Diagnosing Difficulty – LP Intermediate Study Guide –

Whereas the LP Core is fairly straightforward, there is a lot more going on at the LP Intermediate level and therefore a lot more things that can go wrong and bump you off the path. As with all obstacles that you face the key is intent and persistence. If you do get bumped off The Path for some reason (i.e. you go away from this website for a period and do your “normal” life for a while), if you need time to work on resistances in your life, or need extra time to process some of the shifting that goes on while you walk this path, just keep the intent to move forward in the back of your mind (i.e. just keep telling yourself “I wish to move forward). As long as you keep doing that you will always find your way back to an authentic path of spiritual awakening and empowerment. With that said, here are some of the things that can block you up and turn you from spiritual awakening and empowerment.

Fear

One of the first things that you might encounter at the intermediate level is fear, and while I do spend a lot of time at the LP Core preparing you for this encounter (which may occur multiples times, and around multiples issues, depending on your particular religious and/or scientific background), nevertheless in some cases it can be extremely difficulty, even overwhelming. I consider my own case of awakening as one of the more difficult that might occur, just because I was so filled up with the dogma and fear of Catholicism that any movement outside of “the box” elicited deep paranoia and panic. Because there was absolutely no assistance available to help me (even my friends didn’t have a clue, or made things worse because of their own ignorance), it literally took me thirty years. Every time I approached the barrier, and every time I peaked through the blindfold, I was literally overcome with the fear of God. In the end I eventually walked through the fears by telling God that if “his” idea of creation involved some sick and twisted experiment where the failures ended in an oven, roasting for all eternity, or cast into some kind of evolutionary dustbin, well then he could #$&* right off because I didn’t want anything more to do with it and if that meant eternal damnation, then so be it. Since this was several years ago and my life has only got better since then, I can assume that God isn’t going burn me in hell for eternity. I realized this at the time and when I did it was a serious energetic release. I could literally feel the energies beginning to flow again and it was shortly after this experience that I began writing.

Looking back it seems almost absurd that I bought into that hogwash. Hell, damnation, a punishing father figure God, a psychotic need to dominate others, it all makes so little cosmological sense. But then I suppose that is why you are indoctrinated when you are a child. Trying to instill those ideas and fears into a fully functioning adult is likely to elicit disgust or disdain. However, use scary stories on children and that’s a different story. Children are defenseless against that kind of thing. Children are innocent, open, and trusting. They believe what you tell them without question which is why, I suppose, the things that we (as parents), our priests, and our religions do to them is so offensive in my eyes. When we fill our children with fear, paranoia, and self loathing we violate their trust and faith in us in a way that is hard to atone from.

Anyway, it took a lot of effort to get to that point where as an adult I could undo the damage done by my parents and the priests, and getting to that point was incredibly difficulty. And I can tell you, twelve years of university and science didn’t help at all. The fears were so irrational, and so deeply buried in the structures of my childhood indoctrination that they were totally resistant to conscious control. It didn’t matter that I didn’t believe the scary stories with my left brain, my right brain (which was very immature because it had been blocked off so effectively), believed with all the clarity and force of divine revelation. Of course, you have the LP to help you so you do not have to go it alone, but even with the help of the Lightning Path you may experience some of the same difficulty, especially if you’ve been led astray by ‘modern’ priests trying to reinforce these catholic fears with talk of demons and lizards, and if so the thing to remember is intent and persistence. If you are overwhelmed by the fear and need to take months (perhaps even years, though let us cross our fingers that this isn’t you) off to calm down and reprocess, just keep the intent to move forward always in your brain. Take a break, do some extra curricular reading (though be careful with that because a lot of materials will subtly reinforce the dogma and indoctrination you are trying to break through), and come back when you are ready to face the fears down.

Shock and Awe

Another thing that might get you at the LP Intermediate level, especially once you’ve cleared the major fears and unblocked the chakral energies, is surprise and shock. My goodness but how will you handle it when you come face to face with the glory of your own inner light and divinity? Or how will you react when knowledge about your past lives begins to peak through and they aren’t what you expected. You may think up front that this isn’t a big deal and that facing down your god-like nature or the person you are in your concurrent lives is no more difficult than tapping yourself into serenity, but if you think that, or if somebody else is telling you that, then you (and they) are sadly mistaken. The experiences of contact that will come to you as you progress towards the LP Advanced level can be quite like waking up in the morning, looking into the mirror, and seeing somebody totally different standing there. It can be quite shocking. Of course, if you’ve been following the LP program and paying real close attention to archetypes and mental sanitation, then these sorts of openings shouldn’t be too much of an issue, but if you haven’t been paying attention, or if you’ve exploded your crown chakra with entheogens in a premature fashion, then it can be a real shocker. Of course, as always, a little guidance can help ground and reorient you so don’t hesitate to ask for assistance. And of course, the deep breathing you learn about in The Great Awakening is really important. The deep breathing will help keep you grounded as your brain learns to handle all the extra insight, light, and Truth that comes when walking the Lightning Path.

