The Divine Template

Residing within you is a divine template.  It exists all through you and will reach all the way down into each and every atom of your body.  This template exists within everything and is the very thing that causes things to be, to become, to manifest.  That might sound like magic to you, and you would be right.  It is very magical, and even moreso when you can feel it living and moving within you.  When you can begin to listen to it so that it has an affect on you you realize that it wasn’t that it was never there, but that our own sensory systems have been so completely overwhelmed by the barrage of trauma-based energy that it has literally deafened us to these finer strains of knowing and sensing.

This is what is behind why people who awaken often (although not always) go through a stage where they can’t watch commercial television or radio.  We just don’t realize just how drenched we all are in it.  And it washes away our finer sensing. Of this template within.  When you can hear or feel it, it can begin to guide….

 

More later….it is now off to work.

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Of Motes And Beams

The problem sometimes with ones own spiritual work is that we allow ourselves to get caught up in the work of others.  This is a trap that we can easily fall into and it has the effect of rendering our own path and work compromised.  It isn’t that we can’t work with others, no, its that when we seek to compare our path to another that we wind up getting in trouble.

When we compare ourselves to another, we are no longer dealing with ourselves.  We look out across the patchwork of backyards and we see the Smiths and the Jone’s and we begin the comparison process.  Everyone is different, everyone has their own challenges and lessons to learn.  When we start worrying over what the backyard of another looks like, we forget what it was we were involved in.  This becomes the wedge through which all kinds of things enter.  With such a strong reliance upon the ego, the sense of differentiation between “me” and “the” becomes distorted, exaggerated, and we lose sight of what it is we need to be attending to.  They eye of your heart is best served by keeping it on the prize, which is you. This isn’t to say that you don’t care about others, you can and should, but when you seek to judge others for that which rests in your own field of inexperience and lack, you become not unlike a Pharisee, which is a nice way to say “hypocrite.”  The problem is that its so easy to do, and we all do it.  Learning the lesson of self love includes, I think, keeping our eyes on what matters most, which is ourselves.  The moment we begin to compare, we have a world of differences at our disposal.  The differences will always be there and they can serve to trip us up and get us tangled in what should probably best be kept in the past.

Someone once said do not seek to point out the mote in your neighbors eye when you have a beam in your own.

We are all imperfect.  We are like balls of clay that we are kneading into more perfect form.  In awakening, the higher self serves as a kind of template, what Jesus called the Mother and the Father.  I know you may not be familiar with the Mother part, but old documents suggest quite strongly that this was what he was talking about and that he used these very terms in describing the Kingdom which is made up of two currents moving in the body, a source-point of higher consciousness, a more expanded sense of awareness that is what you are.  For the Hindus. it was the Shakti and Shiva that served as a cosmic template.  There is no one culture or tradition that has any kind of monopoly on these ideas, for they spring as fresh and as real from our innocent realization as buds from a cherry tree.  These two higher forms of awareness can serve as a perfect example for you.  This is the part of you that actually exists outside or independent from time so that the usual rules of causality and exploded.  This means you have this wonderful “cheat” or short cut to knowing how you can be.  In the same way that a parent will offer you, as a small child, a better was to respond, react, or to be, so too does this cosmic template offer you the way out of your own dark corners and discontent.  It isn’t anything that exists outside of you. None of this is anything you must right in another….for certainly we should by now be able to see what happens when we seek to make it right in another (no matter the merits of doing so).  We have the Crusades, endless wars, the Inquisition, the Dark Ages, invasions to help bring freedom to poor insufferable souls, and Witch Trials.  All of this because we each felt we knew what was best for another, all because we saw the mote in our neighbor’s eye instead of taking care of the beam in our own.

It isn’t in your neighbors yard or in some far-flung country or ashram.  It is in you.  And when I say this it isn’t like it is some nice thought to consider; it is true from the top of you to the bottom of you.  Its like you were given this marvelous kit with all the tools necessary to get things right within.  If you think to yourself that you could not even imagine how that could be, then take that thought and look at it carefully and learn from it that this is the extent to which we each have been blind to its presence in our world…within each of us.  But don’t worry; I didn’t know that it existed within me either.  I only had a distant sense that whatever I was going to find out, it wasn’t going to be about something outside myself.  It would be within me. Set the world right within so that you may properly know the world without.  Without doing this you shall not see or know that which is ever-present around you moment by moment.  With all of our own self loathing and unhappiness about ourselves I know it can be easy to look and compare, but don’t.  Take what you have been given as well as the accumulation of all the things that you yourself have created up to this point and say “I accept all of this and will begin working on it right now.”  Then go into that silent garage of your soul, the temple of your highest holiest place, the lab of your own inner creation, or your ocean of being and begin doing the work.  Observe, feel, ask yourself the question, not your beighbor “what is it I most need to know right now, what must I attend to in this moment?”  If you are quiet enough, observant, and receptive, the answer will come.  And sometimes it will be pretty obvious.  Maybe the answer will be “quit looking over the neighbors fence” while at other times the answer will not be so cut and dried.  You might have to just let yourself FEEL without expectation.

When you get to this place, you are so much more centered. Quiet and observant, you can better become aware of all the loops and memes that play through your being at any given time of the day.  This will further help to cultivate a deeper sense of awareness and a meditative state.  Life itself becomes a constant meditation, not a distraction.  You go from being reactive to proactive.  You go from slave to your feelings to a master of them.  How long this takes, I don’t know.  I am not you.  Maybe it takes years. Maybe it takes lifetimes.  Maybe it can begin to be cultivated and put into practice within a few weeks, or even right now.  But right now is what you have.  the past is gone, the future keeps slipping one step ahead of you, so the NOW is the point of power for you where all change can take place.  Don’t worry how long it will take.  Be like a child and be curious about all of it and don’t worry about the time factor.  It will come when you are ready.  You aren’t going to change any of that anyway, so letting something take you out of the present isn’t going to be very productive I don’t think.

The other problem with looking over the backyard fence is that we see what we want to see.  We see through our own filters, our own lenses. Someone will see an old craggy plum tree and think “my goodness, that tree is so ugly it needs to be cut down” while the owner might say, “plum tree, I planted you when I first married my wife and I have had four children, lived in three homes, , had two different careers, and now all my children are grown and my wife has died and I am all alone in the autumn of my life, and here you are still bearing the most delicious fruit….”

