inherently runs counter-intuitive to our true nature, and we may spend our entire lives looking for a resolution to the pain without questioning the core beliefs we were taught as children by parents, teachers and society.

For example, the religious idea that humans are "born in sin" and must spend their lives "redeeming" themselves before God and Government; reward and punishment, good and evil, struggle, pain and victimhood all play a part in a learned kind of helplessness... handing over our power and sovereignty to "authority figures" and blaming ourselves rather than questioning the beliefs that got us here.

Often it is when we reconnect spiritually to ourselves and the universe that we discover the discordant energies within and begin the work of releasing the beliefs and energies that no longer serve us. Whether it is the result of a dark night of the soul experience, a collective crisis, or a spiritual practice, such as daily meditation, that spurs the awakening within, as we realign with our souls along the conscious path, we inevitably expand our perspective and are able to see the bigger picture of our lives.

We recognize cognitive dissonance by the stress it causes and the resulting coping mechanisms developed in the attempt to "numb the pain" - we may feel very isolated and lonely as we struggle to relieve the pain of an internal conflict with external means. This further leads to a sense of separation, disconnection, darkness and illusion. Cognitive dissonance is the result of being born into a world that has known itself through a history predicated on fear and control, rather than love and freedom. Today we see a really high level of suppression of information and censorship that is a desperate attempt by those “in power” to stop Truth and "hold on" to their illusory power. These kinds of desperate acts however, only serve to increase polarization and as a result, the "cognitive dissonance" within the collective consciousness keeping many "asleep at the wheel" of their own reality.

Cognitive Dissonance is formally defined as "the psychological tension that arises from simultaneously "holding" mutually exclusive or opposing beliefs and results in actions that are motivated in an attempt to ease this tension." For example, "numbing the pain" of "existence" with alcohol, drugs (prescription or otherwise) and "constantly seeking distraction" could be seen as directly motivated by the cognitive dissonance routinely experienced by every human being living in disharmony with the Natural Laws of the Universe embedded within our DNA.

The psychological burden of cognitive dissonance is known to create psychological stress, physical tension and mental fatigue resulting in irrational and unconscious patterns of behaviour. Our attempts to ease the stress are generally unhealthy and addictive in nature as what we seek to do is ease the pain of something we can't touch or see so the more we numb ourselves out, the less in touch we become with the source of tension and our pain.

Much of society exists in this state of "cognitive dissonance" and as a result, in a state of separation from true knowing that we commonly call "confusion".

NO FAULT

Is it our fault? There is no fault. However it is our responsibility to change it, realign with our Highest Selves and True Knowing and create from a place of love instead of fear. Not because we “should” but because when we do we allow ourselves the sweet relief of energetic alignment…resonance rather than dissonance.

Humanity is often accused of "acting in ignorance" resulting in the kinds of societal, humanitarian and ecological crisis we see today, but there are levels to ignorance - from simply "not knowing" something (you can't know what you don't yet know) to deliberately turning away from truth in a conscious act of denial (choosing ignorance / hiding in the dark). However, ignorance is also a state of consciousness by which much of society is "unknowingly" hypnotized.

To be asked to "hold" mutually exclusive ideas simultaneously in an attempt to reconcile the reality we are conditioned to accept, is to essentially challenge people with the task of reconciling two opposing truths - meaning that the ways in which we are being asked to live are not in alignment with our true Nature and Universal Law; therefore, the imposed narrative requires a lot of propaganda to maintain its reality within peoples' minds.

Mass amounts of advertising are required to indoctrinate humans into consuming beliefs and substances we know are not in harmony with our nature. For example, we know fast and processed foods are not good for us, but we consume them anyway because we have been enticed and coerced into wanting it by the manufacturers, who themselves know it will be in disharmony with our bodies, which is why products are filled with highly addictive ingredients to keep us coming back for more despite our body often saying "no thank you"... society needs no further proof that junk food creates dis-ease and yet we struggle to let go.. we hold on to the belief that corporations and governments have our best interest at heart even when all the evidence points to the contrary. It is a vicious cycle from which only consciousness can free us, for we must come to see the Truth before and within us in order to break free. We must learn to trust ourselves and our own experience of life again, turning to the Divine nature within and all around us for the answers we seek.

We are in the process of realizing that psychological warfare has been waged on humanity’s consciousness.. a society that tells us what to think and discourages critical thinking is a society that seeks to control rather than liberate its people.

