We Burn

I have been working on a renovation project this week that has included taking down parts of an old shed roof over a deck. It might surprise you to know how boards will look after sitting under roofing shielded from the sun. They can actually char. Low steady heat does the same job as sudden flames. 

I rather think that this is like how we are… how, over lifetimes, this slow burn accumulates until it is so ripe, so full and cluttered, we can stand it no longer. Or some part of us can’t.

Our troubles

accumulated,

Our wounds so deep-

furrowed,

triggers something

It can come like a sigh

often  a sudden realization

this can’t be all there is…

we cross over the borderlands

the no-mans land

filled with the remnants

of lifetimes worth of the dried

and charred tinder

the misappropriations of our spirit

ready for the kiss of fire

to set it all aflame.

Just like that, the house burns down.

Our hopes and plans, up in smoke…

along with our lies  
cleverly assembled to look like castles 

but are only  vain glory.

The moon never shone more brightly after, 

nor the rain more precious

every drop now

an explosion

or a tease

….a world waiting to explode.

Seems you must lose it all to gain all 

only because we all lie like that 

and bury them as though they mean something

until of course we burn for real

and immolate until the blaze is enough to illuminate,

purify,

and simplify the work of the sacred arsonist 

who rests in every heart and waits 

for when the alarm sounds and 
our world is set to flame.

It is ever thus

that souls are carried home

by the fire of the Holy Ghost 

Whose sweet destruction returns us each

to what is true.

It’s the love that prevails.

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The Work – A New Timeline

I am working on the most difficult chapter in my book, which is going back into the historical record to show how Christian orthodoxy was an outgrowth of a much deeper mystical current that existed with the first Christian (Jesus), and that through the intervening years between his Ascension and the institutionalizing of the church, this deeper connection to soulful truth was lost.

It is a difficult chapter  for a number of reasons. One is bias.I am up against an entrenched tradition that is used to believing what it believes.  The other is a tradition that was built off of and drew from an earlier “doxos” (or thought) but lost critical aspects or concepts necessary for it to more deeply guide it’s followers to the depths of who they were. The other difficulty has been time. The sheer accretion of it as a belief system has made it a stumbling block, most notably for those with the most need for clearing a path within that leads both into themselves and into the vast realm that is the Kingdom. Lastly, it is challenging because so much has to be packed in to what must be a short and to the point chapter.

To untangle this has meant that I need to bring not just scholarly resources to the table, but the reality and experience of awakening as well. It means that I have to show how this first tradition was lost long before ink was set to papyrus, and how it most likely happened. 

The challenge that comes along with all of this is how the early church sought to scour from history those books and sects that actually served to birth Christianity before it was a state institutionalized religion. A lot of supporting material that I could have used has been lost. However, despite all of this, something amazing has been given to us in our current era. It came in the form of a time capsule, an honest to goodness time capsule buried in the perfect spot in order that it could survive the heresy hunters that have come and gone over the centuries as Christendom has grown.

In an interesting twist of fate, a man named none other than Muhammad Ali (no, not that Ali) uncovered one of the greatest finds to date of early Christian thought in the desert in Egypt just outside the town called Nag Hammadi. Without knowing it, Ali played a role in helping rewrite history by helping to bring forward the very documents the early church came to revile, and which it spent so much effort in burning, anathematizing, and demonizing.

While the Nag Hammad find took place in 1945, translations of the more than forty books were not completed and brought into the broader publishing world until about 1972. As a result, we are only now beginning to assess more deeply the impact that these books have had not only on how we conceived Christianity, but also ourselves at our deepest of levels. 
The reason why I am approaching this subject is two-fold. First, as Westerners, we have been touched most by Christianity than any other religion. Even people who are not members of a church or who buy into the faith at all are still affected by the reach of a religion whose values have threaded themselves into so many facets of our lives. Many people today might not be involved in the church, but very often their parents took them to church as children, or they have grandparents who did. Secondly, there is the issue of the truths and the path that could have happened, but didn’t, and how important the teachings were to anyone, regardless of any religious affiliation. Before there was a religion, there were brilliant messages that were plucked from the Light, which transcends all religions or institutions.
The story here, at its core, is about an infection. It is the infection of ignorance and how it can turn it’s own deliverance into a 1600 year odyssey of illusion. I know how bad that sounds, and honestly, I am grappling hard with how to strike the right balance in this one important chapter in WTI. Sometimes you have to know how to break the news gently. But this isn’t just about overturning a beloved institution. It is  not about that at all. It is in fact about a way to recognize that we have been swimming in the shallows all this time, and that a deep ocean beckons to be explored.
The problem that we face in the wake of the discovery and subsequent dissemination of the Nag Hammad Library into the mainstream is that the conversation about it has lacked a thread of continuity of knowing (or gnosis) when studying the texts that make up the collection. As a result, those who did the translating and the commentaries that accompany the books admit to being mystified by their central precepts. These books cannot just be read with the intellect, or with orthodoxy weighing heavy in the mind, but must, I feel, be read with the heart and the soul. These books ask of us something more than what orthodoxy ever did. It isn’t surprising to find that Christian scholars are so dumbfounded. They are inheritors of a tradition that never demanded that they utilize the hidden depths. It is now time that we did. What’s more is that people are  ready.
These books from the Nag Hammad Library, the best of them, ask us to take that leap into the unknown in order to retrieve or discover that which most of us have lost or have buried. This isn’t about facts and concepts, but a quality that IS us. Curiously, in some of the books, they provide the simplest and clearest means to reach awakening, which Jesus called the Kingdom.
To do all of this in one small chapter has led to the realization that this first book won’t be “the” book most widely read, but will be the foundation for a number of them. What gets laid down in this one small but potent chapter on Christianity will lead to a book that side steps the Orthodox journey and helps to bring a turn of mind and willingness to go deeper. More than a dry analysis of these “new books” from Egypt, it will show how they communicate the ineffable and help bring us closer to it, less by rational discourse and more by tapping our innate powers of feeling in order to conceive what is in fact entirely revolutionary in each of us. In an effort to set themselves apart from other religions, Christianity denied the very aspects that are universal to reaching enlightenment by hiding something terribly important to all of us.
The chapter on Christianity in the book I am writing now will be to wet our whistle for a deeper dive into what the origins of Christianity could have become. The book will examine all of the historical evidence and will ask readers to be audacious enough to step into the gap, their own unknown, to reach out, and in, to retrieve what is still missing in so many of us.
My dear friend and spiritual cohort who is one of the most gifted psychic intuitives I have ever met, said to me many years ago that there would be a book that I would write that would be the book, and it wasn’t the one I was working on then. This ruffled my feathers back then partly because I had so much time, so much experience, tied up in the effort of that manuscript that I had in front of me. But here it is, six years later, and as I begin working on this one chapter, I can feel the presence of an entirely new book muscling it’s way into my awareness. When Ali told me about this as we sat in the car at the gas station that rainy day, she said, “That book is already written, Parker….it’s just waiting for you to put it to paper.” Sometimes a wise man needs a wise woman to help him see the bigger picture.

