Marks Of Awakening

U.G. Krishnamurti had them, saints and other “ecstatics” have had them, as well as some members of the Warao of the Orinoco Delta have been known to have them.  The topic of stigmata or marks from no known physical source is one that is documented, known, and yet in truth little is known about it.  One of the early phenomenon for me was a mark on my body that could not be explained by conventional means and happened around the time that awakening was taking place.  My awakening happened slowly in such a way that I didn’t know it was kundalini,  During that time I had a series of very unusual things taking place that I was careful not to talk about for fear that people would have thought I was crazy!  Part of what happened to me is something that I was concerned may have been connected to my experience in a dream during that time.

Let me explain that the marks on my body have been documented by photographs as they have happened. Also, their emergence cannot be explained in any traditional fashion that have thus far been conjured.

The first mark I received was during my six month period of “high strangeness” that led up to the full blown awakening effects that would happen early the following year and, happened not long after I had had a very vivid dream that involved a being that was not human.  This being was incredibly vivid and I was able to make drawings of it.  I found a source on the web, quite by accident, that was the account of a man who had had long ongoing experiences with nonhuman beings in what he described as abduction scenarios who drew pictures of the exact type of being I had dreamed of (these were not at all like the typical grey alien being however).  The man was an artist and his images were so unusual for how perfectly they depicted the being I saw in the dream.   The details were very specific down to the thickness and character of their skin, which was much thicker than our own, an upper eyelid that worked differently than ours and gave them a strange staring look of surprise.  Their eyes, which were not at all bug-like as described in the alien grey scenarios, were much more like our own.  They were slightly bigger for their frame and the eye was almost entirely black except for a brilliant beautiful blue ring around the iris.  Descriptions of the manner of these beings have all been consistent with my dream.  So this was, as you might imagine, all very strange to me.  I was very concerned that maybe I was being caught up in some kind of alien experience.  What concerned me was how people normally had no control over their experiences.  This was what caused me concern, you see. The first mark happened around this time.

In an interesting post script to this strange dream of this possible ET being, the person who was with me in the dream, and who I had never told the dream, later would describe to me a dream she had about a being that was startlingly similar to the one I had dreamed of.  Later, while watching a movie that had some fairy-like beings in them, she jumped up and exclaimed how similar one being was to the one she had dreamed of.  This being was so similar to the one I had dreamed of five or six years earlier that it was spooky!

The mark took the shape of a large crescent mark on my right hip.  It appeared one morning without any way to properly explain how it got there.  Let me explain.  I am a glassblower.  I make what is called offhand blown glass.  My work is traditional handblown glass using pipes which are dipped in a pool of molten soft glass in order to blow bubbles in it that are formed into vases, bowls, ornaments, lamp shades, sculptures, and more.  I work around high heat all the time so I know the effects of burns from hot metal objects, glass objects, as well as radiant heat burns.  Name it and I have seen it.  My furnaces, which run at 2,200° Farenheite, are hot on their outsides and belch a good deal of heat which can be felt twenty feet away across the same room from them when doors are opened, for example!  I am used to working in this kind of environment.  Burns are not uncommon and I have learned a lot about burns over the years for the simple fact that I have gotten so many of them.  One thing I can tell you is that I have never gotten a burn that I did not feel soon after it was inflicted.  Ever.  The burn that showed up on my hip would have been of the type that would have burned a hole in my jeans and would have caused me significant pain.  That is to say, I would have noticed this burn upon its being inflicted.  This pain would have lasted for several days while slowly tapering off.  In the meantime the burn would have blistered, weeped, and crusted over.  I would have missed work because being near a heat source would have caused it to “rage” from the heat.

The mark looked just like a burn, this is true.  However, there was no pain associated with the mark, not even an itch, which was unusual.  Stranger still was that the mark completely disappeared once I noticed it.  It faded within three days time completely without scarring of any kind.  So if it wasn’t a burn, what was it?  One thing I can tell you is that I woke up one morning and noticed the burn.  this led me, at least for the time being, to worries that it had a non-terrestrial origin.  This was based on my noticing how some people who have had abduction experiences with ET’s have had burn marks on their skin.  In fact, I found out about the ET connection by doing a search for burns of this type.  There are a lot of people who also have ET experiences who also have strange burns that behave in exactly the same way as my burn behaved.  Add a strange ET dream to the mix and you have a concoction that for the time, caused me a great deal of concern. I don’t think I am ready to be branded by the aliens just yet….and yet, at the time, it was a very real concern simply because of just how STRANGE is all was!  ALL of it!  Good golly, get a burn with no explanation, toss in a weird alien dream and I’m running around like my hair is on fire.  I joke, but you get the idea.

