There are numerous pitfalls to awareness expansion:

• If one successfully can enlarge their temporal aperture, that is, expand awareness, their self-identity will increasingly blur.  This could be psychologically uncomfortable. One can conceivably create new ones as one moves along and grows.  All the world's a stage as Shakespeare said, so one should enjoy the show maximally the biggest temporal aperture one can stand to put together.
• Any form of learning and awareness expansion brings with it the complication of conflicts as new knowledge contradicts the old.  These conflicts are stressful.  Stress management skills will be seriously tested. If they aren't, then that's a clue that one hasn't been fully successful in the temporal aperture expansion process.
• Minor neuroses can become major psychoses. If one successfully expands their temporal aperture through problem solving, learning, and contemplating, one becomes more aware of nuances in everyday surroundings. One will also become more aware of nuances within their own psyche. In that area, small psychological and emotional issues can become much bigger ones.  A stable person with a nominal temporal aperture volume may become an mentally unstable person with an expanded awareness.  This is a most significant hazard.
• Mental stresses as above will surely be reflected in the dynamics of the sympathetic nervous system.  The successful seeker will likely wind up with an unhealthy high sympathetic nervous system tone without definite steps to counter this insidious problem. There is a serious potential for psychosomatic complaints as even subtle mental conflicts can become widely variegated physical issues. In the mystical literature there are numerous allusions in this area frequently expressed in the form of allegories. 
• Any mystical or spiritual endeavor risks social alienation as a growing virtual distance develops between the seeker and mainstream society.  Depending on the culture, this could be intense if not life threatening.
  
  Consider an ordinary hand held police scanner. All users of these radios know that the receivers produce "birdies".  If the receiver is inadvertently tuned to the frequency of an internal birdie, it will lock up and no longer receive outside signals - a working micro-definition of psychosis. Similarly, a person with newly heightened awareness can conceivably be overwhelmed by their own internal "birdies".  The same sensitivities that beautifully acquire the outside world will also acquire an inner world - thereby causing latent weaknesses to become disastrous distractions.

| foreword - please read first  | site map |  go to page 6  |

Page 5 - Your comments are welcome.