Billions of people spend their whole lives residing not in a world, but in a mental model of a world—a construct. This construct is at once a description, a simulation, and a set of laws. It is a representational idea about the world, specifically designed to displace the real thing.

Contrary to what many believe, human beings inhabit concepts just as readily as they inhabit houses. Indeed, these two seemingly divergent things are almost identical at their root; only the form is different. One is represented by energy condensed into a form that we call brick, the other into a form that we call thought. The distinction is subtle. It is merely a question of density and oscillation. A dream, a whisper, a zebra, a universe—they are all derived from the same energetic building material.

The control system has fabricated a sanitized and reduced version of reality that it broadcasts as the whole of reality. It is the distortion. Popular consent is required for this sliver of ordinariness to properly function as a complete world. Consent is given by willfully feeding one’s own consciousness into it. The more consciousness it amasses, the more real it appears.

To properly understand what the distortion is, we have to know how it works. The distortion is a map that is given to everyone when they first arrive on earth. It tells us what things are, how they work, how we interact with them, and what they mean. Babies, children, and adults alike are repeatedly told what a thing is until they no longer question what they’ve been told. This is this; it isn’t something else. Politicians, movie stars, doctors, businessmen, plumbers, scientists, teachers, students, mothers, and fathers all agree that the distortion is the way things are. They consent to the idea that the distortion is reality. It is this way; it is not some other way. As infants, quite naturally, we follow suit. We continually observe distortion rules, routines, parameters, beliefs, and traditions. Repetition is a very important part of this teaching. By age 14, the foundational conditioning is usually complete. From then on, whenever we see a thing, or hear a thing, or touch a thing, we are seeing, hearing, and touching the distortion.

What makes the distortion so utterly compelling and persuasive is that almost everyone on the planet agrees with it. It is the norm. It’s just the way things are. We all see things the same way, and that way is the distortion. So potent is this consensus reality, that the tiny minority of folks who don’t operate within its parameters are considered to be very strange individuals indeed. They might even be thought of as undesirable or dangerous. One could say that normality is the religion of the distortion. To move away from normality is to risk being shunned.

Most people simply don’t have the time, inclination, or awareness to contemplate the nature of the distortion. For someone who has dwelled in the distortion for his or her whole life, the idea of probing it, clarifying it, playing with it, or even leaving it behind, is downright disturbing. This dissonance arises because the questions addressed to the distortion become mirrored back into the heart of the questioner. For the distortion-dweller who is entirely unacquainted with his or her own inner landscape, the prospect of profound philosophical revelation is not particularly inviting. The thundering emptiness perceived in his or her own psyche is simply too much to handle. The knee-jerk impulse is to immediately fill the void with distortion media—voices, images, news, entertainment, anything. The distortion abhors a vacuum. So it’s just better to stay put. This is precisely what the distortion relies upon for its structural integrity. It needs high volumes of immobile consciousness to flourish.

So, then, why would anyone question what is commonly considered to be the best possible mode of reality—potentially walking away from the received wisdom of thousands of years of human history? There are three answers on three different levels.

1. On a collective level, the mainstream historical record of human endeavor has not been a very peaceful or sane narrative. It is full of violence, pain, and hardship. Indeed, such things have become so commonplace that we are tempted to think that’s just how the cookie crumbles so far as the gross ineptitude of humanity goes.
2. On an individual level, we are obliged to acknowledge that the distortion is not our personal model; it is someone else’s. It may not therefore be best suited to our own individual journey.
3. On a metaphysical level, with a little contemplation, it is clear that we have habitually come to confuse one description of reality (the distortion) with reality itself. Hindu spiritual philosophy refers to the fake map as maya, a “beguiling concealment.” The genius of the distortion is that it hacks into the organic element of the illusory world—which exists to teach us about spiritual ascendance—and annexes it for its own purposes. What was once a vast and glorious playground for unfoldment has been transformed into a shroud of ignorance.

