The Nine Insights
Summary by Alan Atkisson (Aug/94)
by James Redfield
- Feeling restless? You're not alone: Everybody's starting to look for more meaning in life. Start paying closer attention to those seemingly "Chance Coincidences" - strange occurrences that feel like they were meant to happen. They are actually synchronistic events, and following them will start you on your path to spiritual truth.
- Observe our culture within its proper historical context. The first half of the past millennium was spent under the thumb of the church; in the second half we became preoccupied with material comfort. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, we've exhausted that preoccupation. We're ready to discover life's ultimate purpose.
- Start to get acquainted with the subtle energy that infuses all things. With practice, you can learn to see the aura around any living being and to project your own energy around it to give it strength.
- An unconscious competition for energy underlies all conflicts. By dominating or manipulating others, we get the extra energy we think we need. Sure, it feels good - but both parties are damaged in the conflict.
- The key to overcoming conflict in the world is the mystical experience, which is available to everyone. To nurture the mystical and build your energy, allow yourself to be filled with a sense of love.
- Childhood traumas block our ability to fully experience the mystical. All humans, because of their upbringing, tend toward one of four control dramas:
Become aware of the family dynamics that created your control drama and you can focus on your essential question, which is how to make of your life a higher- level synthesis of your parents' lives.
- Intimidators steal energy from others by threat.
- Interrogators steal it by judging and questioning.
- Aloof people attract attention (and energy) to themselves by playing coy.
- Poor me's make us feel guilty and responsible for them.
- Once cleared of traumas, you can build energy through contemplation and meditation, focus on you basic life question, and start riding a steady stream of intuitions, dreams, and synchronistic coincidences, all guiding you in the direction of your own evolution and transformation.
- That evolution can't be done alone, so begin to practice the new "Interpersonal Ethic" by uplifting those who cross your path. Talk to people who make spontaneous eye contact with you. Avoid co-dependent relationships. Be there for people. Call attention to other people's control dramas. In groups, speak when the spirit (instead of the ego) moves you.
- Our purpose here is to evolve beyond this plane. Fewer people (a result of reproductive abstinence) and more old-growth forests will help us to sustain our energy and accelerate our evolution. Technology will do most of our work for us. As we begin to value spiritual insight more and more, we will pay those who bring it to us, and this will eventually replace the market economy and our need for paid employment. We can connect to God's energy in such a way that we will eventually become beings of light, and walk straight into heaven.
Alan Atkisson, New Age Journal, August, 1994