Listen

You have lived in wonder

captured by its magic

carried by its vitality

that was both you

and the cosmos upon which you rode…

 

Long before you were taught

you knew.

More was known in the nurseries of you infancy

than could be scarcely dreamed

by those who had grown older

and had forgotten.

But we all know what is true,

a truth that lives in marrow and sinew,

the fiber of your whole being

unbounded by the limits of belief.

Its reality cannot be spoken in mere words

but in the syllables of feeling

and the syntax of awe.

 

Somewhere you grew up and set aside those dreams

which were so precious

necessary for knowing what you are

as you tried to grow up…

but since you forgot or lay aside what you knew

you abandoned something

necessary

and free.

 

You knew once that no one could tell you how you must be

for it was self-evident

so sure.

But doubt took its place

and it took years to shake that off

and now here you stand

knowing that the poetry of your soul

is contained in every rock and river

in butterflies

whirlwinds

and change.

The earth speaks to you

through you

like a divine marriage

as the stars whirl overhead

in their endless dance of time.

 

You lived a mystic existence

and nothing offended you

save for forgetfulness

of what we truly are.

 

This is why the realm of fairie

is so real to the young

and the world of myth

stands so close to the world of the child.

There are greater truths told in tale such as these

than in any of our books written by older hands

and darkened hearts.

 

In all of this

there was light

and unbearable lightness

which was its own reward.

But it seems that forgetting became its own passage

to teach us of the contrast

that we might know the continuity of our own consciousness

with all things

and then  find ourselves joined to it,

merging with nature,

speaking its own language…

which is the same language of the heart of the child.

Was there a purpose in being dislocated from the Beloved?

 

Nothing can stand between you and this world again

if you so choose it.

It may not be the readily-crossed path

but it is the only one that matters most

for there existed love and joy and  abundance wonder and awe

whose language you spoke so fluently.

The world need not be the danger you grew to believe

but a place that supports you

and conspires to see you succeed.

Your hands became the bird wings that fluttered in the air, your eyelids grew heavy like leaves in Autumn…and you knew that you were truly wedded to life and life to you as your naked feet rested firm and loving on the ancient ground.

This is the nature of all creativity

regardless of how it expresses itself.

We each choose whether to bring it to the purpose of light

or the dark.

In each, we so our consequences

and so learn by them

to return again with different choices

and brighter souls.

While the world has innumerable challenges and threats

you do not need to place yourself where danger resides

for even the wisdom of children know

that in the sweetness of the honey

lies also the threat of a sting.

But this is not enough to make the world evil or bad

but filled with people who each have their own level of awareness

and knowing.

I speak to the child that is so necessary to kindle

new worlds

and deeper love.

 

Curled up within the world that we know are those codes which we can tap into

limitless knowledge for building a new world.

Hard-heads may choose to prevail

but no one needs to define your existence.

So listen to your intuition

to the vibrancy contained in your childhood

when limits were unknown

and everything seemed possible.

It can be so again

when you choose to live a life

unbounded by belief

and inspired by this secret knowledge resting in the heart

that we once believed could only exist

in childhood’s dream.

 

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The Nature Of Prana

As I look over our history as a species, from the Middle East and the religions it spawned, to the East and the philosophies, the almost-religions that stopped short of being those because they do not espouse worship of a deity or a god of any kind, I see a pattern emerge as it relates to our creative energy and all of its relatives; except under very specific conditions creative energy is only allowed to be expressed in certain ways.  I am dealing with creative energy in a very broad sense here, so if you thought creative energy was that part of us that solved problems or helped create new things like cars or rockets to the moon or music and art, hang on.  Creative energy, I have come to see includes all aspects of our being, from our desire to create art to our desire to build bridges and civilizations.  Our creativity also includes the forces that maintain our bodies and it also includes our capacity, our ability, to create more of ourselves through sexual intercourse between men and women.  All of this to my mind and experience is part of a cosmic strand that divides out in numerous ways in our consciousness but has at its root an energy that in its origin is wild and free.

The problem in our world today is that except as noted previously, creative energy has been tamped down, controlled.  Churches have done this by instilling a sense of shame about our sexuality. We were to not trust our sexuality or our urges least of all so we relied on our religions to tell us what was what.  And you know, I am not convinced that it was for good.  Look at the scandals rocking the Catholic church and they don’t seem to stop. The Pope speaks out about it, but its like it is some monolithic structure with little accountability or willingness to change.  If you doubt what I am saying here, just do a historical church of the scandals that have taken place with the Catholic church over the years and you will begin to see how difficult this issue is.  Part of it stems from requiring priests to be chaste.  I am just going to say that when our creative fires are so narrowly focused there will always be trouble. Creativity was meant to be wild and free, not tamed, and here we are with our religions trying to tame what really was meant to set us free.  And instead, we are prisoners.

I will admit that what I say about prana is my take.  People are keen to try and point out that our perception is just perception, so human, so frail, so likely to be distorted.  But you know, this time, I don’t think so.  As I read about the hundreds, thousands, even, of experiences describing the bliss of the flow of prana, I see the same thing. It’s seen as a goddess, perhaps, wild and free, powerful.  But this energy is in all of us, the place where our inner man and inner woman meet, the explosion of opposites.  That is the definition of kundalini….which is nothing more than this: prana in supreme abundance (finally!). What I observe is what everyone else observes.  People may have different reactions to it.  Some might close down, some might open up.  Some might open and close in turns.  Some will be highly insightful, some will realize there is more to their ability to plumb their depths.  All through it, prana is the wild child to me, a liberating and spiritually lubricating force.

