Wake Up

Raising Your Vibrations: The Path to Spiritual Growth Without Suffering

• Douglas James Cottrell PhD • Season 2 • Episode 9

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Dr. Douglas James Cottrell tackles a profound spiritual question: does elevating our consciousness really make life more elegant and easier rather than more difficult? His answer challenges conventional wisdom about the spiritual path.

The journey begins by defining what "raising vibrations" actually means—becoming fuller, more actualized beings who tap into the wisdom encoded in what Dr. Douglas calls our "soul's DNA." This reconnection allows us access to deeper understanding and better decision-making abilities, ultimately leading to a more purposeful existence.

Contrary to popular belief, Dr. Douglas emphatically rejects the notion that spiritual advancement requires suffering. He calls this perspective "a great deception" designed to control people through guilt and self-punishment. Instead, he advocates for a path of peace, virtue, and living by the golden rule. When we align with these principles, life naturally becomes more harmonious and fulfilling—not more difficult.

Using the powerful metaphor of a boomerang, Dr. Douglas explains that whatever energy we project into the world inevitably returns to us with equal measure and impact. This universal principle explains why those walking negative paths ultimately experience lives filled with fear and mistrust despite apparent power. The spiritual path isn't about escaping responsibility but embracing it—recognizing that while we can delegate certain responsibilities, our personal duties cannot be transferred to others.

Perhaps most powerfully, Dr. Douglas reminds us that spiritual experiences aren't rare, mystical occurrences. When we recognize that prophetic dreams, meaningful connections with friends, and moments of deep insight are all genuine spiritual experiences, we open ourselves to the awareness that we're already connected to dimensions beyond our physical reality. The key to true spiritual growth lies in being fully present, making conscious choices in each moment, and recognizing that both pleasures and hardships are temporary conditions in our eternal journey.

Ready to explore your own spiritual potential? Subscribe to Wake Up with Dr. Douglas James Cottrell and join a community of seekers on the path to greater consciousness and peace of mind.

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Announcer:

Welcome to Wake Up with Dr Douglas James Cottrell, your source for helpful information, advice and tips to live your life in a mindful way in this increasingly chaotic world. For over four decades, Dr Douglas has been teaching people how to develop their intuition and live their lives in a conscious way. His news and views of the world tomorrow, today, are always informative and revealing. And now here's your host, Dr Douglas James Cottrell.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Welcome to the Wake Up, the broadcast where curiosity leads to deeper understanding. I'm your host, Douglas James Cottrell, and my good friend and co-host Les Hubert is here with me, along with editor Jack Bialik.

Les Hubert:

Hi, Doug. Today I have an interesting question concerning elevating our vibrations. Back in the 1900s there was a book written called Masters of the Far East. It was written by a Dr, M Spalding. He was kind of a rock star back in his day and he claimed that raising our vibrations makes life more elegant, more easy instead of more difficult. How is that, and how can we go about doing this for ourselves?

Douglas James Cottrell:

Well, let's sort of talk about raising our vibrations. That's kind of one of those generic terms. So when we say raising our vibrations, we mean becoming better, fuller actuated, more intelligent, wiser, able to communicate with the divine. So for every person out there listening, they would have their own personal uh, opinion or some sort of understanding about raising our vibrations. So let's assume that raising your vibrations means that right now, everybody listening to our podcast wants to be bigger, better, more informed, smarter, wiser, more spiritual. So, whatever reason they're wanting this increasing their vibrations or their energy or their levels it's of course the intention is to be stronger spiritually. You have in your soul's DNA that consciousness, and so if we say we want to raise our vibrations, to become more conscious of that wisdom that's within our soul's DNA, that might be a good path to take, or to understand that raising your vibrations to a higher level of understanding by reconnecting with the engrams, the vibration in your soul, the soul DNA. So if that's the case, then what are we saying? Well, I'd like to remember more, I'd like to know more and I'd like to have access to all knowledge, so that when you have a question or you are required to make a decision, you will have information that will help you be well informed to make the correct decision. You know, quote unquote, never be wrong and always be right in what you do.

Douglas James Cottrell:

