A Tantric Initiation

I never set out to be a tantric. I was a seeker, my one guiding light was whatever enlightenment might be, I was only ever going to find it within. So I sought.

Through a series of fortunate events that fell into my lap, I was brought to a new state, what I would later learn was a kundalini awakening. Barely into the awakened experience, some nine months later, I was gripped by the energy and felt myself open up in a way that I had grown accustomed. Never having read up on any of the Eastern practices, I stuck with my sense that all of this was found within, as surely it was. No teacher, no guru, no books to lean on. Just pure direct experience. When you do that, when your mind is not distracted with what others have had to say about it, you are free to experience teachings (which is a direct experience of the phenomenon) directly, for surely they will come IF you have that inner reliance on the guru within. I will say that it seemed tantra found me, tantra came to me to reveal itself.

One aspect of my and others’ experience is that you can be taught through visionistic experiences, which are things that seem to come out of left field or out the clear blue. On this day as I sat writing to a friend in my sun room when the energy came on strong and my mind was directed to an inner image that emerged in the presence of this energy (which was not distinguishable from me), the experience unfolded. I was shown a giant loom on which there were three different sets of threads. Two made up the warp and weft of the weaving, which are the threads that get moved up and down, and are the threads you normally see when you look at a loom. These make up the length of the cloth. I then saw a third set of thread which was pushed through the gap between these two thread sets with a shuttle. I watched, and as I did, I felt directly what each of these threads represented. The thread sets that moved up and down, making room for the shuttle to move were the opposites in our world and in ourselves, what some might call yin and yang, lunar or solar energies, or the feminine and the masculine in our own consciousness. Yes, “masculine-like” and “feminine-like” qualities in our own individual consciousness, because what I was being shown referred to all of us (and all of nature too). These were highlighted by my experience with the kundalini awakening so that they rested in my waking awareness.

The third thread, this I could feel was a universal energy of bliss, the more hidden part of the experience of bliss. Its presence in our lives was based on how we focused our awareness on them. As these two opposite set of threads moved around this central thread on the loom, there was a corresponding pulse of bliss that could only be described as orgasmic, and while it stimulated the body, it was felt as an energy that flows through the entire body in the most pleasant way. What happens when sexual energy is liberated from its lower realm is made to flow through the entire body? It becomes a finer and finer material, and a force for healing our entire being. The lesson in this vision, which was an initiation into tantra, was that there is within all things this connection to a field of bliss.

Here on earth it seems that we need to learn about the power inherent in the opposites and here is where it gets to be a mystery: does the movement of the opposites create the bliss or is this bliss already there, waiting for this movement in awareness? Causative effects break down here as the question might be which comes first the chicken or the egg? Certainly the movement of the opposites into union seems to create the bliss effect, and yet the lesson for me in this initiation is that the bliss is always there. It may be that these elements themselves act outside of time at a certain point where both possibilities are equally valid and operate together. In this experience some aspects of linear time and the resulting phenomenon of cause and effect appeared to break down or may have been shown simultaneously (cause and effect being shown in a different relationship to one another).

So I saw this vast loom, which I called the loom of heaven, showing me itself and teaching me what I would later learn was the core of tantra, which is that our fundamental nature is bliss. Further, what I also learned by doing some reading on classic tantra in the years that followed was that tantra itself in the Sanskrit means “to weave.” Had I heard this before? It wasn’t likely. What did I know about tantra before this? Nothing except that it was being touted in the mainstream as a way to great sexual experience but with a mystic Eastern twist.

What I saw on this day was that this was not about sex but was instead about our potential as humans to experience untold bliss within ourselves, and that this bliss could heal us of so many issues that we have when we ready ourselves for it. The effect of this bliss has been that it has loosened my grip on narratives in my mind that somehow I am a victim, that it is the fault of the world, my parents, my culture, or its institutions. I soon found that all of my inner beliefs were being upturned in favor of a much more direct line of sight of a fundamental state of my being that had none of those old stories as part of its pure presence.

That isn’t to say that tantra does not tie into sexual experience, because it does. The same letting go that I felt sans sexual activity was not that different from the moment of release and deep surrender that came with physical orgasm. The difference here was that I wasn’t having sex, and the rush of orgasm was instead felt as a steady state, or a constant state of orgasmic energy whose result was no longer about mere release. Instead, I was in a spiritually aroused state that kept me more or less in a state of surrender. In that surrender you find how easy it is to let go of nearly everything you have supposed, assumed, or taken on in your mind about how you think the world works. This is a great healer of the mind and the effects have been wide reaching in my life.

My initiation came without a teacher and without any previous instruction. Instead of reading in books, I paid attention to my experience and learned to feel as deeply as I could, which allowed me to pick up on elements or qualities of the experience which I would later find were in books on tantra, the ones taught by Tibetan lamas and by Indian practitioners. It was only years later that I attempted to read outside of my own experience because I wanted to see how accurately I saw all of this while also being able to find the places where I had blind spots, or were things I hadn’t considered or experienced directly.

I am not saying that you can’t learn this by way of good books on the subject or from others. You can. You do though have the capacity to know this information directly for the simple fact that this is not something you go down to the market to get but is instead inside of you. Remember, someone at some point invented tantra, which was based on their own direct experiences. That person had no one teaching them. If you approach this like a child with an open mind and practice basic checks on your process, it is possible to be an initiate in the same way.

