Why I Am Here

Part of me didn’t want to come here, but another part had made a promise to.

This world is like the womb of heaven. It awaits its opposite to bring heaven to earth. It is how the soul guaranteed that we would enter into relationship: with ourselves, with each other, with matter itself. Our myths contain elements about this union of opposites. I see them as much in us as in the world…for we are a part of it. We are learning about the aspects related to creative energy. As our relationships often bear out, we are imperfect with it. These polarities exist in our two brain hemispheres, our two sides (left and right) mirror it as do the sexes, the yin and yang. The great secret is it has been in us as well as outside of ourselves.

This relationship is multidimensional in nature, existing at many levels at once. It is in the atom, the cell, the soul, and exists as a unifying element that can lead us to our salvation. It can also lead us to our doom if we refuse to understand it.

Presence here, to be more realized, has always meant breathing awareness into this world, into ourselves, to bear heaven to earth, to recognize a trinitarian consciousness whereby two opposites within merge and birth a third consciousness, a synthesis of the two, an ascendant aspect or quality in our consciousness that leads us each to a greater life, better awareness, and with time: bliss. Some fold that quality into higher vibrational relationships that offer redemption and cleansing. It can also be done alone, and is done alone (even when in relationship). It is along one end of the spectrum of awakening dealing with the archetypes of the divine feminine and masculine.

This redemption isn’t achieved by believing that earthly existence is somehow flawed, broken, or inherently bad. It is instead waiting for us to make it into what we will. Each one of us has a part to play. You need only listen to your own inner voice. The Buddha within points to this inner knowledge as did the Christ…and both tend to point away from physical life as some ultimate answer seems to loom. The ultimate has always been here in the power of the present moment.

The delights here are a mirror of what exists in spirit. They always have. To what degree are we each good at translating that reality here on earth? Right. There is a lot of work to be done.

I find that the way into this work is to regard our experience here as filled with possibility and adventure. The sensual need not be eschewed, for our desire isn’t a force leading to our downfall, but to its opposite, if we can realize what the forces are at work: opposites not made to snare you, but to teach you. When we surrender to them a transcendent quality in us knows just what to do.

Be an earthling, take part in its wonders, know that this is a place to learn, a place where we each agree to dream an experience that has in the past felt like a “fall” into density. I came here to raise that dense vibration up by adding something to it in my own personal experience…to experience it, to share it, and then to tell at least one or two more souls about the alchemy that our souls and bodies bear. So much shame that was not necessary.

For me, the height of the spiritual is seeing the physical as an important part in the cosmic play. This is not a place to be feared but a place to be redeemed…and we are the ones whose beliefs need to be remade and redeemed.

Physical and spirit, two ends of a spectrum. I leave you with the words of a man who got it:

Advertisement

What the Twin Forces Within Awakened Consciousness Has On Offer

This quote from Jane Roberts and her trance personality Seth describes precisely the two forces that were responsible not only for a new level of consciousness but for a new way of living. Within them is a new form of awareness if you are ready to embrace what this union represents.

Source: Seth International, Facebook

The Giant In You

Sleeping, slumbering, rolling deep within is that part of you you always suspected must be there, your link to the infinite.

Bigger than you, scary when it first comes, its resources are amazing. Like a deep ocean, an aquifer moving silently beneath your awareness, the path to its ineffable reality lies in the innocence of your heart, the desiring of your soul, a few chance encounters with eyes closed or an event that shakes you out of your workaday world. It is like a mystery, and yet there it is, shining new in each moment that you find it. Or did it find you?

Letting go puts you in its grip. Dissolving the rational allows it to step forward. Now this is usually where most “normal” people stand up with raised hand, seeking to interject a “Yes, but!..”  But what I am explaining to you is not business as normal.  Humans have, for centuries, sought to control by way of the rational, and this, I will point out, is precisely the problem.  Anyone, most great teachers in nonduality have pointed, who seeks to go this path will find only trouble and difficulty.  Shoals await you in such an effort, and this is where many remain.  No, the path forward is letting go of those tendencies that have hung us up since forever.  The way to cosmic consciousness, this larger stream or sense of presence, does not lie through the limited rational mind and it’s left brain.  Instead, it is the right mind or brain that has the demonstrated capacity for handling the broad sweep that is cosmic mind.  Listening, expecting miracles, bids it to come near. Every single teacher, every single experiencer all comes back from this experience and explains that this is not a thing tied to “doer-ship.” Are you getting the picture?   Wiping your slate clean is how it can communicate with you, or rather, perhaps even better, letting go of what it is that you think you know is one of the cracks in the wall between the mundane and the ineffable. Let go the small to grasp the big, and yet it is no grasp, no trying. It is the one that can bring you so much.

People struggle saying how hard it is. Only if you let the rational and its playmate, ego, have its way. This teaches you how not to be so you can BE. It is a great windswept silence that returns you to those places long forgot. So simple, this is no place for a linear mind. This is our multidimensional nature. How could anything so linear as the rational left brain ever hope to guide you? You need the nonlinear, holistic part of your mind, which is a mirror for that part of your eternal consciousness to channel and express itself through this body, this self. Learn its secrets which are breath, movement, and quiet intuition. The Sophia within.

When awakening came I saw that there was another part of me, clearly tied to both body and mind, that had come on line.  A switch flipped, a new world of a kind, a very new kind.  Awakening is not some kind of exotic, it is not tied only to consciousness.  The body must also follow, as it is a mirror of consciousness.  I observed that my ability to see the bigger picture increased significantly to the point of increased intuition, and psi ability. These are the symptoms of awakening.  The Hindu call these siddhis, and they have been extensively reported by those in eastern traditions as well as those who are awakening today more or less spontaneously.  We also know that the two hemispheres of the brain are oriented differently.  One deals largely with linear processes, handles language, and does not show a masterful ability to tap into feeling.  The right brain, however, is not linear, but shows every sign of being able to process many streams of information at once.  The left brain abstracts, finding the most important aspects of an idea or object and it highlights those.  Very useful for certain things.  The right brain, however, is able to see the whole picture without any need to abstract.  This is one reason why artists are said to be “right brained” which is that they “draw what they see.”  However, the right brain does not appear to have an ability to pinpoint the important aspects of this big view.  It is the right brain that has the capacity to comprehend cosmic consciousness.  Remember, the right brain is not here judging or prioritizing. It is this capacity that makes the right brain so good at this “new” state of mind because it is less apt to be biased or creating some sort of preconceived bias which would color what the whole mind or person thinks they are seeing.

