I have been lucky in many ways as it has regarded my awakening process. It always seemed that a higher power was at work; this was going to go down the way it planned (and it did). There were lots of people who didn’t understand this process, even with people also awakened. Sometimes I had no idea what was ahead, but I knew I was along for the ride and that I’d do everything I could to make myself available to its force of both cleansing and its salvation…its renovating force that made me into a better version of myself. Its been an amazing experience, truth be told.
When I was going too fast in my life as an artist, something stepped in and slowed me down (with an injury). Only after that did my awakening process intensify, broaden, and go into a whole other gear. By slowing down I learned things about kundalini that I had previously not known. I found that the deeper we are willing to go (with kundalini) the deeper it will go. You have to get out of your comfort zone and be ready for……anything.
The right people appeared at just the right time. Opportunities just….showed up out of the blue, which were things I had been thinking about a few days or weeks prior. It was something that was remarkable when it was happening, and it led me to a place I wouldn’t have achieved had things been different.
One outcome was I started a blog called Divine Alignment to help me in working through inner emotional knots as well as to find my voice and to plumb the depths back in 2009 or so. I moved it over to Tumblr under the name of the book I am working on which is the same name as this blog. I closed it down after I was beset by stalking activity from someone I knew at the time. After that, I moved to WordPress with the same name. Each incarnation helped me in sifting through the experiences in an important way. Helpful.
Now, though, I find as I conduct research into my book on early Christianity and how kundalini was being taught (yes, really) I am also shifting into my studio practice in a more intensive fashion, leaving me with less time to blog.
This wont change anytime soon. Life here is this precious moment, and I have things to do. Growing my business is one of them. I need to nurture myself in my work while growing an even larger following after years of being available in a more exclusive way to the awakening process (which life had a way of making possible and even glorious in its humble fasion–if that’s even possible).
New work is being designed on an almost weekly basis sometimes. All of this is being done by one person: design, making, finishing, packaging, shipping, advertising, marketing and promotion, upkeep, customer service, and book keeping. There are a few more hats, but I’ll save you.
It isn’t that I wont blog, I just am in a pinch and can’t be as liberal as I used to be with my time. Out of this time frame though, I hope, will be important or interesting work. I will do my best to make this so. I have a few hundred posts in my draft folder that I can finish and publish. There is a lot of interesting news I have dug up about early Christianity for the book as it gets “stranger” and stranger. It seems the more I look, the stronger the case is for my ‘awakened master’ theory involving Jesus as a man we have not well understood. I just wont have as much time as I used to. In addition I have a collaboration in the works with a woman with whom I have grown very close with over this past year on the topic of awakening, relationships in such a context and its role in divine union, which suggests that our divinity is a native part of us, not a quantity to be found elsewhere. It is focused on the tantric path as a way to realization. With projects like these waiting in the wings for me to parse through them, I often feel as bust as can be (and at a time I’d prefer to keep things simpler and simpler). I am here though, looking on kundalini topics, awakening, and tantra from time to time here. I try to read widely on a variety of topics.
As my work in studio expands, I leave you with a few (seasonal) samples of the work that I do. Until next time..
I often see forecasts for energies, and while I am aware of the body of people who have awakened on the planet, I can’t say that the energy forecasts have had much relevance to me. I think that I have been so active clearing material over the years it may be that I grew unaware of the energetic landscape to a certain extent. I say this and I can also admit that around the time that awakening came I was aware of a lot of pretty strange energies which I attributed to the earth and cosmos. And after all, the Schumann Resonance did begin to change a lot in the earlier part of Y2K, as it continues to do (and that can make you feel absolutely crazy sometimes). I sound so certain and oh so clear, don’t I?
About a week ago I posted a quick little post about getting it right, and it was the week before that, that I began to feel like something had just turbocharged in my body and inner awareness. I can’t lie, it has been alternatively bad and good, but it has been more intense than I can remember it being in a long time. I have had this odd sense of being self-conscious like I was the first few weeks after my awakening, feeling like I had a giant neon sign over my head saying “Awakened!!” I was relieved when I found that no, no one could feel it or notice anything had changed. I would later read how Buddha had wondered the same thing, if people could tell something had happened to him. The only difference was they didn’t have neon signs….but I bet that if they had, he’d have made that allusion sure as shooting!
This energy is a bit of a double-edged sword. When it is so strong it can be very distracting. I have found it hard to do much of anything with any degree of full recognition that it was done. A day of work will fold in on itself and I turn around, as I walk across from the studio to home, just 75 paces in all, and I wonder what I had done all that time, because the time felt like it had simply evaporated. I will have put in a full day with many pieces made, a lot of sweat given up to those pieces, and it is as if a world just pulls in on itself by virtue of my being so present that I sometimes cannot remember what it was I have just done. It isn’t that I can’t, it is that I am swept so powerfully along a tide of bliss that honestly, I could care less. When I am in the bliss I am in the moment and in the moment it is easy to forget things….not because you don’t care but because that is how things are. I know how that sounds, but how different is this from the Buddhists and the Zen teachers who taught non-attachment? I think this is the same. I have it in some areas of my life, but not in others (like relationships — I appear to have pretty solid attachments in regards to those).