And of course, we stumble through life. We settle for less in life. We endure life, and so when it gets to a point where you're not happy, you reach out and you look for more. You want more, you want to get away from the drudgery of life. There must be something better than eating, sleeping and working in life. So the motivation of the, let's say, the uncomfortable part of life helps you look for more.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Now, as you aspire to do more, there are certain conditions. That is, when you want more, you have to struggle more, you have to do more, you have to work harder, as they always say. You know, you put a lot of effort in, you get a lot out, or you get rewarded. So that's a law of nature. You know I often say you go to the fireplace and say give me heat and then I'll give you wood. Well, you're not in the order of events. So you have to go back and figure out what are the steps and how do I get to where I want to go.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So, somebody writing a book or somebody putting their wisdom down it's not the only book and the only bit of wisdom. Everybody has some. So look around, that's the first thing. Look and see what's out there, as to quote unquote raising your vibrations, because what you're doing is you're actually saying I want to know more and then, when I know more, then I can do more. And I can do more with the confidence that what I'm doing is going to pay off, it's going to be successful, I'm going to accomplish something, I'm going to have more prosperity, I'm going to have more success, I'm going to be more content. And then you have to define that, because what I just said about all those things, they're kind of like conditions. So you have to come down and say I want to have things that will make me happy, I want to have people around me that I'll feel loved. So having people around you is a real thing and of course, their liking you or loving you or giving you affection, provides what you're looking for in the first place. So again, I'm talking in a pretty simplistic way, but when you want to go to the higher levels of consciousness, all those things apply.

Douglas James Cottrell:

And so if we take it to raising your vibrations, meaning raising your consciousness, then we have to say: what is that exactly? What is a religious experience? What is a spiritual experience? You know, when I once asked a group of people that, they kind of were lost. I said have you ever had a spiritual experience? They didn't quite know how to answer. And then I said have you ever had a dream, and then the dream came true? And it was oh, yes, yes, we have lots of times. And I said that is a spiritual experience. And they all looked at me kind of like, wide-eyed, in wonder: what do you mean? I said, well, that came from the great beyond. You were in a dream state, a higher level of mind or consciousness, and here you were having a soul consciousness, spiritual consciousness, raising of your vibration, consciousness, because you were having a dream of perhaps seeing the future and you didn't even know.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Ascertaining what is it, the raising your vibrations that you're aiming for? It's kind of like I'm going to take a trip. I'm leaving Friday. Okay, where are you going? Oh, I don't know, but I'm going Friday. So having a religious experience, raising your vibration, has to be written down and defined so that when you get there, you know that you've arrived. That consciousness could be: I'd like to meet a spiritual master, a teacher. I'd like to meet an angel that's watching over me. I'd like to meet a guardian angel. I would like to be able to go to other heavens above. I would like to feel that all-encompassing love, like a kundalini experience, where I am just surrounded by so much love. I don't care about anything else. I am so disinterested with the physical world. I just want to be in that envelope of that unconditional love, and I have met people who have done that. Usually, once in your life is a a guarantee, but sometimes people have it twice, and I met a person that had it three times and they were spending the rest of their life trying to have that experience a fourth time

Les Hubert:

Wow.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Yeah, and it's kind of like okay, but it's such a wonderful experience. You know like everything else is secondary. However, that leads to the trap of always wanting the ultimate pleasure and not having anything else. So you end up looking for this pleasure, wasting, if you will, your time and life, looking for this feeling of absolute, complete, unconditional love. Well, we have to struggle a little bit, we have to put the effort in, because then when we have the reward, it makes it worthwhile. We feel better, accomplished, rewarded, whatever we feel good about it.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So, raising your vibration, is in a sense of having a kundalini experience, like having a feeling of unconditional love surrounding you. Is it a sense of knowing, all knowing? Is there such a place, a point when you can know everything? Yes, there is. I've touched upon it, I've witnessed it, I've had experiences of it. But like a dream, i t was there and then I blinked and it left. So I was touching upon some dimension or place where this knowledge was. Is that what you mean, my friends, when you say you want to raise your vibrations? What did this fellow have to say in this book that he determined what raising vibrations was all about Le s ?

Les Hubert:

Well, he kind of was touching upon the fact that, in some disciplines, we're taught that if, in order to strive spiritually or to grow spiritually, you have to suffer, suffer, suffer, and then life gets more difficult as you climb that ladder, and he said. No. According to the masters of the Far East, he said exactly the opposite. Life because you learn more and you figure things out, you go yeah, I don't want to do it that way anymore, I'm going to do it this way, which seems a lot more more elegant. My question to you, though, is you touched on knowledge and how people move towards knowledge. What if somebody was moving towards the knowledge of, let's say, like black magic? I mean, that's knowledge in itself, and yet they want to recruit more knowledge. So how does that differ from somebody who wants to grow in knowledge in the other direction?

Douglas James Cottrell:

Is there any difference? Knowledge is knowledge. So the determination of white magic or black magic or magic at all is a mindset. So if one wants to have a constructive life, and, you know, do good things, or one wants to have a destructive life and do destructive things, it basically is a choice. I mean prayer is: I pray for the well-being somebody, I pray for virtue to come to them, I pray for them to overcome their hardships or their illness. And then the other side of that is I pray for somebody to have hardship, I pray for somebody to have discontent. I call upon all the lost souls out there to bring influences of difficulty and challenges, as opposed to I pray to all the angels out there to uplift and help. So in that essence, white magic and black magic is just a prayer, one for constructive and beneficial needs and the other for destructive and selfish needs.