Perception is not done at the level of the physical senses only, but it is has been shown to be “formed” by the individual as that person “thinks” about what it is that they believe they are experiencing.  As a result, you will get all kinds of explanations about what people think awakening is.  Luckily, we have a host of pretty specific symptoms to help this hold together pretty well, but it also leads to a lot of speculation based on thinking.  This is both good and bad, a double-edged sword.  As one remains unbiased in what they think they are experiencing, the more the phenomenon leaks through over time and informs the individual.

If you would like a primer on what it is like to have the left hemisphere shut down for a time, I recommend that you go to YouTube and watch Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk entitled, “A Stroke Of Insight” which describes her experience of how a stroke in her left hemisphere left her, a neuroanatomist, without many of the functions of her left hemisphere.  What she describes in her talk is nothing short of a brush with samadhi, and samadhi is the cornerstone experience of awakening (or is eventually once the person has gotten a handle on this new kind of state of being).   You can see her talk HERE. So what is the point in this little brain primer?

Let the rational observe. Let it watch from a distance. Don’t let it get any ideas. Take notes but don’t pretend that you know. The more empty you are, the more you can be filled by it. The more empty that you are, the more you can be guided by its great mystery and power. The more you have it figured out, the more it eludes you. Consider the choice you might not usually take but that keeps bubbling up around the edges of your awareness. That is the corner stone that most toss away as unimportant.

You have this, but to gain it, you must let it all go in order to grasp the bigger. It is like embracing the wind. Now let it it take you. This befudles most people and sounds like wishy-washy bullshit.  But this time, it is not.

There is a sleeping giant within. So many never find it because the way to it cannot be known by what you know. Instead, feel. Who wants to do this?  TO learn how to orient yourself to deep feeling would also mean that the closet within your consciousness that we now call the subconscious would suddenly be opened.  That is terrifying to many people because, as Carl Jung has said, people will run from this their whole lives in order to not face up to themselves.  But there is more on offer here than a blast from the dark past.  It is a kind of existential deal on offer that has the power to free you, to remake you, to save you and resurrect you (to the degree that you avail yourself of its power which I note is greater than your own). Open to mystery, and trust that it will come, a giant ready to merge with you to lift you into a new awareness. Let it do the work. It has all of this. It alone is perfectly suited to take care of anything that feels beyond your ability. Trust. Ask. Wait. Be patient. Believe it could come, and it will.

 

POST SCRIPT – There are myriad methods and means to aid in awakening.  Ultimately what these methods achieve is a bringing together of the opposites within awareness and the mind.  No method is some kind of magic, but aims at bringing a person to a certain state of feeling.  This is why awakening has been so elusive to so many for so long.  The answer is not in patting your head and standing on one foot.  It is not only in breathing, it is not only in visualizing a force rising up the spine, but rather tapping into the primal feeling state that actually knows the way.  More people have awakened as a direct result of becoming inspired and led along in that state to reach a whole new level.  Ultimately, something breaks down within the vigilant left brain and a stream begins, first a trickle and then a blast that can be both bizarre and bewildering while at the same time life-saving.  Every culture on the earth has described this experience in one form or another, emphasizing some aspects of it over others, but it is clearly not something that comes about because of a religious viewpoint or belief, but as a result of a hitherto poorly understood mechanism within every single human being.  That said, it has been found that a religious framework often serves to help or assist a person through this process, but it is not required.  It is also true that some fundamentalist ideas held within numerous religions can  lead to demonizing the experience, resulting in misunderstanding this gift.

The Interviews

Sunset over St Marks Nature Preserve, Wakulla County Florida. Copyright Parker Stafford 2018

 

Several years ago I decided to interview people who had experienced awakening for inclusion on this blog.  This was an effort to help bring the perspective of those who have experienced the phenomenon to the fore in order to help others who have gone through this life changing event to gain perspective, understanding, and perhaps greater awareness. I have recently published two of those interviews and they have been given their own page which are located under the header at the top of the page.

 

It is hard to know how much awakening can change your life.  It is like a quantum leap into the unknown.  It is bewildering.  It crowns just as it crucifies.  Navigating it is at once easy, difficult, with old rules now completely out the window.  It leaves many feeling scattered to the four winds sometimes, and yet it is also a saving grace.  It is powerful medicine.  Many awaken without a background in any philosophy or religion to provide a framework for the experience.  My sense, as it was perhaps my own experience, that we have much more to learn from awakening when we don’t have those frameworks in place. This is for the simple reason that we face the phenomenon without preconceived notions of what it is that we are experiencing.  We don’t get “captured” by the “rules” of other groups who, I note, have been unable to glimpse the larger potential that awakening offers us. While the experience happens in every culture and corner of the world, there is also a rising tide within the Christian church, factions of it, who would paint this as an inauthentic experience, what is called a “counterfeit spirit.”  Sadly, there are those who would resist the universality of this experience and they do so out of nothing more than ignorance.  The only way to deal with ignorance is with education, with information, and with what we find to be true (rather than what we believe) from direct experience.

 

There are plenty of frameworks that do speak of awakening and many of them wind up, for me at least, to include just as much belief as they include factual information, which to my mind makes it a mixed bag.  To know the truth, it seems, we have to go beyond what the masses are saying about it in order to learn to trust our own experience.  This is a lonely proposition and can put us at odds with the mainstream (like Advaita or Neoadvaita for example).  While awakening has very specific symptoms and signs, it leads us to an awareness that places us in a whole new kind of mind and heart space.  This can be a lonely road for many of us.  The interviews reminds you that you are not alone, that you are part of what appears to be a growing number of people waking up all around the same time frame.  Curious, perhaps purposeful, we can each learn from each other.  This is my hope.