Part of the soul of this new book is how we can change our world by being able to acknowledge one element, one simple aspect of our inner spiritual reality  that the Orthodox tradition swept under the rug right from the beginning. I sense, at this time, that it has to do with something that will only work if we begin to embody and practice it in our day to day. The way we are going about it now will only lead to a growing divide between all of us and our fundamental nature’s. We need to become aware and begin working now if we are to stave off what could become an ever-widening gap in our society and all of its institutions. 

How A Book Not Yet Written Catalyzed A New Paradigm For Men

What is so interesting about this is that in the months prior to beginning work on this chapter, I felt a clear need to begin doing a type of inner work with men.This was an unexpected realization, and it happened during a conversation I was having about retreats for women who were doing spiritual healing of their own. When asked if I would want to be a contributing partner in this visionary idea, I found quite suddenly that I really needed to work with men, at least at first. At the time I really had no idea about what that work would entail.  
The idea was firmly planted though, and it hasn’t budged a single bit since then. The earliest ideas began in my mind as a group who would first gather locally to begin revisioning the masculine, to, as a group, share and work together to come up with solutions that will aid in recreating the masculine experience and identity. This would be done without destroying what is the essence of what it is to be men in an essential way, apart from cultural expectations and programming. This local group would then be translated into a larger arena where workshops and retreats would be formed in order to reach a wider audience. That assumed that men would ready for this, and I personally see many who are.

Since then, without fully knowing what the content would be exactly, the concept has evolved very quickly into a means to effect a much needed paradigm shift. This shift will have the result of creating a space and knowing about how to heal our innermost spiritual, and emotional fractures related to masculine identity. The outcome of this, I sense, will be men who live very different lives and whose own healing will also help heal a new generation of women who have been yearning quietly for this sort of outcome, for this kind of man in their lives, be they father, brother, son, or lover.
I know that you might be wondering how this type of work is connected to a book on Christianity. It ties into fundamental beliefs about our identities which were supported and informed by the church. It has played it’s part in keeping a great secret from itself and us. This secret has the power to transform all of us. It is the missing ingredient that when added, is tranformative at the most basic and essential levels. Since paternalism had a hand in the early church, and because of the extraordinary scope of the reach the church has had on most Westerners, being able to see the church as how it could have been actually can show men how they can be today by correcting this one simple aspect that got hidden away by men. Men did this, and now we can each undo it. The results should be interesting to say the least.
Having said this, this work won’t be limited to heterosexuals since it will not be built on the old paradigm which has an often unrecognized or acknowledged codependency at its core. It will instead seek to bring healing and fresh thinking to the individual first, with the balance then achieved in the self naturally rippling outward with new effects, new eventualities, coming into the lives of those who participate. This will be driven naturally and organically as an outcome of this re-visioning process that will call upon, not coincidentally, the one aspect that the early Orthodox Church sought to hide, whether by ignorance or design.
There is a lot that I haven’t written about in specific terms because to do so would mean a number of posts. The main core of the work will in fact be incredibly simple because instead of this being a process of reshaping the selves of men, it actually serves to bring men to the one place within them that society has taught them to ignore. Instead of methods, finding this lost part of themselves will BE the method, the compass, the guide, the teacher. We have been envisioning this the wrong way, you see. 

What I sense that this awareness can liberate in men is an amazing relatedness to their deepest selves…this in turn will bring greater and greater layers of fulfillment which will be a healing balm for the rough edges we have had for so long. I am merely it’s facilitator. You are the healer!
It only takes a single pebble dropped in the calm waters of a self ready for change to effect this change.

Who knew what writing this one chapter might birth or clear the way for all of this to begin coming through?
For now, I have a chapter to write. Besides my own work that sustains me in my day to day, I have an outline to write along with how to include all elements necessary to make this book what it needs to be. Concurrent with this will no doubt be setting up the framework for my first group of men who are ready to take that first step into a new world.

Love Is The Key

How beautiful, how perfectly this expresses how I feel. Can you feel it? 
http://youtu.be/qGD6tmov9-A

Dreamer

What a night.  I was up late because I fell asleep, but then awoke, momentarily refreshed and unable to call on the deep trance of dream.  Caught between, my mind was a flurry of waking dream images, a vast rumination running on autopilot. Like a psychedelic trip without the disorientation.

---

 

The Line

Dissolved

Between here

And there

Sleep

And waking

Dream and dreamlessness….

 

This dissolves

It’s a solvent

ripping apart

taking down

those boundaries,

setting in place

A poetry of soul

Self

And bone…

 

So many weep,

holding the remnant masks

grieving

For a nothingness

that came from itself

And dissolves back to its origins.

 

Rejoicing,

The soul rises

to its paradise

lying folded between the leaves

of lost pages

unknown

unseen

until the boundaries fall away

the mountains,

the walls,

the illusory beliefs…

as the book blooms

into a world of sweetened scent

and wonder

for the hidden

now revealed.

 

Your images fleeted through me

(she lay cuddled over him arms tucked in)

The words and sounds

Both of laughter

(She sits up, taking him in)

And wonderment,

Secrets only you knew

(Like a radio star; she received in pulses so fast)

Fleeted through an emptied house…

(Uncertain and dizzy with desire)

as images emerged,

Like a full-on psychedelic experience

Driven by dream

(And desire)

Focused through waking.

 

Strangers moved

Indexed

Stored

Released

As my mind

Balanced between worlds

Watched in wonder

As it all slipped through

My hands

like a great rushing stream.

