There are many ways to raise our vibrations as we are ascending to the 5th Dimension. The articles below provide some assistance.

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If we are to have true peace in the world,

we must first find it within.

(DailyOm.com)

9 Steps to Inner Peace

To ascend to the 5th dimension, we must raise our vibrations. The 5th dimension is not a place but a heightened awareness. To raise our vibrations, we must find peace within. Any other internal or external work will not suffice.

Many of us are feeling engulfed in a chaotic world of turmoil, whether in our feelings, our personal space, our larger geographical area, and/or our political environment. We cannot impact or cope with a larger arena when we are suffering or struggling internally. The 9 Steps below can assist:

• Accept the universal truth that Everything Happens for a Reason. 

We may not know that reason now, or even ever, but that does not change the reality. We chose the experiences for our personal growth. Being annoyed or overwhelmed by them simply hinders our development.

• Connect to God, Source, Divine Being, (or whatever name you use.)

We need personal experience with our spiritual connection. Reading or studying is not the same as spending time in quiet contemplation. We must actually feel the higher energy surrounding us.

• Ask for help from above.

Spiritual beings are available at all times for assistance. We can call on angels, archangels, ascended masters, extraterrestrial beings, spirit guides, or ancestors, and just ask for what we need.

• Trust who we are and what we know.

This is so important. We are all here at this time for a specific reason. Whatever we are being drawn to do is most likely for that purpose. We can stop being so hard on ourselves and just start doing whatever small or large role we have chosen. We know in our hearts what that is.

• Maintain compassion for all.

We need to move to a higher level of personal growth, which is an inclusive acceptance of all people and their views. This is not the same as agreeing with all beliefs, just understanding differences. Compassion, not judgment, is required.

• Eliminate any repressed emotions.

We must look within to find any hidden emotions impacting our daily life. Without a serious effort to identify these, we continue to harbor anger or other negative sentiments. These wounds color our interactions since we often blame others for our own repressed feelings. This is a crucial step in finding internal peace.

• Embrace our Feminine Strength.

At a time when toxic masculinity seems to be on the rise, we must honor our femininity. Part of this is acknowledging the importance of our thoughts, not just our actions, as we continue to grow. If we dismiss the significance of our feelings, we dismiss much of who we are. That is unacceptable.

• Honor our gifts.

IQ is not the only measure of our intelligence. Research has identified at least 11 intelligences:

Cognitive, emotional, moral, musical, aesthetic, intrapersonal, 

social or interpersonal, kinesthetic or bodily awareness, mathematical, 

values, and spiritual

Understanding  a broader definition of our intelligence acknowledges our strengths instead of using someone else’s criteria to determine our worth.

• Remain Open to Change

Change seems to be the theme for 2025. According to most astrologers, important events are occurring in 2025. Some of these will continue for the next 20 years, as the planet Pluto has moved into Aquarius. Universal truths of love, unity, consciousness, compassion and alignment may finally evolve. This will potentially  expose what is corrupt in our politics and the world. We must, however, confront our own inner demons and address any internal conflicts that resist change.

There are shifts in the larger planets of Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus. These indicate a profound societal transformation, and 2025 may begin a brand new chapter. Most of us are already experiencing some external, as well as internal, adjustment. The second half of 2025 will, hopefully, bring us out of the chaos of rapid changes as something coherent and forward-looking emerges. (Astrobutterfly.com). 

Astrology cannot tell us exactly what will happen or when but can provide a larger perspective to guide us. New opportunities seem possible as long as we remain open to change.

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”…discovering a genuine Wholeness is actually the meaning of a real spirituality”

Wilber  

In Finding Radical Wholeness: The Integral Path to Unity, Growth, and Delight (Shamballa, 2024), Ken Wilber presents 5 different steps to achieve a “Radical Wholeness”: Waking Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, Cleaning Up, and Showing Up.