I have had some hard lessons in this area with people who could not or would not see things clearly that was in my own backyard.  I allowed myself to get caught up or hung up on what these very misguided people had to say, and instead of getting a chuckle out of it, I let it affect me.  I became too concerned how others viewed me, a kind of reverse form of the whole motes and beams idea, and yet it is all still very much the same thing.  Why on earth would I have let someone shake my confidence about how lovely my old craggy plum tree is?  I told myself that it was because it was the mother of my children doing this, so I had to correct the noise being generated.  “There are plenty of people looking to crucify and tear you down.  Why let them knock you off your game?” my inner voice would say.  So these kinds of things served as the focal point in my own work, which is to heal that part of me that might be hurt or affected by the harsh judging words of me by others.  “Stop looking over the fence and look at your own backyard,” it cautioned.  You see, we all do this, so saying this is a reminder to me as much as it is to you.  Maybe moreso for me.  So you never can judge for yourself the worth or importance of something in a person’s life. Of course you can, but then, you will most certainly lose sight of the very things that you need to work on, which is that beam stuck in your eye.

Beyond Tradition

Gurus with grey beards, robes, incense, or suits and funny hats.  Priests.  Nuns. Imams.  Ancient tradition.  Spiritual knowledge.

If you know me you know that while I do care to peruse old documents for information, I always filter it through where I am now for any bullshit. I don’t take anything on face value.  Buddha cautioned about that.  We let lots of BS masquerade as something that it is not by not really taking a good look at it.  You thought a spiritual person does not say bullshit. Well they do. Words.  “Bullshit” is very apt as you will see….

This whole business of enlightenment I have chased since I was young.  I didn’t even know what I was seeking but I sensed it was something within and something that had been systematically hidden over vast time scales.  I sensed religion had sought to hide a part of the truth.  It had, it turned out….but that is another story, and is one I write about at length in other places on this and other blogs.

Come.  Walk with me.  Away from all tradition, beyond the incense burning and the temples and prayers to this goddess and that god.  I can tell you just what this whole enlightenment things is about without any dogma.  Hopefully we will reach a place where we can all do this so we can understand without any distortion.

Enlightenment is itself  the forward edge of what awakening is.  It is called many things in many cultures.  No one has a lock on it for the simple fact that it is a HUMAN thing.  It is not a guru thing.  It is not a Hindu or Pakistani thing.  If kundalini yoga works so well, we would all have awakened who tried it.  It doesn’t.  But there is something that does stir this power within you.  You do not need a system or guru.  You just need to be brave enough to cut through the bullshit. Your bullshit and the bullshit of others.  My bullshit, too. Now you might think to yourself “this guy he can’t be enlightened because he is saying “bullshit” a lot.”  But there you are, more dogma.  Long before any conventions existed on this earth or in any culture, the force that is responsible for awakening has existed.  Try to fit it into a box and it will quite naturally flow out of it.  Grasp it and define it and it becomes ten times more than what you say it is.  But we still try to explain it because at some point you WILL experience it.  In a fashion, you already ARE.

Awakening is simple; it is the activation of the light body, the energy body.  This activation is itself not an event that is confined to one system but is part of the entire body from energetic (light body) to nervous system to vascular and muscular and every organ and piece of your body. All of it.  And it isn’t a great mystery how it begins.  But that part, I will spare you and explain that the activation of the light body is merely activating the interior sensing of your etheric awareness through the increased flow of energy now in your system. More energy brings greater awareness (or the potential for it in some manner or another).

The activation of the light body includes a period of time where knots are cleared in the naddis or the energy currents in the nonphysical part of your body (as the Hindus say).  As the light body becomes more active there is a feeling of energy piercing into the deeper layers of the energy fields we call chakras.  As the flow of energy is increased, so is ones ability to sense beyond the individual self.  This acts as a bridge to higher forms of consciousness.  You do have a higher self.  You ARE connected to the All.  You CAN experience union with the deity.  Your very little earthly self can quite suddenly be carried along with the higher self into quite unusual and beautiful places.  But you are still your earthly self.  Now, though, it is as though you are being knitted or wedded to this larger part of yourself.  You now have a very big and capable swimming buddy to go on these excursions with.

You will be like a god or goddess suddenly in the body of a three year old. This is what we all are.  We have this sudden awakening to a part of ourselves that is literally existing outside of time.  When you experience this, you literally have access to all lifetimes, all lives all at once.  And some of it can get pretty wild for a local such as you.  In fact, being human in your body might suddenly feel strange for the lives you have experienced as other life forms….and forms of life that have never even entered into physical form.  Its a vast endless thing.  It takes getting used to.  And still, you are this three year old with all this juice and ability.

The whole issue of light body activation, its a bid deal.  Its big to the tube of millions of dollars and people a year who seek to learn how to awaken through yoga. In fact, it is a far more simple process than you might imagine and you don’t need a faith or a guru or anything like that to make it happen.  Yes, I was on a journey spiritually, and yes there were a few things I did, but none of them were terribly involved.  My awakening was spontaneous.  There are many more who are awakening in just this way.  They are everywhere.  A couple of years ago I was sitting across from an artist in my county who was describing what it was she was experiencing and I was kind of amazed that she was describing awakening.  But why should I?  It used to be rare.  Extremely rare.  As in a handful of people on the planet at any given time.

The energy has been expressed as ying/yang and Shakti/Shiva. The father and the mother, and the son. On an energetic level, though, it is merely the polarizing of an energy into two seemingly different fields of negative and positive, north and south poles. This is in everything and it is in your body as your iron rich blood pumps through your body creating a rich field of electromagnetic energy that is just like how the earth produces these same kinds of fields.  The field of energy itself has a different feel from one end of the spectrum to the other.  It also has had an effect on our neurology and brain patterning.  The energy itself makes for subtle changes in the body and how it looks. How it feels.  Your left and right brain are the result of these two currents.  Learning to balance them is key.  Letting the left and right brain work as a whole integrated brain is of vital importance.  In awakening.  In life. Being able to bring forward both sides of the universal in this is of critical importance.  For one, it helps the flow of energy within you.  Gopi Krishna in his first book described the hell he went through because he had not awakened kundalini properly.  What Gopi failed to do was to feel into his feminine side.  because he was not able to do this, he suffered greatly with his awakening until he did.  He essentially opened the channels within himself that was unknowingly choking off the part of the universal energy we would call the feminine or yin energy.  The negative pole on the magnet, battery, solar body, and physical body. Once he did, we found relief.  Of course!

