The Work

I don’t really see the thing we do, this intense multi-year process of shedding old skin as “work.”
I use the term..work, but it is, for me in truth, a letting go, a deeper and deeper surrender. This is not an effort, you see? But in the beginning it seems that way.

 

This “work” is a returning to a quieter less noticed part of us. It is the “part” that so easily gets drowned out by our barrage of physical sensory information. If you want to see effort, see how we hold onto those looped strands of energy we have formed by hard emotion and a lack of surrender. This is the stuff that forms our inner programs, conditioning, and negative karma!
When the programs, negative energy blocks, drop, those things that you obsessed over dozens of times each day just go “poof” and are just GONE. In fact, once they go, isn’t it hard to even remember what they were, or why all the drama?

We actually clench our minds recursively around so much that hurts us, numbs us, all without realizing we are doing it. But what a relief when the hand of the mind.just.lets.go. So this has been my “work” since awakening entered my life.

I’m at a place now where I’m getting down to the bottom of the barrel. I will say that while I’m pleased with how much I have released, it’s a small pleasure, a lowercase “p.” I feel different, and things are getting easier even as I hold tight to a few last broken pieces. They are doozies…but as I say that some part of me is laughing because it seems to know how ridiculous that is, saying, “It’s only that way because of the power you gave it….and it’s a thing that disempowers you!” True.

I’ve not been so keenly aware of this “doozie” though as I do now. It has come into vivid focus because so many other blocks near it have been removed. These  blocks veiled the ones deeper down. I am now aware of the deeper blocks more keenly. This is of course a good thing because awareness is what helps bring change. It tightens my abdomen, it keeps some part of me dull, upset, clinging to….what? An investment in hurt. Yuck.

This state, though, however temporary,  leaves me feeling graceless, bumbling even. I lose grace, I sometimes feel normal….and I’m aware that it’s my inner compass telling me I’m a hippocrite as long as I’m holding this last bit, this pile of stinking stuff. But after being here hundreds of times it tends to play out the same way.  Being not filled with grace seems to be the whole point, which is to help point out the glitch that keeps me unsettled.  More so than usual.  This place is different than just grinding away on something that is firmly planted inside of me, though.  Its got a bit of that muck being stirred, you know?  Something is up. there is a feeling of something is about to happen.  My feet, feeling the edge of a great cravass, teeters there a little and something in the back of my mind begins to calculate (which I wish it would not do) and wonders what would happen if I fell.  And again, that is the whole point.

It leads me to being at a loss for words. Entering here, I feel the inner earth shaking, uneven, like a world on fire, burning, strange, even dark. It leaves me feeling vulnerable. I have this “work” to do, and it makes me feel… upset. Mildly agitated. For as much as I once reveled in the cosmic energy of union with a “twin” I have never before felt so relieved not to have to deal with my un-becoming and all it entails while dealing with another in my head space going through their own gyrations and chaos.
We all do this differently, and for as much as I have wanted to beat back loneliness with connection, I am finding that when I can just be left to do my “work,” my part of it, it gets done. I’m learning, stubbornly, to love the grace that will be permanent, common, sure, and solid instead of falling for the idea that this can be done while enmeshed in a karmic connection. Yes, a karmic connection  drives powerful energy, but it also leaves me yearning for an ideal I see in that person that has yet to be manifest. I used to think that because I could see a soul in its pristine state that this meant it HAD to manifest itself in them. But their time scale is not mine. I’m making peace with how we all go at this with a different pace. I might leap forward, now no longer attracting nor attracted to that old karma. The tension goes slack right along with the sexual tension, tightly focused previously. When it goes, my focus widens.Each time, the force widens, sublimes, and then grows stronger….but only because I am now more open…less clenched and cluttered. And the things that mattered before don’t. I’m left having to figure how I do feel about any number of things. I’m left having to figure out what fulfills me enough to even keep me here.

It isn’t that I don’t care. Im a feeling passionate person in all truth. It’s that the old arguments…they are, so many of them, just gone. I remind myself, though, that there’s more work to do. I keep leaning into the wind, though. I’m ready for the next thing.

This leaves me wondering what even to write. This process leaves me at odd ends at times. When I’m processing blocked material I often feel agitated, raw, upset, and close to the presence of a block that gives me grief right up to the moment that I find that gap in my heart mind and soul where I can root it out deep so it can go away entirely. Transmuted, redeemed it feels like. This makes it very hard to write.
I’m reminded I have 60 posts in draft mode. I can have one posted each week for a year and not run out. I’m thinking that I’m all out of words. I kind of wonder what is the use. I mean, nothing seems more important to the journey inward that is me and mine. I’m thinking I want to garden quietly, contemplatively, seeing into the mystery that fills me that I alone must face and encounter wordlessly. It’s made all the more precious because it is so quiet.
I’ll be working on getting those drafts more acceptable and not worrying about what next to say. I just can’t. But all those drafts will make it possible for me to go quiet without really being quiet. That’s nice. Better when I’m shedding my skin. I want to move quiet, silently, heeding my own bliss.
Like all of these periods, it’s temporary….but it’s necessary.

I’m working on my house. But The house is connected to me in this weird way. I find I am shifting the energy pattern in the house just as I shift and heal my own—some which are compliments and some have been mirrors to some aspect in me.
It isn’t that the house has the same patterns as me. It has patterns that are present in the awareness of all-time that were created by previous owners here. Both me and my daughter can sense the energy here, and we sense it best when it’s something that is also in us. It’s easier to relate it and to tune it in this way.
It’s two years worth of renovations. Detail work with trim and feelings being stripped away and repainted so this old house looks anew.  It’s more than just looks, though. It’s feeling differently day by day.
Already so much has been done, and it feels like my house is changing right along with me. We are drawn to people and places because they match something in us. I am ready to change the pattern in me as well as the person who buys it. Once complete, I won’t have to worry about its being valued….because it will be a different story based on seeing this house in a new way. It wont be because there are new curtains or new paint just covering the old with new.  Something else will be in the mix, changing the feel.  It is already happening.  A friend of mine told me a few years ago I needed to be careful about those stuck emotions in me and in the house.  People can feel them….and yes, while someone else who is stuck in a similar way might be attracted to it, I prefer to just change the narrative by editing out the noise.  This, I suppose is the work, if ever there was any (on the house I mean).
Columns stripped and repainted, looking brand new. Walls clear and clean. Weeds pulled, mulch beds framing the house in a new look. It’s a labor of love. Now eleven years in, I am ready to sell and move on. Out of it will come an explosion of creative output I have been pushing hard against the harness on for many years. Free now to create just as I have always yearned for: free and clear. Clear inside, free outside.

Meantime, I have research on a book about early Christianity and it’s forgotten mystic roots….and teaching. And renovation in more ways than one.