In this last week especially, the energy has gone from bliss to stronger and stronger. It feel like a channel is getting overloaded sometimes. I begin to have the feeling like I just need to find something that I can discharge this energy into. I described this to a friend recently as feeling like I am like a lightening bolt without its ground. The energy just seems to build and build. Since bliss is so close to orgasmic energy, this has gotten difficult because it seems like if there was something working in me to clear out some old stuck energy that it would have done it by now. Normally when kundalini begins to work in this way, it is doing something to clear my system. It just does it on its own, this intelligent energy. Maybe I just reached a new peak or ability to hold this much bliss, but I have my doubts about that (but check with me in another month – if it is still pegged up high then maybe I was wrong and this is the new normal).
It’s in a place such as this where I began to wonder if I haven’t been interfacing with the world somehow. Sometimes really strong raw energy in the world, reflective of hard emotions and deeds, I seem to feel as pure energy without knowing what that energy is. Ripples in the Force, perhaps. Sometimes, often actually, I will feel the intensity of it, which can feel fantastic, but then I will get some symptom or edginess with it that tells me there is more to this that I am not seeing or sensing fully. I consider that maybe this is energy out there that has been stamped a bit too hard with the thinking of others that were less than enlightened. I want to disabuse you of the notion that energy somehow “belongs” to any one person. Instead, we swim in a nondual stream where all is one while also individual all at the same time. Saying that one drop of water in the ocean is somehow “yours” in a case such as this is kind of ridiculous. At a certain point, all can be known once you get past the barriers that you have erected before yourself (and which I seem to still have since I don’t always immediately know who put this vibratory stamp on this batch of energy!). I have begun to consider this past week that this might be tied to some world event or other. And then Ukraine happened. To be fair, this run-up to Ukraine has been on a slow roll for years it turns out. It can be real easy to jump to conclusions that this crazy energy might be tied to the events on the other side of the earth. I am not convinced they are, but it’s possible. It’s also possible that there is something wrong with me, and I wont discount that either, but if that is true then the bliss is acting in a protective role in this case. Yes, this is me ruminating. . .
Then I hear how Pluto transits or conjuncts with the U.S.A. on 2/22/2022 an event that hasn’t happened before since about 1776. Pluto is about death and change. It isn’t necessarily about bad things, but change…uh…
Yesterday and today have been a peak. The energy just continues to drive as hard as ever. I have begun to wonder what the point is. Breathing, meditation, nothing calms it.
With the coming of kundalini there also came extrasensory abilities. At first their evidence appeared as blips on my screen, the result of mere coincidences where I thought of something and found out later that what I had thought about had happened, or that when thinking of a person I could see where they were even though I had not ever been there or had that location described to me. Over time I found that these happenings were consistently taking place, repeatedly (not just a one-off) and my sensory take on whatever I was picking up on had a high percentage of accuracy. Now, of course, I have read about how in Eastern practice and their knowledge base in India that abilities are one of a number of signs of the presence of kundalini.
By having this energy pegged so high lately, I have been able to experience something that was very noticeable to me at the time, which was the notion that in the energy there is…..information encoded into it. It sounds a bit strange or counterintuitive, but when I first had interactions with this energy during my initial awakening period, there were signs or symbols in my dreamscapes that revealed a kind of psychological or psychic/spiritual language of sorts present in the symbols of my dreaming (codes or letters in light or in water, for instance). These symbols had a very definite character to them, but were also unlike any form of writing that I have known or seen before. What is curious is how similar those symbols are to what those who have attempted to reproduce them who have also seen them in dreams and meditations. The symbols look somewhat, although not exactly, like Hebrew writing.
I would also add for anyone who is familiar with this language which some have called “light language” it seems to me at least to be a language less about words as it is about describing state of being or intensities in awareness. I also suspect that this language is also tied to the phenomenon of speaking in tongues, known as glossolalia, and which some call ‘light language’ which many people describe singing or talking in, which gives a release or flow of energy that strikes me as being the same kind of release as kriyas do. These symbols may in fact be more like code that makes up the landscape of feeling instead of just thoughts. Anyway, I have suddenly felt closer to this language all of a sudden as well as feeling as though I am in some version of a Matrix movie where everything around me has information encoded within it (which I suspect it does). My Matrix movie, though, develops its plot without violence.
