IF YOU WANT MY OPINION, no great awakening, no penetration of the meniscus, no unfolding into glorious high consciousness would be complete without a heresy. Personally, I believe a heresy is necessary for awakening not so much for the sake of the heresy itself but because approaching the heresy is a kind of "test" of where you are at. Don't get me wrong. This is not a test in the sense that someone else is testing you to detect your worthiness or ability. Not at all! Heresy is a test of your progress forward viewable by you and useful only to you.

What do I mean by this?

Well, before you can understand what I'm talking about here, you need to understand about sacred truth. A sacred truth is basically an idea or concept so sacrosanct, authoritative, untouchable, and self-evident that to even question the truth causes people to either dismiss your sanity outright or consider bodily harm against you.

Heavy stuff.

A heresy occurs when someone, anyone, openly scoffs at, dismisses, or otherwise pisses on somebody's sacred truth. A heresy is a big deal, especially in the eyes of the faithful who often see a heresy as an abomination, a horror, or a sin in the eyes of God (or Darwin). A heresy can be a scary event for everyone involved, but it is usually most uncomfortable for the person committing the heresy. When someone commits a heresy, their whole life is made extremely difficult, sometimes even impossible, by those who feel the need to "defend" the truth.

These days, people generally don't commit heresy. They used to more often, but the witch burnings and inquisitions put the "fear of authority" (a.k.a. The Fear of God) deep inside all of us and so now most of us stay well on the side of "compliant" and "believing" when it comes to the sacred truths in our life.

So that's heresy and sacred truth. The question now is, what exactly does heresy have to do with spiritual awakening? Let me put it this way. The ability to commit a heresy is a good test of where you are at on your own path back to divinity. A fully conscious, fully awakened individual will know that there is no such thing as a sacred truth, that Spirit makes all the rules and that, as a result, all the rules can be broken, bent, changed, or discarded at any time whatsoever. Where rules do exist, they exist as a result of consensus, because the locals (in the cosmic sense) agree the rule makes sense in the context of whatever it is they are trying to do. Therefore, you can judge how open and ready you are by your willingness to commit a heretical thought or act. If you can do that without fear, you're pretty much good to go. However, if you are presented with a heresy and you get all fidgety, defensive, offensive, or even violent, you know you've got work to do.

So, what's a good heresy to test yourself against? Well, it really depends on your social-cultural context. It depends on your religious background, the way your parents raised you, whether you have a post-secondary education, and things like that. If you are scientist, there are a few sacred truths you could bounce yourself against (e.g., the myth of objectivity, the necessity of peer review, the superiority of the rational mind, things like that). It really all depends, and it is hard to specify or give examples. A few hundred years ago it would have been easier. A few hundred years ago there was a lot more homogeneity in belief systems, so we all tended to agree that certain things were heretical. Nowadays it seems there's no such agreement. What's heresy to a scientist may not be heresy to a dogmatic Christian and vice versa. If you're not sure about your own state of openness, ask your Spirit guides to present you with a heresy and then pay attention. I'm sure something will come up.

Now, if you don't want to go to the trouble of digging information from your guides, I do have one global heresy that yet remains. There is one idea that pretty much everybody on this planet can agree is sacrosanct and untouchable, self evident, divinely inspired and even given as law by God. That idea is gender.

Let's think about it for a few moments, shall we?

Everybody on this planet believes in the importance, nay sacredness, of gender. Scientists, priests, popes, magi, pundits, politicians, and even the average Joe down in the pub find common ground here. Everybody believes that gender is the crux of our existential being-ness.

You cannot argue this point.

I mean, gender differentiation, gender duality, is so important that our belief in the power of gender is not left to chance. Indoctrination begins at birth. Boys get blue, girls get pink and it just gets worse from there. This blatant, unabashed, bold-faced attempt to separate the genders continues on through infanthood, childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood where everything from the cloths you wear to the games you play and the foods you eat are gender loaded with all sorts of "boys do this" and "girls do that" nonsense.

For some reason, we are taught from day one that gender is some kind of big fat sacred deal. And we buy it! By adolescence, gender has become a defining category. By adolescence, we see everything in terms of gender. By the time we are adults, gender has been burned into the neural pathways of our brains.

If you think about it, it's weird.

Why is it a sin for a boy to wear pink?

Why do only girls get to wear pretty things?

What's the BFFD anyway?

And over some minor bodily differences, too!

A testicle, an ovary, some boobs, and a slightly different shape.

What is the big deal?

Well, I'll tell ya.

There ain't no big deal.

