SpRiNg!

I love this time of year.  I do.  I was born just a few days before Spring and even as I grew up in a warm semi-tropical climate,  I did not experience seasons for the first six years of my life, but my move to the mountains of Virginia revealed to me the great wonder that is Spring.  There have been so many important hallmarks in my life that have involved Spring, from my own birth, to the births of others in my family as well as to significant events, all choosing to take place during this special window of time when the earth is beginning to loosen and open and awaken to new life.  It is so special because, perhaps,  it is also a brief happening.  The buds come out in stages, then the trees all leaf out and then usually by May, its all fully unfolded.  It is, though, a marvelous catalytic event that brings so much to us in so many ways.  At least it is that way for me.

It isn’t just the spring flowers that are poking up.  Its the buds that begin, even now, to begin their gradual greening and burgeoning.  Its like this gentle but subtle movement to being.  Pushed by growing daylight, carried by warming days, and made more fertile and possible by rain.

The new mystery flower buds up close

When awakening took a deeper turn in my life, I was awakened at four-thirty in the morning by a presence I had known about for years but who had suddenly made a re-entry into my life in a more active way, perhaps because my own inner sensing was more active by what awakening offered or brought.  Now, to understand, I am a DEEP sleeper.  So deep, in fact, that I used to need an alarm clock that would continually go off and insist that I get up, just to get up.  Yes, I sleep deep. Its one of my super powers, actually!  Waking up at four-thirty in the morning was simply not something I normally have been known to do.  At all.  And yet, this presence, an angel, actually, who had introduced himself again to me, seemed fond of getting me up at this same period during the mornings in order to administer some teaching or healing of one kind or another.  This angel,  who had roused me from my sleep,  insisted that I go outside.  “Go.  Now.” he said.  So I dutifully roused and got my clothes on enough to make the journey.  Bleary-eyed, I stood at the back of my yard and wondered what was going on.  I looked up at the still-night sky and waited for whatever it was that was so important.

He pointed me off in one direction and bid me look.  I will explain what I mean by what it was that I saw when he told me to look….I was aware that my third-eye was active.  I was seeing with my physical as well as inner eyes.  Do you know this effect?  It can happen when your eyes are closed and it feels as though you are looking through your closed eyelids.  You get a definite sense of space.  Something almost just behind your eyes opens up. There is a sense of expansiveness, of space every bit as real as what you sense with your physical eyes (except for me it actually feels more spacious than physical space—does that make any sense?).   That is at least one symptom I can point to to describe what I was feeling/seeing.  Okay, so you get the idea….so on with the narrative……As I did this, I saw a large hallways open up and I somehow knew that each door represented a lifetime.  All these lifetimes. He then bade me pay attention to what was about to happen next.  An odd thing took place!  The hallways that opened up in front of me lifted up and turned, like how you might imagine how a large boat would sink in the ocean; the hallway just lifted upwards on its far end and suddenly was like a slide of sorts.  I had the awareness of all of this material being shaken out of all of those lifetimes.  The dross.  All that was not necessary.  Like a paper bag that you tilt up on one side to let all the material come falling out.  He explained to me how this life was seminal in how this act would take place, that it was taking place and would continue to take place.  THIS was THAT life!

So you might be asking yourself what this has to do with Spring.  As I stood there, soaking this all up and waiting to see if there was anything more this being had to say to me, I then went back inside and went to my bed where I then fell fast asleep.  It turned out that the day was Good Friday.  At the time, I didn’t know that.  The next day, as I rode through the mountains from the Blue Ridge Mountains where I live to the Alleghenies where I have my studio (I am only a few miles from this eastern continental divide), I noticed something that I had not noticed even the previous day, which was that as I came into the Allegheny side of things, everything was just beginning to get a haze of GREEN on all the trees.  You know that look.  It’s the first visible sign of Spring after all the early bulbs come up.  The trees come in a little later.  But this year, the trees all began to bud out a little earlier than usual.  As I thought about all of this, the confluence of Spring, the trees, Good Friday, and my image of the many lifetimes being cleared out, I saw how it was that this was itself one giant opportunity for new life to emerge, for new beginnings to grow after a slumber of lifetimes.  All of this, nature and us (who are a part of nature), are waking up just as all life awakens in the slim path of Spring.  This, for me, is why I have loved Spring so much.  It is new life!  New beginnings, a chance around this Great Wheel.  Each time, we can bear our shortcomings and seeming failures into the new opportunities that are being offered, which is as perennial as the grass, the hope that love instills on the greatest and the least of us…..which has the power to raise each of us to equal stature with all of our kin, sentient and non, on this planet.

And you might be wagging your finger here pointing out that “Good” Friday was a day when Jesus was Crucified. And well, yes, and so all of this has itself been a death.  In the case of Jesus and with life here, death is followed by rebirth (for plants blooming, in a fashion, as well as for Jesus in his own drama so long ago).  So a death, yes, for death itself was certainly turning in my life (and continues to do so) with the end being also the beginning.  And so, as one dies, there is also this new life which I saw take place the very next day.  Good Friday, itself, varies, so it is actually uncommon to see everything budding out in our part of the country so early. But it does happen, and it certainly happened almost as if by magic the next day.  The promise of new life, continuity, rebirth, renewal.

It helps me to continually reflect how I can bring more healing, more growth, more new buds out into my own life, to make sense of the love both given and denied, in my life and to learn how to better hold all love in my life….since Spring is itself bestowed to us all just as the greatest of love is bestowed.  But it is true, I think, that we each, including myself, can gain from being able to see things more clearly, less as we are and more as they are.  Somehow, Spring seems to remind me of this, and it makes me hopeful even as Winter loosens it grip and gives us here in this region, at least, a taste of the turning seasons.  Spring!  Spring!  Spring!

So it is that I regard Spring, celebrate it, welcome it, and breathe it in.  Born into it, I am born out of it, and look forward to it to come once the leaves begin to fall and everything goes to slumber again.

I hope that you can breathe in this new life into yourself…to stand out in the still-cold grass and feel the pulse and flow that is beginning to leak out through all things.  From here on out, it will be like a voice that will grow stronger and stronger….its spirit lies just beneath the ice, as drip drip drip, that ice slowly and gradually thaws.  Me, I NEED it.  Each time I pray for it to help me to understand more and more of my inner mysteries, old haunts and pains and mistakes and help me to realize them into new form.   This, I think, for me, is part of the promise of Spring!

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Beyond The Brain

 

Modern materialistic science, which encompasses a sense that all things come about because of matter alone, holds the idea that consciousness is formed as a result of what the brain does in the dynamic system (meaning a give and take between body and brain) with the body.  This is so because so much has been studied about the brain as being a perceived organ where memory resides.  While this body of information is certainly correct, it also misses some important points which most materialists often turn a blind eye to.

One observation made in various healing modalities that involve eastern practices of movement and energy medicine (such as Qi Gung, Reiki, and acupuncture as well as deep tissue massage) is that the physical body is seen as a repository for memory.  To understand how this is so, we look to these methods of healing to observe their effects.  I have direct experience with these releases of stored material even as I did not understand or even believe at first that they could even happen, but they did.  It is explained in such disciplines as Qi Gung and acupuncture that through movement of the body in certain key ways (qi gong)  and using needles (acupuncture), the stored material in the body, not the brain, is released through a manipulation of the energy body itself, what the Chinese describe as the energy lines that go to make up the “map” of so-called subtle energy currents in the body.   As a needle is placed into the skin, it serves to conduct electrical and electromagnetic energy through the needle and helps the energy in that meridian or line of energy in the body to flow.  The suggestion here is that stored trauma or memory that serves to inhibit the flow of this energy in the body, is now released or at least bridged in order to allow the energy to flow.  All you have to do to know what this energy flow feels like is to have a good basic acupuncture session, or practice qi gung for a month or two.  Another method that also releases stored trauma and memory in the body is a more modern practice developed by Ida Rolf, known as rolfing, a system of intense body work where a massage therapist messages deeply into the body tissue.  The goal of this method is to release stored memory that corresponds with an awareness that the material is now gone.  It does not return for any of those who have experienced such releases.  It is akin to erasing some piece of magnetic material in the body that appears to have a corresponding feedback into our memory, except it is triggered and perhaps even stored in the body itself.  I have some examples that point to this as being the case, so before you poo-poo this as crazy, read on.  Sometimes life is stranger than fiction!

