A little handmade humor for your day, courtesy of WTI!
When the mirror of the self is cleansed of all pretense, bias, and belief, we are free to begin to truly see.
I was not satisfied with the teaching in church….I knew there was more. I didn’t know what it was, only that it was wanting. I knew this above all else, beyond the explanations of others that I was merely “prideful” or unable to take the teaching as truth. No, there was more, I knew it beyond all else.
When I awakened I was lucky to have seen how there WERE teachings by Jesus himself which he passed on to his disciples in books that spoke directly about a process whereby one entered the kingdom. These were central teaching that acted like a key to understanding everything else Jesus was teaching in his ministry. The problem was that these teaching were demonized and anathematized by the church. These were part of this something “more.” I knew that in fact Jesus was teaching his followers about awakening and that the truth was hidden or obfuscated in numerous ways. History offered up her secrets and laid bare the many ways that contributed to our losing these central teachings. What is so amazing to me is that these teachings are actually the lynch pins in understanding all that Jesus taught about. It’s pretty incredible to look at all of this and know that this went down in the way that it did.
I once wrote about this issue and had some of my friends asking me why I was so critical about Christianity, or why I hated the church. It’s too easy to feel that way when dealing with this issue and to me, it is an easy way out of actually examining things closely and asking some very fair questions. But it’s not out of a deep hate or any of that. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I want a religion that offers the keys to self realization, of actually knowing what this kingdom is. Truth is a curious thing; we can have all levels of it and still be missing key points.
I have done the hard work of inquiring and looking. I have poured through the texts of the New Testament as well as those that were not included, from apocrypha to the Nag Hammadi. I have studied issues surrounding translation, how the contextual nature of Aramaic actually does matter when translating to any language, as well as what biblical scholars are saying that pastors dare not touch. More than this, I awakened and saw that the only books that helped describe my new state of being were the words of Jesus teaching his followers about the kingdom, which fit my experience perfectly….but also happened to have been deemed heresy. They had been cast aside and had never made it into canon. The more that I read, the more it became clear that what we got was a version of the truth, but not the full truth. I’m not even suggesting that this was some sort of conspiracy. It may have been simply a conspiracy of ignorance acted upon by those who had less than the full story. But even half the story is better than no story, and it wasn’t as if we weren’t getting truths. We just didn’t get its heart, and this, dear readers, is the hardest one to swallow for some of us today. It is covered over first by some 1700 years of tradition and then it includes a whole new dimension of thinking added, a great mystery that has been hidden from all of us (for whatever reason).
Since my experience in awakening is the same exact phenomenon as others who have awakened, and it’s all described in the same way by nearly everyone, and is being described in these cast-away texts, it begs the question; isn’t it possible that something very important was missed? And perhaps, then, might this missing piece be important to know the fullness of this man’s great insight and teaching? If you found out that the teaching of Jesus was incomplete, wouldn’t you, as a follower of Christ, want to know? I’m asking you to put your pride aside and get curious and be simple like children, ripe for hearing what might just be really big news.
Awakening, which is the kingdom, brings a renewed way of using the mind. If you can teach yourself to forgo mere rational thought, you can activate more and more of your capacity for understanding, which is truly liberating. It requires humility because there is so much to give up in order to see in this way. There is a blizzard of biases and beliefs that rage in such places, and the very religion that was created to support these teachings has essentially continued to demonize the concept of awakening in some quarters. Once these biases have been cleared, though, the mind becomes a luminous field of awareness in direct proportion to how much bias has been released. But it isn’t just that, it’s letting yourself be shown, led, taken by the presence of the indwelling divine and it’s child which is the Christ consciousness. Others call it Cosmic Consciousness, or Cosmic Mind. It is all the same and emerges in the same way in each tradition because this is what we ALL are, rather than the beliefs we hold. Remember how Jesus said the kingdom is within you? That might just be an important clue to all of us. It’s what’s inside-this does not happen outside of any of us. Where, then, do you think you will meet God?
This more asks me to continually to let go of my familiar moorings to here and as I do, new understanding floods in, mysteries become knowns, and the universe resolves into a greater and greater miracle. But no words can contain this more…you just have to go and see for yourself.
All of this is like a seed that grows into a sprout, then a plant, and then a flower. The flower opens more and more and this flower is awareness. This is how awakening proceeds; it is the smallest of seeds that grows in stages. More and more, it opens, revealing still-deeper layers of comprehension. To get there, I lay aside all rational thought and allow my mind to go blank. Yes, blank. It is here that absent thought a great and ineffable presence grows that is a love unlike any other. Everything I could ever wish to know becomes available in that “space.” If you believe you can’t, you probably won’t….but if you consider it possible, then it becomes possible. I wish this for everyone because it reveals our own foolishness and opens us to wonder and awe. The world so needs this right now.
Until next time….
There is a new page I have put up on the blog, and I hope you will take a look. I will be adding more information as time goes by, and I’d like to extend to you an invitation to include any books that you have found useful in your journey as a woman as it relates to your spiritual journey. This is the link:
Artist Credit: Mark Mawson
It has been widely known by those who have first-hand encounters with it that there is a limitless field of energy upon which our consciousness rides. Focused in bodies, yes, for this life, but we are also multidimensional beings that are more than just “this.”
To understand psi ability, it helps to understand what the genesis is for your ability and experience. What we call “psi” is a living energy that moves through all things and all-time. It forms a kind of body that is part of you and yet your ego makes it possible for you to identify yourself as separate from it, which is a boundless field of energy. Instead of the physical senses forming your inner senses, the inner senses are part of a continuum of sensory ability that is your native infinite self. The physical senses mirror a smaller subset of senses that are part of a larger sensory realm of the soul or consciousness. Your five senses are just a few of your fuller sensory capacity. These inner senses are always with you, but most people are too focused on the physical senses to ever begin exploring the broader field of these inner senses.
