Inspiration And Nonduality

Awakening and inspiration share very similar attributes, and are to my mind siblings to each other within the self.

To reach each, the path or method is so similar. The inspired state requires surrendering everything that does not belong, that will hold you back, not push you forward. Inspiration is thought of as that elusive state that cannot be forced. Artists and creatives go “looking for it.” Popping on a CD, taking a walk, maybe some coffee in a corner of the shop scribbling, waiting for the mood to strike. You look or wait for it like an elusive jaguar slipping through the dense underbrush…you never know when it is going to show itself. One waits for it expectantly.

When it does arrive, you are letting it in, not wresting it to the ground. When it comes, it is as if you are invincible, on top of the world. Anything is possible.

In truth, inspiration comes when we allow ourselves to be dissarmed, when we let go the monkey mind that chatters away. You don’t force inspiration the same way that you don’t force awakening. Why is that?

Inspiration isn’t a rational process at its core. It may suit up using rational decisions…which instrument to play, what key, what time signature, or brush or color. But all of those things are subjects of inspiration, subservient to its need, desire, and play. Inspiration is, or can be, an utterly unbounded state in which anything is possible but only one thing can usually be done at a time. An entire year’s worth of creative output can be conceived in moments like these. I know that this is often the case for me. I have to pick and choose the things that have the best use of my time. Much is similarly discovered when one is awakened. Worlds emerge in both the inspired and awakened state. Why?

Both inspiration and nonduality are deeply rooted in creativity. All forms of it. People describe kundalini as a libidinous force, but I experience it as radical creativity in all of its forms. The desire in the physical for the beloved is itself a creative act of love…that creates new life. Curious, too, how we have so much shame surrounding that part of ourselves. Curious as well how little our cultures honors the arts. The powers that be prefer to make money selling war machines. So easy, so uncreative, so destructive. A world upside down. One expands, the other contracts. For now, this is how this world is.

We must fill it with the juiciness of our art, our music, our photography, and the love that is present in both inspiration and in awakening or nonduality. We must do this without cheapening either of them but making them even more precious…inspiring others even if they cannot hold a note, or paintbrush or a meditative state (yet).

So if you want to know awakening, know your creative impulse because that is the tail of the cosmic tiger.

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Love and Meditation, Yoga and Tantra – Osho

I found this to speak so closely to my experience, what I strive for, what I have encountered, what I strive for more…truly, not as effort, but as what naturally arises as the self is purified more and more. More work to do, but his words are so on point…

https://wp.me/pyZzR-227

The Giant In You

Sleeping, slumbering, rolling deep within is that part of you you always suspected must be there, your link to the infinite.

Bigger than you, scary when it first comes, its resources are amazing. Like a deep ocean, an aquifer moving silently beneath your awareness, the path to its innefable reality lies in the innocence of your heart, the desiring of your soul, a few chance encounters with eyes closed or an event that shakes you out of your workaday world. It is like a mystery, and yet there it is, shining new in each moment that you find it. Or did it find you?

Letting go puts you in its grip. Dissolving the rational allows it to step forward. Listening, expecting miracles, bids it to come near. Wiping your slate clean is how it can communicate with you. Let go the small to grasp the big, and yet it is no grasp, no trying. It is the one that can bring you so much.

People struggle saying how hard it is. Only if you let the rational and its playmate, ego, have its way. This teaches you how not to be so you can BE. It is a great windswept silence that returns you to those places long forgot. So simple, this is no place for a linear mind. This is our multidimensional nature. How could anything so linear as the rational left brain ever hope to guide you? You need the nonlinear, holistic part of your mind, which is a mirror for that part of your eternal consciousness to channel and express itself through this body, this self. Learn its secrets which are breath, movement, and quiet intuition. The Sophia within.

Let the rational observe. Let it watch from a distance. Don’t let it get any ideas. Take notes but don’t pretend that you know. The more empty you are, the more you can be filled by it. The more empty that you are, the more you can be guided by its great mystery and power. The more you have it figured out, the more it eludes you. Consider the choice you might not usually take but that keeps bubbling up around the edges of your awareness. That is the corner stone most toss away as unimportant.

