Humanity vs. Divinity – Awakening Amidst Intense Polarity
- Brainz Magazine
- Oct 2
- 14 min read
Updated: Oct 3
Barbara Blum is an energy conduit and spiritual mentor, specializing in moving cosmic life-force energy and transmitting higher states of consciousness through her energy transmissions. Through a grounded and embodied presence, this work is for the awakening of the individual as well as the healing of the collective and the ascension of humanity.
In an era of distraction, confusion, and information overload, the term “awakening,” which until recent times has dwelled only in the far periphery of society’s understanding, is now finding a strong foothold in current dialogue and moving further out into modern culture.
Any time a concept, philosophy, or ideology moves from the esoteric into the mainstream, a paradigm shift in human consciousness is taking place, and this is the juncture where we currently find ourselves.
But what exactly does the term ‘awakening’ mean? And why are we seeing this movement grow stronger amidst the ever-increasing chaos? I’ll give you a hint, they are inexorably tied together. But we’ll come back to that.
First, our humanity
Most people are conditioned to believe that our humanity, living life in this human vessel and all that comes as a result of it, is the defining principle of life… and understandably so. After all, without this human body, which gives us our five senses and cognitive function, we do not have the opportunity to live and feel the endless variations of experiences available to us.
We have these physical bodies, which propel us through our days, filling us with sensation, emotion, thought processes, and general free will to do and create as we desire. Much of these day-to-day operations function on a sort of auto-pilot, but they also give us the freedom to set goals, make choices, and ponder what transpires, whether for better or for worse. We have both our desires and our dislikes. We generally understand right from wrong, and we sometimes make mistakes, plenty of them. Broadly speaking, these are the things that make up the very rich human experience.
Because we experience life itself through this complex human mechanism, the mind-body has become our primary form of identification. Thus, because the human experience is so incredibly tangible, engaging, heart-felt, and often treacherous, there is a commonly-held, mostly unconscious understanding that this human experience is the primary purpose of life and why we’re here.
As such, those who believe in a god or some sort of higher power often intrinsically feel (whether consciously or unconsciously) that their human life and existence are somehow connected to, yet differentiated from, whatever they understand as that almighty source.
As a result of this human paradigm, religion has become, historically and still today, the primary intermediary between our human life and whatever we feel we may have the potential to connect with in the afterlife. No doubt, this ideology and its corresponding institutions provide solace for countless people. But some might argue that giving full agency to something ‘outside’ of you can be disempowering as well… even if that ‘something’ is God itself. As such, many only turn to this full relinquishment at times when one’s own agency feels insufficient or when no other hope can be found.
To be clear, I am not trying to devalue the power of faith. I believe it is an imperative element on the spiritual path. However, there is an important distinction between faith and surrendering to a higher power versus not seeing or acknowledging the power we hold within our own being. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that many people throughout different cultures and timelines have understood or believed, on some level, that there is some all-encompassing, powerful force at work that is beyond our comprehension. Whether viewed through the lens of religion or not, many have put their faith in this almighty omnipotence.
I also think most people who believe in some version of god would acknowledge that this human experience and all of creation exist and are only accessible to us because of some higher, divine essence, but that somehow this essence remains separate from and greater than the physical being you call you.
What I would like to suggest here is that the power of creation has not only created you, it IS you… that the divine process of creation is not some esoteric thing we are merely a result of, but that we ourselves are that divine process in a perpetual state of creating our experience and our existence itself.
The abstract of divinity
To try and encapsulate the concept of divinity is something I will not attempt. It is too vast, too esoteric, has too many definitions, and its representation is highly personal and individualized for most people. And this doesn’t even take into account the segment of the population who, in no way, believe in such a source, creating an even broader spectrum of possibility.
I do believe, however, that for most people, there comes a certain point in life when one begins to question the bigger picture of life itself. Who or what created all this? What is the meaning behind it all? Far-reaching, philosophical questions of this nature have been plaguing humans for time immemorial, and it’s fair to say that countless philosophers, intellectual scholars, and religious-spiritual leaders have dedicated their entire lives to the pursuit of answering that one, overriding, ever-present question:
What is the meaning of life?
Because, while this human life gives us an incredible range of experiences, it most often presents us with more questions than answers. And thus, we humans have the general propensity to look toward some greater source that certainly must have all the answers, something all-knowing, divine in its nature.