Not to muddy the water any, but hopefully to clarify it some, think of these issues as having an electromagnetic quality to them.  When something has a quality like this, it means that if you know how to erase that particular piece of data in the magnetic field, you can erase it forever and whatever limiting effects it has had on the flow of conscious energy is also freed up.  I say this because this is how I have observed it through my work resolving these blocks.  I have in the last seven years resolved literally hundred, perhaps thousands of them in my own field alone.  Yes, I was helped a great deal with the flow of greater energy in my body as a result of the stirring effect of kundalini, but kundalini is merely life force energy in abundance. We can all do this.  And doing it is not unlike erasing any sort of magnetic media like magnetic tape or a hard drive.  You essentially are, at an energetic level of your being, erasing something and leaving it open and neutral so energy may flow.  To get there, you have to change how you feel about something that is serving to block that energy in the energy field.  An idea, belief, or notion will itself have a very specific energetic signature and it will thus be recorded on your field where it will either help or hamper with the flow of energy.  I have said before that as a result, beliefs or feelings (and a feeling of frustration is at its core based on a belief about something that gives rise to a feeling) act as switches in your energy field.  They can control the flow of energy for good or ill, and when you can begin to deal with these, you can being to set up your field for a more harmonious flow of energy.  While it might seem entirely beyond your ability to know what the block/limiting belief is or where it exists, you in fact do have the means to feel into it and know, on an intuitive level, what it is, how it feels, or where it may have even come from.  Having said that, you don’t have to have this level of specificity or clarity, either, because you can simply feel the slight feeling of blocked energy or lack of ease and then ask yourself how to resolve it (and surprise surprise; it most often comes when given a little time).  In fact, you sometimes only need to feel the spot as an impediment and put your attention on the spot, which then most often has the effect of stirring and clearing that spot.  My purpose here is not to go into the mechanics of healing the energy field, but only to illustrate that it exists and to give you some examples of how it operates.  It is not some amorphous field like water.  it in fact has structure and constancy, and this is all defined by your thoughts and feelings.  I hope the examples I am about to provide you will help you to begin to relate to this field of energy.

I have described here how my own experience has shown me that my energy body consists of a series of switches, gateways, all corresponding to feeling and thought and that the universe is all essentially like this. It is a vast energetic system that those who awaken or reach peak states often describe as the pervading “Tao” or “Nirvana”, etc.  By allowing myself to feel differently or to think differently about a given kind of situation or event or person, I found that I could often clear the blocks of energy in my own field of energy.  It was this process of clearing that also resulted in clearing up memes that I was just a moment before vulnerable to (“I am not loved,” or “the world is out to get me” or other notions like this)  This can also be done through movement of the body through shaking as well as the Chinese discipline called Qi Gung. This, too, I have written about extensively here.   These have all served to release old stored blocks in the body. When they release, you can actually feel them.  Once the stored material is released, you feel different.  A difficult emotion is now no longer present.  One feels clearer, and freer.  It is very much like erasing an old magnetic tape and being empty, something else flows in that is not meme based but is experience based. Increasingly, I contend, you are more and more free to experience what this larger realm of energy is all about. The energy body beyond the energy body.

Now all of this flies in the face of modern medicine, which sees the body as a machine with the brain as being the main repository for memory.  If this is so, then why would someone like myself experience old memories when one of these energy blocks are released?  If the brain is involved as the chief storage unit for memory, why does deep tissue massage, acupuncture, Reiki and Qi Gung result in these effects?  The answer, I observe, is that all memory is itself both locally stored in the brain and body as well as in the energy field of a person.  We aren’t used to speaking about energy because we haven’t been able to measure it very well, but sensitives like myself have been seeing this energy for ages.  It is known as the human aura.  I know, and have known for years, that I can observe all levels of the human condition within the energy field of a person I am reading.  I can see what is happening to them physically, emotionally, and spiritually with just a glance.  This all sounds like woo-woo to a lot of people, but I have been able to use observation and data to help confirm for me that I am indeed seeing what I am picking up on.  For close to a year after I began seeing auras, I had a friend who also saw auras and I used my friend as a kind of control for what it was I was picking up on.  Anytime I observed an unusual aura, I would turn to her and say “what about that guy over there in the hat” as I motioned up ahead of us.  She would then go on to describe the rather unusual aura in the same terms as I had experienced it myself.  Now bear in mind, at no point did I ever lead her or tell her what it was I was seeing.  This same action was repeated many times through the first year of my new perceptual ability.  For myself, I was able to obtain important third-party confirmation of my own perceptions.  Since that time, I do not shrink from verifying my senses along these lines because I know that what I am picking up on is accurate.  What I experience in seeing auras is the sense that our thoughts do express themselves all through the body of the aura, through the energy that is being put out and is expressed as a matrix of mind, emotion and physical energy within the structure of the aura.  While I had observed this phenomenon for years, I never fully appreciated how a feeling might well be stored or moved through all parts of the body.  I didn’t appreciate this because I myself had not experienced it.  It really is just that simple.  As humans, we tend to dismiss or even ridicule what has not been a part of our own direct experience.  the greatest innoculation against this type of ignorance is to simply learn how to develop these senses yourself and then decide on your own what it is that you think this might be all about.

More recently the Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has developed a theory about the nature of matter that is called his “resonance’ theory, which posits that all things, both sentient and nonsentient, exhibit nonlocal effects as it relates to their composition and behavior.  In the case of nonsentient matter, there are observed phenomenon that suggests that there is a kind of non-local “repository” of information that helps to govern the behavior and composition of a given compound or element.  Sheldrake uses the explanation for how it has been observed that when scientists discover a new element, they like to do all sorts of tests on it to understand how it behaves.  One very curious effect is that when scientists seek to get an element to take on its crystalline form, they have to repeat the conditions for doing so a large number of times.  With all of the conditions just right for crystal formation, the new material seems to “refuse” to do so!  Then, after a given number of tries, the substance suddenly begins to crystallize and will do so, dependably, from there on out.  The tendency for many is to assume that the conditions were not right, that the lab technicians were simply off their mark in some way.  But add to this a second wrinkle and you can begin to appreciate what Sheldrake is pointing to in all of this as it relates to nonlocality, which is that labs all over the world can perform the same crystal-inducing methods, all without any luck….at first.  But once, say, the hundredth attempt is achieved, suddenly the crystal form emerges.  It also emerges without any problem at ALL of the other locations.  Next, a lab that has done this experiment in New York City, for example, and has finally gotten the compound to move into its crystalline form, can then expect a lab with no connection to the New York City lab, in say, Switzerland, to perform the technique without having to make the, say, hundred tries to get it to form.

This theory is something that applies to living forms as well, and Sheldrake has begun to observe that consciousness appears to be more a field phenomenon than merely something located in the brain.  he shows examples of this type of behavior as seen in flocks of birds and fish, for example.  Some researchers want to say that this is merely fast signal processing in the brains of each bird, which results in its observing the slight changes in its neighbor resulting in a flock that flies in a carefully choreographed sense of movement.  The problem with this, Sheldrake explains, is that most of the movements that are observed are simply too fast for the known response times for the given species of fish or bird.  There has to be a different explanation for this phenomenon, he explains.  What is so interesting is that what Sheldrake is suggesting is what anyone who has awakened often observes, which is that the energy in ones own body is awake and alive and aware.  It is not merely in the brain.  If this is just a seeming, however, a kind of trick that the brain plays in perception, then why is it that memory is experienced when a spot in the body, not the brain, is massaged or needled, or moved in some way as described earlier with Qi Gung or acupuncture, for example?