You have this, but to gain it, you must let it all go in order to grasp the bigger. It is like embracing the wind. Now let it it take you.

There is a sleeping giant within. So many never find it because the way to it cannot be known by what you know. Instead, feel. Open to mystery, and trust that it will come, a giant ready to merge with you to lift you into a new awareness. Let it do the work. It has all of this. It alone is perfectly suited to take care of anything that feels beyond your ability. Trust. Ask. Wait. Be patient. Believe it could come, and it will.

Energetic Tidbit

I’m an artist by profession and was trained in being good at observation. I have been involved in fairly technical media during my training and career, so I have spent a lot of time testing things for a wide range of results and insight. Like how long it takes on average to finish a surface in metal or glass in order to determine how long each step will take in the production of a piece that will get created many times. Having a good and dependable data set is critical to being able to know how to price work competitively, but also how to reduce flaws or problems that crop up. It is also a great way to understand all sorts of phenomena. Engineers will test new alloys in order to understand how it will weather, hold up under stresses, or finishing surfaces.

If you learn how not to bias yourself with what you think you are seeing, the data often will lead you right to the issue and you can then begin to formulate solutions from there.

Hang on, there, this does tie into spiritual or energetic work, I promise!

By my second year into awakening, I noticed that while I was having lots of synchronicities, I had this feeling like there was something more to them than met the eye. Was there a way to test this phenomena so I could learn more about it? It seemed reasonable to me!

I turned to observation to see if I could tease out any important details. My feeling about this phenomenon was that this wasn’t something the universe was sending me, like a message from the divine as I had heard others describe it. But what was it, if not that?

When you run high energy for days, weeks, months, and years at a time, you get lots of opportunities to observe it in action. I had reached various levels of what I learned was called samadhi.

I noticed one early Fall after I had broken my dreaded adrenal cycle experience that my energy hit new high vibrational peaks. I can only describe this as feeling different from how kundalini had been. It was just….high frequency is the only way I can describe it. I could feel it in my body, too, all this energy once used to fuel unacknowledged fear (expressed as 24/7 adrenaline for about five months solid), now being expressed as this new energetic feeling. I had released some repressed emotional material, along with learning how to regulate my system through the will for this “new” state I had finally reached.

This energy was fairly constant, but it would go away for a day, a week, or just an hour or two, so I had opportunities to see it at work under a variety of conditions. Who knows how it was going to go, except it was doing its work on me.

During this time I noticed when the energy got to a really high in frequency, I would begin having synchronicities. If the energy cut out, so too would the synchronicities. This was noticable as a cery different frequency, I could feel it as this shimmering energy instead of the old peak energy mixed with my body pumping out adrenaline.

“Hmmmmm,” I thought, “I wonder if the two are connected?” I considered the possibility that my energy was responsible for creating these events. It sounded reasonable to me. What had me a little fuzzled was how this worked. Like usual, I had ideas but needed ways to test them.

I continued to watch and observe. I would wake up one morning with a totally calm energetic landscape but would find by, say, mid-day that suddenly the energy would whir to life….and I’ll be darned if the synchronicities didn’t track right along with the energy. Coincidence or correlation? After observing this dozens of times with the result being the same each time, I felt that this was a correlation. Okay, that was most likely figured out. I had also noticed whenever I began feeling the energy awakening early on in my process I also noticed really bizarre synchronistic events taking place. So, yeah.

I then began thinking about the concept of manifestation, considering that this was very much like that principle but now on steroids. I wondered how I could test this idea? I considered that synchronicities were just how we ran our energy and that the universe was doing what it had always done, except now events were more clearly mirroring our thoughts.

I know that this sounds like a bit of a leap from seeing “11:11” or other number sequences, but my intuitive read on this was that seeing number sequences were the result of my simply not giving a direction to my thoughts. I reasoned that we all usually have these number events because we aren’t thinking about how we could direct out thoughts more. This was just my theory. It was time to try to gather some data.