The Egyptians identified 360 different senses that were known or described as being part of the inner self and in no way physical.
The way to tap into these senses is to develop the right cognitive bridge for them to your brain, which will assemble the information in a useful way. The same happens when someone sees an aura, for example. There is nothing to see because the eyes do not have the capacity to pick up on the wavelength of energy that is the human aura. What happens is that the brain does an amazing job at creating a representation, most often visual, of what it is that it is detecting. When you consider just how much information is present in the human aura from one moment to the next, its pretty mind boggling that the brain is able to do this. But it does. The same is the case with all other inner senses. For those who can hear or see events from a distance, the information is presented in a highly accurate way even though it is information that is plucked out of the air and assembled into something that makes sense and is accurate. Think of this as being like how a radio set takes radio waves and turns them into a broad range of sound.
The more you are able to do this work “cold” without anything to bias you in any way is best. The more you know about a situation, the more you have to not let that information come into play. I once was able to remote view a woman’s apartment with amazing detail, getting all details correct. These were specific details that had to do with how the apartment was situated in a larger building, the type of lighting in the hallways(sconces instead of pendants or ceiling mounted units), as well as the layout of the apartment including the types of windows, their construction (old metal casement) and their size. The one detail that I got wrong was the result of bias that I had when I had talked to this person on the phone. I incorrectly “saw” the size of her living room. I saw it much larger than it was. The reason for this, I am certain, was because of the reverb that I heard over the phone prior to my seeing her apartment, that made it sound like she was in a much larger room than she was. In this case, I would have probably been more accurate if I had not first spoken to her on the phone while she was in her apartment.
This is an important caution in doing this kind of work. Personal thoughts or ideas can creep in very easily. You have to keep this material out and learn when you are on the mark, how that feels when it happens, and continue to go to that “place” within feeling. And contrary to popular belief, this place is not found in a place of certainty. You have to become comfortable looking first at a blank screen without trying to put something there that doesn’t beling. You begin with a blank sheet and you have nothing to work with at first. You have to be able to keep your mind neutral even in this “blank screen” place. You have to be able to not think about what it is that you imagine it all to be. You actually need to not know. The more you can do this, the better you can get clear information. And this is not easy for a lot of people. People are so used to apprehending information, going out and ‘getting’ it….but the capacity that allows you to do this best is like a mindless state. You don’t know how on earth you are doing it….except that you are. If you think about it, neither are you aware of the process by which your physical senses operate, but they do.
Another big impediment to this kind of work is how the imagination is involved. What you have to be able to do is you have to enter the gateway of the imagination and go beyond the region where your mind creates things and learn how to use the imagination as the engine for building imagery in your mind. In a way, the process is the same; you start with nothing and you “image” something. When YOU are actively imagining something, you are the one creating the information. When you are seeing psychically, you are not the one who is creating it. It is a subtle but important distinction. Instead, it often feels like it is being assembled within you as a sensory experience. The difference is one you do, the other happens to you. It is a slight difference but it is recognizable. Ask yourself; am I thinking this, or is it happening to me? If it is the latter, you will find, if you are doing this right, that this is the authentic material relatively untouched by how you think or feel about it. You have to clear, and if you have biases about seeing something clearly, you wont. In fact, I have had people read me who were very obviously drawing from their own insides or emotional material. It is hard to know when you are doing this because it will seem real. Most often a clue will be that you want it to be a certain way, or you are being too rigid in how you think you are sensing; being able to constantly ask yourself “is this true?” and then feel into it with your heart of deep compass of knowing is what I have always tried to do. It’s when I question myself and remain neutral that I tend to get the best results. By not remaining neutral, you will effectively “cherry pick” the information, and this can lead to a world of distortion. Again, keeping the mind shut off while feeling it is a critical point here. And it’s important that you can distinguish between your inner stuff that you feel and this inner compass of “feeling it.” Luckily, “feeling it” helps to keep the rational mind out of the picture so the information can stream in unhindered and uncolored.
In my work what I have found over the decades that the energy field, which is always “on” and taking in information, is the receiver. You have tuned all of this information out and you can begin to tune it back in by using some of the same tools that your mind uses as it begins to go into dreaming. So instead of a long drawn out explanation with methods, I will suggest that you begin paying attention to the very edge of your sleep before you fall into sleep. This is where you can learn the most about the inner senses within you and you can begin to learn what it takes to keep the bridge erected within you while you are awake instead of when asleep.
As you begin to fall asleep at night, try to stay in that deep relaxed state and instead of falling asleep, remain there for an extended period. You will find that you will drift in and out of normal consciousness. As you do, you will find that you hear voices and sounds that seem to come from the inside of your head. They might have a slightly “faraway” feeling to them. This is where your native capacity for tapping into these senses emerges. The only difference between your doing it close to sleep and a psychic doing it while awake is that the psychic has learned how to build a cognitive bridge between different states of mind. They can have one part of the waking brain fully alert while activating other parts of the brain that are normally associated with sleep. Some of this can seem a little akin to dream sometimes.
When you are awake, you will need to let yourself drift into that place where your thinking stops. This is a highly charged in-body state that is where you can actually begin tuning in all kinds of information. Mind you, you are actually already bringing a lot of it in, but you have your waking awareness focused in such a way that it gets filtered out. It drifts into the background and only comes forward when you shut off your outer perceptions enough to begin to tune in that other part of you that has these abilities. Everyone has these abilities.