By now people are aware of the rather curious effect that organ donors have often reported having as it relates to the changes that take place after having received an organ donation.   After reading up on this topic I found that this is not an entirely universal phenomenon and that this most often is experienced by people who receive heart transplants as opposed to liver or kidneys (although some effects from those organs have been noted).  Some of the experiences that the donors have experienced go well beyond mere chance and enter into what materialists would want to call supernormal.  I suggest to you that there is nothing paranormal about it, but that it is instead an understandable phenomenon if you view it through the lens of the body containing memory and feeling.  It is important to know that in the case of organ donations, the identity of the donor is kept from the recipient.  Certain protocols are followed which serve to protect the families and to keep the donation system anonymous and free from entangling issues.  Studying over 70 heart transplants, Dr. Paul Pearsall, a researcher and physician, has published his findings, and I am including some of them below.  These cases are  emblematic of the stories that he uncovered as it relates to organ donation

Case 1: Claire Sylvia develops desire for chicken nuggets and green peppers

On May 29, 1988, an American woman named Claire Sylvia received a heart transplant at a hospital in Yale, Connecticut. She was told that her donor was an eighteen year-old male from Maine, USA who had just died in a motorcycle accident. Soon after the operation, Sylvia declared that she felt like drinking beer, something she hadn’t particularly been fond of. Later, she observed an uncontrollable urge to eat chicken nuggets and found herself drawn to visiting the popular chicken restaurant chain, KFC. She also began craving green peppers which she hadn’t particularly liked before. Sylvia also began having recurring dreams about a mystery man named Tim L., whom she felt was the organ donor. On a cue from someone, she searched for obituaries in newspapers published from Maine and was able to identify the young man whose heart she had received. His name had indeed been Tim. After visiting Tim’s family, she discovered that he used to love chicken nuggets, green peppers and beer. These experiences are documented in the book, A Change of Heart.

Case 2: a foundry worker develops a taste for classical music

A 47 year-old white male foundry worker, who received the heart of a 17 year-old black male student, discovered after the operation that he had developed a fascination for classical music. He reasoned that since his donor would have preferred ‘rap’ music, his newfound love for classical music could not possibly have anything to do with his new heart. As it turned out, the donor actually loved classical music, and died “hugging his violin case” on the way to his violin class.

Case 3: murder mystery involving donor is solved by an organ recipient

An eight year-old girl, who received the heart of a murdered ten year-old girl, began having recurring vivid nightmares about the murder. Her mother arranged a consultation with a psychiatrist who after several sessions concluded that she was witnessing actual physical incidents. They decided to call the police who used the detailed descriptions of the murder (the time, the weapon, the place, the clothes he wore, what the little girl he killed had said to him) given by the little girl to find and convict the man in question.

Case 4: the gender transplant

The donor was a 19 year-old woman killed in an automobile accident. The recipient was a 29 year-old woman diagnosed with cardiomyopathy secondary to endocarditis.

The donor’s mother reported:

“My Sara was the most loving girl. She owned and operated her own health food restaurant and scolded me constantly about not being a vegetarian. She was a great kid — wild, but great. She was into the free-love thing and had a different man in her life every few months. She was man-crazy when she was a little girl and it never stopped. She was able to write some notes to me when she was dying. She was so out of it, but she kept saying how she could feel the impact of the car hitting them. She said she could feel it going through her body.”

The recipient reported:

“You can tell people about this if you want to, but it will make you sound crazy. When I got my new heart, two things happened to me. First, almost every night, and still sometimes now, I actually feel the accident my donor had. I can feel the impact in my chest. It slams into me, but my doctor said everything looks fine. Also, I hate meat now. I can’t stand it. I was McDonald’s biggest money-maker, and now meat makes me throw up. Actually, whenever I smell it, my heart starts to race. But that’s not the big deal. My doctor said that’s just due to my medicines. I couldn’t tell him, but what really bothers me is that I’m engaged to be married now. He’s a great guy and we love each other. The sex is terrific. The problem is, I’m gay. At least, I thought I was. After my transplant, I’m not… I don’t think, anyway…I’m sort of semi- or confused gay. Women still seem attractive to me, but my boyfriend turns me on; women don’t. I have absolutely no desire to be with a woman. I think I got a gender transplant.”

The recipient’s brother reported:

“Susie’s straight now. I mean it seriously. She was gay and now her new heart made her straight. She threw out all her books and stuff about gay politics and never talks about it anymore. She was really militant about it before. She holds hands and cuddles with Steven just like my girlfriend does with me. She talks girl-talk with my girlfriend, where before she would be lecturing about the evils of sexist men. And my sister, the queen of the ‘Big Mac‘, hates meat. She won’t even have it in the house.

Case 5: a catering manager develops artistic talent.

This story comes from the British tabloid, The Daily Mail. William Sheridan, a retired catering manager with poor drawing skills, suddenly developed artistic talents after a heart transplant operation. He was amazed to discover that the man who donated his new heart had been a keen artist.

Case 6: the living heart transplant

Among the strangest case Paul Pearsall encountered was that of two men who shared the same heart.

Jim (original names withheld), who was dying of bad lungs, received a heart and lung transplant from a young woman who had just died. Since Jim’s old heart was still robust, it was transplanted into another man named Fred. After this domino transplant, Fred who was formerly laid-back began exhibiting the Type A aggressive behavior of Jim. During intimate moments, Fred would call his wife “Sandy”, much to the consternation of his wife Karen. Jim’s wife’s name was Sandra. On the other hand, Jim became morose and sullen after the transplant and died a few years later. It was discovered that Jim’s donor had been a shy, soft-spoken young woman who had worked part-time in a flower shop, and had committed suicide in despair over a lost love.

There are a number of different theories that have emerged that seek to explain this phenomenon.  One of them is the “little heart brain” theory that comes from  Dr Armour who, in 1994, observed that the heart had its own kind of nervous system made up of 40,000 neurons called sensory neurites. Further, what was discovered was that The heart acts independently of the brain, sending and receiving meaningful messages of its own through the autonomic nervous system. In fact, it has been recently discovered that more information flows FROM the heart muscle and to the brain than comes from the brain itself.  Is the heart acting as a center of information transfer from the body to the brain?  Is the heart telling the brain how we feel? I think that on a biological level, it is indeed possible.

In NAMAH, the journal of alternative medicine, the theory that links neuropeptides (which was recently discussed in the last post) to memory.

Pharmacologist Candace Pert proposed that neuropeptides which are stored in every cell act as a sort of biochemical correlate of emotion. It was previously thought that emotions resided in the limbic system in the brain. According to Pert, neuropeptides are protein-like messenger molecules released by the brain neurons which flow through the body communicating among the nervous, immune, endocrine, muscle, and skeletal systems via blood, interstitial fluids and the central nervous system, which are all body fluids. At present, about 100 different peptides are known to be released by various populations of neurons in the mammalian brain. Neuropeptides have also been found in the heart, which could explain some forms of cellular memories reported by heart transplant recipients

Another theory is that there is an electromagnetic field that surrounds all organs and has the capacity to maintain memory and feeling within it.   To be honest with you, My sense has been that all of these theories are expressing an aspect of the larger experience in some way.  While I have observed that there is indeed an electromagnetic field that surround the body that is the result of iron rich blood being circulated in the body and creating low currents and a low electromagnetic field (think of how the earth does this with iron rich magma circulating in its core to create the magnetosphere), the body needs more than merely the carrier of the information via energy, but will rely on the tissues to conduct this energy and thus the information (which I experience as nonlocal and beyond the body while being within it all at once) as well as the other forms of information transfer, which are seen in the utilization of neuropeptides in the body and brain to express feeling and thoughts.

I think that our understanding of how the body works, and how consciousness is one agent within it, is changing.  The old ways of explaining all of this has served to ignore a whole range of experience and phenomenon.  All that I have shared with you supports what I also experienced early on in awakening, and I hope that this view into the world of ourselves gives you food for thought.