In order for my theory to show any correlation to directional thought, I would have to experiment with that very thing. As I began doing this, I tried to envision outcomes stemming from my thoughts. I picked things that I knew I had few competing beliefs about since this has long been known as one element that can keep a wish or thought from coming to pass. I had to feel like there was no, “Yes, but” kind of thoughts present. I did this over about four months, often on a daily basis, depending on when the energy was peaking or strong.

I found that my old synchronicities dissapeared almost completely and began to be replaced with even more complicated series’ of events that, while synchronistic, were now providing me with much more information based on relevance to my own thoughts. This showed me that a synchronicity as we think of them can become much more complex than before.

I also began having events that would repeat, such as seeing a quote from a writer and then randomly seeing that author’s name coming up based in events for which I had no direct control over, all within a few hours of each other. I would then look up the quote in a book by that author only to find that the chapter in the book from whence the quote was mentioned would contain critically relevant information for the chapter in a book I was working on. I had numerous events like these, but with the caveat that each set of events were specific to a goal or wish that I had in mind. Maybe you have had experiences similar to this!

To put a fine point on this phenomenon, nearly all of the “research” that I did for this book was all gleaned as a result of synchronicities much like I have just described to you. The conditions were that I was engaged in the subject and really didn’t want to have to pour over books to find what I was looking for. That is, I dreaded having to do research the traditional trial and error way. This set up a parameter for how the events would take place. This, I think, was the direction given to my thoughts, which would manifest in these unbelievable events.

I began to realize that the books that came to me, whether randomly plucked from the library shelves and opened to the very page that contained the pertinent information, or from a friend who might innocently reference a book on the subject I was currently working on, the result was always the same. I was gleaning information that would have been nearly impossible for me to find in the way these events were doing. And yet, these events happened with considerable regularity. In truth, ALL of my outside research simply came to me in this inexplicable way. I know that some people on hearing this might say, “You were meant to find that one paragraph in that book!” But, I thought, what if the emphasis is on how our consciousness interfaces with reality, essentially creating an alignment based on your own thoughts? Yes, I do think there is an intelligence there, but if it is as objective as many want to think it is, why doesn’t it do more things for us that we don’t think about that are in our best interest? Do you see the difference, here?

Why doesn’t it save thise children in the school bus in Yemen that was instead blown up by a missile? Why didn’t it jump in and save the Jews during the Holocaust? Why didn’t it save me from a head-on collision four months ago? I’m fine, by the way, but I really wish the car wasn’t totalled! Do you get what I mean here? This was showing me that it was being driven by my own needs which I was thinking about, not some objective intelligence. I know, that might be a tad cerebral, but this is the kind of thing that fascinates me. And yes, I do split hairs!

Always there was an aspect universal to these events, which was that the information that I needed was not known to the person when they randomly mentioned a book relevant to my topic. If it was an event that didn’t involve another person, I was plucking books off the shelves and turning to the one page that had the information I was looking for.

The other side to all of this was a state in which I was either not thinking of finding the material or not having spoken about the information to the person who would mention a book on the same topic or a teacher who had information on the topic at hand. This still kept the “bizarre” aspect in place that is native to most synchronicities.

This experience showed me that synchronicities are little more than our ability to manifest outcomes by using a “field” based approach instead of a particle based approach. A field is consistent with “putting it out there” as an unencumbered wish or visualization, whereas a particle approach is more about trying to work to make an event happen a certain way. One wishes for an outcome but doesn’t think beyond how that will happen, while the other wishes for an event and tries to make it happen. Want to guess which one has been heads and shoulders above the other in both efficiency and usefulness?

I use these terms of particle stnd wave symbolically to refer to the two seemingly dualistic modes referred to in physics and electrical phenomena. One feels masculine and one feels feminine in character. Can you guess which one refers to which mode of “doer-ship”? Particle. Solid, concrete, following a rational systematic and liner approach. The other is much more mysterious and always seems to work with amazing accuracy and perfect timing.

The end result in my observation of this phenomenon is that it seems that our intention meshes with our reality and helps bring certain events to fruition at a speed that makes these events feel almost otherworldly. Can you relate?

Does prana work with our own thoughts to help create events like these on a shorter time scale than usual? I say this because awakening is certainly a change in the flow and awareness of prana (that is what kundalini is, a radical flow of vast amounts of prana).