Doing this requires some rigor and willingness to step directly into the fire of universal bliss. Doing this acknowledges that it could be messy at first. Your awareness will grow as you go through this and what seemed true or a condition of your experience can change, sometimes from one day to the next. I see plenty of people who drag their old junk into tantra when they write about their experiences, and the point I am making is of course you do. We all do. The point also is that you are dedicated to change and transformation. It may seem too simplistic to say that the desire or mindset to improve will result in improvement, but it is true. You will. Setting your intention is considered a key component in this line of inquiry. It releases you from the busy part of the linear mind that asks, “But if you don’t have it already, how are you going to expect to magically get it later??” That part of the mind drops away in favor of the more feminine part of the mind that says, “Shush. Be quiet. ” It then whispers, “It’s a mystery…” And so it is. But this is a mystery based in a truth about our nature, about who we are once you begin to distance yourself from the station your mind has been tuned to for decades now. The line from the Kate Bush Song Cloudbusting is operative here: “Just saying it can make it happen.”

The desire to learn more, to dig more deeply using your consciousness (without necessarily knowing how that will happen) is possible even without a teacher. To do this you need to up your game in becoming increasingly more and more sensitive to the emanations in consciousness and what comes in teaching moments such as these. I would add that trusting yourself and your senses is another important prerequisite. “But how do I know whether a teaching like yours will come to me too?” Realize that the teaching was something in my own consciousness. The information was always there, I just had to allow myself to feel deeply into it in order to grasp its meaning. There is no one correcting you or directing you. You are instead like a magnet pulling out the iron of the universe or being like a bloodhound who is on the scent but has no earthly idea how it is that it can follow such a thing. And yet it happens. The information is there because it is a part of you. You aren’t going to the market to buy eggs or butter. You are looking within yourself and it is there that the whole of the universe can be seen or known or experienced. We can do this because we are energetic beings, and every single one of us are built the same, you simply have to want to find it enough. Trust yourself and your abilities, which at this point may only just have begun coming out into the bright light of day.

I know how strong the urge is to seek out a teacher. In some cases it can be helpful, but what I have discovered is that humans don’t think the capacity to know is within them already, which leads to chasing after teacher or book or guru, never acknowledging that the capacity was there all along to know it natively. There is also the possibility of swallowing whole a teaching that the guru doesn’t fully understand his or herself. I have seen errors perpetuated this way, some now thousands of years old and now nearly universally agreed upon as correct. Just the mere fact that the teaching has been handed down for so long must mean it is true.

In the movie Anonymous about the life of Shakespeare, a character is telling another character how a royal must surely be correct in a given assertion when in fact they were woefully incorrect. When faced with incredulity from one of the characters, the character in the movie explains that they had important titles given to them, as if to say there was no way they could be wrong. The only thing a title does in some cases is to highlight how the system can incorrectly identify a person as someone who knows.

Not long ago, a group of archeologists who pushed a theory on when humans appeared on the North American continent (called Clovis Man) found it suddenly overturned after a dig was performed in South America that showed clear signs of human presence much further back than what the Clovis Man theory had put forth. The Clovis Man theory had been in all of the text books and was considered by everyone to be the truth. What came out after the theory was crushed was that the archeologists who had pushed the Clovis Man theory didn’t believe that humans in North America went back further than 10-13 thousand years, so they simply stopped digging! In this case human presence had been shown to exist well beyond 100,000 years in the South American dig. When archeologists dug deeper, they found older and older remains in North America.

This quality can be found throughout the world and in every corner of human inquiry. I am not suggesting that you blindly question everything, but I am pointing out that as human beings we all make mistakes. We missidentify phenomenon sometimes or missatribute reasons for why things happen as they do. There are people who look at the horrible things that happen and shrug saying that it must be God’s will. That is how far the inquiry goes! That’s why your own awareness is important and learning to use it an a clear and open way is crucial because sweet little you might discover something the rest of us have missed! You might even find something amiss in my thinking, and that is a learning moment for me.

I can tell you that the capacity to feel is way more important than any intellectual prowess you think that you might have or using the rational mind. To learn something new you cannot drag the rational mind into any of this because that part of the mind is based on what you have learned in the past. The truly revolutionary realization is that through your creative imagination, alloyed with feeling, those will bring you an overabundance of insight and this is how all great yogi’s and yogini’s have uncovered new ground. It seems so impossible until you find yourself pulling out information you never thought to consider or even knew was possible to reach. But you can.

I believe it was Osho who spoke about the tantric temples of the past. He said in essence that most people assumed that these places were adorned and populated with stone carvings of women and men cavorting in all manner of poses, a real feast of sensuality. But the opposite was true. Instead, these buildings were plain and empty inside. Why? Because the action all came from within! Tantra stands against the howling silence and emptiness to show us our creative potential as bliss-filled beings in a confounding universe that normally has people who seem to always misdirect your attention to the physical senses.

One final thing I will also add, which is that all of this is like an onion with many layers. Keep at the work because once you have uncovered some great realization, you will find after that, there is more to the story. Keep going, and this path will reward you with wonderful truths and incredible realizations about who you are and your capacities as a human living on the earth.

The tantric path isn’t for everyone. It is intense, it can knock you over at first. You can misread its seeming signs sometimes, and you can get it wrong, but the path is one that is fast and one slip up one day is wisdom in the next. If you allow the bliss to dismantle your old armoring and your beliefs about yourself and the world, it can work more directly and if you are willing to lose something in the exchange in order to gain something bigger, then it can be an incredibly beneficial path. For myself, tantra has given me a bright and positive attitude and it shows in my life. It has created a field of bliss around me that lifts others up (sometimes when they are aware enough). Gone is the much of the self loathing and negativity of the past and this shows in my interactions with others. Yes, there are people who cannot be moved and want to remain where they are, and with tantra, that is completely fine.