But its just energy.

Does it lead you to enlightenment?  I really hate that word.  I do. It suggest a destination and you know, I am sorry, but after awakening it is clear that we are like a cell within a vast realm of being.  We will know and become so much more.  The infinite spread out before us.  It is dizzying in its vastness.  It can also make you just want to sit there and just LOOK at all of the vastness and wonder “what’s the use?”  It is here that many monks and followers have gotten caught up.  Its hypnotic.  Beautiful. And yet, it is a giant sea of pure potentiality.  Are we supposed to draw energy from that sea and use it? Its one use for it, yes.  But is it the only use or reason for its being there?  I cannot answer that for you because it could well have purposes beyond my own realization.  And I am but a speck on a speck floating in space on the outer edge of a spiral galaxy almost 100,000 light year across. And even as I say this, recognize this, the sheer vastness does not in any way mitigate the sense of everything being connected, intertwined and ONE.  ONE!  Breath calms and centers and also helps move energy, so that can help. Silencing thought sounds great but until you have a major shift, your head is a beehive of thoughts.  You really need significant work to cease the wild monkey-mind.  You do. But doing these things helps to bring peace, a very nice side effect.

Now here is where I stop.  I am not going to give you a lesson in should’s or all of that. YOU will have to find your way through that. I do think or feel, though, that THAT is the real core of awakening.  It isn’t the bells and whistles and cool things that take place, the miracles and amazement. It is the process of refining. Getting better.  Compassion.  Love. This is the hard work because its very easy for people to talk about it and not do it.  That includes me.  I got all the magic stuff down.  I can manifest, I can read energy, I can have the most amazing things take place or happen….and really, so what?  It is merely me living in an activated light body co-creating at a new level. I know people awakened who have been amazingly hard and mean and even cruel.  Untruthful and deceitful. So certainly awakening does NOT make you a better person.  In fact, it can turn you into an evil person as much as it can turn you into a saint.  Why?  Freewill. Makes all the difference in the world!

So think about your life and the regrets you carry around inside of you.  Clean those up first.  And then get to work on shame.  Shame is the killer.  It can turn something beautiful into something twisted and ugly real fast.  Being able to become more natural and easy with yourself without shame or guilt is huge.  The path to this place is subtle, nuanced, but leads to joy and wonder.

So activation of the light body is the first step.  Third eye allows you to SEE the divine cosmology, yes, but it is seeing only.  You can activate all the other centers in awakening, but it is the heart siting in the center of the entire being of YOU that seems the singularly most important part for balance and return…..

This is the first part.  The rest, follow…

With Solstice yesterday and a “supermoon” tonight, I hope you can soak up all the rays from this very special night!

 

Solstice

I am reposting this from my other blog….it is timely and worth reading!  ~Parker

Marking time has been an important part of being human.  Understanding how the passage of time effects us, binds us, moves us, has expressed itself in creating all kinds of ways of marking time.  We have earthly calendars made of stone, buildings that line up with stars that count the precession of the equinoxes.  Today with our Julian calendar, we forget sometimes the daily rhythms of  earth and nature.  We spring from nature, are a part of it.  Its great truth moves in our veins every second of the day.  The electromagnetic field of the earth which pulses and moves, protecting us from the solar wind mimics our own inner magnetic fields created from the iron rich blood in our veins building this field around us. We are a model of the earth with its molten core.  Our own cores made of iron rich blood helps to build and propagate this important field in our bodies. It is what gives our presence a constancy here on the planet. It makes life possible in the way that we know it. This energy field in our own bodies caries information all through it like a vast nervous system and it is a field that can be seen by sensitives in what is called the human aura. Since we are made up of this electromagnetic field and operate within its guiding force, tapping the planetary flow of information simply is not foreign to us.  You very likely haven’t had enough experience with it to be able to identify it when it does happen to you, but if you were to spend a day or two with me I think I could easily point out a couple of instances in your experience where I say “There; what you were just describing….THAT was your feeling something in the flux flow field of Gaia….Mother Earth….”  This is where you would cock your head realizing this sense is not a thing, but more a way to feel…..and this is what keeps this thing often so elusive for the simple fact that they often can’t or wont trust their feelings or anything that seems to transit the gateway of their imaginations.  Like a giant magnet, we are in its flux flow.  We are all part of the other.  We are a cell swimming in a sea of planetary cells within the heart of the cosmos.  And if you think that sounds like so much mystic mumbo consider that some of the leading physicists of our day are beginning to come to the same conclusions. The world is far more fascinating a place than we every allowed ourselves to even glimpse. What if, as the ancients have been asserting that everything we see is but one small part of a living breathing awareness that we sheepishly try to call god or goddess or any number of other names?  I know; it can get hard when someone is suggesting a different name than the one that your family tradition has held to for generations.  We are nothing if not creatures of habit but in a world where our understanding is rapidly advancing and evolving, our understanding of what our deity or source of all life is to us should be expected to change too. For myself, I see the deity as a huge flux core of immense energy.  Maybe a bit like the sun…..and like the sun only gives without any need for return…..

So it is with this day, the marking of the Solstice, that I pause to consider how the turning of the days can keep us rooted and grounded in the rhythm of life here. However we each choose to see it, however we each choose to allow its broad meaning to flow, we are all bound in this world of cycles and circles. Sunrise, sunset, equinox, solstice.  All are part of a vast clockwork that is our lives.

For myself, this day coincides with reclaiming of personal power.  For me, in this longest of days, the greatest of light, I reflect on how I have sought to help others while being blind to my own short comings. I have sought to take power from others in what I mistook as some grand gallant gesture of generosity and kindness. It was neither kind nor gallant. Some grain turned in me which I felt for in order to grasp instead of resolving.  Perhaps I needed to reap what I sowed in order to learn from it.

