Awakening the Below Podcast

Oholomo and Jack talk about how the Above and Below meet in the Middle, resulting in an integration of spiritual realization with ordinary daily life. Topics covered: * Present-moment awareness and memory difficulties* The “Above, Middle, Below” model of awakening* Witness consciousness and emotional detachment* Spiritual superiority/arrogance* Therapy alongside spiritual practice* Different people need different spiritual “medicine”* Monastic vs lay ideals and role models* Healthy expression of anger* Spirituality as embodiment, not escapeConnect with us:* Get the Awakening the Below book* Oholomo’s website* Jack’s website* My Rising Rose YouTube channel This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.awakeningthebelow.com

Do you find yourself waking down instead of waking up? Oholomo and Jack explore the rarely-mapped territory of descending into the body, psyche, and underworld — and why it may be the missing piece in modern spirituality.Topics Covered:* Why inner healing must come before unleashing the body’s energies* How even enlightened teachers can have dangerous blind spots around the body and desire* Above, middle, below: a three-directional map of spiritual awakening* Why Western spirituality is obsessed with transcendence — and what it’s missing* Tantra, shamanism, and other traditions that genuinely embrace the below* Sexuality and sensation as the body’s languages for spiritual knowledge* Meeting darkness on its own terms, not as something to transform into light* Ego-death, surrender, and learning to trust the descent* Why spiritual emergence is so often misread as psychiatric crisis* How two fellow travelers of the below found each other — and why this conversation needed to happenConnect with us:* Get the Awakening the Below book* Oholomo’s website* Jack’s website* My Rising Rose YouTube channel This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.awakeningthebelow.com

Hello and welcome to The Awakening the Below podcast. This is a series of conversations between the spiritual teacher, Jack Morrigan, and me, Oholomo. Together, Jack and I give voice to the underbelly of the awakening process. We talk about what we call The Below — that is to say, the difficult emotions, traumas, strange bodily ailments, spirits, ghosts, ancestors, demons, the imaginal, the soul, energies of the earth, the elements, the dark feminine, and much more — that arise for some people in the process of spiritual awakening.Without any background knowledge to help contextualize these things, surprise openings to the below can be difficult to understand. They're consequently often interpreted as spiritual emergencies or mental health crises rather than the blessings and opportunities that they truly can be. The goal of our conversations is to validate and normalize such experiences in order to encourage people to lean into and even embrace the precious dark wisdom that comes from below.Listeners who like what they hear in these episodes may want to check out the book, Awakening the Below, which teaches readers to recognize the signs of the Below when they appear, to navigate the depths more confidently, and to fully integrate these experiences into their spiritual development in a healthy and meaningful way.I look forward to this journey with you in this series. Let's begin our descent.Connect with us:Oholomo’s websiteJack’s website This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.awakeningthebelow.com