Here is a draft from a few years ago, part of my backlog of posts that I am bringing forward so it can be out there for what they are worth. This is a very busy time of the year for me, so it is nice to have this backlog….
I came to awakening without having been raised in a tradition or philosophy. Yes, my family went to church for a time, but I didn’t join when it came time to do that (and luckily I was allowed to decide for myself). I was always listening to the voice in my heart that tended to caution me about buying into a religious or philosophical construct.
I spent my life in a solo singular approach, seeking out those sources that reflected back to me what spoke to my own growing body of inner truth. In the 80’s I heard the album by Van Morrison “No Guru No Method No Teacher” and found a common sense of belonging to a path that comes from within.
The advantage, to my mind, of this “path” is that we learn to rely on our own inner compass point instead of relying on dogmas from other outside authorities. There is so much in our world that has distortions. Most every philosophy and religion has them. I would be called a nit-picker to point out some, but others are quite big and substantive. This is not to say that there aren’t traditions that aren’t good or useful, it is just that my inner guidance kept me from buying into any one of these paths. Along with this resisting joining or buying into a religion or school of thought was the feeling or expectation of a ‘big reveal’ that was going to happen further down the line. That inner voice was telling me that all of this was building to something.
….And then awakening came and so much was made plain to me about religion, spirit, the world….
It feels like to me that in many ways (not all, but many) that I have been called to seek the light within in order to bring forward the perennial teachings. Now, I know what this might sound like, but I do this for myself. I know growing up, the one thing I was most interested in were the “secrets of the universe.” I also realized that no one else was interested in these things like I was. Not many, anyway. So it isn’t as though I do this for an audience of any kind….I do it because I want the truth. I know; and now I’m writing about it…doesn’t that suggest that I am all about the audience? Not like that.
I share what I come across for anyone who cares to read…so in this way, I very much keep away from the teacher and guru model. Over and over people want a link, a book, a teacher, when the real rubber- meeting-the-road moment happens within. I understand, but enlightenment is waaay simpler, way more foundational an event within the self. No methods, no postures. It is so simple but hard for most it seems. So simple it can be transmitted by a look, a breath, a sigh.
I prefer to be an example for a way to be. It turns out that others have done this also and it is Jiddu Krisnamurti who espoused the “Pathless Path” in his own work. So my impulse or inner directive is not a singular one since there are others who have done the same thing. So with that bit of babble, what I am saying here is something that I came across from what I would call an inner teaching has helped me to understand desire in a way that isn’t often talked about and is also often misunderstood.
In most religions and philosophies, there is a strand or need to describe desire as something that is bad. In other traditions, desire is considered a bad thing, something that is meant to be eschewed. What I have found, though, is that this is actually being filtered through a bias that serves to cause a good deal of misunderstanding about the natural path through the self as a way to work through the issues that remain.
These issues are stored emotions that are contained not just in the brain, but are all throughout the body and is contained and recorded from life to life through the pranamaykosha or the sum total of what we think of as the Light Body.
The “problem” with desire is that what we call prana is itself full of desire. EVERY SINGLE PERSON who has ever been touched by high levels of prana has felt how desire has been intensified. Now you might think that this is just a reaction to an outside stimulus, but in the world of the nondual, any belief about the seperateness of phenomenon quickly is dismissed when you experience how all phenomenon is connected (like Dr. Bronner used to say: “all-one”).
This is one reason why awakening bears with it considerable desire of all kinds. Now, this is not just because when you awaken that prana is stirring these desires (of all kinds), but is the very basis of prana. Yes, personal desires are stirred, but this isn’t all that is at work. The crux of this is that there are issues that we each have that result in desires that are distorted.
Imagine a pure light streaming through a window that is colored with stains that distort this pure light. This is what I am talking about here. We forget the nature of prana and thus also kundalini as being full of desire. Who doesn’t see the stimulating effects that kundalini has on the body who has gone through this? I saw effects of age slow, then reverse for a time before age continued forward more slowly than before.
This desire, though, is a perfected light that does not have the same distortions or blocked forms within it. We are experiencing this advanced energy in our bodies and consciousness while also experiencing what happens when that light strikes our own light bodies, which are most often chock full of blocks when awakening comes (because in the West we do not have traditions that properly help us to prepare for awakening—at least not yet). But we often hear about how bad desire is and how many monks will spend their lives eschewing desire. This leads to all kinds of problems.
