Within & Without

No teacher can provide you with what is not already within you.  No one confers anything that you already are.  The great illusion of teachers and authorities is that they hold something that you, yourself, do not already have.  We fool ourselves into thinking this is so through our belief, that we must “get” something from another when all along, it is within us.  By no longer seeking to allow another to be the harbinger of that, we actually free ourselves in a way that goes beyond all the old paradigms that place each of us at a disadvantage, however small or seemingly inconsequential.  Doing so leads to authentic personal power.  This is something so incredible, no one can ever take it from you, for you never entered into any kind of agreement that sought to share that power, or borrow it, or rent or loan it in any way.  Some want to call this the warrior path because of how it is so clear, how it takes what is its own, but it is not that.  This is the human path.  It is the greatest truth never told.  To find it, you must search for it yourself.  Not just search, but find, then hold and embody it.  You do not look beyond yourself for the glory that is your own being.  There is nothing quite like it in anyone on this earth.  I ask you; why cheapen it by leaping over the fence in your own backyard in favor of the grass next door.  Yet we do this constantly.  You don’t have to, not anymore.  What you win from doing this is immeasurable.  And it is yours.

When you get this, you free yourself to see clearly how what is within is without.  The world is a mirror of you, for you.  You need only look.  You need only bear awareness in the moment and really see the world that turns in your day-to-day.  What do you see?  Now as you see, feel into what you see, seek its innards, its soul, its heart.  Seek the world from its insides and what you find there is you.  It isn’t that there isn’t anything there but  you, but that this universe is just that miraculous a thing that energy attracts its own.  Don’t like it?  Be the change you wish to see and I promise, it will indeed be. Don’t worry about what anyone else says, for moving out of the prison of your own feeling is but a breath away.  What is it that is in us that needs the crutch of others?  We do not believe in ourselves.  We do not honor and love and even cherish ourselves enough in order to see it, or find it.  But it is there.  Always.

Not long ago there was a movie about this very issue.  I have not seen it, but I know others who have. I know enough about it to know that it is a story about an ordinary man who was a maker of documentary movies who dressed up like a guru and people flocked to him, believed in his made-up stories.  He transmitted a blue light to them as a kind of blessing and the people saw the blue light.  He told them that the guru was within, all the while his students would ask him, “Yes, but what do you think?” This is the story of Vikram Gandhi.  This is perhaps the hardest of lessons for us to learn.  It is so engrained in us, to wake up from it is what we each will resist, many of us, until the moment happens.  And then it happens again, and again, until we have shed that which keeps us separated from that one great light that exists within ourselves.  Knowing it leads to imperishabillity.

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The Temple

As Kundalini began to move in me, before I knew that it was headed down the tracks straight at me, I visited in a dream, a place,which was itself a shortcut through town….a town where I did not live, but would live a few years later through an interesting twist of events.  This was what kundalini would do to me, for me….effectively take me through places I had not been in an accelerated way, a short-cut if you will. My dreams became much more literal under the influence of kundalini.  And brilliant.  I didn’t know it then, but this would be the first of a string of incredibly vivid and powerful dreams that would become part of my new inner landscape.  Now, you should know that I have kept dream journals for years.  Decades.  I have considered dreaming as important as waking even if people seem to feel its something we do in our off-time.  For me, dream was itself the flip side of waking and an opportunity to see and do such amazing things within.  My dreaming was already changing as the force of kundalini slowly trickled into my life beginning in late August of 2006.  I took notice.  My awakening experience was different from most as my awakening came in small bits and pieces….it was likened to a renovation crew coming onto the scene, MY scene, and beginning a whole series of odd jobs that did not seem at first to be connected one to the other.  With time, though, I realized that all of these unusual experiences were building into something.  Something was about to happen….

There was a trickle of a creek running down the side of the hill as I drove through this shortcut that took me from one end of town to another. I didn’t know it then, but Kundalini would come and provide me the shortcut, the speed-boat version of cutting through the morass of junk that had unwittingly been cluttered in my way psychically for years.