While Wilber does not reference the 5th dimension, his Radical Wholeness is one way to assist our ascending to the fifth dimension.

In this article, I will discuss the first two steps of Wholeness: Waking Up and Growing Up. In a subsequent article, I will explain the remaining three: Opening Up, Cleaning Up and Showing Up. Wilber’s research provides copious amounts of evidence for each of the different types of Wholeness.

Waking Up is a state of consciousness 

Growing Up is a stage of personal development 

Waking Up

Waking Up is a direct and personal experience. This is a state of consciousness, a feeling of oneness with the universe. The basic point is that a personal connection with a sense of oneness is necessary. Reading, studying, or discussing will not achieve Waking Up success. 

Waking Up seeks for unity with the Divine through direct contemplation.

Wilber explains that “We find this quest for Wholeness at the center of most of the world’s great religions…If you examine the great traditions carefully, you will readily see this common core of Unity consciousness in virtually all of them.”

Growing Up

The second type of Wholeness is Growing Up, which includes 5 stages:

Egocentric:  The belief of a young child, which is narcissistic and self-centered. 

Ethnocentric: This stage starts around four to five years of age and may last long into life. This is “a belief in family values, fundamental religious views, patriotism, patriarchy, and the military, with a loyalty to one main group. 99% of the time humans have been on earth, they were in either ego or ethnocentric development. This ethnocentric stage continues today in 20-30% of the population.

Modern or Worldcentric:  This is a belief in rational thought, science, progress, individual rights, freedom, merit and profit, with inclusion and less oppression. Most people today are in this stage of development, which began in the 1700s.

Postmodern or Pluralistic: This is a belief in diversity, feminism, civil rights, environmental concerns and a desire to be all-inclusive with an emphasis on feelings. This stage did not begin until the 1960s, so it is relatively new, encompassing only about 25% of people today.

Integral: This is the first truly inclusive stage, which unifies the three previous ones and is a new direction in human evolution. It encompasses and embraces all previous stages. Only 5-10% of the population is currently at this stage. Wilber believes that moving to this Integral Stage is necessary to Finding Radical Wholeness.

None of these stages can be skipped

As Wilber points out, these steps of Growing Up are virtually unknown to most people, yet the research for them is overwhelming. 

Studies have shown that if people learn the stages, they develop through them more quickly.

Each of the three stages of ethnocentric, modern or worldcentric, and postmodern or pluralistic poses some concerns.

First, “fundamentalist religion at the ethnocentric stage is the single greatest source of terrorist activity in the world today. Whether they are Southern Baptists blowing up abortion clinics in the south, or Catholics and Protestant at each other’s throats in Northern Ireland, or Hamas and Hezbollah in Palestine, or Pakistani Muslims and Indian Hindus in border warfare in north India, or al-Qaeda and Isis Islamic extremists, or white supremacists in Charlottesville, or Antifa in Berkeley—they are all, in effect, ethnocentric fundamentalist religious groups convinced that they and they alone, have the one pipeline to God (or an absolute Truth or ultimate concern).”

Humanity will never reach a harmonious worldwide peace in solidarity until our religious organizations move up at least to the worldcentric stages of their spiritual development and make that understanding clearly available to all of their followers.

Wilber

Second, in relation to the modern and postmodern stages, there are other, perhaps less extreme, concerns. People often do not understand the stages and/or refuse to include previous stages in their thinking. For instance, Modernists promote equal freedoms while Postmodernists want equal outcomes. But equal outcomes cannot be the sole aim of social justice. Wilber explains there are “legitimate reasons why there are differences between people in this culture, from interests to biological factors to cultural specializations; not all of the differences are due to people being oppressed or victimized.”

 Too often postmodernists tend to ignore the reality of any differences as they try to open doors to everyone equally with equal outcomes.

