In The Shadow Of The Light

In my last entry I described a meditation I got caught up in that resulted in strong light activity, a phenomenon often tied to awakening experiences. After what was a very productive session, I decided it would be a good idea to revisit the meditation again to see if I could continue with the work. This time was decidedly different, but was oddly similar to the movie about the after death experience “What Dreams May Come” starring Robin Williams. In a similar way, it was also a bit like the movie “Inception” too. This was due to the lucidity present throughout the experience, I think.

When I say my meditation was like a movie, it’s not lost on me that there was an undercurrent of drama, hinting at a subsumed emotional energy, like a great big question lying in hidden veils at the center of some great edifice that kept coming up and up, over and over. But this meditation took me deep while awake, and then took me into dream, while I alternated between lucidity and full-on dream state and forgetfulness of earthbound ego awareness. This time, instead of brilliance, I delved deep into the shadow.

I have tended to see awakening taking on this kind of cycle; a moment of brilliance followed by a deep dredge of the muck as though one serves to bring up the other. It isn’t perhaps why many people misunderstand the power that awakening contains. It’s not all rainbows. It is more about clearing, cleansing, and it can be hard on you to do this kind of delving. I know it’s not fun for me….but it always comes with a reward that is forever reaped, an inheritance that remains perennial.

I slipped into the deep state. This part is the easy part. It’s being able to remain lucid enough inside such a deep lovely swirling eddy of energy and not lose consciousness, especially when it’s at the end of the day and you are ready for bed. I remained neutral, not seeking to do anything since the intention was already placed. I just had to wait for the subconscious and higher self to do their part. I was along as a witness to what would unfold. My cat lay next to me, again, purring softly, a few snorts as she drifted either deep or up out of her own deep sleep. This time, she would project right into my lucid dream, acting as a reminder to remember why I was there.

I wound up inside a dream. It was night and I was walking around an old house that I remembered having dreamed of years before in another shadow work dream at an earlier stage in my progress. Nowadays, dream imagery and its meaning tends to be much more direct or understandable than it ever was before awakening. For me, a house represents the construct of human consciousness. It is an image that Jesus often used, too, and it has been a consistent image each time I dream of it. In one dream I might be in a house, in another, a warehouse, or in one, I stood on the streets of a city as I observed the roots of some massive tree or plant that was growing in a large building, revealing its roots as it emerged through cracks in a deep stairwell….an image that spoke to me of the work that remained to be done in the root chakra, the foundation.

Last night, it was that same old haunted house. It had the weight of ghosts, of lives and people who had lived inside of it and now it lay abandoned. A moment of lucidity began to build and I felt myself dream while kicking into meditation all awareness simultaneously. The last time I was here, the dream ended with me discovering that I could lift up into the air; a clear indication of my letting go and allowing the organic force flow through me. I lifted up into the treetops. This time, though, I was solidly grounded. I pondered what else was there to clear out, to resolve in this tumble of an old home? It was in its own slanted way, a great life, but it wasn’t my life today, but one lived a long time ago. All of this was emblematic of the work I had left incomplete in that previous life, and here I was, having to set it right, to give it that moment of forgiveness it so needed in order to be free.

The house lay in a depression, between two sloping meadows. It must have been a lovely sight in its heyday, but it was lying in moonlight and was ramshackle. The large wrapping porch had sunk in, taking a wing of the roof with it. You could see into its interior and as I made my way around it, I realized how much it lay in shadow. “If there is to be light here, I am the one who must bring it…” I realized.

Just as I thought this, I felt myself lift and the dream fall away from me. I was warm in bed, and only had a moment to ponder as, like a swimmer, I went right back in, grabbing a quick breath as the waves of sleep lapped over my head and everything went muffled and I lost ordinary waking consciousness, trusting that I would find myself again on the other side.

I was walking in yet another building, another old house, and this time I was inside it. There was no light, and windows down the hall and into a large outer room were painted over a kind of greenish color. Drapes hung in tatters, and there was a drip of water that made a smacking sound as each drop filled a puddle on the wooden floor, now a wash of sepia in the dark of the night. I remembered this house, too. This was one I didn’t like at all. It looked like it hadn’t been lived in in forty years. Nothing was bright about this place, it had a dank and decaying feeling to it. I kept walking though, wondering if I would find something that would mean I had broken through to something. I noticed kitty was with me. She has a name, but she knows kitty best. Sometimes she is monkey, sometimes Georgette. There she was, her tail flicking upwards. I could hear her thoughts, wondering why we were here, then immediately realizing that she was in my dream. She settled in after that and began following alongside me with less trepidation. She predicted that we wouldn’t be here long,and she was right. I surfaced yet another time out of sleep and felt my deep breathing. It was like being awake, but feeling the spell of dreaming still all around me.