One problem is how in Christianity we have shunted aside women as active participants in it (there have been no female popes and no female cardinals or priests (or priestesses)). In Islam, it is much the same. The covering of the feminine is considered a form of protecting modesty, but it is actually doing something else, which is holding back men from learning how to deal with their own energy in such a way that they can work on their blocks and move into this purer kind of light. This is simply one example of how this state of being has been distorted and so misunderstood. The path through desire is not to resist, but to work through it and you cannot do this without facing all of your junk. If you think desire is some bad thing like I have described, then you are hobbling yourself. You will find that your capacity to bring heaven on earth will be greatly limited. But the question naturally arises, does this mean that we must embrace our desires in order to work through them?
The answer to my mind is no. However, it does mean that you do need to raise your awareness about where you are in your development. To do that, you need to be able to see how your desires are causing you problems.
Can you ask yourself if your desires are causing you problems? Can you observe the truth in this by observing what happens in your life? If you are experiencing awakening, you know how powerful this desire can be…and you can feel both this higher desire, which is this light that is moving through you, but you can also feel how this same light of prana is also activating a slew of other lesser desires, and it is natural for us to be drawn to our earthly desires. This is about learning to align to a higher vibrational state. When I hear about people seeking to “ascend” I wonder do people really know what this even means?
Sometimes I see people who are trying to ascend the hardest are the ones who are suffering the most. Simply, this is just holding onto blocks that keep these lower vibrational desires activated. So here’s a secret; if you respond to the reaction that you get from a block, you will never dig that block out. What you need to do is to actually find the stored emotion, not what that emotion is generating. Address that, and you are at the source. Blocks can fool you. You got hurt and you have been placing blame on others ever since. The problem here is as long as you are doing this, you are NOT addressing the initial reaction that you had that causes the block to begin with. I know people who are still going around in circles with something from childhood that they are too invested in how they felt they were hurt by others. This is the trap, you see. The universe does not give a whoop who did what. The only thing that matters is your reaction. You can let yourself be stuck in your reactions. You can be stuck for your whole life, even.
I say this as someone who has known this all too well. We hold onto these things because they feel so wonderfully strong and when we feel something that is so strong, we naturally get drawn to it. What I can tell you is that there is a higher power, a higher vibration that is available to us when we can do the work to cleanse the pranamayakosha (or Light Body).
Early in my awakening, when I began to really get involved in figuring out ways to help assist in releasing these blocked energies (which are often traumas) I began to be visited by higher vibrational beings. They came after awakening ramped up and began to accelerate, which made awakening difficult for a time. One of these spiritual visitors was someone whom I learned was my life guide, someone who revealed himself over twenty years ago to me, but who seemed to disappear for a long time.
When he showed up, he explained who he was. This turned out to be an angel from the Old Testament, called a Seraphim based on what it was he said to me. I never knew much about the angels, so I had to look his history up on the internet. It’s strange to find that the things that I saw about him were actually described in his description in the Old Testament accounts.
He showed up in my room at about four a.m. He walked over to my bed and explained that he needed to take something out of me. In a very matter of fact way he said “You are much more beautiful without this…” and he reached into my heart chakra and removed a dark body from my light body. This was itself amazingly vivid and it felt as though an inner body was being pulled out of me that had no bones. It was pulled away with a feeling of tearing at two points at the top of my lungs, up in the shoulders. But the moment that he reached into my heart center, I had a pulse of energy that was beyond anything I can even begin to describe. I was completely awed by my ability to experience this energy. I had never felt anything like this. It was like bliss X 1,000.00. This was a transformative experience in that I was able to see what is possible for us resting in potential. I wondered how on earth I was able to feel this, it seemed so beyond anything in our world. What this did was it showed me what I had to do in terms of work.
Needless to say, this has served as a kind of peak to look for within myself, to know that as I release more of the hurdles that are in the way within me that have accumulated over this life and other lives, I know that with dedication to this way of being that I can attain this pure light that is known by others seemingly more advanced than we.
You see, these blocks are tied up in beliefs that we have about ourselves that serve to hold us back. These are big and small and very often they are almost always limiting us. When you think about this energy of prana as a sentient energy (which it is), you are dealing with an energy that is limitless. Is it any wonder, then, that we experience synchronicities and perfectly timed events when kundalini (prana) begins to flow so strongly? When we are aligned within ourselves without limitations, what we wish for is unimpeded in its movement through the pranic field. When this happens, the field responds and it begins to create with us. Well, it is actually always creating with us, but the problem we so often talk about is how some of our wishes don’t come true. Instead, we have other things happen that hold us in a state that is “less than.”
The reason this is happening this way is because there is a competing belief that literally cancels out the signal of the wish that you wish could come to pass. Remove or resolve/change the belief and you open the flow and path for this wish to come true. To do this requires honesty and surrender.