These two value systems of modern and postmodern represent real stages of development through which everyone grows. “They need to be integrated, not simply pitted against each other as they are in today’s culture wars.” Think about that. If you are a postmodern, do you ever find yourself arguing for equal outcomes, not just equal freedoms? Do you see how this may not always be the best or only answer?

Wilber further explains that while the Postmodern stage is healthy, there is a “broken” segment that insists on “political correctness, identity politics and far-left policies.” The issue should no longer be, “which of these values is right and how can we get rid of the others?” But “How can we bring them all together? How can we transcend and include them all.”  The only real cure is the Integral stage, because it is truly inclusive.

Other similar views

Historian Heather Cox Richardson in a post on December 7, 2024, described a speech by President Obama in which he claims “pluralism is about recognizing that in a democracy, power comes from forging alliances, and building coalitions, and making room in those coalitions not only for the woke but also for the waking.” He is reiterating Wilber’s idea that we must recognize common values, and change from “we vs them” to just “us.”

Growing Up is moving from the healthy stages of Egocentric to Ethnocentric to Modern to Postmodern and finally to Integral. 

Both Waking Up, experiencing a personal connection with the Divine, and all five stages of Growing Up are necessary to move us to a 5th dimension vibrational frequency.

These two steps of Spiritual Development and Personal Growth bring us closer to Wilber’s “Radical Wholeness.”

In my previous article, I discussed the first two steps in Wilber’s Finding Radical Wholeness: Waking Up and Growing Up. I continue with the remaining three steps: Cleaning Up, Opening Up and Showing Up.  

Cleaning Up

This can be a difficult step since it involves looking within to find repressed emotions. Do we all have them? Not necessarily. But many of us do.

Shadow issues are so massively common and enormously problem creating in almost every field of human activity, that it’s astonishing that there isn’t more conventional wisdom about how to deal with them.

Wilber

What do you most hate and/or most often overreact to? This is the world of your repressed shadow. This is the world that all of us have to re-own if we want to truly be reaching Wilber’s Wholeness.

“Many shadow issues often have their genesis in something that occurred…between the ages of three and twelve, and that usually means something went wrong with relationships with parents, siblings, teachers or peers.” Wilber continues:

In either case, we need to re-own and reintegrate.  the disowned or repressed material, no longer blaming or assuming our exaggerated emotions are caused by others.

Wilber

Wilber proposes a 3-Step process to access our repressed emotions:

First Step

Ask what exactly is your issue, your anger, your problem, your neurosis, or your symptoms —  what is your major shadow complaint? Is there something or someone you overreact to or that perhaps creates strong emotion in you? If you feel this doesn’t apply to you, great. But be sure to be honest in your response. As mentioned in a quote above, “Shadow issues are so massively common…”

Second Step

Start to address the anger, issue, concern, or problem as if it is an actual person. If it is an actual person, then address that person. Wilber borrows a technique from Gestalt Therapy in which one sits in front of an empty chair and imagines a conversation with either the person or problem identified in the First Step.

Third Step

Honestly assess your interactions with the imagined person or emotion. Be open with any thoughts that arise. Try not to resist any feelings that come up. At this point, you may realize it is your own anger and/or emotion that is causing your overreaction. 

When I first read Wilber’s Gestalt Therapy technique (as mentioned in Step 2 above), I almost felt a little smug since I had done a similar activity in graduate schooI. I  remember being surprised that my anger at one of my relatives’ intolerance toward others turned out to be my own intolerance projected onto him. Since that time, so many years later, I remember that understanding. Any overreaction speaks to my repressed emotion, and that is my problem, my anger.  

I was surprised, however, to see that I wasn’t getting off that easily. My complacency about this activity quickly disappeared as I realized I had never actually dealt with the origin of the anger. It didn’t take long for the source of that emotion to engulf me. It related back to a childhood abuse issue that I had repressed. As an adult, I remembered the abuse but not the repressed anger of the child. The repercussions took me 2-3 days to process. The anger from my young child’s experience impacted me strongly, especially since I thought I had dealt with all of the attached emotions. I had not.