 

My mind does not know what it means

Nor always to whom it belongs

It all becomes

Noise…

A flurry of images

From personal lives

The soul

Linked into realms of light.

I listened as I heard the peculiarly loud vocalization last night

that sitting here now,

I hear the man next to me chirping out

exactly as it had come

in a time that came backwards

from the way it usually comes.

 

What secrets do any of us think we hold in worlds such as this?

 

But for purposes

I wonder

The chaos of our world

Slipping through the radio of my mind

As the daily broadcast is ruminated

By minds other than my own

As my own can only guess

At the glue that holds them together.

 

The desire

The greatest one

Is what holds it all together

Even as none of it makes sense sometimes.

Sometimes it all just comes so fast

So furiously

Meaning meant for another self inside

While the mind just cannot grasp

Nor should it,

I think.

 

It is what it is

Assigning importance

Robs it of its reality

 

All our masks are lost

I think

To the deep river of time,

and as they do

you too will see as I have seen

as the veil thins

not between worlds

but in the world of the self

which sees all worlds.

Dry Canals

From 2010….

 

Shame on you
you dry canals
you fearers of truth
you forbid the very essence of divinity
whilst in the same sentence condemned
and hid
the truth
of our greater being.

Some books
forbidden.
Long since the Master
had come and gone.
Who made you the expert on the divine cosmic
you whose waters were imaginary
entirely fabricated
and guessed?
Liars
fakirs
fearsome of the wholesome truth of your being
you stripped a promising tradition
of its true power
and sent the Master’s words into oblivion.

You hid half the divine under a bushel
but she is emerging
It is time.
Your high morality
imagined,
created,
showed at least
that belief
has its own power
we must be careful of the gods and beliefs we choose
they reinforce each other.

The tide is  turning.
Time to move with the tides.
Your centuries of hate and killing is enough.
Your power was entwined with blindness
your hands bloodied.
It is time to step aside
catch your breath
and consider there is another way.
Let the master in each step forward-
heresy is now the sacred.

The Secret Of The Samscara

What divides you is keeping the fullness of awakening from being known within you. What divides you keeps not just your mind in seperation, but it keeps your whole self seperated to one degree or another.

The term “samscara” is a Sanskrit word that means “soul scar” and this scar lies at the foundation of our feelings, motivations, and actions in the world. The soul scar divides the self from being completely whole, aware, and unified to its origin. Many might think that this scar is the sum total of what has been done to us that has caused hurt or pain. In truth, the samscara is created out of our own reflection on the world, and arises out of the contrast between our expectations of the world and how the world actually is. This is the source of all suffering. But this is an inner event that takes place, this perception that things are not how we want them or expect them to be.  
It is a reaction. We in the West fail often to understand how we feel is a choice. We think it is just how we are made, that we have no choice. People MAKE us feel certain ways. Am I your maker? I make you? No, you make you. Always.

If you take five people and have them each experience the same event, you will most likely get a range of reactions. For the person who has a strong sense of expectation that the event was negative, that person will see it and feel it that way. This feeling will also color how they saw the event for years to come. But for the person who does not have the same level of expectation, there will be much less in the way regarding their perception and feelings about the event as purely negative. It will be much easier for them to see that the event unfolded the way it did because of the limitations that the participants had. It wont be taken personally, but seen more clearly. What is so hard for us is that we want to believe all kinds of things, all perfectly noble and good about how we think the world should be, but the truth, more often than not, is that the world just does not match what we believe inside ourselves. When we are unable to come to terms with this, we remove ourselves from our capacity to forgive and move on. Instead, we are hooked by it. If the contrast within us compared to what’s happening in the world is great enough, it forms a soul scar. It then forms the basis of a stumbling block where we then suffer in big and small ways from then on. The nature of the scar, the suffering, will be activated over and over until it is healed.

The samscara is not just one emotional issue, but is in fact made up of a whole cluster of issues. Whatever your expectations are of the world that the world does not match, will most likely form the basis of  problems for you.

Healing the samscara requires radical honesty about how you feel and react to the world around you. Healing the samscara requires the deepest innermost forgiveness, not of others, but of yourself, for having put yourself into a position where you were less than your truest being. To be this true being means being honest about how you have chosen to suffer. As long as you believe that your suffering comes about by anyone except yourself, you will continue to remain in a maze of your own making, a blend of dharma and samsara (different from samscara)…with your own beliefs about yourself leading the way. I don’t think I need to tell you how difficult this sort of combination is for any of us.

The secret of the samscara lies in how it divides our awareness. If awakening is the result of a merging of our opposites, the samscara is that which keeps  inner union from reaching its fullest possible expression in each of us. Awakening is a partial union, an initiation, and is so rich and intoxicating, that most so touched by it forever seek it. Awakening is just the  water upon our lips, and full union is a wholesale cleansing that allows us to become purer vessels, realized vessels, for this water of life, which we once sipped and found so amazing, so celestial, which now pours through us with perfect peace and acceptance of what is. Curiously, this is where we each can best change the world, not in the perception of division and seperation that the samscara always creates.

The curious things about the samscara is that while it divides, it also becomes the agent for change and transformation. It is the crack that lets in the light. When the pain gets to be too much, something deep within asks the question, is this all that there is? Most often, this is the spark that catalyzes a deeper relationship with the full undivided awareness of self and can lead to the kindling of the creative fire, the powerful flow of prana, that is called kundalini.

Do you see how the image above fractures our being? Our awareness of ourselves as truly whole? Do you see how it stands between the two sides of the energy body? The Ida and Pengali? The yin and yang? Do you see that the samscara is in the center of awareness, blocking out fuller union, fuller embodiment of this higher or more expansive experience of ourselves? Do you see that the samscara, the wound, is also opening to let in the light? Do you also see that the whole self already radiates the light of the totalities?

The samscara is made up  of beliefs. These beliefs are about the world, yes, but they are always fundamentally about you. So often we look to the events in childhood to try and find the genesis of our samscara….but the truth is that the origin of the samscara comes from you. Beyond all time, beyond all cause and effect.