During the course of looking into this issue I found discovered a theory about transfer of information on not only the cellular level but the atomic, which suggests the same thing I experienced the first year of my awakening when I went down into the “atomic level” of the universe and was shown how all matter has consciousness and has information locked up within it.  This experience has been described on this blog recently.  In his own words, he states, “Moreover, the recent integration of systems theory with the concept of energy (termed dynamical energy systems theory) provides compelling logic that leads to the prediction that all dynamical systems store information and energy to various degrees.5,6,7 The systemic memory mechanism provides a plausible explanation for the evolution of emergent (novel) systemic properties through recurrent feedback interactions (i.e., the nonlinear circulation of information and energy that reflects the ongoing interactions of the components in a complex, dynamic network).

Recurrent feedback loops exist in all atomic, molecular and cellular systems. Hence, evidence for atomic systemic memory, molecular systemic memory and cellular systemic memory should be found in these systems.”

My sense has been that the energy field that surrounds the body itself is capable of coupling to a larger body of energy which is experienced as cosmic consciousness and which the ancients described as being the Tao, which is in all things.  It is a supportive “grid” of energy that we ourselves have access to on a moment by moment basis and is how all things both living and sentient are ordered.  To be aware of its presence in consciousness is like being aware of being a cell in a larger body.  It is a real and ever=present sensation or experience.  It does not go away.  It is persistent.  Far from being merely a world of random effects that have given rise to life on our planet, I suggest, that it is rather that there is an intelligent energy which pervades all things and supports all things because it is part of those things, from rock, flower, to human.  We are as much a part of the universe as the universe is in us from physical matter all the way to the energy that binds and supports all matter and hence also all life.  Some of the examples I have noted in this entry I think help to support that notion.  It is my hope that we can as a result of findings like this, begin to gain a non-dogmatic understanding of how the universe works, not strictly through a materialistic view of science, but with minds willing and capable of exploring new ideas, new possibilities and not simply cleaving to old notions that merely feel comfortable to us.  What I do feel lies ahead of us in such an attitude is a much more interesting and amazing view of our world and of our place within it.

For my money, though, is how this all can make us feel and experience.  A lot of this kind of research quite frankly bores me to tears, but I also understand that if we are ever to change or shift perception and awareness in the western world, it will be by presenting information that appeals to our western mindset and helps to move us beyond it.  What is beyond it is a great sea or ocean of wonderment. It is what we are.  Touching this great mystery has been one of the single most rewarding experiences of my time here in this life.  It is also what inspires me to realize that at any moment I can find myself in a new place within myself and that healing these old wounds, these old old traumas from the past (that sounds severe, doesn’t it?  And yet, if you look at our history through time perhaps you can get an appreciation for how hard of a slog it has been for all of us from lifetime to lifetime).  And what lies beyond that?

Sources:

http://www.namahjournal.com/doc/Actual/Memory-transference-in-organ-transplant-recipients-vol-19-iss-1.html

http://www.paulpearsall.com/info/press/3.html

Circle Of Healing

I am not an angel person.  I did, however, experience something many years ago in connection to my deceased father that I was told was a ring of angels.  I did not see them with wings.  I know that in some ways, what we point to as angels can be any number of things to us in terms of what we see and experience.  Messengers, those who are between lives, a class of consciousness that assists us here.  Later, I found that I had a recognition of things that were about to happen.  This “angel” kept me out of trouble.  It alerted me to problems on the highway and saved me from many speeding tickets.  That period of time was spent in a lot of reflection.  Now, during this awakening, a lot has changed.  My third eye was the first to be activated in a process that opened that center up much like a bud bursting open.  Since then, I see things more clearly using this inner sense.  Since then more has been shown to me about this angelic presence.  I have had my own life guide or angel minister to me, pulling out old material from my light body in a process, as it turns out, was nearly identical to an account made by St. Theresa of Avilla over 500 years ago.  I stumbled across the account after someone explained how she had written  a book about how she described the progression of awakening and the chakras.  I was told by this being that I need only call his name and he will be here.  Others have felt his presence, people unaware that I had him as a life guide.  One person said she dreamed of hearing someone outside my window.  That was funny, because that was where I always felt him.  Just over there, standing guard.

So recently, while brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed, I thought about what he had said on that first night when he visited to do the work he did on me.  This was something beyond belief, beyond anything that anyone could, or would, call normal.  It went beyond anything I have experienced, an opening of the heart directly to a flow of bliss energy so powerful so full of love that it simply cannot be described.  What he explained left me with no other conclusion except that this, for as other worldly as it might have seemed, is something that is native to us.  It is who we are.  It is the universe.

So upon sliding under the comforter and turning out the lights, I felt a hand on my abdomen.  Then I saw him lift his head and look to the side where there was a ring of Others.  He said something right then, and the healing began.  I laid quiet and still, thanking each of them as I slipped into a peaceful sleep.  So now, I call his name.  Looking back on it, I never called his name.  He said I could call anytime, anywhere.  It did not matter.  All the times when I dreamed and felt a presence beside me, that unseen guide, that was him.  All through these years, decades of them, he has been living along the edges of my life, present, but often not seen.  In some cases, I need to do it myself.  But now, this last step, I need to bring all the resources available.  And he is here.  Perhaps a gift which I have not fully honored, perhaps even resisted in some effort to do it on my own.  But in that, there is a certain resistance which is not good.  Something inside need to open even more deeply, for this last step is a doozie. It contains the oldest of the old, or the hardest of the hard.  But I am determined to break through it, to see it for what it is, to forgive it in me and thus release everyone who was drawn or attracted through a less than healed place in themselves.  In all of ourselves.  I do not know what tomorrow or even tonight will bring.  It seems it works best without building any sense of expectation around it, just a very simple intent and let it go.  This seems to give the best latitude for the right ones at the right time to arrive.  And so now they come as they did earlier on when I was in a different kind of place.  Helping me through this misnomer called ego death.  Ha!  Silly we even call it that.  Something moves in us, glacially, but certainly, and powerfully.  Ego turns nimble and learns how it can move out of the way. When that happens, we open to the mystery, not to the mind or reason or logic.  We are in mystery.  We are in the sacred circle of healing.  Nights are no longer just any night.

Kundalini & Adrenaline

It was one of the hardest parts of my awakening experience.  All of a sudden, awakening turned a corner and went into high gear.  As if it wasn’t high enough!  With it came a sudden influx of….adrenaline.  But this was no ordinary adrenaline rush.  Oh no.  This was a constant flow of adrenaline as if some unknown button had gotten stuck in the on position.  To say it was excruciating was a mild way to put it.  I had days where I could not escape the rush that went on for days, weeks, months.  It was awful, and I was very worried that if I didn’t do something about it, it could do some permanent damage.  I would sit in the most comfortable chair I had where I could relax the most without falling asleep and try to get control over this crazy thing that was happening inside of me.  Tears streamed down my face.  I wanted to leave, exit, be done.  It was no fun.  I felt driven by this constant drumming of this chemical soup in my body.  I wanted to leap out of my skin.  Please let it be over, I thought.

I did a lot of physical exercise which did help some.  This, though, was only temporary.  As soon as I got off my bicycle or stopped my vigorous walk/run, it would all be back, pounding out its painful rhythm again.  You see, it is entirely possible to wind up in a state of adrenal failure some call adrenal burn-out.  A family friend who went through kundalini a few years ago described her harrowing experience with it and how she was able to break the spiral down into who knows what.  For her, she simply surrendered.  In the middle of the night, unable to take it anymore, she just asked the universe what it was she needed to do.  And then it came….a deep sense of release and calm began to settle all around her.  She had gotten out of the briar patch.  She also had adrenal collapse or burn-out and had to take adrenal gland treatments to get it functioning properly again.  Word to the wise.  Don’t let this go on for too long.  And if it does, be ready to talk to a doctor or other practicioner like a naturpath.

