My name is Parker. I am a professional artist and educator. I am a father to two children. I have been a seeker most of my life, beginning at age nine and continuing right up to the moment that awakening began to flower. Awakening was a seismic process for me that changed so much in my life, some of which was hard to deal with.
Awakening changed so much, and while the change was hard, it also returned me to that which I really had needed all along. I am doing this without buying into any tradition, no guru or teacher. It has been an inner admonition og my own inner compass as if to say, “Try to understand all of this without what others have believed themselves into…” You wont find a leaning in any particular direction common to Eastern or Western schools of thought (“the self does not exist,”or, ” everything is an illusion.” What I write about comes from direct experience and from a teacher who came into my life at a critical time whose path wasa lot like mine; she followed her own experience, the teaching within and what an emergent higher self had to say. I try to write with as little lingo as possible.
I wont say that my life was an ordinary one prior to awakening because it wasn’t. But do ANY of bus have so-called normal lives?
It is my feeling that we each have an inner authority, a divine compass, that can guide us when we are radically honest and humble enough to hear it. We listen to authorities for truth, but your truth is in you and I say you must dig for it in order for it to mean anything. Awakening has confirmed this to me, but my practice refines it. It is important to listen to others who love you and find out what that love has enabled them to see in you, positive and negative. Most people simotly do not see things as they are but through inner filters. For me, I note that releasing stored emotional material from the past leads to being free and more open to see things as they are. This is a journey each person must make on their own.
We are at an interesting watershed moment in history. At no time has there been so many waking up as now. It is time to push our understanding further down the road. Already my awakening defies several key tenets of kundalini according to very kind and generous Indian men who explain that I didn’t get the right education or practice. And yet, I really did raise kundalini in January of 2007 despite having no teacher, method, or guru. This is exactly how thousands of others like me have done it also, so be careful about pronouncing hard and fast rules. Things are changing…but maybe more; an entire generation is ready.
What I seek to do here is to give you some of what I have found along the way not by reading what others say, but observing my own experience and then seeing how it correlates with others in a sincere desire to help demystify the experience so that we can continue to step out of our collective shadow as a species. My desire is to help raise awareness and thereby raise everyone’s boats.
Most of my work here is entirely unplanned. It is what I can do between working in school, my life as a parent, my studio business, and my own inner journey and work. However, as is most often the case, the unplanned opens the door to possibilities that I could not have known had I planned it all out. This is the kundalini shakti, the right brain, the cosmic door inside of each of us. I teach glassblowing in the Blue Ridge Mountains and I run a production studio. I teach because I love, but I produce in order to survive. All of life, a balance.
I am glad you are here, and I hope I can provide some nuggets of useful truth for your journey forward. If you are writing on your own experience, I would love to hear about it-follow me so I can follow back! In this light-
नमस्ते
Parker
Image copyright Parker Stafford
I’m interested to know the details about how you first experienced your awakening
Oh! I think because I am writing a book about it I feel like I have covered in such detail even though I have not here. Perhaps I should put something up…
I think that in so many ways much of what is on the blog is an echo of that….the awakening…..over and over and over in big and small ways….and it may be that I do not have a simple description of how it all started. I also think that by writing about the experience in my book Waking The Infinite (which I am STILL working on!!!) I feel like I have already told that story. But I will revisit this and see how I might be able to put it into a short version.
This blog is promoting new and upcoming authors:
http://aopinionatedman.com/2013/12/20/calling-all-new-authors-self-publishers-entrepreneurs/
Why not have them promote and spot light your new book, “Waking the Infinite”? 🙂
Thank-you for the suggestion and the link! I am currently accumulating sources for promotion that are online, some of which have begun following the blog, but I’m just not there yet. Right now, though, I am in the midst of what I hope is a final edit before I have some pros take a look at it to see what else I can do to get it into even better form as either a book deal or a self-publish route. The holidays have put work on hold, but I hope to be digging back into it soon!
You are most welcome! 🙂
Thank you!!! A lovely blog I’m following.Stay blessed:)
Thank-you for stopping by!
Thank-you!
beautifully written.. thanks eve
You are WELCOME! Thanks so much for stopping by!!
Saw your like on one of my posts – thanks ! I haven’t spoken to you in ages… my kundalini is intense… lots of karmic horror and bliss… Hope you are doing Okay and your process is Okay?
Don’t be no stranger, there fella. Glad you are doing alright! What are you doing to release and feel better? You really sounded like you were going through a lot of intense stuff. Did you take your blog private or something? I thought I tried clicking on it and no go…but things have been a blur lately for me, too, so could have been someone else. Thanks for checking in!