Now bear in mind that I am not espousing some materialistic angle on spirituality that will bring you your wildest dreams for the sake of greed. Instead, when aligned to the highest within you, and when that alignment is not being cancelled by competing beliefs, that energy will flow in accord with how clear you are and the result that you get wont be filled with glitches like they so often might be. For example, here you are, you are finding you can wish for things and they happen. Great. You land that job you really needed in some new part of the country for the next leg of your journey and it is just what you need. That is one hurdle removed. But once you get in that job suddenly you find people emerging from the woodwork who seem to be the same color of some past experiences that you thought maybe you had dealt with, but obviously not because here they are causing you trouble. These people are part of a pattern from your past and they remain for as long as you have this belief still within you because that belief about yourself is actually activating physical reality along those same lines. The universe is super intelligent and it will bring you things that are bizarrely perfectly aligned with your stuff that you have not yet dealt with. Its like God is sending you something. But you are doing this. You. You are working with this amazingly creative force that is forming the physical and supporting it and bringing you all of this energy. It is up to you how you use it. If you are holding limiting beliefs, the universe dutifully brings you limited results.
We live limited lives in part because we believe that we are limited beings. We think we are just this one body, and we have created both consciousness and culture to close our larger being down, but we are much more. Being able to tap into what we truly are, which is a vessel for this shining light, is a very good first start. Only then can we know what is possible.
You can begin to taste this by removing the blocked energy in your field. As you do, you will find gradually, that things will get easier and easier. In fact, desire itself will change. It will get better, stronger, more cosmic, but also more peaceful. I think we all know just how chaotic awakening can make us feel especially in the beginning. But this is not because of our upbringing or because of another person making us feel a certain way or any of that. We feel this chaos because we are the chaos. Work through it, and it will go away, never to return.
The thing about doing this work is that desire does not go away, it get better. The thing about this work is that we realize over and over that no one else is ever the problem, we are. When you can turn the lantern of your awareness into yourself and dare to see all of your broken places and roll up your sleeves and ask the universe how to heal it, it quite naturally will begin to show you ways to do that. When I said I wanted to clear away the dross, my awakening accelerated because I had someone telling me where the blocks were and who to go see to take care of some of them. I had books and I had dreams, I had realizations in meditation or throughout the day, all showing up in amazingly perfect timing over and over. These things were not based in the old way of doing things but of being willing to finally be really honest with myself about my own shit.
The other side of desire that limits us is our shame. It keeps us locked in a prison most often. We don’t want to be seen as “less than” so we put on these masks or we try to hide in order to get through our days. Someone once said that we should be as children and we will know the kingdom. We need to return to a kind of openness and innocence in our work I think in order for it to go more smoothly. We might need to get used to the idea that things are going to change and that the intense current we are feeling in awakening is likely coming from holding our fingers over the end of the hose. No, more energy is not flowing, it is being impeded. Impeding the light will make everything seem intense and strong, but it is holding back the flow. This happens the first five years of aeakening for most people (some it can take much longer, some, fewer, for less time).
When we hold back, we are also holding back or denying what we are destined to be. There is no reason to feel shame that you have not reached perfection. The truth is, no such perfection exists, we just keep getting better and better. I mean really. if you think of the supreme consciousness and how advanced it is and how it interpenetrates the entirety of all things and knows each sparrow that falls, then that is a pretty high bar to set, don’t you think? So don’t be silly; ascension is simply a process that goes on and on. Maybe its even a good idea to let that old husk of an idea go because at some point all that striving will actually serve to limit you. There is no arrival, there is no real ascension save for a continuum of becoming and improving ourselves continuously forever. When we can be like children, we are no longer impressed so much by big productions and hunger for the really simple things…like play (creating).
So I say this to speak to myself because I am telling myself what I need to remember. Since I have experienced this, I have no hesitation sharing it because when you share what you know and what has served you as genuine, it will work for others too. Our fields are part of the same field. All are connected. Our consciousness divides “this” from “that” creating arbitrary and sometimes not too arbitrary divisions. Some are important for a time but fall away.
Even as I am writing this, I can feel the presence of the future and those who will be reading it. I know that my own energy will meet the reader, you, and something in me that is entirely without word will remind you of what it is that you are and what you are capable of. And this happens all the time. It is only a reminder.