So I am taking a”rest” for a bit while I work on me and drink deep of this lovely life that keeps growing sweeter…I will have blog entries scheduled each week, and I might just be more consistent by posting all those old drafts than I ever was when writing when the spirit struck.

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Curled

Artist: Hüseyin Şahin

 

The lock of the Beloved

curls thrice

gently,

lovingly,

gasping quietly

until she is freed from her deeply chambered place.

 

Years in dream she prepares 

edging closer to you and me
longing across a bridge not yet built,

eying your capable hands.

 

I heard your voice speaking

in events surrounding me

you wrapped me in impossibilities

transforming the mundane

into the profound.

 

You were the essence of the miraculous

and  bid me deeper

so that I might know

finally

what I had been seeking.
Though I might drown

I am drawn deep into your sea…

 

Your waves shook me deep

over and over,

your golden presence

lifted me into light

and bid me enter the chamber

of the bride and the groom

a secret consumated in mystery.

 

My watery self

emerged from new birth
challenged

an old memory

rewritten,
it was…

a resurrection

an inundation

there are no words to contain you…

but you bloom here in my chest

and open me to the grandeur

the same as when life comes to itself

knows itself

and knows what has made it.

 

You undid me

and remade me all at once.

 

I am left having to make new sense of old maps

 

listening to a still-older compass

that whispers at night in dreams

and shakes me to my core;

“it is waiting for you” 

and I struggle through the sleep

to find myself on the other side

awake

The Merit

Artist: Hüseyin Şahin

 

What is the merit of holding on?

 

Fists of your heart

 

clinging since before your birth

 

to what keeps the rush of the real

 

at bay.

 

Just listen to your words

listen to the secret language of your heart

 

feel it deep

 

deep…

 

the luscious words are there

like a bubbling spring

 

a creek

a brook

yearning for its ocean tide

 

as was ever-written

 

on this heart of mine

-on all of ours-

 

 

that it is time to just let go.

 

 

“It is such a lonely place!”

that false heart cries

your hands clenched tight

 

where do you think you will ever go?

 

the biggest lie you tell yourself

is never as big as this one

because it was born from the blindness

which will lead you to the blazing light

where nothing can be hidden anymore

 

Where is the merit in what has always been?

Where does the new get born in such a place as this?

 

Just let go…in everything….in all of it….because of it….for it… and be free.

 

You just gotta learn how to set yourself free.

 

 

 

 

Kundalini & Flu Symptoms?

Its pretty amazing to me just how big the stats are on people searching using kundalini and flu symptoms. This has been going on for a number of years on several blogs that I have.  It is consistent across the board. This tells me that kundalini awakenings are going strong and that people are concerned most with this, next to a handful of other observations related to awakening. I think that it is important to help illuminate this subject because this spectrum of experience effects so many people.

 

I dealt with flu-like symptoms a lot during awakening and my sense has always been that prana as a force has a stimulating effect on the body, yes, obviously, but it also creates some irritation as well. I have for years made a habit of making careful observations of my experience.  this goes back to the days when I began seeing energy fields around people, which was about twenty years before I had awakening.  being an artist as well as a scientist-minded person, I have been taught to be a professional observer as part of my training as a visual artist, so this has been easy for me to do.  When it comes to this flu issue, I have dug into it and I will provide you some key observations that I have made.  Understanding the basics can help you in knowing how to soften its effects.

 

I felt this irritation  or flu before the full rising of kundalini in the form of stomach upset and mysterious bouts with flu-like symptoms that affected my intestinal track.  it would come, I would take Pepto and things would settle back to normal again for a few weeks before it would come back again.  It is normal.  Along with this I also found a lot of other bodily fluids being produced that I felt were the direct result of this stimulating effect.  I could be wrong, but my sense has always been that these fluids were being produced as a way to protect the body from further irritation.  When prana flows at such high levels, I think the body does what it can to deal with it.  When I had gut trouble in the beginning, I used pepto, which always made it go away for a while.  I think that similar stomach coating methods can be helpful.  Just a little something to provide comfort.  At the time this was happening, I didn’t know it was related to kundalini.  I even went to the doctor for it.  He showed nothing of concern, and suggested it was just my natural system adjusting to something.  All good, he said.  And a week later: boom!  Then things began making more sense to me.

 

My observations have led me to observe that the type of energy that is causing this irritation the most is what is referred by Chinese Medicine as “solar” Chi (Qi)  prana, or the “masculine” side of the energy.  But then it came time for me to see if what I had found in my inner observations  was correct.  When I looked it up on some Chinese medicine sites, sure enough, they described solar energy in the gut related to Qi flow and its effects, most notably irritated bowel, production of mucus, etc., as a result of this stimulation effect.  So yes.  Normal. But the questions about how to cool things down. How do we deal with it?

 

My first thought is to focus on the feminine energy, the yin side to this for comfort.  It has what is called a “cooling” effect.  On the one hand, the masculine energy can clear and heal a lot of things, an energy that I like for letting things go having to do with blocked energy, but it is only one side of the equation.  While the yang energy is good at pushing through stuff, you also have to work the other side of things, by really going deep in another more “feminine” shakti way.  Push out, draw within. Part of a cycle of innermost creation.  And this cycle is what makes consciousness whole.  We each have both, so don’t be afraid to explore it.  It will also connect you in to issues and balances that will help you in your process. I often meet people who tell me they have no idea how to balance this energy.  These are people who have awakened sometimes.  I think, “really?” Each one of us has both masculine and feminine energy, not literally male and female energy, no, but what we call that.  It has more to do with the nature of consciousness and the fact that we have these two “sides” which are in fact part of a spectrum of experience or character.  To understand how this works, imagine the letter “U” and on one arm of the letter there is a male side and on the other, there is a female side.  This is negative and positive energy like a magnet or battery.  The point to realize here is that there is no one point where the U is either male or female, positive or negative.  Do you get that? So if you still don’t get it, let me see if I can help you.

 

U

 

How you are able to anchor the feminine energy will be something that you connect well to, your own inner associations.  You will FEEL “her” in you, so the trick will be how to explore it more.  When you anchor this awareness or focus on this part of your awareness, you are effectively opening up to what I call a wave or field-based awareness instead of a particle awareness (which is masculine).  This awareness is vast, it is very very large in its scope so when you shift into it, it allows issues to not be felt quite as acutely and it can also help you to shift or transform the energy by allowing the wisdom within the field or waveform awareness (feminine)/  The opposite can also work but in a different way, but usually particle or masculine energy will often mean that you are willing to “burn’ through a block.  There is also the possibility where you can use a balance of the two and in those cases, healing comes about much more quickly and can lead to large releases all at once.

