By Shaman traie

There's an ancient prayer tucked into mystical texts that goes something like this: "Open my eyes, that I may see wonders from Your law."

Now, before you glaze over at the word "law"—hang with me. Because what if that word doesn't mean what you think it means?

The Hebrew word Torah literally translates to "instruction" or "teaching"—not in the finger-wagging, shame-inducing sense we've come to associate with religious rules, but more like: Here's how reality actually works. Here's the operating system of existence itself.

The old Kabbalistic masters had this wild idea: that embedded in life itself is a kind of cosmic instruction manual. Not rules to make you feel small, but insights that make you feel vast. A framework that doesn't restrict your freedom—it reveals it.

Here's where it gets interesting.

We spend most of our lives operating at a certain frequency. We experience what we can see, touch, taste, feel. We understand what our minds can grasp with the tools we currently have. And that's not wrong—it's just... limited.

Think about it this way: A rock doesn't know what it's like to grow toward the sun. A flower doesn't understand what it means to run through a forest. A dog, as much as we love them, can't quite grasp why we stare at glowing rectangles for hours or cry at movies about people who don't exist.

Each level of existence has its own bandwidth, its own range of perception.

And here's the mind-bending part: we're not at the top of that ladder.

There are frequencies of reality—dimensions of consciousness, if you want to get mystical about it—that we can't perceive with our current equipment. Not because we're broken or bad, but because we haven't developed the capacity yet.

Just like you can't see infrared light without special lenses, you can't perceive certain layers of reality without a different kind of perception.

And this is where the ancient texts get really provocative.

They suggest that you can't think your way into higher consciousness. You can't willpower your way there. You can't even meditate or manifest or positive-vibe your way into it.

Why? Because—and this is the crucial insight—you can't lift yourself to a higher level using only the tools from your current level.

A plant can't decide to become an animal through sheer botanical determination. It needs something from beyond its current nature to transform. It needs different light, different conditions, different organizing principles.

The mystics called this "the Upper Force"—which sounds all lofty and religious, but really just means: there's an intelligence operating at frequencies we haven't accessed yet, and we need a download from that frequency to expand our capacity.

Think of it like trying to run advanced software on old hardware. First, you need the hardware upgrade. First, you need the new operating system installed.

This is where texts like the Zohar come in—not as religious doctrine to be believed, but as technology for consciousness expansion.

The idea wasn't that you read these texts to learn facts or follow rules. The idea was that engaging with them—really engaging, wrestling with them, letting them confuse and disorient you—creates an opening. A kind of spiritual WiFi signal that lets you download something you couldn't generate on your own.

The old Kabbalists weren't asking you to believe anything. They were offering you an experiment:

What if certain words, certain arrangements of ideas, certain frequencies of thought could actually rewire your perception? What if the point wasn't to understand the text with your current mind, but to let the text give you a different mind?

And here's what they promised—not as religious obligation, but as lived experience:

That this expansion of consciousness doesn't make you more restricted. It makes you radically free.

Free from being jerked around by every fear and desire. Free from the tyranny of your own conditioning. Free from the illusion that what you can currently perceive is all there is.

"Anyone who engages in this," the text says, "all the nations of the world cannot rule over him."

Translation: When you tap into this wider bandwidth of reality, nothing external has power over your internal state. Not governments, not economies, not other people's opinions, not even your own past programming.

You become sovereign in your own consciousness.

Not because you're special or chosen or better than anyone else, but because you've developed access to a frequency that transcends the temporary dramas of surface-level existence.

So what's the actual invitation here?

Not to believe something. Not to join something. Not to become more religious or more righteous.

But to consider: What if you're operating with a fraction of your possible perception? What if there are layers of reality—of your own reality—that you can't see yet, not because they're not there, but because you haven't developed the capacity?

And what if there are ancient technologies—weird, cryptic, sometimes infuriating texts and practices—that were designed not to teach you information, but to expand your hardware?

The mystics weren't trying to make you a better person according to someone else's standards. They were trying to make you a bigger person. A person with access to more frequencies, more dimensions, more life.

They were saying: You think this is life? This narrow band of experience you're having? This constant cycling between wanting and fearing, acquiring and losing?

Friend, you haven't seen anything yet.

The texts don't ask for your belief. They ask for your curiosity.

They ask: Are you willing to experiment with the possibility that you contain multitudes you haven't met yet? That life is infinitely stranger, wilder, and more free than the version you've been experiencing?

Because if you are—if you're willing to let these ancient strange words disorient you, confuse you, crack you open—they promise something that no religion can give you: not salvation, but transformation. Not rules to follow, but eyes to see what was always there, waiting for you to develop the vision.

If this resonated with you and you'd like to support my work as I continue exploring these intersections of ancient wisdom and modern consciousness, you can buy me a coffee here. Your support helps me keep writing and sharing these explorations freely.