Every path has its own steps. I can harness the immense creative energy to achieve new work in my business and new ideas. My experience in nonduality has shown me that we are all one, that we are all in this together regardless of our political or spiritual outlooks. I see truth spoken everywhere, different groups just have different parts. Everyone matters and learning by encouragement is so much better than through punishment and condemnation! There is so much positive about this experience and presence as a guide long before we even touch on s-e-x. Why? Because the real union happens within. It’s an inside job. It might surprise you to know that this is so, but it is the path into and through tantra and greater spiritual union be it with God or Source or with another person. Union within is THE thing, and as a result, you love not for the object but because this is what you are. When this happens, so many things can change within you. Lost is the desire to grasp another to fulfill a need or a desire. Instead, you ARE desire, you ARE love, you ARE passion and you ARE the bliss that pervades the universe.

May you experience blessings in your life today and all days..

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The Third Eye: A Simple Tip For Helping To Activate Awakening

I begin this as I begin all posts on ways of sparking awakening, which is to caution the reader to consider that if you are not properly prepared, awakening can not go according to plan. This is a full-time commitment and it will occupy your life for years especially in the beginning and more specifically in the first three to five years of awakening until you learn how to work with, and not against the forces that are brought to bear. One thing I can say is that if you are OCD, like things a certain way, or like your life well ordered and controlled, awakening is not for you. Awakening will involve opening up the metamind, which is a fuller spectrum of mind than you are used to. It also reveals your shadow and the way at working out these wrinkles in your past is not the way we go about our business normally. If you don’t know how to surrender and let go of expectations, it is better that you learn how to cultivate that part first.

That said, a simple method that has been used both by the Hindu’s as well as the Egyptians. It is also what I was guided to do one evening as I sat for my meditation. I will also say that this method may not work magic for you right away, but for others it may be very helpful. It is best preceded by the meditation method described in my last post, which is a good way to learn how to silence the left brain (which is the part we call the part that is always “talking”). This is a shift into the nonverbal centers as recent discoveries have revealed.

There is an apocryphal story about an exchange between Pythagoras and a member of a mystery school in Egypt where he asked them what he needed to do in order to gain entry (he was said to have petitioned them many times) and the response was to focus on certain centers in the body and to fast. He did what was prescribed and returned saying they were right and that by doing so, he was changed. He said the old Pythagoras no longer existed and a new man stood before them.While we don’t know what those center were, it is very likely that they were centers like the third eye since this same method has been mentioned in passing in ancient writings. Pythagoras went on to study there for many years and eventually became a teacher there.

Sitting quietly and in meditation (breath work as prescribed as described in the previous post is helpful to drop you into greater quiet) close your eyes and then focus your physical eyes on your brow region of your forehead. Imagine that you are looking just beyond your brow region some. This will mean that your eyes may feel like they are slightly crossed. Focus your eyes and your attention on the area that we think of as where the Ajna or third eye chakra is located. Now as you do this, you can be aware that you are focusing the energy of your awareness there. You can imagine that you are sending energy to that location, because you are. Do this for moderate amounts of time, but don’t do it until you feel uneasy and find yourself disliking it. It’s important to find this fun and enjoyable because the quality of your energy will help actually to create an emotional pattern associated with this activity. It is better to do five minutes while feeling fresh than it is to do forty minutes and feeling bored to tears. Just place your attention on that spot and consider how you are filling that center with the energy of your awareness, and that your energy is going into that center.

It’s helpful if you do this without any expectation of an outcome. It is best to keep your mind as free from these things as possible. Having a blank mind is very helpful because what you are doing in this practice is stimulating the latent powers of your being. The ajna chakra is one of the least emotional centers in the energy system. It sees but the degree of emotion in seeing can be one more aligned to a kind of detachment. Certainly the state required to open up the powers of the right brain and the larger cosmic mind requires learning to understand how that focus of mind is so broad as if to seem as if it is not a focus at all, and this can escape beginners. It is like you went from wearing glasses that allowed you to see up close for most of your life and one day, you took up a set of telescopic lenses that allowed you to see so far that you didn’t realize what it was you were doing. You might even be gazing and deep empty space without realizing that this was itself a meta view (through the metamind). Because the third eye can be so free from emotion, the initial awakening can be relatively calm at first, allowing you to be more stable in those first days of new experience. Only later might the energy, the high flow of prana, begin to open up and free stuck or knotted energy in your field, after which the experience can then become more intense to the degree that you allow it to be so. There is nothing inherently wrong with its being intense, but some of it is built on appearances and on an illusion created by the ego that these things are more important than they are. The only thing important is that the body and mind is cleared of them. Some might think they have to wrestle with these things, and when someone takes a stance like this, then it seems reasonable that wrestling must be done, but this is in no way necessary at all. You can learn to drop the drama within if you are more selfless in your approach. This is a much more peaceful way of going about doing “the work.”

Additionally, it is possible that other centers of energy might be stimulated that could stir the depths and bring on awakening, however, it is my sense that everyone needs to be careful when doing this since if you activate a center that has a lot of stuck emotional material, you could be seeing your experience through a lens that is now amplifying that emotional material, which is like being cast into the vat sea of awakening but in choppy seas right from the start. There is, though, real benefit in simply meditating and feeling your energy, sitting with it and keeping your mind open without preconceptions about what it is or what you might experience. By sitting in the present, by being present, you are beginning to utilize the right brain which has the goods in regards to cosmic mind. In my last post I spoke to this as being a quality that we have identified as being located in the right brain. This part of the brain is specialized in a certain range of perception and feeling, and it is very different from the more dominant left brain. Knowing that it is the right brain doing this doesn’t really tell us much, so all of this is a direct experience. Just knowing that you have this bicameral brain with two ranges of experience and perceptual ability is enough to put you on the scent so that you can remind yourself to emphasize one a little more than the other. Contractions of consciousness, which are often about fear and which can contain pain body, something that is both a noun and a verb, can be experienced and then the self can learn how to keep those contractions down to a minimum which results in keeping a broader more open-hearted state at play. This is why work of this kind seems best done in a gradual fashion since it allows you to slowly walk into the waters gradually and to get used to how to navigate it and not fall for fear or anxiety or to lapse into the pain body or contracted states, which are a hallmark of the left brain.