The answers didn’t come in the usual fashion. So much of these places represented aspects of myself from the past, mostly distant, unresolved, lying unseen, needing badly to be seen. They had a surrealistic quality to them. I felt that edge of…fear, dread, and yuck about it. But that was exactly why I had to go back into these old haunts. I wasn’t there seeking to do what a guide once admonished me never to do, which was to try and drag it back into my life again. No, this was different. The idea that I had to carry the light into these darker corners was what this was all about.

Awakening is ruthless. You can’t bullshit yourself. Only when it’s completely clean, clear, forgiven, can things be forgotten. Until our inner compass is satisfied, we wind up going back to those places to sweep that little remaining bit of shadow away. I felt like I was ingesting it, taking it in so that I could metabolize it into light. Kitty stirred and looked at me through blinking eyes, sleepily, her head up, then back down, nonchalantly falling back in for another round of sleep. This felt like it was turning into a tag team wrestling match, dipping into lucid dreaming using meditation as the launching pad.

I kept at this all night in a marathon of visitations, never knowing where I would end up next, but in each case it was some long forgotten building, some old remnant that I have inherited in this go-round and am tasked with emptying of what is less than it’s best. Like  a big cleaning. You know how it is. You pull out the big stuff and haul it away, and with each time you go back, the particles get finer and finer until you go from sweeping up the last bits to wiping up the dust. This is all old business, an old self, a past life, and it’s now being brought forward.

I thought about that first house I dreamed of in the months before awakening came. It was all so much brighter, more optimistic. A road led up a hill with a creek running beside it. The creek grew stronger the closer I got to its headwaters, which revealed how this wasn’t an ordinary body of water. It was prana itself, filled with symbols and brilliant. How could water be so bright? Climbing the hill, on the right, was a beautiful arts and crafts meets Zen monastery. Built from large beams, the building interlocked, revealing its construction. Stone rose up through its middle, and when you walked inside you could clearly see two fountains inside, split down the middle, representing the Ida and Pengali currents with the Shushuma in the middle. That was my house, my temple, a place that was more than just home, but was who I was. It still is. But since that time, I have had to venture out into the past in order to heal it and cleanse it. Actually, I can’t even say it is I who does this; clearly my earthbound self isn’t up to this, but something deeply rooted in me is. It is this part of me that teaches, reveals, redeems, and ressurects. I wish dream could be brighter sometimes, but there are plenty of regular dreams that are, and besides, digging into shadow always resolves some deeper sense of feeling ill at ease in me.

It would be great if I could offer some grand finale, but an ending is itself a beginning, a new thread is discovered and it’s then followed through until something big is exposed from the rubble. Another chapter is begun even as additional chapters emerge. Over time, what I have found, is the gradient becomes finer and finer. It actually gets harder to keep the shoulder to the grind stone sometimes. It’s easier…the energy is less turbulent and it doesn’t stir me in the same way. But what I also find is that in some ways it’s a little easier simply because so many blocks have been removed. The blocks have gotten harder, but the level of confidence has been forged in the flame of awakening. As if that makes any kind of sense, right? The easy stuff came away first, and when I put myself into energy work like Chi Gong, material cascaded away, and this continued for years. Thousands of blocks, I figure, big and small, always burrowing down deeper and deeper.

For me, the hardest blocks lay deep down. For me, the root was where the hardest wounds lay. And despite all of this, I was able to manifest truly remarkable opportunities in my life, and when I was ready, events have simply fallen into place. When I was ready to fund the next phase of my life after a collapse of the markets, I waited, keeping my wealth in assets I could relate to, which was real estate. Even though I saw half the value of my property evaporate, it also came back during a confluence of events when I was ready to make my next step. Wanting in truth to sell directly to a buyer instead of a realtor, my soon-to-be realtor cancels when she gets too busy with a market which suddenly was going crazy. Deciding to sign papers for representation in another three days, I’m contacted by a family who heard through the grapevine that I was going to list my house soon. They asked if they could buy it directly from me, an outcome which I had wished for in my heart. While taking a nap hours before I would speak to them on the phone, I see them in a meditative state, not knowing that they would be talking to me later that day. Before I was set to sign papers with my realtor for representation, they brought a contract. I was able to sell to a family who had loved my house for years and were having trouble even seeing homes because of how hot the market had heated up within months.

Now it might be a big question what this has to do with my work. What I have found is that as each block is removed, so too are the blocks to manifesting the events in my life that support what needs to come next. This isn’t for me about chasing wealth, but finding my own inner abundance, which is less about money as it is about opportunity and helping to make others lives better. There is so much feeling of loss and lack, and for years I too fell for this feeling. But often, the things I chased after weren’t the things that would have been good for me. That was why they were hard. What is easy comes like magic. These things emerge in perfect timing. Life is increasingly different as the years roll, and as the air clears. Life is more a series of serendipitous events that have purpose and flow, pushing some old block to the surface, or leading to the next step. Something bigger is in control. That might sound superstitious, but it’s not. As division falls away, there is a marriage of the small self with something larger within. This is about bridging the gap and clearing the way for this to happen, and it’s not done halfway or half-assed. How’s that for mystical musing?