Torus form with multiple sheathes/fields

Prana is creative.  It stimulates all centers of the body when there is an abundance of it.  The ancients described bliss that was off the charts due to the increased flow of this energy.  As I sit writing this, I feel a steady-state experience of bliss.  I came to this level of bliss as a result of a lot of inner work.  I instinctively knew that if I followed what kundalini was doing that things would get easier.  They have.  I still have my challenges that I deal with, but they change with every realization or inner breakthrough.  I know that in my case that prana has fueled wildly vigorous creative energy.  In fact, I had to be creative in the arts in order to build enough of a flow in my body to sustain the current level of bliss that I feel.  When I go into the energy I can feel its wildness.  I can feel that it was never intended to be tamed.  yes, it is like water and will flow into any container in which it is poured, but the vessel itself is what limits or allows the flow of this force.

As someone who deals with awakening on a daily basis for over a decade, I luagh at the videos of teachers telling people how to awaken the kundalini.  The “Sat Nam!” breath that is one part hammer and one part release into the Mystery.  i know that if I had to depend on an exercise like that to awaken I think I should wait a very long time.  Maybe someone figured out that it worked for some folks, but I direct the flow of prana by way of feeling only.  This has always been what has opened the gates….always.  Even teachers who say prana is breath are wrong; prana is a fine energy that is in no way contained in the air.  No, prana moves by way of feeling. In fact, feeling is how we actually communicate to the cosmos. it is how the dream is made manifest (I write about this extensively in the blog so do a search to find out more).

The chakras are energy centers and every one has an emotional vibration connected to it.  This “emotive power” inherent in the chakras is born out of this feeling quality I am talking about.  No, people shut down their chakras and thus prana when they feel a hard feeling instead of a soft opening feeling.  And even if a million teachers say prana is breath, it does not make it right even once.  It just means that they themselves do not understand prana or have not been able to stimulate prana with anything other than breath (and this tells me as the observer that they may be lacking in their ability to connect with their feeling side of themselves to boot!). I know it might sound pedantic, but I promise you that it isn’t.  When we understand something so simple as prana responding to feeling, we can get ourselves on the right track in our own work for bringin in more of it so that its flow can heal (which it does).

Breath, when properly used, has a stimulating effect on the body which in turn stimulates prana. It isn’t even that the chakras respond to thought, it is deeper still than that.  Feeling….the whole world is lacking in feeling and awareness of their power to feel.  People who are not awakened will laugh at this, but trust me, the world carries a level of numbness in them…..even awakened people.  The journey to full feeling can take some time.  I know that I have been gifted with a kind of energetic “reset” by a healer who revealed the true depth of my woundedness, which sent me into a very real sense of physical pain (which was itself emotional/spiritual but now boosted by the presence of prana so it feels physical), so I know that we can go merrily along with the work of awakening only to find, “holy bejebus! there is so much more!” even years later.  So this is why all of this can become such a journey for people.  This is a journey to realization.  Realization comes about as a result of awareness.  Sometimes, once in a great while, we can meet people who we connect so deeply with that they share something about themselves that can spark all sorts of realizations within ourselves.  Some are direct, some tangential.  Some are unintended.  But this is why relationship has been so important in awakening and is also one aspect that is largely denied by the world’s religions as a bona fide religious or spiritual “practice.”

Yes, prana is creative. There are stories of how women who have undergone awakening have experienced a sense as though they were pregnant, that they were going to birth something. A close family friend confided in me during one of our talks about her awakening process that she went through a period of time when she could feel her body wanting to physically birth something. She sensed that this was part of her awakening process, but it was a curious experience to her.  When I explained to her that many other women have reported the same experience it made her feel a little less crazy. The experiences have all been extremely similar and I think that it points to powerful energies that are creative in nature but that operate at higher dimensional levels and are having their effect in our day-to-day lives (because it’s all connected now).

So I think that when we are faced with the spirit and the higher self, it is quite natural for higher-order experiences to be transmitted into the language of the body, to be related to our bodies as well as all other levels of ourselves.  I have noticed that at a certain level the self knows itself to be One with all things, so naturally the creative energy of prana is the same as the creativity of our personalities, the same creativity of our physical bodies in making babies, and who knows what other forms of creative output there are in other realms of experience that we have yet to discover as sentient beings. What is universal is that creativity always feels blissful.  When we create babies in the physical our bodies provide us with an orgasm to make the experience that much more filled with reward, but creative energy also brings chills and goosebumps to creators of music and art.  It at once expresses and evokes powerful feeling. People who have awakened almost all go through intense creative bursts.  As an artist I can say that my awakening has fueled a number of new directions in my work that would have never existed before.  It’s a little crazy in a way just how crowded my inner landscape is with ideas.  My only challenge is in bringing these ideas to fruition.  And, in the way that prana also works, it speeds up manifesting many-times over.  For example, when I began thinking about how close I was to reopening my studio practice after teaching, without saying a word, but thinking how I would like to have some good assistants, I received one highly qualified request for being involved in some part-time capacity at the studio making work as well as two beginners who expressed a sincere desire to learn the discipline.  The interesting part of this is how well-timed it was.  By now, I am not surprised by any of this, but I know that when my prana flow increases, it accelerates manifestation of desired outcomes.  That said, it might bring me a person who WANTS to work in my field, but it does not guarantee that they will be excellent or that they will decide to stay with it a year or even a week later. Sometimes, you have to dig deeper to find where these glitches exist.  But that is for another time.