The stream that ran alongside the road was most unusual.  Instead of growing bigger as it meandered along its way, this one did exactly the opposite.  This one seemed to trickle out but got stronger the closer I drove to its Source. The water was itself brilliant. It was like lightning and starfire. Forms moved within its light matrix.  I saw symbols that were unlike anything I had ever seen here on earth….perhaps an ancient language, or a codex from some lost land or planet or system far from this place…whose memory was emerging again through the portal of this creek. This slip of spirit.

As I drove up the hill, the creek grew in strength.  It was so compelling that I stopped the car and got out; I waded out into the water.  I felt like I had somehow come home.  The water was alive!  It moved up my legs and I saw blue and green and red streaks of things, barely noticed, but entire concepts and presences within this water.  Was this like a current of information?  Was this the water of life?

I got back into the car and drove up the hill and there I saw what I can only describe as a temple.  It was made of wood and stone.  It wasn’t one thing or another.  It was its own form and style.  Perhaps Wright meets Zen.  Walking inside it was entirely empty.  Bare.  A central channel, a short open area almost like a hallway graced the center room.  To one side was a shower, to the other was a shower.  Three women got into these showers.  Two got into the right side showers and one got into the left side shower.  I didn’t know it then, but these would be the three women who I would know during my journey through kundalini the most. Two would align more to a more masculine right-sided current while one would align with a more feminine left-sided current.  Some would want to call them soulmates, some Twin Souls, some soul connections.  I rather think that it is an inevitability of having stepped into the realm of awakening.  Here, we are both locally and non-locally focused.  Here, in this new place, the temple within is the temple without.  Suddenly, in finding its source point you realize the source point is in everything.  Through this All one flows.  We each can touch one another through the aether as the persistent reality or origin is with this aether.  The infinite within.

No more temples, no more alters, no more gurus or shamans.  The answer I seek is within….and any problem or hitch or difficulty I experience in the world is in truth my own. By being gracious and grateful again for my life and experience, I can enter again into the temple of my soul….for grace is the medium by which we know the All in its fullest.  Perhaps it is easier for me because of the bliss I feel which comes about from the core of my being.  Perhaps if I weren’t so full of bliss on a moment by moment basis, I might be seeking outwardly, too.  But the bliss you seek outwardly is only short-lived.  There is a river in you of energy which will flow constantly, without purpose beyond its own bliss and which can elevate you regardless of where you are or who you are.  It is bestowed simply because you ARE. Not because you are good, or righteous, or even a believer.  This will certainly take you beyond all religion, all belief, all dogma, and place you back in the primordial place.

It is beautiful. Pristine.  Untouched.  We long for those places in nature because we long for that place within ourselves.  And it is there.  Once you find it and realize just how incredibly sacred and important it is to who and what you are, you will strive to keep your own outer world pristine as well.  You will esteem in your physical life what it is that is so lush and alive within you for you wake up one day to realize all of this….all of this…is itself a carrier, a vessel for spirit….ALL spirit….ALL of it.  Every drop is invested with awareness….and this awareness is love. When you touch this or are touched by it you are not the same every again.  Oh, maybe you struggle against its truth in you and even seek to make it a devil for a time, but the temple of me is the most remarkable place.  It is set atop boulders on a hill where the headwaters of this creek or river rush like a mighty force.  My temple is a temple of water and air, dedicated to the indwelling spirit.

Bit by bit being here changes me.  I am a stubborn sort, so sometimes I struggle….and yet, the bonds continue to break and fray and fall away.  For as hard as it sometimes seems, a remarkable amount of work has been done…..and there is more to do.  I cannot tell you how I reach the next step….for the indwelling spirit is my guide and it curves and turns the same as a river turns and bends.  One day I will breathe and that will do it.  On another day I will focus on the bliss flowing upwards in a stream like fire and ice inside of me.  On another day I will be led to a silent and still lake of my soul where I will see something that I could not see in the rushing waters nearest the temple of my soul.  Some bonds are broken by tears, some by smiles, some by memory, and some in forgetfulness.  It seems my experience has been one of a rainbow of things, perhaps to know the full range of possibility for us here, or maybe because that is just how it must be for me and there is no grand design in it save for how I am saved.  Redeemed.

The temple is within and when it honeyed river flows inside of you gone will be any mention of temples elsewhere, for the light and water full of sweet fire shall have taken up residence within and nothing else will suffice.