 

My hope,too, is that we can build a library of these interviews for the assistance of anyone wanting to learn more about the experience, be they curious or an “experiencer” themselves.  If you have had an awakening and would like to add your voice to the chorus, your interview is welcome here.  Interviews are kept anonymous if you wish, but very real people are behind them.  You can simply respond in the comments section and I will arrange to receive your answers to the questions (which are just a jumping-off point) for inclusion here.  I am interested in whatever insight that you feel that you have, regardless of what others may say about awakening (or even myself) because we all have a lot to learn.

Understanding Kundalini

People say a lot about it…and for the most part, there’s a lot of good information out there. But there are a lot of things said that just aren’t so. Some say you must have a guru, receive diksha, and stuff like that. But they say it because that’s their only experience, so they can’t imagine it any other way.

I didn’t have a guru. I didn’t receive diksha. I didn’t do yoga. I didnt sit in full lotis with back straight, eyes on the nose. I did have a confluence of serendipitous events based on my singular intent to get to the bottom of a few things in my life. These were things that I had buried and needed to resolve that wound up being the switch that turned on the lights. I didn’t have a guide, I did what I was trained as an artist to do: I observed. I’m no different than anyone else except I have been seeking this something “more” that came crashing into my life like a cosmic visitor who made sure nothing would ever be the same ever again.

I see so many searches done on my page that show me that on a daily basis people are just trying to come to grips with their awakening. In the beginning it is a lot to take in. But I think that you were made for this. I also think that we all have existential threads that we need to learn how to cut while awakening is present and strong in us. Doing this will free you up to go from intense awakening to smooth flow. For as hard as it was for me at times, I always knew I was going to make it. I think I chose this at some level. Something in me has the resilience to get through the harder parts of the experience. It’s incredibly personal, so it’s a bit like being laid open like an experiment in dissection…and yet, if you notice, the things that are dissected are never a loss to you. I had this fear….like it was going to destroy me. It was really my fear of change. Over time I learned simple forms of surrender which took me twenty feet into my soul depths, then 40 feet…only to find there was a still deeper surrender as it took me deeper into my psyche to dig out the deeply rooted issues. Not happy with trimming my existential bushes, I dug deep and asked the energy to take me with it. It has always been my teacher and my guide. I am the guru…but that guru is mine. It is your job to recognize the guru in you, too. There is nothing wrong with seeking to figure out how you will do this. My words are just a reminder that you have this. Get curious about yourself.

Today as I was working, there was this channel of information streaming in. Normally I ignore it so I can focus on the busy-work of my day. But it comes, and when it does, when I listen deeply and give myself to it, I can later go and lay on my soft carpeted floor on cushions and give it my full attention. This makes a lover of me, I am not ashamed to admit, and it draws me closer, a great nothingness that is everything, that I am drawn to. And then, I am on fire again.

So as this comes in the moment, let me see if I can explain something that it’s telling me and if you can relate to it.

Kundalini is just an abundance of an energy we call prana, chi (qi), ka, or life force or vital force. It comes when enough blocks are removed to make it possible to let it’s flow increase. I know the Indians say you concentrate on it to imagine drawing it up from the base of the spine, but energetically something “gives way” inside of you that allows for this flow. This isn’t a physical change. It is a change in the structure of your thoughts and your feeling. It’s simple. In fact, way simpler than most people let themselves to be.

Since prana is a force that is also conscious energy, the “structures” that govern it is the subtle energy system. Normaly, we were made for it’s flow, but as humans, it’s stopped. In most people, its a trickle. Once it flows, little can stop it.

The one thing that can stop it is strong negative emotional energy and your thoughts. In the early stages of awakening it seems nothing can stop it, but I have seen that it can be regulated. So if this is so, then the way you can work with this energy is by learning how to be so that the ride is easy instead of hard. This is how it teaches you. You might want to resist it at first, but this is the universal intelligence in all of us, and it has no limitations. The only thing that limits you is you. And for a time, keeping a handle on it may be what you need before going deeper with it. Just follow your instincts and your comfort level. You can, though, go as deep as you wish with it. It is without limit.

Growing up, I had a lot of run-ins with energy. I could have awakened early in life, but the material didn’t move enough. I knew intuitively though that I needed to increase the flow of my inner energy. Interesting things would happen when the flow increased. I often missed what the trick was in increasing the flow. I didn’t realize how I felt was the valve that opened it up. I was too much in my head. I was shown that as this energy increased, my ability to be more aware of numerous streams increased, too.

In an experience at age 18 with a past life as a Native American man who was having a Thunderbeing vision, I found myself swept up into a high level electrical energy of the spirit that made it possible for me to be simultaneously aware of being in four places all at once. Without going into the experience in detail, as the energy rose in me during this vision quest experience in that past life, I was able to be aware that I was alive in numerous aspects or spiritual beings in the vision. I looked out through my eyes as the native man, my own eyes in 1984, the eyes of the thunderbird, and the eyes of the Thunderbeing who was in the storm. I was able to be aware of each location at once. There are exercises that yogis use that do the same thing, and I suspect it’s to achieve the same type of state.

I am telling you this to illustrate the point that as energy increases, so too does consciousness and it’s ability to perceive and take in information incredibly fast and on many channels at once. This only happens when there is enough energy present. I am telling you this to help you be aware of what your potential is and that you can use this to help yourself understand better what’s going on inside you. And if you don’t believe what I have conveyed to you is possible, try imagining the possibility that it is possible, and then do an experiment where you tell yourself that you will allow yourself to open up and be led. Depending on who you are, you might slip right into it, achieving what you thought you were not capable of moments before, or it might need to incubate in you for days or even weeks before you have that surprise “a-ha” moment. Could be, too, that you have it come to you in dream. If it fits you enough, it’s only a matter of time before you encounter it. It’s really about where you put your focus.