The universe is ruthless…..unbending. The Law of Karma tied into the Law of Attraction served perfectly to bring me those who were just as unresolved in their lives as I was in mine. In being unable to approve of myself for myself, I sought to find that approval in others.  By doing this, I took their power for safe keeping and they took mine.  The problem with people pleasers like me is that we attract people who need to be pleased.  This is a less than optimal start in any venture….because it means that someone in the equation very likely wont ever be happy with ANYTHING since they are, well, stuck in a sense in some old something that makes them always reflect on the loss, the lesser, the lost, the forgotten, the failure, the end-piece, the heel of the  loaf, the missing piece.  Whatever it was in their past life, they never got past whatever that regret was.  And here we go, the people pleasers, seeking to make it all better when the real job is for each of us to get our own sh*t straight FIRST before dragging others into it.  Knights in shining armor, for as tempting as they may be, should yield and let the damsels solve their problems on their own….not to be hard or thoughtless, no, but to ensure they are capable.

When we allow the broken birdies to heal themselves, we allow the Law of the Divine to work perfectly.  They wont go willingly and will continue their chirping for another to come along to save them most likely, but for those who seek the path of the enlightened, you have to leave those birds, blessing them and wishing them well.  This is because a new day has dawned.  It isn’t that you do not have compassion for the world, it is that the divine in each of us is Never fostered when we carry anothers’ weight.  I know what the Christians have to say, maybe we will get to that issue on another day…..But when we do this, when we take responsibility for ourselves emotionally and spiritually, We invite personal spiritual responsibility to grow.  We each live our lives for ourselves as we heal and touch the divine each on our own. We cannot simultaneously reach the divine while holding someone else’s story in our hands.  We must find it for ourselves.  And in finding it, and owning it, we reach a place where we ask the universe to align to that vibration rather than the old vibration of possession of another’s power. Possessing another’s power means they are effectively powerless.

I have seen how this lack has attracted others who all exhibited the same characteristics. In their own ways, they sought to hide from their own ultimate responsibility, giving me an in to their own wound, their karma. In some measure I tried to set the world right, but the only world I set right is the world within me first, not with others whose wounds I try to fix from across the other side of the table.  It has always been our task to do this. When we don’t, we enter into an unholy alliance that is doomed to fall. Every one has been a perfect mirror until I have learned that I must first know who I am deeper down. Not through another, not because of another but because of me.  Not to be alone, not to be hardened against the world, but to simply let this incredibly unusual self that I am to shine in the world without fear of any one else not approving. Only I approve of me, only I can love myself. Only I can feel the love that is the universe shining in me to finally reach the light of day.  Not because of another, but because on an individual basis, we much each find the god and goddess within us.  If we seek to have another do that work for us, we invite whatever shadow that rests in us to grow stronger and we forget the greater truth shining in us. Instead of carrying the power of another, we inspire others to carry their own.

You can do it.  Its in you to do this. And once this is done, then we look at the world and consider perhaps for the first time the view through clear eyes and ask what is in our highest to mirror. We have spent lifetimes mirroring in the shadow land, but now it is time to live in the mirror of light.

To me, Solstice is bringing the greatest illumination into the world.  It is reaching a place of illumination within.  Being able to see our own foibles within the bright light of the world. For me, it is a chance to stand back, to be honest and clear-eyed.  How does the turning of seasons help to remind you of your own inner seasons and changes?  Your body, springing from nature, is connected to nature.  Listening to that nature is for me a far more honest and integral truth than any dogma or system could ever hope to offer me. For me, right now, its about reaching that place of zero point, which is our “primal self” which has nothing to do with being unrefined.  Coming back to center, and in coming back to center, a marvelous opportunity to begin asking what I am beneath all the blankets of hurt from the past in order to know what my inner truth is.  Well….don’t I know this already? Can’t I feel this world within surging up with such bliss and wonder?  Haven’t I felt this my whole life long?  Casting them off and focusing on our most essential selves, our own true essence without fear of how we might look or seem, is important.  It is to me.  I finally realized that I had to accept myself and no longer try to run under the radar.  Perhaps the world would not understand, perhaps the world would reject it.  Perhaps. But I alone have to remain true, and the truer I am, the magic in all of this is that I am led to a place where I can mirror something new. I am free to mirror my own divine truth in my world. Not through another, not because of another.  And once I get right in myself, then who knows what can happen. Who knows who else will be inspired to do the same.

~Nemasté~
– Parker

Living An Authentic Life

The way to living an authentic life begins very simply. It has to.  there is a lot of BS you have to sort through.  But start, you must.

Authenticity is not about fear.  fear, even the smallest niggling fear of how the neighbors might interpret your intense love of plaid as being WEIRD, so you hesitate buying plaid wall paper because you think other people think you are crazy to want or like that.  This is not authentic. A big part of being authentic is not being fearful or letting your reflecting on what other people think get in the way of what you do, how you feel, who you are, and what you ultimately become.

But it’s also not about rebelling and taking a giant machete to your surroundings.  You don’t hack off arms and the limbs of those hanging out in your plaid-less jungle.  No.  You change. If those who were there before the change do not like it, they will move on. It could be a very peaceful transition.  Most often, it isn’t.  People want to hurt you or say things to hurt you because they are simply so dysfunctionaly cast into their memes that they can’t honor that it’s not plaid-ville (or whatever it is that you need to do to change your life for the better, for the more authentic).

Second, don’t expect the authentic life to be some granite edifice to your unwavering greatness.  Your authentic life will change.  Perhaps

Image © Stafford Artglass, Parker Stafford

day-to-day.  Week to week. Maybe it changes once and NEVER changes (okay, you are an unusual dinosaur bird and welcome to the 21st century, we want to study you….from a distance!)  Give yourself the flexibility to do whatever changes you need to do.  Allow yourself to be wrong.  Allow yourself to be right.  Don’t pretend to know everything that is in this enchilada because that, too, will change.  All of it.  Tomorrow we might be eating kabob or something.  Lamb.  Quail.  Cactus fruit.  Tangerine and coconut.

Authenticity lies in you.  I can tell you all sorts of things but unless you find it, you haven’t found it.  You are always seeking it if you are indeed seeking it.  Otherwise, maybe not so much.  What I am saying is that this is a constant state of becoming, so be ready for that. Be ready for what that means.  It means not taking yourself so seriously.  Besides, it makes you look stiff and that kind of brittleness does not look good on you (holds up a different colored suit and dress to compare and ushers you into the dressing room quietly to try on the new pair of clothes).