Many people, whether through religious upbringing, cultural conditioning, or particular family values, were taught that “the divine” was something outside of them. That its essence is something unfathomable and not fully knowable while living this human life, but which, depending on your particular beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in this life, you may finally and ultimately connect with and ‘know’ after death. The premise being that, yes, divinity or heaven, is accessible, but only after you have completed this human life.
Certainly, this ideology is the foundation of most religions, giving people a ‘guidebook’ of sorts on how to live their lives, with the promise of something greater to look forward to after it’s over.
I would like to add here that this is the primary difference between religious teachings and general spirituality. Religion requires a particular set of beliefs (what those beliefs are is dependent upon the particular religion itself), as well as the understanding that your deference to something outside of and greater than yourself is required in order to obtain eternal bliss in the afterlife, or perhaps, if you’re lucky, to be gifted glimpses of it through blessings and small miracles in this present life.
Spirituality, on the other hand (and in very broad terms), says you yourself have all that is required. Moreover, that eternal bliss and greater understanding are available to you right here and now. No intermediaries needed, and anything that might be available to you in the ‘afterlife’ is also accessible to you at this very moment.
On either front, there also seems to be some inherent understanding that this ultimate, divine force is one of unconditional love. Religion may require you to jump through some proverbial hoops in order to be “worthy” of it at the end, and spirituality will tell you that it does not matter what you have or haven’t done, this divine love is your birthright. Either way, there is an understanding that benevolence and unconditional love are the fundamental nature of the divine.
Meanwhile, for many in the here and now, the great mystery continues. Ask 100 people what divinity is, and I’m willing to bet you will get 100 very different answers.
A bridge called soul
I speak from a spiritual and experiential perspective, void of any religious overtones, but I would like to state that many, perhaps most, religions acknowledge that the human being has, as part of its intrinsic makeup, an intangible, etheric aspect embedded within. While different religions and spiritual philosophies qualify this in vastly different ways, a broad spiritual understanding tells us that while your individualized soul aspect is unique unto you, it is inherently connected to the whole of creation and the Creator itself.
Or, put another way, there is an inherent aspect within you that is your divine nature. You could even say that the soul is the bridge between your humanity and your divinity, two aspects of you which are not separate from one another, both of which are equal and necessary elements of human life.
Here, I must divert back to our humanity for a moment and say that one important distinction humans have over other life-forms on the planet is a particular, evolved state of consciousness. Every living thing on the planet holds its own form of consciousness, but within the human mechanism lies the wholly unique and critical capacity to be self-aware.
It is this exact capacity for expanded, self-reflective awareness that gives humans the ability to open ourselves to higher, wider, and more profound perspectives, perspectives that we perhaps could not see if viewed only through the lens of our intellect. These expanded perspectives allow us to acknowledge, at least on some level, our capacity to go through, feel, and comprehend life beyond what we perceive on a surface level. Perspectives which open an internal compass that provides meaning, or at the very least, some sort of inner acceptance and harmony around that which may be elusive, esoteric, or difficult to understand from a purely intellectual level.
This is the soul aspect within you, acting on behalf of source itself.
Your individual soul, embedded and housed within your body, gives rise to your fundamental human consciousness and guides your correlating human experiences. But its essence is of divine origin. Many spiritual teachings refer to our soul aspect as our ‘higher self’ because it is the direct connection we have to the Creator, Source, or God, but which is experienced in a specific way through human consciousness.
Through this lens, it is fair to say our humanity is experienced because of this divine source within us, a source which continues to give rise to endless possibilities, in part due to the miracle that is the body itself, through which our senses and cognition perceive all experience, and in part due to the innate ability humans have to reflect from an expanded state of awareness.
In fact, the ancient Indian teachings on tantra say that absolutely all of creation (including not just the ‘good’ but all that we perceive as ‘bad’) is a result of the divine manifesting into form, and that it is only the human propensity toward separation and division, which is the result of being solely identified with the body and mind, that creates the idea of a god outside ourselves.
So, to say that we, as humans, are in fact divine beings is to infuse that idea into every possible aspect of life, into the unfathomable intelligence of the body, into our wide emotional scope, and our vast capacity to think, deduce, decide, and act. But also, to embrace the understanding that there is a higher aspect within, guided by our higher soul-self, where we have direct access to the essence of source.