At the inner level, when we are completely authentic with ourselves, we know full well that the human story has gone off track. This is what is important. The system under which we labor does not serve us; we serve it. Once more, it has been this way for millennia. But now, that paradigm is shifting. The seasons are changing. The territory of the familiar has become uncertain. The old hierarchies of our governments and institutions are losing their authority as people stop believing in them. It is time to do things differently. It is time to move away from the distortion.

The distortion puts a straightforward deal on the table: If you accept it, you get to choose anything from its colossal predefined shopping list of material gratification. Name your poison; it’s all there. You can drive your convertible, live in the city, drink beer, eat lobster, play sport, vote in elections, have sex, read the newspaper, join the army, join the masons, listen to Wagner, and bungee jump. Whatever. Herein lies the guile of the distortion. It sure feels like freedom when you can select from such a vast catalogue of stuff. Indeed, the overwhelming degree of choice actually deters almost everyone from any further contemplation of what true liberation actually looks like.

The distortion is not reality. It is a description of it, and we have decided to inhabit that description. Over time, this de-spiritualizes both one’s personal world and the collective world, reducing everything down to biological machines, nuts and bolts, clockwork. The play, the creation, the depth, and the mystery of existence vanish. People live lives they do not want to live. Their families, relationships, jobs, finances, plans, and imaginings become artificial and dysfunctional. The distortion breeds this profound disappointment because it is not a natural formation.

As has been laid out in innumerable classic spiritual texts, it is an explicit observance that if one does not know oneself, then everything on the outside is also essentially unknowable. This is because the outside is misconstrued as a depersonalized realm with no accountable connection to the individual. This is untrue. Outside is mind. It is a direct projection of the inside and is no less ours than our own self. The distortion therefore, like all clouds, has a silver lining. Liberating oneself from the distortion and moving into the real world compels everyone—male and female, young and old—to dive into their own spiritual journey. This is where the solution lies. From a higher perspective, we can even say that the distortion is actually a gift concealed as a threat—one that actually accelerates our conscious and spiritual evolution.

The pragmatist might reasonably think that this is all very well, but given the colossal and all-encompassing nature of the distortion, how do we move away from that which is everywhere? What can you possibly do to change something that is our whole world, rightly or wrongly?

By design, the distortion normalizes the perception of everything and everybody. It is the default gravitation for those who choose not to generate reality from themselves. The reason most people choose not to generate their own reality is because they do not realize that they can. The information and techniques have not been made freely available. In fact, they have been deliberately hidden. The shards of knowledge that do filter into the public domain are far too oblique and fragile for a mainstream distortion-saturated mind to take hold of, let alone understand. The first step therefore is to begin decontaminating the mind from the chief broadcasting edifice of the distortion: the mainstream media.

To move away from the noise of the distortion is to permit the human mind to find its own natural state of equilibrium. This is not possible, however, if the mind is being willfully force-fed the info-sludge of gossip, deceit, and dishonor that characterize the mainstream media. So we must stop feeding it such things. We turn off the television. We cancel the newspaper subscription. We do not go to see the latest blockbuster movie, which we know is rubbish anyway. We don’t follow the mainstream fictional narratives that are presented as the hot topic of the moment. We disregard untruth.

Most people you will ever walk past in the street, for the entire duration of their lives, never proactively question the distortion. They do not get the defiant impulse to vault its ramparts or spelunk its hidden caverns. And if, as occasionally happens, one noble heart does dare prod the dragon’s tail, there is a tidal upwelling of such perilous psychic discomposure that the inquiry is immediately dropped and rarely, if ever, returned to in any meaningful way. Too weird and too hard. No thank you. Go back to the previous page. This ingenuous failsafe deters nearly all human souls from walking the ascendant path of conscious spiritual evolution.

People can feel the distortion, even though they may not know what it is. Not infrequently, people will reach the halfway mark of their lives, after they’ve been immersed in the 9-to-5 distortion game for a good long while, and instead of feeling deeply fulfilled by all their marvelous achievements and realizations, there is a faint but definite suspicion that they are still somehow off course. On paper, everything may look okay and be proceeding very much according to the plan of what grownups are supposed to being doing with their lives. But the feeling remains: Something is wrong. There has to be more.