It might be that simply thinking about the feminine, looking at images of goddesses, dakinis, or yogini’s can do it for you.  Sometimes just reading something about the divine feminine….meditating on the moon and its symbolic nature in your own mind as an archetypal symbol loaded with meaning….deep rivers, the dark side of our being, a deep void pregnant with possibility might do it.  if you are actively experiencing awakening you wont have to go far to encounter her.  She resides along the left side of your body and then as she moves up into the neck and the head, the energy does a flip as it goes into the “zero” state, where the flow moves into what I calla “flux” condition where its polarity changes.  It meets in the head and the hemispheres of the brain mirror this.  Right brain is holistic, sees the big picture, is diffuse, vast, wildly creative, but also needs the direction of the left in order to create a focus within that vast field.  Learn how the energy works in your consciousness and body.  I think that this will help if you do this kind of work daily.

 

The other thing you can do is to look at what the Eastern traditions say about foods that are good for yin.  These will be described as “cooling” in nature.  Before I knew about this type of diet I was approached in a vision by my guardian and he showed me an image of several foods.  One was eggs.  That was the protein I was to eat for a while because meat was giving me a lot of trouble.  Then alongside the egg was a slice of cantaloupe. “Really?” I thought. But I tried it, and by golly, it really helped to calm kundalini effects a LOT.  In fact, it put me into this very calm blissed-out state.  It was like a drug.  This only lasted for about a six month period for me, though.

A year later I came across an article on a site that described that eating melon was very good for calming and “cooling” kundalini down.  Well there you go, right?  Along with melon are other foods like cucumber which are supposed to be good.  I found myself not eating meat and eating a lot of eggs, fruit and light uncooked vegetables.  I also found that a couple of years later that raw jalapeno would really even me out and put me into a similar blissed-out state as the cantaloupe had a few years prior.  Again, this was synchronized with where I was at the time.  Jalapeno does not affect me the same way as it did then when kundalini was stirring me so strongly with all those blocks to clear out.  You might want to listen to your intuition, consider lucid dreaming and mediation to get messages about the best things to try.  Trust that you can discern these things. Whatever the way is that works best for you, the information is there and it can help you out a lot if you can learn to trust that this can happen.  Sometimes just being aware that you can do this is enough to begin grabbing that informational tiger by the tail.  Heavier foods have had their place for good grounding, but there is also a time not to be grounded completely.  Sometimes you have to go waaay out in order to do the work, right?  So go.  Do.  And then, get your grounded state in so you keep balance in your life.

 

The other side to all of this is that during rapid block removals you can feel achy.  It feels almost like you are going to get sick.  This is a good time to let the junk flow through you.  it is a bit like the “hair of the dog.”  When I had rapid removal during Qi Gung work, I actually felt clammy and sick for several weeks.  Then, just as a block was getting ready to move, I would feel sick a little to my stomach.  This always became a sign that I was moving energy.  At this stage, it can often be the result of what I call chakra energy movement where the force of the chakras are moving many blocks in a given region of the light body instead of individual blocks.  This is more a wholesale kind of removal.  You can often be dealing with a whole cluster of blocks being removed at once and this was always where I got flue symptoms.  It was a lot to deal with, so symptoms emerged.  But instead of this being a situation where I was being made sick by the junk floating through me, it was more its last hurrah before it was gone.  So think of it as a positive sign and that once it all moves, the flu feelings will recede until the next big series of blocks go.  You will likely find after a few years of this that things quiet down and you begin experiencing blocks moving more from the meridians than the chakras.  They are ALL moving out of the meridians or the nadi, but the chakras are creating these powerful stirrings of the energy in certain areas that sweeps all that stuff up and out.  Let it do its work!  Its good! Just know that this is simply a reaction and you are not getting sick.  If it gets bad enough, consider minimally invasive ways of calming and creating comfort for coating the stomach. Teas, honey, even yogurt or milk if you can handle that.

 

Drink plenty of water, too. I know it sounds simple, but your body is working overtime.

 

I hope that this helps you.  My hope is to help ease your way, to provide you with what I have found useful, to add to our base or understanding.  Use what works and bear in mind, too, that some things wont work at one point in the journey and suddenly work in other periods.  ~P.

 

 

The Allure Of Awakening

I was a seeker my whole life. It was fueled by a deep sense that there was much more to existence than met the eye. As a child I  had some unusual experiences that showed me that there is an inner realm which is where we all live and emerge from that was largely ignored by the masses back in the day. 

Even as I say this, as I was experiencing out of body states at the tender age of three and four, the world of the 1960’s was itself asking some big questions. People were joining the “counterculture” and there was an accelerated effort of “East meets West” with people beginning to discover meditation and yoga.Stanislav Groff was using LSD for researching what mind-shifting substances could do for healing (funded by a grant!), Timothy Leary was taking LSD and jumping into an isolation tank. McKenna was traveling to the jungles of the Yucatan and finding ayahuasca. Richard Alpert took mushrooms and saw himself dissolve, thus setting him on a journey of awakening in India where he became Ram Dass.  This was a period of sudden openness and experimentation, perhaps even a desperate effort seen as playful to crack the wall of perception because wasn’t there more? For the West, we seemed to be trying to crack the cosmic egg with drugs. It worked, but the question for me has been, is it necessary? 

Forty years after my birth and after thirty years or more as an active seeker, I stumbled upon the mechanisms tied to light body activation. I didn’t follow a method, I simply did something that initiated a fuller flow. In that flow, my higher self, my godself, was there directing me in perfect timing. I didnt know where it was leading. I was always playing catch up, I was never told why I had to do what I was being instructed to do. After I had achieved my “goal,” (the “more”) I have found out a few things that I would like to share. 

I have been trained to look, see, and observe as an artist, and because I have always believed the mystical ought to be examined objectively and should be able to be examined scientifically just as anything else is, I have been keen to gather my data. I have been sharing observations and paying attention to repeatability as well as phenomena that is common to us all in studies of consciousness. My hope has been to help dissolve the bias science has in denying consciousness as valid phenomena worthy of study. I think I am a decent reporter. I am here to tell you what I have seen. Take it or leave it.

The drive to know and to be more is a very human thing. It is laudable, good, and is the very characteristic that will help each of us to evolve. This does not guarantee you a lovely experience, however. Awakening is powerful business and the stakes are high in such rarefied atmospheres as this.  As Westerners we bring a lot of junk into awakening because our traditions have not placed value or awareness on preparing. I think we have the expectation that “it” should be a walk in the park. We find God, and it’s perfect.

You bring all of your unexamined junk with you into awakening. It will get amplified in the process. This is the promise awakening makes for all of us (that bring the unexamined into awakening). It is a blessing and it can be a curse. This is how it is when you have not prepared sufficiently before awakening comes. This is not what most who are awakening today will tell you about who are awaking spontaneously. This is because they grew up in a system that knew “0” about awakening nor the importance of preparation. And just so you know, I was in many ways in that camp. I had no teacher or guru. Some traditions say you can’t even awaken without a guru: sorry, but yes you can!