But here is the problem as I see it, at least as it relates to many of our institutions on earth,  which is that our creativity has been hijacked.  It’s not some demonic conspiracy to enslave humanity, just a desire to tamp down creativity because it scares people who are in positions of power.  One thing I know about power is that the vast majority of institutions and the people within then have a great need to control.  This control on the one hand may have been intended to keep people from killing each other or behave badly, but the other side of the coin has been that it also limits freedom.  It limits our creativity.  When I look at what I have seen in my meditations about creativity and how wild and free it is and when I look at the human race, I see a big disconnect.  And the problem? Here is your problem…..

We value war and destroying in the name of greed and the usurpation of land and wealth through military invasions and keeping our race held hostage by the fear of the next fabricated threat that the military industrial complex decides to come up with next (read your history on this—most of our wars have been coups on the part of the CIA or an effort to fool us into war, this didn’t start with the invasion of Iraq, this has been going on for a long time). We are taught that to be a man we must be warlike, unfeeling.  Women have their place, perhaps one of the greatest fonts of creative energy alive on the planet and our women are shut down to such an unbelievable degree. Their thought process mimics men in their rational approach, with that fabulous intuitive and feminine character of soul nearly gone.   Really, you have no idea.  But so are the men shut down.  We all are, so don’t think I am picking on anyone in particular.  But men are shut down in such a way that it creates this rage and it just keeps feeding their desire to go to war so they can just kill something.  This, my friends, is creativity turned into itself.  This is the dark side of the creative force.  Do I really need to point this out to you? Men who don’t know how to command their sexual energy, women who are afraid of these men, and then women who aren’t in command of their own sexual energy too, and use their emotional forces of manipulation to work things in their favor.  It is a crazy mixed up mess if you ask me.

Our institutions by and large forswear sexual expression as a necessity to make babies, but by and large, we have incredible taboos placed on our sexuality.  While there are good reasons for governing behavior in theory, my observation is that our attempts to govern sexual energy result in greater dysfunction than ever.  Men pitted against women, the war of the sexes, men not in possession of their source of power and women not in full possession of their source of power either.  All the while we are taught that our sexual nature is dirty, that lust is not redeemable, and forget having sex if its lustful.  In fact, most of our institutions teach us how to sublimate sexual energy as a convenient way of side-stepping the issue altogether. In many parts of Asia its as though the teaching of Zen Buddhism and Taoism and other strands of Buddhism would rather deal with packaging bliss so that its no longer sexual as their axis mundi for solving the problem.  Women no longer in possession of themselves will never engage a man at the level of his divinity for very long, but the exact same can be said for men with their women.  I ask; how did we get here? I feel like I am in that video by the Talking Heads for the song Once In A Lifetime where a clearly out of control David Byrne seeks to illustrate the chaos of our lives as controlled beings while desiring finding the flow of life.

When I step back from this madness, I can feel a world within me swirling with the forces of creation in a way that I had always hoped to be able to feel, actually.  I had always hoped prior to awakening that creative energy was this vivid and strong (and it is). But when I look at the world I see we have a long way to go, baby.  We have a long way to go because we have squashed the creativity of the feminine and masculine both.

It’s interesting to me how as men begin to soften, kundalini is coming onto the scene also as women are learning how to find their own strength and their own sovereignty.  I observe that on a collective level humans are reaching across the aisle and integrating more of their opposites into their lives especially over the last twenty years (which also corresponds with the sudden increase of awakening (I could be wrong, but I don’t buy that these awakenings are due to someone decided it will be, but are the result of a myriad of factors all resulting in the changes we see today.  If you know how awakening is itself defined by the fusion of opposites in consciousness, then you can perhaps appreciate how it is that we now have a mass awakening taking place on the planet. Right. Now. And honestly, I observe that the progress we have made not just for hundreds of years, but especially during this last century, just happens to be of a kind that favors the fusion of opposites.  What if instead of this being some grand cosmic event as many want to say it is, we are simply glimpsing the natural result of people having reached a kind of threshold point in their development with awakening being the result.  This period has shown us more possibilities and people have been able to shrug off the control of their institutions just enough to begin to evolve in new directions, directs that favor awakening.

I think we need to be less concerned about how others will react or treat us.  We already are made into a kind of outcast by the differences in our experiences moment by moment from the average Joe and Josephina.  I mean, admit it, even as you go through your life undercover as the awakened being on the planet, you also find that this makes you feel so singular and lonely.  Social things for social creatures.  I think that the teachings of Tantra have a lot to explain about bliss.  While tantra is itself not necessarily sexual, the parts of tantra that are do not seek to shy away from confronting issues in our consciousness (well, it is the same with white tantra or black, both head straight-away right into the center of the fire which is how all emotional release work is done in fact).  The lesson is that you never skirt the briar patch, you head right into it and liberate it of whatever hitches that reside within the self.  Free yourself from shame, guilt, and repressed emotion. I know that in my life I have worked to dissolve as much of it as I can.  I have more to go, but as this last block rears its head I am reminded that if I am to be able to hear the voice of my intuition and my inner guidance as clearly as possible, I have to continue to be clearer.  Don’t be tamed, friends.

