GREETINGS, DEAR READER, AND WELCOME. My name is Michael Sharp and the book in your hand is the key to your rapid and safe spiritual awakening and empowerment. This book is a spiritual primer. As mentioned on the back cover, this book provides the foundational materials for the Great Awakening - i.e., the individual and collective return of Christ Consciousness to this planet. This book provides all the basic information you need. Here you will find information on breathing, visualization, intent, and other concepts and techniques critical for effortless progress forward into the new spiritual millennium. Here you will find everything you need in order to initiate a successful awakening experience. Where you go from this initiation will be up to you.

I would like to say at the outset that no matter where you are on your own spiritual path, this book will be useful. It is my strong advice that you not overlook the concepts and ideas presented here no matter how skilled or knowledgeable you might be. Just because this book functions as an introduction to my work, doesn't mean it contains only simple information or that the information here is optional. The materials presented are important. If you are going to make good progress on your return path back home, if you are going to wake up with speed and facility, you need to know the basics as presented in this book in some form or another. Learn the concepts here or learn them from someone else. It doesn't matter. Just learn them.

I would also like to say that although the information set forth here will be useful for all people interested in a rapid return to full consciousness, this book will be particularly useful for those of you who have previous religious or scientific training, those of you who come from judgmental spiritual backgrounds, and those of you who are experiencing disorientation or anxiety over personal or collective events. To you, a special welcome! I promise you, you will find the material in this book (indeed in all my Lightning Path books) will go a long way towards providing you calm, clarity of vision when it comes to your own efforts to "sort through" the things happening in your world.

Let me also be clear that neither this book, nor any of my books, for that matter, is a book about spiritual "enlightenment." This is not a book about soul evolution, spiritual evolution, consciousness "raising," karmic work, "altitude" or anything ridiculous like that. This is not a book about how to "save" yourself or others and it is certainly not a book of commandments or morality.

This is a book about awakening and nothing more.

This is a book about awakening your mind and your body and empowering into the full light of your full and glorious spiritual consciousness without compromise and with no strings attached.

Now, perhaps at this point you are curiously asking yourself, "Why awakening and not enlightenment, salvation, or evolution as the masons, priests, or scientists might say?"

If so, good question! It is for two reasons...

On the one hand, it is because the notions of enlightenment, salvation, and evolution have way too much baggage attached to them to be useful. When you get down to the nitty-gritty of it, there are literally centuries of dogma and misconception attached to the "standard" explanations of our origin and purpose (i.e., we are here to evolve, to become enlightened, to learn, to work off karmic "debt," blah, blah). To be blunt, there are centuries of lies about enlightenment, salvation, and evolution floating around in that collective consciousness of ours. As such, there is just too much crap attached to these concepts for them to be of any use at all.

On the other hand, the other reason why we don't want to use words like enlightenment, salvation, or evolution to describe this process is that despite all the millions of words creatively wasted on these concepts, the process I talk about in this book (and in all my books) really is a process of awakening. It is not about enlightenment, karmic resolution, salvation, soul healing, evolution, testing, judgment, or any of the other (often millennial) nonsense you hear from the "doomsayers," "prophets," and self-styled messengers of this world. The process I talk about really is a process of awakening. It is a process of returning your full consciousness to your physical body and mind and nothing more.

In fact, you can see it as a continuation of your normal cycle of sleep and awakening process.

Every day is the same.

Every cycle is the same.

Every night you go to sleep and "descend" into a state of reduced consciousness. In that state, you are operating at reduced capacity. Your mind is numb, your senses are turned off, and your bodily systems respond only to emergency. However, every morning when you are rested, or when you, somebody you love, or somebody that you asked to awaken you, brrriiiiiiiinnnngggsss an alarm clock close to your head, you wake up. You open your eyes, struggle back to "full" consciousness, and go about your daily work at "full" capacity with eyes "wide open" and consciousness "fully present" with no trouble at all.

In this context you can see, awakening is easy. In fact, you have been doing it every day since you were born and although sometimes getting out of bed can be extremely difficult (especially if you are sick or have had a rough night), you always succeed at it sooner or later.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

It is exactly the same way with this spiritual awakening process that I am talking about, although for the sake of explanatory power we extend the metaphor a bit and shift our perception of the physical body. Thus, instead of identifying with your physical body as if it is a part of the "I" that is you, see your body/mind as a container for your consciousness. View your body/mind as a vehicle for your soul, a temple for your spirit. Know that it is a very good vehicle; an excellent vehicle, in fact. Indeed, your body/mind combination it is a finely tuned, precision-engineered powerhouse of creation.