Be ready for people not liking you and not seeing what you are doing as anything worthy.  However, those that matter will see that what you are and who you are as being authentic is a good thing not because you are somehow different but simply because you are being you.  For you.  And the people who are attracted to that kind of person for that kind of reason are a rare breed of animal, different from the vast masses of followers and pretenders.  Lost children.  Angry.  Frustrated.  The people who like you for you….who do not feel any need to change you but to see you be all the more you are more of the same.  Authentic.  Not everyone is ready for the awesomeness of this.  Don’t let it trouble you. I have people who wont speak to me because of this.  Too bad, but really, if I spent my time pacing the halls and weeping, where would that get me?  Nowhere.

Life is not a popularity contest.  Any great artist who was ahead of his or her time will tell you this, each of them from the grave.  Its not about being recognized for your greatness, its just being YOU as the greatness that you are. So maybe that means plaid wallpaper and maybe it doesn’t.  I am hoping maybe it doesn’t, but then, that shouldn’t matter to you, right?  Your greatness will not be because of any other reason than you are THAT.  Don’t go looking for recognition because you have already recognized it in the only way that really matters.  the world, what does it know?  When does the world know cool when it sees it, or awesome, or marvelous, or beautiful or handsome? As soon as the world has caught on, its like disco was in the 70’s.  It was so yesterday.  If we worry about a trend or catching on, we wont every really authentically live in the moment.  Most recognition, then, comes at the very tail end of an era just as those who were there in plaid (or whatever else they were being authentic about) was getting ready to change.  That’s why you really can’t go chasing things.  No chase.  BE.  Butterfly come to you, not you chase butterfly. Wax on, wax off.

If you follow this and not worry about outcomes, you are going to find yourself and really that is all that matters.  When you can find yourself, you will find others who have also found themselves.  You do not find the found amongst the lost.  Are you lost?  You aren’t going to find those who have found themselves in the sea of lost swimmers.  Their time will come when it occurs to them to give up whatever it is they are doing that is keeping them from authentically swimming or living in this vast sea of everything.  I know; it is simple: just be yourself.  Be ready to watch as vast skeins of yarn comes unraveling off of you.  It has to.  It no longer fits….and now must be rewound or chucked completely. So much stuff that you thought was you….sitting like the old objects in your attic that you could never bring yourself to get rid of.  And yet, in chucking them, they are never missed.  Really, why were you carrying all that baggage anyway?

Oh, and I almost forgot; this authenticity thing, it is also a path toward self-love.  Not selfish love, not narcissism, but rather honoring the self you are in the very best way it deserves.  Okay, you can now take off the plaid and try on this new suit to see if it suits you….

The Coming of Quetzalcoatl

It was 1985 and I was at this time interested in the phenomenon of astral projection.  I was 19 or 20 at the time and I sensed that if one could experience this state that it could serve to help erase our fear over death.  I had read some material on it from a few sources as they popped up here and there.  I bought a book by Robert Monroe who was able to project so predictably that he was a research subject at the University of Virginia’s Psychology department. Led by other academics such as Charles Tart and some of the work by Stanislov Groff and others who had gone to India, had dropped acid or eaten magic mushrooms, this 60’s era expansion of consciousness brought with it an awareness of still more experience, of larger dimensions to human experience. This was what came about as a result of some of the earliest East meets West experiences, a legacy that I think has helped to push an awareness of alternate forms of consciousness.  I grew up with some of these materials like East West Journal and Be Here Now, which was like a kids book for grownups.  Like my mother who seemed interested in this aspect of the counterculture, we both were into what the hippie scene conferred long after it had come and gone.

I had listened to an interview with a woman named Lynn Andrews on NPR who had written some books on the shamanic tradition as it related to women (Medicine Woman, Jaguar Woman, etc.) and she gave an example of how one could use dreaming as a jumping off point for doing spiritual work.  She described a method for doing this work that amounted to suggesting prior to sleep that when you fall asleep your  ego  would step aside while you did this work in dream.  The ego would move into the background as you used the dream state for more intentional work. Essentially what this meant was that you would “wake up” inside the dream using the dream state as a springboard.  This is called lucid dreaming.

I decided that I would do just this as a way to use dreaming as a jumping off point for a projection of consciousness.  Before going to bed, I simply said that I would wake up within the dream and would use this state as a way of projecting consciousness.

That night I dutifully awoke within dreaming.  I found that I felt a sense as though there were wheels of energy moving at ever greater speeds within me.  I felt as though there was an energy that was building speed inside of me, like a car whose engine was put in neutral while its engine revved to ever higher speeds. I had the distinct impression that some process was underway that would catapult me out of my body.

Just then, I saw in the distance of my vision the image of a coiled snake moving towards me. This snake floated through the air.  It had no wings.  It had a very Mayan looking face where the head of the snake should have been. As I looked at this form I felt something say to me that what I was supposed to do was to project my awareness into the form in front of me which was this serpent form with the human face on it.  As I looked at this dream form, old notions about the snake in the Garden of Eden cropped up.  I chided myself for falling for this fear.  I decided to ignore the fear and do as this inner voice was saying.  The wheels then dutifully sped up, the force increased to an incredible velocity, as I made this decision to just go with it.  This was building into something stronger than anything I had ever experienced before.  It felt as though the whole of the universe was moving through me as an incredible force gained speed. As the energy grew beyond anything I thought possible, I found myself feeling hesitant.  I decided that if I was falling for this fear, I needed to resolve the fear before going on such a journey as this.  The phenomenon began to subside and the snake disappeared into the distance as I slipped back into sleep.

In the wake of this experience, I kicked myself for falling for the fear.  Several years later, while in college, I took a course on PreColumbian art where I would see the same image in a traditional form of the Mayan and Aztec God Quetzalcoatl.  I did more reading on this God and found that the priests of Quetzalcoatl would encounter this form in their visions and dreams and that Quetzalcoatl would come in this way to take them  on soul journeys to other worlds.  Of all the Gods of the Aztec and Maya, Quetzalcoatl was the most peaceful. Quetzalcoatl did not ask nor seek blood sacrifice. Flowers and butterflies were instead offered to him.  As I read through this, I thought how perfect.  I wished I had not begged off from such an experience that I had had a few years previously.