Should one feel guilty about this? Is it ungrateful? Is it wrong? Is it important? The knee-jerk response is often to upgrade one’s resources and see if that helps. Get a bigger house, a new car, a better-paid job, some new clothes. Lose 20 pounds, redecorate the spare room, go on vacation. Though these diversions take the edge off things for a short time, they do nothing to address the root of the problem. It is a seemingly insoluble predicament, and there is usually very little effective help from friends, family, or medical professionals, because they don’t understand the root either. All the while, the mind continues to struggle for freedom and clarity. The result? People go a bit crazy and do impulsive things.

This state constitutes a psychic moratorium on untruth and a special occasion for honesty, re-evaluation, and course correction. At this time, there is often a strong accompanying desire to throw oneself into real experience, as opposed to running through the same old predictable tasks and neurotic calculations of everyday life. It is a desire so potent that it can displace all other aspirations and suspend standard operating procedure. Vividness of experience rapidly becomes more valuable than anything else. At last, life and self begin to transform. Old things break up, and new things blossom.

The conveyor belt of endless productivity that the distortion uses to captivate its subjects is slowing down, day by day. It is slowing down because a critical mass of conscious humans is discovering that what is being produced is not beneficial to humankind. In fact, what rolls off the production line is entirely arbitrary; it is a hollow negativity that diminishes the human spirit. All the blood, sweat, and tears that go into this flaccid industriousness need not be spilled. Honor is as valid a tool in this forswearing, as is wrath. All ideas of deriving self-worth from the workplace must be abandoned. It is notable that men and women of high spiritual attainment are never seen in positions of traditional power. They are not in the White House or Downing Street, nor are they investment bankers, media moguls, or visionary businessmen.

The impulse to say no must be backed up by not doing. To not believe a thing is to not put consciousness into it. To not do a thing is to reroute consciousness back into one’s own pool of knowing. Where dishonor and untruth are encountered, no further belief or deeds need go there, should we so wish. The damaging protestant work ethic that ties labor to godliness is counterfeit. The divine creator of the universe does not require anything from anyone.

The origin of truth is divine; it can only be known through spiritual endeavor. There is no meaningful success outside the unfoldment of one’s own being and the joy of the ascendant journey. The only measure of value—in oneself, in others, or in anything—is truth. How true are we to who we are and what we know we are capable of? Are we healing old deceitful patterns? Are we creating new harmonious ones? Do we consistently move with integrity and honor? Are growth and discovery part of our everyday experience?

It is never too late to begin the journey, no matter how long a mind has slumbered in the distortion. Some people become conscious early on, some mid-way, some toward the end. Some do not become conscious at all, at least not this time around. Awakenings occur at precisely the right time, when the most favorable energies are aligned. We can only know when that is for ourselves. When we do, it is time to act.

In realizing that we are our own authority, we permanently free the mind from the delusion of servitude. We bring more and more consciousness into everything we do and accept nothing within the distortion at face value. We discern. We choose. We determine what is fit for our conscious attention and what is not. To not engage— to content oneself with watching others go about the business of running reality—is not an option. There is nobody acting on our behalf and with our best interests at heart. There cannot be. It is something we can only do for ourselves. Indeed, to be content to do nothing is to consign oneself to a state of conscious limbo and forfeit the most precious and powerful gift in the universe.

Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from THE UNFOLDMENT © 2012 Neil Kramer. Published by New Page Books a division of Career Press, Wayne, NJ. 800- 227-3371. All rights reserved.

Neil Kramer is a writer, philosopher, and teacher specializing in the fields of consciousness, metaphysics, shamanism, and ancient mystical disciplines. He has made a lifelong study of philosophy, indigenous wisdom traditions, inner alchemy, occultism, and esoteric world history. He shares his path of transformation in writings and interviews, and travels the world giving seminars, workshops and teachings. He has spoken at numerous international conferences on the nature of human consciousness. Neil is recognized for his message of empowerment, lucidity, and spiritual insight. www.neilkramer.com.