Douglas James Cottrell:

And this is where it might get into that point where people say you want to invent yourself, you have to suffer, you have to punish yourself. I agree with our friend in the East. No, if you're suffering, especially if you're suffering at your own hand, you got it wrong. You're supposed to have a wonderful life and, if I can say, any one quality other than love profound that you will find that way is living your life in a peaceful way, within due bounds of all humankind, with virtue, with honor, with caring and with the golden rule being your choice of weapon. You know, do unto others only that that you would like to have done to yourself. And I'm changing that by saying only. But the idea is that what you are putting forth, what you're giving out, is like a boomerang. You throw that boomerang out and whatever you have on that boomerang is going to come back to you exactly the same, the same measure, at the same speed, and it's going to have the same effect. So why not throw out boomerangs of compassion, helping, constructive aspects, not being anything other than grateful for other people and cheering them on in their own successes and their own achievements? So combining those two aspects, Les, about if you want to advance yourself, you have to suffer. That's a great deception. That's a deceit and that's a way of somebody controlling people by blaming them or getting them more exactly to blame themselves, for them to feel guilty and then to punish themselves. That doesn't sound like heaven to me. That sounds like the other place. So the freedom of your soul, the freedom of your mind, the freedom of your life, that doesn't, in my mind, have anything to do with suffering and punishment.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Now life ,again pivoting a little bit, life is full of suffering. We have difficulties, we get sick, we hurt ourselves. We have friends, we have people that we lose in our life. They die or they abandon us or they move away. But you know, think about this. When you ever start feeling sorry for yourself in that way, it's like just a minute. How many people were there at your birth? Well, there was apparently some people watching you, but you were the only one. No matter if you're twins or triplets, you were there, one at a time. And so you came into the world, somehow, through excruciatingly difficult and hardship, you were born and then life got better. When you go out, it's the same way, only it's not excruciatingly painful. It's a release, it's a relief and you're moving back. So in between those two points, you're on your own. You're not really codependent. You don't need other people to make you happy, nor should you expect other people to make you feel any way other than you choose to feel.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So in answering those questions, you pray to a bunch of bad guys, they're going to make you feel bad. If you surround yourself with negative people, meaning toxic people, complaining people, you're going to feel toxic and you're going to feel sad. So if you surround yourself, it's like putting on a nice warm coat and you have people around you, you feel better, especially if they're your friends and they care about you and you care about them, you feel wonderful. Even though you don't know it, you're having a spiritual experience because now, for that moment, you're together with other people, which is only going to be for a moment, because everybody's going to go home and you'll never, ever be able to rekindle that moment. So that's an essence of a spiritual experience. But you've done it on your own and together with other people. They're on their own, but together you're all together, sort of, you're all in the same path, individually, but together. And so you start to look at it and say, yes, I don't need other people to approve of me, I don't need to people- please, I don't need to be codependent. Who's the only person in the world you need to please? Numero uno, yourself and then not to get carried away like, hey, I want to be the Big Poobah, you know. No, I'm just happy to be here with the group.

Douglas James Cottrell:

And so, with that understanding, you can find your way. But understanding that you have two things: responsibility and duty. Responsibility you can hire people to take responsibility lawyers or accountants and things like that, responsible for your welfare, your money. But duty is something you do yourself and that duty cannot be done by anybody else. And the realization that, whatever it is you have to do, because it's your duty and nobody else can do it, you're having a spiritual illumination. You're back to your birth. Hey, I can handle this. Nobody else can do it, so I'll do it. If you procrastinate, if you put off, if you assign your duty to somebody else, it's going to fail. So the key is hey, this is my duty, get on it right away.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So, in this search for spiritual illumination, yes, you can contact some pretty bad actors in the world and in the next world, because the higher levels and dimensions are exactly the same in the degree of consciousness, as are the dimensions that we're in here in the world. There are bad guys here in the world. They die. Where do they go, Les? They go to the bad guy's heaven. I have another name for it, but that's where they go. So where do all the saints and wonderful people go? Well, they go to the world of saints and wonderful people go.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So, having that idea that you can have a spiritual experience, spiritual illumination and understanding, it comes down to who? To you. You can listen to other people and you can read other books and you can agree with it. You can have that a-ha moment. You get it, you wake up, but you did it on your own.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So, as we go to these people, Les, of attempting to understand the dark side, it exists. No one can say there is only heaven. No one can say everything that goes wrong is the fault of the devil. Or no one can say that it's all man's fault (man, human kind, I mean), it's all their fault. No, we live in a world that is a world of duality. We have light, we have darkness. Choosing which path you'd like to follow, I think, answers that original question about what is illumination. What is that spiritual experience? Well, it starts with you choosing, like in the beginning, to be born. Have you ever thought of that when you were born? Was that like a spontaneous, by chance moment? Or did you as a little baby say I've had enough, I want out of here. You came into the world. I kind of think that's the case, in talking to people who remember their times in the womb and their birth and things like that, it's kind of like you're choosing everything. So, as we explore this, what did you mean more exactly about people visiting the dark Le s?