Wilber’s exercise made a believer out of me. I see how we can carry repressed emotions that might hold us back from the “Wholeness” we want to embrace. I hope your experience, if you choose to participate, will be successful and less stressful. Owning our repressed emotions, however, is never easy. Allow the discomfort.

There are also “golden shadows” that represent the qualities we most admire in others. Rather than making other people “heroes,” we can acknowledge that those same qualities we so strongly admire in someone  are also in us. Just as in the previous activity, assess any overreaction to allow all of your emotions free reign. While these golden shadows are important, the repressed emotions are more troublesome.

My hope is that you may find a release from some childhood concern that has carried over into your emotions today. As Wilber claims, “The things that we most despise in the world are exactly the things that we possess and most despise in ourselves.”

So this is the incredibly hard lesson of shadow research and why is it so unbelievably important to include some form of Cleaning Up in any path of understanding.

Wilber

Showing Up

Wilber discusses interior thoughts and exterior observations. He comments that we must accept these “different perspectives on reality.” His research and that of others claim that we can’t reduce life to only tangible observations. We must accept different perspectives of reality. There is a distinction between the individual or subjective, and the exterior or objective. Both exist and must be considered.

Wilber’s discussion provides extensive background and research. The topic overall is really quite simple: We need to accept both mind and scientific viewpoints. Thoughts are different from factual observations, but are still valid. We can’t deny our consciousness, even if we can’t see it. Claiming our thoughts are not real ignores the importance of those thoughts. Of course they exist. Are they observable? No. To embrace Wholeness, however, is to embrace these  “different perspectives.”

Opening Up

Opening Up is perhaps the easiest of the 5 stages to understand, but it is no less significant. It is also no less controversial. There are multiple intelligences. Cognitive intelligence, measured by IQ, is not the only one. While this may initially seem confusing, research has discovered many different ones.

Different Intelligences:

Cognitive, emotional, moral, musical, aesthetic, intrapersonal, social or interpersonal, kinesthetic or bodily awareness, mathematical, values and spiritual. 

Wilber

These are the eleven intelligences most agreed upon. We all have different strengths. Wilber is suggesting that we recognize and accept them. IQ is not the only gauge. A person seeking Wholeness understands peoples’ skills. We can no longer judge people solely on how “smart” we think they are without including a more comprehensive assessment.

Think about brilliant people who are considered to be geniuses. Not all of them have social skills or values that we admire. Not all of them function well in society. Yet they are smart. Is that enough to be considered successful or admirable? Wilber’s Opening Up provides other measurements to use.

Reviewing Wilber’s path to “Finding Radical Wholeness” 

Wilber’s five steps to Wholeness are Waking Up, Growing Up, Cleaning Up, Showing Up, and Opening Up. 

Waking Up is experiencing a personal spiritual awakening. Most of you reading this had probably already done so.

Growing Up is progressing through stages of personal development. Most of you have probably progressed from the worldcentric stage to the postmodern or pluralistic stage. Now is the time to embrace the next level, or Integral stage, where we learn to accept all views and release our judgments, and to be truly inclusive. This is not an easy transition and requires serious soul searching. 

Cleaning Up is facing another difficult step as we open up to face our deepest fears and repressed emotions. Moving into the Integral stage will be easier if we do this. 

Showing Up is accepting both objective and subjective aspects as valid. Thoughts and matter both exist. 

Opening Up is showing there is more to intelligence than just IQ. Emotional, social and other strengths are equally important.

 These five steps lead us to Wilber’s Wholeness.

Finding Radical Wholeness is a challenge for us all.

Wilber’s Radical Wholeness helps us raise our vibrations as we are Ascending to the 5th Dimension

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Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul

…it has been argued that for us to recognize the truth, 

there must be something within us that already knows it.