For me, I wish it had been so simple.  However, my experience showed me how to balance on a very specific wave of awareness that involved tuning my body chemistry in just the right way.  I don’t know if anyone going through this will relate, I can only say what it was I observed, which was that I was hyper aware of every little thing going on inside of me.  I could feel each drop of adrenaline being released.  I mean, I really mean, I could feel it.  It was located near my kidneys.  At first, I didn’t know what it was, but with a quick anatomy lesson, located the adrenals right over top the kidneys.  I could then feel the drops of adrenaline, for they were now like drops instead of the steady flow they were in the months past, and could trace each one upward as it moved into my heart muscle and affected it.  I could FEEL this.  It was not imaginary.  I learned, over hours and days and weeks, how to identify it because it was so persistent and strong.  When you see enough of something like this, you learn a lot about it.  So I tuned in, and I found that over time, the bliss response is actually a complex cocktail of different body chemicals.

I first identified something that served to bond me to things and people.  I didn’t know what it was, but it was real.  This chemical was stronger than many others.  This was what I call the first step into bliss.  This can also be accompanied by sexual feelings, or a leaning into bliss.  But I was not fully there.  As I slowly learned, there were other feelings that were matched in physiology, and there were two that were obvious to me.  Once all of these different compounds were surrogate through my feelings, they were matched in my body through its chemistry.  See?  Feeling does it.  But you have to WANT it so bad, you will do anything for it….and this is strong enough to counter what adrenaline is doing in your body.  Again, this was what I did.  Later, I did some research to see if there was anything out there to match what it was I was feeling with the first compound.  I found the compound; oxytocin.  This is the bonding hormone.  It goes up when women are pregnant, specifically their last trimester and continues through until after the birth.  It is present in both men and women and it is what makes us feel the rush of being head over heels in love with someone.  Oxytocin is interesting because it is also a neurotransmitter!  Wowza, huh?  Yes, so it is not just important to how we feel, it is involved in transmitting important signals in the brain.  Love signals perchance?  I think it is most certainly likely.  Then along cam what I suspect was either dopamine or endorphins.  I am less sure about these, but I know they were involved.  I learned this balance by hook and crook over a period of some months.  Once I got the first step, the other steps became much more rapid and the process began to fall together much easier with each step taken.

It was like listening to a chorus in my body.  I would FEEL the bonding hormone.  Just FEEL it.  Then something else was needed to balance that and broaden it, too.  THAT would then be felt.  Another voice was joined and suddenly I would find I was atop this wave.  I felt BETTER!  And I will tell you, it was not easy STAYING on that wave.  I fell off LOTS>  But I would get back up and get back on and each time, I got better at it.  this simply goes on and on until I can return to it with less and less effort.  The truth I will tell you, in MY experience, was that none of this actually countered adrenaline.  Nope!  This is what is so amazing to me.  Adrenaline was like….my enemy for a while.  this giant gorilla of a thing ready to clobber me….and did.  Many times!  I have the bruises and a couple of T-shirts.  I am happy to give you one of them if you want.  I joke, but what is no joke is that once all of the compounds were balanced, adrenaline was an important part of the overall chemical chorus in my body.  Yep!  adrenaline was STILL there, but it was now no longer the ONLY juice running my body!  Now, all of the chemistry was tuned to this new condition I found myself. Pretty wild.  Adrenaline helps to create bliss…..but it has to be in the right proportion.

We associate adrenaline with fear.  We can, however begin to associate very different things with it if we just let ourselves.  For me, adrenaline now has a different role to play.  This is alchemy, my friends, pure and simple.  What once was horrible, turned golden.  Kundalini makes it so that you can see all of this under a microscope.  So use that microscope to your own best advantage!  Let what might have blown everything out of proportion be the force that now gives you an up-close view of your physiology!  Brilliant!

Just settle in and relax as best as you can and then think of something that would make you feel really good.  In fact, I often found I didn’t have to think of anything from memory, I just KNEW how to feel different.  But why hadn’t I felt different before?  My sense is that we have latent fear in us that is being swirled around, is getting ready to flee our bodies, but before it does so, it gets mixed up, kind of like silt in a river clouds the river for a while.  the body is simply responding to a somewhat over-blown effect that is now working overtime.  the other side to all of this is adrenaline kind of forces you to learn how to be…..different.  Can you do it by just surrendering?  I suspect you can.  Maybe that way is the simplest and best.  For me, I am curious about how everything works.  I am the kid who took things apart.  That is how I am .  Curious.  For you, who knows?  But the bottom line is to go with what you feel is right.  And who knows, you might find that you do something completely different.  You know, if you ask, it will come to you.  In one way or another, through dream, direct cognition, a voice in your head or heart, or someone dropping off an article without ever knowing what you are going through, it will come.

Okay, just felt the need to put this all down for the just in case column.  I hope it helps someone out there!

 

 

UPDATE 3/17/2014:  I was watching a presentation being made by a man who has done research into brain function and he explains something that I have experienced quite clearly and offer it here for your consideration as it relates to getting a grip on your body/mind and brain connection.  He explains that there are substances called neuro-peptides that are compounds that turn thought/feeling into a physical representation of that energetic quotient in consciousness into a very real physical response in the brain/body.  For every thought you have, there is a specific orchestration and tuning of neuro-peptides in the brain in order to create a unique and very specific representation of that feeling (which I am assuming is consciousness/energy and thus not entirely physical in the way we normally think of it…although it iS energy) in the body.  This then gives each feeling, thought, and emotion, its own fingerprint. Imagine the body taking what it is your consciousness decides to feel and making a chemical representation of that feeling in the body.  Imagine the brain as like a kitchen and it is getting signals on the nanosecond-scale….trillions of these signals from all parts of you, including your own consciousness (not merely feeling physical sensation only through the nerve endings), and in this kitchen, the brain is putting together unique recipes, like a short order cook, but each order that comes in is itself highly unique, custom-made even.  One recipe asks for no salt, but extra mayo, or some barley, and in another the veggies should be steamed, not stir-fried. There is an amazing level of detail involved in all of this and the brain is engaged in helping to create a physical representation of what it is you are feeling.  One the one side, the brain does take in sensations from the gross body, but there is another level where the feeling parts of the self feed into all of this also.  Its amazing, but it also points to how you yourself can choose, were you to want to, to shift and change the character of your feelings so that your body will output a different result, a different message.  I experienced this deep and detailed level of signal processing in awakening and I know that if I can become aware of it, it is in all of us to be do.  What I experienced was merely a larger flow of conscious energy in my awareness, which I think aided in being able to detect these seemingly miniscule changes taking place in my mind/brain/body/consciousness. In the case of adrenaline, something was happening to keep adrenaline pouring in as if I had no control. This was itself the result of kundalini serving to highlight ever little thing happening in my body, a good thing on one side, but a bad thing when I still had latent fear/trauma in my conscious energy field.  The body was merely doing what it had always done, which was to generate the signals to release the chemistry that my consciousness was sending to it.  When I learned how to feel different, my body began, immediately, to respond to those new signals, those new feelings.

 

At a site managed by the National Institute of Health it described neuropeptides this way:

“The discovery of neuropeptides is founded on groundbreaking research in physiology, endocrinology, and biochemistry during the last century and has been built on three seminal notions: (1) peptide hormones are chemical signals in the endocrine system; (2) neurosecretion of peptides is a general principle in the nervous system; and (3) the nervous system is responsive to peptide signals. These historical lines have contributed to how neuropeptides can be defined today: “Neuropeptides are small proteinaceous substances produced and released by neurons through the regulated secretory route and acting on neural substrates.” Thus, neuropeptides are the most diverse class of signaling molecules in the brain engaged in many physiological functions.”

Source:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21922398

Now that is a more generic description, but since neuropeptides have only recently been discovered (last 40 years) what is the more current understanding of these compounds in the body?

Larry Young, in his video on neuropeptides explains:

“So the brain has multiple different kinds of chemical communicators or transmitters; one of those is neuropeptides. A neuropeptides is a chain of amino acids that is released either into the blood where it activates receptors in our body, or directly into the brain where it can activate receptors in our brain. When a neuropeptide is released it binds to the receptor and that activates a series of events inside the cell, inside the neuron, and then that causes that neuron to become active. If that neuron is placed within a particular circuit, it can activate that circuit. So now you can begin to see how you can have a single molecule released from one neuron activating another neuron, and then activating a circuit and then a circuit can change an emotion and a behavior.”