The goal of desire is to teach us about our need to create and how central this is in our universe. We create all the time and we do so out of desire….desire of all kinds…and those creations are a mirror for where we are in our development like how children are a biological mirror in part of who the parent are. As you clear desire of the blocks, desire will grow ever more powerful and it will be….simpler, less impeded, and it wont trip you up as much as it did in the past. it wont be that you will feel any less desire, it is that the desire that you feel will be free from limiting ways of getting energized by things that aren’t good for you. It isn’t that desire is bad, it is that so many people can’t get over the hump of their own junk enough to see that desire actually changes and does so in a wonderful way. No, this is not about denying desire, and if you do, you will forestall your development, I promise you that. If you release fear then you might find yourself more easy with others so your own energy can just fill a room without any hesitation. You wont be afraid of somehow being captured by another person’s energy because you are so sure of your own. You will be more easy in yourself and desire will simply be aligned to a higher purpose. This wont be something that you think with your mind, it will be something that you feel all through you. And even then, you might still have things to work on…like all of us.
But the homework for today is; what is the source of desire? What IS desire? if prana IS desire-filled, then what is its parentage, its origins? What is animating prana?
I think desire is here to help us to refine the way we feel. It is to help us to feel. Most tend to pooh-poohs feeling, but the truth here is in order to know peace and contentment, we first need to understand all of the things that color our feeling. When the consciousness is clarified, we don’t get tossed about by our knee-jerk and hot button issues all of which are being driven by the result of the repressed emotions, the blocks I have been discussing all along here. I’m talking about a version of you that you were always meant to know. Now isn’t this interesting, a great mystery to help yourself unravel.
If you ask the question how do I do this work, the first and most important step is to learn how to help facilitate the release of stored energy in the body. Kundalini helps immensely with this, but you can also facilitate its removal greatly with a variety of methods. Qi Gong is very helpful especially in the first five years, but so is a method called TRE which uses tremor movement (shaking) to tap into an ability that we have to release stored trauma. It can work remarkably well. There is body work or deep tissue massage by an intuitive therapist who can feel blocks in your body. There is also forms of yoga that involve helping to clear the energy channels in the light body that hold these blocks. Being creative is itself very helpful also. There are many methods that can assist you in releasing this material.
~P.
Waking The Infinite 
Excellent questions, and outstanding words, as always…
Why thank-you. Your comment reminded me that I had an update to the post that hadn’t been put through yet. It’s been adjusted, should you be interested…
I read this article first time around a few weeks ago. “Hmmm, not bad” I thought. When I returned to it recently it was like reading a different piece altogether! So much of it spoke to me, and of matters that are close to my heart right now.
I spent years practicing – nay, living – within the Buddhist tradition: about a decade full of enthusiasm, then a decade where doubts and questions about the effectiveness of it all started to be properly processed. I suppose that some of that soul-searching constellated around ‘desire’. Buddhism, as most often understood, does not major on guilt and sin as does mainstream Christianity. Nevertheless, it places great emphasis on ‘overcoming craving and attachment’, which are seen as major obstacles to enlightenment. Maybe that’s OK in theory, but in practice it means that folk may not experience their desire, in whatever form, because they are so preoccupied with cutting out craving and attachment, which get put in the same basket as desire. Desire gets short-circuited. Buddhist tantra is an exception – it embraces desire as the quick path of progress – but it’s a ‘minority taste’.
It was a few years ago that I started to realise that ‘the world’, duality, are not enemies to be overcome, but embody the teaching themselves. This mini awakening naturally led to a new attitude to desire, and was, I suspect, a prerequisite for the eventual arising of kundalini within my own body.
To be direct (not easy for an Englishman! Even if he lives in Scotland): it is so wonderful to read some of your articles, and find so much that resonates. It fills me with a warm grateful happiness. And a certain relief. Some stuff written by other people in whom the kundalini energy has awoken does not elicit the same response in me; there’s not the same sense of ‘fellow spirit’. So, Parker, thanks.
Well, thank-you for that thoughtful note….and I must confess that it drove me back to the post to realize that an update that I made when bringing the post out of the drafts folder didn’t take…so some changes have been made like misspellings, grammar and who knows what else. That’s to say thank-you for bringing it to my attention. Unfortunately I don’t have the time anymore to plan out a post better than I do.
I think this is why I consider myself a tantric. Not sexual necessarily, but ecstatic for sure. I think I spent lifetimes walking around my mess so that now I want to step right into it because I wonder how long will I have this cleansing energy? Maybe forever, but who knows.
I think it’s very telling about your sense about what helped stir kundalini, and it’s interesting how what you did effectively served to remove what had you divided inwardly even if just a little. By joining them, I often see awakening come. At any rate—good food for thought!
\Hello, it’s me again. Tell me if it starts becoming tedious….