Your body is a fantastic vehicle for your soul; that is for sure. However, despite its sophistication and power, it is also a very fragile vehicle. Not only must your body survive, revive, and regenerate from the daily insults of life on this earth, it must also cope with the inferno of your spiritual consciousness. To your body, which is crystallized, frozen energy, your soul is literally fire. The fire of your soul, which is necessary to animate your body, nevertheless strains the crystallized, ice-like molecular structures of your brain/body to the point of failure. Because of that, and because of the insults and toxins and other physical difficulties, every night your body and mind must rest to recover, regenerate, and repair.

Simple, right?

In order to facilitate the regeneration of your body, your consciousness exits its mortal coil every night and goes cavorting out and about the multi-verse. As your consciousness does this, as a greater proportion of your animating soul leaves your body, your body goes to sleep. While sleeping, it repairs itself. Ideally, when it's done its repair, consciousness comes back and your body wakes up.

When sleeping, the body/mind is almost empty of consciousness. It cannot be fully empty because if it was, if your consciousness completely left your body, your body would immediately die. Thus, in order to preserve the physical integrity of the cellular structure of your body, your consciousness retains a thin connection to it. However for the most part, consciousness leaves the body alone so it can recover in peace. If you want a number, we could say that only about two percent (2%) of your consciousness inhabits your body while it is sleeping. Of course, the percentage of consciousness changes when you wake up in the morning.

In the morning, when your body and mind are rested and recovered, your consciousness returns more fully to your body. Not too much though. For reasons explained elsewhere, under "normal" conditions, only about ten percent (10%) of your full consciousness re-enters your body/mind when you wake up. This is not too much and in reality represents a serious diminishment of your full capacity. This minimal ten percent makes the "waking you," what society and psychologists would call the "normal" you, a mere shadow of who you really are. The ten percent is enough for you to function properly in the "energy extraction systems" of this world, but it does not represent anywhere near your full capacity. In truth, it represents a sort of semi-conscious sleepwalking with a sort of semi-intelligence, semi-awareness.

Truth is, "normal" isn't very much of you at all. The truth is, there is a vast potential in you that lies unrealized and untapped. If you want, you can consider the previous Avatar Jesus Christ as an exemplar of the possibilities open to a fully awakened, fully conscious human mind/body.

Pretty exciting when you think about it.

As noted above, it is helpful to view your body as a container for your spiritual consciousness. In fact, you can wrap your head around the whole "awakening" thing with greater ease (and even help others understand what you are talking about when you say the words "awakening," "enlightenment," even "salvation") if you simplify the container metaphor and strip it down to the bare essentials.

Do a visual experiment with me. Visualize an empty water glass in your left hand and a clear glass jug of water in your right. Now, think of your body/mind unit as the empty glass (container) in your left hand and your consciousness, your soul, as the water in the jug in your right hand. When you are conceived (sperm meets egg), you begin to pour water into "the glass" (the cells) to animate the body. After you are born, and while you exist in "normal" consciousness, you pour water into the container, into the glass, to about the ten percent line. When you sleep, you pour water out of the glass till about the two percent line.

During your normal sleep cycles, you go back and forth between two percent and ten percent and that is the routine consciousness of every day life. However, one day you decide to "wake up" and when you make that decision, you immediately begin to fill your body/mind beyond the "normal" ten percent to fifteen percent, twenty five percent, and eventually even higher.

Simple right? Awakening to whatever "level" is simply a matter of pouring water (i.e., consciousness) into the glass container of your body. As you can see, when you couple the idea of awakening with the metaphor of the water glass, you get a very grounded and easy to grasp explanation of the processes referred to by the often difficult to understand and grasp concepts of salvation, enlightenment, and so on.

So, the questions before us now I suppose are why are you sleepwalking through life and how do you wake up and access full capacity? The answer to the question of "why" is provided in my Book of Life: Ascension and the Divine World Order, so I won't rehearse that answer here. As to how you wake up, it is not that hard at all and, in fact, that is what this book is for.

In these pages I will provide guidance on getting the process rolling. More importantly, I will show you that, contrary to what some might like to tell you, the process of awakening is not that hard at all. In fact, it takes only a little bit of time, willingness, and effort. How long it will take, and how much effort you will need to expend, will depend largely on you and your own unique situation. Bottom line, some of you will find it easy to wake up and others will have more difficulty. However, don't make anything of that.