I wanted to pass this along for anyone who has either had this happen or who wants to test it for themselves to see what results they get. I hope this adds a little new wrinkle to your day. ♡

(Copyright, Parker Stafford)

Finding It

In my journey, the breakthrough that I made was in realizing the role of feeling in cosmic consciousness. I saw how backwards the world is. Instead of understanding feeling, we eschew this in favor of “thinking things through” or using the rational mind over the part of us that has the capacity to plumb the depths where the transcendental dwells.

We are taught to think but we are not taught to feel. We certainly are taught how to be emotional, but no one teaches or points to feeling as important (let alone superior to rational linear thought) because people are ignorant of what this means. This is like casting pearls before swine. No one sees its value and everyone is afraid of being criticized for such simple “thinking.”

Learning to feel is the most important thing you can do. It is what arouses the sleeping woman and man to life. It is what arouses kundalini, even. As you feel deeper, you open your consciousness to more energy. It can be analyzed, but not grasped by the rational self. It is so simple a child could do it, which is why those who do teach about it describe a simpler state or type of being to know more deeply. It isn’t fashionable by those who want to keep their grip on the cramped quarters of the rational, but it can in time can show you the superconscious side of you, a remarkable part of you that you have always been.

Using this part of you can confer peace (often gradually for most) because it is such a simple way to be. It is here, as the zen master Taishen Desimuru said that, “all the sand of the deserts flows through your hands.” You gain All by being simpler and quiet as you turn on your capacity to feel. This is different from emotion. It is a depth we all have.

By being in the rational mind we get confused by words. Here, in this video, Jiddu Krishnamurti answers a question about the existence of God. It isn’t until the 15:30 mark that he homes in on the important part of all experience. He isn’t talking about whether God exists at this point, but is pointing out how to BE in order to understand the world and consciousness.

When he says “word is not that” he means you have to move out of the thinking mind full of ideas about things and move to the part of you that loves with all of your heart and being. That gives your consciousness the means to take a word like “tree” and enter the place within that connects with the tree being discussed. Of course this can happen if you allow yourself to do it. He is saying, you must turn to this other part that is in you to know these things. You have to turn to your feeling self, your capacity to FEEL. And THAT is the simple but potent door that we open ourselves to the All. Here is the video…

Where The Fire From Heaven Dwells

Words, like belief, can be prisons or liberators. Breath can show you the way….a deep simple innefable truth existing beyond reason. An inner compass that resides before the prison of belief held me. Be careful of your words, like your beliefs, for like the gods and goddesses, they will reinforce each other, catching you and convincing you of its small truths as it stands in the shadow of the one great Light.

Beyond belief is that place within me, within you and the All, where we meet where we are, you and I, stripped bare of pretense. Written in the heart of a Child, these sparkling consequences tell us of truths simple in their acquisition. Beyond reason, curled up within the fiery portals of becoming, it beckons to you, promising to ruin you for anything but its great soul-saving promise.

It holds out promise, it’s hand, that we might drop what we hold now to embrace this new world within us. It asks everything of us to discover what will remain, what abides in its deep portals of bliss which has always been the physician to our undoing, redemtion, and inward discovery.

It is beyond belief.

Let it go. To feel it means letting loose your grip of what you think is real. It is at once terrifying and the deepest comfort, the more you let go the more it fills you and animates you. Whispering in your heart it welcomes you as so much leaves you in this upside down world. Set right, set on fire, it meets us in this place. The great healer has come to you.

I know that I was made to bear this fire, to bring it down through myself in a simple act of forgetting. It asks me to let go of the things that limit me. All belief, bias, notion. “Forget what you think you know; you cannot know the gods with your mind or memory…” is what it says. It opens a portal through feeling, through the She, and through her I see a brilliant channel into those realms of fact but which are beyond all belief.

The divine asks us only one thing: feel truly, deeply, because that is where it waits for us. This is the stair, the ladder which we seek but are held back by in our rational minds that speak in the grammar of uncertainty and the syntax of fear. Letting go of it, I turn from dark to brilliant, fiery, possessed of myself, possessed of you, no need to ask why. It just is.

