Book Update

I know; I should not begin a sentence with a semicolon so close to the beginning but I have to say this quick! Okay; the work continues on that book, but I have to tell you that things are looking better and better. As a writer, I don’t know that I will ever be completely happy with what I have written (I am also told by my cat that I should not be admitting that, but she just caught a vole in the yard, so…). Like my art, it is a progression, so for me, I guess, what gets me excited and fulfilled is the next project. When I look back at an older work I have that impulse to go back and fuss with it. Somebody hold me back!

But. I am currently having the book reviewed by another writer who is familiar with the topic and after a few months of silence and being disciplined not to bug anyone about it, I got a preliminary piece of feedback. And it is really encouraging. In fact, so encouraging, I am having trouble seeing it for what it is at this moment.

I am initiating the process of finding an agent who will shop the book first in the hopes that it will be picked up by a major publisher. Then, the option to self publish will also remain as an opportunity to pursue, along with converting the work to e-book format.

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What is Up!?

Boy the change that is happening! Since January its been….well…interesting to say the least!

So just so you know, I am sorry I have not been blogging more frequently, but some changes in my work have meant that I have had to put a lot of time and resources in other directions and this has made getting heer less frequent. That, and it has focused me on book work (I also started two more books with outlines in the last week…we will see how those develop…one is on creativity and the other is a diary of “epiphanies” from awakening).

However, the really good thing is that I have been working on THAT BOOK. Recently I said I had gotten some major editing done on it and have since added some short chapters that I felt needed to be included.  It makes the work larger, which means I may need to work some more on making it smaller all the way through the work since its hovering around 400 pages at a “cut” size.

But the material is good, and I am looking forward to getting it into the hands of other writers for a good first look.  This has been the work of over four years and I want to get it right!

So for now, I can’t say exactly what the future holds, but it has been exciting, that is for sure.  It has also given me the much needed time to look deep within at the remaining issues that dog me, effect me in my life.  Life, even though it has changed, remains a deep intake of breath, of awareness, and of relasing all that had held me to a limited scope of being and becoming.  And you know what?  I think it can sometimes be messy, but as we each unwind to what we are, we let go those things we have been toting around for ages which we realy don’t like to see, and probably don’t WANT to see.  Our fear, our anger, our greed, our dishonesty with ourselves and with others.  But instead of falling for shame, being able to fall for love instead is so vital.  When shame catches us, we are most often caught in a situation where we do not feel safe enough to be ourselves, to unwind, to allow our fundamental selves to peek through the landscaping.

So spring is upon us, even if it does not feel that way…it is. The buds are beginning to grow and there are signs that the early bulbs are getting ready for the trigger of MORE SUN….which they are now getting!  Hang in there and I hope March is the kind of March I have always known thus far; embracing spring, and embracing new life.

Happy Voyages to you… until next time….

Update!

As some of you may know, I operate a glass studio in addition to teaching part time in art.  The holidays is an important time for me to capture the funds necessary to sustain me through the slower times of the year…..sooooo….I have not been blogging much!  Lots of change in the air and so, an update for now.

In a most odd twist, I was working on my book the last few weeks and finally reached….the end!  Boom!  Just like that!  I had edited this thing, cutting it from an immense size down to 160 pages, then building it up to 350 pages.  while this page number is going to get trimmed perhaps by as much as a hundred pages or more, the revised and edited version NOW contains everything that it NEEDS to say, convey, and discuss about awakenings.  The difference now is that I only need to add small bits and remove larger bits…..which wasn’t the case before!

It turns out that the day I realized that I was done with the main bulk of the book was the exact same time I awakened….seven years ago…..so it was….an anniversary of sorts!

 

Pretty wild things have been happening recently around these parts that confirm the fact that the universe is a living canvas on which we each create….that how we see the universe is badly in need of an update!  The KINDS of events that are taking place are not “supposed” to happen in a normal mechanistic world as we have been envisioning it.  When we can understand how to welcome this impossibility into our lives, it means impossible things happen (which of course ARE possible, we just don’t all know this yet!).

So!  I wanted to thank you for bearing with me.  There is more book work to do, getting some new eyes on it and then the next step, which leads to publishing!  Updates when I am able.