Actually, yesterday, so much stuff came moving through me in a way it had not done before it has left me reeling today. Overload. Like I hooked into this….phone line with all calls coming in at once. Weird. I was awake, not dreaming and just seeing all of this playing across my lids…Yeah, so like what else is new, right? Lol!
I did close my blog. First I made it private… then I went through all my old posts and found most of them didn’t relate to a newer me…and I deleted them! Then I made the blog public again but it only has a few posts.
I’m still doing energy enhancement yoga to help release the blocks… what I would say is that my release of karma and blockages has sped up tremendously! and I’m flicking between love/bliss and the worst fears and depression of my life.
I’m reliving a lot of heavy karmic stuff linked to the occult and what I feel are distant past lifetimes.
One good thing I feel is when I compare photos of myself or energy from my posts – I seem to be purging of this stuff, the energy seems stronger and more pure.
I feel like kundalini in my heart – as heart energy, has flung me right out of my comfort zone and my ego mind with it’s fears have been thrown into tough challenge.
If I had to say how I’m doing, I’d say ‘good’, but it’s crazy ups and downs every day. It feels like the karmas I’m processing have gotten to subterranian depths! and I have little choice but to cope as best I can, either allowing the kundalini to ground it or using meditation methods to help.
I’m feeling a good level of protection spiritually, coming from god. But I’m also getting the feeling of my ego losing control.
I feel like I can’t choose where I live, who my friends are, or any major details of my life.
It’s like a little ego saying ‘help, I’m losing control’, and a big heart saying ‘this will be good for you in the long-run so suck it up.’
Feels good to talk to you, another kundalini person. We really do follow the submissive path to higher self/god.
It’s for the greater good, on a personal and macrocosmic level.
I am mostly processing heavy implants – karmic energy from past times, and inner children or soul splits – they make me feel depressed, angry or afraid when they come up. When they heal I feel more like a soul – positive energy and sort of neutral.
Desires continue to be pulled out of me, fears going one by one.
What is energy enhancement yoga? Is it pranayam? And yes on how you feel after releases! Takes “work” but after a while, it all adds up. And now the ego issue, which came along similarly for me. It was hard. But what I learned was to let go, to surrender deeper and deeper until ego slips out of your center focus and can be used as needed….sooo much better! When the energy felt hard, I knew it was just me resisting, fighting it. But as I let go, I found much more peace. Quiet mind, calmer energy…less snagging me. Ego does not die, it just become more mobile so when you need to set it aside it goes without the old problems or resistance. Good for inner work and reflection. The dark feelings are just shadow…. embrace it and the dragon will turn into a mouse. Feels like guilt to me….so forgive and let in more light. You are doing really great, looks like! Obviously your soul knew you were the self who could undertake this. Sometime I’d like to tell you about how first teachers or catalysts can sometimes either imprint or reflect something in/on us…. looking into that and how to clean that I think can be good. Also, clearing entities helps a lot. It’s really easy if you know how. It also speeds up the releases….but it sounds you are really rocking the kundalini!
Also, the swings into depression lessen greatly as this progresses. Mine cleared significantly just a few months ago with a couple of key releases. What a relief!
Great… yeah I am certainly having a lot of problems and ups and downs. I feel like I am integrating long lost aspects of my soul which got broken off or split off from past lifetimes.
I have had guilt also! a lot of really terrible things god has shown me, both what I did to other people, and what then happened to me from a karmic swing-about. It involved various types of torture and nasty stuff which I never want to happen to people.
This feels like I am going through a spring cleaning of my soul, on a deep level – which hasn’t happened for hundreds of lifetimes!
You should leave me a message if you feel guided to, and I’ll check. I don’t talk to many k-people, but I have watched a lot of youtube videos. Seems like the theme behind it is all the same – but that everyone has different types of karma.
I don’t get to view my past lifetimes but sometimes god shows me and I relive the emotional trauma of some of them which I need to integrate. I often feel like I absorb the wisdom when these pieces of lost soul return back to get healed and integrated.
In effect, the dark shadow aspects of my soul are returning to get healed, and then they merged into my main soul. Many hundreds of these pieces have been returning for quite some time now.