You meet me here, this garden of the gods and goddesses.  Fiery is the soul of creation and what animates it. Constantly burning away the impure, returning us to a renewed state of ressurection. Can you feel how such a simple grace in him responds to the grace within you? Can you feel how they each speak in the mute syllables of bliss? The cantenaries of desire? Can you see how he and she turns around in a spiral ever upward, endless in scope, forming worlds? So simple the Ida and Pengali become the rails of the ladder and we rise both alone and together. Every entry into this sparkling realm was as if we had never left. He touches her in the center of her heart and says, “There.” Her head falls back with such a truthful reminder.

Breath tells more truth than a million beliefs. It explodes illusion, turning you and I inside out, returning us to that brave realm of sacred fire and boundless joy. What you are brings out what I am in those places…

Beltane Was Yesterday…

…And I am late!

In my defense, I was busy dealing with some big discoveries about divine union, the gods and goddesses and how our ancestors would use creative energy on Beltane to charge the earth for greater fertility for the new crops. Horned god and all of that.

And then along came orthodoxy and crashed our innocence and deeper connection with the forces in us and the universe! Don’t let them get you down.

The Yearning: Rewind To Preawakened State

My awakening came gradually. It came in somewhat measured steps. The first step clearly opened me to a strong flow of prana and my first experience of nonduality. Then, over five months, I began having innexplicable events occurring that led me deeper. A friend loaned me a hemisync cd for clearing emotional baggage. Another gave me a meditation technique I have detailed in the last post.

A Voice spoke in my mind telling me to close my eyes and focus on the center of my brow. Complying, I awakened my third eye, a process that expanded over several days once I focused my attention there and saw the fiery brightly lit eye emerge into my field of vision. Then I was taught or tutored in how to alter my consciousness to take advantage of the wave-form part of our consciousness, the part we call the feminine, the Shakti, the right brain and left side of the body. Everything was unfolding, gradually, carefully, as if by some plan. I wrote about it to close friends. I had no idea what it was leading to.

I had several events that all directed me along a path to awakening in a way that left me the last to know what all of these things were adding up to. Clearly, a higher intelligence was involved. This is not to say everyone must awaken the way I did. What is clear to me, because of my own experience, that at the base of awakening is an effort to break through a logjam of trapped energy to liberate or open a hole within us that will let the water of life stream in. First a trickle (for me), and growing stronger each day, each week, until my body was conditioned enough so the full rising event could come. A breaking through this logjam.

One of the events that took place in October of 2006 was a day-long acceleration of prana, which was a preview of what kundalini would bring. I had a vivid vision-a certainty in inner vision and through intensely felt feelings-about how all life feels prana or life force in the same way when it is felt abundantly (which is all kundalini really is—unusually high levels of pranic flow).

Getting ready to go home, this information nagged and pulled at me until I put it down on my computer starting at 7:30 pm and finishing at 7:34 pm (I had no idea why I should note the start and ending time but I did…now try and type what I typed in under four minutes).

This writing spoke of prana and how it was affecting both my body and mind. After writing this, I would find myself experiencing an odd synchronicity involving my finding the only magazine on a rack full of popular magazines whose content was uninteresting to me except one magazine I had to hunt for around a corner, blocked by a card rack placed in front of it. Without anything on its outside to suggest its contents, I would find that it had an article that read in bold: “When it comes to seeds, it’s all about sex.” Here is the piece I wrote to try and get that stuff out of my head, a first brush with a powerful burst of prana.

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The Yearning

The fields are wet from rain after the corn has been harvested. Trees slowly turn from green to yellow, then gold. The air cools and the mind thinks back on days when life was brimming over and the air was thick with the smell of pollen. The same corn, now nothing but stubble, stood gold and green with tassels swaying with the breeze, releasing its sweet nutty smell. To some it was just a delightful thing that marks the passage of seasons. To me, its more than that. It speaks of life seeking its own, making itself over; a new generation. A yearning, a leaning toward the wind in the hopes that Nature will take care of Nature, and carry its life giving sweetness on the air to waiting seeds, waiting for that breath of life, that germ of passion that makes the flowers grow, and makes life turn ‘round once more in the endless cycles this world is known for.