The point here is that beneath the energy lies what I sense is a data stream for lack of a better word. When the energy is strong that stream becomes more obvious to me. This happens because the reality is that sexual energy alters consciousness in such a way that certain ranges of cognition appear to open up in rather fantastic ways, but they don’t always open up during ordinary intimate encounters, and so can be missed entirely. I don’t feel this undercurrent until the energy begins to get to a certain level, and it is as if the energy serves as an illuminating presence that reveals to me that this transmission is going on all the time and I simply hadn’t noticed it. It is a bit like looking at your router where your computer is hooked up. You see all of this data, a bunch of dots and dashes, and there is this tremendous amount of information flowing and what comes out the other end is a picture of a horse or a cat, or a spreadsheet on your computer. The question I have is what is the rest of all of that information doing? It feels like there is a lot more there that we simply aren’t getting at this point.
In the early stages of awakening I was shown how what we call time is itself a very deceiving thing because of the true nature of time outside our system of reality here. I was shown that time itself is real, but what we see here is only one aspect or facet of a much larger phenomenon, which is itself a kind of energetic radiance. The teaching here was that outside the world of mass and gravity here, time is very different. Outside out reality everything is accessible all at once. The sense of sequential events is overturned a good deal as those who have experienced NDE’s (Near Death Experiences) describe how everything felt like it was happening at once, or that they had access to all times, lives, or existences. I was shown that under such a state of awareness what we think of as our snail-paced linear transformation that has taken lifetimes in our earthly perspective has already happened “over there.” I had a hint of this reality in a past life as a man who was crying for a vision as a Awaneechee in California in the mid to late 1800’s. In his vision he was shown by a Thunderbeing how all time existed for it like a landscape. This being spoke of a time in the future when I would be reborn as a new person in a time when the earth would be going through a cleansing (now), and as I looked out through that being’s eyes, I could see how it related to the future. It already existed for this being. It spoke with great certainty about the event of my birth in this world at an important time in earth history. For the Thunderbeing, all it had to do was to look off slightly in the distance to see where I was in this other life, the one that I am living today. For the Thunderbeing, all of this was a certainty, it looked off into the distance slightly and could see my life there which had not yet happened in the life as our Native American man. If this is so, and I think it is, then there are states we access where the unity of all things is not only possible but can be shared in a practical way with us here through these glimpses into these rarefied spaces of awareness. I suspect, though, that most people will want to frame them as an encounter with God or something outside of themselves when in truth they may be encountering the god of themselves unbound by time and space where there is no cause or effect, only the realization of what we are in the scope of infinity. Its so big a thing that it can be almost irrelevant for most people here, making it difficult if not impossible to discuss with words. It may only be transferrable through direct cognition, psi (or maybe poetry).
It is this information that lends to my mind the sense of what the ancients called hieros gamos, which is simply put ‘sex with a god.’ This was clearly a facet of human experience in many cultures, and it is curious to me, and perhaps telling, that people felt close to the gods when intimate. I suspect that this is so because of the effect that bliss energy has on consciousness. It is interesting to me that in my life I have had two women both describe a precise account of an experience during intimacy with me that involved seeing energy as a star field that sped up and exploded, and how it was that this experience that they both experienced was tied in some way to our physical intimacy. In each case, we were experiencing ourselves in a higher nonphysical form. I think that the idea that the gods may be in us or that our awareness expands in certain states to include a much larger story has been there for a very long time.
I have long been aware of a presence of my higher self that comes forward during meditation and in acts of intimacy. It only happens when I am completely surrendered and feel at ease with who I am with. It can’t be forced, and sometimes just an expectation of it being there on the part of my partner can be enough to make me feel self conscious enough to make finding that state elusive. There is too much of a feeling of being on some stage. All this to say that this is a very natural phenomenon that has arisen as my consciousness has expanded or accelerated over these last fifteen years. As I reflect I realize that right now is very close to the anniversary of my awakening.
In fact the period of time that I have been feeling such intense energy corresponds with my awakening in early 2007. Added to this is how Pluto is coming into the picture (is there anything to any of this planetary movement?), and what is up with the world at large. It becomes very easy for me to wonder whether what I have been experiencing is a synchronized anniversary event that may have been exaggerated by the very turbulent energies at play in the world stage that are now playing out in Russia. Whether or not that is so, I can say that whatever you think you see playing out as the official version of reality (a public narrative) is most certainly not what is actually happening. One thing is for sure: the world is drenched in deception, and there is a lot of it happening on a daily basis that often has more to do with how one person or country wants an outcome and is willing to lie to get it.
OMG….He Is Going Political…
Right now the narrative at play on the world stage is that Russia is an aggressor who is invading Ukraine. That is true, but what is also at play are how Western forces, especially the U.S., who have been meddling in Ukraine, going so far as to pick the people in the government in a recently discovered recording leaked to the press has revealed. Ukraine was supposed to be for Russia a buffer from NATO and now the Western allies are going against that promise which was made by Reagan and Bush when the fall of the Berlin wall was front page news. Most people see what happened in Ukraine through a Western lens, but there is more to the story, which includes Russian wanting to protect itself.