~Parker

Questions About Awakening / Kundalini

Days are spent working on this book, digging first into its introduction, itself a small job….then to the beginning and to the structure.  With the work on the book moving along, its so easy to add material at this stage with great ease.  So naturally it leads me to ponder…..what do you ponder? What are YOUR questions?

What are your questions and ponderings about awakening?

Is there anything that does not make sense to you, or that you wonder about?

If there was something you most wanted to see in print about this subject, what would it be?

It’s Afoot….

Today is a gift.  Another day that I get to spend working on my book.  I am taking a break from writing in order to write. I just finished a section that had to do with larger effects across the Collective Consciousness that are happening currently.  And it is exciting.

I can remember those early days of awakening where I looked out through new windows, a returned sense of perception. I sensed I could feel the collective awareness, knew I was doing this now, and in sensing it, could feel, like a pulse, what was moving in the Collective Awareness.  I had never heard of anyone sensing in this way so I kept quiet about it for a while except for my closest of friends like Alison who has been experiencing this since she was young.  About six months ago while visiting my grandmother I listened to an interview with U.G. Krishnamurti when I had little to do in the house where I was staying.  Krishnamurti was describing the same thing I had experienced and said how we awaken to this state, less of just the individual and more of the Collective Consciousness. “Yes, yes!” I thought, “like shifting gears from one singular focus to a much larger focus which now makes up the whole of my experience now….”

What I experienced in those early days was a very clear awareness that something was afoot!  It was!  All these beings, people, all awakening!  I could feel them like stars shimmering against the dark coat of night….each pulsation having its effect on the whole.  A giant webwork, a network of being that was becoming conscious at this level!  What I felt within this was how the Collective felt “pregnant” with awakening, that the incident of awakening would expand.  You could just FEEL it.  It wasn’t rocket science, it wasn’t something hard to get at, at least I didn’t think so.  As I observed it seemed that more and more younger people were waking up all in a more spontaneous way, or with the barest of triggers.  What I feel now is a feeling of something rolling out, unfolding.  In some ways, I have focused much more on my own process, on me, instead of looking out into the Collective.  I think at the time this new feeling felt novel so I spent a lot of time just poking it and feeling around inside of it like some new skin.  I know, that probably sounded weird.  At least it isn’t an old bear skin or something…

Something is being birthed.

After about two years of experiencing kundalini, I had this feeling like there was something more, and that some of the ideas that people were saying about soul connections, twin souls, just didn’t make sense to me anymore.  The idea that kundalini yoga being the only way to wake up was obviously proven incorrect since I had done so without it or without any discernible practice.  I mean, yes, I had my own form of meditation which I had used for years, but I never read up on it, I never followed anyone’s method or technique.  I was a do-it-yourselfer;  DIY kundalini!   And then kundalini shifted into a whole new gear, ripping me to shreds pretty much (or so it felt—I was actually just resisting it…that happens when you resist the waves instead of surf them!).  Tsunami waves broke apart the old me and left the core of me on the beach to decide what was next.  As I struggled through this portion of the process I was visited by someone I call “my zen guy” and who wound up looking like an actual zen master named Taishen Deshimuru.  I mention it because of just how similar he appeared, although the living Taishen died about two decades ago….This was what I was writing about in my book just a few moments ago….

But anyway…..zen guy.  I was feeling this hard spot inside of me and it caused me sadness and upset.  He came to me and sat down to my side asked me “Why do you struggle?  Don’t you know that all of this is happening just as it should?  Don’t you realize that all of the monks and followers and aspirants all through the ages have each unwittingly had their effect by helping to create what is here now?  Each devotional prayer has helped to shape this template and now it is ready for you and all of your kind to simply step into it.  This is not a crevass to jump.  It is like stepping outside.  It is one small step.  You only need to step into it to inhabit it, to be it. ”  After he said that, it seemed such a simple thing; like all of this was about stepping out of an old suit of clothes into one that fit  better.  Thus began my thinking in terms of the Collective not just as something I felt but that was now a tangible part of life experience.  On the one hand, it all seemed so big and formidable, but on the other, it seemed to simple.  We get to choose whether we want it easy or hard, since we are creating it.   We can, in the words of someone I recently read — we can “unfuck the world.”  I know perhaps it sounds  bit indelicate, but this is what is happening.  We are loosening the threads that bind us and freeing ourselves…..person by person.  Can you feel the sweet air of freedom?