Source:  http://www.dnalc.org/view/2388-Neuropeptides-can-Change-Emotions-.html

Based on how Young is describing it, you can begin to see how if a neuron is itself activating a circuit in the electrical/neurological system connected to the brain, this is essentially also what the energy of consciousness is doing.  This is what I have observed.  I am not a researcher, and do not wish to be, I am offering you my insight and you can take it or leave it.  But I do and have experienced energy as made up of a series of switches, which are actually activated by feeling that will themselves serve to allow the flow of universal energy into consciousness.  the body, in this description is doing the same thing.  This description is one I made as a result of my own experience in earlier blog entries.  We tend to think of energy as nonphysical, but I experience it as another state of matter, which of course it is.  As we know in physics, all matter is composed of energy!  Within our own consciousness lies a switching mechanism that is actually composed of our own thoughts.  We let in certain things and exclude others.  We do this selectively and based on what we believe is important.  We do this in regards to day to day experience and we also do it down to the micro-level, and the body responds perfectly by putting out the chemistry that those feelings and thoughts represent. Getting a grip on what is within you, your beliefs and biases, etc., is THE way to shift your body and brain chemistry for the better.  This is itself a form of freedom.  And really, the great things is the body is this amazing tool, and like a computer, we  do not have to get down into the source code, down to the actual calculations being made each fraction of a second in order to appreciate and experience the changes as they happen.  But it may be that if you understand that this is not something that you are a slave to, but CAN change, then knowing how your choice to feel differently can actually begin to dismantling an older means of being and feeling that did not serve you as well as a less cluttered and more direct way of feeling and knowing.   ~P.

Unbounded

©image Parker Stafford

I return in multiplicities

ancient riddles compounded by rhyme

whose reasons lie dreaming in mystery.

Heavenly syntax made vast and simple in one whispered word.

 

Living a thousand lives before

slave, king, thief, woman, mother, wife,

husband and son

all voices which speak to me across their times

their toil and challenges have all led

to this.

 

They each reach into me

their words like kisses

pulling me in closer

showing me their trueness

beyond all judgement

order

and reason.

 

I would not judge them

I may hardly know them

even though they are me.

I know

the way the moon glow

traces milky paths in motion and time

wrapping one mystery in another

undoing each as each procedes

precedes

in what we think is time.

They are vibrant and alive

even though their bones are dust

I can reach into their certainties

and dreams

like plucking flowers

fresh from a field.

 

All exist as surely as any other did

and shall

all hungering

for the conclusion of the phrase

that has been lifetimes in speaking.

A book of endless chapters

now condensed

like haiku

now into a a simple phrase

in total and complete summary.

I come at the end of it

a sentence,

a paragraph

chapter end

or book end

I know not which

but I know with certainty

of its finality.

 

I feel like the last word

on the end of their sentence.

I stand shivering and cold atop a great height

they all stand waiting for me to make my  dive

into the deep waters of destiny.

Everything bears from past upon this

and future is shaped by it

and what we do now

and how we are

what we will become.

A vast living canvas

painted

repainted

undone

redone

recreated

and mysterious.

 

I want to say I don’t know how I could ever

be the end

countless souls shaping words

undoing themselves

so that I might stand here

poised

ready to jump into that great sea

and I want to say I am unsure

that I want to honor their rich chorus

but I am not what they seem to want me to be.

 

The king shakes his head

“no no no, that will never do”

as the slave genuflects

“there is a reason why you are you”

and the mother adds

“All the things that will be”

and son adds

“all are resting in the sea”

They all cry that the sea awaits

a sea

unlike any other

from father king mother or brother

I am nothing if not stripped

as the waters deep and blue

surge like a lover waiting to be parted

known

and plumbed.

Their voices rise

as fear turns to welcome

Every birth is a death

and every death turns to its opposite.

 

But we all must in our way

find our toes wrapped

on the edge like this

our lungs breathing cold air

our hearts pumping molten blood

ready for this sea of love

to take us into her

that what we know within

we will know without.

 

I have been many

who have sought to live

their lives like riddles

their words mysteries.

The syllables of their lives

cluster and form

the grammar and conlusion

of a story strung like beads

a few simple words now

born from a thousand different lives.

 

I might return in multiplicities

but I leave in singularity

wrapped and rocked in this great sea

of me.

It waits for us all

when each word finds its sentence

and as each sentence

knows its end.

Within & Without

No teacher can provide you with what is not already within you.  No one confers anything that you already are.  The great illusion of teachers and authorities is that they hold something that you, yourself, do not already have.  We fool ourselves into thinking this is so through our belief, that we must “get” something from another when all along, it is within us.  By no longer seeking to allow another to be the harbinger of that, we actually free ourselves in a way that goes beyond all the old paradigms that place each of us at a disadvantage, however small or seemingly inconsequential.  Doing so leads to authentic personal power.  This is something so incredible, no one can ever take it from you, for you never entered into any kind of agreement that sought to share that power, or borrow it, or rent or loan it in any way.  Some want to call this the warrior path because of how it is so clear, how it takes what is its own, but it is not that.  This is the human path.  It is the greatest truth never told.  To find it, you must search for it yourself.  Not just search, but find, then hold and embody it.  You do not look beyond yourself for the glory that is your own being.  There is nothing quite like it in anyone on this earth.  I ask you; why cheapen it by leaping over the fence in your own backyard in favor of the grass next door.  Yet we do this constantly.  You don’t have to, not anymore.  What you win from doing this is immeasurable.  And it is yours.

When you get this, you free yourself to see clearly how what is within is without.  The world is a mirror of you, for you.  You need only look.  You need only bear awareness in the moment and really see the world that turns in your day-to-day.  What do you see?  Now as you see, feel into what you see, seek its innards, its soul, its heart.  Seek the world from its insides and what you find there is you.  It isn’t that there isn’t anything there but  you, but that this universe is just that miraculous a thing that energy attracts its own.  Don’t like it?  Be the change you wish to see and I promise, it will indeed be. Don’t worry about what anyone else says, for moving out of the prison of your own feeling is but a breath away.  What is it that is in us that needs the crutch of others?  We do not believe in ourselves.  We do not honor and love and even cherish ourselves enough in order to see it, or find it.  But it is there.  Always.

Not long ago there was a movie about this very issue.  I have not seen it, but I know others who have. I know enough about it to know that it is a story about an ordinary man who was a maker of documentary movies who dressed up like a guru and people flocked to him, believed in his made-up stories.  He transmitted a blue light to them as a kind of blessing and the people saw the blue light.  He told them that the guru was within, all the while his students would ask him, “Yes, but what do you think?” This is the story of Vikram Gandhi.  This is perhaps the hardest of lessons for us to learn.  It is so engrained in us, to wake up from it is what we each will resist, many of us, until the moment happens.  And then it happens again, and again, until we have shed that which keeps us separated from that one great light that exists within ourselves.  Knowing it leads to imperishabillity.

Ho’oponopono

What is in me is seen in the world.  What brings suffering in me is mirrored in the world.  My world is like a thousand refracted rainbows all based on a bending of the light.  Sometimes the light gets bent too far…..but I see this bending in the world around me…this light that is bent in me. The path to healing becomes a path of self honesty that there is nothing before me that does not first originate within.  As much as I try to make deals with it, the truth of it faces me each moment.  There is a way to heal it.  It takes honesty.  Humility.  I am not the most humble person, so there is often struggle.

Ho’oponopono recognizes this reality, that what we see before us in our day-to-day is a reflection that is within us.  Each moment is colored by it.  We attract perfectly what we are.  If you do not like something “out there” look within for the answer.  It sounds magical, but it is the way.

Ho’oponopono is a healing modality or Hawaiian origin that recognizes that the way to healing is by healing first what is within us.  When we do this, it provides a path for healing what we ourselves have attracted. Shift yourself, you shift the world.  It has a powerful leveraging effect.  It is also the essence of a compassionate path whereby what you heal in yourself will be healed in others.