You can awaken so easily, though. It takes seconds. I could give you two techniques that if used would begin to stir the giant within you. But I won’t because it can lead to psychotic episodes when unprepared. I once felt that as many should awaken as possible, we will sort out the challenges that come along later. I no longer hold that view. This is not a race, it is an important step in the process of our evolution. We don’t need a generation of freaked out paranoid sczitzophrenics running around! 

This also leads bystanders to wonder if awakening is really all that it’s cracked up to be….maybe with the suggestion that it’s not a holy thing. And that’s just the problem. It is a REAL thing, and as a result, it is powerful. It isn’t black or white; where you are in your karmic journey will have a big say in the quality of your experience.

Peaceful awakenings always occur when the right preparations are made. This preparation  includes somatic work to release emotional energy that the mind has not fully processed. Whatever you do not fully process (make peace with through feeling it fully) will ALWAYS result in stored emotional energy. Since we always embrace positive energy (you never run from the good stuff, do you?)  you rarely find positive energy stored in the body. Positive energy, which is really just how you are choosing to color your own pure life force, is part of an aligned flow that is in harmony with a productive mindset. 

Negatively tainted energy, now stored and shoved down into the subconscious, is the material that awakening will dredge up. Think of it as an unrecognized inventory of emotion that when dredged up is as fresh and vibrant as the day it was silently and unwittingly packed away….and it will all come rising to the surface when awakening comes. At this point, you will require heroic stability just to deal with it all.
I speak from experience. I also pay attention to the countless people whose experiences I have read both in word and on the library of light.Most every person who struggles in awakening is doing so because of suppressed emotional energy that is amplified by awakening. For some, it can be a very real stumbling block. It can harden awakening, hanging people up for years in a merry go round of denial or just wanting to ignore it because it’s all just too much. This was precisely what got them here in the first place. Woops!

The answer to all of this is careful preparation. Awakening is not for the elect. It is a natural state that every person can attain. Rushing in,  is ill advised, though. Humanity is now sitting on a hair trigger for awakening. Knowing this, knowing that this cosmic traveler is so close should give you pause. Unpack your bag; the less luggage you have on your flight the better.
The Simplest Way To Start

Begin by becoming familiar with your energy body. The energy body is what gets activated when the major chakras are pierced when kundalini rises. It opens awareness and consciousness to itself, to its origin. Understanding it is a vital first step.

 You can do this through careful observation in meditation. Go deep, breath, relax, and find that place where your awareness feels as though it is being buffeted by the soft breeze that is your energy. Breath work helps to move chi or prana in its sytem, so long deep breaths are like energetic lubricant. 

You might feel areas of the energy body activate as you breath deep and quiet your mind and create a sense of movement, spinning, or vibration. Once here, observe how your energy body feels and how your whole body, your light body, is a dynamic system where one center in your belly, say, can lead to other centers activating. 

As you do this, be aware of any feeling of tightness or tension. This will always show you where stored emotional energy lies. Instead of getting into feeling the tension, supplant that feeling with the opposite in your mind. Imagine images that support feelings of flow such as gently flowing rivers or streams. Your light body is a system of conscious energy and it is moved and changed not by physical things but by how you think, feel, and react. You can feel a release often as a feeling of a thick substance flowing up your body, as something pulling away, of a tightness suddenly letting go completely never to return. It is followed by flow. Before awakening, this flow may not be felt as bliss, but it also comes with less phenomena that could distract you. This can keep you on track. Once awakening comes, you will be so sensitive, very small things become big things. It’s possible to lose a degree of perspective during such experiences (I have done it, and I see it often in others).

The greatest teacher for me is observation. When I feel myself shutting down or feeling tight, what am I thinking about? Often we aren’t aware that we are even thinking about something, especially when its something in the subconscious. 

The journey of awakening is in making the subconscious conscious. Doing this requires a powerful or determined sense of discipline in order to stick with it. Once awakening comes, you will be locked in on your ride and I ask; do you want it to be a roller coaster ride of intense ups and downs, or would you like a thrilling and exhilarating experience? What you do now will help determine that.

There are yoga’s that from my perspective are more focused on helping to tone and clarify the energetic channels called nadi in the Indian tradition that are where blocked emotion is stored. 

Kundalini yoga, pranayama yoga, and Hatha yoga are all very good methods for preparing for the rise of kundalini. These assist in clearing trauma that has been stored.

Body work such as deep tissue massage with a practitioner who knows ways to aid in the release of these blocks can help. Look for someone who shows clear intuitive traits and who can surprise you by knowing things about your condition even you did not know, but is able to help release. 

There are many methods within body work. Cranial Sacral is remarkable for how it can help you tap into your deep and distant emotional history but is not a deep tissue method. Acupuncture can help with some blocks, Reiki can be very helpful as well as Chi Gung. Some methods are faster than others, some will fit you better than others. Every individual is different, and a wise body worker can often help suggest additional therapies for emotional release work. An awake person can sense the blocks in you right away. Some sensitives who read energy can see it manifest in the aura, for example.
There is a powerful method that uses a latent tendency in humans to be able to release this material through shaking (often by shaking the gut and lower torso by fatiguing muscle groups in the region—we are unsure why it works but it’s bringing relief to thousands who suffer from PTSD).

Currently there is another method used to release stored emotion and it is Ayahuasca. At first I thought this method was dangerous, sensing it’s violent energy. However, when I went into it further and observed, I saw that it was doing just what these other methods were doing, except very quickly and through DMT. 

I had already identified DMT as a compound that I was experiencing in small concentrations during kundalini awakening. When I saw mandalas in my mind spreading out above my crown chakra into a vast bliss field, the only compound I knew that could do this natively in the body was DMT. So? Wasn’t DMT taken in the Ayahuasca ceremonies, the same compound that was unwinding me and opening me to the great cosmic lovers in a subtle field of blissful consciousness? For as much as I wanted to say “do it naturally” I realized that not everyone has experienced what I have. Not everyone is the same. Some people need this medicine just like I need to lay on Violet’s table as she works her Kahuna magic on my meridians, sending me deep into trance where I travel back to the origins of the many wounds that make up my samscara, or soul scar. And it’s all okay. Thing is, Ayahuasca does a lot very fast. In a way, though, you may still experience facing your own wretchedness just as I did in my dark night that lasted seven months. With aya, you do it in several nights if you are blessed to meet it and have it work hard on you, it’s clever language working its magic and freeing up so much through purging.

The more you make peace with now, the smoother your process will be later when awakening comes. This is an investment that you never lose. What you do now will make your life more peaceful regardless of whether you are awake or not. It will also accrue to your next life since you are setting the stage for all of the conditions of that life right now. If you don’t like something, you can change it and that change will have significant impacts on your life today and hundreds of years from now.