The problem most people have when tuning in is that their sensory information that comes through their physical senses gets their most attention. There is a certain amount of detachment that is always present in psi pursuits. Turning off the inner mind chatter is key. Only once you have done this can you hope to erect the bridge. Once it is done, it becomes second nature and you do not have to work as hard to tap back into that state. Many psychics when asked how they do what they do often are at a loss as to how to explain it. Most often they use terms that suggest they are feeling something, but they can’t identify where it comes from. Truth be told, if we were concerned with the mechanics, nothing would get done. The vehicle, the body, makes this process effortless.
When you understand that all information, everything that has been, exists in a field of energy that takes up no space whatsoever, and is itself seeded throughout the universe, access to this information is a given once you know how or begin training yourself. To do this requires you to turn on your ability to FEEL. You do not think. You feel.
Don’t misunderstand; I am not saying emotion. Feeling is not emotion. Feeling is a capacity for perception. Feeling includes emotion, but its more that emotion is a kind of subset of feeling. See? When you can dip down into the subconscious self, you can begin bridging the disparate parts of the self and bring in extrasensory experience. All of this is entirely energetic in nature. Your energy field picks up this information, tunes it in, and received it, and is paying attention to one piece of information over a vast swath of other material. This field can be felt by your consciousness and it is felt all through the body. I am aware that when I am picking up on information like this, I feel it all through my body, less as a perception of a reaction to the information and more as a direct experience of the information as it actually strikes me, my awareness, which is all through my body (not just the brain or head). The energy vortices called chakras also have some play into all of this as amplifiers of information. While they can amplify a signal they can also degrade it with noise. You have to have a still quiet mind. You need to be simple. This is how it works.
The stimulation of the various chakra centers is also at work in inner sensory awareness. The third eye is one such center. As unfortunate as it is that the third eye has been associated with the pineal gland ad nauseam, the pineal actually has nothing to do with it (this idea first emerged with a completely off the wall pronouncement by Voltaire that the pineal gland was the seat of the soul even though he had zero evidence for this at the time, except the idea stuck and has continued to enjoy being used as a mystic center of some kind or another). Trust me, having a third eye-opening or activation has NOTHING to do with a gland in the head. This gland is only for physical processes (secretions for the regulation of mood and sleep cycles only). This is because a physical gland or organ is for working with physical matter. The energy body is for working with nonphysical things. And a third eye awakening will make it more likely that you can image things from a great distance.
The way to open the third eye is also a way to spark kundalini awakening, and anyone who does this need to understand that this can have unintended consequences if you are not careful. Awakening kundalini without preparation can make for a very difficult experience.
Most often psi work leads to improvement of the individual because developing the senses puts one in touch with a broader range of characteristics of the self that need to be dealt with because of greater awareness of the self as it is. The vehicle, the light body, is the means for this inner sensing, and this light body needs to be clear in order to get clear transmission. It also can lead to stumbling blocks for the healer or seer if they are unable to work through their own blocks. These activities often lead to a more “spiritual” outlook and effort to be more refined.
I hope that this provides you with some new insight into this world of inner sensory capacity. If you aren’t good at it, working on it will help. If you already have prior experience (often from other lifetimes for example) then it will come more naturally. But no one is more psychic than another. When we leave the physical, we will all use our inner sensory abilities to the same degree as anyone else. In fact, you will have to. But beginning now will help to show you how you are more than just this one self. This is very much at the core of what I feel is important for us to do here….to awaken to all of our capabilities, some of which will lead us into other realities as well as capacities that we all have as multidimensional beings alive in all-time.
A large part of what I write about on this blog has been about how to release stored emotional energy that is in the body. I do this because of its connection to our ability to know the deeper self. It also is work that can make an awakening experience far less chaotic or difficult. Some people who either awaken without preparation or do so spontaneously can wind up in a state of psychosis. While I speak and write glowingly of awakening, it is our own backlog of stored trauma that causes great difficulty with so much prana (which is kundalini) now animating the good and the not-so-good within.
There are numerous ways to assist in releasing stored emotional trauma. One of the ways that I have been exploring this has been a direct result of earlier releases which have made an awareness of how fundamental the hips are in aiding in clearing trauma that is stored there. This is where the root chakra rests and it is also home to a set of muscles yogis have dubbed “the seat of the soul.” These muscles make up what is called the psoas (pronounced “so-as”). These muscles are where the most basic and earliest traumas in life are stored. Without proper care, this muscle group can not only store trauma, but can also lead to a number of lower back problems that include a weak, unnatural, or shuffling gate, and body pain that radiates down to the knees and up though the hips into the lower lumbar regions. Knowing how to stretch and tone the psoas will leave you feeling as though you have a new lease on life. While Voltaire claimed the pineal the “seat of the soul,” the psoas is in my experience the real honest to goodness seat of the soul. This region will impact your self worth, feelings of abundance, and creative fire, to name a few.
The psoas is so basic and foundational a muscle group that it governs our most basic of emotions and feelings in our bodies. When this muscle group is stressed our whole being feels out of place. When this muscle group is cleared stretched and toned you can go from feeling trapped and oppressed and full of pain to feeling light and like a child again.
I’m going to describe one of the most effective ways to begin to release stress from the psoas. There are also some stretches that are used in yoga that have been used for centuries for stretching and toning the psoas.
To understand how foundational this muscle group is, you need only look at the illustration below to see that the psoas is the bridge between the legs and torso. Like back muscles, if this muscle group doesn’t get enough stretching and toning, it can develop soreness and rigidity that telegraph’s that pain and rigidity throughout the body making you feel “yuck.”