Right now there are a bunch of narratives being pushed that hides the involvement of Western forces in a conflict that is being represented to appear to be a straightforward invasion by Russia when in truth there is a lot more at work, but because of how much faith some people put in corporate media, it means that the narrative they want to put out gets taken up by a large block of the population. For those willing to dig there is another narrative that tells a different story. And what is taking place right now in this regard is no different from what has been happening for hundreds of years. It’s just that the deceit has ratcheted up considerably from where it was fifty years ago in the U.S.A. If you don’t agree with the Orthodox view then you become a kind of outcast and that becomes your punishment. For some people that means losing jobs and their place in society as a person of influence, say. What is interesting to note though is that in this system, those who push back and fight this effort to silence through demonizing, people have won back a level of credibility again (which is a ray of hope for now).
When I awoke I could feel the mass of deception turning in the world even though I didn’t know specifically what it was at the time. What this sense has done is it has led me to investigate news story more deeply, more thoroughly, to see if there is more to the story than is being reported. On the one hand it can look like someone like myself is being paranoid, but as is often the case, I will find out later that my concerns which were rooted in a feeling of deception in a world event and the reporting on it were founded in truth, but not one that was immediately apparent. I will also say that in order to do this requires that you clear away as much of the rubbish within your subconscious because the self has to be clear to get a clear signal. I am not suggesting that I am some great psychic, though. I am not. I have certain areas where I do pretty well, but I am not always 100%.
Can Our Inner Senses Save Us From Ourselves?
It is against this backdrop that I often feel rumblings months and weeks before events taking place. I, like others like me, can detect the smell of deception most often, and while we may not always know exactly where the deception is in world events, they can often be seen once the events have rolled out. In some cases anyone can see how what officials say often falls apart when scrutinized, so this is not always a hard thing to do for the average person as it now stands, but to feel it coming down the pike and not being aware fully enough to know that there is a new version of “fuckery” coming our way or what form it will take exactly is the real challenge at this point. In that space the awareness is beyond physical sensory capability, and this is just where we need to go as a race just to keep people honest. Once we get to that level we will be able to see events emerge just before they do, or as they do, and be able to see how they are in fact constituted instead of how they are sold or represented to the public, we will be much more able to fight against this endless need to spin and lie. It is possible for us that in the future we will all be able to smell the rat in world events. There is this old axiom that says here on earth we can hide things, but in spirit all things are known. I think we are in the process of knitting spirit more closely to our world here, which itself serves to alter how this reality can be experienced. If we can raise everyone’s awareness as a simple matter of course, I think that would spell hope for humanity. As was said in the movie Avatar, “We must first cure you of your insanity…”
All of this to say that I think that we can be more aware of what is happening around us because it may well be streaming through us as a kind of coded light signal much like the computer code that makes it possible for you to see a horse or kitten or that spreadsheet on your computer screen. I know that I can feel it and often dip my toe into it in order to begin detecting what is moving by at the speed of light. I also know that this is happening all the time, and under certain instances, I am more aware of it than in others. The fact that I am more aware of it through sexual energy is very curious to me and I think it suggests to me that in meditation I may need to extend the level of surrender I feel in intimacy to my meditative practice. While the bliss is constant and assists greatly in staying in that nondual state, I sense that there are more blocks to knock down, blocks that I think are entirely artificial and unnecessary. I do wonder whether sexual surrender and bliss creates the same required state needed in order to use psi abilities correctly, that is, an empty mind that doesn’t seek to insert what it think fits but instead waits for the information to come (the difference between tuning in a station and making up what you think that station might say were you to be actually be able to be tuning it in).
It seems counter-intuitive but clearing the mind is the first precursor or requirement for clear and uncluttered psi sensing. I am reminded of this person I knew who was convinced that she had superior psi ability. She went on telling me what I was thinking and feeling and over and over again, it was clear that she had done little other than insert her own fears and beliefs into what she thought was a genuine sensing ability. Because she believed that if she was sensing psychically, it had to all be correct. That was the logic that appeared to be used. She had superior intuition, she had after all sensed all of this material (which was completely off the mark). This was for me an important lesson in learning to clear away all the crap within that can cloud inner sensing. It is soooo easy to want to insert something that you feel is right instead of being that still receiver, like a radio.
One good thing to come out of all of this has been my reaching a point where I began to sit back and kind of laugh about it all. Somewhere inside my heart I just wanted the people of the world to be good ethical people. We aren’t, though. Self interest flies through the air like flaming arrows, all at cross purposes with others in transit as they create chaos in the world. It is what I call The Big Ugly Beautiful. It’s ugly, that is true, and it is going to probably stay that way, and the point may be not to have a perfect world, but to be perfectly human and not take it all so damned seriously.