I wondered where I would have gone, what would I have seen had I merged into the body of this snake form?  All through history and all across the world, the serpent was an ancient symbol for wisdom, and spiritual knowledge. The Hindus had the double form of the serpent fire of kundalini, the Egyptians had the serpent (some were even winged—I write about this in the post of the Kriyas and/Mudras and the Holy Ghost that shows up in a link at the bottom of this page for popular posts), the Chinese and Japanese had serpents in the form of dragons.   The Minoans, Cretans, and early pagan Europeans all had the serpent tied into spirituality and vital force. Within my own experience I had been visited by Quetzalcoatl having never known what this image even meant, but its purpose was perfectly expressed in my lucid dream from just a year or two previous.  Some part of us knows these larger forms as we connect into the Collective Consciousness of all traditions.  We dip into the pool of our larger knowing and wonder how on earth this could be.  By shifting awareness, by allowing ourselves to move into larger realms of awareness, we tap these seemingly archetypal forms resting within the collective awareness of humankind. Its “out there” to tap for the fact that the channel lies within.

The Coming of Quetzalcoatl is  symbolic of a deeper return of our own inner knowing, our own vital force and spiritual wisdom.  Its no surprise to me that so many have been connecting with the form of Quetzalcoatl in recent years. For people who are connecting to the Collective Consciousness, many today are left with few good ways for reaching into the divine in a way that makes sense.  Quetzalcoatl serves as a type of angel.  I know for a Christian this would be blasphemy, but this has never stopped me from pointing out the obvious.  Religious figures are propped up as though they have always been while we alone have been involved in creating them.  The Hindus refer to this as our being the “ancestor” to the gods.  This is expressed this way because, well, we DID create them.  Anyway, so we are basically short good spiritual agents that we will need in the time upcoming.  This is not hard to pin down, to know.  Its very much in the air and it leads to a lot of fascination with those same forms that wind up speaking to us about all kinds of qualities that we need that we may never have known existed.  Call it an ability to sense through the Collective Subconscious. I was not able to know that Quetzalcoatl did not have wings.  I in fact imagined him this way, yet when he did arrive, he arrived in a very traditional way, which was much more like the image of the mans face emerging out of the mouth of the snake than anything else.   And if I was merely guessing about Quetzalcoatl’s connection to astral projection and “spiritual journeys” I’d say my subconscious pretty well nailed that one on the head.  Quetzalcoatl fits the bill for some because of this uncommonly peaceful character who did not demand blood sacrifices and was the epitome of peacefulness.

Quetzalcoatl and serpents go far back into the record in Meso America. Quetzalcoatl has gone through some changes over time, but has been connected to death and resurrection,as well as taking on the elements of the sky, rain, and the winds (not unlike the Thunder Bird of Northern America).  He was in the pantheon of gods in Teotihuacan, and it is believed that it was from there that his presence spread to the Maya who adopted him as Kukulkan.  Quetzalcoatl and the snake image dates back to the Olmec Preclassic period, as far back as 1150 B.C.  He has also been associated with Venus.  There are a number of stories over the long period of time that he has been worshipped. Some rulers have taken his name, perhaps in a bid to raise themselves to the level of gods themselves.   In the 10th century a ruler closely associated with Quetzalcoatl ruled the Toltecs; his name was Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl. This ruler was said to be the son of either the great Chichimeca warrior, Mixcoatl and the Culhuacano woman Chimalman.

Quetzalcoatl was also said to have made humankind out of his blood and earth.  What is interesting is that the Olmecs, Aztecs and Maya all attribute our current era as belonging to the “fifth sun” which is the result of four major catastrophes that have befallen earth and have meant the humankind had to rebound or be recreated each time, something that is very similar to the Hopi concept of the four worlds, with the fifth being the one we are soon to enter. On that note, perhaps we bear some connection in the collective of Quetzalcoatl having to do with our destiny at this higher order of our consciousness?

From the  Codex Telleriano-Remensis.

It has certainly been “in the air” in a sense that many have been looking for ways to fill the need for spiritual agency, or connection to the divine cosmos.

In literal and figurative ways, we are unearthing what these potent forms represent for us.  Quetzalcoatl is interesting in that its very likely that there was a man who lived who bore the same name.  It is said that he presided over a kind of golden era which are now ruins. What gets many Westerners so interested is that he cam from the East and returned there by making a boat to sail.  He was also said to have had a beard, a very unusual thing for the Aztec and Mayans.  So often, myths mixes with legend as legend often has rooting in actual fact with myth expressing the spiritual aspects that transcend both.

In the historical account, Quetzalcoatl had a sister whose name was Quetzalpetlatl.  If we consider how these two forms of myth and legend might flow and merge, it is certainly possible that Quetzalcoatl and Quetzalpetlatl express the masculine and feminine aspects of a still larger realm of spiritual experience.  We then have a masculine serpent and a feminine one as well.  Just as in the Hindu story of kundalini as two serpents, we have a full form that expresses the totality of creative potential in physical and spiritual form.  In this way, we all have access to those forms that align more closely to our own inner masculine or feminine selves. The coming of Quetzalcoatl can also herald the coming of his feminine aspect, Quetzalpetlatl.  The wisdom of what this myth represents is open to all.

If you can consider that we know more than we consciously realize, that there is a much broader realm of experience available to us in what Jung called the Collective Subconscious, then all of these things can make more sense in how we might encounter these archetypal beings without any present knowledge.  The resonance from a past life, or merely tapping a broader range of inner knowing can bring us into contact with those elements which can serve us in our own inner alchemy.  If you can approach all of this in the form of a very creative activity without a lot of structure, your higher self can suggest new possibilities that simply were not possible previously.  This material can be given a new life and old forms rewound through our own present experience. Its as though we take clippings from another time and make new art forms from the images and ideas contained in them.  As long as we don’t get hung up on what is supposed to be, experience is less limited.  Your being is innately creative, and you will be amazed at the insight that these forms can provide you if you allow things to flow more and be less controlled by any rules about their structure or older traditional material.

it was this process that has led me to a greater understanding of my own process as I come into contact with these archetypes.  Even removing the need to know WHY they show up will allow you focus in the moment to create anew.  I suspect that this is what all of this work with archetypes is all about; a creative enterprise where the old is made new again.  Don’t be afraid to go at this like an artist.  This is how new worlds are formed, ideas birthed, new resources uncovered.  There is a lot more to know and to become.  Even the Plains Indians had a process where the old forms were brought out, shown, then new ones put in their place.  These became the great sacred bundle that helped to direct spiritual understanding.  Like a snake shedding its skin, none of this was static, but ever-changing. Don’t be afraid to move with change and see what great promise it may yield to you!