So appreciative of how clearly you are talking about this topic. Believing also, that it’s necessary for deeper experiential understanding, I know it is helpful for others. I didn’t know where to look in the beginning of my awakening & some things I did find on-line only intensified fear based thoughts already present. There are a couple of teachers these days who speak more clearly about this psycho-physio-spiritual process & it’s awesome! Many Thanks!
btw ~ just started a new post yesterday in which I’m reflecting back to those early-early days 🙂
Oh, good! I look forward to your look back! You know, on the one hand, I do very much feel that while we often feel out of our depth sometimes in the early stages of awakening we soon learn the wonderful resource, the “open door” that this experience offers which some call, perhaps rightly so, the guru within. On the other hand, sometimes a sentence or chance meeting is all it takes to accelerate our awareness sometimes. I find I do the same thing I was doing pre-awakening, which is reading here and there but always going with my gut or heart, or maybe intuition, to take what feels nourishing and right for the time and leave the chaff. A sifting process. And sometimes what didn’t seem useful in the past suddenly becomes relevant because of how much change, healing, and growth can happen amidst this great blessing that is awakening. I’m so glad that its helped, and glad too that you reached out to let me know. I look foward to your work on the subject as well; we all can learn so much from each other, I think.
absolutely! 🙂
I’m very happy to have made your acquaintance 🙂 Your “about you” resonates deeply with me. I have a quality of mind that, although I seek to know my experience directly, in depth and as openly to the fullness of it as possible, mind often reads the descriptions of it in the traditions I’m familiar with (yoga, tantra, and buddhism for the most part), and believes it is not possible for there to be anything additional or more about the experience. This has been deeply frustrating often. As I write this I’m seeing the opportunity to give mind some updated instructions: will have to check out the “programming” (I really don’t believe that’s accurate, but it will have to do for the moment) and write some new routines.
Hope to chat with you sometime soon; also will peruse your work 🙂
K
Hi Karen. Thank you for your feedback. If I understand you correctly, I would say to what you wrote that while I tend to try to be free of traditions coloring my experience, I have read post-awakening more about them (all of the ones you mentioned in fact) and they all do an excellent job at describing as well as helping to map out so much about what I consider to be the “pranic universe” of our being. I’m very eclectic, and really enjoy taking an integrative approach to these wise old traditions by taking from them the best they have to offer. But for me, I also find odd cultural biases that float up within them that aren’t always apparent, and weren’t to me until I got deeper into my process. Tantra was something I knew little about, for example, but realized that I was living it as an inward path (White tantra) and it was very nice to read about something that was so near and dear. I’m a Westerner is all, and I think it’s time for us to speak into the experience in a way that reflects our own turn of mind (and it’s looking like it’s turning into a mix for many…so it’s all good. Anyway, sorry for the ramble and I hope you find things here that a park new things for you.
Spark* not park…!
Thanks. I’m curious about “white tantra”…will look that up. The ancient yoga texts available to me (patanjali for the most part, as far as speaking to post-awakening process) (Virtually no contemporary with the exception of Adiashante) and the people of the Yoga tradition I am closest to had very little to offer in terms of what happens once you begin to experience lower samadhi.
The teachings of the Buddha on the 7 factors of enlightenment were very helpful, as far as they went, but “pranic universe” doesn’t really sound much like what he was discussing; so…I’m curious what texts you have read that were informative, as aside from the big B, I’ve not seen much that was descriptive of my experience.
On another note–I’ve just read the first 1/2 of your “Journey to Awakening”, but I had to stop–for me the lines of text are so close together that I got to a point where I could not follow them anymore. I’m going to save that article on a word document stretch out the spacing, and come back to it when my eyes have had a rest, hope that’s ok, please let me know if it’s not.
Awakening itself has become the primary source. Most everything written that’s illuminated or insightful speaks to it to some extent. At this point I don’t read for gaining knowledge as much as seeing who touched on what aspect and how. Once awakening comes fully my experience has been that it becomes possible to know without the texts….because we have it in us, it’s the getting to it that is the trick, and to do that has meant, for me at least, w emptying my mind and allowing that part “behind” the silence to show me.
I made “pranic universe”up…to point out that all of our inner experience is circumscribed in large part by it.
I think formatting is done by Word Press, so sorry it’s scrunched, but certainly unscrunch!
ok, thoughts; pranic universe, suggests that your experience is within the field of energies; yet my experience seems to go to something which is beyond energy–a No-Thing-ness; yet also there is “closer”(?) appearing aspect which I experience as a very high, subtle vibration (terms, heck I don’t know but this comes closest) experience of “Bliss”–which seems to have purpose and intent in a very active way, yet which rarely “speaks” in any easily readable way ( so far anyway), but does act, heal, teach, communicate, share, get me ridiculously drunk on Bliss, etc. This is what I call the Mother, as she feels more relatable than the experience of “No-thing-ness”, even though I feel the Mother is really basically a “nearer” expression of That. So, Bliss to me seems like something much finer than “prajna”. I see that as kind of tertiary in the overall situation of what is or what seems to be. How does this compare with your experience? Does it at least make sense to you? How would your description differ?