Seeds and plants and pollen, all lean into passion in ways we can scarcely imagine. For this is the glue that keeps life going. For them, it must be pleasurable, a passionate act of giving, a release, an immersion into a mystery far older than our own known seasons, our own individual lives and experiences. For this is the gravity that pulls them, moves them to continue. How can it be any other? Why then would life seek to replace itself through an act as perfunctory as the dropping of an apple from a tree? No, the drop of the apple is not perfunctory, or a second thought, but part of a yearning to become, a part of merging with some larger dance. If trees can’t feel this, then why continue? Why go on? Perhaps in measures we can only guess or imagine, there is some divine spark of wantonness, of passion and pleasure bound up within their shells of being. How can it be any other? Perhaps there is a secret life these rooted beings feel that is beyond our ken, beyond our too quickened ways. We have been “beyond” these beings for so long that they are now “just plants.” And yet, they are more. They will speak if only you will listen, and they yearn to tell of this ancient dance, this incredible desire and passion bound up within every cell of their being, so it pays if you will only listen.

I know that seeds seek and yearn and hope and dream; dreams perhaps that are so different I could never scarcely imagine or see them for what they are. And yet, it seems inescapable that these creatures, ancient as all of life here, yearn for the touch of pollen upon their seed pods and enclosures, waiting patiently for the bee to carry their spawn beyond them into other regions where others await the touch of the life giving sparks that enliven and awaken a new generation. Even the warming caress of sun and drenching rain is an act of divine providence, or giving in a wheel that knows no end and no beginning. Quiet and still, these beings mask their greater inner lives.

So even we do these same things, even we make this dance of longing and yearning, so old and ancient that its root can escape us as we are caught up as if in some whirlwind, some deeper dance both of passion and letting go as we give ourselves to life’s great mystery, to its passionate embrace, and longing that brings us to this place, this wonder filled state where our minds and bodies and hearts are excited beyond the normal trebling that life gives or provides.
To touch my eye with your eye, to touch smile to smile, or hand to hand, we join in this ancient dance, this passionate longing for life seeking to complete itself, and in so doing, complete ourselves. Round and round we turn, like stars upon an endless wheel that rolls and ducks and sways in the lost night of time. We are carried one by the other, some by our imaginings, some by the reality, but always by the same glue that keeps life turning turning back and forward at once, calling to the roots of what it was to the heavens of what it will become.

So as our hands embrace, our smiles merge, as face becomes face, and eye becomes eye; as flesh becomes flesh, we excite in this dance, this subtle movement first tentative, then more certain as we are gathered by the compass of its certainty, of its need to move as it moves, which is ever forward into endless days and tomorrows.

We came here as boundless beings who knew neither limit nor touch, and followed down into narrow pathways into minds of earthlings, like spirits on a cosmic voyage, we entered the world of limit and pain and loneliness, only to be called back by forces that were brought to bear in this world, moving us through realms of limit and bounding to that greater reminder that this is a dance of mystery, passion, and love. In this love we touch the infinite, wrapped in that which pulls and grabs us like hawk talons grasping talons in a spiral dance of yearning, moving us one step beyond this one, seeking the divine, seeking the infinite. 10/13/06 – 7:30-7:34 p.m.

Healing Energy Meditation

Someone recently asked me for a meditation technique which I have written about in the past, but during a search for it I realized it might be easier to have it be at the top of the blog roll.

This is a gentle and healing method that is very simple and was passed on to me from an old friend just before awakening took hold. It was in fact one of several types of meditations that I used that helped to train my mind in how to trigger and sink into the part of our awareness where we process cosmic consciousness in the brain. This is the right brain, and to utilize its native focus requires a big shift in your awareness which I will describe to you as a potential outcome of this method.

It is my experience that this method can be an important prelude to awakening, but there also needs to be several other parts added in order to more fully prepare the energy body for this significant change that can take place once you are properly prepared. This technique is gentle so anyone can do it in order to learn about their powers of consciousness.