Now, back to writing!

Pranamayakosha The Light Body

In my awakening,  I observed that after I had removed a good deal of material from my light body, things that are old blocks or unresolved emotional issues, I found that the energy which had gone from root to crown was going other places, was starting back at the root or near it only to go back up again. I wondered – what gives?  What little I DID read from the eastern information about kundalini all said the energy rises from root to crown and once there you have had the system swept clean.

Well hang on a moment. Not really. For me, it went up down and all around.  What is up with that?

If you know about awakenings and how entirely miraculous events wind up being, then you can very likely guess how easy it was for me to ask that question in my mind only to get an answer in short order without even going looking for it.  It is how these things go.

What I discovered was the concept in the Hindu tradition of something called the Light Body or the energy body, which was described as having etheric sheaths. It is called the Pranamayakosha  and was mentioned in the previous post.  This body is made up of five layers of nonphysical material and one layer of physical matter (which is the physical body).  These layers  are like layers of an onion. Nested into one another.  This explained a lot about what I was experiencing!  Being able to be present but not standing in the way of this energy and what it is doing has been the hallmark of my work in many ways. I might try to focus on some problem areas and I might congratulate myself on my progress, the truth is that an agency more than I was doing this. And good thing, too, because what comes after these clearings has been extremely helpful to me.  The notion or idea that the guru is inside of you has been literally true for me as there is a self that exists here that is me but seems to have a life beyond just this one focus.  Call it a cosmic parent, a higher self. from it, I can actually learn how to be, to grow, to become.  This is helpful to know how to be when there may not be good mentors available.

Learning to trust this force alive in you, which is you and is the universe, will go a long way in bringing you peace and contentment.  You are in good hands. That kind of perspective is very good to feel wrapped all around you. Now, the universe is free to conspire to help you the most and in the best of ways.

The Recipe For Creative Juiciness

I will admit that like my spiritual journey, my journey through the creative has been studied, considered, and lived for many decades now. I have pondered long the nature of creativity and I have been a careful firsthand observer of it.  Over the years I have had pieces of the puzzle,  I knew deep down that there was a way to help make creativity FLOW instead of merely flash for a few short seconds.

When I awoke many new  pieces of the puzzle came into view.  When the bliss field emerged as a part of my experience more as a steady state  experience I realized that what we call the human orgasm is part of a larger spectrum of bliss energy that is wildly creative and that once we awaken and can properly ride this bliss wave without falling off of it or needing to bleed it away through sexual union (this doesn’t happen in awakening, but that is itself another blog entry), this same baseline energy can be used in the same way that the flow of energy in a river is used as long as the water flows.  What I am saying is that in awakening energy that is orgasmic in nature flows through every corner of your being, the proverbial genie in the bottle being released and bathing the entire body in the rich nourishing flow of what the Hindus call prana. It is the very locus of ecstasy, of expansive states of consciousness, of the very essence of self transformation and of intense, wild and wonderful creativity.   Its just that in our unawakened experience that we only see this high level energy as expressed through the orgasm as being the only way to experience such high levels of energy, that we can become biased as to what is or is not possible.  When you awaken, you can open up the floodgates to inspiration.  Ask anyone who has gone through this experience.  I know people who began writing music, writing poetry,  designing clothing, artwork, etc.  In my case it fueled a whole new direction for my business which was a hot glass production studio.  I wrote short stories, children stories, music, poetry, and began a journal that turned into a book several hundred pages later.  It has also helped to illuminate the nature of creativity as being essentially an intimate encounter with the two “opposite” forces within the body, within the self and soul that we call yin and yang.

The elusiveness of the creative state is really not elusive at all once you understand how it works. We have allowed ourselves to become alienated from a fundamental instinct or way of being that is native to who and what we are.  We are operating with only half engines on full.  We can in truth live in a constant state of inspiration as the next dimension of experience unfolds in experience. There is a way  for the creative to flow unhindered. It involves the two seemingly opposite aspects of your being reaching  unity within you.  When these two forces come together, some very interesting thing happen. I have experienced ongoing creative energy flow continuously for years at a time. The nature of creativity means every corner of human endeavor is littered with creativity.  Its not that art is the place where we feel creative, it is that human experience rich and rewarding moments of creativity in every single facet of experience.  We ARE creativity.  It is in our blood bones and nervous system and souls.