“I think this is why I consider myself a tantric. Not sexual necessarily, but ecstatic for sure.” I found these words of yours fascinating. From what I can make out, the identification of tantra with sex is a modern western invention. Traditionally, in Hinduism and Buddhism, which I know a little about, the approach of tantra was more in line with William Blake’s aphorism that ‘Energy is eternal delight’. That embracing of energy would most likely need to include sexuality – energy without sexuality is a bit like a banana milk shake without any bananas – but was not defined by it.
The place of sex in the tantra might be literal doing-it with a consort. Or it might consist of yab-yum visualisation meditation – or, I suspect, the sometimes spontaneous manifestation of the divine other, in the form of goddess or dakini for the male, or buddha or daka for a female practitioner. Whichever, it would be erotic, arousing, and transformative. It would be fertile ground for kundalini to wake up in and do her thing.
Anybody actually taking a look at the scriptural tantras will, if they are anything like me, find them abstruse, complex, and pretty much impossible to understand without a teacher specialised in that particular ritual. A bit like western alchemy, which I find the nearest equivalent to tantra closer to home: comes with a packet of ibuprofen (if you can handle such drugs…..). I think that we can absorb the ‘spirit’ of tantra without getting caught up in the complexities.
OK, enough on the tantra! Best wishes, Ian
Well, yes indeed to all of that. There’s nothing tedious in being clear. I think that for me, though, my experience has been that I am stimulated in a significant 24/7 way by the energy without any reason to be, that is, my condition is one where I’m in a state of high energetic stimulation and delightful arousal…for no usual reason (my beloved is seeking to engage me, for instance). But it isn’t merely sexual. I just observe that prana is stimulating, and it is like a tide that affects all boats, in this case, chakras. So for me to say its,sexual energy (which some do say) I find this not the case. It’s sexual, but it’s so much more.
I was thinking about this jyst this past week, actually. I can’t think of another center in consciousness that is able to communicate intimate unitary consciousness quite like our sexuality. When I experience union with higher-order consciousness, something I right now call “Source” (if and until a better one comes along), I felt rather scandalized that I was feeling my sexuality in on the game. I quickly learned that like language, there is no better vocabulary with which to express how total and complete this “Source” experiences it’s connection with All That Is than through the “language” of our sexuality. For me, when it happens, the sexual makes up only a part of a broader “chorus” of energetic experience…so it isn’t just sexual but an ecstatic experience. It is only we who have shame about sex, not God (or Source).
I have found a lot of these old teachings to be structured much like a mantra or prayer; the central concept is itself simple and often singular with a lot of supporting material that is to my mind just fluff (but maybe considered important to practice). So in a Tibetan document, they will say something very central and important, made as a direct statement like “the blooming of the third eye chakra is like that of a flower coaxed by the sun which is the light of our attention turned inward during meditation” and this will be followed by lines and lines of texts praising Buddha, the role of Buddha as liberator, how blessed is the Buddha….and on and on like that.
The book The Secret of The Golden Flower is like this. It’s maybe an 80 page book that could be edited down to a three-paragraph statement. The rest is like chants…this repetitive material. Perhaps thus is something similar to what you have seen? Maybe it’s purpose is to induce a trance and a suspension of the rational “I have a grip on reality” part of our limited mind (which is to say we don’t really have a trip on reality at all). Maybe. And maybe for Westerners, we find this odd or too thick or unnecessary. Every culture or tradition has its biases and in Buddhism they have a lot that are built into the practice. They are innocuous but are there. It leads Indians to proclaim that I didn’t really experience Kundalini because I did not arouse it whilst in full or half lotus in correct posture, saying the right mantras under the tutelage of a guru. You see?
Anyway…I realize that as I recover from a little bit of a car accident yesterday (someone didn’t look before crossing unto my path—all is well just taking it easy because of a mild concussion yesterday) that I am prone to rattling on….I don’t think I’m well suited to the clipped language of social media and internet memes. I think I far prefer substantive conversation over the other…so if I am being tedious, lock me up!
Personally, I don’t think you need to be locked up! Or if you do, I’ll see you inside….
Yes, that’s a fine reply of yours. Many thanks. I think that I can second pretty much everything that you have written here. I like the way that you incorporate the sexual within the wider ecstatic; this is very much my experience. Some writers on kundalini seem to omit or play down the sexual bit (probably suffering from the ‘sex and the spiritual don’t mix’ error), while others appear to equate the two overly closely. You describe the balance and the interplay very well.
Hope that you are recovering well from the accident. Minor or not, still, an accident is an accident. Anyhow, judging from what you wrote yesterday, your mental faculties are all intact and in good working order!