A Surprising Outcome

I was working in the studio making a new type of work recently when something surprising happened. The work involved a body movement that required me to reach to a tool that was needed for the next step. I work with hot glass, and some steps involve very precise timing, and if a movement is not made correctly it can result in problems. In the case of this one step, I had to reach around a glowing red metal pipe in order to get at a tool. Since this movement was new, I was still learning it, putting it into “muscle memory” so that this movement could eventually go off without a hitch.

What happened was I wound up pressing the crook of my arm against the hot metal. And then something interesting happened, which is the reason for the post.

First, with my eyes on the tool, and not where my arm was, I realized what I had done. This had happened once before but without so much contact as was taking place at this moment. I continued to grab the tool, though, neither flinching or drawing back. This move took three seconds. I was aware of my skin on the hot metal all the way through this. I could hear and feel my skin sizzling. Then I could feel the nerve pain come barreling into my awareness. I had an odd calm through all of this…idd because for the first time ever, I just didnt react as I normally woukd have in the past.

I finished the movement, shaped the glass, turned around to get ready for the next step and found myself choosing a state of calm instead of a big reaction to the pain which was coming and which I knew would soon be so strong that I might need to stop my work because it would be too much. That’s when it happened.

A thought arose in my mind that I should try to not feel the pain, but instead to try and make it just go away. Up until this time I could feel an emotional and mental tension building like “steeling” myself for the inevitable rush of pain. Instead, something in me just relaxed a little and I felt myself aware that I might be able to change the outcome. Instead of feeling inner resistance, this felt more like surrender. This eliminated the tension, and it was immediately followed by a surprising change of events.

As I turned to make the next step in my work, I felt the pain being replaced by an entirely different sensation. This sensation was not pain at all. In fact, I experienced a coolness where the burn was. My arm exposed, I faced a furnace blasting heat at me. Normally this would have been like pouring salt on a wound. It would have made the burn howl with pain. But it didnt. I felt myself in a very calm detached state and I completed the piece I started in another five minutes without a hint of any pain whatsoever. This turned out to be one of the worst burns I have ever gotten in the studio.

The burn two weeks later and after the scab came off

I realized that what I was doing was controlling my autonomous nervous system, a kind of “brain hack” that enabled me to completely change my natural response to this burn. It wasn’t a moment of smugness, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was as easy as it was.

There was no pain at all until the following day when the burned skin began to dry and started to pinch and pull at my burned skin a round the edges. It oozed for several days after that. This was not a feeling of burning, but a different form of pain related to tender skin being covered in a crusty layer. After a few more days I put honey on the burn, which is known to have natural antibiotic qualities and the healing moved swiftly along.

Truth be told, I was always interested in these kinds of “feats” that seem to defy our normal understanding about how the body works. I read many years ago of Indian monks who could slow their heartrate incredibly slow, selectively lower blood flow to one arm or other extremity. And then I heard the story on the radio of the Tibetan monks who would go out on the coldest night in Winter (the full moon in February) with nothing more than a wet sheet, which they would dry with their body heat.

I always felt that there was more to ourselves than meets the eye, and I have begun to realize that at least in part, I knew this because in other lives, I had done things which were similar in nature. I was surprised at how effortless this turned out to be.

When I think about it, I began to realize that I had been practicing similar forms of deep control at the root level of my body. I had turned on and turned off all kinds of responses over the last few years. Just yesterday I found a pain in my abdomen wound up being energetic in nature, something our doctors might chalk up to as neuralgia or something similar, and as I sank into a meditative state, I reached a place where I could really feel the body response, look at it, and then just make a small effort at letting the tense energy lift away, which instantly addressed the pain. In this case, the pain was not even being induced by way of an injury or disease. My body was treating it like it was pain, or maybe it was my brain that interpreted this energy as pain and made it so. Whatever the exact case, the problem was no more.

You might be thinking, “Yeah, but pain is an important warning sign that helps alert you to trouble, Parker.” I would agree. Pain let’s you know something is wrong. But in the case of my burn, I knew I was being burned, could feel the pain crowding into my body like a freight train in flames. I just chose to reverse it. My stomach pain turned out not to be an injury at all, or disease, but instead a kind of persistent tension energetically that was being interpreted as pain (or as something wrong). If I hadn’t gotten to the bottom of my stomach pain, I might still be feeling something that might have only gotten worse and who knows…in time it could lead to physiological and chemical changes that could lead to a very real physical dysfunction.