This work is an act of self love. If you have this love, when the cosmic comes knocking, you will be able to answer that advanced version of you with wonder, awe, and while anchoring love within and without.

Releasing this emotional material is directly tied to your karma. 
We think karma is action. Yes, if it is your inner action, because it is the inner you take with you always. Negative karma is a fundamental misalignment with the divine…and this divinity is in you. It is powerful and it is unmovable. You, however, as a self, have freewill. You can, and have (many many times) not heeded that immovable compass point. You were contrary. You did it anyway, and you sinned against the divine in you. The more you align to that immovable orientation, the more relaxed and at peace you will be. You don’t even need to understand the divine, you need only to allow yourself to feel it. The deeper you let go and allow yourself to feel, the deeper the bliss will flow. It will be like a standing wave of orgasmic energy that transforms and continues to heal as you simply stand in its blissful presence. Here, you do not need to know. Just be in that alignment. It is enough. You let the little you drop, that ego we are so quick to demonize. It lets you know who the little you is. Problem is, it does not let you know who your cosmic ego, your higher vibrational awareness of you as a soul is. Drop it, and you will feel it there, quiet and unassuming, but expertly ready for some great adventures.

This action is action that has moved you out of divine alignment. No amount of yoga postures or changing your life on the outside will fix any of it. Changing how you react or respond to someone you are karmically entangled with is window dressing unless you get radically honest and release what upsets you about it at its source. Karmic release is itself a deeply humble and grace-filled act of forgiveness. The person you forgive is not your ex or your boss: it is you. When you get to the core of a karmic thread, the place where it ends in not in the other, it is in you. Release it by forgiving yourself for engaging in something that kept you from your highest, and it’s gone. Forever. And events will actually change based on what the karmic release was all about. 

When I released karma having to do with a self respect issue, a boss of mine changed right along with it. How was that possible? Was I imagining it? Another person who gave me an offer on my house that was a third of its true value sent a new offer six months later but a day after this last release that was much closer to the fair price. This was not my imagination, but others will cite coincidence. This, however, is how these things go every time. People pick up on these deficiencies and act in harmony with them. It is part of that subtle field I’m talking about. 

Karmic release has to be done right. You don’t get it by feeding the poor; you get it when you realize you were doing it just to get “points” and the universe arranged it so you could see the old man coming in through the back of the facility taking the donations, ashamed and hoping no one would see him, but desperate for food as his legs trembled from his shame. Anger rippled through him because he was so tired of feeling this way, and it made him edgy, hard to be around. You see that and it hits you; it wasn’t about you, sunshine-good karma comes from an honest heart and you find that place in you, that same shame as in that poor man and you realize it has imprisoned you, this shame of yours. And you wind up feeling so foolish but it just hits you deeper until you have tears streaming down your cheeks. The shame is yours. His shame is his. You aren’t righting any wrongs here unless you free yourself. And poof, there it goes. You say how sorry you were that you felt that shame for so long. Good that you fed the poor, yes, but unless you let it change you and increase your capacity for love, well, you were just being an empty suit. 

You were just replacing old drapes with new and as you do, something reminds you that you are just a bullshitter and you are just making it worse. The new drapes, they were just another denial of the truth; your house, your inner self, is not so great as you made it out to be. Just admit it. Stop playing games. The only person it matters to is you. 

So I ask; are you ready to face your deafening blizzard of bullshit in one gigantic thunderclap that leaves you reeling with its consequences for years, or does it sound more reasonable to whittle away at it for a while such that when the flood comes, it doesn’t knock you down? 

This is the path of radical self honesty. You have to own up to all of your bullshit in order to be free. You’d be amazed how hard we all hang on to our bullshit. No, really!

If you are ready, nothing will stop you. It will consume your entire life. It will fill every corner of it as it seeks to root out the dark tangles you forgot were there. It will be relentless. There will be a fiery passionate love that is the ancestor to all loves. It will fill you with fear, your own self-made fear, and then it will fill you with peace. The fear will only be because it comes like a mystery and feels at first like another. It brings you to the divine, but no harps and angelic choirs in the clouds here,  but voices filled with passion and desire that is not entirely of this world but is married and born through all of them. This is part of what Source is…and it is entirely without pretense or bullshit. It is the real. This ain’t a cake walk, but then again, you don’t strike me as the cake-walking type.
Get ready because the kingdom comes to each of us when we allow ourselves to ripen.

All my hopes…

Energetic Update

 

In the last week I had an unexpected release of an old block.  For the last couple of years now block release has gone from fast and furious to slower and more difficult as I have gotten down to what I know are the deepest of my blocked energy.  It is now like chiseling away stone.  While this has required greater patience than ever before, the reward has been great.

 

The interesting thing about the release of this latest block was that I was able to trace it back through history to a past life event.  While I do not know the exact date of the event, I have been able to locate it in the third to fourth century AD.  This was interesting, and this was not something that was on my radar at all.  In fact, I have in numerous instances been over this same ground that involved this block many times, but never had much of a reaction one way or the other.

 

It involved burying a cache of ancient documents, and it helps to explain why, before the block lifted, I felt the way I did.  For years I had this driving feeling as though something had been hidden that told the story , the untold story of a very important, a foundational, aspect of Christian thought.  This sense within me has driven me since I was a small child, and honestly, it wasn’t the best sense for a child to have.  How do you explain to someone that you KNOW that something had been hidden, but upon being questioned, you don’t have ANY details about what on earth this could be?  So you see the conundrum. This is why I have always kept this sense entirely to myself, with only a few people ever even knowing I felt this way.

 

To give you just enough back story without loading you down with details, I had to bury documents I considered sacred and extremely important to spiritual maturity (a code word for awakening) in order to hide them from the church. I hid them in order that they might be protected, so they might be found by someone at a later date who could appreciate their importance. I was hiding these documents because the church had deemed documents such as these heretical and were an anathema to Orthodox belief. This experience was not ot unlike placing a child in a boat on a river alone, hoping that they might survive. Things were so bad where I was that doing this was the last and final option. It was my message in a bottle. Hidden. Would they ever be found? Would they survive?  The desert is a sea where no oar is dipped, so say the Muslims. I placed my hopes in the hands of that great ocean of sand and said many prayers that they might come back to a more inquisitive kind of human in the future. This was in a day when everything was written down, not printed and widely distributed as today. 
Once the block was encountered and the emotions fully processed, this driving feeling in me that I had felt most of my life went away completely. What is interesting about this, though, is that I lost the “fire in the belly” over this issue…which has made my recent work more difficult because now I am left without this driving feeling as though something was done that should not have been and am instead left with a peace and bliss that comes as a result of fully processing these blocks.  All of this repressed emotion was what was driving me forward with such conviction and vigor….it ate at me, you could say, and this is very important to understand about how blocks affect us.  They just keep turning in us until we resolve them. Depending on the nature of the block, it could be very destructive to all you hold dear. 