When you understand the nature of creativity, it becomes much easier.  To learn more about this, read about it in my upcoming book

Waking The Infinite.

In it, I go into the relationship that both the yin and yang energies have as purely etheric and nonphysical manifestations of cosmic consciousness and how the physical body then is designed to be a perfect biological mechanism for the expression and conveyance of that energy physically.  I also explain how the etheric or pranic current moves through the body and how it intersects with the nervous system, informs it, modifies and enriches it once kundalini is awakened in a more or less conscious way.  I also show how the two brains that we possess themselves are mirrors of this cosmic couple and how we can in a very practical way, learn how to marry them in order to discover that moment when the two explode in that moment of genesis, the moment of inspiration.  I further explain that it is possible to actually LIVE in a constant state of inspiration and what effects or benefits that this has. This is nothing short of learning how to ride a wave of bliss and wonder that these two energetic currents create when the consciousness of the individual is able to focus the energy in the arena of the conscious self.  Learning this is about learning the correct type of balance of feeling necessary to generate the physical chemistry needed to support the etheric or nonphysical state that those who are interested in awakenings seek to do for themselves and for the race as a whole.

These energies are all around us all the time.  They have always been and shall always be.  In awakening we make a lot about how we awakened, that the energy “rose” in us.  What “rose” in truth, was our own awareness of a universe that was, right out of the gate of creation, awake and aware with this vibrant boundless energy.  The truth is, it has the power to change your life tremendously and for the better if you are engaged enough to recognize what it is that seems to stand in the way of your realizing this state.

So creativity will play a role in the book simply because as an artist I recognize that the power of awakening is the same power as the flash of inspiration.  The sad thing is that those (including myself who am a visual artist)  in the arts call it the ” flash” instead of the steady state flow or the dwelling place or something else that would suggest that the experience is continuous.  What do you think the flash of inspiration stretched out into a daily experience would feel like?  How do you think such an experience would change your world?  (the answer, at least for me, is “radically”)  The fact remains, it just isn’t a continuous phenomenon for most people and for many more of those, how to even try doing such a feat seems an utter mystery.  We still are beings that find this part of our experience to be shrouded in cognitive veils.  It need not be.  By learning how to turn this faucet on you can learn how to bring fulfillment in your own life as well as inviting in the force that can dismantle lifetimes of dysfunction and trauma and hurt from your light body.  And if you didn’t know already, the light body records ever single thing that ever happens to you, at least of an energetic and emotional nature.  We are fast realizing that while the brain may be the locus of recording memories, it may in fact be more of a biological switching system for nonlocal as well as locally recorded or imprinted experiences which we call memories.  The realization is fast upon us, though, that the body itself records past emotional impacts, and by learning how to erase those impacts from our energy memory, we actually free up the energy system of the physical and etheric bodies to operate in a way that is far more optimal, efficient, healthy, and clear.  When awakening hits most people, they are bowled over by the experience and are in wonderment over the power of the experience.  And yet, in time, people who learn how to move through their awakenings in a successful and fulfilling way find that this same intensity is itself more a steady-state experience that is the new way of being for humans.  What is on offer for us is a truly incredible way to be and to feel every moment of the day.  To get there is the “work” that so many talk about, which in truth is merely a surrender of those patterns, beliefs, and old feelings that stand in the way of a clearer flow of the cosmic in your seemingly tiny frame here on Gaia…..which is herself a speck in a sea of specks.  And yet, even on the micro-scale, the atomic scale, everything still vibrates with knowing.  This knowing may be beyond science at the moment, but everything in our world is alive.  It may not be what science call sentient life, but it is certainly what the ancients observed is part of a universe that lives and breaths in its own way.  When you consider that energy is conscious, the whole universe, bound together by energetic forces (an atom is mostly energy, not matter), then you can perhaps begin to appreciate the impact that this has.