Everyone who awakens speaks at one point or another about how time is an illusion, yet often we do not bother to consider that what happened in our childhood or in later life came from who we are outside of time, in the very spacious present so many espouse being aware of. It is here, in us, that all of our glitches have emerged. Since this involves awareness beyond the world of cause and effect, it is hard for us to embrace this timeless realm from which we each come to be incarnated in bodies here in this world. It also means that all problems begin first in ourselves.
When you can reach into this realm beyond time, you can heal your samscara for all lifetimes. Do it now, and you can feel the tension in the karmic cords it creates through all that you are and all that you have been and will become. It is precisely because it is so total a healing that it is so effective. The effect this will have for you in your evolution is that of a quantum leap.

This is how total we each must learn to be in our own sense of personal responsibility. It is one reason why whenever I tried to get over a hurt I thought someone had caused me, just as I reached into the root of the problem, I always found that it wasn’t the other person who needed  forgiveness, I was always brought to the inner truth of all of it, which was I had to forgive myself. 

This is the radical honesty that emerges when you heal the samscara. We stop seeing ourselves as being at the mercy of others and events for how we feel, and we own up to our part in it. It reverses victimization by bringing the awareness of what we did to create such a weakened dysfunctional condition in ourselves in the first place. This is not blaming the victim, it is stopping being a victim by healing our part in the equation.

We are energetic beings. So many of us are stuck believing that the five senses are all there is to our experience. Awakening shows us that HOW we feel and HOW our consciousness is constructed has a subtle nonphysical effect on what we experience and attract in our lives. You change all of this by changing what you are inside. 

You try to change it by changing where you live, but it follows you. Some things you can change when you want to heal, like not interacting with someone who you feel has hurt you. This is perfectly reasonable and can give you enough breathing room to be honest with yourself about where the old problem lies (within you). But try to initiate another effort to create a new life, without healing the samscara in you, and versions of all the same problems just keep returning. This is the karmic merry go round. What gets you off of it is how you change how you feel and identify with an aspect of your being that is anything less than healed.

Anything that you see that serves to limit your fulfillment in your life is a sign  of something that needs to be set right. There is no one way to do this, but your higher self knows. It will step in and set it right when you can lay ego and the rational mind aside enough for it to enter.
 By going deep within and finding the root of the problem, you can heal it. In so doing, your own inner awareness of what you are will grow and unfold for you. The result of this is that whatever was snagging you or causing you a problem will no longer be there. 

The way to reach the root of the problem is not by the rational mind. You have to use FEELING. This is NOT emotion! This is your intuitive capacity to know the source of all things in you. You do know. You must practice feeling. 

This begins with a willingness to stop thought to any degree that you can, and feel yourself. Then, you feel deeper and deeper. You let go and drift into yourself with a quiet mind and awareness that is present. It is so easy, but so hard to explain. It is like you are visiting a new world, which is your deeper self, and you are along for the ride. You can access material from earliest childhood using this method. Feel it. Don’t judge or resist. It is deceptively easy, and you need to work through your own beliefs that block you from achieving this.

Tips

When you forgive, forgive with all that you are. Imagine the problem seeping out of every corner of your being, top to bottom, like a vibration that is leaving every cell in your body. Breathe deep and slow. Then use a panting breath, like a tiger or jungle cat does. It will move a lot of energy. Close your eyes and imagine that you are floating in a deep blue ocean, unafraid of its depths and willing to drift deep into it.

Pray to Source to see and accept your apology. Offer up this problem, not with a desire to fix it, but to simply remove it. These problems were not created by the rational self so the must be given up without a hint of ever trying to understand them this way. Hand them over to that in you that touches and lives in a higher vibrational state. This is how you transmute all low vibrational problems within you. 

Expect a miracle.

Be open to change. Be like a child; open and ready for the new.
The moment you think you have everything pegged, step back and observe. Do you really? If you are still suffering, there is more work to do.

Stop assuming that you know where you are headed. A higher intelligence is running this if you will surrender control and allow your awareness of its presence to fill your life. It is so much bigger than your awareness that it takes faith, like a child, to be led by it.Y you go from pushing the river to working harmoniously with it. Your doing is now allowing. Do you see? The rational self controls. It is also limited. It cannot begin to dream of what could enter your experience next.

Grace comes by way of matching discipline and faith together as partners in your day to day growth and progress to realization.
When you are stuck, sit quietly in meditation (this can happen anywhere …even while shopping or standing in line) ask to be shown what remains to do. If it doesn’t show up as inner guidance, it will show up as events in your life. Pay attention and see how they are mirroring something inside of you. Then, by witnessing this, not ingratiating yourself with it by being reactive and emotionally invested, ask yourself how you can choose to feel differently. This is how you can actively break the chain of behavior that keeps the samscara active.

Devote yourself to love in its deepest possible expression. When you do this, seperation is dissolved in you. Love unifies. If you feel like a stranger in a strange land, love has the power to heal this. Love does not exist in condition. If you cannot do this with someone in your life, this is a sign that this is a place where more love needs to be in you. It points to a block in you. It works perfectly when you let it.
You cannot control the world, nor make it better by following old methods or paradigms for change. Instead, make yourself the paradise you would like to see in the world. You will wind up seeing all the aspects of this paradise that you had missed previously because of your blinders. If you are paradise, this will have a much better chance of catching on than any campaign sought to change through the mind.
Every part of this forms the basis of my “work” that always, in time, leads to profound healing. I hope that it can help shift your own awareness too. Nemaste.

Leg Chakras

Someone recently expressed interest in learning about the chakras that are in the legs. I copied the following excerpt from Divine Alignment, which is from the blogspot family and is another blog that I manage. That excerpt follows.

I would like to add that the chakras in ANY part of the body are cleared by all the same methods one would clear a block in any part of the body. I put this post together assuming that readers who are familiar with ways to clear blocks would know about these methods.

For those who are unaware of the many ways to clear blocks, a quick review.

The energy system in the human body consists of a vast network of energetic lines that move all throughout the body, and while they are entirely energetic in nature, they are not that different from the way they are composed in the physical body as, say, the vascular system (not precisely, but in principle). As a result of this, in extremities and radiating outward from the central core of the body, there will be finer and finer strands of these lines. Most people are completely unaware of this network of energy in much the same way that we are not aware of blood flowing in our veins. Since this system is designed to carry energy, it is a low density system made of energy to carry energy. By low density, I mean that which is not dense matter. You can, though, become quite aware of this system and the energy it carries through meditation and “inner work.”