To begin, you should pick a time when you can be both relaxed but alert. I have always meditated before bedtime because my body was already trained to become deeply relaxed, a precursor for all meditation work. In Buddhism this is often done very early in the morning and it is done consistently, again, because the body will in time slip more easily into these deep states of calm. I will go to bed early so that I am less prone to just fall asleep. I also like having a quiet house and dim or even darkness to cut out any distractions. You might have times that work just as well with you that are different from how I do it. Do what works for you.

You can sit or you can lie down. Just be in a relaxed position. Place your hands together like you are praying. Do you ever wonder why so many traditions use placing the hands together? Could it be that it helps to bring the mind together in a unified way energetically?

I want you to imagine getting very small and standing in the crevices and grooves of where your hands come together and to focus only on your hands. Feel your hands and keep your focus on them and try to eliminate all thought reactions for as long as you can. You can start with doing breathwork if it helps to settle you and quiet your mind. Long deep breaths, focusing on just your breathing, works wonders for calming and quieting the mind. Breathe deep and long and hold the breath for at least three seconds, four or five might work even better…just don’t do it for so long that it makes you deel out of breath.

So here you are, focused on your hands. Just do that. Settle in. Eventually, your mind might wander, but don’t be upset with yourself. Just bring your awareness back to your hands again. Doing this will slowly train you to have longer periods where you are focused on just your hands and fingers. This is an important first step. Feel and focus on the place where your hands touch. Very simple.

You need to do this meditation for at least two weeks each day in order to see any benefits or results. This takes time in order for the right kind of shift to work within.

Over time, maybe quickly, you will notice that you might move from your usual awareness to an awareness where you lose your focus of self. I liken this to how we dream. We often aren’t aware of ourselves in quite the same way when dreaming. It is slightly….defocused. Have you ever been drifting off to sleep but found yourself suddenly in a kind of blank state, perfectly quiet, but you ask yourself “where am I?” only to jerk back to waking consciousness? This meditation will assist you in cultivating that awareness by letting your mind go blank for periods of time. This is the beginning of the shift I am relating to you.

This state is not a normal observer state and any effort to bring ego awareness into it will break the wave of awareness and any phenomenon that might be arising. This is not your “doer” consciousness, this is almost like dreaming consciousness. It works very differently than your waking awareness does.

Now you might begin having small dreams or visions with this method. Just observe and don’t judge. As you sit or lie with your hands together, just keep your awareness on the space between your hands. Being able to not disrupt the flow of phenomena is itself the challenge of this method.

I know how simple this method is, but it is hard because of how spare it is. It must be, in order to train you to shift awareness, but all the while it is also cycling your energy back into your system through joining the hands together.

It is important to be quiet in your thoughts so the energy can do its work. Its possible to experience a state of presence which is largely devoid of a need to think. If you are familiar with this state I am mentioning, you can use it here. Often we feel this state only fleetingly, but its time base can be stretched so that it lasts longer. Don’t worry if you can only hold this for short periods, this isn’t a race! And if you are unable to do this, concentrate on your hands and put your attention there.

Twenty minutes a day will work for this method, but it is even better if you can go forty minutes or an hour. Do what you can and start with where you are. We are all different.

In time, you will notice things happening. What exactly, I wont say because it can be different for each person, but know that this method is very healing.

Pay attention to your dreams during this time and see if you notice any changes. Do you notice any changes during the day? During the meditation being able to hold on to that state of nonlinear being which is the feeling nonverbal self is key. This part of you can begin to come forward and with it some very interesting things. When I say “feeling” I don’t mean your emotions. I mean your capacity to feel and to feel deeply.

The important thing is to not try and use your rational observer mind during this, but the part of you that sees but does not critically examine and think the way you usually do while awake. I know this might sound impossible to do, but give it a try and don’t worry whether you feel like you aren’t catching on fast. We are each unique and different.

If things start to happen, it just means that it is working well for you. If anything comes up that seems odd or alarming, don’t judge it, never judge, just watch it and observe with curiosity and interest, but let it pass as it does naturally. And if you wind up experiencing something that you don’t understand or are confused by, feel free to leave me a comment. I can see your comments before they get published so if its personal I can not publish your comment and then leave a comment of my own that answers your question. But most of what people experience wont be earth shattering or private, so I welcome your comments or questions.