So the really great thing I was being shown today was a version of something I think about a lot because I find it so interesting. This is the energetic engine that keeps prana flowing. I’m being shown that it’s these two polarities, things I think of as a cosmic quantity that I might symbolize in my mind as the shakti-shiva or the divine pair. But when these “two” which are really just one wake up inside of you, it wakes up the rest of the cosmos inside of you, too, because this pair is seeded into everything, so it opens you up and gives you access to all that is.

The energy in you is moving through all other things, and since the energy exists outside of space/time, it is everywhere all at once. This means you are also everywhere, too, by extension. I know you aren’t everywhere physically , but take a moment to feel the “god” state alive in this experience and feel how the very fine energy within it is simply not limited. Do you feel that immensity?

Maybe you think you should do something with it. Maybe you think it’s just that way and nothing more can be done. What I find is that as I turn my attention, the energy can “fetch” whatever it is I want or need to know about a good many things. I also need only think about something and it winds up happening. I have been having some very nice adventures in manifesting lately. This reveals to me how the world is really creating using our thoughts. The world is not for or against me, it’s giving me what I am.

Imagination is the gateway for this experience. Beyond the most obvious use of imagination, which is the creation of things, is also the capacity in you to image things that you never knew about before. Imagination becomes a portal for direct knowledge, direct learning, and your ability to feel is what makes it possible for you to relate to whatever information you are picking up on. All of this is experienced not as concepts but as a living reality. Everything has a life. Everything is alive, sentient, even if it’s not physically alive. It is the aliveness of atoms that makes it possible for matter to evolve or to become living like we are.

This aliveness, this livingness is in everything, and it isn’t that our existence as sentient matter is the ultimate state, because it isnt, it’s that everything that exists exists because it is aware. Far from dead matter, atoms have an enduring life of their own, with subatomic particles making up the “cells” of each atoms “body.”

What makes this possible is the sweetness, the uncompromisingly compassionate and ever-present energy on which we are all riding. By sinking into it, you avail yourself of its healing as it straightens out the kinked and blocked places within you. It feels fierce early in awakening only because it’s like trying to fit a thousand gallons through a straw. This is due to the energy body still being restricted or blocked. The more you let it flow into you in your dark places, the more it removes and the more smooth everything within your body and mind gets.

This is to me like the biggest story around. It is for many, a secret. But hidden in your ability to feel (not your emotions…this is your ability to feel and to be more and more sensitive inwardly) is it’s “secret” revealing itself. The less you rationalize with it,the more it will unfold in you.

The more aware you are, the more capable you will be of feeling the remaining blocks in your energy body. As you turn your attention to them, the prana flows. It flows through your attention. This is why we can transmit energy through our eyes. It isn’t that the energy literaly flows through our physical eyes, but that it flows through our attention, and for this energy, a gaze is a form of attention.

It’s quite something knowing that your body is host to trillions and trillions of other lives existing in your body at this moment. It’s true; every cell has it’s own life, even if it lives for only a few weeks, or even days. Every atom, when you see it up close , pulses and vibrates in such a way that it’s a wonder that your body mass doesn’t just slip through everything.

The world’s secrets can open up like a beautiful mountain flower which only you are privy to in that moment. What would you like to see? Would you like to see how we were made, how we came to be here on this planet? It’s surprising to find out that human life as we know it was active long before earth was hospitable, existing in different genomes in different regions of this and other gallaxies. Sound impossible? Go look. Use your minds eye. Or maybe you ant to learn how other cultures existed, or how the light body works, or new forms of technology that use sentient energy as a way to interface with them without the use of dirty fossil fuels, or how you can cancel gravity through high frequency waves, or how some theories in physics only get it partly right. Or, closing your eyes, you can listen to the life of plants and read about their story and how their passions exist in differently seeded ways than our own, a realization that helps to open the mind to the possibilities.

More

I was not satisfied with the teaching in church….I knew there was more. I didn’t know what it was, only that it was wanting. I knew this above all else, beyond the explanations of others that I was merely “prideful” or unable to take the teaching as truth. No, there was more, I knew it beyond all else.
When I awakened I was lucky to have seen how there WERE teachings by Jesus himself which he passed on to his disciples in books that spoke directly about a process whereby one entered the kingdom. These were central teaching that acted like a key to understanding everything else Jesus was teaching in his ministry. The problem was that these teaching were demonized and anathematized by the church. These were part of this something “more.” I knew that in fact Jesus was teaching his followers about awakening and that the truth was hidden or obfuscated in numerous ways. History offered up her secrets and laid bare the many ways that contributed to our losing these central teachings. What is so amazing to me is that these teachings are actually the lynch pins in understanding all that Jesus taught about. It’s pretty incredible to look at all of this and know that this went down in the way that it did.
I once wrote about this issue and had some of my friends asking me why I was so critical about Christianity, or why I hated the church. It’s too easy to feel that way when dealing with this issue and to me, it is an easy way out of actually examining things closely and asking some very fair questions. But it’s not out of a deep hate or any of that. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I want a religion that offers the keys to self realization, of actually knowing what this kingdom is. Truth is a curious thing; we can have all levels of it and still be missing key points.

I have done the hard work of inquiring and looking. I have poured through the texts of the New Testament as well as those that were not included, from apocrypha to the Nag Hammadi. I have studied issues surrounding translation, how the contextual nature of Aramaic actually does matter when translating to any language, as well as what biblical scholars are saying that pastors dare not touch. More than this, I awakened and saw that the only books that helped describe my new state of being were the words of Jesus teaching his followers about the kingdom, which fit my experience perfectly….but also happened to have been deemed heresy. They had been cast aside and had never made it into canon.  The more that I read, the more it became clear that what we got was a version of the truth, but not the full truth.  I’m not even suggesting that this was some sort of conspiracy.  It may have been simply a conspiracy of ignorance acted upon by those who had less than the full story.  But even half the story is better than no story, and it wasn’t as if we weren’t getting truths.  We just didn’t get its heart, and this, dear readers, is the hardest one to swallow for some of us today.  It is covered over first by some 1700 years of tradition and then it includes a whole new dimension of thinking added, a great mystery that has been hidden from all of us (for whatever reason).