We are also at this unique place in our development as a species where awakening is happening in ways that have never happened before. It is a hopeful sign in some ways and I think that it also shows that this is very much needed if we are to progress as a species here on the planet. We need bigger thinkers, we need more compassionate thinkers, too. We need the soul of what the Buddhists call bodhichitta, which is a motivation that is based on wanting to expand our understanding of ourselves while at the same time, wanting to be of service to others. It is a more selfless way of being, and is not about grasping for approval or for being happy because we made someone else happy. It is like giving something precious away and not holding onto it. I leave a hundred dollar bill near a park bench and someone who i do not know picks it up and is thrilled because moments before they worried how they were going to pay a bill, or maybe it is just that the note left which says “blessings to you” was enough to clue them in that all of this was intentional but selfless.

The boddhichitta is also that part of you that has made you a seeker and has kept you on the path of wanting to know more, to reach whatever that elusive thing was that might have been eluding you for so long. There are some who say that seeking is itself an illusory act, but I am of the mind that we are first seekers before we find that which rewards us so greatly. The essence of the bodhi, or Buddha nature, is one where the heart opens and where there is less grasping. It is in such a state where all that we need naturally comes, like a blessing upon our heads like the rain that makes everything grow. The universe is not one of punishing or rewarding. The way of the bodhi is in part the removing of obstacles. This is why so many who awaken experience such coincidental or synchronistic events in their lives. Miracles, small ones, sometimes daily, remind us that we have stopped the struggle and are now open to the divine plan and cosmos, which is one of abundance if we can live in that feeling state. The reverse is certainly also possible where everything seems to be going wrong. Examine your thoughts and your beliefs.

If you feel a struggle or resistance within you, then whatever you are feeling will serve to attract things like it. If you feel that there is something wrong with helping others because you think that it is somehow selfish or self serving, then examine your feelings more. If you are living transactionally in your life, you might be missing an important element that is holding you back. If you give openly with a full heart, more of that openness will come to you in your life, bringing you greater joy and fulfillment. If you instead want happiness, you will tend to be more happy and by serving this light in you, you will shine it out onto others in a shower that they also cannot help but sense at some level. This is some of the more positive motivations that can serve to guide you in your inner work.

So by focusing your awareness on the third eye, you feed more energy into that one center. As you do this, it slowly fills with the light of your awareness and your attention. Perhaps think of it as some unknown reservoir that can contain energy and by turning the light of your mind inward, you are no longer expending it through the physical sensory world. At first this might be a challenge, but the mind can be trained, and you can make this part of a practice with the highest intentions at heart. Don’t worry about when that reservoir will fill up enough for something to happen, instead be patient since we are each unique and this may take some time, some more than others. This isn’t a race and achieving this is like finding a pearl that is hidden in the mud. Imagine yourself filling up with your attention and keeping turned inward. This practice is very similar to what is called the Golden Flower, which is in Taoism. The secret of this flower is known when we turn the “lantern of your attention inward” so that the inner world is filled with light and may respond in time.

Every tradition has its prescriptions, some say to practice for forty days, others don’t put a time limit on it, and this I think is the wisest way to approach this. What I can say is that imagination is the gateway through which we can know a hitherto unknown thing. At first when you get results, you will think you are just making it all up, but deeper still is a part of you that naturally knows what or how to imagine in order to get there. By being quiet and calm and learning how to calm yourself with breath work, you can begin to bump up against these forgotten realms of the mind. Remaining inquisitive and like a child is best. I have found that I was able to learn much by not leaning on a teacher, for it is in us to know these things if we resist the desire to ask someone who surely must know more than we do. If a teacher is needed, that teacher will come like the blessed rain that I described as coming to the bodhi earlier. If you resist trying to figure it all out in a mental way or trying to force things, the universe will provide you with exactly what you need for that moment. Its pretty amazing that I was able to have people who had exactly what I needed who lived within walking distance of my home in these mountains. One was a Qi Gung master of sorts, someone who had studied in China to learn White Crane Qi Gung, which is the same energy practice that the Shaolin monks learned, a man who gave classes just around the corner from me, about three blocks away from my home. Then there was a healer from New Zealand who was almost the same distance from my home, who was there just in time to help me with some later work in my process. Only months after seeing her, she moved to another part of the States, so all of this had the feeling of happening in what we often call “divine timing.” In each case, I didn’t ask for these things, but I was open to the possibilities. All of this comes when there is this shift or acceleration in our energetic awareness where we seem to be interfacing very differently with the world. These are all signs that we are moving into a different perceptual and field of consciousness. Remaining humble and serving the light within seems to keep us on the right keel and in a state of grace, which I observe is an important thing for us. Don’t expect to be perfect at every moment, but instead learn as you go, for surely this is how we improve. Awakening is a great gift, but it is just the beginning, a kind of entry into the garden. You might wind up slipping on some of your own shit from time to time, so go easy on yourself. This is not a race, and there is no one out there who is going to bonk you on your head for messing up (you will probably do enough of that in the beginning all on your own).