Reclamation

Wakulla County, Florida, Copyright Parker Stafford 2018

I have been doing a lot of travel recently ( I plan to do more now that I am officially an “empty nester”).  Some of it has been traveling to  places I grew up in, others to places I haven’t been before.  What is interesting to me is how when I travel, how it impacts the way I dream. This summer my daughter and I spent some time along some islands in the Gulf of Mexico.  As we traveled further south, every night for me was like digging deep into some deep barrel to lift out something long forgotten.  I have found over the course of ten years that the things that have led to releases energetically have been extremely broad.  I have used movement, Qi Gong, meditation, breath work, shaking and TRE (Trauma Release Exercises), dream work, and I even released a block on the advice of my guidance by drinking alcohol one evening just enough to get tipsy (and the next morning the release came-magic!).  No matter what the yogis or masters tell you, if you have a voice of guidance, follow it.  If that guidance says “find the nearest body of water” or something odd-ball like that (which happened to me) trust it.  Follow it.  And even if you don’t have a clearly defined thought-voice in your head, follow your gut, follow your urgings, and even try doing something you are afraid to do or that you have resisted. So much of our buried emotional material has to do with what we resist or bury, or try to ignore.  The bodhisattva in me wishes very much to assist you in realizing even more the bodhisattva that is within you…

In the case of this Summer, being in places where I grew up but have not been in for a very long time seemed to have an  effect on my state of mind and a kind of reverie I felt that extended into dreaming. In my case, the place I was in I hadn’t been to in close to 20 years, and before that, another 20 years which takes me all the way back to my early childhood. I find it interesting how traveling to familiar places that you haven’t seen in a long while can help spark or catalyze transformation, a kind of reclamation of the soul and its lost parts through buried hurt or trauma from the past.  This is actually what yoga seeks to do for the individual, which is to help clear the energy body of this stuck energy so that the primordial self might know itself in presence. I know that when you think of yoga you think of all of these postures, but true yoga is actually about realizing the divine within you.  This is its ultimate goal. Now as to whether yoga teachers are teaching yoga with this emphasis/awareness or not is another question altogether…

It has been a great Summer for me because I was able to spend time with a child whom my ex has worked diligently for years to lessen my exposure to.  Anyone who knows me knows how much I love my children and how engaged I am with them.  It has been a hard seven years but my child turned 18 and she was able to assert her rights as a person and that has meant that we finally were able to have a real summer together traveling and enjoying each others’ company.  We have been out boating, kayaking, snorkeling, swimming, taking walks,  and laying in the hot sun. We have been able to visit old family friends, and for my daughter, meet people from my past who are like family who my daughter had only heard in story.  All the while, in a way I can’t quite explain, my insides are being effected as I sleep at night and have these dreams that seem to access long forgotten parts of myself.  Some of it feels so peripheral I am not completely sure what is happening (sound familiar?) and some of it feels more familiar or known.  There is a lot in dream that has felt like accessing points or places within me that were concurrent with a certain place and time….

Sunset over St Marks Nature Preserve, Wakulla County Florida. Copyright Parker Stafford 2018

I’m writing this urging you to consider breaking up your regimen by going to places you haven’t been to in a long time.  If you are  like me, and moved from your childhood home a long time ago and haven’t been back, try going back.  But relax, enjoy your time, see the sights and soak in what it was like to be there. Even if you didn’t like growing up there, there is really something to be said for returning to those old brambles….sometimes only to find that the brambles are all gone, or are ready to be rooted out of you. Sometimes just being there can be enough to connect you by way of geography, the smell of the place, the change in altitude or weather, or even the slight disorientation that comes from being in a new place.  We generally think of these things as disquieting, but in release work, it really can be the very trigger that lets an energetic loop slip out of your energy body and fall away.  I think that it could hold some surprises for you as it relates to release work. Sometimes dropping a pebble into long undisturbed waters can make for change….

Key Largo, Florida. Copyright, Parker Stafford 2018.

Leg Chakra Links

Meridian chart for the LV meridian in Chinese medicine

 

Since traffic continues to grow on the blog on the topic of the chakras in the legs, I am including links to some articles on the subject all in one place.  I hope that it helps you in learning more.  I am also including a very useful method for releasing stored energy in the chakras (legs included) in the links, and since as you go down below the major chakras the energy becomes increasingly more primal and more difficult sometimes to understand, this technique can be very helpful since it does not rely on your dredging up emotion in memory. It taps into body memory and if given enough opportunity, can release hard and long-stored emotion without so much as engaging the mind or anything; no story, just release.

https://wordpress.com/post/wakingtheinfinite.wordpress.com/2948

As for working out blocked energy in the legs, if you can find a body worker (masseuse) who works with energy and understands it well, you can go into your session with a chart in hand and say, “I’m interested in having work done on my meridians in my legs, can you help me?” Most body workers who are good work intuitively, which means that they don’t work off of just book learning, they actually have learned how to feel energy and know where a block is instinctively. You want to look for a massage therapist in your area who says that they do deep tissue and some energy modality.  You might also want to ask around your community.  When I went to a weekly Qi Gong class, there were several massage therapists there and during a break I asked two of them if they knew someone who did both deep tissue and was good with energy work and they both looked at each e\other and blurted out the same name at the same time.  I asked what her number was and they looked it up on their phone.  It was that simple. I saw her several weeks later and she became a really good resource for me.