 

I find it very curious that I would have a block like this pushed so far down.  I say this because over the course of my awakening process, I have noticed the the easier blocks all went first.  There were a lot of inconsequential blocks, many I had no clue what they were that simply evaporated, and these left in complete anonymity in numbers beyond my counting (but every one is accounted for in how they will affect us until it’s released).  I am happy not to know what they were about because I no longer am affected by them….whatever they were.  This has simply left me at a greater place of peace. But this last one, because I had a memory of how it was connected into the an event in the past and my connection to sacred texts, and because it came later in an area of the light body where the blocks have been notoriously difficult to dig out, I have been given a view of how this block has affected me and for so long. This was not an inconsequential one. How would you feel if you knew you had to hide the truth because those in power didn’t want to hear it? When I look back on the people I have known whose lies have degraded my joy, or destroyed parts of it, and I see how I did what I did, the guilt, the sadness, all of it, served to attract or draw to me lights that were less than the one great Light. This was what we called it back then because it was a great unfathomable beautiful mystery that was the Light!

 

Below is an image of the meridian where the block released.  In the hip there are three locations for acupuncture points 10-12.  It was on the #12 point that this last block released.  I could feel it quite vividly.  Shoot, I felt the presence of the block long before then nearly every day as a hard tense tight and burning sensation.  Really.  I am blessed to be able to feel these points, even though I feel them all the time.  But when you wake up, it seems that when you are able to feel more deeply, as is often the case, you feel all of it, right down to where blocks reside. Knowing where they are is one very useful step in releasing them.
It is on my right side that this block was located.  

Before I began feeling the specific meridians where blocks are now located, I felt them previously in a more regional way, and they were also released in a regional way through the action of the stirring effect of the major chakra centers.  Now, though, the chakras seem less at play as I get down to the last blocks in the major chakra regions. It seems that now I am down to doing this piecemeal.  But by feeling them as clearly as I do, I have been able to point directly to the specific blocked area on my body and either my acupuncturist or my body worker (a lovely Kahuna healer who is perfect for this kind of work at this stage in the game) were then able to go directly to the site and begin working their magic on me in those places.

 

In an odd twist, though, it helps me to see how close this issue of getting the word out is to my own soul.  As a result, while I now feel freer than ever before, I have this calm sense of resolve that I do indeed need to finish this work. No fire in the belly, no, but I have something much better perhaps.  A quiet calm knowing.  To know that something I did in the past helped in some way to preserve the esoteric wing of early Christian thought is like having the past reach out to me and touch me on my heart, telling me that while we are at a time when these books can be seen anew, or seen for the first time in a new context, the work is perhaps even more important so I can round the end of this one chapter that has been almost 1600 years in the making. I get to tell the story I didn’t get to tell, you see. My work will be for the texts themselves and what they meant to me and how it was that I understood them when others did not seem to know.  The research I am doing will seek to illuminate this to show just how revolutionary and how similar these teachings were to other very different traditions in other parts of the globe.  

We each do not see the sun rise through the eyes of a Muslim or Christian or Zorasterian.  We see them through human eyes and awakening is very much a human experience, not one attained by way of religion (our self-imposed ignorance as a race has seen to that!).

 

The other really interesting thing is how it has loosened up my energy.  The heart center, which has been one center that has cleared the most in my ten years at this work, now suddenly seemed to explode with a new found sense of energy.  The heart center was not the one blocked, though, but when a block near the root opened up, it put the heart center into what felt like was a new context.  It has provided a vibrant presence of this energy within me that is remarkable.  That is a beautiful outcome. This is showing me yet again the complex reciprocity between all aspects of the light body (yes, heart is open and clear, but when the root is clear, the heart can know continuously what it could only feel in peak states previously).  It also gives me an unexpected level of hope and excitement about clearing up the two other blocked areas in the root that I can feel vividly. This last release helped to confirm what I had felt in my body before laying eyes on a meridian chart, which was a cluster of points (and blocks in each) that corresponds to an acupuncture meridian that has three points along it.   That is pretty cool, I think, because it shows that those Chinese who helped develop these charts really knew their energy centers and could feel them like I do. It’s almost as if I can see them talking now, “Xiao, I feel resistance right here in my hip!”
“Write it down on the chart! A new point! Now let us observe if anyone else has it and what its nature is!”

 

With each release, there is also sometimes a certain kind of confusion over why I am feeling the emotional reaction that I am feeling.  Often, for me at least, a few days before a block lets go, I begin feeling all kinds of emotions that are tied to the block….except I don’t know in the beginning that it is associated with that block.  I just feel all this emotion and I wonder if I am just “in a mood” or just what is going on!  But, as is often the case, my mind turns to the possibility that it is a block releasing and it is then that I quietly observe and just do as I have always done, which is the work to help the block go ahead and release.  In some cases, physical movement helps this.  Shaking, massage (deep tissue), breath work, and some other somatic work can help.  In this case, actually feeling the emotion and seeing where the block happened, can in some cases help me to realize its origin and to just let it go by flushing the emotion in my system partly by processing the emotion more fully.  In this case, this meant feeling such an intense mix of emotions was what took place.  Over the period of one day, this emotion kept coming up.  In moments through the day I mourned the loss of something I knew were texts that were  central to understanding how to help people to wake up.  And the narrative changed considerably after that date as Orthodoxy stretched out its limiting hand on Christian thought.  In its origins, what these people had was nothing short of explosive, and it was largely lost to time until about 60 years ago when some of them were recovered.  But how do you explain to people who don’t get it how important these books were?  Most often, people’s eyes glaze over when they are confronted with something someone says is important Christian thought.  But this was itself a different Christianity, an aspect that never made its way to the light of day.  I have had people criticize my thesis on this because, well, they only know what they know as a result of what Orthodoxy has handed down to them.  But this….this was something powerful, and there were people who had a clear view and understanding of it.  What it means is that human experience is human experience.  This prefigures ALL religion because an awakening is NOT Christian or Hindu or Muslim or Sufi or Native American.  Each has its unique cultural coloring, but its all like Rumi said, just water.  We all argue over the water in one bottle over another, simply because the labels are different.  But really, they all come from the same well, the same source.  We all experience it the same way the world over.  This is what people have a hard time coming around to.  But it is the truth.  It is also what will set us free. We all are seeing the same light. Our water all has the same source. Call it heresy if you must, so we all must face a common heresy because we are made by the same one who created the truth that we call heresy.

