Second Awakening

By Paul Fredric

The ancient Taoist text Secret of the Golden Flower has been a source of mystery ever since Wilhelm and Jung brought it to the West. Paul Fredric offers a fresh analysis of the text based on his life-long experience as a student of the esoteric and meditation practitioner. The Secret of the Golden Flower is revealed as an instruction manual for unlocking a primal force of intelligence and energy within us that can lead to a higher level of conscious existence. In addition to the first awakening everyone experiences every day, there can be a Second Awakening that introduces us to a new state of being. Referencing Esoteric Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Fourth Way ideas, we learn that it is a universal human process long ago lost to the West. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Fredric
• Release date: Jun 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224615179

Book preview

Second Awakening

An Experiential Exegesis of the Secret of the Golden Flower

Paul Fredric

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ATAR Group

Copyright © 2024 by Paul Fredric

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Acknowledgements

Edward Wang, Jim Chisholm, and Sekha Xin for the invaluable sharing of perspective, experience, and proofreading. JJ Semple, for much wisdom and advice. Rob Freriks, for recommending Secret of the Golden Flower to me back in the day.

Cover art and all illustrations by Seraphim Sokolov

Contents

1.Introduction

2.Learning to Listen

3.The Second Awakening

4.The Book

5.The Method

6.The Posture

7.Exegesis of the Secret of the Golden Flower

8.Heavenly Consciousness

9.The Primal Spirit and the Conscious Spirit

10.Circulation of the Light and Protection of the Center

11.Circulation of the Light and Making the Breathing Rhythmical

12.Mistakes During the Circulation of the Light

13.Confirmatory Experiences During the Circulation of the Light

14.The Living Manner of the Circulation of the Light

15.A Magic Spell for the Far Journey

16.Conclusion

17.Appendix 1: Gurdjieff’s Food Diagram

18.Appendix 2: Second Body in Corinthians

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Introduction

When you hear the words 'Second Awakening,' you might ask yourself, What happened to the first? The first awakening is the one we always forget. Whether it's the moment of your birth into this world, or what you do each morning after so many hours of sleep, every human being experiences a first awakening, and almost every human being forgets about it or at least takes it for granted. A very small number of people ask themselves if that's all there is and if there might not be something more to life thus opening the door to the question of Second Awakening. It means an additional awakening and a different quality of awakening. Some have used the term 'born again' to refer to such an experience, and that's not entirely inaccurate. The Second Awakening is the one you will never forget.

Everyone has had a first awakening, and so have you – like today when you woke up and rolled out of bed. After that, maybe you brushed your teeth, drank some coffee, talked to your spouse, went to work, talked to more people, went to the store, and so on. The next thing you know, you wake up again in the morning. Many people go through life in just this sort of automatic manner, a state that is sometimes called relative sleep. Neuroscience tells us that for most of the day, our brain waves reflect the same activity level as when we are asleep. Yet esoteric and religious literature often suggests that higher conscious states are possible, and some people claim to have experienced such higher states. A fundamental question may emerge: Can I experience a higher state of consciousness, and if so, how?

At the same time, on a larger scale, your first awakening happened when you entered this world. Before you were born, there was nothing; after you were born, gradually, an awareness of the self and the world it inhabits began to emerge. Again, the question may arise: is that all there is? The idea of the Second Awakening also suggests a fundamental change that occurs only once in a lifetime and forever changes one's experience of existing in this world. There is the world of the first awakening, and then the world of the Second Awakening.

The reason I got interested in these sorts of questions is that, on November 15th of 2021, I had an experience that was indeed unlike anything I had ever experienced before; after decades of chasing after some nebulous ideal of higher consciousness, a substantial and lasting change finally came to me from a most unexpected source. I had never felt more positively energized and optimistic about the future, and at the same time, never more puzzled about why I should feel that way and confused about what had put me in that position. Henceforth, I was on a quest to discover what happened and what I was supposed to do about it. I couldn't talk to anyone about it and didn't for some years. But in my slow, silent research, I re-discovered the book Secret of the Golden Flower – an ancient Taoist text on internal alchemy, and the way in which the book seemed to describe my experience was uncanny.