https://wordpress.com/post/wakingtheinfinite.wordpress.com/4898

https://wakingtheinfinite.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/leg-chakras/

https://wakingtheinfinite.wordpress.com/2017/02/19/clearing-the-foot-chakra-for-better-health-and-well-being/

 

 

God Wasn’t What I Was Raised To Believe

 

I think I have always wanted to know the thoughts of God.  I was never convinced that God was what we said “he” was.  It seemed that there was something much more to all of this.  I grew up feeling this way but having no way to back that feeling up with sound, solid proofs or contentions. I didn’t know for a long time why it was that I had a kind of amnesia about this knowing, at least not until recently. We all have this kind of amnesia, and it serves a purpose, I think.  We even have a name for it, we call it the “veil” and everyone talks about it so much.  It is everywhere you look. We have anthropomorphized it, essentially taking what is in us and projecting it out onto the world.   But this veil is within us….it is not outside of us or in the world, no matter how much it might seem to you at the time.  It does express itself in the beliefs of men and women, yes, but that only speaks to the ubiquity of this meme in people’s minds. The veil is discussed as part of attaining a clearer view of reality or how the world works, “Once I pull the veil completely back, I will then know what the real truth is” many think to themselves. Admit it, if you have read about the “Veil” you have thought about this at least once.

The secret to attainment is in unrolling these illusions and getting down to the deeper fundamentals of who and what we are, not doing what those who are not awake do, which is to see the surface of things and think they understand the forces that are at work.  This type of attainment means that some beliefs are going to die. This is in fact the very act of “pulling back the curtain.” This opens your awareness in such a way that you are now capable of being able to glimpse a new world, or at least what seems to you to be an upgraded version.  All along it was because the lenses and blinders were being  dropped within you (and me and the rest of us who are engaged in this process of awakening on the planet).

The problem is, as I see it, is that we don’t even know what God is.  We have created many many forms, but these are human creations. The biggest challenge I faced when I awakened was this thing we call God.  It just wasn’t at all what stories had tried to describe God as.  Obviously we had each created “him” and ourselves in each others’ image.  But what I found when my soul was cracked open like a walnut by awakening was that a force that was lacing itself through the entirety of creation and which lay nested within every single atom and lay there watching, quietly, observing.  In fact, my very first experiences when I encountered what I would later learn was samadhi, was the presence of this force that was ever-present all around me. I just came into an awareness that only seemed possible once the brain or mind had been altered by awakening….it just wasn’t something that I had any real direct experience with.  If you know me, I am a big one for direct experience and not just quoting the experience of others (but both are good). It was less that I stood before a great man being and more like living in the bloodstream of a light being that is so huge you can’t even glimpse what it is.  Something that huge is just hard to even wrap your head around.  I found it flabbergasting to be honest.

Another aspect of my experience with this grand living presence that was everywhere was the silence of this presence.  In fact, it could be said that silence was its hallmark.  I wondered about this for years.  Why was it so silent?  I mean, I am now aware of it and it must know I am now aware of it….aren’t there going to be some kind of recognition of that?  To date, there has been none. Instead, it seems that this is still very much an inside job, and I have been getting hints that this Presence does want to commune with me, but it wants to do so in silent knowing.  It already lives inside of me, albeit silently.  But this observation about its silence is nearly universal amongst mystics and people who describe such encounters.  Mother Theresa has mentioned this silence as have Buddhists of every persuasion.  Saint John the Cross wrote, “The Father spoke one word from all eternity and he spoke it in silence, and it is in silence that we hear it.” This perfectly matches the kind of silence that I experience…I feel the presence seeming to be pulling me into it.  It seeks union with creation, and it is not just content to be inside of everything looking out.  But when I say this, I have to stress that this Presence does not force anything.  In fact, everything that it has done thus far shows very clearly that free will on our side is absolutely crucial, which means, I supposed, that it remains inactive in a way, but vibrant in its longing to engage with the Creation which has sprung up around itself and which it, “God” (if you want to call it that), has cleverly hidden itself within.

Without realizing it, I had my own personal “God is dead” moment. The final tossing of that old dry construct of God as a man in a beard or something roughly mimicking human was replaced instantly with something wildly different, but also extremely interesting.  God had indeed died, but it died in the way that an idea dies; it wasn’t ever really real per se. It was like watching this old play set fall down around the actors.  It wasn’t even tragic, it was more like it needed to happen.  I guess on that day was when I really met God, or the thing that we all would agree or are yearning to know.I know how hard it is for those who very much want to believe in Christian doctrine to hear these kinds of things.  I don’t say them out of anger or upset or some deep seeded need to tear down the church.  Its just that…..we kind of have been getting wrong for a long time and I think it is time for us to wake up to something that appears to be much much more amazing.