Using this method along with the meditation that was outlined in my last post can be a very useful way of stirring the depths. Consider the meditation method first and then after a period of some weeks as you get used to the method, bring in the third eye meditation later.

Serving the Light,

~Parker

A Beginners Guide To Awakening

I can tell you as someone who did not follow a teacher or guru and didn’t know much about any of the methods involved in awakening that the central core of the event of nonduality and the enlightened state involves a union within the self with its many parts.

In many methods this takes the form of silent meditation, or “just sitting” and being quiet. This, though, is not always enough, and I think our understanding about enlightened states has progressed enough that we can begin speaking to this process in a more updated way.

There is this quality of mind that must be allowed to take center stage and without it, most of all methods will relax you and might provide you with some interesting effects and some insight into your consciousness, but it wont lead to a more illuminated or enlightened state. You could meditate for years and never find this thing we call awakening.

What I can tell you, if you are trying to find it, is that this capability is already in you. It is in every person. In Buddhism they rightly describe this as the Buddha within. We all have Buddha nature. This is not a man or any person, but in our innocence we might tend to think it is. No, you are the one who has it….but you need to learn how to discover it. The way this is done is by allowing instead of doing, and this runs counter to how many people think things in life should be done. To do this, to allow, involves meditation, but this meditation is best when it silences the left brain, the part that is most active in people all across the world.

We have developed this way and it has resulted in a silencing of the left brain. What you want is a practice that will help to keep the left brain occupied with something. Give it something to do. It is like a man in a way; he always likes to solve problems and thinks this is the way of the world, making things right again. It is also the verbal part of your brain and is thus the part that chatters on and on. You hear a lot about this as being a challenge to many who are seeking to meditate. But meditation itself involves hours of practice punctuated by brief moments of success. This success involves silencing the left brain so that the power of the right brain can come forward. You see, for as capable as the left brain thinks it is, it is really only designed to deal with linear tasks, point A to point B kinds of things. It does not have the sense of the ineffable that is in your nature. To do that, the left brain needs to be trained to be quiet for longer and longer periods. This is hard to do. However, the brain is open to being trained and you can train your brain to do certain things. By having a meditation method that keeps your left brain doing something, which is really keeping it quiet and not nattering on about all the things you need to do, you begin to open up the brain so that the right brain powers can begin to come forward. It is important to note that the right brain is the part that focuses on the present while the left brain focuses on the past and the future. Together, they make for a good marriage, but until awakening, the marriage is very one sided, you see. What you want to do is to silence the left while letting the right come into focus more. The experience of enlightened states is marked by this sense of an expanding present. There is a reason for this, and it is all physiological at its root, but the body serves the consciousness that drives the whole experience. In order to know that higher consciousness you need to have both online and functioning together. This is what awakening is. Many say it is just the feminine or Shakti (right brain) but the two parts were made to work as one and the right brain has a very hard time navigating a physical world of symbols like words and numbers that are used to communicate externally (while it can communicate psychically).

The right brain, which is the center for awareness of the infinite in us, is the nonverbal part of the brain. It does not think the same way as the left, so when you have it working in the beginning, you might not even be aware that it is operational. Its focus is so broad that it can be present and it can feel as though you are standing in a vast emptiness. It can be there and you wont even know it sometimes. You have to spend time in this nothingness long enough to learn how this part of the brain works. The problem is that we are so used to thinking with our left brains that the moment something happens that is right brained phenomenon, we shut it off just by engaging the left brain. I know how this sounds. I know it may sound preposterous to you that it works like this, but in the beginning it does. You are slowly letting the “woman” in you to come out and express herself. “She” is truly the genie in the bottle. She is vast and when you first feel her it can be scary. She has another form of ego which is truly a cosmic sense of self which is very different from the ego mind the exists in the left brain. But it is with “her” that you will be able to begin perceiving thins more as they are in a broader context, and that context is what is often referred to as cosmic mind. Her focus will be so broad that it wont seem like it is a focus at all, but you will need to let that part of you express itself. If you can allow this part of the brain to express itself through any number of phenomenon that it can produce without dragging in the left brain, you will be well on your way to developing a greater balance in your consciousness and how it was always made to operate.

I found that by putting my hands together in a prayer position and placing my (left brained) attention on my hands and where they touched, that this was enough to begin giving that other part of my mind time to come forward. Now these things happen incrementally, so having dream like phenomenon happen at first may not be the final destination, but it is a good place to start because big things come from small things. You can imagine or pretend that you see that all divisions begin to drop within you, and whatever you imagine that feels most natural is fine, no matter what it is. What you want is something that YOU can relate to. Having your hands in this posture also establishes a circuit of energy in the body that helps with establishing greater unity between the left and right brain. Have you ever wondered why so many cultures all across the world will use this posture of hands together in prayer or meditation? It is because it works, it helps to center your energy and it helps to establish a cross current between the left and right brain. Think of it as a way of bridging the gap that exists between the two hemispheres, except this is being done with your hands. This is in truth what the Hindu call a mudra (of sorts). By doing this you allow your mind to be focused on this very simple thing, which is your hands together. If your mind wanders, just put it back with your hands together. The point here is you are learning to still your mind, which is no easy task. To this end, breathing can help. We know that by breathing in slow deliberate breaths, you can send a signal to your body that you are calm. This is one of the most potent ways of getting into the autonomous nervous system portion of the brain. Breathing is the one action that the body does that we have control over, so by using slow breathing in and out with pauses at the top and bottom of each breath will help you to further relax. The trick is not to fall asleep, and yet being so relaxed that you could fall asleep is a very good place to be. The more you practice, the better you will be at not falling asleep. The mind thus learns through repetition. By repeating this daily, you can get your brain in the habit of this exercise. You will find with time that instead of taking ten minutes to get fully relaxed that you can sit down and in a few moments be at a place that might have taken you much longer in the past. This is progress!