In the Chinese tradition of medicine these lines are called meridians. The meridians in the Chinese tradition have all been mapped out to a very complete degree so that in the areas where energy can get stuck they have all identified acupuncture points along the meridians where they can release the stuck or blocked energy. Using the Chinese tradition and its points along the meridians lines,you can massage the areas using acupressure or you can go to a Chinese acupuncturist and have them “needle” you in order to move the energy.

My observation with this healing modality is that the Chinese tradition does not take into account the existence of chakras but rather these many many points where the blockages occur. However if the practitioner needles you properly in order to release enough energy from the area that is blocked, you can in fact have an effective removal of a block in that area. This can also take a number of appointments with an acupuncturist in order to loosen up energy especially energy that has been stuck for a very long time. A good practitioner will be able to not just needle in the block, but know enough to draw a line, or series of lines up away from, say, the foot in order to open the foot up. Sometimes, then, a needle in the solar plexus might do more to “pull” chi up and out of the foot than a needle directly on it. A good practitioner will be in tune with you as any good energy worker must be.

Another very good way to release stuck energy is to work with a massage therapist who knows about energy work and can combine both tissue manipulation in the form of deep tissue massage along with energy work. This is not that different from acupressure, it uses all the same knowledge base, but adds a broader “geography” in massaging the whole body (which I find to be more effective than placing needles at a few select spots hoping that it releases the energetic block).

My experience has been that if you find the right practitioner which is someone who really understands energy and also really understands body work you can in fact release a great deal of material from your body with someone who really knows their stuff.

It is important to understand what is at the base of all of this blocked energy. The blocked energy is in fact blocked emotional material that has been stored in the body. If you can understand that this is blocked emotional energy, you can work,  energetically,  with the blocks through proper meditation techniques which are extremely simple and which can, and will, release blocks all throughout your body.

The difficulty with blocks is that represent  emotion that has been felt only partially, with the remainder unprocessed emotion now being stored in the body. In some cases, allowing yourself to feel that emotion again can be enough to flush it out of your system. However having said this, sometimes a block is actually a conglomeration of many emotional blocks in one center and allowing yourself to feel an emotion they only released one small part of the larger block. So you can see perhaps that this work can  have many steps to it.

I tend to feel that it is much more effective to use body manipulation massage for this work if you can’t use meditation techniques to bring prana to the block. It also bypasses the “story” bound up in emotion, which can lead you into blocked energy, instead of out of it.

There is also  the technique called “tapping” which is also called EFT, which is doing the same thing that acupressure/puncture does but is using a tapping motion along the meridian line.
In the case of the legs and the feet, the descriptions for each center in the article below, both positive and negative attributes are mentioned, and these attributes will clue you in to the emotional nature of the block. The reason why they are described in terms of certain emotional states is so that the practitioner, or you, can bring those emotions back up and learn to process them when they were not originally processed to begin with. The descriptions help you to hone in on what parts of your emotions need work through awareness and care.

There is also a method of shaking that has proven to be highly effective  for  releasing blocks. Since few muscles are in the feet when compared to the rest of the body, shaking the feet are harder than, say, the legs. The method is to go into postures that will cause you to shake. Mild exertion can achieve this such as leg lifts held in place until the muscles begin quivering and shaking. Doing this for 15 minutes day can be very helpful in releasing blocked material.

You know you have released a block because you can feel either pressure, tension, or resistance melt away in your body. This can feel like a liquid flowing out of you, or a clogged region slowly melting away. A feeling of temperature change can also accompany the release.

The method that I use in the beginning stages of any removal of a block in my body is to simply sit quietly and begin to meditate and allow my awareness to go to the area where there is a problem. What I do in this meditation is I become an observer, and in that observer mode, I become highly sensitive to being able to detect my own energy. I make no judgments, I simply observe. I FEEL. I allow myself to feel it deeply as I can, all of the characteristics of the block so that I can learn as much as I can about that. Very often I will find in this Observer mode that a block is actually a cluster or series of much smaller blocks.

If you are someone who is awakened you no doubt have had a third eye opening or activation at some level or another. You can in this type of meditation use your mind to see into your body like an observer would look at any other object and begin to glean information from your own body and your own energy body in order to assess the problem correctly. Let me iterate that when you focus your attention on a given center with your mind with the intention to heal it, you WILL bring prana into that area. If you believe that this will not work, it will do you no good to use this method until you are able to change this negative belief. Energy goes where attention goes, and if you are focusing your disbelief in ANY method, you will be shooting yourself in the foot…so to speak. In this case, you will need a method that fits your belief so you can get the energetic flow that you need. In any case, the healing always comes when YOU can find a way to allow energy to flow again.

Once you have detected the area in question that needs to be removed you can also begin to massage that area with your hands. Gently using circular movement that starts at the center of the block, massage in a circular motion, slowly moving outward from the block. Then reverse the direction of massaging.
A very effective Bodywork or massage therapist who does energy work will actually be able to pick up all that same information from your own energy body. They will in fact be listening to you and to your mind (even when this information is not available to you consciously because of the block) in order to pick up the things that are most needed in that moment. These are the very effective energy workers and massage therapists, and it takes some care to find one who can be the most effective for you.
I will add here that if you are really ready for the perfect healer for you and do not have any competing beliefs against this standing in your way, amazing things can truly happen. It is a fact that all of the best healers (except one) all were located within walking distance of my home. No, my area is not gifted with many healers. When you can know how your belief plays into every aspect of your life, you can change belief in order to manifest the healing resources that you need. And these will be tailor fit for you where you are now. In this case, the mountain will come to you.

There are, of course, a number of other healing modalities that you can use for releasing blocks. There is the system called Reiki that can be effective. There is also a Polynesian healing modality that is very simple and can be incredibly useful called Ho’oponopo. It means “setting it right.” It gets at the root of all blocks by recognizing that we allowed ourselves to feel less than our divine selves. It requires honesty and trust in order for it to work. It is effectively holding up the problem so Source may take it “back” to be forgiven and healed.