I am passing this along because my sense is that the more we meditate, the more we spend time deep in the subconscious digging out stored emotional debris, the easier it is to begin brushing up against not just our emotional codes, but our physiological ones as well. I think that things like this may be a natural turn of events, much like how the Tibetans who were practicing g-tummo meditation were able to gain control over their body heat in order to dry sheets in zero degree temperatures. Not a boast or a brag, but to share with others interested in our own inner workings. If I can do it, so can you!

~Parker

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Making It Count

 

 

I only want one thing for you, if you are blazing with the fire and rushing with the rivers running through your heart and soul as your body is taking this wild ride of awakening: to make it count.

 

 

You can push this beyond what you think is possible, you can reach for the ripe fruit. You can dare yourself, you can reach uncharted waters.  I have been there, and I am egging you, nudging, waving my arms.  Its here.

 

 

Imagination is the portal through which you will go. Learn to trust it.  If you bring the awakened state with you, as you sink into it and it fires up, a world will emerge before you.  Blank slate at first, but hush, be quiet; its up ahead.  I am pointing you to the impossible.  I am asking you to make the unknown, known. Now lean into it.  Lean into it and ask a question….but that question should be something that you are really interested in.  Its not stock quotes or the lottery; you are here for the secrets of the universe, right?  Ask about how things go, the root cause of things.  Do not expect an answer, just make the call inside of your mind.  This is the inception.  It broods, it grows, it gestates. This is how it goes.  Wait.  But be ready. At any moment, it could come.  Make awakening your friend, make it your partner.  In it will be everything reflected.  But disbelieve that you can even do this and poof! It scatters like light in rain.

 

 

Then you are lost.  You are stuck with what you think you know, relying on what your senses have been telling you, which is itself a limited story.  You don’t need to read or acquire knowledge in the old way.  There is a new way, a way that has been used for a long time by a very few people.  It isn’t magic, and its poorly understood.  It just takes getting in the right grooove.

 

 

Feel with your body. Stop the mind.  This is how you shift out of the physical senses.  It is also how you can make your awakening count by doing this.  It does not seem legitimate simply because our world is awash in the belief that you can’t do this.  But you CAN.  I have, and so can you.  Sink into it, and let the mind go blank.  Its easy once you know how.  So slip into that delicious space where you don’t have to think or worry, you are in that place where you feel Presence.  It is YOUR presence that meets the Tao.  The One.  Its simple, no thunderclaps.  In fact, no one would believe you had done it, so let the haters hate, the empty suits just be empty.  You have this.  It is all done through feeling.  Its how its been done for centuries.  FEEL your body, FEEL your energy.  Let it grow and increase. Its so simple, so easy, yes?  Get quiet.  Feel those eddies and currents begin to flow and increase.  That is the first part.  Your mind goes quiet, you focus inwardly.  You are almost there…

 

 

You let your body FEEL it and the mind goes silent.  There, as you wonder if its even working, is the first thread.  Just grab it with that empty mind and don’t worry what will come.  FEEL it!  The more you learn to feel, the more of it that will come. This is the secret.  This is the reverse of rational thought.  It’s okay, you can do this, you have permission.  Play.  Consider.  What is there to lose or risk?  Then, it will seem as though some part of you is magically coming up with ideas, images, concepts. They will slowly begin to resolve.  Reach beyond what you think is possible.  It is like being suspended in thin air and all of a sudden land builds around you to support you: impossible, you think.  But there it is, a world is forming.  Let form build.  See where it takes you.  Everyone will go in the direction that they are most intimately interested in.  That is always the best stuff because it is so close to your heart, you see.  Your imagination is stepping beyond mere production to reception.  This is the other side of what imagination is! As you go, things add up….ideas stack up in your head.  You feel excited, you feel inspired.  It all seems crazy, your rational mind is in fits.  You let the rational mind go in circles for a while longer as you tease more and more threads from thin air.