Well…it’s been a process, a moving target for me. Awakening usually begins as intense, but the Indian texts describe kundalini (prana) as being still…and we think of prana as vibration. As time has gone by and I have continued to clear blocked emotional energy, indeed, the energy has gotten finer and finer. As for no-thingness, there is a mind that can be utterly calm and silent, a deep seeming nothingness…which I have found is something, but too much to go into here. I used to make definitive statements about all of this in the past, but not so much anymore. I think I reached a point where I realized yes, I made a leap, but let’s keep this in perspective because there is more…and beyond that other things I have yet to unfold to. It’s humbling, and I keep a lot to myself because it’s too much to explain and it’s better to be with it.
I observe that I can seemingly move past the strong local vibrations that are part of my local self here and visit far parts of the soul, but to embody them, it’s all about clearing the dross away in the light body (and through which prana moves and animates those blocks). It’s late and I’m wondering if I’m making sense…it was a looong day for me.
The Mother is experienced as a broad field…a big picture that is like a womb of potential, so it often has an almost mysterious quality…but at a certain point these become like subdivisions that acrete to a still larger consciousness that is itself more than mother or father…even though these two are like rails on a ladder that get me to this prime awareness. ‘Night, Karen. In-joy all of it.
ok, yes. so, did some tantric meditation this morning, your discussion of it (although I haven’t yet finished the article) caused me to realize I was maybe missing out on some of the benefits….not so much anymore 🙂 Also, the broad field you describe, do you equate this in part with No-thing-ness? If not, is there any specific reason? The reason I ask is that I see that as kind of an unavoidable ultimate reality, and mysterious by it’s nature, in that it can’t be defined. As such, I feel it is important to commune directly with this apparently wildly creative, creating everything in each and in every moment of existence.
My experience of the field is what appears to be a nearly infinite field that interconnects everything all the way down to the smallest subatomic particles in our physical universe, parallel universes, alternate realities and densities of matter (dimensions). This field, as I have viewed it is immense and within it or an aspect of it is a “place” where everything goes silent, still, and perhaps even empty. It has been described by various cultures as connected to the Tao, etc., and I experience a representation of it in me as well on a micro scale. I don’t really care what other people call it, I just experience it. I have found no new discoveries are made by following but going your own way. Currently I am working on observations about this field. It feels empty at a certain place because I think we don’t understand what it is. As I progress through my work inwardly and release more within, I can see more and more clearly through my own light body into these worlds within all things. I find that it’s helpful to find others at similar points in their process who can help confirm a few things that are out there, but it’s also important(for me) to not get stuck remaining in place where others are in their own work since subtle conditions have subtle effects on us all. There aren’t many people who I can confer with, and it’s no longer as much of an issue as it was in the beginning. I suppose I trust what I see but also know that there is more to know….even stuff that seems set in stone (old old teachings…good to a point but only go so far—this thing is experiential). Anyway, hope that answers your question.
Thank you Parker for your blog Waking The Infinite. You are definitely a soul brother. I had a minor awakening in the 70’s but was told in 2011 that I was starting on my Spiritual apprenticeship – and in 2016 had a major k-awakening – activated by a person on a deep inner path. When I asked if he was experiencing (aware of) the same things I was the answer came back, no – but he knew the Way. Later on I realized the Way was Tao.
But I just want you to know all the blogs I have read so far of your experiences are so familiar to me that they bring a great deal of comfort knowing others are living/experiencing life in such a different way than the majority of human beings here on earth. Namaste.
Awww…thats so nice to hear, glad to know my rambling strike a chord with someone. It has been a labor of love. That said, I’m glad to make your acquaintance and look forward to your own writing (which I hope you have on WP?) because it is so interesting to me to now be learning of so many people’s awakenings. It used to be just the Krishnamurti’s, Yogananda, G. Krishna….no Westerners except maybe Ram Dass and a few others I have only recently become aware of.
And keep in touch-your story sounds like one that is familiar….perhaps an insight into how this energy operates in a Western cultural environment? Blessed be.
I thought I’d already read your About Me info, but realized I hadn’t. Nice to put your spiritual experience into the human context of being a father, teacher and artist. FYI, my sister blog, Remembering My Divinity, is where I post in more detail and get a bit more raw when it comes to the spiritual things in life, and my healing work. I’ve never been a seeker – spirituality found me. (https://mypeacenow.wordpress.com/) .
I couldn’t reply to your last comment to me on your post “The Nature of Prana”, regarding my son, but I wanted to thank you so very much for sharing about your dyslexia. It’s being an amazing lesson for me to raise a son who in some ways is so very different from me, yet we’re both very heart connected. Because my brain is doing so much major rewiring these days, I have to remind myself that my son will be fine. He’ll find his way (with help – as we all do), and make it to adulthood. Just a rough patch at the moment.
Ah, I see. I didn’t realize you had two blogs. I will check it out!