NOTE:  Now just a few weeks after having first posted this entry, I notice that this post has an unusual number of views.  I first asked myself what was it that was drawing so much attention to this? The answer is simple I think. People have been finding the post often through searches FOR Quetzalcoatl. People are already looking for information on this mythical being.  People are focused, drawn by him. Is it because of all the Mayan 2012 stuff?  Perhaps. But I also tend to feel this goes even deeper.  I suspect that we sense that Quetzalcoatl serves as a medium for self transformation, a “Way Shower” of sorts.  We FEEL like h is somehow helping to usher something in.  I suspect that he is, in a way, but I also think that “he” also leads to the “she” as well, which is one of the great things about this age, the return of the divine feminine (there is a lot about this on this blog–use search tags to find them).  He holds a vibration which is a truth that we can sense from a vast distance.  How was it that I experienced Quetzalcoatl in such a way that was so close to his role in a culture that wasn’t even my own?  Somewhere in the space beyond our thinking lies a knowing about things. We see a distant light and feel a yearning to be there, to go nearer it, never knowing that it leads to some larger world that is within.  How do salmon know to swim upstream? Why do Monarchs find South America after thousands of miles?  We say it is instinct.  Perhaps instinct ties us into a more vast field of knowing…..even when we think we are not aware.  We hunger for a new path, I think.  A brilliant light to show us the way…..Even as I completed this addendum to the post, I noticed that on my popular blog entries section at the bottom of the page that this entry is now showing up there.  This is just how rapidly this post has gained popularity. We are looking for a light that we know exists….

Update:  8/20/2012

In a recent discovery of some old documents, I am pouring through a rather interesting tie-in with the Seraphim of the bible and how these beings were also called winged serpents.  These winged serpents took the shape of heavenly beings that brought illumination to humankind.  Either we have a collective awareness of these beings as serpent-like or it was part of a very ancient and wide-spread symbology that was used in most every culture in one form or another.

The Coming of Quetzalcoatl first appeared on the blog Divine Alignment.  To read more there, find D.A. HERE.

Waking The Infinite….The Book Part

The process for me of going to length to write about my awakening experience began as early as 2009 when I was keeping a handwritten journal that I thought at the time was helping me to keep track of the frenzied pace of change that was taking place in my life.  I was witness to what felt like an afterdeath experience, one where the dying was already done and the crying was over and now I was having to get used to the new surroundings.  I felt like in that place that maybe I needed to keep track of all this new stuff.

It turned into a book once I hit 120 pages. that was when I knew it was turning into a manuscript.  The project was rethought and a simple outline grew out of this effort.  This though was tricky because so much of the book had yet to happen since it was a memoir.  I had to give enough room in the book knowing it would somehow fill itself up.

Most of the book was written during a time when I was outwardly in the worst shape of my life. I had seperated from my wife and children (I say children because this was how my ex sought to do things as a kind of punishment to me).  I was lucky that I was able to live in my studio which had an office space that would work as a bedroom and a shower and plenty of industrial equipment that opened amazing culinary doors.  You have not lived until you have had broiled prawns in my glass kilns.  But much of the time spent there was without power, without water, without heat.  I lived on the edge.  I managed, though, to write this book without any distractions.  I would gather my thoughts and my laptop and plug in at a coffee shop and rubbing my coins together, purchase a cup of coffee which would buy me an hour or two of comfortable time charging my battery and writing feverishly.  Once my time was up and I had checked my email I would go home to my dark space and write by laptop light. It might have looked like a very bad kind of situation, but it was a marvelous gift if you can get beyond your associations of what is acceptable or good living. The quality of my life had to be inwardly first.  I had plenty of time to contemplate that.  I also had plenty of unusual events taking place all around me that served to teach me some basics about how quantum theory actually has a linkage into the world of larger events.  The world opened up to me like a bud not once, but many times.  Over and over I would receive inspirations that would become the basis for the book.  Sitting by the river I would hear the instruction begin: “the brain is triadic just as the energy flowing is triadic…..understanding this helps to understand how energy is ordered in the body and how you can use it….”  I suppose it would have been better if I had created a fictional character who would come and sit down with me to tell me all these things but the truth was far more subtle and nuanced than that.  THis is where the writing is difficult.

Writing about this experience is like trying to explain something that grows out of everything you are to become something that you aren’t or have not been.  I know many people after having been awakened like to say that it feels as though they have had it forever.  Well, not me.  I was VERY aware of a presence that was seducing me, sweeping over my body the way someone’s long hair might swoop all over your skin and give you goosebumps.  I know that when it dove down into me that this may have been a seeming, but nobody talks or writes about the energy diving DOWN into you.  They are busy writing about it rising up the spine.  What I observed is what I think some people may miss, which is that this energy was conditioning my energy field, loosening me up enough so that it could become integrated into my neurocircuitry.  When it did rise I awoke to a different kind of world.  The old world was very much like how it must be like for astronauts when they see the earth shrink in size in their rear view.  A little sad, a little meloncholy.

I took the events from life and let them tell the story.  I had some most unusual things happen, events that in truth aren’t that unusual for people going through awakening.  I have collected these and discussed their core purpose in our lives.  We talk alot about synchronicity  but no one seems to know what it is.  Once you know what it is, it opens large doorways for you in understanding what you are as a creative being.  I write about synchronicity because I had it happen so much I was able to draw causal principles between the phenomenon and what is actually driving it.  The hopeful part is that synchronicity has the power to change your life for the better as it stands as a shining example of what we are all capable of.

I also challenge the old notions that emerge from the east about what Kundalini is.  I know that one thing I am is a very good observer, what Robert Monroe described himself as being a good reporter.  This is what I am, and without any prejudice as to what was happening to me, what I observed was something different from the way it is described in the eastern literature.  I think that by keeping your awareness more balanced, your experience can become more beneficial and powerful to you.  It can also lead to better healing and it can help remove powerful blinders that we all seem to have been wearing.

We are moving into a new paradigm, this is true, and we need new stories, new books and writings to help all of us re-conceive ourselves.  What is on offer with awakening is the opportunity to remake ourselves in a rapid and rewarding way.  To take most advantage of it, though, requires a daily discipline and self honesty.  It is true that while I released much of the old dogma, I also became more monkish in the sense that I spent many hours meditating…..not in any disciplined fashion but while sitting or lying down, while driving or swimming or taking a bath. Life became a prayer.