Who controls the narrative? What supports the narrative? Ignorance and the lower states of consciousness such as fear, guilt, apathy, shame and the egoic desire for the money, power, status - as well as - the deference of our sovereign responsibilities to external authorities giving someone else the power to dictate the terms of our perceived reality.

Truth & Intuition

What we need to realize is that the human body - when aligned and connected to Soul - is a natural lie detector. We KNOW when something is "off" and a large part of that has to do with our sacred intuition. The intuitive mind has itself been mocked and ridiculed throughout the ages, but that is only because of the IMMENSE power it holds to lead us out of darkness and into the light. Our whole body is like a radio constantly picking up frequencies that our intuition and our physical bodies know how to filter and translate. The more we learn to trust our intuition by following its guidance as it calls us forward on the flow of healing and evolution known as change, the stronger it becomes. Trusting our intuition is the water it requires to sprout and grow.

As everything is energy, all information holds a frequency - a vibration encoded within it that seeks harmonic resonance in receptivity. If we cannot resonate with the energy of the information being given, we will not be able to receive or hear it in its entirety. Whether the frequency is too "high" or "low", we cannot align with certain frequencies until we "attune" to them; however, the dominant bandwidth of information propagated on Earth resonates with "fear" and therefore, consistently seeks to be pulling humanity down to its level.

Fear-based information vibrates on a different frequency than TRUTH and people’s minds are “hijacked” & hypnotized by the mainstream media which broadcasts a constant frequency of fear into our homes, offices, cars, computers, phones and minds. “Ignorance” leads to cognitive dissonance because it keeps us from rectifying the problem at its source, which, let's be honest, nobody profiting from the "game" wants. To bring light to the many layers and levels of cognitive dissonance within humanity would be to root out an extremely profitable source of dis-ease.

Cognitive dissonance is not an easy dis-ease to spot because it effectively exists as a sort of "blind spot" in our vision and understanding of life. For example, one of the main conditioning programs we face upon this incarnation is the religious dogma that we are born in some kind of "sin", unworthy, undeserving, mere “flesh & bone” here to work in a debt-slave, top-down, patriarchal system of tyranny and nothing more…

We are told that we are “selfish and immoral creatures” who need to be supervised, controlled and "perfected" into conformity.. from the day we are born and enter school we are placed - without conscious consent - into an imaginary race to a "top" that does not exist but is used to coerce us into "willingly" becoming both slaves to and supporters of an oppressive and destructive system of control.

Rather than being educated into trusting ourselves and our natural instincts, we are filled with stories of our violent and unconscious past, graded on our knowledge of war and depravity and schooled into believing humanity cannot be trusted - those who do not conform “threaten” society, but how threatened can a sick society really be when what we are conforming to isn’t serving us or the planet?

"New York is the new model for the new concentration camp. Where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards and they have this pride in this thing they’ve built.... They’ve built their own prison, so they exist in a state of schizophrenia. They’re both guards and prisoners and as a result, they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made, or to even see it as a prison. “

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, 1981

The media tells us anybody offering an alternative narrative to its mainstream version MUST be “conspiracy”. This is not freedom. This is indoctrination into a postage stamp version of reality fuelled by fear of the "unknown"...

We are ignorant to the amount of pressure on us simply bc we are so used to it, so - in our divine brilliance - we adapt, compensate and find ways to soothe the pain, even if they are harmful to us...

REMEMBERING OUR HUMANITY

Humanity today is riddled with self-doubt, unaware that all the answers we seek lay within, waiting to be remembered, realized and embodied.. we have handed over our power to authority that tells us what to do, who to be, what to think, look, walk, talk and live and we have been entrained to believe our job is to follow the script until we get our "reward" for compliance. Many carrots are held up along the way for us.. graduations, weddings, cars, houses, labels, status, power, fame ~ even enlightenment is marketed as a prize... "pick your choice", as my yoga teacher would say, but choose wisely for nothing temporary can ever bring everlasting happiness so choose wisely my friends, for only you know what is true for you!

But, the burning question remains: how do we discover and uproot the cognitive dissonance we hold when we have become acclimatized to the tension, desensitized to the pain and addicted to the soothing patterns of behaviour? How can we eradicate the tension it creates within us?

“We fear that the inner voyage of discovery will lead us to some dreadful, awful truth. In its programming of our minds, this is one of the barriers that the world has set up to prevent us from finding out the real truth. There is one thing the world does not want us to find out and that is the truth about ourselves. Why? Because then we will become free.”