 

 

I will tell you that I saw how matter is formed from energy using this method.  I wanted to know, but I did not know how it could be known.  Weeks later as I sat in a park I felt the inner Presence speak: “Look at the trees” it said.  I did, and I felt something pull me inward through their leaves and cells, down into their compounds, atoms, then subatomic particles.  All of this, through my third eye, I saw as if in my imagination a world explode into view.  I was there, feeling the warm breeze and watching carefully as my child played in front of me.  I was all completely there, tantalizingly present, totally aware of everything, yet this energetic presence was supporting me and showing me another channel.  My mind was fed information about that place where matter turns into energy and energy into matter.  It took me years to untangle it, to understand that what I was seeing had been described by such great minds as Plank, Heisenberg, and more.  I knew what I had seen was true, but really, who would have believed me?  I hadn’t gone to school for this, I hadn’t studied for years in books, and I hadn’t worked on advanced formulae.  I simply got pulled down into it and saw it first-hand.  I related to what I was feeling.  I FELT the phenomenon as an atom might feel itself.  I WAS the phenomenon.  I had to translate it, make it into something my mind could grasp.  But I did, and you can too.  All of this took only moments. I kept going back to it over and over, just to get a better look, and to satisfy my rational mind that it was real.  Of course it was real.  Doubters will always doubt, and that is the rational mind for you…

 

Seers have done this for centuries, and because it was so poorly understood they were often oppressed.  You do not need to fear this this time around.  The world supports this, this way is built into the very molecules of life and matter.  It is encoded into the All like light shines through our world.  This thread can lead you to many other worlds and can fill your life with inspiration, creativity, and life.  It IS life.  A forgotten life….but you can remember it, and the more who do this the easier it will be for others.  I have blazed a trail as others have, too.  Just follow the path of least resistance into the underbrush.  Feel the currents pull you.  Trust the universe in the wisdom and structure built into it.

We can all do this, it isn’t so hard.  It is reading the light.  It is teasing strands out of the ether, and it can be used for the good of all.  We can learn how to do this and we can teach others. We have this one moment in the sun of our illumination where this can be done and passed on.  It need not be covered over in myths and legends, or in misconstrued notions about how reality is or might be.  You need only consider that it could happen….

A Wondrous Gift

I know that as I grew from a child into adulthood that there were those brilliant flashes of insight that came without any rhyme or reason that would light up my life in such a way that they often proved pivotal moments that helped to accelerate thinking and becoming.  Once, when very small, I awoke from a dream in which I had been shown how to ride a bike.  I was all of five years of age and had not been urged to try and ride a two-wheeler.  It was just me and my tricycle.  I loved that thing.  I got it for Christmas.  But its sparkle was dimmed that morning when I went dashing out of the house, skipping breakfast as I ran yelling that I KNEW how to ride a bike.  I hopped on and off I went.  How  on earth could a kid of that age do such a thing?

What caused such experiences like these would remain a mystery in a sense.  Deeper into the knowing, though, I have come to realize that all of this, all of these experiences in my life were akin to pulling back a curtain on myself.  What it has revealed has been one wondrous gift after another.  None of them have been quite so sweet as the sense that we are composed of something more than what our rather stuffy left brains tell us is concensus reality.  We stay boxed into these world views that we are somehow limited when we aren’t.  The challenge is what our senses seem to be telling us.  Everything happens linearly, everything happens a certain way according to what it is we believe is true.  And yet, something glimmers beneath, like some great grey whale of an encounter just beneath the small slip of a boat that is our world view.

There is more.  I am more, you are more.  More than you could ever dream.  And yet, in touching dream, it is all there, waiting for you.

In awakening, all of this has been accelerated and I have been given view after view of things that have been wonderful gifts.  Taken down into the  incredibly small world of atoms and subatomic particles to be shown how the world is threaded with a single needle of purpose and brilliance, and that this needle has two sides which SEEMS to be the heart of duality, but really isn’t was nothing short of an epiphany encounter.  It awaits for the moment when each of us can begin to “get” that our own minds have been playing a trick on us and belief and conditioning has simply come along to codify it, to cast it into some concrete monolith that does not really suit it.  Or us.