When these realizations begin to surface, it is a tangible turning point where the seeds of ‘awakening’ begin to take root.
And now, awakening begins
Deeply ingrained as a fundamental part of you, not separate or outside of the self, the soul is the interface between your humanity and your divinity. This embedded divine aspect of self is the propelling force that, for many, at some point in their life, sparks a desire to seek an understanding of self beyond the mere lived experience of being human.
In its most simplistic terms, we could say that ‘awakening’ is merely the impetus to begin asking the esoteric questions that never occurred to you to ask before, to begin trying to conceptualize the how’s and why’s of the universe and your place in it. To look beyond the obvious into the mystical. There can be many factors that ignite the spark to understand ourselves in this deeper way.
Sometimes a traumatic event creates a powerful moment where the questioning begins. Sometimes a general, non-distinct displeasure with life pushes one to seek answers. And sometimes, even those who have lived a beautiful life with relative ease may reach a point of just knowing there is more to this entire thing than meets the eye.
I would even suggest that the soul brings with it into this body a particular mechanism that is programmed to, at some predetermined juncture in life, more fully ignite the inner divine aspect, which compels one to begin asking the deeper questions and to begin looking beyond what our humanity alone has found answers to.
This is where the awakening process begins in earnest.
The merging of humanity and divinity
First, you must know that the human creature is wired quite differently than the soul that inhabits it. This makes for a fascinating and curious kind of cohabitation that, upon closer introspection, can really be nothing less than of divine origin.
Your human is a dense, earth-bound form, thriving on structured stability, an overriding sense of security, and some degree of predictability. Such is the required nature of the human, to be nourished and cared for, ever seeking to know and experience safety, contentment, and, ultimately, some form of deep, unwavering, consistent love in this earthly realm.
Your soul, however, is a boundless, creator-connected, utterly expanded aspect of self, an all-knowing, source-driven energy individualized unto you, housed in your body for this lifetime, that seeks none of those human requirements because its inherent nature, its very essence, is already all that which the human aspect longs for.
As a direct aspect of source, the magnitude of divinity and its all-encompassing benevolence is already embedded within you. The soul's containment within the human vessel is for the specific purpose of having experiences and learnings that can only be had through a physical body combined with our human consciousness.
So, a large part of the awakening process is the realization that your soul IS the all-encompassing love and understanding your human seeks. Thus, your soul’s only task while here in human form is pursuing a refined awareness of its unique, divine essence, a task for which your human vessel was specifically created in order to facilitate.
In this divine configuration, somehow, the intermingling of these two dichotomous aspects of mind-body and soul finds, as its sole purpose, a harmonious and unyielding desire to come to full fruition, to learn, to experience, to find its way through the ever-present and often-painful entanglements of being human in order to reach the understanding that is and has always been there, waiting to be realized.
You are that which you seek. The divine benevolence which you look for outside yourself can be found by contemplating its existence right here, right now, within you.
Beginning to understand these deeper concepts of self, layer by layer, life-lesson by life-lesson, is true awakening. It is coming to the realization that you, as you are in this very moment, are in fact divine, and that every cell which makes up the entirety of your body, every thought that passes through your mind, every emotion that rises and passes, is only experienced because you have the fire-spark of the creator itself, igniting, fueling, and experiencing itself as you.
You, the human reading these words, are the divine essence of unconditional love you long for deep in the shadowy parts of your human heart. And this brings us back to why, now, during these tumultuous times, awakening is happening to more and more people at a spectacular rate.
The most important juxtaposition: Awakening amidst chaos
Throughout the ages, many great leaders and iconic spiritual figures have talked about the idea of “unity consciousness” not just as a concept, but as a fundamental aspect of life itself. This highest form of an all-pervasive consciousness is the embodied, felt-sense comprehension (vs. a purely intellectual understanding) that the underpinning of all manifest and unmanifest creation is a single, unifying aspect, an essence that embeds in and bonds all that is, ever was, or ever will be.
Many context this aspect as god, but it can also be understood as pure awareness, unattached to anything, but embedded in everything. In this human form, as well as in all the manifest world we experience around us, this all-pervasive consciousness is always in a state of evolution.
