Table Of ContentTHE UNFOLDMENT
The Organic Path to Clarity, Power, and
Transformation
By Neil Kramer
Copyright © 2012 by Neil Kramer
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THE UNFOLDMENT
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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my heartfelt thanks and appreciation to the following
people: David, for sharing so many adventures with so much heart. Lynda, for
her love and integrity. Ronen, for the best conversations on the East Coast.
Kevin, for his tremendous courage. Nate, for his honorable spirit. My folks, for
their love and understanding. Mikael and Brent, for greasing the wheels. John
and Arthur, for their inspiration.
Thanks to all the fine souls I’ve met at conferences, workshops, and
conscious gatherings, for their support and insight. Thanks to everyone behind
the scenes at Trident Media and New Page Books for helping to turn this into a
finished product.
Finally, infinite gratitude to Maren for being an ever-luminous flame in my
life.
Contents
Introduction: Spiritual Insurgence
Chapter 1: True Deeds
Chapter 2: Covenant of Amnesia
Chapter 3: Breaching the Narrative
Chapter 4: Holding Feathers
Chapter 5: Russian Dolls
Chapter 6: Knowing the Field
Chapter 7: Imperial Secrets
Chapter 8: The Distortion
Chapter 9: Silent Consent
Chapter 10: Touchstones
Chapter 11: School Bus of Selves
Chapter 12: Word Bondage
Chapter 13: Projected Images
Chapter 14: Cult Indulgences
Chapter 15: Glad Tidings
Chapter 16: Input, Output
Chapter 17: Ogres Bearing Gifts
Chapter 18: Paradox
Chapter 19: Something From Nothing
Chapter 20: Sublime Flux
Chapter 21: Undoing Woundedness
Chapter 22: Mystical Utterances
Chapter 23: Within and Without
Resurgence
Index
About the Author
Introduction
Spiritual Insurgence
When we pull ourselves away from the hypnotic allure of the material world
and stand back from the clamor and collusion of it all, we come to the realm of
philosophy. Philosophy invites us to rise above the route map of our own life
and take a broader view. It is the gateway to experiences of meaning, insight,
and truth. It can recalibrate the mind for contact with something of a higher
order than everyday human consciousness. When approached genuinely and
openly—and quite regardless of our familiarity with it—philosophy never ceases
to reinvigorate our relationship with life, charging it with a vitality and a sense
of adventure that many have not felt for years.
The word philosophy comes from the Greek philosophia: philo “love” and
sophia “wisdom”—“love of wisdom.” Considered in this light, it is a rather more
natural impulse than we have been led to believe. Though scholars and
academics appear to have laid claim to it from the ancient days of Babylonia,
Egypt, and Greece onward, philosophy is really an abiding and essential
component of everyone’s life. We all know that wherever we are and whatever
we are doing, the more wisdom we hold, the more fulfilling our life path.
Throughout the many journeys and realizations that have shaped my
consciousness over the last few decades, I have always sought to distill my own
thoughts into the most honest and lucid terms possible. This has been largely for
practical purposes, so I can better understand myself, my fellow humans, and the
extraordinary world in which we live. Many revelations, intrigues, and
awakenings have been encountered along the way, all of them somehow
interconnected at the deepest level. Though the wisdom I have come upon feels
very personal and unique, I understand that, at its core, it is not. When the
singular colors and textures that describe my journey are set aside, what is left is
universal. It is transpersonal, open, and immutable. There are seven billions
paths to it—one for each of us—but the original knowing is always the same.
We all feel the truth of it.
My path began with puzzlement—puzzlement at why it was that most
people’s lives followed a single fated formula: work, rest, eat, sleep, repeat. It
was a deceptively vicious gravitation and it seemed to eventually pull everyone
in. Though there were plenty of diversions available to take the edge off it, such
as sport, vacations, culture, church, and parties, none of these things offered too
as sport, vacations, culture, church, and parties, none of these things offered too
much inspiration or insight. In a way, they made it worse. There was precious
little time for anyone to think about the deeper questions and mysteries of
existence. In fact, any sort of pondering on any subject was considered a rare
luxury.