Trauma Release Exercise (TRE) is one of the most effective ways to release stored trauma in this muscle group. A quick look on youtube will reveal countless videos that reveal how this method works, and I also have a detailed post that delves into this extremely simple yet effective method (search on my blog “TRE”). It works by causing the body to go into tremors which help release stored emotional energy that is in the body (who knew, right?). Humans are the ONLY mammal that does not have the instinct to shake after a traumatic event has occurred. In fact, more often than not humans will freeze when trauma is experienced. This is how trauma is stored in the body, and it will remain there as an energetic and physiological imprint until it is removed or released. By inducing shaking in this important muscle, everyone can utilize the therapeutic effect of shaking as an effective means for releasing trauma from earliest life.
This method, which I have detailed before (search “trauma release” in the search section) involves lying with your back on the floor and your behind lifted up about six inches off the floor, doing so until the leg muscles become fatigued so they begin to shake. This shaking begins to help release stored emotion. You might find that a lot of hard emotions come up, and it’s important to not hold these emotions back. You need to let them flow without “grabbing” for them. If you adopt this approach, you will find success with this method.These emotions are in the past and there is nothing to fear.
In the illustration above, a large pillow can be used to rest as needed. The lifted position of the pelvis is very helpful in getting the stress to move deep into the hips.
Next, stretching the psoas is very helpful. In fact, if you do it regularly you will feel as though you have a new lease on life. Believe it or not, this very simple act can lead to releasing karma. The one way we release karma is by forgiving ourselves (not others, although this is indeed helpful and an important prelude to self forgiveness when it comes). Feeling the weight of past “debts” bearing on you is not how karma is ever released. Once you shift how you feel deep down, it is easier to reach into the light that is the new life that comes through this work. It might sound unlikely that such a simple thing as stretching can shift and evaporate karma, but it is in fact an important run-up to getting into the right space where these debts can go forever. It always involves a deep recognition of forgiveness. No God or outside agency can do this for you; it is an inside job. Winks.
auraspa.net
This stretch, shown above, is very helpful. Start off slow and don’t stretch beyond your comfort zone. Over time, you will loosen the psoas more and more.
If this stretch is uncomfortable at first, you can lie flat on the edge of a table or bed and let each leg dangle over the edge, allowing you leg to flex at the hip. This is a little lower impact than a full stretch. You can detect imbalances in your energy field by way of tightness, muscle pain, pressure, as well as issues with balance while performing this stretch. As I have gotten into using this stretch I have found that I am increasingly more off balance, which might not seem correct at first. The nature of releasing blocks is that as the block begins to let go (this can be of short duration while stretching or it could occupy weeks or months of time as you work this block out), unsteadiness can often be a symptom of your becoming increasingly aware and present with the block. This is not a bad thing! It is a wonderful sign that your body is beginning to “speak” to you to let you now that something big is up. It is also possible to feel a range of sensations from a liquid-like feeling of motion in the body surrounding the block, heat, cold, electrical shocks, and waves of emotion. Don’t let a strong wave of emotion stop you; this is where the best work is actually being done!
Next, lying flat on your back, bring each leg in turn up to your chest, which will also stretch the “glute” muscle group in the behind. This will also stretch the psoas where it ties into the lower back, an important place for releasing stored stress. Take it slow. Hold this for many minutes. Begin holding one minute and slowly extend it into the three to four minute range. In time, you will be able to naturally stretch into these deep positions naturally. Go slow; this is not a race and your muscles groups, if they have blocks in them, may also be very tight, so you will need to move slowly but persistently over time to help loosen things up. This will help release body armoring (also called emotional armoring) when you bring thought, feeling, and body together as one in these movements. In fact, as I do these exercises, I will often begin getting intense sensations related to the psoas that in the past might have made me wonder if I should continue, but don’t let feeling emotionally rough stop you; this is a sign that the healing is happening. Continue with it until it is stretched, massaged, and released. Wait for it; it will come, simple as sunshine.
One final note: stored energy isn’t just in muscle. It is also in the interface between tendon and muscle. By holding a stretch long enough, you give the time needed for the stress to release in the tendons. During a therapy session recently, I had a body worker releasing stress in my elbow, something that had developed as a result of over stressing it in my work. By pressing down and stretching the tendon in a hold, I was able to feel the tension/stress release which felt like water pressure leaving a tube. Once this happened, the tension bound in the tendon was gone for good.
I found that the tension went deeper into the tendon where it connects to the bone. Having learned the technique for release, I pressed deeper and closer to the bone. Once clear, the memory of the trauma was released. While the stress in my elbow and forearm wasn’t emotional stress, the body responds to it the same way. When stretching, let yourself stretch deeper as you go, gently but persistently. You do not want to create tears. Slow and gentle is better than being overly aggressive.
So there you have it: practice this and you will find immediate relief from stored emotion in the hips.
We are taught to look heavenward for the best in us but I have always found that the best in us resides with us here and now. Our divine nature, the source of all our seeking lies nestled within us waiting for the moment when we are ready to see it. Our limited humanness, that often reviled part in us that we have collectively felt was what we had to transcend, holds the infinite in its deep and often unknowing embrace. By awakening, the vessel yearns to know what is filling it. Rather than looking to the heavens, look to your humanity because the answers all lie in wait in all of your impulses, no matter how dysfunctional you may think they have become. You might see as I have seen that instead of our being the result of a “demiurge” or a “fall” from grace, we are in truth expertly made and have everything we need to realize the divine within us….but we have tended in the past to have loused it up a bit, and this has led to notions of our being fundamentally flawed. So I’m going to talk a little about a dynamic that has been a part of our past that we can each heal in order to turn all of this around. Thankfully, it’s already happening for many people!
