The Third Eye: A Simple Tip For Helping To Activate Awakening

I begin this as I begin all posts on ways of sparking awakening, which is to caution the reader to consider that if you are not properly prepared, awakening can not go according to plan. This is a full-time commitment and it will occupy your life for years especially in the beginning and more specifically in the first three to five years of awakening until you learn how to work with, and not against the forces that are brought to bear. One thing I can say is that if you are OCD, like things a certain way, or like your life well ordered and controlled, awakening is not for you. Awakening will involve opening up the metamind, which is a fuller spectrum of mind than you are used to. It also reveals your shadow and the way at working out these wrinkles in your past is not the way we go about our business normally. If you don’t know how to surrender and let go of expectations, it is better that you learn how to cultivate that part first.

That said, a simple method that has been used both by the Hindu’s as well as the Egyptians. It is also what I was guided to do one evening as I sat for my meditation. I will also say that this method may not work magic for you right away, but for others it may be very helpful. It is best preceded by the meditation method described in my last post, which is a good way to learn how to silence the left brain (which is the part we call the part that is always “talking”). This is a shift into the nonverbal centers as recent discoveries have revealed.

There is an apocryphal story about an exchange between Pythagoras and a member of a mystery school in Egypt where he asked them what he needed to do in order to gain entry (he was said to have petitioned them many times) and the response was to focus on certain centers in the body and to fast. He did what was prescribed and returned saying they were right and that by doing so, he was changed. He said the old Pythagoras no longer existed and a new man stood before them.While we don’t know what those center were, it is very likely that they were centers like the third eye since this same method has been mentioned in passing in ancient writings. Pythagoras went on to study there for many years and eventually became a teacher there.

Sitting quietly and in meditation (breath work as prescribed as described in the previous post is helpful to drop you into greater quiet) close your eyes and then focus your physical eyes on your brow region of your forehead. Imagine that you are looking just beyond your brow region some. This will mean that your eyes may feel like they are slightly crossed. Focus your eyes and your attention on the area that we think of as where the Ajna or third eye chakra is located. Now as you do this, you can be aware that you are focusing the energy of your awareness there. You can imagine that you are sending energy to that location, because you are. Do this for moderate amounts of time, but don’t do it until you feel uneasy and find yourself disliking it. It’s important to find this fun and enjoyable because the quality of your energy will help actually to create an emotional pattern associated with this activity. It is better to do five minutes while feeling fresh than it is to do forty minutes and feeling bored to tears. Just place your attention on that spot and consider how you are filling that center with the energy of your awareness, and that your energy is going into that center.

It’s helpful if you do this without any expectation of an outcome. It is best to keep your mind as free from these things as possible. Having a blank mind is very helpful because what you are doing in this practice is stimulating the latent powers of your being. The ajna chakra is one of the least emotional centers in the energy system. It sees but the degree of emotion in seeing can be one more aligned to a kind of detachment. Certainly the state required to open up the powers of the right brain and the larger cosmic mind requires learning to understand how that focus of mind is so broad as if to seem as if it is not a focus at all, and this can escape beginners. It is like you went from wearing glasses that allowed you to see up close for most of your life and one day, you took up a set of telescopic lenses that allowed you to see so far that you didn’t realize what it was you were doing. You might even be gazing and deep empty space without realizing that this was itself a meta view (through the metamind). Because the third eye can be so free from emotion, the initial awakening can be relatively calm at first, allowing you to be more stable in those first days of new experience. Only later might the energy, the high flow of prana, begin to open up and free stuck or knotted energy in your field, after which the experience can then become more intense to the degree that you allow it to be so. There is nothing inherently wrong with its being intense, but some of it is built on appearances and on an illusion created by the ego that these things are more important than they are. The only thing important is that the body and mind is cleared of them. Some might think they have to wrestle with these things, and when someone takes a stance like this, then it seems reasonable that wrestling must be done, but this is in no way necessary at all. You can learn to drop the drama within if you are more selfless in your approach. This is a much more peaceful way of going about doing “the work.”