From all walks of life, the talk that I overhead was habitually focused on very
mundane matters and was conspicuously un-magical. People shared their stories,
their wishes, and their woes, but no one seemed to be really getting to the heart
of things. They didn’t want to talk about it. Even the most intelligent people
seemed resigned to contracting the formula, as it if were a disease—quietly
accepting that it would shape their lives from one year to the next. It felt wrong.
I realized that unless I took it upon myself to do things differently, I, too,
would most likely fall into the same routine. I vowed that I would do my best to
create my own patterns and spend as much time as I could on the things that I
felt were meaningful and real. I stopped focusing on the particulars of life and
instead started going to the roots. This immediately required me to regard my
life as a kind of experimental art project. What I did, what I thought, and even
who I was, would be painted onto a perfectly blank canvas, with absolutely no
rules or restrictions. As long as I did no harm to myself or others, it was all good.
For a while, I chose to adopt the formula like everyone else. I worked, paid
the bills, put bread on the table, and conducted myself in a relatively orderly
manner. In parallel, I also immersed myself in the study of philosophy,
spirituality, and mysticism. These seemed to be the subjects and disciplines that
were best suited to the enterprise of discovery. Though they had each fallen
unaccountably out of fashion, to me, there was nothing more exhilarating and
consequential. I studied deeply and comprehensively. I read everything that I
pulled from the shelves: the classical and the obscure, the deep and the divine,
the arcane and the enigmatic. I soon realized that the wisdom our forefathers had
left for us could not be absorbed in a single lifetime; perhaps not even 10. So I
chose as judiciously and intuitively as I could. I put forth whatever effort was
necessary to optimize my time with those texts. I read them with a great sense of
pleasure and privilege.
Nevertheless, such presumptuous independence meant that I was occasionally
suspected of not taking life seriously enough. I found this odd, as that was
exactly the opposite of what I was trying to do. It was suggested to me that it
would be better to do away with the frivolities of philosophical contemplation
and instead turn my attentions to the somber responsibilities of adulthood. There
were also times when I was reproached for taking it all far too seriously,
accompanied by bizarre attempts to coerce me into spending my time on more
accompanied by bizarre attempts to coerce me into spending my time on more
acceptable leisure pursuits like football, golf, and reading spy novels.
Because I chose to pursue my studies in a non-academic fashion— instead,
consciously selecting the path of the autodidact (one who is self-taught)—it had
the effect of making matters even more flammable. Without a degree or a job in
any of my areas of interest, it seemed that all my efforts were apparently
fruitless. What I was doing was unproductive, insubstantial, and without
practical value. I had embarked upon an irrational and perhaps even dangerous
path. Regardless, I just got on with it and kept my nose clean, as they say. I kept
my game so sharp that, despite the underlying ideological conflict, there were no
real grounds for complaint.
I could not point the finger at any specific opponents, saboteurs, or
individuals. My friends and family were pretty open-minded and tolerant, thank
goodness. My colleagues and employers knew little or nothing of my interests.
The adversity emanated from the system of social conditioning itself. All of its
embedded messages, doctrines, and axioms were aimed at amplifying the old
inevitable formula. Because I was rejecting that at a philosophical level, I was
perpetually swimming against the tide. What was supposed to bring me pleasure
did not. What was supposed to scare me did not. Yet the inertia of the whole
setup weighed heavily upon me. At every turn, I was presented with solid
reasons and tempting excuses to discard my conscious growth and do something
else instead.
Another decade passed before I completely grasped why real philosophical
and spiritual inquiry is frowned upon in the mainstream. The purpose and
mechanisms of this peculiar containment are fully explored in due course. For
now, let me say that the revelatory shock that ripped through my being, served
only to strengthen my resolve to embrace my own sacred sovereignty as a way
of life.
As I went about my studies and practices, I kept my eyes and ears open to
what was happening around me. What occurred in the offices, corridors, and
meeting rooms of the commercial world proved just as illuminating as the 19th-
century German philosophy I was devouring in the evenings. Sometimes they
even mirrored each other, if you can believe such a thing. I realized that laboring
in the heart of the machine was affording me intimate knowledge of a world that
I was beginning to actively deconstruct. It would be of little worth for me to sit
in a comfortable study somewhere and merely speculate about the plight of the
unfortunate proletariat. Before I could speak with any real passion or wisdom, I,
too, had to be up to my neck in it. And I was.