We aren’t used to doing nothing, but this is what you need to do. Focus your mind on your hands. If not that, then be silent and be comfortable. There is no magic in holding a yogic pose, I can promise you. There is no honor in making yourself feel pain or discomfort, this will only forestall reaching your goal.

To help to explain what I mean when I ssy that the left brain is so dominant to the point of acting as a brake against the right brain, it is helpful to watch the TED Talk by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Her talk is about what happened when she had a stroke in her left hemisphere one morning while getting ready to go to work. As the stroke spread and shut down her left hemisphere, she list her ability to communicate verbally and to read words and even the keypad on her phone. What happened next was that she began to experience a sense of expansiveness, a feeling came if how everything was interconnected. She entered into a state of sammadhi. She understood, as a neuroanatomist, that the right brain handled the perception of our cosmic nature. It was a huge breakthrough for her and for me, I was able to confirm that the sense that I had that awakening was tied to the right brain in consort with the left now working together in greater balance. It took a stroke for Dr. Taylor to see this, but you don’t need to induce a stroke to help bring this part of your awareness forward. You just need a meditation technique that can busy the left brain just enough so that it is stilled. I know how this sounds. It sounds contradictory. In truth you are giving your busy bee left brain a very simple task that tricks it to become as quiet as possible long enough for the quiter nonverbal mind to have room to experience itself in your waking consciousness. By activating it in this way, which is allowing waking consciousness to use it, you are able to provide a means for you to use your mind more fully. You are rewiring your brain so it can be used much more efficiently. Her video follows.

If you study kundalini you will see that the ancients imagined it as a twin energy that rises, establishing itself along the spine and into the brain, moving through and piercing each of the seven major chakras as it goes up (and sometimes down) the spine. What we see is a demonstration of both energy currents in the body and the nervous system being impacted by this new “wiring up” of the system. It happens automatically, you allow it to take place. It results in establishing a “new mind” state. These two currents of energy, called Ida and Pengali are called the Shakti and Shiva, but they correspnd to these two different hemispheres that feel like opposites so that many, including myself, think of them as like female and male. While there is no real gender in the brain, this often opens people up to being aware of their greater being beyond the body and in the physical, as having been both female and male in other incarnations. This awakening thus can open you up to a greater awareness of who you are and who you have been. It is courtesy of allowing the right brain to become more active not in a shallow surface way, but in a much deeper way that is as cosmic as it is physical. The yogis if the past just didn’t have our understanding of neuroanatomy or someone who could make the connections that this is about the brain until now. What I am describing is a way to experience whole brain thinking, feeling, and being. It is best to find yourself in an environment that will support you in this change because it can result in symptoms that can be missidentified as mania and psychosis. If you are an overly mental, rational, and controlling person, I would strongly suggest that you not try to awaken this but instead work on softening your reliance on your linear modes of thinking because the energy is so strong that it can unsteady you. I have personally seen people awaken who should have done more soul searching and preperation before awakening.

Doing this is the first step. It is possible to awaken very quickly, it is also possible that it will take some time. The conundrum is that if you think you know what you are looking for then your preconception can color your experience and it will derail your efforts because this is something you haven’t experienced before. Having a clear mind is best, but it also means not knowing. That’s tricky: how do I know what I am looking for if I don’t know what it is?

It isn’t so hopeless because what you seek is so fundamental, so basic, that it’s in everyone. It isn’t like I am asking you to find the lost grail, I’m pointing out that the grail is in everyone! What this meditation does, or can do, is it acknowledges that cosmic mind is the result of a continuity, a circuit that has been created, where before the circuit was disconnected. This technique joins the opposite wires in your brain and brings them together in such a way that a powerful and enduring union, a completed circuit, exists. Once done, other disconnected parts of you begin to come online. You experience an immediate connection with and an awareness of the body that hasn’t existed before, a sense and awareness of your energetic inventory. The energy that is being produced in awakening automatically begins shedding trauma and releases stuck emotion (if you don’t resist its energetic program). Things might seem hard at first, but this is the healing from your own insanity, your neurosis. You can feel sick at first, but this is like stirring up the toxins before they are cleared away (and it’s a good thing). In time, things get easier as the mind returns more fully to its natural state. Allow this energy to do its work.

It is also possible that you have a much calmer simpler form of awakening, which usually involves a deep awareness of how everything is connected and one, without the more fiery shedding and healing energies of kundalini. My observation is that some people come with more baggage while others may have already done this work in a prior life, which results in a calmer simpler process. The fiery power of kundalini helps to move the baggage, setting it free from the body and mind. Your system will automatically respond in such a way that one of these two polarities enters the scene (and this is along a spectrum so there are a range of possibilities or combinations of these two).

If the idea of something working in you whose will feels stronger than your own upsets you are scares you, this path isn’t yet for you. If you can learn to cultivate surrender and the faith that everything works out in the end, then this is the mindset most needed for the journey into awakening. Again, being overly rational, mental, or always wanting thinfs known or figured out, are all warning signs that more work needs to be done.

Remember, you are providing space for a new arrangement to flower. Like planting a seed, you need only water it (meditation) daily. This is, afterall, superconsciousness we are talking about. It knows what its doing. 🙂

>>> Check out for the next post where I give you an incredibly simple tip that has the power to bring forward your greater awareness quickly as part of waking up.