The practice is simple.  You pray to the universe.  You think of the problem before you in your awareness and you hold it there while you pray to the universe saying

I am sorry

Please forgive me

I love you

Thank you

Ho’oponopono is a method for atonement, for helping to heal and erase the error and cause of hurt in our lives.  By being able to touch upon the grace available to us, that can be in us, we can begin to free ourselves and others from the things that have troubled us and that cause trouble for us.

To understand the power that this simple method has for you, I  direct you to a video that I think you will find very interesting.  After that, perhaps you will find a way to include this in your tool-box of tools for healing.  It is an interesting video of a practitioner of Ho’oponopono who has a great story to help illustrate how this can work in your life.

One very effective way of learning to deal with what is out in the world is first becoming aware that what you are being attracted to is something unresolved in you at some level.  People who have awakenings speak of how they can feel what others feel.  True, but look deeper though at what it is that you are picking up on.  In every instance, you will find that you are making a choice in what you are picking up on. If you are like me, you might come to the realization that you aren’t picking up on EVERYONE’s energy, just certain people.  Why some and not others?  There is a reason for this, and it is rooted in where you are and what you are feeling, even when you are not entirely aware of what these things are.  They are still inside of you and they help to paint a portrait of your life in a way that might be difficult to face sometimes, but is perfect for how accurate it can be.  It is in learning what the point is of connect within you that can lead you to resolving the issue that is at hand.  And maybe you find that you, say, keep running into people who have trouble with anger and this is very troubling to you because you find it so unsettling.  You aren’t an angry person, no, but there is an issue that is not completely resolved and the universe is serving as a perfect mirror for you.  Time to dig deep on this one!   For example, I had someone not long ago who was having trouble being in public because he was feeling everyone’s energy. In truth, he was sensing certain kinds of energy, and this was all itself a mirror of where he was.   I explained to him how an experience I had helped me break the cycle of feeling as though I was wide open to others thoughts and feelings.

Up to that point I would walk down the street and be overcome with incredible pain coming from people I would pass in public.  At first I thought this was because I was more sensitive, that I was picking up on everything.  true, yes, but there was something more that bears pointing out, since it is a finer point in all of this and can help a good deal when dealing with these things at least initially, which is that I was not picking up on everyone’s thoughts.  I was in truth picking up on those thoughts that held a vibration that had something in common with me.  A specific example and break-through for me was when I was attending a party with family where there were at least a dozen people in attendance.  I began to feel very anxious during a certain part of the party and as I felt this wave of anxiety wash over me, I found myself stopping for a moment and questioning why it was I was feeling this all of a sudden.  There was no good reason why I should be feeling this sudden wave of anxiety.  So I asked myself was this mine?  The answer was a quick “no.”  So I then asked myself “where is this coming from?”  The energy pointed me immediately in the direction of a man sitting quietly talking to my Mother who was over to the side, kind of out-of-the-way of things.  I looked at him and asked him point-blank, “Do you have problems with anxiety?”  He kind of sunk into his chair for a moment.  the look on his face was the same look that a kid gets when they realize they have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.  But looking at me for a moment, he seemed to realize I was not asking this in a mean way, and that I did not mean anything by it.  I was just being direct.  He then softened, and explained that he had actually had a lifelong problem with anxiety and had gone to numerous therapists for it and took medications over the years because of it.  I listened as he spoke and as he did, I felt the feeling of anxiety melt away.

After that experience, I no longer felt others’ energy like I had before in that same sort of way.  I was not seized with a pain in my heart chakra after passing some man on the street, or feel a sense of tightness in the shoulders when I was talking to the receptionist over the phone.  I suspect, or feel, that the very act of identifying these things in the way that I did had the effect of helping me to identify between my own feelings and those of others in a more clarified way so that I was no longer processing things that were not entirely mine.  What it did do also was to point out why I would feel something from another person, which was that there was some aspect of it that was also in me.  I also think, though, that this mirroring still continues in our lives, just in a different way. Maybe you see them in the customers you deal with, or the clients that come through to your workplace, or the kind of people you work with.  The interesting thing is that often, when I do this work, I see a change in the other person.  I have seen some big changes taking place in my family, for example, that has led to some very healing results and some marvelous results for these people in my life.

I have seen that as I clear things up in me the type of people I encounter on a day-to-day basis has also changed.  The power of the Law of Attraction, which is that like energy attracts like energy, is at play.  It is just how the universe is.  this is not some kind of game, it is just how things work.  By being aware of this I can look at the world and the people around me to get a good view of what I might want to heal in the next go-round of work on my roster. Layer by layer, new material is revealed, I become more aware or sensitive to layers I had not felt before, and the work continues.  It is what I call spiritual archeology.  This is a digging down, revealing and healing old baggage that has been buried down there for ages.  The force of kundalini, which is itself a creative force, has a magnificent ability to heal these knots of cords that we have built up within us.

So try it on for a bit and see how it works for you if you are so bold.  And also try Ho’oponopono.

The Power Of Dream

As a young teen I embarked on keeping a dream journal.  I did so partly because a friend of my sister who was into all sorts of interesting things to me said it had helped him to become more aware of his dreams.  The other reason was because my life had been littered with the most unusual dreams.  It seemed like a good idea to keep track of them, maybe learn something from this world I spent so much time in each night.  Dreams were a release from the mundane, permission to enter into improbable realms of possibility. I also had noticed that some of my dreams would come true.  I had them about births and deaths and even world events.  I was curious about this other world right under my nose.  So I began my dream journaling, trying to be as devoted to jotting down anything I dreamed no matter how unusual or different or hard to explain or relate in the written word.

So for about fifteen years I kept a dream journal.  From seventh grade all the way through college and a few years beyond I did this.  Along the way I found I had a complete history of all the dreams that had come true and was able to find some interesting correlations that these dreams had with the lunar cycle (of all things).  I also found that some dreams that seemed entirely fantastical may have had a rooting in things I did not at the time know too much about.

Like the dream about the Orca.  In the early 90’s while on my own and fresh out of college, I had this dream that was itself delightful and magical.  It had, though, some elements that would take about two decades to realize may have been tied to something that I did not at the time know anything about.  You will see as I explain the dream….In it, I am standing on the shores of a lake in what seems like an alpine setting.  I say this because that is how it all struck me.  The trees that were near the shore of this “lake” were all fir trees.  No deciduous trees at all.  There were these large rounded black stones that came down to the water and turned into smaller stones, all round.  This was a cove and it was at night.  I was standing at the shore looking off into the distance when I noticed I could hear something in the distance.  I was hearing the sound of some kind of cetacean coming up for air.  You could hear the powerful explosion of the animals blowing air and water up into a spout as they cleared their blow holes and took in large lungfulls of air.  This was the first sign that something was coming my way.

I didn’t see much for a bit, but a pod of Orca were coming my way and as they entered into the cove, I could see their bodies beneath the surface of the water.  they were rubbing agains tthe stones and swimming around in what I took to be play.  I found myself stepping into the water.  As I moved into the water, I felt the Orca all around me.  I felt no fear near these massive creatures and in an instant I found that I had submerged into the water completely and had gone off with them, an Orca myself.  It was a dream that I often thought about as one of “those” dreams that stand out.  For years.

Now fast forward into the internet era and a friend has been telling me about the San Juan Islands off the Coast of Washington.  The next day a client comes into the studio and begins telling me about her trip to an island called Orcas which was near the San Juan islands.  Too spooky.  I look into video of this area to see what it is like and I find a video taken in a cover just like in my dream on the island of Orcas and what I found was that it was exactly like the scene in my dream right down to the fir trees, the stones, and the effect that the water had of looking like it was a lake, not the ocean.  Orcas, you see, is a horseshoe-shaped island whose shape counters the normal effects the ocean has of sending in waves.  There are many coves like this on Orcas and this effect gives the shoreline the look of a lake instead of an ocean.

Many years later I saw an identical image from a dream many years previous that had me wondering why on earth I would dream of Orcas living in fresh water.  this never made sense to me….that is until I saw the videos taken on Orcas.