Getting Back In The Book Groove

After a number of months keeping the book at arm’s length, I have recently gotten back into working on it.  This book, which grew out of a journal I kept to keep up with the changes taking place during my awakening experience, had just a year ago swelled to 700+ pages, which, when “cut” down to the average paperback book size meant I had over 1400 pages!  Three months were spent just chopping the jungle of words so that they were more manageable.   Another few more months were spent after that to re-edit the book where it was finally gotten down to under 300 “cut” pages.  I am now convinced of what friends have said who have seen the book; its really about three books…..except I need to work on the first before a second or even third.

At a certain point an effort like this can become overwhelming.  Toss in a little kundalini and it can get dizzyingly interesting really quick!

I have had a friend who helped me to edit the introduction mention how the beginning just doesn’t have enough juice and form to make it different from other books on the same subject.  As a result, I am now taking a different approach to re-crafting the beginning of the book, which is just what I have been up to the last couple of days. This time, less is more and being able to keep the rewrite and revisions simple and more to the point without losing the magic is pretty important.

The book charts how my own awakening took place.  Unlike what many Hindus and traditionalists have said, I can point directly to what triggered my awakening.  It is interesting, too, since a little-known Christian document that was hidden for over 1600 years which has come to light having to do with awakening mentions the exact same scenario as my own.  The book is written to show just how different an awakening can be; someone who had awakened kundalini over a decade ago who I talked to didn’t even recognize my experience as being kundalini…..and yet this is most definately kundalini!  By being able to bring new information to the fore we will all benefit.  The book will also deal with the issue of the quantum wave and why the left and right hemispheres of the brain are important in harnessing the full power of the universe in our bodies and our consciousness. For those who have not experienced this, my mentioning this might sound a little odd or random, but trust me;  I think we are discovering (at least I have) a way to a VERY different kind of life simply by how we balance the two hemispheres we call the brain!  If that makes no sense, you really need to read the book when it comes out (I will get it out by hook or crook; traditional publishing methods, self publishing, or writing them out as they did in the seventh century).

Since kundalini accelerates experience and phenomenon, its possible to experience a broad range of things in a relatively short period of time. As a result, I have been able to observe  synchronicities enough to bring forth some new information about their nature and how they emerge as phenomenon connected to us even as they seem to be events happening “beyond” our control.

The book will speak to those interested in the topic and who want to work on issues that are central to awakening as well as those who have experienced the stirring of kundalini or awakening itself.  I think its important to begin to have a larger appreciation for and understanding of kundalini and how it affects those who have activated it.  I had a spouse who tolerated my condition but when the symptoms grew stronger, the marriage began to crumble, resulting in a very difficult time for me.  With greater understanding will come more compassion and awareness, which I think is vital for helping to shepherd those individuals who may well help to guide others to a new paradigm and way of being in this age.

Waking The Infinite….The Book Part

The process for me of going to length to write about my awakening experience began as early as 2009 when I was keeping a handwritten journal that I thought at the time was helping me to keep track of the frenzied pace of change that was taking place in my life.  I was witness to what felt like an afterdeath experience, one where the dying was already done and the crying was over and now I was having to get used to the new surroundings.  I felt like in that place that maybe I needed to keep track of all this new stuff.

It turned into a book once I hit 120 pages. that was when I knew it was turning into a manuscript.  The project was rethought and a simple outline grew out of this effort.  This though was tricky because so much of the book had yet to happen since it was a memoir.  I had to give enough room in the book knowing it would somehow fill itself up.

Most of the book was written during a time when I was outwardly in the worst shape of my life. I had seperated from my wife and children (I say children because this was how my ex sought to do things as a kind of punishment to me).  I was lucky that I was able to live in my studio which had an office space that would work as a bedroom and a shower and plenty of industrial equipment that opened amazing culinary doors.  You have not lived until you have had broiled prawns in my glass kilns.  But much of the time spent there was without power, without water, without heat.  I lived on the edge.  I managed, though, to write this book without any distractions.  I would gather my thoughts and my laptop and plug in at a coffee shop and rubbing my coins together, purchase a cup of coffee which would buy me an hour or two of comfortable time charging my battery and writing feverishly.  Once my time was up and I had checked my email I would go home to my dark space and write by laptop light. It might have looked like a very bad kind of situation, but it was a marvelous gift if you can get beyond your associations of what is acceptable or good living. The quality of my life had to be inwardly first.  I had plenty of time to contemplate that.  I also had plenty of unusual events taking place all around me that served to teach me some basics about how quantum theory actually has a linkage into the world of larger events.  The world opened up to me like a bud not once, but many times.  Over and over I would receive inspirations that would become the basis for the book.  Sitting by the river I would hear the instruction begin: “the brain is triadic just as the energy flowing is triadic…..understanding this helps to understand how energy is ordered in the body and how you can use it….”  I suppose it would have been better if I had created a fictional character who would come and sit down with me to tell me all these things but the truth was far more subtle and nuanced than that.  THis is where the writing is difficult.