This is the challenging part for so many, which is trusting that our desire is designed to bring us closer to the divine. Or that our impulses, which we have used to wreck our lives in the past, can be used to actually save us. It means being brave and diving right into what the forbidden and the taboo is in order to liberate and heal those feelings and beliefs so that love can flow unhindered. This is what all taboos do to us when they serve to limit us. This also happens to be central to Tantra in its purest form. Before you think I am referring to s-e-x, please know that a central tenet of Tantra is how a direct realization of our true nature brings bliss and bliss heals the self of a world of shame by unhitching us from our shame and guilt, in large part because the bliss is stronger than the pain encountered in our shame. This is an experience not unlike diving straight into the briar patch of our spiritual mess or tangle. Unfortunately Tantra in the West has become synonymous with sex which is putting the cart before the horse. When we accept taboo’s without thoroughly understanding their purpose, we can become bound by a convention of behavior that distorts our authentic nature. So often a taboo does more harm than good. “Oh really?!” you might be thinking. I’m going to give you a few examples and see if you don’t see how these things twist us around. The central stumbling block of taboo is that it serves to direct behavior in an uncritical way while making it so you may not be listening to your own inner compass. It is this compass that everyone has and is in truth your very own seed or connection to the divine. When you follow a rule without fully grasping why the rule is there to begin with, you aren’t following your inner compass, you are simply taking the lazy way to being, which is a life that doesn’t understand authentically. Life becomes a shadow of what it was because your deeper connection to your inner divinity is lost, or buried. But a life that reflects vividly on this inner compass is one where one knows and acts in accord with the one true stream of guidance which is itself a river of life full of realization and boundless wonder.
There are so many of these taboos and they are almost always made as a result of fear and often out of ignorance. It was in many cultures, at various times in our history, taboo for a woman to show her body. Some cultures still hold to this way of being that involves covering the entire body of a woman. Have you asked yourself why this is so? Or maybe how it was a taboo for a man to show his emotions beyond anger and aggression? When we created these restrictions we act surprised that men became physically aggressive instead of emotionally tender or sensitive? Women, on the other end of our dysfunctional past have given up their natural aggressive nature’s and have chosen a different route. Instead of brute force women learned how to manipulate their environment by way of subtler means: through emotion. In Renaissance Europe, arguably a hotbed of liberal thinking, women were expected to go to church and to the market; it was unseemly to be seen hanging out with friends in the city square. As for middle eastern countries, it got much more repressive. If you think about it, human kind has been in this arrangement for a long time all because we have worshipped fear over freedom. Every one of us have been affected by this, and every one of us can choose to no longer be affected, too. Change is coming fast now and we have seen a lot of change over the last 100 years, but there is still more that we can do that favors listening to our inner compass instead of a rule that was created perhaps thousands of years in our past when our ancestors were at a very different place in their spiritual and cultural evolution.
The deeper truth about our divine nature is that we are not divided but contain within us aspects of both the feminine and masculine. We have each lived lives, whether we remember them or not, as women and men. Inwardly, we are composed of both and we carry a capacity of both. You can’t know your inner compass without first knowing this important truth. By reaching peace within on this one point, you can know a greater peace in your life because it grants you a more direct access to that golden compass where anything can be known.
The elephant in the room is how the masculine and feminine is in all of us. We have somehow forgotten this. Our sexes even show how divided we appear to be. Our behavior belies a fear of being the “other.”
For women who have exaggerated beliefs about femininity and the taboos that have been in place surrounding how they feel they need to behave (often responded to as what society expects of them), one predictable outcome is that their natural traits of aggression have been conditioned out of them. More accurately, they are repressed. Women have for a long time feared using their innate masculine power for fear of reprisal and a concern that it would make them seem less feminine. In the past, great value was placed on being female and this resulted in exaggerated beliefs that then served to shape the body. Just look at how values have changed and you can see how doggedly we as a species have stuck to a narrative for all women.
In the Victorian era, women were their most fertile when they had some weight to them. In fact, skinny undernourished women skip periods, don’t conceive readily, and have trouble taking a baby to term. So naturally the “Rubenesque” woman was prized by all of human kind during a large swath of our history. If you fast forward to the turn of the century, you see women active in fighting for, and obtaining rights like voting, as well as being able to free themselves from being baby making machines through the advent of birth control. This, and a growing awareness and desire for greater rights helped to bring a change that resulted in the evolution of the perception of the feminine form away from the voluptuous and chunky earth goddess to a thin and more svelte version of herself. I am not suggesting that all of this was good, just that this change came with a swing of the pendulum and that we are working through the value of it. The change of the idealized female form has in large part been driven by the fashion industry, but it takes a public to buy onto this look in order for it to take hold, and take hold it did. Whether thick or thin, the changing face of femininity is drawn along by our own changes brought about by each of us individually and en masse. In either case, the value placed on women being submissive and tender remained even as how the physical image began to change. The change that women fought for, which was for better equality was itself an expression of women’s more aggressive nature, and only came about because women were willing to tap this nature that was and is always within them. Women in this way began stepping out of the shadows.
The same is also true for men, of course, but in opposite fashion. Men remain hard and stoic because of conditioning and taboo’s about men showing emotion. What is true, at the core of all of this behavior, is that men suppress their feminine sides because they fear that when the feminine energy is joined consciously to their masculine that they will lose themselves, which of course is true.