Two years after this dream my daughter told me that she had a dream about how someone had walked up to her and explained that I should always wear the belt buckle that I so often wear that is a cropped image of an Orca whale done up in the style of the Kwakiutl.  I have worn this for a number of years after finding it at a craft fair.  I bought it because it reminded me of the dream I had had many years before.  My daughter had seen the buckle many times but didn’t know what it meant.  I had not told her about my dream about the Orca.  I smiled and turned to her and said “You know, that’s really interesting that you should say that….” and I went on to tell her the story of the Orca in my dream and about having seen Orcas island from afar on Youtube.

I convey this story because I think it helps to underline how our dreams can be more than what some have tried to make them out to be, which is more like the ramblings of the mind as it just creates chaotically.  I have always felt that dream time was always so much more.  After you have a few very specific dreams come true, it is enough to pique your interest and suggest that there is something more to all of this night-time activity.  At least in my life, this is so.  And in dreams, I think that as you become more aware of your dreams, you will tend to remember your dream more often.  Sometimes, by writing them down over long time periods you can begin to see pattern emerge and you can see what kinds of things you have been dealing with from a different perspective.  Dreams can be more than just the mind out for a rambling stroll.  Sometimes I think they can tie us into larger issues that we seem to be aware of even if we are not consciously aware of them.

For me, water has always been important.  I was born under its sign as a Pisces.  I grew up in Florida where I had access to rivers and ocean and the Gulf.  Water was for me and my siblings, a form of freedom.  You could hop in a boat and go on an adventure.  When I moved to the mountains of Virginia, we lived just a few miles from the most magical stretch of river you could imagine. People used to come and comment on how wonderful it was.  As an adolescent, I traveled the creeks and scrambled over the small tree-sheltered springs in my mountain home which bore frogs and creyfish and salamanders. I suppose if I were to choose how I were to come back, it would be not as a human but as a dolphin or whale.  Perhaps, better yet, an Orca.

Scientists Scan The Brain Of A Woman In An Out Of Body State

This article was too interesting not to reprint here. I think any time that we can use different tools to understand a given phenomenon, it can sometimes yield unexpected results or information that can serve to help us to understand  things better.  While the results may suggest that the woman was merely thinking she was moving or out of body, I think the research helps point to how the brain handles this kind of data.  I hope researchers are not quick to reach conclusions!  More information is probably needed, and this is a good start!  The article is below in total. Sadly, there is talk of this experience being like a hallucination….which troubles me because it continues this bias some have, many have, that consciousness cannot exist beyond the body (it is huge if it does, so let’s not toss out the baby with the bath water alright?).  It is just as possible that the brain is recording information that is existing BEYOND it…..and if it IS then that is HUGE!  And yet, I am very glad that this research is being done.  Being able to have robust discussion is important so people like us can bring our own ideas and proposals to the table for consideration.  Nonlocality would be a giant step or leap for humans to recognize in this kind of work!

 

By Jennifer Welsh March 7, 2014 6:27 PM

It may sound like the plot of the Twilight Zone, but a psychology graduate student at the University of Ottawa says she can voluntarily enter an out-of-body experience. This was a lucky break for scientists, who were able to scan her brain during the episode.

Usually out-of-body experiences are a part of, say, a near-death experience. A patient may float above their own body as surgeons work on them. These experiences are usually attributed to the drugs in a patient’s system, or the hormones released into their system by trauma.

A unique experience

The study — which only involved this one person — was published Feb. 10 in the journal Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, a peer-reviewed open access publication. The researchers are members of the School Of Psychology at the University of Ottawa.

According to the paper, this woman enters her out-of-body state right before sleeping, visualizing herself from above. She started doing so during naptime in preschool, they write. She currently only does it sometimes.

The researchers wrote in the paper:

She was able to see herself rotating in the air above her body, lying flat, and rolling along with the horizontal plane. She reported sometimes watching herself move from above but remained aware of her unmoving “real” body…

She told the researchers:

I feel myself moving, or, more accurately, can make myself feel as if I am moving. I know perfectly well that I am not actually moving. There is no duality of body and mind when this happens, not really. In fact, I am hyper-sensitive to my body at that point, because I am concentrating so hard on the sensation of moving. I am the one moving – me – my body. For example, if I ‘spin’ for long enough, I get dizzy. I do not see myself above my body. Rather, my whole body has moved up. I feel it as being above where I know it actually is. I usually also picture myself as moving up in my mind’s eye, but the mind is not substantive. It does not move unless the body does.

The brain out of the body

The researchers did a fMRI before and after asking her to enter her out-of-body state to find out what that looked like in the brain. They compared these to when she was imagining, but not actually entering, the state.

Interestingly, the pathway that seemed to be activated during her out-of-body experience is also involved in the mental representation of movements.

Andra M. Smith and Claude Messier, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014

Brain regions activated by the out-of-body experience include the supplementary motor area, the cerebellum, the supramarginal gyrus, the inferior temporal gyrus, the middle and superior orbitofrontal gyri.

Some parts of her brain involved in interpreting vision were turned down in activity, as shown below:

Andra M. Smith and Claude Messier, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014

Brain regions inhibited by the out-of-body experience include the visual cortex.

She didn’t have any specific emotions surrounding this experience, and i t seems to be a kind of hallucination she can turn on at will.

What’s happening?

Even if there is no soul stuck in our bodies, this woman isn’t making this up. There’s obviously something happening in her brain that is making her experience the world in a different way — but researchers can’t yet say exactly what it is.  Plus, this study was about one woman’s out-of-body experience, not all out-of-body experiences.

Still, the changes they observed could be similar to how the brain can be trained using meditation. The researchers even suggested that this could be something many kids can do, but that with practice could be carried into adulthood.

Interestingly, the researchers suggested that this kind of experience may be much more common than we thought. The woman in question actually “appeared surprised that not everyone could experience this,” the researchers wrote.

They compared it to synesthesia — the condition in which people hear colors or smell sounds — which was thought of as “out there” but has become widely accepted in the last few decades.

The article appears HERE

Happiness

If you aren’t happy, it is all your fault.  I was told that this was an old saying from around the Mediterranean.  I think its sound advice.  No pushing responsibility for your own happiness or the lack of it onto others.  I was married with children and was involved in a relationship with some co-dependency.  What this meant was that neither she nor I stood up for being happy on our own but sought to have our happiness validated through the other.  The problem with this is that it is essentially a way to give away our own personal power, and when that happens, no good can come from it.  relationships, though, can run along for years in this way just as long as no big issues crop up. But over time, it can begin to accumulate more dysfunction in its wake and this can create big problems.  it is easy for me to see just how abusive this person was to me, but the truth is, I chose her, took part, and even tried to get her to see the light probably as she was trying to do the same with me.  Radical honesty is in order, but sometimes in relationships like this if people are unwilling to grow or change, it means you most often have to go your own way because it will wind up being just more of the same.  Until we are done with the issue that once caused us hurt or pain, we are destined to repeat it, and it seems that the only way out is to release the desire to keep going back into the hurt without resolving it.  This most often means being able to forgive it.  And this forgiveness does not always mean forgiving another person, but yourself.  You wake up, just as I did, and see you have been allowing yourself to live in a vat of corrosive chemistry day in and day out.  Seeing and knowing this is often enough motivation to help bring about he change necessary.  But the change doe snot come from pointing the finger at others, but at admitting the problem was within us all the time  No, you do not own anothers’ own bad behavior, just your own.  You entered into it, it is your freewill to move out of it.  To do this requires a good deal of not just honesty but also compassion  Maybe just a lot more compassion.  I think our meters are running low, am I right?

So if you want to sing your song a little differently, or are hung up yourself on wanting to blame others for some perceived ill, I highly recommend that you read the following three articles listed below  first.  Getting off the big trip of ego is a good way to help calm things down a few notches. Being responsible for your own happiness is a true path to actually BEING happy!  Pretty amazing, huh?!!

How To Stop Blaming Other People For Your Own Misery

If You Are Unhappy, it Might Just Be Your Fault

Learning How To Live Without Toxic People