I looked at all of this, the whole thing, and I thought how what we really need is to spend more time sitting down eating meals with one another, seeing each other for who we are and not judging. Everyone is on their own journey, and everyone is at a different place than everyone else. If asked I would have said to those angels to save Sodom, because the whole world is like that. Perfect? What a heresy that is. Come, have some smoked pork. Or try this salad…stuff your mouth and just look at the light in each person’s eye. We are killing everything that we eat, come join the celebration of death and life! Maybe we either find a way not to kill through our technology or we find a way to be humane in our killing so we may live. It’s a conundrum, don’t you think, all this killing in order to survive, killing that none of us really wants to look at or acknowledge is happening (so it’s done behind closed doors so we don’t see the slaughter)?
We are all so different but also much the same. We have spent centuries feeling shame for the very range of energy that might free us from our bonds, which is this crazy thing I feel when the sexual energy is driven or pegged high enough, which is how everything is like a vast internet and I am plugged in, plugged into some great cosmic play of divine union second by millisecond….and I really don’t know how to even say it to anyone except myself.
I lean back in my chair and my back cracks from mid-back all the way up into my shoulders. My muscles are just a little tight, causing those bones to slip out of alignment. And yet, with one gentle release of breathe and leaning backward, those bones all line up like they know how they are supposed to be. DO we know how we are supposed to be, what we may be in a fuller or larger context? Is it even important to seek that? Will it do any good for this, our corner of Sodom? My back will fall out of alignment in another hour and I will lean back, arching backward over the chair back as I feel that delicious alignment brought back to rights…I am clearly unclear on something niggling at me, though, but it isn’t clear enough that I seem able to just find it on my own. Maybe by saying that it will signal to my innermost self that a challenge has been thrown down for it to delicately deliver to me….maybe in a dream, maybe in the midst of meditation, maybe in that gap of thought that transpires at seemingly random moments during the day where I become inattentive enough that a bigger story can be told and my mind can absorb it. I could say that this is as simple as a need for all humans to have communion, but it feels like there is more than just that on offer, there is a new world rising. Can we understand what that ultimately means for us, or will we sink back into our illusions again because they are the devil that we know instead of the strange angel of our better nature. One thing is for sure: I am not going to find it sitting here for another minute.
It took a bit of courage to photograph and then publish the marks that showed up when kundalini rose a decade and a half ago. It was an odd thing to witness these marks, one on my right hip and another that emerged after a clearing of karmic material tied to my heart center several years later. The posts about this are in the archive. I include one from the heart below.
At first when I wrote about it, there was little comment about them, but after about a year comments began to come in with people describing similar marks who had been running searches for burn-like marks after spiritual events, and voila—they found me. Many tended to be either on the hips or near the shoulders. Then, a few years ago, a Japanese graduate student shared photos with me of his own marks which were nearly identical to my own, also on his hip and another like my heart center mark except at his throat chakra which following a kundalini awakening.
I thought that someone or something had done this to me, but as increasing numbers of people have come forward to describe their own burn-like marks, it seems to me that these marks may simply be what happens when strong energy is being released (because of its proximity to the energetic event tied to kundalini awakening). Intuitively it seems right that the marks could happen when energy is trying to move up the legs to the torso, and vica versa, and like an energy bolt used to traveling in a more or less straight line, it has to make a sudden turn and becomes impeded and marks result (this is my theory at this point). This could result in a burn or iritation to the skin. For me, I know that this is nothing mystical or “woo-woo” but serves as a physical trace of the energy in the physical. I also have not just marks that emerged around the time I awakened, but I have a persistent mark over my heart and recently that mark has moved.
It would be helpful if science were to take an interest in this observable phenomenon. Absent that, I am left to investigate and collect accounts by others with similar effects that have happened to them.
Three days ago, I noticed that the mark over my heart center has moved. It started at the lower sternum as you see in the photo. It has moved up by about 2 and a half inches, and the mark, which has tended to be circular, and which has been constant in its presence for years now has grown three times in size. It is less noticable but can be easily seen in the right light. It hasn’t waned in that time and resembles two semicircles that sit opposite each other along the vertical axis of my torso. The end of each semicircle doesn’t touch the semicircle beneath it, but the effect is seeing a near-perfect circle being formed (or at least suggested). I am observing it to see what it does after this move, if anything.
I often find it hard to describe what I feel because while I know that it became a novel but continuous state compared to how I felt previous to this experience of awakening, its constancy has led me to find it to be a new normal. How do you normalize supreme bliss? I spent years learning how to appear normal while speeding through another world within. It’s progress now that I can keep from needing to sit or lie down for an hour or two because the bliss is so strong. There were periods where I would be so blissed out that I would forget from one moment to the next what I was thinking about or even doing. It didn’t even matter in many cases. I can’t say that I handled it all that well in the beginning, but over time I learned how to carry that bliss while being able to focus on the kinds of things that would normally get wiped away by the thick blanket of bliss.