Les Hubert:

Well, yeah, it's interesting. You mentioned this because I knew a person who was involved in organized crime early in his life and I got to know him for over a period of time and I remember him telling me about how, he said you know, he said Hollywood has it all wrong. He said you know, in shows like these, you know, these people involved, the gangsters, they have lots of respect, they have an easy life and they've got the world, you know, by the -- the world is their oyster. And he said it's all not true. And I said Well, what do you mean? He said Well, he said, yes, you do get a lot of respect. But he said, eventually it catches up with you and because you're involved in such negativity as you just mentioned, what you throw out comes back to you. And all of their lives, he told me, he said most of his friends just didn't do well, and neither did he, until he got out of that. Like, he was able to get out of it, thank God, and basically live a normal life. But he said you cannot trust anybody. So when you're involved in that negativity, that power is there, the respect is there, but you pay a dear price for it. So he learned the hard way it's better to go the other route than that route.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Well, I think that kind of respect that he's talking about was respect out of fear and more than likely he's always looking over his shoulder every day. When you can't trust people, that means you can't have any close friends to trust because they might be the person that comes along and assassinates you or something or tries to promote themselves by assassination. So that's a world that is pretty toxic, but the respect is out of fear. People who respect you to your face are having mental reservations or inside they're plotting your assassination. You know that kind of thing. So what is that? That's a world of toxic thoughts, but it's based on fear. So what's the answer? To be in a situation where it's loving thoughts. I'm not talking lovey-dovey, romantic or sexual thoughts, although those are good thoughts to have. It's a matter of being at peace. You know, you go into a room and everybody's in their room and they're like, hi, Les, how you doing? They're happy to see you, and you just let your guard down and you're okay. And you can even do something silly and nobody's going to condemn you or chastise you or correct you and say, oh well, everybody does that. You fell on your face, well, we'll help you out, but okay, I suggest you don't do that again because it hurts. Been there, done that, so pass it on.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So the essence of, in the simplistic terms we're talking about, yes, Hollywood's got it wrong, but that fascinating aspect of the heroes, the generals, the emperors, the conquerors, something in our nature admires that might you know, but might doesn't make right. So I don't know. It's something fascinating with our character as humans. But the other side of that story is the messiahs, the saints, the wise men. They don't go to conquer people and force them to do things at their will, which we know, there's no empire in the entire history of the world that has survived the world. They come and they're there for a while and they go. But the aspect of being kind and helpful and loving to one another, that's always in the world. There just seems to be a whole lot less people today than there was yesterday that were more loving in yesteryear. But the pendulum swings and then our perception changes and we find, wait a minute there's a whole lot less people in the world causing problems and there's more people loving and being kind. So somewhat of your perception and your bias, I guess, is one way to perceive the world. Not to be naive. Have a practical outlook. Look at situations that come to you in your life, evaluate each and every day and then be wise enough that, when you learn a lesson, to remember it and apply it next time.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So, as you reach out, in these heavens of experience and these experiences of the world, what are you really doing? You're being wise, and to have the gift of wisdom means you've lived a lot of life. It also means you have a lot of good friends, just like you and I on the Wake Up here, Les, we have our friends out there. We hope they'll subscribe to our Wake Up podcast and help us spread the word. and so things we say might trigger a word, a thought and change somebody's life, and then they will pass that on. That's what, praying to the higher beings, to the avatars and the saints, we don't want to make God our servant. We don't want to make the angels our servants. We don't want to make deals with anybody. If you do this, I'll be so good. We want to s ay s: I want to be like you, I want to be fully awakened, I want to be aware, I want to be self-aware, I want to be realized, then I want to be fully realized. Can do . Just take your steps, my friends.

Les Hubert:

Well thank you clarifying that because so many kids today, as we wrap this up, so many kids

Les Hubert:

Well, we're in the present moment, for a moment, whether it's a pleasurable thing or not so so pleasurable if it's a difficult thing or it's a hardship, it's hardship only going to be there for a moment. So the ever-present moment is where we want to be. Until next time, peace be with you. .

Announcer:

Thank you very much for listening to Wake Up If you enjoyed this episode the ever-present moments where we want to be. Until next time, peace be with you. Thank you very much for listening to Wake Up. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you'll be notified when a new episode is posted, and we'd greatly appreciate your review of our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts to let others know about the great content we're producing. For more about Dr Douglas' self-development classes, books and other related products, please visit his website douglasjamescartrellcom. Until next time, we wish you all of God's blessings health, wealth and peace of mind.