Gradually, I began to understand that I experienced a transformational growth process that is available to all human beings but, for some reason, remains dormant for most. It has been known about and documented in many ancient initiatory systems, and though it may be with different words and symbols, the key features are the same. Perhaps the most well-known word for the experience is Kundalini, but that doesn't mean you need to start learning about chakras or buying crystals. I have tried to illuminate several different cultural perspectives on the process to avoid the phenomenon of idee fixe that shipwrecks so many seekers before they even reach the open seas and to show the universality of the key ideas and values reflected in the system.

This work then has three primary aims. First, I will relate my experience leading me to what I have called a Second Awakening. Secondly, I will give some basic instructions on how to maximize the benefits of meditation toward the goal of Second Awakening, also based on my own experiences and studies and work with various groups. Finally, my verse-by-verse analysis of the Secret of the Golden Flower will reveal the method's more detailed and nuanced aspects. I believe that rather than just another book, SGF is more like a modern interactive educational app that adapts its teaching to the student and facilitates the reader's evolutionary process. But rather than interacting with a program or an AI, the student of SGF is learning to interact with their own higher self. If you are prepared to enter this relationship as you begin studying SGF, by knowing how it has affected others and by already having had direct experience of what it means to 'sit,' 'meditate,' or 'collect one's self,' then the book will help you make that connection with your own higher self that much smoother.

So whether you are new to the Secret of the Golden Flower or have read it long ago, whether you have just started meditating or tried it once or twice and gave up on it, whether you have just discovered the idea of Kundalini or dismissed it long ago as new-age fluff, this book will help you integrate your experience and use it to connect you with your own private teacher—the higher self that has lied dormant within you since the day you were born into this world.

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Learning to Listen

As a man abandons worn-out clothes and acquires new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within.

Bhagavad Gita

Throughout my life, I’ve learned that the most important truths are often not immediately apparent. However, once we recognize them, we realize they have been there all along, waiting for us to see them. If someone is telling you a story, but you fall asleep, it’s up to you to wake up if you want to hear the story. It may sound simple, but it’s not easy to realize how many important stories we’ve missed because we were asleep.

I was a young man on the cusp of finishing my bachelor’s degree in the early nineties when I read the book Secret of the Golden Flower (SGF). College, for me, had been less than inspiring. Instead of spending my time studying, I was more inclined to read books on the esoteric and occult and then stay out late drinking and talking with fellow liberal arts students about all the wild possibilities that subsequently flowed through my mind. I maintained a colorful circle of friends – artists, musicians, philosophers, gamers, and occultists. One drunken evening at the local student pub, a highly regarded member of that circle recommended SGF to me with the curious warning that ‘some of the stuff in there can be dangerous!’ A label of dangerous put any book at the top of my list, and within a few days, I’d completed the challenge and read the book cover to cover.

I found only a few exciting ideas buried amidst a sea of poetic mysticism when I read the book. It didn’t even register with me that the book was primarily about meditation. When it mentioned meditation, I presumed with no hesitation that any altered states of consciousness it discussed must be just as attainable without meditation. Nevertheless, I was obsessed with the idea of a higher state of consciousness and the possibility that consciousness can evolve. At the time, I was also experimenting with ceremonial magic and occultism based on the works of Aleister Crowley, medieval alchemists, and the like. I also discovered P.D. Ouspensky’s ideas in books like Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution and The Fourth Way, which introduced me to concepts like different levels of consciousness, multiple I’s, knowledge versus being, essence versus personality, etc. These ideas suggested that consciousness could be enhanced through a series of practices, like self-observation and self-remembering, and keeping detailed field notes in a personal journal.