I have considered an infection of some kind, but an infection would have caused topical swelling that this burn mark did not have.  Ringworm, which is a fungal infection, was next in line. That too was marked off the list simply because I was unable to find any examples of ringworm that formed a crescent the size of my mark.  I posted this story on another blog and got a response from someone who had had a similar mark on her right shoulder and this had taken place in conjunction to spiritual energy being present.  This person had found my account because she had been searching for what this all could mean and came across my account.

Within a matter of days of having released a significant and longstanding block in my heart chakra which had been causing me a significant amount of pain for close to a year, there appeared a smaller mark directly over my heart chakra, which was one inch above the bottom of my sternum in my chest.  This mark has persisted ever since then, which has been over two years.  It is circular yes, but it also shows up as a kind of crescent mark where the waxing part of the crescent is pointing directly upward towards my head.  Since that time, I have released more blocks and in the wake of the last big release of a block, which was not in my heart center but the sacral chakra, the mark has grown to include a second circle which now gives the heart mark the appearance of an infinity mark standing up on its side like the number 8. They appear as two crescents with the fuller end of the crescent being upward and downward, alternatively.  These two crescents are about the size of an American dime or British half-pence.  This mark is nowhere near as big as the first that showed up on my hip and it also does not go away.  It waxes and wanes somewhat, but I am reminded that it is there when I look in the mirror.  It feels more like it is an expression of some form of energy in my body that is affecting my skin somehow.  It feels like something is trying to seep out of me, perhaps an energy of some kind.

This heart mark, which DOES have a size consistent with ringworm has not responded to any medication that ringworm responds to. It seems, at least for now, to be a regular feature.  I continue to photograph the marks from time to time and I pay attention to when it gets brighter or weaker looking in order to learn as much as I can about this unusual phenomenon.

Ordinarily these kinds of marks usually are an expression of some spiritual fact or issue.  In the Christian tradition marks on the body run the gamut from burns and whip marks to actual holes in the body that bleed as is the case with the passion of Christ.  This, though, is but one manifestation of such an effect.  To understand it, consider that when people are under hypnosis burns can be induced from the mere suggestion that the hypnotist is holding a hot branding iron to the person’s skin.  This has caused swelling, reddening from a histamine release to the area, along with a blister forming in many cases.  Its not that far from the possibility that any number of skin effects could happen at a time when the body and self are undergoing a powerful transition or transformation spiritually or energetically.  For me, I did not get crosses or holes in my palms because that tradition wasn’t the content of my experience.  My wagon was not hitched to that particular experience.  The moon, though, has continued to play an oddly synchronistic role throughout my awakening.  I have met someone who is connected to the moon as a spiritual element in her inner work.  I have suspicions that there was some past life involvement with something that was called “The Daughters of Isis.”  I don’t think we have anything on this group beyond old stories or perhaps rumors.  I am not so sure we even have much about these ancient practices.  What it may all mean, I really am unsure.  WHat I am sure of, though, is that if it is important for me to know, it will be made known.

I am not posting the marks here simply because I feel that for those who will not believe, it wont matter if I show photos or not.  Skepticism is more a belief than a desire to know the truth, I have found.   An honest answer will most often lead to still more skeptical questions not in an effort to get to the truth but to express a skepticism simply because a phenomenon is outside of someone’s own realm of experience.  We tend to doubt what we have never experienced, and while this is a good way to go about things, it is also a bad way of being able to accept things as they are.  This leads to arguing with evidence sometimes.  I have posted these marks in other places so that if you really want to see them, you can.

I am posting this because there may be others who have had these unusual unexplained effects and cannot understand why they are happening.  It may be that my case is so rare that there are few cases happening.  For as strange is it may sound, I have come to the conclusion that the burns in the “abduction” cases may well be nonphysical manifestation of something deeper going on for these abductees. This is a long story and it has to do with what I think is a misconstrual of what we as humans take the ET presence on earth to be, which is not all as it appears.  I am not talking about a conspiracy by shadowy men in black, but rather something more fundamental to human spirituality and our lack of awareness of beings all around us in the etheric which are seeking to appear in a given guise.  Interestingly, there is an insightful and freethinking scholar who very much stands outside the realm of traditional Christian spirituality who has built a convincing theory about what the ET presence actually is all about, at least in part. It also helps to underscore how lacking in awareness we are as beings and that the flames of awakening can help to break away the barriers, at least in part, of how we perceive things.