I found that now I felt things that I had not felt before.  I related to the “spark” in me that is said to be divine.  What I mean is that I became aware of just how it is that our divine spark IS this “God” or Presence or divine intelligence in the universe.  I imagined feeling a thread that moved through all parts of me down to my deepest core.  Somewhere, in what seemed like the mystery of nothingness, I could feel that thread dive deep, somehow tying me to All That Is. Just beyond that inky dark, I sensed a world that was unimaginably vast.  I imagined or considered that this void was in fact God’s own veil in order to help us maintain our sense of self here in our reality.  When I would feel into this void, as I experienced it, I really did see that in the great void, there was simply nothing.  It was like the nothing state you encounter when you fall asleep….just…no consciousness.  But this isn’t a scary thing, not for most of us.  And I think that we really all known the Void as it is discussed in my mystic circles because we encounter it every single time we fall asleep.  We cross over in those moments.  Its a kind of non-event.

When I would feel a little overwhelmed by all of this, I would take my third eye and go into an atom and scale that up until it was like I was standing on a football field with the atom’s parts all around me (I suggest you try this sometime-it can lead to amazing discoveries about matter).  Here, I would feel the energy animating the atom.  I would feel the presence of those beings that orchestrate the creation and sustenance of the atom, these wildly creative and gleeful beings I encountered my first year of awakening, but I would also feel something else that was this amazingly constant presence that was…everywhere and everywhen.  I experienced it initially as a flash of brilliant white light, after which everything in my experience changed from that day forwards.  Shade of Paul on his way to Damascus.  In the case of Paul, I sense quite strongly that Jesus was sharing with him the light of his own attainment because they were, oddly, kind of like brothers of a weird sort, displaced by about 20 or 30 years in their births, but with a connection to this same light.  Paul was less converted from a distance by Jesus as he was touched and healed by the light that Jesus and all other initiates are connected to, regardless of religion.

When I read about the Chinese concept of the Tao, I see how their experience mirrors my own. Yes, I have felt this marvelous quiet and stillness that is the Tao. I have, however, also experienced another aspect of the Tao, which is that each time I go back to it, it has changed.  I don’t mean that it has changed its essentially nature, no, but something energetically has changed.  To explain what I mean, it is like how a lightning strike could be absorbed by a vast lake.  This lightening bolt is streaming in all of the time, and this lightening bolt is actually information coming from the Creation.  There is energy that is streaming out from the Tao also, but it is not seen as a lightening bolt because the creator is IN everything, actually sustaining everything that exists.  As a result, you just don’t see a big production happening. But this Creator is registering all of the change in all realities which is quite a feat.  I became aware of the Creator presence as this thing that looked almost like an atom, this thing that mirrored itself all throughout creation in the atom, the cell, in so many forms. Even as I say this, I know that this was not the truth, it was simply a way that I saw it.  It was inside of all things, like how you have DNA inside of your body at the base of your entirety of being. Having said this, I also must admit that it could be that the change that I see as taking place in the Creator as a result of being a part of its creation, may in fact be my own inner change.  I am always keeping my mind open because what I think I know is often changed by what actually is.  What I do know though is that as a kind of mile marker in my jounrey that what I have experienced privately is very much in line with what people describe during moments of enlightenment or while experiencing samadhi.

In fact, what I experienced while encountering this prime creator was that it was not masculine or feminine. It could not be said to be a God or Goddess at all.  It was radically different from anything we have ever as humans been taught.  I found that when I was feeling this prime creator, I did it best when I was deep in samadhi.  The deeper I could go, the more of it I could glimpse. I wanted to expand my consciousness more and more in order to take in a larger view. This Presence was so perfect, so wonderful to me, I wanted to know what made it tick and how I might be more like it.  Over time, though, I have found that my ability to feel it moment by moment has improved along with my own inner work in awakening.  That said, my ability to comprehend its mystery appears to be tied to what level of attainment I have matured to at the time.  The spark in me knows that in order to really change our world, we need to teach how to bring this spark into the world and nurture it into a flame.  We need it because it represents a balancing of our innermost natures and of a path to activating the latent abilities in the left and right hemispheres in the brain (which are activated when awakening is itself activated).

I am not alone in this sense about the creator as a vast presence.  Nearly every person who has had a near death experience (or NDE)  reports much the same as those who have had brushes with enlightenment.  Those who have had NDE’s as well as those who have awakened both often say that after the experience “God” was more a quaint idea for people to carry with them until they were ready for what I call the Big Kahuna of Realization.  It seems that awakening and NDE’s both share similar traits, in that both involve an encounter with a brilliant white light that always results in a significant change within the person taking place.  I have read extensdively on NDE’s over my life and this trait is nearly universal. People talk about the veil being pulled back in awakening, but really all that ever is pulled back are the beliefs that you had in place that kept you from being able to see things as they are.  Both an NDE and awakening promises this kind of glimpse and the changes that take place in their wake.

This is why, I think, people describe Awakening as a destructive process.  It is destructive because by rewiring yourself for awakening, you enable your mind and begin to glimpse the truth of things, sometimes only for mere seconds in the beginning, but a glimpse is all that it takes.  In time, you have more glimpses, and hopefully it melts the beliefs that have been wrong all along and which have also kept you from facing the prime creator and understanding your relationship to it (as a divine spark seeking to grow into a flame of creative energy).  But once you get past that sense of having lost so much, a new world begins to unfold.

I found myself watching a youtube last night of a man who I have known peripherally.  I have friends who know him and have studied with him.  His name is Joseph McMoneagle.  Joe was a military Chief Warrant Officer and a gifted Remote Viewer for 19 years in the military and intelligence agencies.  He has gone on to form a business where he remote views for companies and he speaks about his experience as well as having written books on the subject.