Death & Bliss

I had allowed the shadow of death to knock me from my perch. It happened as a gradual accretion, a belief based on coincidental symptoms that had emerged over the last two years that I might be sick and that I might die from what the symptoms were suggesting that I had. I have spent weeks trying to feel out if it even feels right to write about this. There was, I realize some unrecognized silliness involved, too. This is not something that I have mentioned to but a few people in my life.

It’s true. I began having symptoms for what I thought was for a type of intestinal cancer. Normally very healthy, I didn’t carry health insurance. It was tricky to sign up for: you can only sign up November through December. Those are the two busiest months in my studio business, and for as lame as it sounds, I missed the signup dates two years running. I knew the clock was ticking and yet I was also being pulled into a feeling of inevitability.

I knew that the only way I was ever going to see a doctor was with the right insurance. The importance of this was driven home by something I learned about first-hand about cancer diagnosis and treatment. A family had come to me this past year to ask that I put the ashes of their loved one into molten glass, something I do with something called Journey Glass. I saw during a visit to the studio how they had tried to keep their loved one alive with chemo treatments. When she finally passed, her husband was 1.2 million dollars in debt. It was startlingly easy to do with the cost of a single dose of IV administered chemo at nineteen thousand dollars. They went into receivership just trying to keep her alive. I knew the only way I would see a doctor was with insurance. I also knew every case was unique, and I knew the clock was ticking. The back story on this was that I could feel a block in a region of my body corresponding to the LV 12 meridian point and I had had several therapists work in and around that energy line as early as 2013 onward. I could FEEL the energetic block for a while before it manifested into a physical malady. Being me, I assumed the worst instead of staying open and receptive.

The symptoms were all consistent with cancer, though. When I would research the symptoms, this was all that ever came up with. How could it be anything but that? After two years of this dogging me, I finally was able to see a doctor who ordered a battery of tests. The abdominal pain had gotten so bad that I was having difficulty using bliss states to ameliorate the pain. This tossed a few more pints of gas on the fire of my fears. It turned out, though, that it was just that; an unfounded concern based on symptoms that sounded nearly identical to the “big C.”

One big reason why I fell for this was that in years past, as I worked through blocked energy with kundalini assisting, I could feel the presence of the blocked energy in what I identified was the LV 12 region of the meridian system. I had been to an acupuncturist, which did result in some releases, and then later I was guided to a Kahuna healer whose therapy room was within walking distance of my home. Of all the people out there, I had a therapist who knew and understood energy work using a modality that focused on the balance between yin and yang energies, which was exactly what I had been hoping to find. She had lived in New Zealand where she first learned her craft. Here she was, within walking distance of my home. She too helped me when a group of Reiki healers could only go so far. I wrote a few years ago about how one of these healers admonished me to not “go trying to find problems where problems didn’t exist” because she could not feel the presence of the block herself. I thanked her and the rest of the crew. A month later I found Violet, my Kahuna healer, who felt the block and went straight to work letting a portion of it go. There was still something there that I could feel vividly, that remained. About a year later, another energy healer worked on this area of my body, revealing still more material stored there. That, too, was a welcome relief. I said that I was concerned about moving this block because I was afraid it could wind up turning into disease and kill me. Because of some cancer in my family, my mind went to that as the potential invisible culprit. It was there that things stayed and after a few more years, I had the uneasy sense that the energy was turning into a physical symptom of illness. I was ready for the worst, which has been one of the Achilles heels in my life. Why had I fallen for the negative instead of remaining open to the possibilities?

Somewhere along the line I allowed this niggling fear to eat away at my bliss, the same kind of bliss that I felt when an angelic presence entered my room one early morning at four a.m. and did to me the same thing that I would later read had happened to St Theresa of Avilla. An arrow had been thrust into her heart, which set her ablaze with bliss and a love for God. Her insides felt as though they were being drawn out of her. I had the same experience, except that my angelic presence pulled something that felt like my insides out of me, leaving me emptied of something I knew was old past material. It was this experience with that angelic being that I was able to taste a bliss that was beyond all bliss. It was that one experience that forever changed me from that moment forward, leaving me to reach for some semblance of that bliss felt on the morning of Good Friday in 2008, about a year after kundalini first rose in me. It showed me that I didn’t need to be a believer, much like Paul wasn’t a believer either, but was nonetheless struck by a blinding light which changed his life forever. I am not suggesting that I am a Paul, no, but rather to underscore that belief is not a prerequisite (like it was with Paul). It is something that is in all of us, a potential which is revealed in each of us just as Paul described it as the Christ that was revealed in him in that moment. We don’t get it by looking outside of ourselves, but by always looking within to find the “architecture,” the structure in our own consciousness that makes such a state possible. The reward is this brilliant bliss that heals and transforms. It humbles, too, while opened the mind to our greater potential. It’s as though we often suffer at the hands of our limitations, of feeling cut off somehow from a quality that we in truth have but do not realize that we have. I had allowed myself to drift from that perch that I had found. I am reminded that this is a daily challenge to always attune myself to this quality and to do so in silence and in thanksgiving.

So finally, I was able to go to a doctor. Tests were ordered up, a whole battery of them. One by one, the results came in: negative for cancer. I was happy to have been wrong! I had reached a place in life where the world just seemed like it was going off the rails. It was like the world was going mad to me, and it was disheartening to witness it all. I saw how terrible people were being to one another in the midst of a pandemic, I saw how those who questioned the mainstream narrative were being treated much like any group in our past has been treated: they were the enemy. Why? Why was one narrative being pushed so hard? Why was early treatment being treated as though it was the worst possible thing a person could do to themselves or to others? Doctors lost their ability to practice medicine. People were deplatformed from social media sites for speaking up about alternatives. I read meta studies that showed the efficacy of other methods. And why not? How had so many seemed to have lost their minds? Fear. That’s what happened. In fact, I had also fallen for the power of fear myself with the concern that I had cancer, so I wasn’t immune from this. My condition all seemed to fit a given illness trajectory, except fear kept me from considering other alternatives that could have led me to different conclusions or the possibility of them. It took tests to show that my fear was unfounded. All of this left me feeling like maybe leaving this life might not be such a bad thing.