Additionally, it is possible that other centers of energy might be stimulated that could stir the depths and bring on awakening, however, it is my sense that everyone needs to be careful when doing this since if you activate a center that has a lot of stuck emotional material, you could be seeing your experience through a lens that is now amplifying that emotional material, which is like being cast into the vat sea of awakening but in choppy seas right from the start. There is, though, real benefit in simply meditating and feeling your energy, sitting with it and keeping your mind open without preconceptions about what it is or what you might experience. By sitting in the present, by being present, you are beginning to utilize the right brain which has the goods in regards to cosmic mind. In my last post I spoke to this as being a quality that we have identified as being located in the right brain. This part of the brain is specialized in a certain range of perception and feeling, and it is very different from the more dominant left brain. Knowing that it is the right brain doing this doesn’t really tell us much, so all of this is a direct experience. Just knowing that you have this bicameral brain with two ranges of experience and perceptual ability is enough to put you on the scent so that you can remind yourself to emphasize one a little more than the other. Contractions of consciousness, which are often about fear and which can contain pain body, something that is both a noun and a verb, can be experienced and then the self can learn how to keep those contractions down to a minimum which results in keeping a broader more open-hearted state at play. This is why work of this kind seems best done in a gradual fashion since it allows you to slowly walk into the waters gradually and to get used to how to navigate it and not fall for fear or anxiety or to lapse into the pain body or contracted states, which are a hallmark of the left brain.

We are also at this unique place in our development as a species where awakening is happening in ways that have never happened before. It is a hopeful sign in some ways and I think that it also shows that this is very much needed if we are to progress as a species here on the planet. We need bigger thinkers, we need more compassionate thinkers, too. We need the soul of what the Buddhists call bodhichitta, which is a motivation that is based on wanting to expand our understanding of ourselves while at the same time, wanting to be of service to others. It is a more selfless way of being, and is not about grasping for approval or for being happy because we made someone else happy. It is like giving something precious away and not holding onto it. I leave a hundred dollar bill near a park bench and someone who i do not know picks it up and is thrilled because moments before they worried how they were going to pay a bill, or maybe it is just that the note left which says “blessings to you” was enough to clue them in that all of this was intentional but selfless.

The boddhichitta is also that part of you that has made you a seeker and has kept you on the path of wanting to know more, to reach whatever that elusive thing was that might have been eluding you for so long. There are some who say that seeking is itself an illusory act, but I am of the mind that we are first seekers before we find that which rewards us so greatly. The essence of the bodhi, or Buddha nature, is one where the heart opens and where there is less grasping. It is in such a state where all that we need naturally comes, like a blessing upon our heads like the rain that makes everything grow. The universe is not one of punishing or rewarding. The way of the bodhi is in part the removing of obstacles. This is why so many who awaken experience such coincidental or synchronistic events in their lives. Miracles, small ones, sometimes daily, remind us that we have stopped the struggle and are now open to the divine plan and cosmos, which is one of abundance if we can live in that feeling state. The reverse is certainly also possible where everything seems to be going wrong. Examine your thoughts and your beliefs.

If you feel a struggle or resistance within you, then whatever you are feeling will serve to attract things like it. If you feel that there is something wrong with helping others because you think that it is somehow selfish or self serving, then examine your feelings more. If you are living transactionally in your life, you might be missing an important element that is holding you back. If you give openly with a full heart, more of that openness will come to you in your life, bringing you greater joy and fulfillment. If you instead want happiness, you will tend to be more happy and by serving this light in you, you will shine it out onto others in a shower that they also cannot help but sense at some level. This is some of the more positive motivations that can serve to guide you in your inner work.