~ Dr. David R. Hawkins

In order to unravel ourselves from the dissonance and find resonance with Truth, we must first become conscious and aware of our thoughts again. This is partly why practices such as meditation, yoga and mindfulness are so transformative for they create the opportunity to break the cycle of programmed thoughts and behaviours, opening space to receive the higher frequency energies of our true divine nature. These ancient practices take us out of "fight or flight" and the parasympathetic nervous system and return us to a state of "rest and relaxation" and the sympathetic nervous system. It is from this place of relaxation that we allow energy to flow and learn to move with it - eventually becoming aware not just of that which we are experiencing in the physical, but also, and simultaneously, as the witness to those experiences.

As we learn to become the witness, we are able to experience the happenings of our lives from a higher and broader perspective; we may witness emotions arise and flow through us rather than becoming attached and addicted to emotional and mental patterns that keep us guarding our own prison.

As we rise to embody more of our true light, we are empowered and inspired by it to anchor in the higher vibrations of Truth Consciousness that have the power to liberate humanity from this dis-ease, stepping into our true infinite potential as multi-dimensional human beings with the inherent ability to access multiple dimensions, naturally heal oneself and others, and become consciously soul embodied divine beings of Source that we are.

Doing the soul work of becoming more self-aware and conscious is work; however, unravelling and releasing decades and generations of fear-based programming is incredibly liberating and empowering. Stepping outside our comfort zones, facing our fears, exposing ourselves to new experiences and people as well as seeking solitude and time to be in stillness with our Soul and the Divine are all ways we may open our divine channel and allow divine intelligence to once again flow through us - not identified with the body as who we are, but knowing it for the sacred vessel that it is - a pattern of energy that captures the vibration of who we are, ever changing and always evolving.

As we begin the process of reconnecting with our highest truth, we often recoil from matrix life for a time. We may quit our jobs, travel or seek solitude; and, as we begin the process of detoxifying our minds, we may find that we want to spend more time in nature and less time in crowded spaces. We step back in order to see the bigger picture which we cannot at first see while we remain in the midst of creating the smaller one. When we are able to re-open our minds and reflect, we naturally raise our vibrations and rise into a higher state of consciousness where we can see more of the whole picture - not just the directly opposing views but all the shades in between that make up the sphere of unity consciousness.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

Right now we are faced with immense cognitive dissonance on the planet, extreme polarization and a lot of fear-based thinking and behaviours that don't resonate with Truth; therefore, we are able to observe the cognitive dissonance increasing. By following a mainstream narrative predicated on fear, collective human consciousness is repeatedly coerced into dismissing truth, intuition, facts and logic. As with any war, "authorities" have used the fear-based claim that "the end will justify the means", knowing very well that in truth, the means create the end...

What kind of world do we want to live in?

I have learned that whenever stress and tension arise within me that there is a cause typically connected to a belief I am holding that does not serve me and therefore, is blocking my connection to vital life source energy. I will do my best to acknowledge the energy and ask it where it comes from.. what subconscious belief or beliefs are supporting the creation of anxiety with me?

For example, financial stress can be one of the most debilitating energies and arises from the indoctrinated belief that we must “work hard” to live in this world and therefore, if there is challenge, we blame ourselves for “not doing enough”. However, within this moment of stress, I could choose to “alter” my state of consciousness with food, drugs or alcohol by numbing it out, or I can choose to witness the energy and communicate with the information it is feeding to me.. often when I actually stop to listen to the stress-creating thoughts in my mind, I quickly realize that they are merely masquerading "as my own" because in my core and in my heart, I know we live on a planet known throughout the galaxy for her abundance and unconditional love..

I will quickly realize that these stress-inducing thoughts of perceived "lack" are creating a poverty mindset and drawing more difficulty to me rather than allowing a flow of positive energy to provide and guide me to a solution. In my heart I know I am always supported, loved and cared for by a benevolent Universe and the Divine, and therefore, I know this illusion shall pass. I do not have to battle these feelings - I simply need to witness and acknowledge them, releasing them and making space for Truth to embody my being. Tension and stress are replaced with trust, ease and grace, knowing I am always guided and protected, supported and loved wherever I go…

We have the power to consciously choose our beliefs and choose only the ones with which we align. It may mean we don’t always “fit in” with the “norm”, but when the norm is consistently dis-eased by its illusory nature, not fitting in becomes the sweet relief of reconnecting with your own personal power, life force, truth and light.