Women were also doing exactly the same thing out of a fear that they too would appear less feminine. But it is only the fear of this unknown state that men once projected onto women and sought to control and limit them as has happened in our past. It’s more than just men fearing women’s power to nurture new life, it’s that men fundamentally were uneasy with what this kind of creativity involved on a spiritual or energetic level within themselves. This fear was then projected outward onto women. Any time anyone is unable to deal with an inner fault they project it onto another person. This tendency has been widely observed by psychologists such as Freud and Jung. In this case, the fear that they could not face was projected onto women. The same is also true for women, and both sexes have done their part in keeping the sexes divided inwardly and outwardly. This type of division no longer serves us, and we are seeing a much greater flexibility in sexual roles and identity as a result. None of this has destroyed what it means to be male or female, it has enhanced it.
While you might wonder what I am getting at, I am not suggesting an end to male and female identity. I am suggesting that our roles don’t serve us as humans as they once did, which was a more limited perspective in our past. I am for the change that happens when the curtain is pulled back and we can be really honest about who we are deeper down. I am for being aware of our compass, which leads us to our divine nature here and now. This isn’t about wrecking the past and destroying our future, but getting honest about who we really are. When we do this, in the words of the ancients, we do not taste death but know life in abundance. We are, in truth, emancipated from our prisons of belief.
I’m about to take a leap, here, and I want you to bear with me…
The Role Of Bliss In Healing The Rift
We call orgasm “petite morte” because it involves a deep letting go of control of the self. This is what we do when we die, it is the same. Of course, we don’t really die, we merely shed the body. It isn’t a conditional letting go, it is a deep release and a subsequent encounter with the larger self and all that it’s connected to (all that is). In Tantra, for example, work often leads to losing fear of death for the simple reason that one stares in the face of it so often when experiencing the bliss that can be found in such a deep state of letting go. Many teachings discuss how those who are not ready to let go in this way suffer through death and often wind up as ghosts, stuck in an “in-between” realm for various reasons. This bliss also just happens to be an energetic state that accompanies awakenings (once you can get the hang of it), and bliss is a powerful way of allowing our emotional armoring to fall away so that the inner self can shine forth. This is what is central to Tantra as a way to heal very quickly (if you are ready and honest in your approach). It is here that I give you The Man, whose channel to his own bliss has been so incredibly attenuated….
Men have learned to be controlled in order to survive. It may have served a purpose once in the past but it no longer serves us now. But this kind of death is what men are uneasy about. When men come close to women, they can behave badly for the very reason that they have become so estranged from that part within themselves that could give them, moment by moment, the same thing they feel when they behold or are near a woman: death. This death, for those who live in it is known as orgasmic bliss. In an awakened man, this bliss can be constant, but in everyman who is not awakened, it is experienced as a brief explosive event that he can only get with a woman, and it is much more physically encountered. In truth, he can and does get it alone (sometimes multiple times in a day in his younger years!). The desire for something when it’s forbidden only makes the desire riotously powerful. Add to this a man so estranged from his feminine side that the only way to feel it is to be in the full embrace of a woman, and you can perhaps see just how all of this has conspired to create an unhealthy situation for all involved. Pile onto this the double standard of women needing to be chaste and virtuous and you can begin to see how hilariously messed up that we have all become! Men sow their wild oats and women are to be virtuous and chaste! Pray tell me; how is this supposed to work?
Once a man awakens, he gets the briefing from the energy which shows him that this energy has arisen in him because of the forces of opposites now merged. I’m joking here because there is no “brief” as such, just a self that comes to the truth of the matter, which is a significant event in a man’s life. Orgasmic bliss is now no longer limited to those fevered moments beneath the sheets, but now pours all through the body in a continuous stream as a direct result of the union of opposites which is the source of the power of kundalini or awakening. As long as we don’t try to fiddle with the cosmic switches inside, we will feel a continual flow of this energy.
Women will experience much the same, but from the opposite end of the social/sexual spectrum. To awaken is to join the masculine and feminine currents in consciousness together, which will bring bliss. This is nature’s way of rewarding you for taking one more step closer to being a full person, a more whole being!
In fact, all traditions that have awakening as an understood experience (nearly all), you will find a balancing effect as a result of of its activation. In the Hindu tradition the awakened person is shown as equal parts Shakti and Shiva, merged right down the middle of the body. The Taoists more obliquely refer to this in the Yin and Yang. In the early Christian texts this is called a syzygy. This is an equal part male and female person who has awakened the sleeping energy of transformation. They were known as androgynous in a spiritual sense. During awakening the lines between these two aspects blur and they merge more and more as the awakening unfolds. This does not confuse sexuality, but rather informs it in a deep and substantive way if the person so affected allows for this to creep into their awareness.
This is a moment by moment experience of bliss pouring through all parts of the body, it is not a singular event like a physical orgasm. It is a “standing wave” that does not crash, does not subside. It endures. And the reason for this is because those who know this experience are in varying degrees learning to awaken and merge their twin energies of both their masculine and feminine in their bodies and in their consciousness. Men, though, have been fearful of even going there. Taboo. They had to be strong. They had to provide by using muscle to hunt and create from the land. They believed there was no way they could survive and let that feminine flow into them. Men who were seen as effeminate were picked on. Gay men were known to be lynched, tied to fences to die, or beaten up in alleys outside of gay bars. The fear and programming went hand in hand. Somehow, we each have persevered through all of this. And what men refused in themselves they refused in their world. The way they created themselves was how they created their world. The pressures placed on women were no less restrictive than their male counterparts. Both were taught to hide their opposites while expecting the house to stand. The way we have managed this traditionally has been for the man and the woman separately but together to hold each other up. While this has had asocial function it has extremely limited use spiritually and personally.