The effect of the bliss is that it has had a significant effect on dulling or eliminating a lot of pain in my body, and softening emotional pain. While this is helpful, even miraculous, I am concerned that it could make identifying a physical problem difficult in the future. Pain is an important feedback when things go wrong that need attention. I sometimes worry a little about this. Could I miss important signs of my imminent demise? The bliss says, “pipe down, it’s okay, just chill…” What’s behind the bliss? A cocktail of chemistry, I have found. It isn’t all just dopamine, but a good portion is based on my experience and investigation into it.
I disagree with Jana Dixon in her assertion in the Physiology of Kundalini that dopamine does not play an important role in the symptoms of kundalini. I have observed that high dopamine levels are responsible for being able to take part in the release process because while dopamine is a natural pain killer, the effect it had on me psychologically was that it made it possible for me to let go, and to stop “grasping” for the old familiar psychological patterns that were the basis of old beliefs and programming. What I experienced fell neatly into the realm of high dopamine levels. Additionally, I have found that in people with schizophrenia, the condition involves an inability to properly metabolize dopamine, resulting in a build-up in the brain resulting in the psychotic break if nothing changes. I found an online conversation of a group of schizophrenics who had gone off their medication just to see how long they could go without serious problems. One person said that he discovered his symptoms after a week were identical to kundalini. For me, this was proof that at the right level, dopamine is directly tied to elements that makes kundalini feel the way that it does. It may also be responsible for boosting psi ability in the brain by allowing the self to tune out the usual signals through the sensory cortex in favor of tuning in the nonphysical senses. Dopamine, it could be said, gives peoole a pleasant rush at one level, but could do much more at higher levels.
When I read accounts of people who smoked opium (a dopamine analog in plant form) many of the accounts described symptoms very similar to my own experience with dopamine. When the self lets go and surrenders, the chemistry instantly shifts away from the stress hormones of norepinephrine and adrenaline and into the softer more dreamy dopamine/oxytocin range of the spectrum. And who among us haven’t felt intense feelings of love during awakening? I am not suggesting that dopamine production is kundalini, I am suggesting that dopamine is the concoction that creates part of the experience of bliss in the body. This is all being coordinated at the nonlocal consciousness level. Dopamine doesn’t get produced or released until the signal from the consciousness comes. I will also add that I am aware that other compounds are in this mix, it’s just that the effects of dopamine were so easy to identify with some simple online searching. I do think that without a little adrenaline, dopamine tends to make me want to lie down for considerable lengths of time. It slows motor response, it has even slurred my speech and gave me the stereotypical “Buddha gaze” where eyelids are often at half mast. I wouldn’t rule out the presence in small amounts of DMT since in small amounts it has been shown to create bliss. I for one would like very much to test this in a clinical setting to see how DMT bliss compares to my own physically produced bliss compounds.
When this shift in the heart happened, what I count as the fifth in a five-layered process (tied to the koshas—each chakra is like an onion, kosha meaning “husk” and each layer aligns with the five major aspects of the energy body: emotional mental, physical, energetic, and spiritual). This means that each chakra can be cleared by kundalini up to five times as it acts on each aspect of the chakra and its koshas.
At this time, just a week before the change in location, I inquired in meditation to find out the nature of a hitch that I had for most of my life, which is a habitual tendency to move into poverty consciousness. This never made much sense to me in the past because I always had a capacity to get whatever I needed in life, so what gives? Just ask and it will be given.
I realized in the course of the inner inquiry that there were no limits that existed within, and what was causing it was a vestige remaining that came from growing up in a family where this issue seemed front and center. I was myself taken on a very fast journey through a space that I knew was my being and what felt curiously similar to a spaciousness that I experienced in the wake of the third clearing of my heart center in 2008.
In my recent meditation, my inner guidance took me through this vast open space and there was simply nothing there that would impede it (it was completely clear—a vast brilliant white space–my own connection to and experience of the divine white light capable of being anchored here by me in this life). Huh.
This was new to me because over the years this inner space was always cluttered with something. I grew accustomed to feeling the “remainder” of the stuck energy that had yet to be resolved, with the process always being where I saw, noted its presence (after a while of getting used to this process), knew it was there, but relied on the energy to get to it in its own time. I, as a result, never second-guessed the energy in terms of which block it would get to next because it was much better at getting it done than I could ever do on my own. That said, I did practice Qi Gung and meditation in order to ‘soften the ground’ so to speak in a hope of making things go more smoothly for this intelligent energy. It was my “project” and after years of doing this work sudden it became a wind-swept silence of a space.
“There is nothing there” my inner guidance said to me. There was nothing in my way, whatever that hitch was that I had was now gone. Looking back I realize that most of it was the result of other people who either expressed a poverty consciousness, or it was people near me who tried to connect me with it. Luckily those people have edited themselves from my life now and for the last three years I have been actively engaged in bringing my studio business back to life (with the greatest growth happening during the pandemic).