Whatever it will be for you, getting out from underneath the tangles holding you back, is what brings the change. For now, the work continues, and who knows what is around the corner.

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I Saw The Light

I’m not going to blow smoke up your behind. I honestly cannot say where it comes from. I can’t even say if it originates in our neurochemistry or in interdimensional space. What I do know is that it figures in most every transformative event for people down through the ages.  Saints and sages all speak of it and in the world of awakenings, it’s presence is ubiquitous. You might even say it’s a prerequisite or initiation into awakening itself.

 

Im talking about the experience of “the light.” Most who have awakening experiences have had at least one encounter with it. In earliest Christianity they wrote about it, even connected it to the same light one sees when one dies, linking this encounter as critically important for attaining something more in this life of ours. What is clear is that whether you were Paul on his way to Damascus, or a monk meditating in a cave, getting hit by that blinding light is an important clue that awakening is here.

 

I experienced it in a completely unexpected way while meditating prior to the full “rise” of kundalini. When it happened, I actually thought someone had flipped the light switch, like playing a trick on me to get me to come out of the dark room I was in at the time. But no, there had been no switch flipping that day…at least no switches in the physical, that is…

 

after my innocuous encounter with with the white light, things began changing real fast. I didn’t see events downstream as being connected, but over time, I have come to see it as one of several central events tied to my awakening. I think that to attain this light leads to what the ancients called the perfection of the Light Body, the Rainbow Body, or soul. In ancient texts an encounter with the white light is the demarcation point most often used to point out how a person’s life has changed. I should add that this is not, in my experience, an instantaneous cleansing, but an event that initiates a process of cleansing.

But here’s the thing. I can’t say for sure that it’s even really light. It may simply be an interpretation of an energetic emanation of some kind. It might even be connected to how we perceive. It might be inside of us all along. I say this because it feels like it is within. It does not feel like it’s coming from outside in the least. Perhaps this is a realization about our true nature as this light? I really cannot say. It is a bit of a mystery. Maybe it’s God, Maybe it’s an emanation from it. Maybe it’s my own connection to higher order awareness. What I can say is that while I am aware of it, I don’t feel anything particularly special at the time while I see this light effect. It seems to have had a healing effect, but more “downstream” from the light event itself. It remains a bit of a mystery in my experience, and I am loathe to jump to conclusions about what I think it is or isn’t.

What isn’t a mystery, though, is how this encounter has life changing effects.

Last night, on what can arguably be considered one of the coldest nights in years, I snuggled into bed with my cat purring by my side and after watching a documentary, slipped into a nice meditative state. I did this after feeling a bit of upset about something happening with a family member who is unable to understand something which I felt was important at the time. For some reason, it had me tied in knots. All the more reason to go into meditation and see if I could find resolution of one kind. So with eyes closed, I felt my energy begin to move, fluttering, spinning, and pulsing. The more I let go, the more it was free to simply be itself. My meditation nowadays tends to center around letting my energy body simply be itself without controls from the mind. Call it a surrender to the higher self, a larger order or picture of what is true. When I did, even though I had been tied in knots thinking about the world as it is, everything went by the wayside as a world of light effects began to take shape for the first time in years.

Since my encounter with the light, my experience has been largely one of sensation but without a visual compliment. No light effects. As I found myself very quickly in deep water, I prayed about the state of the world, my experience in it, and how I might resolve my feelings about it. That’s when the light came.

It was without form, but it felt as though it had layers and that these layers were unfolding from within, as though from my core a light was being generated and was propagating such that it had sheaves or orbs with different layers nested one inside the other. It was multilayered light. Suffusing it was this white light. I know I just said it had no form only to begin giving it form. It had the idea of form, but was not tied down to how form is linear and composed as it is in the physical. If something was in a center point, it was more the idea that this was so. In truth, I can’t adequately explain exactly how it appeared to me. It was at once no local while also having locality, shape, and form. Formlessness within form.

Was I being cleansed? Was it healing me? Was it a neurological effect? All I can say is that when I awoke, whatever feelings I had last night that weighed on me, they feel far away.

So here is what I am going to do. I’m going to see if I can repeat last night’s performance and try and place my unresolved feelings into the light, if it comes again, to see what happens. I will see if I can begin doing this on a regular basis to see how it works. I suppose if one believe in it enough, anything is possible. But humor me my experiments. I’ll report back on what I have found. And I also should include that it’s easy to say there has been a change 24 hours in. The story will probably be told after weeks or months. Only after seeing sustained change can we ever know that the change was real and not just wishful thinking.

In a sense, this is what awakening does anyway, which is to resolve blocked emotional material. In the healing method called Ho’oponopo, one offers up your brokenness to the universe in order to heal it. It is offering it up to a higher power. There are countless other methods for healing that are from many different traditions that all involve very similar methods, a “let go and let God” sort of idea.

I think it could be interesting…<3