At the same time, I was interested in the psychedelic therapeutic models suggested by Timothy Leary and championed by Robert Anton Wilson, from which it is easy to conclude that taking mind-altering drugs is a sort of ‘fast track’ to the states discussed by the ancient Taoists and alchemists. Why spend grueling hours, days, or weeks sitting still in an awkward position, struggling with obscure mental exercises, when one tiny tab of acid will take you to the furthest reaches of the cosmos, wash your body and soul with a neon stream of Zen-like paradoxes and witticisms, and deliver you back to Earth in plenty of time to make last call at the local student pub? These ideas seemed attractive because they seemed transformational while at the same time fitting into the lifestyle I had wandered into.

While reading SGF against this colorful backdrop, I connected with the ideas about heightened consciousness. However, I assumed that the path to unlocking it could still be achieved through the methods I was already committed to—a combination of ceremonial magic, self-remembering, and occasional drug use. Essentially, I used the book to validate my beliefs, congratulated myself for intuitively following the instructions of these ancient Taoists, and then confidently set it aside, convinced that I already knew its ‘most important’ lessons.

I didn’t think about the book again for a long time - like decades. A lot of things happened in those decades - I went on the road with a band, moved to Houston, Texas, quit the band, got married, worked a ton of odd jobs, and eventually found a well-paying, if not artistic career in IT consulting - but throughout I maintained my interest in the esoteric and spiritual side of life, and maintained some connections with various occult and esoteric scenes. I was already 32 years old when I found a local group that practiced meditation - a Gurdjieff-oriented group. It was also there that a respected elder told me that if I wanted to get the most value out of meditation, I would need to do it every day, for at least a half-hour, in the morning. Even though I sensed this as accurate at the time and had great confidence in the source, I continued to be a meditation ‘dabbler’ for another twenty years.

Though I was starting to pick up some better influences, I continued to find reasons why I couldn’t meet the challenge of a daily mediation practice. There seemed to be many good reasons not to – I was traveling too much for work and had to get up too early. Reading a book or something was more important if I had time in the morning. On the weekends, I needed to spend that time with my family. Another factor was my fondness for rich foods and liquor and staying out late, so any extra morning time was easy to sleep through. Spending a lot of time in airports isn’t good for you either. I was abusing my body in more ways than can be counted. I gained weight, and along the way, I developed an auto-immune condition in the gut - ulcerative colitis - and soon found myself dependent on daily medication to get by.

Amid this whirlwind, I occasionally got some inspiration and, in a rush, would commit to turning things around. I’d meditate once or twice over a week or so, but eventually, it would trail off, and before I realized it, I was back in the old cycle. When you’re drinking and rambling through 'high times,' all it takes is one good hangover to forget about morning meditation. Weekends are a great place to lose the momentum of even the strongest resolve. What should be clear by now is that I found an endless supply of excuses to avoid daily meditation.

In 2019, something changed. I was now in my Fifties and starting to feel my age and the inevitable side-effects of a lifetime of ‘hard living.’ Whatever the cause, there was some wake-up call that time was ticking away with a fear that my window of opportunity might be closing. It wasn’t so much a need for new ideas either, but rather - and I still struggle to articulate this - it was coming from my body as though it had its own will and was wishing for something different and healing through new action. As though in answer to prayer, my work suddenly became ‘remote,’ and I worked from home most of the time. This allowed me the possibility to reconnect with my local Gurdjeffi group and participate in their ‘sittings’ once or twice a week. I believed that adhering to this schedule would help me meditate more consistently, restoring some health to my mind and body.

So, twenty years after being told it was the best thing I could do for myself, I sat on my own for fifteen minutes almost every day. I was working from home then, and though I was slammed with work and phone calls beginning at 6 AM nearly every day if I didn’t make morning sitting, I would take advantage of the afternoon lull and sit then. Eventually, all the initial itching and fidgeting that typically plague the effort to meditate began to subside. I started finding little ways to prioritize sitting and even look forward to it. I’d do the sitting on weekends, even if I slept in late and meditated with a hangover. Gurdjieff used to speak a lot about the significance of suffering in self-work, and I could see that here. The suffering I had to feel to get to a point where I was desperate enough to seek a new kind of action, and then suffering for the remorse of how much time had been wasted. I would learn that suffering is essential in the work of inner alchemy, so long as one does not suffer unconsciously.