Within days events changed. I had cobbled together work from last month’s production in the studio, held an event, and in 20 years of doing shows and events, this one wasn’t just better than anything I had done before, it was head and shoulders beyond anything that I had ever done since I began the business in 1997. I thought it was a fluke until the next week’s event was just as crazy as the first. This was repeated a third time for good measure and the result was the same. The whole tenor of the business has changed. I am hiring part time help and the truth is, it wont be enough. A new chapter has opened up. The heart mark had shifted during this time, signaling a readiness to step into the next phase of the journey.
The curious thing about this is that I keep hearing that abundance is tied to the root or base energy center. I feel that for me, it all happens in my heart as a pivot point, a mediator, between root and crown centers. For whatever reason, this was the most natural outcome for me. How is that possible? Is it that when we do something with love, it can only really emerge best from the heart? Would it then be an outcome mediated by it?
All of this is the culmination of years worth of work, so while this recent development was a pleasant surprise, it was one step along a long line of steps. And why am I even saying this? It’s to show that there are different ways of doing this work, to convey that the moment someone says that something must happen a certain way, you can know there are many paths that lead to the same summit. The other side is my sense that none of this is supernatural but is, I think, natural. It’s physioligical and driven by an energetic force we unfortunately don’t know much about in a scientific way because so few researchers are willing to delve into it. We do have reams and reams of accounts both current and ancient by the people experiencing the phenomenon. It is described as a serpent in India. Based on how the energy rose up through my body, I can understand why. But there is no snake, there isn’t even a Shiva and Shakti meeting at the crown. Those are apt descriptions to say what it is like, no one thinks it actually is that. This is much the same as Jesus saying the kingdom is like a candle, or a treasure in a field. The kingdom isn’t literally those things, it is like those things. Based on my observations it is more likely that this energetic even is the result of the two brains, the left and right hemispheres finally synchronizing in a very particular way which leads to a sudden rush of energy and bliss flowing into the crown and radiating throughout the body. That may not sound terribly exciting, but how the mechanics sound and how it feels can appear quite different. Prana is just electricity?? It might be that a slight “over-volt” in the body is enough to supercharge the brain and kick the endochrine system into high gear where a host of hormones kick into high gear resulting in better health, sharper physical senses, and an expansion of cognition even into intuitive abilities. Clearly these burns or marks are the result of a real physical force, and the best explanation is an arc of electricity perhaps coupled with resistance at critical points where energy flows from and to the torso to the legs. It would help if someone with a technical background were to take an interest. How to rouse those in slumber?
Personally I suspect that the phenomenon represents an area of inquiry scientifically that would likely serve to challenge materialist views long held about consciousness as arising from matter rather than the other way around (which is what I think this is). It also has the potential to vault us into a new understanding of ourselves, and our potentials If only we can break the log-jam of enlightenment-era thinking (namely Descart who championed the idea that we are just biological machines entirely driven by the matter assembled that we call biological life). The incidence of marks that show around energetic events like awakening is one such example of real physical traces that help to anchor the phenomenon in something more than “woo-woo” and gets us all closer to “how-to” through an investigation of this field as a once-rare event that is fast becoming a more common phenomenon.
I know that it is entirely possible that my heart mark could help show the physical traces and existance of the chakra, not as a belief or notion promulgated by Eastern philosophy and esotericists, but as a reality that could serve to point to the system most directly tied to the forces of consciousness.
Additionally it could help us to understand the size of the chakra in the energy body. The fact that the mark on my heart emerged immediately after a heart clearing event, was the size of a dime at that time (in 2011), only to change size while also moving up my sternum by about three inches may have a lot to tell us about how this system behaves. While we may not have dozens of people for a half-decent study, we may be able to glean information from the few who do exhibit these markings as a response or reaction to the energy. Is this mark, which persists, the result of a strong energetic pathway that opened up in the wake of awakening and the release of emotional baggage? It feels electric to me, so that would be one clue for future investigation. I also sense that what might be increased electrical activity in my body may well be felt or read as bliss in consciousness. I see a connection with this energy serving to stimulate my endochrine system which has led to a host of positive physical results. It also, not surprises, has pushed libido a good deal, and with so many experiencers describing kundalini as a sexual energy, this effect may help us to understand why, while helping us to see how this energy impacts the body in a positive way (while understanding better how to support the physical organism so it has less chance of burning us out or experiencing negative side effects from the energy).
Currently most materialistically inclined thinkers think that the idea of the chakra is just speculative hogwash. I think that by upping our game on this front we could begin to show anecdotal evidence that this is more than mere speculation.
The problem I face is finding the people who are affected in the same or similar ways as I have in regards to the marks. While I have a handful of people who have reported having had simkar marks only one has been willing to share pictures which he took before the marks faded after the surge of energy that likely produced them faded. While I had a hip mark, my Japanese friend developed a mark at his throat chakra which is not that different in size and shape as my heart chakra mark. At this point, these kinds of numbers are not enough to convince any researcher that there is anything to it.