I know how that sounds, but if you know me, you know that working with kundalini left me largely free from the fear of death. I knew what waited for me on the other side of all of this. And yet, I was not completely immune from fear about something else. So? It was for me a big lesson, an important one, and it had more to do with not giving up so fast, to stay with the challenge that this life offered me. The lesson was one of having a better attitude. The rest, I have come to learn involves availing myself of how to help my body heal from a couple of issues that created the symptoms that I thought might be cancer related.

Despite this, I had already begun to have big shifts in my life, with an ex who finally came to apologize to me for her treatment, something I never thought could or would happen. This had happened in part as a result of what power truth has in our lives. We can run from the truth, but it gets harder and harder to hide. Eventually it eats away at your peace, which was predicated on something that was false. I am not suggesting that karma is something that is some righteousness coming to take anyone down, but rather that when we hide from the truth, the truth stalks us since that truth is so important for our happiness and wellbeing. My ex’s life had been whittled away because of living an untruth and seeking to promulgate untruths about me. I wrote about this recently, just as it caused me to consider the effect the same acts others have perpetrated in my life which involved being dishonest. Would it stalk them too? Of course, but that wasn’t my story and they were out of my orbit, thankfully. I too wasn’t being honest about my truer nature and had allowed the worst of my fears to grip me. Luckily, I was able to dispel those fears once and for all. I mention this recent event with my ex because in that moment I felt this great weight lift, and when that happens, many more other things often tend to have a way of happening, too. But as for my condition, this swirl of concern over my health and mortality? It showed me that there is something beyond the pinched view I had in regards to what my ex had done and I read this event as my soul finally being heard before I might kick the bucket. But there was another possibility beyond my thinking that this was a presage to some kind of transition. Silly me.

I had so much to do, I thought, so much left to do that my soul came here in physical form to work through. I had several writing projects hanging over my head and I really needed to finish those so I could tick them off my soul contract. I had not spoken to anyone about these concerns except for just a few people, and none of them in my family. I didn’t want anyone to worry, least of all my daughter who was getting ready to finish up her last semester at college. I figured if it was bad like I feared, then I would have to look at chemo and surgery perhaps, and that would be a bridge I would have to cross once I got there. No use in setting off alarms and distracting people. On the other hand, I still considered this could be something else, so I stayed quiet. I am glad that I did. I am also glad I was able to get the question cleared up.

This experience has helped to also underline the importance of taking care of my gut health because my gut has felt like it has been zapped with electricity since the rise of kundalini 15 years ago. Those who practice Chi Gung claim that chi resides in the gut, and it may be that it exists as a kind of biological battery of sorts. I had developed symptoms of nausea after awakening (kundalini flue they call it), as well as a five month period where my body stopped feeling hunger, a period of time that led to the shedding of loads of blocked energy and also helping my system adjust to this new normal. The zapping of my gut though was always an issue, one that came and went, and now as I write this I find that the many notes that I wrote in my journal about way of supporting good gut health are now coming in handy. While I am not a doctor, I can feel how food effects my system and how I need to change my diet a little more. Some of this involves getting rid of wheat as a possible culprit for one aspect of my symptoms, another involves supporting healthy gut bacteria. There is more work to do, and my hope is that I can heal a very cranky system that has led me to a great deal of discomfort at times.

I remain concerned about the state of the world, one that feels like it is somehow running off the rails emotionally. I see groups seeking to seize control of the narrative in order to direct policy in a global way that I frankly find beyond worrisome. When I see leaders embracing a green ideology while at the same time banning the use of fossil fuels while they themselves are opening up new markets for their own liquified natural gas in Europe, I see hypocricy. When I see passports for tracking our carbon footprint and whether someone has had a vaccine, I see another form of control and the loss of freedom in the process. Freedom is messy, but the ability to speak freely even though it means listening to voices we do not agree with is the cornerstone of our form of government here in the U.S. and in other democratic societies. Without dialog we lose the means of thrashing through our challenges in a broader way, imperfect though it may be, and even if it inconveniences our own personal values. We have so much promise as a species and yet, if we are not free to work through our challenges in an open way, we lose the very thing that will help us to find new solutions to old problems. We have so much potential and I hate to think that we as a species might squander it. Only through freedom do I sense that we will open up the lanes of possibility which could lead us to a brighter tomorrow.

My big lesson in all of this is not to shrink from controversy, nor to allow my own inner fear get the best of me. Only by being neutral and open will I be able to see with clearer eyes. I am glad that I was wrong, at least on this one thing. There is a bliss that exists at the center of our being. So many have been cut off from this fundamental nature, and so often fear is the killer of this bliss. But even death does not stop it, as this too is part of the natural order of our existence. For myself, I am getting back to the pass of bliss again as the way through, but not around my own challenges. It is in the bliss state that I find my own mind is expanded and curiously, my own intuitive powers strengthened. It is as it has always been, this new mind birthed from the union of opposites in our consciousness. This bliss represents the fullest expression of the synthesis that takes hold of those who “wake up” and find their consciousness changed in a twinkling. I think this is the way through for many of us, and hopefully it will be the way for many more to follow.