Blocks in the body will tend to align along one energetic polarity or another; yin and yang. Yin will tend to manifest one range of symptoms while Yang will manifest others. Coolness is Yin, for example, while heat is Yang. Anything in excess can lead to physical problems, most of which will have as their source an emotional issue. Correcting the issue in consciousness releases the energy block and thus changes the physiological effects within a 24 hour period (but often within minutes).

With that said, the article…..

Leg & Arm Chakras

Each leg of the physical body also has chakras and the same two currents that flow up the main trunk of the body.  Each toe has the same two currents as do the arms and fingers, with much smaller chakra centers in each.  Because they are so small in appendages like toes and fingers, most do not detect their presence. To detect them requires a focus most often in meditation. 

 

One reason why the hands are so often used for healing is that there are terminal points akin to the top of the head where the energy flows from positive to negative, referred to as “zero point.” It is here at this place in the energy that anything can happen. 

 

In the Hindu system, the chakras in the legs are seen as  both negatively and positively charged centers. That is, they are referred to in a negative and positive light as corresponding to our more animal natures, and are said to belong to the “underworld.” These centers are just like all other centers.  They are neither positive or negative but depend on the emotional, physical, and spiritual energy that have been invested or cast into them.  In the same way that a sacral chakra can convey a lack of good self image and a lack of sensual beauty, so too can the same center be magnetized in the opposite direction. This is so with every single center in the body. 

While you are probably familiar with the Muladhara, Swadhishthana, and Manipura chakras, for example, the chakras in the legs have also been named. The Patala, located in the soles of the feet, is said to be aligned with malice and hatred as well as forgiveness.  The Mahatala is located more centrally in the foot near the arch and is aligned with a sense of entitlement and lack of conscience as well as expansiveness.  The Rasatala is located in the ankles and is aligned with selfishness and charity, while the Talatala is located in the calves and is aligned with a materialism for the self and an awareness of being conscious. Sutala is in the knees and is aligned to inadequacy, inferiority, but also self-confidence. Vitala in the thighs aligns with blind wrath while also aligned to forgiveness.  Atala in the hips is aligned to lustful promiscuity and the ability to be healthily sexual. 

The way that each of these centers are charged by your awareness and your feeling, will determine your experience through them.  As with all chakras and the nadi system, blockages can occur in them and removing these blocks is important in freeing the old perception of the self in order to open up to a new awareness of who and what we are. The work of release is the same as with any other part of the body.  There are numerous methods and they can all work for a variety of reasons.  There are posts on the blog that are about these different methods.  Search using tags like “healing blocks”

I hope that this was illuminating and helpful to

you.  If you have questions about other sources, feel free to let me know and I can dig them up or you. I hope that you can find the information served up today will help you in developing a broader awareness in your own life about who you are.  🙂

This is a link to a post that has a number of other posts about keg and foot chakras.  In one of them, the major leg and foot chakras are named and described:

https://wordpress.com/post/wakingtheinfinite.wordpress.com/4883

 

Update 5/21/2018:  I was recently going through the visitor stats on my site and I noticed an unusually large number of views of this blog post.  I dug deeper and found that while the post was written in 2016, this one post has had nearly 6,000 views, mostly happening between 2017 and 2018, with views increasing by about a hundred for each month, every month. This is just on this platform (this post is being shared from my other blog).  I will be working on putting together more information on leg chakras and why what doctors call “restless leg syndrome” is actually an energetic phenomenon that is pointing to how you can begin to release blocked energy in the legs for better life and greater vitality.  -P.

 

Summer’s Glory

This has become the unexpected summer. I was only a week out of teaching my classes after the semester ended that I was handed the opportunity to work with a crew of people during half the summer which quite unexpectedly gave me a brilliant insight into the nature of our own suffering as human beings

A stone heart, one of many I have been finding on my journey that sits in my flower garden
 Now I know how that might normally sound, but in my case it was a golden opportunity to see how I had been affected in the past, and how I could choose to go forward (differently) from where I was in my own journey now.

I had a front row seat in seeing how this group of people followed the programming from childhood that had them in all sorts of tangles. I had the odd feeling like this was all for my benefit. Watch what they are doing the voice suggested to me. These men’s lives were in many ways a mirror with my own. Since nearly every problem we face winds up being rooted in love (or lack of it), we are as a species very similar in many basic ways. I saw how same backgrounds, same childhood dramas helped to mold their lives based on how they “fell into” the beam of certain ways of feeling about themselves. As I saw this, I felt all of my old material rising to the surface. When this happens, I have learned that people who are compliments to that energy start crawling out of the woodwork. No, these are NOT mirrors of us always, but often our opposite. So naturally, I began to wonder what was going to happen next in what seemed to be a production put on for my benefit. In this instance, I had the gift of perspective. I buckled up and watched the show.

And then?

And then my ex showed up behaving in a way I can only describe as her usual mean old self. This was that same old meme. But in my role as observer, I was determined to do this whole thing differently.  I was actually ready. This time I didn’t respond to what was clearly a provocative move to try and wound me, to do as she had so often did in the past, which was to drag me down to her level. So I didn’t respond to my own old program, samsara, or karmic glitch. I just resisted and it hung in the air there….and? 

And then something happened. 

Something inside of me began giving way. I could feel the blocked energy behind it break free like a solid little knot which softened and melted away. In my energy body I felt a pain on my right side along my hip and down near the root. I was familiar with the presence of this block. It was one of the very last cluster of blocked energy to be released. After nine years of work, day in and day out, this was the hardest and most stubborn block of all blocks. It was the oldest and also the freshest of all of my blocks. It is why it has been the last to go. A day later, as I stepped out of the work van, I felt it go. I had to fight the impulse to stop and double over. I watched it as I felt a twinge the size of a bee-bee begin to rise up the meridian. It hurt at first, like passing a kidney stone. As soon as it rose up several inches along the meridian, it began to soften, and then it dissipated like a tightly clustered spark expanding outward into smoke…and then nothing. Poof!  Would there be more?