Incredulity and disbelief / over inflated expectations / sideshow view of spiritualityBesides fear and shock, several other responses to this material can also get in your way. Incredulity and disbelief is one such response that may hamper your progress, especially at the LP Intermediate level where, much more so than at the LP Core level, I begin to introduce concepts and ideas that may be quite foreign to you. This is especially true as we begin to broach topics like ascension or the colonial history of this planet. Some of the ideas and topics may challenge you and stretch your idea of what is real and true far beyond what your parents, the schools, and your media systems have taught you. If so, it is a fair reaction. That is, you have a right to doubt. If you do feel your sense of verital propriety being pushed to the breaking point, take a step back and ask your guide network for verification. Ask the question directly, “Is Michael Sharp telling me the truth here” and see what your guides say. If you are not able to receive direct communications at this time, look for synchronicities, dreams, or additional information that confirms or adds to what I what I am saying. There is no harm to be found in doubt and discernment, but at the same time closing your mind shut just because you are not hearing what you think you should be hearing is counterproductive. Keep an open mind and take the time you need to investigate further if necessary. The truth is, a lot of what you will be learning on this path (or any authentic path really) will be different than what you were told in the past.

In addition to incredulity and disbelief, you may also have inflated expectations about what is possible on a path of spiritual awakening or, much worse, you may have a sideshow version of spirituality. You may expect grand visions of heaven and/or dramatic revelations of universal truth, speaking in tongues, funny clothing, fancy spiritual names like purple pixie, or other elements more appropriate in a sideshow tent then on a path of authentic spirituality. If so, you need to moderate your expectations and ground your sensibility. Don’t go flying out on some cloud of purple haze, and don’t go following somebody else who has because if you do, you won’t go anywhere. Having said that I should say that you can expect visions, mystical happenings, and other things of a deeply spiritual nature to happen to you, but this is more likely to occur towards the end of your intermediate level of study when you’ve activated your chakras, cleared your fears and issues (especially when you’ve cleared your fears), and dug out all the ugly old world archetypes and replaced them with the new ones provided in the Halo/Sharp deck. Before that, expanding consciousness into the body is difficult. In fact, before you’ve done the work outlined here you are faced with a kinda self imposed cut off switch that ensures you don’t connect too soon and blow your fuses. You can circumvent that cut off switch with entheogens (and sometimes the switch fails if there is damage to your physical unit), but you don’t want to do that until you’ve prepared.

Impatience

Something else that might get in your way of progress is impatience. Although I don’t call this the Lightning Path for nothing (lightning strikes instantly and leads to dramatic changes in energy levels over extremely short periods of time), and although can you expect rapid progress, you still need to be patient. When you put all the guidance and advice and technique of the LP together, it is a fair amount of work. You’re learning new ways of breathing, new ways of thinking, new ways of seeing the world, and you are digging around in the muck and mud of all the past wounds and hurts that have shut you off and made you cry. Because of this you have to be careful. Even with the divine force of lightning, it takes time to clear through the issues, it takes time to reprogram your brain with new archetypes, and it takes time to heal wounds. And for all your best effort and intent, sometimes you can get stuck and when that happens you can go for long periods without any real progress forward. And when that happens, you can grow impatient with the path and begin thinking there is nothing here after all. When and if that happens, don’t throw up your hands and walk away. Consider what you are doing and why it might be taking you so long. Are you stuck on a fear or an anxiety that you have failed to recognize? Are you missing something from your childhood, or a past life? Are you engaged in all the suggested practices of the LP (including the mental sanitation which can be painstaking, but is necessary nevertheless)? If not, maybe take a step back and evaluate. Post on the forums, talk to a mentor, seek some additional guidance before assuming there’s nothing here. You can expect miracles on the LP. It is not unheard of for people to drop of antidepressents and other psychoactives totally after only a couple years of practice on this path, but you have to be realistic both with what you are able to accomplish on your own, and what you might need professional help with.

Your own ego

Beyond disbelief and overexpectations your own ego can also get in the way. There are two sides to this, one is lack of self confidence and the other is over confidence. Of either of these, over confidence is the easiest to spot. It is most common among men, and most prevalent amongst those with prior spiritual training, especially in the “old boy” schools of mysticism and mind control. Of course, self confidence is a very important trait to have whatever you do in life. Lack of self confidence removes your will to forward movement, and prevents you from taking on even minor challenges, and you need to be able to accept challenges on any authentic spiritual path. However overconfidence can be just as bad. When you are overconfident you often assume a facility and knowledge that you simply do not have, take unnecessary risks, or fail to accept guidance and advice even when you actually need it and all this can be damaging to your forward progress. As with many things, balance is the key. You want to be confident enough so you do not shy away from challenges, or belittle your own progress, but you also want to have a reasonably sized ego. If you’re gonna puff up your chest like a peacock just because you wear a ring and can perform that secret handshake, or whatever, you risk being stalled on your path forward into awakening and empowerment.

As a psychological side note, both of the above, i.e. lack of self confidence and over confidence, are rooted in lack of self esteem. The former is obvious. If you do not have good self esteem, if you think you are weak or stupid or unworthy or incapable, then you are going to have a hard time mustering the confidence to take challenges. As for overinflated ego, this is often a reaction formation to deep seated feelings of unworthiness or inferiority. When you feel bad about yourself you puff up your peacock feathers in an effort to prove to others that you are in fact worthy, smart, strong, and capable. If you can convince others by putting on some kind of show, then you get your “props” and can stave off the depressive feelings. Incidentally, the psychological roots of our tendency to put on a show to overcome our feelings of inferiority can be found in the socialization we receive in schools (and from our parents) which gives us love (i.e. trophies, ribbons, etc) for being better than others in front of others (e.g., sports). The less unconditional love we recieved as a child, the more susceptible we are to feelings of low self worth, and the more likely we are to use competition and display to prop up our own egos.

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