Our society in the last 15 years has been going through a sea change as it relates to greater and greater equality for people from all walks of life. Women have become more assertive and are beginning to see greater equity in the work place than a hundred years ago (we have more to go!) has I think been concurrent with men realizing they don’t need to be the sole breadwinners but can be a stay at home Dad. Men are learning that they can be more sensitive and nurturing while still retaining their masculinity. Gays are not beaten in the streets or killed, and we are experiencing an opening, a flowering which is in its early stages still, but will help to push society to a much more egalitarian place. What it will do is it will fuel more and more awakenings for the simple reason that we won’t fear touching the opposite in our nature’s. Men won’t lose their masculinity anymore than a woman will lose her femininity by embracing the opposites within themselves. They will open the channels so that bliss will pour through.
This is to my mind the briar patch we should dive into, not fearing it or what it will do to us. This will happen when we stop listening to what the collective has created on a mass scale and begin listening to our own inner compass. When you are a woman and feel attracted to a man, what man is moving in you? Is it the man in front of you, or is it the man within you? No man makes you feel, you alone must participate and become moved by your own innate understanding of what this glorious energy is about and be willing not to make the man in front of you into the man who is really the one you feel that is inside of you. If you do this, you risk projecting onto the man before you the image and presence that is not with him but that is with you. In the same way, men must be careful not to put onto the woman before him the woman that is inside him, lest the two not fit well, or will be forced together in a hopeful effort made by both people with the likely result that no peace and union can hope to endure. A woman, just like a man, will feel innately the force of your expectation that they should be something that they are not. Why make chameleons of ourselves? Are we not perfect within? Are we really afraid of seeing our gloriously human and divine selves in their truest light?
This is precisely what is brought to bear in so-called “twin” unions. The energy is often so strong because of the subconscious (now more conscious) desire to merge with an inner unrecognized aspect of the self (our opposite) that is projected outward to another person. While these can work, they will always labor under whatever karma and inner issues that remain and they will be felt more keenly. This is good for people willing to engage in rapid healing, but such change can mean that each are left without a common point of reference once the karmic glitches are healed. The reality is that twins DO NOT heal in perfect synchronization.It isn’t that love goes away, it is more that the change when one heals a glitch can be so profound that the foundation for that love can change faster than what most people can keep up with. One twin can, and most often does, move more quickly than the other, resulting in one feeling left behind in one way or the other. In the myth, the two live happily ever after, but in the reality they are having to deal with every emotion highlighted and amplified. Every challenge can then be so much more of a challenge. In a world such as this, there is often a gulf between the real and infinite potential. We often mistake the potential as being what is real in our world, which isn’t. We must work to create in such a way that this potential manifests itself, and this can only happen through radical self honesty. In the end, the true twin resides within each of us as a misperceived other that we seek to project onto a loved one.
Perhaps, for now, the wise approach might be to honor and see ourselves as we are and see others as they are and begin to learn a new way which is to appreciate each other’s wholeness as precious and love based on that instead of our yearning to touch the opposite that resides within. Perhaps we then merge our individual yearnings together in what might be an utterly new arrangement with regard for our true selves instead of allowing societal rules and taboo’s to guide us in an unknowing and unnatural way. When we follow our compass fully, we become innocent and cease being contrived by our ideas about how we think the world wants us to be.
No one breaks your heart –they break your expectations!
I don’t really see the thing we do, this intense multi-year process of shedding old skin as “work.”
I use the term..work, but it is, for me in truth, a letting go, a deeper and deeper surrender. This is not an effort, you see? But in the beginning it seems that way.
This “work” is a returning to a quieter less noticed part of us. It is the “part” that so easily gets drowned out by our barrage of physical sensory information. If you want to see effort, see how we hold onto those looped strands of energy we have formed by hard emotion and a lack of surrender. This is the stuff that forms our inner programs, conditioning, and negative karma!
When the programs, negative energy blocks, drop, those things that you obsessed over dozens of times each day just go “poof” and are just GONE. In fact, once they go, isn’t it hard to even remember what they were, or why all the drama?
We actually clench our minds recursively around so much that hurts us, numbs us, all without realizing we are doing it. But what a relief when the hand of the mind.just.lets.go. So this has been my “work” since awakening entered my life.
I’m at a place now where I’m getting down to the bottom of the barrel. I will say that while I’m pleased with how much I have released, it’s a small pleasure, a lowercase “p.” I feel different, and things are getting easier even as I hold tight to a few last broken pieces. They are doozies…but as I say that some part of me is laughing because it seems to know how ridiculous that is, saying, “It’s only that way because of the power you gave it….and it’s a thing that disempowers you!” True.
I’ve not been so keenly aware of this “doozie” though as I do now. It has come into vivid focus because so many other blocks near it have been removed. These blocks veiled the ones deeper down. I am now aware of the deeper blocks more keenly. This is of course a good thing because awareness is what helps bring change. It tightens my abdomen, it keeps some part of me dull, upset, clinging to….what? An investment in hurt. Yuck.
This state, though, however temporary, leaves me feeling graceless, bumbling even. I lose grace, I sometimes feel normal….and I’m aware that it’s my inner compass telling me I’m a hippocrite as long as I’m holding this last bit, this pile of stinking stuff. But after being here hundreds of times it tends to play out the same way. Being not filled with grace seems to be the whole point, which is to help point out the glitch that keeps me unsettled. More so than usual. This place is different than just grinding away on something that is firmly planted inside of me, though. Its got a bit of that muck being stirred, you know? Something is up. there is a feeling of something is about to happen. My feet, feeling the edge of a great cravass, teeters there a little and something in the back of my mind begins to calculate (which I wish it would not do) and wonders what would happen if I fell. And again, that is the whole point.