So no, I do not think this is about aliens.  However, people who are on the verge of awakening HAVE had such experiences which they take to be real events which have happened in a vivid and seemingly real holographic reality much like an out of body state.  Like a dream that seems so real you think its actually happening, these people have had these experiences.  Some have led to burn marks, for example, not so much because they have been physically abducted but because this is a nonphysical reality now being expressed through the agency of body Gnosis, or stigmata.  The mind says it is real and thus creates an effect that would seem to express this reality, except that the root of the effect is misconstrued or misunderstood for what it is.  The burn is itself just an effect, and it is happening nonphysically and since we know so little about this effect, it is taken as being caused in physical reality when its not.  THAT is one concept that I know is a bit hard to swallow, but is to my mind quite possible given what John Lash, the scholar I have mentioned earlier, has uncovered about the alleged ET source (which, if you have been following my drift you will suspect doesn’t have anything to do with ET’s at all).

Awakening Symptoms

There are lists of the  symptoms of kundalini awakening, and at first glance, they are bewildering in their breadth, and do little to shed light on the larger phenomenon (at least at first glance).  I say this because they are just so broad a range of symptoms that it might lead some to wonder if this is A thing or many other things.  But I assure you, it is THE thing.  The symptoms are so broad I think because kundalini isn’t like something you catch, like a cold.  With a cold, it’s a fairly focused or specific experience.  You get head, throat, and ear soreness.  You sneeze and cough.  You get itchy eyes and you feel tired.  You might have congestion.  But for the most part, a cold has a series of symptoms that all make sense as a specific THING.  With kundalini, this is involving all aspects of your being, so be ready for a host of symptoms.

Kundalini is like the World Tree of the Maya.  It feeds everything, is everything.  It is the World Hoop of the Lakota, the sacred circles and Dream Time of the Aborigines.  So it spreads it limbs far and wide and does not include one energy, but a host of them, all interlocked, related, merging and unfolding.

While it is easy to point to the event of the rising of kundalini, I think that the approach that I do believe we make towards awakening may well  provide clues to us for something looming on the horizon.  In the Hindu tradition it is claimed that you cannot even awaken kundalini without the proper preparation, which means kundalini yoga and meditation.  Well, there are people all over the planet right now who are awakening spontaneously without having had ANY practice and certainly not even knowing what kundalini yoga even was before this thing hit them.

Even before the series of events that took place that landed me smack dab in the nondual universe that day in August of 2006, something had actually been brewing.  There was a sense of expectancy, as though something was happening, I just could not put my finger on it.  The one big symptom pre-awakening (if I can even call it that) was what I would call “time slips.”  Time  was acting weird.  I thought at the time that maybe we were being bombarded by cosmic rays (imagine my surprise when I read about how the entire solar system is actually heating up as a result of some radiation, perhaps coming in now from the central galaxy “sun” or from increased solar activity—note: Mars’ ice caps are melting and most planets are showing evidence of symptoms that could be attributed to warming up!). Others who were having these same symptoms thought this same way, too.  I don’t know if this was an intuitive sense, or an attempt to fashion a myth around an unknown effect that was beginning to hold people in its sway.  These slips were a sudden change in the perception of time.  Time simply would suddenly seem to go by very quickly.  I remarked once that five minutes ago it was yesterday, an hour ago it was last week, and who knows what tomorrow will bring.  These slips seemed random, but were happening frequently.

After this period of time, I had the definite sense that something was up.  What it was, I just didn’t know.  I didn’t know what I knew.  I was not fully aware of what I was aware of.  Does that make any sense?  Perhaps a new current was already making its way inward, but not enough to spark a deep enough level of awareness to gather my cognitive function into the famous “A-ha!”  moment.  I mention all of this because this MAY constitute one aspect of the awakening experience that is not talked about or even mentioned simply because we become too fixated on the more dramatic effects of the “rising” of kundalini.  For my experience, I had a slew of symptoms that all presaged the rising of kundalini.  For a good while I just wasn’t sure WHAT was going on, and because of how these symptoms presented themselves, it kept me off the scent of it being kundalini.  Sometimes it can be helpful to know what you are dealing with when it comes to things like this.  Many people thought they were going crazy, and I do wonder how many people did go off the deep end who were lacking in the support they may have needed at such a crucial time.  Would having a good support structure make the difference between a hard or easy awakening?  My sense is that if you are engaged, curious, and have a good sense of self, you can make it through all of this quite well without thinking you are going around the bend.  When you awaken you aren’t alone.  With it comes a presence, an intelligence, a kind of silent guide that is ever-present.  However, years of programming that might keep someone from listening to this trusty presence could create a lot of inner turmoil about it.