One of the more difficult spiritual concepts to understand is this evolution of consciousness itself. If God is already everywhere as all things, what can there possibly be that needs evolution? But this is the beauty of the human experience. As individual aspects of creation who have the ability to self-reflect, and when that self-reflection begins to expose God/Creator as a part of self, we move through an awakening which, since we are a part of source, affects the whole of source.
So we could say that consciousness evolves as God experiences the vast, unlimited range of possibility through our individualized capacity to open and expand our perspective. So, with each individual awakening, the collective consciousness expands, and the more that happens, the more ‘momentum’ this evolution gains.
Historically speaking, civilization has had many periods where the collective consciousness has undergone monumental shifts. Some examples in recent history would be the aftermath of both World Wars, particularly WWII, and the counter-culture revolution of the 60s, to name a few. And although these eras of change affected the world and began to raise consciousness across the globe, humanity has continued to primarily operate through the lens of separation.
This division of lands, of peoples, of opinions, of beliefs, all continues to entrench us in the mindset of me vs. you, us vs. them, mine vs. yours. As a collective consciousness, humans have always been in a slow, steady state of evolution, but the strong ultimate identification as separate selves has been one of the most difficult human aspects to overcome.
But it is also our tool. Only through the lived experience of separation do we have the opportunity to realize there is another way of being.
So while this division has always been here and, on a surface level, we see that continued today, the truth of the matter is our overall evolution IS in process through the awakening of individuals like you. What we see rising to the surface has always been there, but through our expanded states of awareness, we are seeing old things with new clarity and expanded perspective.
Where are we now?
Many ancient prophecies, revered spiritual teachings, and wizened cultures have told us that throughout the epochs of time, there is an overarching cycle of creation and destruction that occurs. Once humanity reaches a point of destruction, where it has become so deeply entrenched in division and has primarily lost its awareness of its inherent, unified, divine nature, a massive shift will occur in the collective consciousness so that we can begin the journey back to wholeness.
We are at this critical juncture now. The ignorance and suffering that come from the lower, unconscious states of the collective, which have created horrific division and separation throughout the world, have reached a tipping point. Destruction and harm against fellow mankind have been with us always, but now, the expanded awareness of how segmented actions affect the whole, ourselves included, is bringing something that has been embedded deep within the subconsciousness of the collective to the surface.
Which is why, alongside the escalating pain and suffering in the world, we see more and more people coming to an awareness of something greater within their own being, as well as the potential it holds for the world at large. This shift is not only one of self-preservation on both an individual and collective level, it is the divine, in its largest capacity, moving us back to where we were always meant to be, Oneness.
Through the awakening of our own being, we are finding our way back to the divinity within. As an identification with one’s own divinity begins to take hold, kindness and compassion toward all life on Earth become no longer a mere concept. They become a way of existing because, as the highest form of consciousness, unity, we have absolutely no impetus to engage with anything outside ourselves any differently than what our own needs and desires require. Everything comes from the source and state of love.
So, as a spiritual teacher, I am here to remind you that you are a pure and unique manifestation of God's essence residing in a very complex human form. Yet, every day, you have the capacity to look with new eyes and see from higher perspectives. To think critically, ask questions without attachment to the answers, and to open your compassionate heart to the overarching plight of humanity’s journey back to understanding its divine nature.
Do not discount the sublime, utter miracle and privilege it is to experience each moment of this tenuous and spectacular dance of awakening. It’s why you’re here.
Want a taste of the energy behind all of awakening? I invite you into the heart of my work, channeled energy from a powerful connection to the divine realm. Sit with me for this short transmission.
Read more from Barbara Blum
Barbara Blum, Energy Conduit & Spiritual Mentor
Barbara Blum is an Energy Conduit and Spiritual Mentor, specializing in moving cosmic life-force energy and transmitting higher states of consciousness through her two primary energy transmissions: Light Body Activation and Cosmic Consciousness.
Decades of embodied yogic practices and studies of the energy system through the yogic lens brought a personal, experiential understanding of how the human energetic system operates. She is a former Level 2 KAP (Kundalini Activation Process) Facilitator, 700hr Yoga Instructor, and Certified Meditation Instructor offering personal and group energy transmissions in-person and online, holding international retreats and offering facilitator trainings.