It leads me to being at a loss for words. Entering here, I feel the inner earth shaking, uneven, like a world on fire, burning, strange, even dark. It leaves me feeling vulnerable. I have this “work” to do, and it makes me feel… upset. Mildly agitated. For as much as I once reveled in the cosmic energy of union with a “twin” I have never before felt so relieved not to have to deal with my un-becoming and all it entails while dealing with another in my head space going through their own gyrations and chaos.
We all do this differently, and for as much as I have wanted to beat back loneliness with connection, I am finding that when I can just be left to do my “work,” my part of it, it gets done. I’m learning, stubbornly, to love the grace that will be permanent, common, sure, and solid instead of falling for the idea that this can be done while enmeshed in a karmic connection. Yes, a karmic connection drives powerful energy, but it also leaves me yearning for an ideal I see in that person that has yet to be manifest. I used to think that because I could see a soul in its pristine state that this meant it HAD to manifest itself in them. But their time scale is not mine. I’m making peace with how we all go at this with a different pace. I might leap forward, now no longer attracting nor attracted to that old karma. The tension goes slack right along with the sexual tension, tightly focused previously. When it goes, my focus widens.Each time, the force widens, sublimes, and then grows stronger….but only because I am now more open…less clenched and cluttered. And the things that mattered before don’t. I’m left having to figure how I do feel about any number of things. I’m left having to figure out what fulfills me enough to even keep me here.
It isn’t that I don’t care. Im a feeling passionate person in all truth. It’s that the old arguments…they are, so many of them, just gone. I remind myself, though, that there’s more work to do. I keep leaning into the wind, though. I’m ready for the next thing.
This leaves me wondering what even to write. This process leaves me at odd ends at times. When I’m processing blocked material I often feel agitated, raw, upset, and close to the presence of a block that gives me grief right up to the moment that I find that gap in my heart mind and soul where I can root it out deep so it can go away entirely. Transmuted, redeemed it feels like. This makes it very hard to write.
I’m reminded I have 60 posts in draft mode. I can have one posted each week for a year and not run out. I’m thinking that I’m all out of words. I kind of wonder what is the use. I mean, nothing seems more important to the journey inward that is me and mine. I’m thinking I want to garden quietly, contemplatively, seeing into the mystery that fills me that I alone must face and encounter wordlessly. It’s made all the more precious because it is so quiet.
I’ll be working on getting those drafts more acceptable and not worrying about what next to say. I just can’t. But all those drafts will make it possible for me to go quiet without really being quiet. That’s nice. Better when I’m shedding my skin. I want to move quiet, silently, heeding my own bliss.
Like all of these periods, it’s temporary….but it’s necessary.
I’m working on my house. But The house is connected to me in this weird way. I find I am shifting the energy pattern in the house just as I shift and heal my own—some which are compliments and some have been mirrors to some aspect in me.
It isn’t that the house has the same patterns as me. It has patterns that are present in the awareness of all-time that were created by previous owners here. Both me and my daughter can sense the energy here, and we sense it best when it’s something that is also in us. It’s easier to relate it and to tune it in this way.
It’s two years worth of renovations. Detail work with trim and feelings being stripped away and repainted so this old house looks anew. It’s more than just looks, though. It’s feeling differently day by day.
Already so much has been done, and it feels like my house is changing right along with me. We are drawn to people and places because they match something in us. I am ready to change the pattern in me as well as the person who buys it. Once complete, I won’t have to worry about its being valued….because it will be a different story based on seeing this house in a new way. It wont be because there are new curtains or new paint just covering the old with new. Something else will be in the mix, changing the feel. It is already happening. A friend of mine told me a few years ago I needed to be careful about those stuck emotions in me and in the house. People can feel them….and yes, while someone else who is stuck in a similar way might be attracted to it, I prefer to just change the narrative by editing out the noise. This, I suppose is the work, if ever there was any (on the house I mean).
Columns stripped and repainted, looking brand new. Walls clear and clean. Weeds pulled, mulch beds framing the house in a new look. It’s a labor of love. Now eleven years in, I am ready to sell and move on. Out of it will come an explosion of creative output I have been pushing hard against the harness on for many years. Free now to create just as I have always yearned for: free and clear. Clear inside, free outside.
Meantime, I have research on a book about early Christianity and it’s forgotten mystic roots….and teaching. And renovation in more ways than one.
So I am taking a”rest” for a bit while I work on me and drink deep of this lovely life that keeps growing sweeter…I will have blog entries scheduled each week, and I might just be more consistent by posting all those old drafts than I ever was when writing when the spirit struck.
The lock of the Beloved
curls thrice
gently,
lovingly,
gasping quietly
until she is freed from her deeply chambered place.
Years in dream she prepares
edging closer to you and me
longing across a bridge not yet built,
eying your capable hands.
I heard your voice speaking
in events surrounding me
you wrapped me in impossibilities
transforming the mundane
into the profound.
You were the essence of the miraculous
and bid me deeper
so that I might know
finally
what I had been seeking.
Though I might drown
I am drawn deep into your sea…
Your waves shook me deep
over and over,
your golden presence
lifted me into light
and bid me enter the chamber
of the bride and the groom
a secret consumated in mystery.
My watery self
emerged from new birth
challenged
an old memory
rewritten,
it was…
a resurrection
an inundation
there are no words to contain you…
but you bloom here in my chest
and open me to the grandeur
the same as when life comes to itself
knows itself
and knows what has made it.
You undid me
and remade me all at once.
I am left having to make new sense of old maps
listening to a still-older compass
that whispers at night in dreams
and shakes me to my core;
“it is waiting for you”
and I struggle through the sleep
to find myself on the other side
awake