Eventually, my teacher challenged me to sit for half an hour at a time. It was hard at first, but I held to it, and sure enough, it got easier after a couple of weeks. I also began sitting every day - deciding that work could wait; I practiced not even looking at my phone till after my morning sitting. The practice became part of my daily morning routine, washing my face, brushing my teeth, etc. Then, one day, I was distracted by something and missed my morning sitting. Missing a sitting was nothing new, but my body felt it this time. I was compelled to sit at the next opportunity. It was like I was entering a new phase where I seemed to be getting more ideas that originated from my body. Well, maybe if not my body, then from somewhere else inside me, rather than the old head-brain. More inner impressions appeared suggesting changes I could make to my sitting practice, like changing my stance from Burmese to Lotus or ‘watching the breath.’ It was like I was starting to get guidance from my higher self. This was all moving along nicely, and there was a new sort of calmness and consistency in my day-to-day living, but I still had some self-abuse tendencies. I knew I was eating and drinking too much, and though I’d try and make changes, I would always fall back in a few days or weeks.

Then, in November of 2021, something new happened. As I had learned, a significant part of my meditation practice was based on sensation - finding sensation within the body and staying with it. To affect this, one could start by focusing on the parts of the body, typically the hand/arms, feet/leg, back/front, and move - or circulate - the sensation sequentially. It occurred to me that one place I had never really looked for sensation was the sexual center. I didn’t realize it then, but this area is an essential key in Indian/Kundalini meditation practice, called the Sacral Chakra. So, on my November 15, 2021 morning, I decided to strip it all down and look for sensation in that region just below the abdomen and above the base of the spine…It was like the firing of a rocket. It is also reminiscent of that moment after you’ve spent all day putting together the Christmas tree, and finally, you plug in the lights, and all the brilliance and radiance all at once come alive! I experienced something I can only describe as a gentle and quiet explosion, like the blooming of a flower, sped up; of white light energy and sensation washing upward over the whole of my body and being. I was in an ecstatic state that I still feel is best described as an orgasm with no climax, having no beginning and no end, a sleepless euphoria that was not confining itself to my lower story but ebbing and flowing about the entirety of my body and being. A sexless sensuousness attached to no one and nothing, yet everywhere at once. I saw that my breath related to the sensation and that I could direct the sensation with my breath. Breath, sensation, and attention became one - or rather, these became an entirely new thing, no longer only breath, only attention, or only sensation, but something more. Inhaling, I could bring the fiery sensation from below the abdomen up to the head, and exhaling, I could direct and ‘fill’ any part of my body with what seemed like a euphoric cosmic fire that was everywhere and nowhere.

Eventually, I had to close the sitting to start getting ready for work, but a part of me didn’t want to. I wanted to keep going. Even after closing I still had something of the feeling in me, and an indescribable sense of joy and harmony filled me. Part of me was still there, meditating back in my room, while the other part was walking around talking to people. I went about my day, working, moving, and speaking as though nothing strange had happened. My interactions with people seemed more fluid and pleasant. But in my moments of silence, I could return - not just to the visual memory, but to the total sense and feeling of being in that state. Surprisingly, it was still there and available to me at the end of the day. I had started getting a little scared it might vanish. After getting off work, I returned home and meditated again, following the same process. The result was the same, and I felt such great joy and relief that I could get there again; it wasn’t just a fluke. Over time, the experience has integrated, but the unique flavor remains.

I have had this dream in the past; maybe you have had something similar. I am flying high up in the sky. It is beautiful, and I feel incredibly free, powerful, and independent. But gradually, I lose my ability to remain air-bound, and I start falling back down to the Earth. I try with all my might and will to stay in the air, but for some reason,