Since my experience in awakening is the same exact phenomenon as others who have awakened, and it’s all described in the same way by nearly everyone, and is being described in these cast-away texts, it begs the question; isn’t it possible that something very important was missed? And perhaps, then, might this missing piece be important to know the fullness of this man’s great insight and teaching? If you found out that the teaching of Jesus was incomplete, wouldn’t you, as a follower of Christ, want to know? I’m asking you to put your pride aside and get curious and be simple like children, ripe for hearing what might just be really big news.

Awakening, which is the kingdom, brings a renewed way of using the mind. If you can teach yourself to forgo mere rational thought, you can activate more and more of your capacity for understanding, which is truly liberating. It requires humility because there is so much to give up in order to see in this way. There is a blizzard of biases and beliefs that rage in such places, and the very religion that was created to support these teachings has essentially continued to demonize the concept of awakening in some quarters. Once these biases have been cleared, though, the mind becomes a luminous field of awareness in direct proportion to how much bias has been released. But it isn’t just that, it’s letting yourself be shown, led, taken by the presence of the indwelling divine and it’s child which is the Christ consciousness. Others call it Cosmic Consciousness, or Cosmic Mind. It is all the same and emerges in the same way in each tradition because this is what we ALL are, rather than the beliefs we hold. Remember how Jesus said the kingdom is within you? That might just be an important clue to all of us. It’s what’s inside-this does not happen outside of any of us. Where, then, do you think you will meet God?

This more asks me to continually to let go of my familiar moorings to here and as I do, new understanding floods in, mysteries become knowns, and the universe resolves into a greater and greater miracle. But no words can contain this more…you just have to go and see for yourself.

All of this is like a seed that grows into a sprout, then a plant, and then a flower. The flower opens more and more and this flower is awareness. This is how awakening proceeds; it is the smallest of seeds that grows in stages. More and more, it opens, revealing still-deeper layers of comprehension. To get there, I lay aside all rational thought and allow my mind to go blank. Yes, blank. It is here that absent thought a great and ineffable presence grows that is a love unlike any other. Everything I could ever wish to know becomes available in that “space.” If you believe you can’t, you probably won’t….but if you consider it possible, then it becomes possible. I wish this for everyone because it reveals our own foolishness and opens us to wonder and awe. The world so needs this right now.

Until next time….

Illusions

The Bridal Chamber

When I awoke, when I began to realize that something quite different had happened to me and that whatever “this” was, it wasn’t just imagination or some unusual effect of my physiology….I wondered what on earth this was….I wondered if there was any sort of explanation that would help me to understand what this force was that had entered my body and my life.  

Since I did not know what this thing was that was taking place within me, I was free to simply watch and observe, which was itself a great gift.  As I did this, I communicated with a friend about this happening to some degree and based on what I was telling him about my sense of two forces rising up within me that felt like a cosmic yin/yang, he pointed me in the direction of the Gnostic texts most notably found in the Nag Hammadi. He had studied in the seminary and knew these documents and how the church had sought to turn a blind eye to them as being inconvenient to church doctrine. 

I found to my surprise that these documents were describing what I was experiencing better than anything I had up to that moment I had found out there.  I would later come across the Hindu texts about kundalini, but it seemed that for the moment I needed very much to see all of this through an old lens of Christianity first.  I sense that it has been part of healing a rift I have felt I have carried about what went down with Christianity.  Its another story and I wont bore you, except to say that I felt since I was young that something was seriously amiss with our canon or bible.  The experience of finding the Nag Hammadi texts (most notably Thomas, Philip and Mary) have helped to really clear some things up.  Jesus was himself a carrier, a channel for the divine, yes, but had been a man who had done the work in order to help his disciples to know it as well.  It was becoming more and more evident that he had even spent decades in India and came home, translating all of the language of awakening into his local language and ways and customs so that others could know.  Jesus was like any other person and attained a knowing or sense of the divine within himself.  While prophecies swirled around his life as “the one” I think that this was a convenient gift for the man but it also brought in all kinds of distortive elements for the simple reason that when you bring the divine and earthly power together, the divine has to be the one calling the shots or else everything becomes distorted. Put theologians in charge of the mystical and you wind up holding a corpse.

Kundalini, the two forces of yin and yang had “risen” within my body, carefully piercing each chakra as it rose, establishing a blinding path of energy along the way which altered me forever.

Christ instead became a king who stood above all others, a kind of inaccessible force or presence that you had to entreat for his forgiveness or to gain his grace through his sacrifice.  This was itself a story that made no sense to me.  If Jesus was awakened, he knew there was nothing that he, as a man, was going to lose.  There was no death for such a man.  So where did the concept of resurrection come from?  It came from Awakening which the gnostics all described as having been “as if dead one day and then alive the next.”  It was not a literal death and birth…it was a resurrection OF THE SPIRIT.  When we awaken, this is exactly what happens.  And it happens regardless of religious affiliation; Jew, Christian, Native American, Hindu, Taoist.  Somewhere someone inserted the idea of sacrifice into the story.  Jesus may well have been crucified, yes, but what he sacrificed was his old earthly self in favor of “putting on the better person [man]” which the Gnostic Jesus entreated his followers to do.  What was moving in me was a dual energy that brought incredible bliss and transformation.  Further, this was a force that was absolutely in love with its opposite end of itself, its compliment.  And even more than this, these two forces WERE NOT SEPARATE!  If this was not a mind bending notion at the time, I don’t know what was!  Kundalini, the two forces of yin and yang had “risen” within my body, carefully piercing each chakra as it rose, establishing a blinding path of energy along the way which altered me forever. My new condition would be about getting used to the new forces alive in me and adapting to this new world I found myself in.  I lived with an energy that was in love in my body.  This idea could get reflected outward as my feeling intense love also.   