In perfect timing, I opened the book I had bought on a whim a few weeks before, by Osho,  and on the page I had opened to, he was saying how we should try an experiment…to not respond to anything that normally would be upsetting and then see how our energy  changes. Just try going through one day where you don’t respond to the things that happen during a day. This came as a confirmation that I was on the right track. Then, a few days later there came another effort to try and rattle me. It was, most certainly, unnecessary, and it would have pulled me down with the ship, dwelling in this negative space I had come to know so well in the past. I remained calm and didn’t respond…and suddenly I felt something give way in me that led to a release of this stored material. An old connection also lost its power to activate me as it had done in the past. This connection, most certainly karmic, had been a mine field of unresolved issues in the past… and they all played into my reactionary self. By staying out of it and doing my work for me on my own, healing came so much faster. It was yet another epiphany moment. I have learned that each time these releases occur, they correspond with a change with material reality. How so? The saying that we create our own reality can nowhere be better illustrated than in moments such as these. It seems uncanny, yet I have hundreds of events just like this one that have happened over the years since I embarked on this journey to retrieving the authentic self. Events begin to match the inner landscape.

Over the following weeks life bloomed in unexpected ways in the wake of this. Stores of energy were put to manifesting a life that mirrored these inner shifting tides in me. 

The crew I was working with then began telling me their deepest secrets. It was the strangest thing. The timing was what was so unusual. This began the day after this last release. Each began to tell me directly the reasons for all the things I had been witnessing in both the ether and in their behavior. It was as though their souls knew I saw them and they couldn’t help but engage with that type of awareness. I wondered what on earth was happening. And then, right on cue, just a week later, the work ended right at a point where I didn’t think it could get any more woo-woo….and I was free. New work appeared without my looking for it, and what might have been seen as a loss resolved into an easy transition into a subtly different world.

As my inner sky cleared, I saw just how much clutter there was from the psychic junk that had come from others who I had let into my space. My mind clarified. My inner guidance grew clearer, and stronger. I began to see and understand how the people who had come crawling out of the woodwork  had been so obsessed and how ill-prepared they were to be honest about their junk. The difference was I no longer needed to identify with their stories. Enough time had elapsed that I simply no longer had any connection to those broken ways of being. 

I was shown by spirit how their own lack of awareness had also let in entities, these low-level life forms that serve to tie up people’s energy so much of the time. While I had removed or “cast out” these beings from the person I thought of as my “twin” some nine years previously the voice said that this is an inside job for them to resolve. 

Many awakenings are marked by the removal of these etheric influences, which help to accelerate awakening and “clear the deck” so new growth can take place.For me, this clearing had come easily with the help of a brilliant healer. Most of the time it’s hard for many people to see the influence these presences have because they feed on the very energy that is part of our own soul wound, samsara, or karmic glitch. After spirit had shown me this, it also showed me how a soul connection had behaved as she had, unable to let go, utterly obsessed. It helped me to understand the reason why things were the way they were. Somehow, after seeing this, so much made better sense. Once I understood, it quited the mystery in my own mind…which led to a still-deeper capacity to let go and just be free. I was also able to see how obsessed I had been with trying to please people who were fundamentally very unhappy people, even deeply disturbed. My glitch was that I thought it was my fault and this kept me in the game trying to bring healing, awareness, and healing. They have to heal themselves…let them do their work..it is theirs to do, spirit urged.

My own inner voice was clearer. I saw that my life was a blessing. I simply chose a different way to be. When I began relying on myself, so much cleared up that wasn’t even mine. It helped to remind me how I had taken on stuff that just didn’t, and couldn’t, belong to the self that lay deeper down. If ever there was an illusion, it was that I was trying to be a version of myself that just wasn’t authentic enough. It’s good to help others, but this must always be an act of leading a horse to the water…and that is all it can ever be.

I was around this time tapped out of the blue to make art for the Russel Senate Building in D.C. I had a wonderful weekend visiting with friends in D.C. and delivering the work to our Senator’s staffer before heading for my home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a great feather in my cap and an honor since I was being selected by way of a state-wide search by their curator. I didn’t apply for this opportunity. I’m hoping they will have a reception so I can take my daughter to see the Senate Building as honored guest.

My daughter arrived after this and we spent our weeks together swimming in the pool and nearby river, mixing a new clay for a sculpture for her portfolio this Fall, seeing movies, shopping for books and going to the fair where she was able to find something so cool, it was as though it had been made for her.We saw art and she took the car for the first time ever alone after having gotten her license. Yes, I felt a twinge inside, as every parent does,  and I was reminded how glorious it was when I was given the car keys for the first time…ever. So my twinge dissolved into delight (cautious delight!).

My daughter and I share a moment of levity over the Summer together 

I revelled in being a father and saw that for as hard as I thought my life has been over the last few years, life had actually been blessing me all along. I just needed to show up for it in just the right way. It went from a perceived trouble to a wonderfully perfect life….and it was going to continue to unfold in this way.

My daughter asked this Summer if I could show her how to see auras…something that she knew I had the gift for, and have mentioned in passing in years past when asked about it. I explained to her that there is no better way for us to know that we are more than just our bodies by seeing into the world of our energetic being. I was able to show her all the techniques for seeing them and found that she was able to tune them right in. For years she has heard her Mother poo-pooing the existence of auras, maybe out of jealousy, or ignorance, or just as a way to make me seem like a kook….(and who knows what that was all about, really!) but now she will have the tools to decide for herself, despite whomever the naysayers might be.

Being able to have my daughter spend time with my mother (her grand mother) was also itself a blessing,  because she was able to see how this woman has led such an interesting life, and that my child can benefit from such a close family tie, which makes me so happy. Not everyone has this. Some people in my life have propped up these ideas spun out of their own story of hurt and cannot be in my life or my side of my family as a result. The difference now is that while I love them and miss them, I know that their story is so turned around that to deal with them in anything approaching the real is an impossibility. As hard as it’s been, it’s how some have chosen for themselves. My son was a casualty of my divorce, something that’s called Parental Alienation where he chose to believe a broken story from his Mom that was so distorted that the only way to keep  the story propped up meant having to cut out the one person who could have set the story right…(me!). This, again, was a difficult lesson in letting people who are determined to be unhappy to simply be what they want to be. This has been an extremely hard lesson for a parent because you only want the very best for your children. In the past, I mourned this loss like a death because  I had learned that when children are brain washed in this way by a parent, an authority and caretaker, most children don’t snap out of it. I had to let go and stop playing into the trap that the two of them had built around themselves. But in doing so, I felt a wonderful lightness of being. My son could be just as weird and messed up as he needed to be-it was his journey, one in which he made a very concerted effort to exclude me from. Taken like this, an even deeper love emerged. Timeless, it seemed to stand with me at the shores of time explaining that our lives are a gift given to each of us, and that each life must be lived, for good or ill, as part of our own unfolding story. Maybe that sounds corny….no, it really does…but it is true.