Newell

Sometimes in order to go forward, we must look to the past. John Philip Newell suggests such a journey in Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom For Reawakening To What Our Souls Know and Healing The World (Harper One, 2021).

“What is unique about the Celtic tradition compared to most other Western traditions is that it cannot be reduced to a set of doctrines or beliefs; 

instead, at its core is the conviction that we essentially need to keep listening to what our soul already knows”

Newell

The Celts were not just in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall, they also spanned all of middle Europe from what is now Turkey to present day Spain. They considered the forests and mountains to be their temples. They honored the feminine as well as the masculine.

How often do we get lost in our spiritual beliefs, wanting to ascend to the 5th dimension, thinking that it is another place rather than a higher vibration of earth. We say that we connect with Gaia or Mother Earth, but do we really accept that our journey must include the sacredness of earth? Do we sometimes feel that higher aspirations are all we need, as we forget to honor where we are?

The Celts believed that: 

“all life is holy, not just the life of our family or our nation, and that every species, 

not just the human species, is sacred.” 

Newell forces us to see that “This story of both the beauty and the suffering of the people of the western island of Scotland is in fact a universal story. It is the story of what has happened to native people and marginalized cultures throughout the world again and again.”

”We cannot undo the tragic wrongs that have been done to Native American peoples during the westward expansion of settlement across what is now the United States and Canda, where indigenous life was seen as having no value and viewed only as a hindrance in the quest for land and its resources.”

We cannot continue to ignore the genocide and rape committed, even today, by countries such as Rwanda and many others.

“We can, however, be part of new beginnings.”

Newell discusses nine Celtic teachers from early Celtic Christianity to modern times who show us how to “be part of new beginnings.” Two of those Celts particularly touched me: John Muir and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  I was surprised to find their words resonating deeply within, reinforcing Newell’s belief that something within us knows the truth. 

John Muir (1838-1914) was a prophet born in Scotland who moved to the US and is called an American Celt. He began to promote the ”interrelationship of all things and the sacredness of every species.”

Newell describes Muir as having a “passionate anger at what is being done to the environment coupled inseparably with a passionate love for the earth.”

We little know how much wildness there is in us.

Muir

”Part of what we owe the earth right now” explains Newell, “is the space and time she needs to heal from the damages we have inflicted on her.” Our hope, he continues,  lies in the “untamed regions of intuition and human imagination within us” rather than just with science and rational thought. 

Another Celt, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a French scientist, Jesuit priest and mystic. As Newell describes, ”He saw it was communion with the earth that we experience as communion with God…This was the conviction that God is to be found in all things.” Teilhard spoke of the sacredness of matter, as well as the sacredness of the feminine.

The core of every living creature is its power to love.

Teilhard

Teilhard also spoke of the sacredness of sacrifice: “Our ego has been created not to be the center, but to serve the center, not to focus on itself, but to focus on the sacredness at the heart of one another and all things. Sacrifice is not about ceasing to love oneself. Nor is it about loving oneself less. Rather sacrifice is about loving oneself in a different and better way.”

Newell explains that Teihard’s view is “the ‘primacy of humility,’ or learning to live from the sacred common ground of life rather than lifting ourselves up over one another or separating ourselves from one another.”

All we have to do is to let the very heart of the earth beat within us.

Teilhard

 Celtic wisdom has evolved over time. Newell claims that our role now is to apply those beliefs in new ways. “It is a stream of wisdom that nourishes the deepest knowing of our being, that the earth and every human being is sacred.”

For love, like nothing else, 

is the fire that fully reawakens us to the sacred in one another and the earth.

Newell

Newell includes a poem by Celtic Kenneth White. An excerpt: 

Religion and philosophy

what I’d learned in the churches and the schools

were all too heavy

for this travelling life

all that remained to me was poetry 

but a poetry

as unobtrusive as breathing

a poetry like the wind 

in the maple leaf

that I spoke to myself 

moving over the land