What I discovered was a LOT of information that hit the nail on the head where my own experience was concerned.  I had to pick and choose some, though, because like all ancient texts, these texts showed signs of having been revised by different people over long periods of time.  These were, after all, handwritten texts, and not everyone was able to just make a photocopy of the original, but sometimes added or took away. This is the same situation with the canonical texts, too, if you dig into the history of these books.  It was in these heretical books, though,this Nag Hammadi,  that I found the most direct and clear description of the experience of awakening, of the union with the two-part nature of the deity or God, and what happens during such a sacred and mystical union.  All of it is achieved by way of images. Know that these are just images and that they are merely there to describe an experience that stand behind the words.  Know what is behind the words and you shall inherit the universe.  I know that sounds grand….and it is….but in so doing, a great humility has always come over me that has shown me that now that I know, it is like knowing powerful things that now must be honored and respected. 

Remember when Einstein had that BRILLIANT realization that energy = matter?  Wow.  Now what did others seek to do with that knowledge?  they built bombs with it.  Horrible things that had the power to wipe life off the face of the planet if the wrong hairless apes got a hold of them.  For 40 years the world was literaly held hostage by forces who played with this knowledge now existing as bombs and fissile material.  It was just as possible that we could have done very different things with this knowledge.  Yes, energy and matter are the same.  What implications does this have for us here?  How can we use this for the good of all?  This is the kind of responsibility I am talking about.  It is the same responsibility I felt when I began to see energy fields.  Doing this meant I had another level of awareness that I could use for healing or it opposite.  So in seeking and finding, always choosing the good is very important.  If we do not choose the good, depending on how high the stakes are, we can stunt ourselves or we can literally loft ourselves over the moon.  Lofting ourselves collectively over the moon sounds a lot better to me.  It may not serve the agenda of a small cabal of people who want all the goods for themselves (which has been the human story all over and all across time), but it does, I sense, serve the unfolding of the creation in an wonderful and ecstatic fashion.  We can know this ecstatic vision.  It is here right now and we each need to simply grasp it and make it our own and allow its presence in us to temper and guide our choices in each moment:  how does my actions help to serve the good of all, the highest?  Okay….that was my soap box moment.  But it is important for us in this moment, NOW, to get what is facing us now right. 

So the Nag Hammadi….

Union with the Deity was described less as facing the deity but more a revealing effect wherein the person would feel the presence of the “Father” and the “Mother” within themselves.  This powerful effect was a mirroring.  This was a bridal chamber because of how blissful that it is.  It was not called a grand reunion, no, and it was called the bridal chamber for a very important reason.  It is because when we reach this place within ourselves, when we touch upon the divine within, it is the most incredible experience we could ever know.  And part of it is a feeling of having fallen deeply into love with someone, a deep and abiding sense of engagement.  Looking into ones own self, a mirrored world opened up, a place where one wanted to make onse self more beautiful for the Other.  For me, I was watching this passion play unfold as two forces on each side of my spine sought to enfold the other.  I felt like I had suddenly become a vessel for the cosmic forces of the heavenly and divine.  I often wondered about this accelerated form of consciousness…..and I wondered what it was thinking.  I knew how it was acting and behaving.  I KNEW how it felt in my body.  I knew that something had taken up residence within and even as I let go of those first uncomfortable stabs of worry over what this presence intended to do within me, I found that it was all bliss for the most part…..except for when I resisted….in which case it would become misery. I quickly learned that this force did not have a single bad thing in mind for me.  I was not being possessed in the normal sense, but I was entering into a channel that exists inside each of us for the divine to flow. 

You “rise” in the spirit and in the flesh, which is the very essence of the resurrection.

The Gnostics described it well.  Jesus asks his followers what they would do when upon entering the Bridal Chamber that they discover that they are two?   One walks into the bridal chamber but two walk out.  Most people who have not experienced this might not realize what he was getting at.   You “rise” in the spirit and in the flesh, which is the very essence of the resurrection. In fact, Philip explains that we must rise in the flesh or else when we die, we get nothing.  We are here seeking to learn, to attain something that he says will not happen in the next life.  Perhaps it wont happen in the next life simply because all life is one life, whether in flesh or not.  If you can’t do it here, how can you do it anywhere else or in any other body?  Further, he also described ego-death and the aspect of the miraculous ability to cause events to happen in perfect timing, something we call synchronicity today.  This was most certainly what the first Christians were talking about.  The further you get from the fount of the bubbling spring that Jesus flowed out to his followers, the harder it is to get the original sense of mystery wonder and awe of the experience.  So it was by the time that the Church was formed that the theologians and politicians could not see or understand what these deep mystical texts were saying.  It did not help that a lot of the texts had some really quite messed up thinking attached to them.  Yes, there were some really messed up thinking that was in the mix of many of what we call today as Gnostic texts.  When I say messed up thinking, I mean that the books have some material added in that is just….well….it is way off base, even when being interpreted in an allegorical way, which many of these texts need to be, even the Bridal Chamber, which is itself not a real chamber that is physical, but a deep and wonderful communion with the divine within ones own self. 

The language used to describe what happens to you when you awaken to this presence of the two within was not that different from what Hindu and Chinese mystics have described as the yin/yang or the Shakti and Shiva.  St. Theresa of Avilla describes her awakening as the cleansing of seven rooms within her being where she found communion with her spouse, God/Jesus and looked forward to the day when she could leave this earth so she could go be with her spouse in heaven.  And this was just how it was for me.  I was absorbed completely into this and it was absorbed into me.  Whatever that had existed before that served to be the boundary between knowing this so deeply and not feeling so deeply only moments before it “rose” in me, the effect was one of an essence of spirit that was in no way built on anything resembling the old life I had known where everything existed as individual objects, divided out, separate and alone.  In fact, all of life seemed to rise upward into my awareness like individual objects being suspended, supported, and fed by this endless ocean or web of living presence that my own consciousness had a habit of being able to seep so far down into that I would lose myself in visions of how it was made or composed.  It was not too unlike what it was like if you were to awaken as a cell in your own body and were given a tour of your body, which would no doubt look like a vast teeming realm, seemingly endless in scale or scope and fascinating and amazing for how wherever you looked, you “saw” (felt deeply) the presence of this ocean….this field….this web of life supporting everything quietly, non-judgmentally and lovingly. 

