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.
Waking The Infinite 