Writing about this experience is like trying to explain something that grows out of everything you are to become something that you aren’t or have not been.  I know many people after having been awakened like to say that it feels as though they have had it forever.  Well, not me.  I was VERY aware of a presence that was seducing me, sweeping over my body the way someone’s long hair might swoop all over your skin and give you goosebumps.  I know that when it dove down into me that this may have been a seeming, but nobody talks or writes about the energy diving DOWN into you.  They are busy writing about it rising up the spine.  What I observed is what I think some people may miss, which is that this energy was conditioning my energy field, loosening me up enough so that it could become integrated into my neurocircuitry.  When it did rise I awoke to a different kind of world.  The old world was very much like how it must be like for astronauts when they see the earth shrink in size in their rear view.  A little sad, a little meloncholy.

I took the events from life and let them tell the story.  I had some most unusual things happen, events that in truth aren’t that unusual for people going through awakening.  I have collected these and discussed their core purpose in our lives.  We talk alot about synchronicity  but no one seems to know what it is.  Once you know what it is, it opens large doorways for you in understanding what you are as a creative being.  I write about synchronicity because I had it happen so much I was able to draw causal principles between the phenomenon and what is actually driving it.  The hopeful part is that synchronicity has the power to change your life for the better as it stands as a shining example of what we are all capable of.

I also challenge the old notions that emerge from the east about what Kundalini is.  I know that one thing I am is a very good observer, what Robert Monroe described himself as being a good reporter.  This is what I am, and without any prejudice as to what was happening to me, what I observed was something different from the way it is described in the eastern literature.  I think that by keeping your awareness more balanced, your experience can become more beneficial and powerful to you.  It can also lead to better healing and it can help remove powerful blinders that we all seem to have been wearing.

We are moving into a new paradigm, this is true, and we need new stories, new books and writings to help all of us re-conceive ourselves.  What is on offer with awakening is the opportunity to remake ourselves in a rapid and rewarding way.  To take most advantage of it, though, requires a daily discipline and self honesty.  It is true that while I released much of the old dogma, I also became more monkish in the sense that I spent many hours meditating…..not in any disciplined fashion but while sitting or lying down, while driving or swimming or taking a bath. Life became a prayer.

The book covers about two of the busiest years of awakening.  In that span I wound up with 700 type written pages.  To make a cut book, I had to change the margins and fonts and this led to a book that was almost twice the size.  I spent months trimming it down over and over until I got it down to two hundred pages.  I am now at a place where I am slowly and carefully adding material back into it.  It hasn’t been as easy as it first seemed.  I often wrote while half in trance.  It would pour out of me without any discernible location best suited for it. It often wound up in what I thought of as swamplands in the book.  All of that though has been mercilessly turned back and trimmed.  Keeping the spirit of the experience remains the challenge to me even now.

The book is a giant positive spin to life.  In this spin the forward momentum will hopefully be enough to put you in new conceptual waters with experience that changes too.

I hope to get more work done on the book when the days grow too hot to be in the studio.  To do this right I am going to have to keep the view narrower, simpler, and more straightforward.  It hasn’t been what I have wanted to do.  Someone looking at what I was doing explained that many writers wind up burying their readers in a monsoon of words.  I am working in a gentle rain of words and not a flood.

Its late and time for bed.  I have the best place now for writing than I ever did; a study on the south-side of the house with plenty of light and views. Somehow, though, sitting in such comfort makes me want to lie down on the floor and think back on how I was stuck in this place and embracing it for what it offered me.