Now as an aside, once you begin, you want to carry through each day with this meditation for at least two weeks. You will need to give it an opportunity to work its magic. If after the first week you feel like you are getting nowhere, simply stop. It might not be a good match for where you are. But if given time, this method tends to bring very good results when applied in the way described. If this method works for you, you can do the meditation while standing in line at a store by placing just a few fingers together. This helps to concentrate the energy in your body in a very particular way!

As an adjunct to this meditation, being able to learn what your biggest hot button issues are and do the work to bring energy to those places where they normally reside in your body will assist this work later for stimulating a more gradual opening to awakening. Choose something you can do, that is easy enough for you to deal with but that has dogged you most of your life. These are blocks and they impede the flow of this energy that is behind awakening.

For example, whenever you feel your stomach tighten or your heart cramped, these are signs of blocked energy in the body. Learning to know how to release them opens the light body to a better flow of prana or qi (chi). When you remove what divides you, you open yourself more and more to the flow of energy tied to awakening or kundalini. Go slow, take it easy, but also engage your intuition. Going at this with fear is not the way. You need to cultivate trust in the energy. While the energy is strong, stronger than you, it wont ever hurt or harm but seek to heal you even more, even if it all seems a bit much.

Have fun and let me know how it goes!

The Interviews

Sunset over St Marks Nature Preserve, Wakulla County Florida. Copyright Parker Stafford 2018

 

Several years ago I decided to interview people who had experienced awakening for inclusion on this blog.  This was an effort to help bring the perspective of those who have experienced the phenomenon to the fore in order to help others who have gone through this life changing event to gain perspective, understanding, and perhaps greater awareness. I have recently published two of those interviews and they have been given their own page which are located under the header at the top of the page.

 

It is hard to know how much awakening can change your life.  It is like a quantum leap into the unknown.  It is bewildering.  It crowns just as it crucifies.  Navigating it is at once easy, difficult, with old rules now completely out the window.  It leaves many feeling scattered to the four winds sometimes, and yet it is also a saving grace.  It is powerful medicine.  Many awaken without a background in any philosophy or religion to provide a framework for the experience.  My sense, as it was perhaps my own experience, that we have much more to learn from awakening when we don’t have those frameworks in place. This is for the simple reason that we face the phenomenon without preconceived notions of what it is that we are experiencing.  We don’t get “captured” by the “rules” of other groups who, I note, have been unable to glimpse the larger potential that awakening offers us. While the experience happens in every culture and corner of the world, there is also a rising tide within the Christian church, factions of it, who would paint this as an inauthentic experience, what is called a “counterfeit spirit.”  Sadly, there are those who would resist the universality of this experience and they do so out of nothing more than ignorance.  The only way to deal with ignorance is with education, with information, and with what we find to be true (rather than what we believe) from direct experience.

 

There are plenty of frameworks that do speak of awakening and many of them wind up, for me at least, to include just as much belief as they include factual information, which to my mind makes it a mixed bag.  To know the truth, it seems, we have to go beyond what the masses are saying about it in order to learn to trust our own experience.  This is a lonely proposition and can put us at odds with the mainstream (like Advaita or Neoadvaita for example).  While awakening has very specific symptoms and signs, it leads us to an awareness that places us in a whole new kind of mind and heart space.  This can be a lonely road for many of us.  The interviews reminds you that you are not alone, that you are part of what appears to be a growing number of people waking up all around the same time frame.  Curious, perhaps purposeful, we can each learn from each other.  This is my hope.

 

My hope,too, is that we can build a library of these interviews for the assistance of anyone wanting to learn more about the experience, be they curious or an “experiencer” themselves.  If you have had an awakening and would like to add your voice to the chorus, your interview is welcome here.  Interviews are kept anonymous if you wish, but very real people are behind them.  You can simply respond in the comments section and I will arrange to receive your answers to the questions (which are just a jumping-off point) for inclusion here.  I am interested in whatever insight that you feel that you have, regardless of what others may say about awakening (or even myself) because we all have a lot to learn.