Some of the most mentioned symptoms of awakening are these:

An awareness of the unity of all things – an different sense of time – increased creativity – powerfully inspired states of mind – increase or decrease in libido – changes in appetite – sleep patterns can change – quality and intensity of dreams can change – a sense of presence near or within ones self – awareness of nonphysical presences – increased empathy – increased psychic abilities – chills or goosebumps on the skin – crawling sensations on the skin – feelings of energy in the form of hot or cold, buzzing, and vibrations – hearing sounds, music and voices – sensations of pressure in the body – sudden and subtle sensations of something (energetic) moving up the body in a serpentine manner – sudden giddiness/laughter – sudden sadness or even depression and despair – light effects; seeing lights when eyes are closed, seeing energy around the body -strong effects of energy in the chakra centers a sense of pressure even to the point of discomfort can take place as chakras open in powerful ways – anxiety brought on by all of these changes – fear of losing ones mind – sense of physical pain often centered in certain regions near the chakras (abdomen, heart/shoulder as well as throat, third eye and head pressure) – the presence of synchronicities in ever-increasing numbers –  a larger sense of awareness, intelligence, which you are now a part of – jerking or sudden movements that may help to relieve the “pressure” of some energy (the Hindu call these “kriyas”)

Okay, so by now you may wonder just what this is all about.  All of these symptoms and others similar to these or analogous to these are all a part of the awakening process.  The thing to understand is that an awakening can be beautiful or it can be horrifying.  It can also be somewhere in-between.  There can be bouts of incredible bliss  and rushes of energy followed by a sense of intense pressure on the psyche or emotions.  This process, its nature, is in truth all up to you.  If you get anxious, then this will color the experience.  If you surrender and go with it, it is much easier. I can remember being on carnival rides where I really didn’t or couldn’t give myself over to enjoying them.  I felt like I was gritting my teeth all through it.  On other rides, however, I felt open and free and had a ball.  So you see, it is very much like this.  So much in this is up to you, and this is all a choice. So for this reason you will notice a broad range of symptoms that are quite frankly all over the place and could make for a sense of confusion over just what this is all about.  Since this is not the common cold with a fairly limited range of symptoms, this is about life.  It is about you.  None of this awakening will leave any part of you untouched.  It will move down into the very cellular structure of your being.  This can be disquieting to some who are used to being in control.  It is just a ride, and we can enjoy it or not enjoy it.

What I can tell you is that the most central effects are less dramatic in nature and more feeling in nature.  Yes, there is energy, and yes it creates bliss and brings on enlightened and “altered” states (I don’t like this word—perhaps “alternate” is better). it feels a bit like riding a very big wave, though, one which might be invisible to everyone around you but is absolutely there.  Learning to ride this way, neither too forward nor too far back (holding on) is key to a positive experience.  The chemical cocktail that gets triggered in the body is pretty significant and I will be writing more about the changes that take place with the body, and learning how to regulate feeling so that the body is an accurate  mirror of what you intend or want is key.  What is termed a spiritual experience is in fact a whole-being effect and what touches on the nonphysical parts of you also touches on the physical body as well.  This is alchemy; a refining of both spirit and body in a crucible of energy whereby the person is brought to a new place or way of being.

But let me be clear; awakening is JUST the beginning.  With rapid change taking place, it is easy to think that you are further along than you are.  The junk that is now being dealt with, the “house cleaning” taking place now is up to you.  You can block progress or you can get out of the way and let the “crew” within to do its work, which it will most certainly do.  Perhaps enlightenment comes in degrees.  When we awaken, it is as though we see the sun rise for the first time.  As we progress, we move ever closer to this sun until we are this sun.  Not a perfect analogy, but it gets you close.  You are able to see and feel all that this sun is on first glimpse, the very moment it peeks out over the edge of the horizon, but there is a difference when you embody this solar body.  Perhaps also awakening can come all at once, but we tend to pull back and try to manage it, telling ourselves that we need to be in control of this thing happening to us.  This energy seeks to remove so much dross it can feel a bit like you are having someone come into your house and begin tossing out all your cherished belongings.  It can take a while to begin to trust that whatever gets tossed was simply keeping you from being aligned with your own authentic divinity.  I hesitate using that word because of the associations that it has, and yet it is the best one I have to use just now, so divinity will have to do.

There are other symptoms certainly, but the ones I have mentioned are the main-line ones.  If you understand how you are positioned spiritually and emotionally prior to awakening  then the symptoms tend to fall into three categories; energy effects (which I would include seeing lights as well as psi ability and tend to happen to everyone), and then negative and positive effect (which are determined by “where” you are before awakening).