This goes to show to what length people will go to remain in their own hurt. It is here where the concept of the victim is used to cover a world of wrongs that they believe others have done to them….when, more often than not, they are doing it to themselves. The only problem is that none of this is as one-sided as we think. We need clear eyes if we are to be able to be really honest with ourselves. By now it’s clear how badly people need their story, and I get that now. I am left wondering what happens when all story has been dropped as we step out of our own shadow into our light? I mean, what happens when we completely shed all remnants of what held us back and made us into limited beings? I don’t know that any of us have yet dug all the way down to clear ourselves out in their entirety. Goodness knows I keep at it, but I wonder, what that will look like?

My department Chair where I work at the university recently completed her evaluation of me recently which comes around every three years, and I received a glowing report.I get to be evaluated each semester, anonymously, by my students, which is an important key to improving the teachers and the program. My evaluations from my students have been consistently favorable since I began working there. I used to hate going to grade school as a kid, so it’s a real turnabout to have the opportunity to be teaching.

I really love what I do, and it shows. I teach a class that has gotten to be very popular since it was first offered only a year ago. Using sustainable and recycled materials, we often work out in nature, a part of the class that the students love. I find that the biggest impediment to learning is how disconnected we have allowed ourselves to be at the university, and how the spiritual basis of inspiration gets lost in the mad dash to other more linear methods of performance measurement. How do you measure something like inspiration? You can’t….you can only trace the path it blazes, and this path is not always a predictable thing. Some inspirations don’t lead to a successful end product, but this doesn’t always mean that the student hasn’t always learned something valuable.

For six hours a week my students get to have fun, work hard, and discover new ways to work with sustainable materials. Their work has been nothing short of amazing. I also have students turning the assignments inside out and making them their own. Students retake the class for additional credit…because!

The piece, above, was made entirely from container plastics my students took out of the recycling bins at school. This piece was over 6 feet tall.
“Cooke” was my student who didn’t seem to want to be at school…but day by day he rose to the challenge and made work that was really great. He resisted, coming late to class, until he saw how much fun we were having…. and then he turned into a real work-horse for our group projects. The detail above is from what I call a “disco wreath” made out of plastic cups and led lights that he made. It was really something!

I’m not in the habit of posting my student’s work, but every project they did knocked it out of the park. Being able to inspire them to push beyond what they thought they could do is the single biggest reward for me as a mentor and teacher.

I have faculty who now want to collaborate with me on projects, and this only makes things all the more exciting to look forward to. It has pushed me each semester to find new ways to invigorate ways of teaching the old stuff in order to build excitement, inspiration, and great work. In the end, it only succeeds when I can provide a platform interesting enough for students to make it their own. Our lives are only as good as the content we are willing, and daring enough, to fill them with. We like to say it’s another person’s fault when we aren’t happy in a job or relationship, or a life. But the truth is, we are the ones who are responsible for our happiness. Don’t like it? Goodness me, change it! If nothing works, it might be a sign you are doing just what I did for years, which was fighting the flow of events and people. There is a much happier existence when we learn to accept…all struggle just ends and all that energy spent trying to go against the flow is now available for the bliss of a new way to create and to be.

As I work this Summer,  I hear that voice returning, telling me about the deepest love there is, how our shame has tangled us up. I was recently shown a new method for helping couples to heal themselves and their relationships by bringing a greater awareness of their true nature more to the fore. Can it be turned to the cause of helping build greater intimacy, understanding, and closeness in a relationship? I hope that it can serve as an effective healing modality. Time will tell.

It’s curious, too, as I have been working on a class/seminar for men that I’d like to offer in the future. It is based on how to revision the masculine, and how to tap deep well -springs of love in an effort for  bringing forward a more aware man.I have this curious thought that this could lead to an integrative approach to being more fulfilled as men. I have gotten more and more excited to begin this work.How do we bring such deep love to the fore so that we ARE this love? I think it’s a wonderful healing time for those who are ready to try. After a consult with someone today, I think it’s all within reach. Life has turned into a blessing and its helped to build peace and joy. We so often forget that the quality of our lives is up to us. 
It’s been an unexpected kind of summer, full of blessings that could have turned into curses had I let them. All that really changed was me. This Summer has revealed itself to be an unexpected joy…a quiet one…that I can’t help but toot my horn!

The Light

The light which enters my room speaks to me. It is a brilliant presence beyond presence, a majesty beyond all majesty. All things are known through me, it says just now. It tells me with a smile to put away my old childhood things; our beliefs in a man-god, the belief that it wants to be worshipped. It was you who misunderstood, I have only wished that you know this love, a great liberator, which is the essence of worship.

The light first came in an entirely inconsequential way. It came as a brilliant flash, with no presence or meaning or grand pronouncements. I was not ready then, merely an initiate, unaware of what was to come. I even thought someone was playing tricks on me, but no one was there turning my night into day. The one clue was how I held myself, my awareness…it was awareness without looking, a gaze of mind that was without direct focus and held just long enough for the light to flood in. It is this gaze which can be taught to anyone.

It would return endlessly, making of me a lover of its flame. By then, the light was deep within and turning out all the things that got in the way of its revelation in me. This, first heavy, grows light as it does it’s work.

It has come bidden, always, ready to reveal mystery after mystery and turning all to light. And as each layer is touched, deeper and deeper still, more of what no longer belongs. The revealer frees those imprisoned by its touch. Ray upon ray the light has done this and dares do more.

In turns it seemed to come from without, but it’s presence becomes my own. The riddle of it is it’s own mystery. A light that come bidden, a light that professes to be what I will be in the future of my time, a light whose waves I ride and read upon it anything that has ever been. Like a vast nervous system whose story is written in its own essence.

This light which comes hence is not the light of this world, but the light which is in all things. It does not come, but has always been, and waits for us all.

Simple!

If it’s “spiritual” and it isn’t simple, you have over-thought it.