Awakening is not a question of talent or worthiness or grace. It really just depends on conditions in your life, but even in the worst case (i.e., hard nights, bad nightmares, illness, heavy grogginess, unsupportive environment, and moderate-to-severe disorientation), a couple of years is all you need if you stay focused and if you practice the techniques provided in this, and subsequent, books. Not that hard at all, especially considering what you might have been told by others. What's even better, there is a nice bonus at the end of it all. Once you're finished this process, you won't have any more need for psychologists, integral theorists, prophets, pundits, or any of the others whose job is to "save your soul" or "improve you" in some way.

I'm the last "prophet" you'll ever need. I'll teach you you're perfect already and, when you finally, really realize that, you'll be done. At that point you'll be moving forward under your own steam, gathering your own information from God and Spirit, making your own creative decisions, and manifesting the conditions you want to manifest with confidence and aplomb. It might not be good for the long-term financial health of the healing and self-help industries, but what can I say. The trees of this earth will thank you.

In closing this chapter on the idea of spiritual awakening, let me be perfectly clear so there is no potential misunderstanding. Awakening in the spiritual sense, i.e., awakening from ten percent to one hundred percent, is exactly like the "normal" awakening you do every morning. It is exactly like going from two percent to ten percent, which is to say, it is just like getting out of bed in the morning. It is a simple matter of intent and persistence. When you wake up in the morning you do not have to run races, pass tests, or "prove your worth" in order to get out of bed. You just get up.

As we shall see in more detail in the next chapter, it is the same with spiritual awakening. There is no entrance fee, no judgment at the door, no pearly gates, no gatekeeper, no test of worthiness, no complicated curriculum, no final exam, no nothing. It doesn't even matter what you have done in this or any past life. The truth is, your soul could be black as coal and you still get to wake up and walk back into The Garden for a nice cup of tea, just like that.

No questions asked. No strings attached.
You just need to get up. You just need to wake up.
So wake up! And wake up others!!

The time is fast approaching.

The transitioning of 2012 is almost upon us.

So wake up!!!

Embrace the global return of higher consciousness. Embrace the global return of higher self. Embrace this global return of Christ. Embrace The Great Awakening!

It is going to be quite glorious and I promise you the world is going to change, and for the better, rapidly, and in quite dramatic ways, despite what the doomsayers are saying and despite any doubts you might have. To the un-awakened, it is going to look like magic, but don't let the magic fool you. As you will learn from this and subsequent books, The Great Awakening is a carefully orchestrated event that we (and by we I mean the six billion people on this earth and the other 36 billion or so disincarnated guides and helpers) have been preparing for, for over one hundred thousand years. So embrace it without hesitation and without reservation!

From this point on, there is nothing to fear.

Now, let us start this process immediately, shall we? Let us begin, in the next chapter, with the necessary first step of getting rid of any misconceptions about spirituality that you might have absorbed while sleepwalking through this, or previous, lifetimes on this earth. Once these misconceptions, these "obstacles" to your spiritual awakening, are out of the way we will move onto a discussion of basic bodily techniques for safe awakening and empowerment. Through all of this remember, this a basic book. None of the stuff we discuss here will be difficult to understand or disconcerting to your soul and everything will be meted out in easy to absorb and integrate chunks.

As a final word before moving on, I certainly expect the information here to be of practical benefit to you. In fact, as you practice what I preach, you should begin to notice immediate changes, some subtle, some not so subtle, in your life and your state of consciousness. Pay attention to those changes, embrace them, welcome them with joy (because they mean a better life is on the way) and when they begin to accelerate, don't get freaked out. Some of the changes may feel dramatic and earth shattering, at least on "that side" of the meniscus, but they are not. They only look that way.

After a little bit of effort and progress, the changes you go through won't seem so very big at all, so embrace the changes. And if things are moving too fast, remember, you are in control of this process. You initiated the process by picking up this book and engaging in the practices outlined here and you can control the speed simply through intent. Move as fast or as slow as you want. Take whatever time you need to integrate and process and hey, if you need to snooze a little longer, if you find this all too weird and discombobulating, and if there isn't anybody in immediate physical danger around you, feel free to snooze a little longer.

We'll all manage just fine until you are ready. I'll warn you though, you can only hit the snooze button for so long. After 2012, you got to wake up.

Just so you know...

You can't stay sleeping forever.