In fact, allow me to be the first person to say that in the cosmic scheme of things, in an unfolding of creation sort of way, in an eternal Fabric of Consciousness, "logos of the creator," thing-a-ma-bob, thing-a-ma-jingy sort of way, gender just isn't that important. The truth is, there are no deep mystical meanings, no esoteric secrets, no profound evolutionary significance, and no determining biological influences behind the sex of your physical vehicle. In the cosmic scheme of things, gender amounts to no more than your preferred means of experiencing the pleasures of sex (and also your willingness to experience the joys and difficulties of childbirth).

That's all.

It's a question of boink partners and nothing more.

And frankly, I don't care what the scientists or the priests or the psychiatrists or the hob knobs or the bob wobbles have to say about it.

I know.

In terms of spirit/consciousness/god, gender is nothing.

Despite what those loopy priests tell you, God isn't male.

Consciousness has no sex.

Bottom line, in the cosmic everything of our collective divinity, there's simply no room for gender.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

"Michael, you're obviously crazy."

"Michael, can't you see?"

"Male/female."

"Positive/negative."

"Yin/Yang."

"From electricity to electrons, it's everywhere!"

"Isn't it?"

Well, I admit it.

It does appear to be everywhere, at least in this physical universe, and at least during the time period we are capable, with our limited physical instruments, of accurately observing.

It's true.

Yin/Yang, positive/negative are important, in this physical universe. But despite that fact, get this. Talking about positive and negatives charges on an atomic particle, or talking about the yin and yang energies of this physical universe, is not the same as talking about gender. One has to do with, well, energy and the other has to do with whether or not you are capable of incubating a baby. They are totally different things and to think otherwise, to equate them as if there is an equal sign in the middle, is a non sequitur of biblical proportions.

They are not the same.

Yin does not equate to the female body.

Yang does not equate to the male body.

Which isn't to say that Yin and Yang aren't important for the body.

They are important.

Yin and Yang are energies. They are two sides of the same coin, two complementary aspects of prana, chi, the Breath of God, The Waters of Creation, or whatever you want to call it. A body, any body, from solar rock to human being, uses Yin and Yang to maintain itself and create its world. Male or female, young or old, animal, vegetable or mineral, in this universe you must draw on both energies to function well. If you only draw one side of the energetic coin, you are not running at full potential. You need both.

If it helps, think of your Immortal Soul as an electrician responsible for keeping "things" (creation, the world, your body, the building downtown), empowered. In order to do the job of electrician, in order to bring light into the darkness, or bring power to a factory, the electrician must harness and control the energy (a.k.a. electricity, in the lingo of the trade). Harnessing and controlling the electricity is accomplished, as we all learn in grade school, by manipulation of the "positive" and "negative" poles of the electrical force.

Think about it for a moment.

If you don't have both positive and negative, if you don't have both yin and yang, there's no electrical flow. Without positive and negative, there's no energetic movement. In creative terms, you're powered down, ineffective, and impotent. The bottom line, in order to bring power to a house or a factory or even a physical body, the "electrician," the soul, the animating consciousness, must plug both negative and positive prongs into the appropriate receptacles. In other words, you need both yin and yang energies.

I talk about fully empowering your body in more detail in The Dossier of the Ascension. For now it is enough for me to emphasize, and for you to remember, that gender has nothing to do with anything more than sex and procreation.

Got it?

So, if you want to advance into full spiritual power, begin the process of opening to the opposite energies immediately. You can use the visualization I suggested in the chapter on Roadside Communication or come up with a version suitable for yourself. The important thing is the intent behind the visualization. The intent should be to balance the energies and open to the opposite forces. If you are male, this means cultivating the yin energies. If you are female, this means cultivating your yang energies. The visualization only helps you maintain consistent intent, so come up with a visualization that is clear to you. That's all you have to do.

Just forget about gender and remember, yin and yang energies are merely complementary sides of the same creative force. Your body, your mind (your brain) requires both. Begin the process of bringing them together by embracing that which you have rejected, and, word of advice, don't be too much in a rush.

I advise that you go slow.

You have been excluding what you consider to be the "opposite" energy for centuries. As a result, coming into contact with the powerful and "frightening" opposite can require care and attention, so take your time and don't do anything that you aren't comfortable doing. If you do experience fear, discomfort, or weird ideas, remember my advice on trust. On the other side of this heresy is a light, love and power that has been denied to you for centuries. If you want that back (and who wouldn't?), trust in the process and get over your gender based fears. Remember, sex and gender are one thing. Yin and yang, positive and negative, are something else.

And besides, what male in this world wouldn't benefit from the nurturing, receptive, and open orientations that yin energies provide? What female wouldn't benefit from the active, powerful, confident, "get it done" driving energies of yang?

We need both, we need both, we need both.

It is time we live a balanced life in the true sense of that word.

Trust me on this.

Your health, your piece of mind, your power, even your ability to create in this world will benefit greatly by a rebalancing of energy.

Remember, your soul is the electrician, your body is a temple.

Plug it in, plug it in, plug it in.