Last summer, sitting quietly on my front porch looking up at the night sky I felt that familiar pull into that grey whale of an experience.  The curtain was pulled back for me to view and a voice that was not a voice spoke and showed me yet again how it is we are composed and revealed in sparkling clarity a mystery which has lain at the center of this talk of the dual current that moves up our bodies and fires off the flame of awakening; Shakti and Shiva, the yin and yang.  The dual serpents of kundalini.  In simple terms I was shown how the energy moves up through the body….less as a linear current and more as a presence.  But for simplicities sake, lets take the old school approach and say it was a current.  This presence within me showed how awakening is not just promised for each of us, but is actually insured by HOW we are actually designed neurologically, energetically, physically.  In that one moment, it was explained why the left brain controls the right and why right brain controls the left, and how this is significant for us in our evolutionary spiral.  I am not widely read, but I do pick up things here and there as I pick from the buffet of information out there and I have simply never come across anything quite like this.  Why not?  Perhaps somewhere, there is some dusty scroll that contains this information, and if it is mainstream, I have yet to hear of it.  But in understanding this insight into how the current of the TWO moves through us in a very specific way, a new world emerges where the very design of our being is turned on its head.  How can we be the broken beings so often mentioned in old books that seek to explain why life is so hard and trying?  We just never really understood what was at the root of all of this trial.  It wasn’t some angry god or fate or any of that, for this one simple insight that came last summer to me that erased all of that.  If what I saw or came into knowing is to be believed, the world is in fact entirely misunderstood by some of us and the realization emerges that we simply have been seeing it all wrong.  This insight is nothing short of a grand epiphany, and if it has not been spoken of before, it will help many to realize how it is that the energy of awakening can lead to the enlightened state.  Without dogma or myths or beliefs, but a very simple mirroring effect that is at once in the energetic template of our etheric being AND in the physical body as it also points or shows very clearly that reaching into the crown for the highest vibration is actually not some elusive thing, but a VERY physical thing and that it has been created entirely by design in each of us.  All of us.  Personally, I think such a realization is actually cause for celebration.  

This insight is one of many and I am not giving away the store because I have these and others like it teased out of the ether over the last seven years of my awakening experience in the form of a book I am working through that I hope to bring forth for what it is worth for those who like to chew on substantive material.  At least I think it is of substance, and someday soon, you will get to judge for yourself.  It isn’t that this post is about specific insights, but HOW such insight can literally change how we view the world and how we understand who and what we are within it.

The Hindus often speak of the abilities that come with awakening as those things that we ought not tarry around, but to keep our eyes fixed on the star of our greater becoming.  In a sense I agree, but you know, if we all did that in our lives, nothing of any substance would be brought forward.  Consider a gift that you have and consider having someone saying that you ought to ignore that ability or gift in favor of something more.  Perhaps, dear reader, all of this, all of life and everything in it is that something more and we, locked into rigid conceptualizations of HOW we think things need or should be,  miss the boat on the golden glints in the sands of our journey through this experience which could bring such fulfillment to all of us.  Think how the world would be had the great composers of music followed the promptings of the yogis of old and simply kept their discoveries and creations a secret.  What if Monet had simply chosen to set his brushes aside and instead just looked at those haystacks and ponds and smiled.  For him, perhaps an epiphany, but for the rest of us, a poverty. What if Carl Jung had simply chosen to keep his insights to himself?  What if Jesus had chosen to remain silent in the desert and kept to sawing wood and being filled with the Holy Mother of Spirit as she ducked and dove within the Father as he remained entirely mute?

When we choose to use our gifts for raising ourselves up selfishly, perhaps some tarnish comes to our souls.  Perhaps our own vision is diminished even as we seek to look far.  But what if, like children, we act upon our insights and choose to share our basket of goodies with the rest of our friends and thus make the world around us richer?  What if Edgar Cayce had chosen not to dream and speak in his dreaming?  And what if the great orator and mover of hearts, Martin Luther King, had chosen not to dream?

Dream. All of you.  Make them big and be daring.  Be full of possibility, and plunder the great wellspring that is your infinite self.  Do it shamelessly and often.  Be willing to just give it all away on a moment’s notice if you must.  The world needs more of you.  The world needs it like a thirsty man who has crawled through the desert needs water.  We thirst and hunger for it even as our reach may move beyond our grasp.  This has always been the way it has been.  And yet, we move forward, sometimes inching, sometimes bounding.  At a certain point we will find ourselves no longer struggling and crawling on hands and knees, but dancing ecstatically,  arms raised to sun and moon and to that compass that criss crosses the sky of our becoming.  It will always point both heavenward and earthward.  Inside and outside.  The moment we think it is “out there” is the moment we are moved to see what is within us.  It isn’t one or the other.

So dream big.  Pull back the curtain.  See all that you can see, and share your basket.  Do not fear your ability or gift, whatever it is.  You are one of us.  All of us.  And you need us as much as we need you, if only to remind us of that one important insight that could be yours and which will become ours and which could serve to move mountains in the most surprising of ways.  You really never  know.  So dance like you mean it.  Ecstatically.

The gift is what each of us is.  We are each reminding each of us what we are.  Some will seek shadow while some will seek light.  I suppose all of it will prove to be of some benefit in ways we can scarcely imagine.

So try to imagine.