Joe had two NDE’s and when he talks about them, he describes how his old notions about
God were put to rest. What he believed about God as a result of growing up and what he actually experienced during his NDE’s were so vastly different from each other that he was left grasping at straws.  He saw that there was this vast presence and it was in this white light.  His whole inner spiritual paradigm got shifted through those experiences.  This, though, is part of the “growing up” that we each do in order to be able to face the much bigger truth that waits for all of us.

Knowing this is such a big thing. By this, I mean that the Presence that we wind up experiencing is just so incredibly vast.  Faced with this presence of the Light, and the lack of all of the things that we thought was God (ala Moses and the Ten Commandments), we can be left with a paradigm shifting experience that leaves a giant hole open, which is a vast mystery and really hard to wrap your head around.  It really takes a level of spiritual maturity I think to be able to deal with this. While we each face this when we leave this body, we also face a curtain of forgetting, too, which means that most people do not remember what it was like in between their lives.  I know that for as many lifetimes as I have wound up remembering this go-round, I have precious little in the way of what it is like to be in this place called heaven.  I suspect that this is something that we can’t cheat on, it is something that we have to be able to obtain for ourselves, this presence of the white light. But what I do know is that when I encountered the white light and what it brought to me, I had this singular experience of remembering, not as clear as you might think, that yes, I had experienced this white light before, I just could not place it (it existed, it turned out, outside of time, something that makes placing something so tricky).  Until we do this, we are simply caught on the cycle of reincarnation, trying to grow up and mature enough so that we can handle to news that things were different from what we had thought.  And to be honest, its not a devastating truth, its just….different.  No more Santa Claus, yes, but something else more subtle and bigger.

I tend to feel that by knowing this great mystery, as the Native Americans called it, that we are kind of setting things right again and getting more right with the way of the world and the way of the entirety of Creation. It seems based on my observations that the prime creator does not speak through burning bushes but by simply being present inside of every subatomic particle, inside all of us, looking out, and waiting for the moment when we get quiet enough and clear enough within to be able to see how we are connected to the Creator and how what this Creator has is freely given.  Many of our leaders in the past encountered their own spark turning into a flame and had visions that they believed were of God speaking to them.  That’s great, I guess, but given our new understanding of how things are, it is more likely that it was Moses’s own inner spark speaking to him and not the Presence in the white light.  I say this because when it comes to people who talk about God speaking through them, just knowing how silent the White Light is, causes me to doubt the very nature of these communications.  I have no doubt someone like Moses had an experience with an inner presence, I’m just not convinced that it cam directly from “God.” I think anyone having experiences with awakening or NDE’s will likely have similar feelings.  We, it seems, are here learning how to receive these gifts as the sparks of the divine that we are, and we are bounds to get the truth only partially correct sometimes. Additionally, learning how to use the energy that comes from that divine spark in us for beneficial purposes also seems to be an important aspect to growing up and seeing that this White Light is this powerful force that is love.

Namaste

More Than Just Seven: The Leg and Foot Chakras

It might surprise you to know that there are hundreds of thousands of chakras in the body.  You might not be familiar with this fact because popular culture has focused our minds on the seven major chakras.  Doing this is akin to paying attention to, say, the vascular system and only looking at and attending to the aortic artery.  We all know that there is a vast system of branches of veins and capillaries, right? The same is true for the chakras.  The thing is, most people don’t even know that all of these chakras exist. Granted, these many thousands of chakras are very small and might be considered minor by most people, but for me as someone who have been aware and interested in energy for so long, I like to know the details. One such detail is the chakras which are located in the leg and the foot. 

Most articles will deal with the one “sole” chakra in the foot, but I think it is more helpful to know all of the main or larger foot and leg chakras as they go from the sole of the foot up to just below the root chakra where most people are taught our energetic vivacity begins. I would like to mention that often when someone tells me that they had this twinge and feeling of release in a really oddball part of their body where no chakra is, I have to smile because most often (but not always) this can be a chakra clearing itself, and it is a chakra they didn’t even knew existed (because we have just seven, right?).  Also, imagine a human awareness that is able to tune into and is able to see or visualize ALL of the chakras down to the nanoscale that are in the body! I can tell you that this is certainly possible, and if you are really interested in energy, I can help to teach you how you can do this.

As with all chakras, the energetic resonance of that region will tend to invite a certain vibration of emotional energy to be trapped or blocked there.  There is also an opposite range of emotional energy that this part of the body can resonate with, too.  With energy, everything is a double-sided coin.  As with all of the other chakras, knowing what each center will hold onto is one way to begin to build awareness about that center and to know how a given emotion might be triggered by one of these energetic centers. As with all other chakras, there is a positive aspect and a negative aspect for each one.  Shadow and light. So let’s dig into the leg chakras…

Atala
The first lower chakra which is located in the hips is aligned with fear. This center is also aligned in its shadow aspect with lust and promiscuity. The opposing attribute to balance this chakra is governed by a lack of shame and a right to ones own sexuality. 

Vitala
Located in the thighs is aligned with anger and burning resentment. The positive aspect of this chakra is forgiveness.