If you have experienced this type of phenomenon, I would like very much to know because it will help us to better understand this phenomenon and without data, there isn’t any interest. If you have images you can send them to info@staffordartglass.com. Your info will be held in confidence for any contacts that you make.
I found this to speak so closely to my experience, what I strive for, what I have encountered, what I strive for more…truly, not as effort, but as what naturally arises as the self is purified more and more. More work to do, but his words are so on point…
it leads you to a deeper love
rivulets lead to torrents
and rivers run out to the sea.
Let love lead you
go blind and follow down blind alleys and heart break
until there is nothing left but a bigger love
which yawns widely
consuming you
taking you into itself
as it shows you it’s bliss
orgasmic,
alive,
eternal,
forever new.
Let the small lead you to its inevitable course,
to flow into the larger
so that you are led into an ever greater love
that no one could imagine exists.
But this love sets up shop
like lovers who are unafraid of making their love
right in front of you,
in the bathroom
the living room,
the park
temple
and office.
They are there,
unafraid to be within you
wherever you are
going at it
and sharing this sweet orgasmic experience with you.
These two have lost their shame
long ago
and visit us each
as revealer
of how Creation is
beyond our breathing world….
Let it lead you.
It will trick you
until you learn
that it is first inside you
as a creek empties into its river
and fish become platelets
and water turns to salt
and salt into wine….
Let it take you
show you
and why it wants you
to follow.
It is not an emotion
but a force of nature
this love.
It is not for a thing
but occupies us
a revealer of our truth
of both our dark and light….
but by being it’s follower,
it’s crazy saddhu,
we are remade by it
and become the consumate lover
of all.
Not for a thing,
we become that love
and become the force we were all along.
It is a crazy crash of a love
that tears down illusion
leaving the eager lips
and consumate heart
as it’s center
turning ’round endlessly
wondering what is the point
until we realize
it is in just being it.
By being just that
the noblest truth is owned
not borrowed,
felt to the marrow
no fakery here.
To love because you are love
is the hardest path
because there is nothing else
to turn to—
not anger
or fear
or jealousy
or lies….
because it cannot tolerate anything else but it’s relentless drive to the Center….
Only one great truth remains
and it has hid itself in you
so that your lips last for only that love
and your heart is aflame for nothing else but it.
Who else can you love then?
The bar raised so high
only the universe can pick the one
when all else is shed
and you wander seemingly alone
in a world filled with lovers who feel it for a thing.
My religion is the wind swept plains, the tea shared on rainy days with wordless joy passing between us. It is the pulse within me which finds the pulse of the universe as I find them the same. My religion has no beliefs but is filled with presence, and a joy that grows ever-bountiful. Like a hermit I live, and every moment with those whom I love grows more precious by the day.
My heart is filled from a deep well from within as it’s waters never lessen or subside. I do not have to believe anything when what I know burns and flows with a power I just can’t tell. But I do wish the world could know this. But until then, I do the curious things we creatures do and find excitement in the simplest of things. This eternal flame of a presence contents me and rouses me to a new life.
I wish it were true that love is found in another, but this pulse of life that animates my awareness says this is not so. We must find this love first within us if we are to know it in another… for how else could we ever love them rightly, speaking such different languages which we want to call love. No, I must first overflow, be so enlivened and filled that it will ward me off from loves mistaken, loves that seek to take and make others responsible for what we truly each must find for ourselves. It’s been one of my latter realizations that I am here building a vibrant love inside myself so grand that its often hard to stand. But I do, and sigh into deeper folds of its mesmerizing wonder.
I am left utterly stripped of belief, and naked as I am, I am so much closer to the one that animates and guides. Listening quietly, I do wonder that if this is all there is, how grand that I may have just come to it, ready for the consummating kiss that is it’s promise made somewhere hidden in the folds of our bridal chamber.
I do not believe, but I bear the riches of the heart of religion. I have the temple without the priests. It is the deepest and most holy of the mysteries, and it is the only one you ever need to know to see how it alone reveals the rest. She bids me enter her most sacred of mysteries. She shows me where her lover meets her which is in the triadic chamber of my heart. No priests or priestesses, no law, no guess work. No prophets, no holy wars. No hymns, save my warm breath and yearning. No candles, save the flame of it all, and no opinions, no pronouncements in the deep chamber that is my soul knowing itself.
To love that the divine moves in you is no sin but sacred. To know beyond all dogma is a healing hand. With just a glance my whole life opens to it with no eventuality ever being just sheer chance. To honor the love that lives in me is to love and honor how masterfully I was made…and I do hope that you find this soon, too, so we can share Summer’s last fading light with tea and thunderstorms and the honor of pure religion flowing in our hearts.
Waking The Infinite 