I had come to peace with the reality that my own sexuality would be used as a vessel for the divine.

In fact, I had to come to peace with the reality that my own sexuality would be used as a vessel for the divine.  All of my energy which flowed through me was now…..taken.  But hadn’t it been given?  When you touch such sweetness there is nothing you can do but to say yes.  Every single act of resistance is turned into compliance in such moments as those.  It is simply too powerful.  While we may each give ourselves to it or resist out of fear, in the end it seems that this is all a large-scaled event wherein it is not always easy to see the whole picture simply because the picture is endless.  Something in this consciousness does not divide itself because to do that would be to deny life to some part of itself.  I learned that the divine simply had no shame.  This is the work we have to do here, which is to realize that when this force takes us, it takes us innocently and completely.  It does not know half-way or less than all the way.  It does so totally because….to do any less would mean that the presence of the divine somehow does not feed all of its creation equally or evenly. There is simply no exception or division or limit.  And so the sensual character, the mental, the emotional, the sexual….ALL of it becomes a vessel for the divine to reside and know itself in you.And this is the marriage that takes place. 

As these two forces rise in your body, what the Gnostics called the Mother and Father, they reach a deep embrace that is like sexual union that gives rise to the creation of a third, a child, what we call cosmic consiousness or the Christ.  It is a transcendent energy…..it is hardly just a person but a force, too.  It coheres the a sense of presence but also goes beyond our usual sense of what a personality might be as a deity or divine presence.  I would say that what we think of as the presence of ego is different.  This less identified ego allows the presence to flow in and out of things, out of you and me with great ease without feeling a sense of losing itself.  It is, I would say, a perfect form of ego where the presence still is itself but is able to flow through all things. 

But what I found was that if I could simply resist feeling shame over being found to have this junk in me and instead just opened deeply to this presence, it would cleanse me of this darker material and my own energy and experience would refine.

This experience has shown me that as I surrender to this presence within, I am letting “it” more deeply into my being, into my light body, which is where all sorts of old knots and blockages once existed and were cleared away.  But as this energy flowed in me, the effect that it had was to amplify all of my feelings.  Even the sexual ones, too. It was itself a process of union where I let it into the deepest and most intimate parts of myself knowing that I would be consumed with this great love and passion and even lust.  All of it would rise up within me as this presence came in.  It was like I was the moon being illuminated by the sun whenever it would come into my silence and meditations at night and in my day to day work and thoughts. So for a time I had to deal with all of the old baggage getting knocked about the interior of this bridal chamber, a lot of muck being kicked up for a time.  But what I found was that if I could simply resist feeling shame over being found to have this junk in me and instead just opened deeply to this presence, it would cleanse me of this darker material and my own energy and experience would refine.  Even as I tried with all my might to hold on to the old familiar ways of feeling as a human being….i would slowly lose my grip and learn, in degrees, that I COULD become a different person…..not difference in essence, but different in what motivated me, affected me, or moved me.

This presence would move into me and create such a storm of feeling within…..and it was often a feeling from something to something.  For a time I would feel the Presence sending me love until I learned to hold that love within myself.  When I could do that, somethign quite miraculous would happen; I would find myself wed even more deeply and more inexpicably into the msytery of this experience, which is to say I would experience a still deeper sense of union where the notion of the “other” would simply dissapear.  That, or it was so deep within me it did not matter whether I say one part of me is the me I have always known and the other part is this ancient yet forever new presence that is this “other.”  This is why it is so important for me to not seek to always understand it, but to allow it to unfold like a mystery because any effort at trying to make sense of it using my logical mind will trap me and keep me caught in something that was never intended to be used for knowing the mind of God. 

There is no greater love in the universe than this, so continually seeking to surrender to it opens it up within yourself.  Struggling with it or fighting it is fighting with what you are.  How can anything good be expected to come from that? 

God does not feel shame.  It is totality in all it does.  If it feels union, it is because it does so totally.  So when you feel God truly, it will be as though one is suddenly gripped in the presence or heart of something so amazingly vast yet also so incredibly personable and so ready to take over your entire body in order to worship and love and adore you that to resist is to invite psychosis.  There is no greater love in the universe than this, so continually seeking to surrender to it opens it up within yourself.  Struggling with it or fighting it is fighting with what you are.  How can anything good be expected to come from that? 

When I do this I find that I am like a mandala that, folded, continues to unfold around its outer edges, revealing a little more dimension each time.  Something inside of me that is at once me and the divine, unfolds.  I know that this is the mystery of creation….that as I touch the bliss of being in unity with the divine, I am made more….I unfold….I am more aware of more that is at once me and also the universe.  How can that be?  That is because the divine dwells within everything.  It literally looks out from within EVERYTHING.  It is silent and it waits until, through grace, each particle that it inhabits, begins to realize that the vibration that it has is purely divine and reaches it back to its creator. The Shri Yantra unfolds within me as larger and larger triangles of phenomena, like ripples on the surface of the water, spread outward.  As they spread outward, so too does my awareness expand along with it. I have become one with the divine.  I ride along with it just as surely as it has been riding within my cells waiting for the day when I awoke to the truth of my being. 

The Hopi, who describe a dividing of the way that would happen someday in the coming of the next world, where some people would take a high road and others a lower road, may be happening now.  And like all prophecy, nothing is written.

And now, it is your time to consider who and what you are.  This is a flame that is composed of both fire and water, of the totality of all opposites and all union that will move and purify your body mind and spirit.  This is the essence of what awakening has brought to me.  It is not for anyone who is not ready to take it on and allow the work to unfold.  To resist it is to know madness.  And even as I flow with it, I too have my moments of resistance, and resistance I don’t even know yet that I am resisting.  And yet, even as I know this, I also know that I have unfolded….and will continue to do so and that there is no force that is seeking to judge me, no force that is within my cosmic orbit.  