Sutala
Located in the knees, this center governs jealousy. The positive alignment of this chakra is self-confidence. I feel this chakra a lot. I feel it a lot because I work so much with self-confidence but am still shaken by events in my life that I have responded in a less than confident manner.  In fact it has been strong on one side of my body and I can point to it.  If you look at the inside of your knee and see the part of the knee where the front of the knee becomes the side of the knee, and the point where the rounded body part of the knee gives way to the slight hollow going into the back of the knee, this is where this chakra is centered.  This chakra is at the intersection of the knee hollow towards the back of the leg and the hard bony front part of the knee as it transitions into the back part of the knee. If you measure the width between the front of the knee and the back of the knee, this point will be about halfway or the very middle of the side of the knee.

Talatala
This chakra, which is located in the calves,  involves a state of prolonged confusion and instinctive wilfulness.  An inability to allow the higher aspects of self rise to the occasion; it is all dog eat dog. The positive alignment aspect of this chakra is being conscious, aware.

Rasatala
Located in the ankles,  is the center of selfishness and pure animal nature. The positive attribute in this center is the ability to be charitable, or giving.

Mahatala
Located in the feet, this center in the Sanskrit means a dark realm ‘without conscience’ and of inner blindness. The positive aspect of this center is having a grounded sense of conscience and awareness. One is not impeded in this center when expressing its positive aspect.

Patala
The patala is centered in the soles of the feet, at the front of the arch towards the front of the foot but behind the ball of the big toe.  This is the world where murder happens, death for the sake of it. This is the realm of malice, murder, and torture. The positive aspect of this chakra is the ability to feel empathy, to see the sacredness of all life.

The chart of the meridian system is very helpful in helping to locate these chakras also.  While the Chinese system does not acknowledge  the chakra system traditionally, the acupuncture points  sometimes point to these chakras.  And yes, there are more acupuncture points than there are chakras listed.  Bear in mind that the chakras that I am pointing out are from the Indian system and recognize seven major chakras in the legs (there are more).  I think it is helpful to understand both systems because between them you can engage a body worker who is practiced at releasing stored energy.  That said, you need a worker who is highly intuitive and knows his or her stuff. When I say this, you might wonder why.  the answer is simple.  The sensing of this energy can be done by anyone who is adept, but not everyone who is trained in, say acupressure or massage work may be naturally sensitive to detecting the energy in you.  Being able to detect blocks and go to them as well as how to open up the lines of energy in the right places to help coaxed those blocked areas is not always something that can be taught. So perhaps you can see why it is important to find a practitioner who works a lot with energy and who comes highly recommended.  We are dealing with systems in the body that harbor deeply buried material and even very good practitioners can miss this material (I had a healer tell me that the blocked material I could feel very well wasn’t even there because she could not feel it).

These centers respond to massage, movement, and meditation when you are able to really go deep. Join breath work with meditation by being open and receptive and trying to feel into those centers with a neutral probing mind.  If you do not have time or the inclination to do this type of inner work, finding a therapist who is good at what they do is important.  I have always found that it is important to find a therapist who works with energy and knows energy.  Some of the best practitioners come from traditions where they never received a certificate, for example. It may be somewhat correct to say the gifted ones are born, not made.  I tend to feel that while some might be born, it is also possible to study and work to develop awareness and this is why I recommend meditation and breath work for those willing to delve deeper. 

I will tell you that leg chakras are hard (for me) to clear and I have cleared hundreds of blocks in this ten year period since my awakening began. The leg and foot chakras are so fundamental I think we would rather not even think about them.  Some of our worst sins are there along with our greatest triumphs too. This is one reason why having a good practitioner who works with the meridian system or who does deep tissue massage along with energy work can be an incredibly important asset to you.  Having centers opened can feel like you have just gotten a tune-up.  You will feel different.  You will feel clearer, and you might even feel like you have to sit down for a while until you get your bearings again.  This usually means that your session went very well. 

If you want to learn more about this fascinating but often forgotten or less-mentioned set of chakras or energy points, there are a number of older and also newer posts on this subject.  If you would like to know more about energy and how this can help you in your development both spiritually and emotionally in your life, this blog has a lot of information that is first-hand about this process.  While some material is geared towards those who have already experienced awakening, there is a lot that can be readily grasped and understood for everyone.  I am glad you are here! 

Below is a chart of the leg and foot meridian system which I think will be helpful in helping you to visualize the placement of many of these centers. this one is using the Chinese model of acupressure/acupuncture points and the one that follows is the Indian system of the chakra. While these two things are different, they are interrelated because both concern themselves with the energy system in the body. This might be at first confusing, but in time the role that they play can best be understood as complimentary rather than conflicting. 

You can see that the LV points do not perfectly coincide with the last illustration showing the chakras. Both are part of the energetic system of the body. Much like how the vascular system pumps blood, the energy system corresponds to the electrical system (but is not a physical system like the nervous system).

Many people who do not know a lot about these seven chakras below the seven that we normally know and even practitioners are not well versed in them. Try to find leg or foot chakra charts online and you will begin to appreciate how little is actually known about them. Some charts will only list the negative aspects of these centers, but those who do this are missing the full truth of what these centers contain and as a result have a lack of awareness about what their roles are and how to work with them. Ideally, these centers are treated as part of the whole system of the person and the body as of course they are.

Here is another article on the topic, which goes deeper into some details about the energetics and topics related to these seven chakras:

https://wakingtheinfinite.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/leg-chakras/