 

We don’t often feel a connection to the church because, it lost its own connection with the truth….or an important aspect of it.  The church has much good to say, some about a glorious garden whose keys to they themselves have lost. And it is here, in the midst of this, that I have been set free.  Here, the flow of life force is so strong, I am excited over getting the rest of the blocks cleared so that I can know a greater peace and a field of undisturbed bliss.  It is already better than it has ever been before.  
It is interesting to see how it will affect those who have been caught up in karma contrary to my own who have not themselves come to the truth of their own soul. And really, who knows.  It is their story.  I have my own, and in the end, we are each like flowers opening before the light of this new day, aren’t we?  Isn’t this a pretty amazing time?  And no matter what happens, we each know that at the least, we helped to bring the collective to a point of greater realization than has happened in a very long time.  It would be nice to continue just to witness even bigger miracles on the world stage. I suspect that in the next six months, we will be in for a very bumpy ride.  All of it, though, will be the collective consciousness coming to grips with many of the issues that still dog it. Some will see the change coming and miss understand the forces at work seeking to work it’s own agenda. If that sounds cryptic, hang on because the last leg holding up our economic table is about to be assaulted. And soon! This will unfold in such a way that someone who could have brought great change will be, very likely will be, neutered in effectiveness. If events unfold as I feel they will, this event is soon upon us.

 

Not long ago I was gifted with a reading by a really great person who works with ancient systems of knowledge and divination.  I know how that might sound, but when I talked to him, I explained that I never felt like I could do the work he was saying I would be doing because I had not fully cleared my field.  I have just always felt that before I do healing work with others, I need to be clear.  He explained that I needed to begin the work now because doing the work would get me to where I needed to be.  He had his ideas about what this would look like, but in doing this work with this book, which he didn’t see as playing a very big role in my future work, I have found that it has helped to do just what he was saying my work would do, which is to get me to that place of clarity.  While I have some ideas about what I am interested in delving into to help others, I don’t know what this will look like in specific because spirit always has a way of bringing me all the right events and opportunities in unbelievably synchronistic ways. So we will see how that unfolds, but by giving it the room it needs, the higher self will express itself as it needs to, with elbow room and with me not meddling too much in what I think it needs to look like. Maybe you have a few experiences with how that has worked out in your own life?

 

And all of this happening on the eve of my birthday.  I think I picked a great time to be born; a time when everything in the world is waking up, peeking out as new life.  How juicy it is to feel new life in me, right along with new life in the world.
Until next time…
-Parker

Great Music For Yoga, Meditation, Workout, Or Getting Through The Day!

Source:  yoanu.com

 

Do you find yourself having trouble with much of the music out there today that gets airplay over the radio waves? Do you find yourself having trouble with your old play lists that you listened to before awakening? Old favorites that have just….fallen away?

Oh so much changes, doesn’t it? I know that at a certain point in my process, I could no longer watch certain movies or even listen to certain kinds of music. So much of our world is drenched in this vibration of hardness, and it shows in the music we listen to. I recently began to reflect on all of the really great music that I have listened to over the last ten years that helped me to find a place to be where I could still listen to music without going into the wrong kind of overwhelm.

 

So if that has been the case for you, I have a treat or two hiding in here for you!

 

I have a list. It is in truth, a lot of different stuff, but its been selected because it has at different periods of time, helped to support me in my process.  Some days, I just could not listen to ANYTHING deeply rhythmic because, awakening.  But other times, I NEEDED that deep beat.   But mostly?  I needed something that wasn’t drenched in the drama and BS of popular culture. Some of the music is great for work, yoga, meditation practice (if you use music at all) and for just getting around through the day. I have selected out all of the things that didn’t put me in a funk and that usually tend to lift me up or helps to put me in one great zone or another (some very quiet and subtle). I don’t know about you, but my tastes range all over the place, and what suits me one day does not work the next. I have all kinds of play lists often just to suit the mood. So the list….it ranges all over the place, too. I hope you can pick up a few things to add to your sonic tool box. So sharpen your pencil, take down some names and head over to i-Tunes to listen to the free samples, or try them on YouTube.

 

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, and there is a lot that is not included because it might only be one great song on one album, but this should be something to get you started on a new sonic-mind space groove. Note: everything I am listing, except for a few noted exceptions, can be found on i-Tunes. Injoy!

 

What’s your favorite music these days?  Care to share?  I’m expanding my list on a daily basis and would love to hear from you.

 

 

 

Elephant Revival. An eclectic blend of styles rooted in folk, but without slavery to instrumental styles that hem them in. My favorites from their most recent album Petals are Peace Tonight, Petal.

Their album These Changing Skies is their second most recent album and it’s worth taking a look/listen because the sound is a little different in some ways, while staying true to their quiet calming meditative music. In some ways, there are songs on this album I like even more than their most recent Petals. Make sure to check out

Birds and Stars, and Down To The Sea – I do have to admit that these soft-sided works often get a little much for me; I like some variety, so Down To The Sea feels a little turned inward, but I am sure you will like it in the right pairing, right? Also, Rogue River is worth listening for a bit of unexpected bluesy variety on the same album. Rogue is a bit hard in the lyrics, though.

 

Here is a link to one of their songs on youtube:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LgHDFHzMI4

 

Jai-Jagdeesh. Taking a sudden turn into the Bakhti vibe, there is the work of Jai-Jagdeesh who blends western with Indian sensibilities. This is good for those who want longer songs, more contemplation, less just easy listening, but often delightful and uplifting. Her album I Am Thine is made up of mostly long six to eight-minute tracks that help to keep you in the groove. I liked the first song on the album Aad Guray Nameh. And while the title track I Am Thine might be pretty popular, I liked Om Namah Shivaya Raam more because it departed from the more mellow rhythms and had a more bluesy feel, which is always interesting to me from a creative standpoint. Her earlier album Of Heaven and Earth has a little more upbeat feeling overall, and might be worth a listen.

 

Bachan Kaur is another artist whose work seems to be designed for yoga. Her album Anahata has a very folk feel, but this is not because it has traditional folk instrumentals, often just a guitar and a sitar in the background. Her work is spare, but if you want to have a fifteen minute tune, her work could be just the ticket.

 

Mirabai Ceiba is a duo that blends an interesting range of instrumental styles. I found myself grasping for a way to describe their sound. The best I can say is that it is a Celtic-meets-Latin feel. I find that I’d like their work without the singing because the instruments shine so beautifully on their own. Their albums Sevati, and their most recent Sacred Love Meditations, along with several others, are all on i-Tunes.

 

Matisyahu is less meditative music as it is something with a positive message. It has a reggae backbone, toss in some world, and you are done. Light is one of his recent releases and personally, I like the track on Light, One Day the best.