There is not a sense as though anything is wrong or bad, just a simple matter of cleaning this all up…because the world is FULL of faults and “bad” if you want to really get honest about it and those who point fingers the most are the ones who have been the worst transgressors most often.  Motes and beams, motes and beams…..what I saw in a vision as the purification of the earth that the many native tribes of north America have foretold would happen.  The Hopi, who describe a dividing of the way that would happen someday in the coming of the next world, where some people would take a high road and others a lower road, may be happening now.  And like all prophecy, nothing is written.  Do we take a drop along with us or do we swell that drop to an ocean?  there is not real timelines on any of this and I urge you to follow your passion, your wonder, your awe and live life as fully as you can no matter what that might mean.  Be you a computer tech, a designer, a teacher, or a builder or a service worker or Mommy who nurtures her children full time or a farmer…….all that seems to be asked of us is that we punch it all up a notch or two in order to expand our awareness of what we are beyond our more dim visions into a larger vision of what we are and what we can be.

You are two-in-one, the divine awareness that is love and does love itself.

We have lived under the canopy of separation consciousness for a long time.  That is now changing as we reach into a state within ourselves, individually, where we can touch and know and feel the totality.  You are two-in-one, the divine awareness that is love and does love itself. We can sense the sacredness of the experience and be informed and changed by it. No matter who we are or what we are doing…..for the simple fact that the divine is everywhere…..it is in the atoms of the tire that the mechanic is changing in his shop, and it is moving in currents beyond the stars and is a force holding everything her together as a cohesive unit.  No matter who or what you are…..it will meet you perfectly because it is without any thought of limitation or judgement.  Truly.  If you would get to know this force you will learn that each and every act of judgement was you.  It is already awake and aware and is patiently waiting, silently and softly for each of us to come to our senses. 

And so this is a little of what I experience.  It is a deep and difficult depth to explain or plumb.  IN the end, there are no words.  In the end, it is simply what it is and I often tire of telling of it because it takes me away from my direct experience.  And while, yes, I seek bliss with the divine, I do so knowing that in each moment, that bliss heals me so I make no excuses for feeling it and letting it into my life.  It has set so much right and is setting more that still remains to be right.  I hope that you may find such fulfillment and love and wonder. 

A Path Through

So many admonishments made by old wise guys from centuries past telling us to eschew pleasure, ego, control, focus, desire…..

 

It isn’t the material that is the problem.  It is how the material can enslave us….how it can master us because we are ourselves unable to utilize the CREATION in a way that is positive.  Look at your life.  Are you creating separation or unity in your life?  In your work, do you knit people together or do you wind up penalizing and punishing people?  Look at it honestly.  Is your life running you or are you running your life from this one moment? 

Many who awaken wind up with a sense of grandeur at some point.  There is this belief they have a mission to save the world.  And in a sense, this is true….but the weight of the All is bearing into us in moments like this.  The experience of nonduality in awakening means that an experience with, say, making soup for lunch connects you to every bowl of soup every enjoyed….really.  You feel a grain of sand in your sandal and suddenly you feel the whole of the deserts rushing through your soft grasp…..this is HOW it is.  But the grandiose is there because….well….because of the sheer scope of it all.  Now connected into this vastness, you FEEL vast because you are by connection and definition.  No worries….but keep it in perspective.  We are all one.  We inherit so much in this.  For as hard as it can sometimes be, it can be the path to true liberation.  The “path” takes many turns.  For as alone as this has made me feel, I know now that I came here for this….to clean it up on my terms, to do it as my soul has sought to do it even if no one understands or can relate.  It will lead to something remarkable when you can surrender to your own truth.  Not doing so creates conflict and problems invariably.  Live your truth even if it means that others do not understand.  This is a giant leap off into the deep blue.  How could it be understandable by anyone who has not themselves awakened?  And yet, in being awake, does anyone really need to relate except to respect your path, perhaps?

This means a ripple of an wave can move through me and move through the entire Collective of humans on the planet.  I can sit and sing and ask the infinite to potentiate the vibrations of that song and it does….a steady gentle Ohm Padme….and then some other sounds meant to shake out the harder stuff from the Collective.  Have you ever tried this?  It is almost as though some larger part of you exists just beyond reach….you send it up like a prayer….a purposeful prayer and thread your awareness into it like one thread in this much larger tapestry that is this higher self. 

So its not grandiose to say we can change the world through intention.  For those who think this is all about sitting on the couch, you will miss the point that monks have been doing this for thousands of years.  A few years ago while in meditation one of my guides came and sat down next to me.  I was having a really hard time with some stuff and he said “All you have to do is step out of the old and into the new….it is hard for you to see how easy this can be…but the template has been prepared over centuries by the prayers of countless pilgrims and monks and aspirants from every religion imaginable….the blueprint has already been made.  Now step into it.”

So I will pray that this ripple through me spreads out into every silent night and between the cracks of each moment in a grandiose way.  I pray each day for the Christ, the Cosmic to become manifest.  It is why I am here.  Isn’t it why you are here?

Essence of Awakening

In it

lies

the three

potent

foretelling

compelling.

Two divided

return to union

creating a third

like some cosmic family.

 

Left brain unites to right brain

see how Shakti and Shiva are merged?

It is the same

the world bubbles up with this

the ubiquity of union

of disparate

becoming familiar

exploding in creation.

 

The distant stars draw us forward

into an ancient

but recognizable vibration

where the massive

unites with the small

where the dark joins the light

where the cold is embraced by heat

and the yin knows the yang.

Forever like this

for this is how all cosmic mind is and shall ever be.

Turning one into the other

within each and every single particle

that exists.

In you

in me

in all of us

as we make sense of this

and give up trying

and embrace the mystery

and thus sighs the universe

in its ecstasy

in our union.