The book covers about two of the busiest years of awakening.  In that span I wound up with 700 type written pages.  To make a cut book, I had to change the margins and fonts and this led to a book that was almost twice the size.  I spent months trimming it down over and over until I got it down to two hundred pages.  I am now at a place where I am slowly and carefully adding material back into it.  It hasn’t been as easy as it first seemed.  I often wrote while half in trance.  It would pour out of me without any discernible location best suited for it. It often wound up in what I thought of as swamplands in the book.  All of that though has been mercilessly turned back and trimmed.  Keeping the spirit of the experience remains the challenge to me even now.

The book is a giant positive spin to life.  In this spin the forward momentum will hopefully be enough to put you in new conceptual waters with experience that changes too.

I hope to get more work done on the book when the days grow too hot to be in the studio.  To do this right I am going to have to keep the view narrower, simpler, and more straightforward.  It hasn’t been what I have wanted to do.  Someone looking at what I was doing explained that many writers wind up burying their readers in a monsoon of words.  I am working in a gentle rain of words and not a flood.

Its late and time for bed.  I have the best place now for writing than I ever did; a study on the south-side of the house with plenty of light and views. Somehow, though, sitting in such comfort makes me want to lie down on the floor and think back on how I was stuck in this place and embracing it for what it offered me.

 

Waking The Infinite Quote

For All Fathers

We are asked to be strong to not show our feelings, to suck it up and to move on.  We are asked to be rocks and the world seems surprised when we become that.  But even more disbelieving when we show that we are soft inside.  Its not easy being a man because of all of this training we have done to ourselves.  All of us.  Women want a man who is strong, and yet a man’s true strength cannot be known until he allows himself to break and become vulnerable.  We want that steady force beside us to make us feel confident when in truth we need to learn to be confident within our own selves.  When we ask for it from without, trouble surely is waiting, for all things genuine begin first within, not without. We know a thing deeply within ourselves first before we can speak of it or teach it or become it.

Today I will not spend any part of this day with my children.  I cannot tell you how much this pains me, how much it hurts.  The day is a reminder of the hurt that the other who is also a parent to my children wishes to exact on me.  My children have been told an untruth that is in the words of Anais Nin the way we see the world less as it is but more as how we are.  It is not easy when you were the provider for your family putting in long hours to give them a good life only to be ridiculed, criticized, destroyed before your children and behind your back.  I know it sounds like I am belly aching, but in truth contained within this is a great big question.  Its not obvious as first.

So I take this as a sign that I must look deeply within.  Touch the Spirit that lies in the center of all of this, that lies in the center of all things to draw from it the inspiration that I need to see things rightly instead of wrongly.  For just as wrongly has the mother of my children seen me and expressed to them how she thinks I am, I too have seen her wrongly.  I have not seen the world rightly and this has been the source of my troubles……very hard troubles they are.

So today I embrace the mystery, I embrace the love that I am.  I radiate with it and while I may not have the answers I can keep embracing the mystery and asking what it is I am to learn, to open myself completely before it all and not be afraid.  For it is there that the Source of all things resides and it is in that presence that all things are possible. It is our own divine inspiration.  Literally.

Today is still Fathers Day.  My children will be aware of it.  One will be thinking of it dourly and angrily, seeing only what he felt he did not get from life and from me while another will be feeling guilty that she has not stood up to speak truth to power (or madness).  In both cases, though, I will shower them with my love even as one has vowed the meanest hardest things.  But nothing rational will explain any of this and the only way through this is to take the stone I have been asked to become and render it into fluid moving molten magma.  The greatest strength is in our ability to be gentle and kind and compassionate. Even when we are alone.  Even when we are reviled or hated.  Even moreso then.

Being a father IS about being strong, but its not the kind of strong that you might think.  Sometimes it asks of you to be way stronger than you ever thought you could be.  Such is the calling and the discipline required. With the day being unusually cool I am going to be blowing glass and thinking of my children and wishing them all great things in their lives even if it means not being with me.

If these people are dreams that will fade right along with the nightmares of my life, then so be it.  If they persist and transform, even better.  If they move out of my life then I suppose this is how it must be for them, but I will not pause in telling them that I love them, have always loved them, and will always love them without expectation of anything in return.  Surely the mystery of All lies in the center of me radiating love even if it does not itself receive anything back from me.  True love is like this I suppose and its less something that you learn as you become.  The love I feel can no longer belong to the Soul of dysfunction.  There MUST be a better way.  While it is not my fault that a spouse has said and done the things she has to my children in an effort to brainwash and propagandize, I most certainly was drawn to this person who contained all of these potentials within her since before I had even met her (and it was all there for me to see if I had been willing to do so—I saw and ignored them).  I think we think as parents that we are supposed to be perfect, but we aren’t.  We are human. We become parents not knowing how to change a diaper let alone how to care for another human being in such an intimate and involved way.  We are all rookies driven by love and the desire to become and be and learn and grow.   If we can manage to stay one step ahead of accidents or disasters of one kind or another, we consider ourselves lucky that we didn’t burn down the house because we left the stove on while sleeping exhausted after being up all night with a fussy baby, or that we haven’t lost our temper because we have just had to deal with a baby for the ninth night in a row who can’t seem to sleep for longer than two hours at a time.  We grow through these things, we learn what we are made of and we marshal the resources needed when we feel as though we are somehow falling short on one end of it or another.

Nope.  None of us are perfect.  Fathers are not solid rocks of granite and women are not oozing worlds of wondrous sensual beauty.  Sometimes we fail and cry and wonder and fear and fall apart. And this makes us perhaps all the more beautiful because of that.  Will our  children accept that as good enough? One does and one does not, so it is a lesson to me that if I am to take anything from this it will not be because another has chosen to go a different way or that my way is somehow off, but that my way is golden and I know it and must follow it no matter what, even when others say otherwise (crazy others at that!). Trying to make it all make sense is like grasping the wind. Instead of that, being able to feel it when it comes instead of wrapping our minds around it is the greatest service.  Not all things lead to wisdom by being known.  For now, I embrace the mystery and wish all fathers a wonderful Fathers Day.

What’s True

As soon as someone says something cannot or will not happen to you (in, say, awakening) along comes someone who is living proof that that is just not so.  Seeking to make systems most often succeed in casting nets of confusion instead of inquiry or illumination.  Keep your mind open so your eyes can observe clearly and truthfully.