 

Trevor Hall has a great message, and isn’t into the trancy eight minute journey’s, which means that Trevor is a bit like Matisyahu not so much in style, but in that they have a rhythmic instrumental style that lacks the rawness often present in music of this type. I like Trevors music a lot and I find I pepper my play lists with his stuff when I need to break up the longer “trancy” stuff with something that has a nice beat. His last two albums Kala and Chapter of the Forest are two you should start with and explore his earlier work from there. I wouldn’t call his work yoga music though. Its really nice thoughtful music with soul.

 

This is his Youtube channel:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96SGUEnI2uw&list=PL11s0VhvKvosz9kjROX5j11NrnP8meHCJ

 

In a similar kind of rockin’ vein is Michael Franti. Again, his stuff might be too fast for some yoga, but his message is supportive and strong with his hi-hop reggae blended style. In fact, his music is often really great to dance to. His most recent album is Soulrocker.

 

Deva Premal was music I listened to when I did my Qi Gong practice. Her music has a contemporary backbone but well within the New Age style. The focus is on her voice, which she uses very well for create rich landscapes that can help carry you along in your work. It tends to be faster tempo than, say Bachan Kaur. If you want a really wild sound scape, try her Tibetan Mantras for Turbulent Times. This album is most definitely for trance work, if you ask me. Much of her work tends to be mantras sung in the Sanskrit.

 

NOT ON I-TUNES: Now for one that might be hard to get to, but at a certain point in my work, especially meditation and Qi Gung, Vyas Huston’s Victory Over Death fit the bill. It’s a bit severe sounding sometimes, but when its good, it can be really good. I copied the file twice and burned a disc for listening for long periods since it is one giant circle of mantra (but somehow, it doesn’t listen as repetitive because of how the phrases are paced out with the music). And to be fair, he isn’t singing mantras, but reciting a prayer whose words can be found on other sites dealing with Huston and his work.   I was introduced to his work by my teacher Robin and I was able to copy his disc. If you do Thai Chi or Chi Gung, you might see how the pacing of his recitation works really well with the moves of Qi Gung (which my teacher Robin presented to the rhythm of his piece, which is almost half an hour long-perfect for getting in a number of important moves in the Gung).

 

When I went looking for his work on i-Tunes, it didn’t show up, and honestly besides a Youtube video, I am not sure where to tell you to go to get it (if you like it). Vyas is mentioned on the internet here and there, so maybe you can get lucky (and maybe share back here for a link?). Let me know what you think of his work! Until then, this is the link to the youtube that has the piece on it (and a few images that are a dead-ringer for places where I live):

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv4DcBDNwI8

 

 

Moksha (featuring Kanchman Babbar). If you want something in a similar and perhaps more traditional vein, try these Vedic chants by a chorus of 21 Brahmins. Just type “Moskha” in i-Tunes and it should be the first choice that comes up and give it a try. All of the chants are done in a pitch and style that does not vary except the mantras being chanted.

 

Odesza. So nice. One album worth listening to is In Return. First track: Always This Late. This is not meditation music per se, but its great texture and a sonic landscape for….running, working on writing (if the vibrations match what you are doing), cleaning, dancing (?)and heck, maybe even an active yoga routine. Check them out and let me know what you think. Very upbeat, bright, and lovely vocals with a definite electronic backbone to it all. I own their work.

 

 

Emancipator. Another electronic trance groove kind of sound-scape in a similar vein as Odesza. See their album Seven Seas, safe In the Steep Cliffs, and Soon It Will Be Cold Enough. I like their stuff. I have a few of their songs, too!

 

Peter Gabriel. I know, “isn’t he that pop artist who was once with Genesis and did Shock the Monkey?” Yes! If you listen to his music, you will find that all of his work has a driving desire towards awareness. He is a modern Gnostic in my book with his revealing More Than This. He is a kind of revealer of important issues concerning our place in the world. While his music has hit the charts and has had a lot of play, giving his music a listen to revealed, at least to me, a great depth of comprehension about spiritual issues. His album Growing Up, which was also released as a DVD of his live concert (in France, if I remember correctly).   While his work with Genesis was more in the pop/rock vein, his work began to mature once he broke from the band. Some of his work gets hard and even edgy, but some of his songs, like Signal To Noise are dealing with the issue of disinformation and seeking truth. His music was indispensible at a certain phase in my awakening. Blood of Eden speaks to the union of the opposites in consciousness.

 

1. IZ. Also known as Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Iz is Polynesian and has a beautiful melodic voice that he matches with equally sensitive lyrics. Iz is no longer with us, but he has left a number of albums like Facing Future, and Alone in IZ World. His is a Hawaiian experience.

 

Yoga Music Co. These folks create music expressly for yoga. Might be worth a try. If you want a quick intro, you can go to youtube:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij28wzJMijI

 

I am not sure if they are i-Tunes but their web site is www.yougamusicco.com. I liked what I heard!

 

For that matter, there are a number of channels on youtube now with music like Yoga Music, so it might be worth a listen and a little seeking to find things that you like.

 

Deborah Van Dyke is a chanter and her work is, as you might have guessed, very repetitive, but these are mantras after all.

 

In a more melodic and musical vein is the work of Donna De Lory, a mix of English and Sanskrit language styling.

 

So what music do you like? Please feel free to share and we can make a nice list for others in desperate need of a sonic transformation!

 

Until next time,

 

-Parker

Kundalini Talks -Building Community

With the coming of our last lunar alignment in Pisces came a sudden turning within. 
For a few years I have thought of an informal gathering to discuss awakening in a Western context for any and all who are interested in knowing more. While the thought stirred, I knew I was not yet ready for a host of reasons. Some were simple reasons; I have been making renovations in my home and rooms were in flux and not amenable to a comfortable setting. I was myself going through so much change from one moon to the next…it was hard to know how I’d feel once I settled on a time.
All of this became a part of the past and a new feeling emerged; I remember being a young teen and how I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at just such a meeting. I knew that the time was right and rich with possibility. With a large alternative community of back to the land folks, old and new hippies, yoga teachers, workshop coordinators and teachers, as well as a rich community of healers of every stripe, I knew it was time.
So I called my friend Diane and we had a chat. We got caught up and as usual, one or the other brought up a random tidbit that the other was looking for. That’s been how our talks have been over the years. Both with their own complimentary experience, I knew I wanted to bring her, or someone like her, to be a part of a dream of mine. 
We settled on a date in April and the posters are made. We will be sending the word out through the community to announce this meeting soon. The hope is to help raise awareness, discuss widely, and enjoy community of those brought together by a common interest.
While the date and time is planned, I have found staying open to the possibilities has always resulted in the most interesting of engagements.
As the Spring moon continues to usher in beginnings and makes ripe so much, I look foward to, and will be reporting back, on how our meeting has gone. Free, with no cost, no agenda save a purpose to help raise awareness at this critical time, it feels like the perfect thing to do.