So by focusing your awareness on the third eye, you feed more energy into that one center. As you do this, it slowly fills with the light of your awareness and your attention. Perhaps think of it as some unknown reservoir that can contain energy and by turning the light of your mind inward, you are no longer expending it through the physical sensory world. At first this might be a challenge, but the mind can be trained, and you can make this part of a practice with the highest intentions at heart. Don’t worry about when that reservoir will fill up enough for something to happen, instead be patient since we are each unique and this may take some time, some more than others. This isn’t a race and achieving this is like finding a pearl that is hidden in the mud. Imagine yourself filling up with your attention and keeping turned inward. This practice is very similar to what is called the Golden Flower, which is in Taoism. The secret of this flower is known when we turn the “lantern of your attention inward” so that the inner world is filled with light and may respond in time.

Every tradition has its prescriptions, some say to practice for forty days, others don’t put a time limit on it, and this I think is the wisest way to approach this. What I can say is that imagination is the gateway through which we can know a hitherto unknown thing. At first when you get results, you will think you are just making it all up, but deeper still is a part of you that naturally knows what or how to imagine in order to get there. By being quiet and calm and learning how to calm yourself with breath work, you can begin to bump up against these forgotten realms of the mind. Remaining inquisitive and like a child is best. I have found that I was able to learn much by not leaning on a teacher, for it is in us to know these things if we resist the desire to ask someone who surely must know more than we do. If a teacher is needed, that teacher will come like the blessed rain that I described as coming to the bodhi earlier. If you resist trying to figure it all out in a mental way or trying to force things, the universe will provide you with exactly what you need for that moment. Its pretty amazing that I was able to have people who had exactly what I needed who lived within walking distance of my home in these mountains. One was a Qi Gung master of sorts, someone who had studied in China to learn White Crane Qi Gung, which is the same energy practice that the Shaolin monks learned, a man who gave classes just around the corner from me, about three blocks away from my home. Then there was a healer from New Zealand who was almost the same distance from my home, who was there just in time to help me with some later work in my process. Only months after seeing her, she moved to another part of the States, so all of this had the feeling of happening in what we often call “divine timing.” In each case, I didn’t ask for these things, but I was open to the possibilities. All of this comes when there is this shift or acceleration in our energetic awareness where we seem to be interfacing very differently with the world. These are all signs that we are moving into a different perceptual and field of consciousness. Remaining humble and serving the light within seems to keep us on the right keel and in a state of grace, which I observe is an important thing for us. Don’t expect to be perfect at every moment, but instead learn as you go, for surely this is how we improve. Awakening is a great gift, but it is just the beginning, a kind of entry into the garden. You might wind up slipping on some of your own shit from time to time, so go easy on yourself. This is not a race, and there is no one out there who is going to bonk you on your head for messing up (you will probably do enough of that in the beginning all on your own).

Using this method along with the meditation that was outlined in my last post can be a very useful way of stirring the depths. Consider the meditation method first and then after a period of some weeks as you get used to the method, bring in the third eye meditation later.

Serving the Light,

~Parker

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Death & Bliss

I had allowed the shadow of death to knock me from my perch. It happened as a gradual accretion, a belief based on coincidental symptoms that had emerged over the last two years that I might be sick and that I might die from what the symptoms were suggesting that I had. I have spent weeks trying to feel out if it even feels right to write about this. There was, I realize some unrecognized silliness involved, too. This is not something that I have mentioned to but a few people in my life.

It’s true. I began having symptoms for what I thought was for a type of intestinal cancer. Normally very healthy, I didn’t carry health insurance. It was tricky to sign up for: you can only sign up November through December. Those are the two busiest months in my studio business, and for as lame as it sounds, I missed the signup dates two years running. I knew the clock was ticking and yet I was also being pulled into a feeling of inevitability.

I knew that the only way I was ever going to see a doctor was with the right insurance. The importance of this was driven home by something I learned about first-hand about cancer diagnosis and treatment. A family had come to me this past year to ask that I put the ashes of their loved one into molten glass, something I do with something called Journey Glass. I saw during a visit to the studio how they had tried to keep their loved one alive with chemo treatments. When she finally passed, her husband was 1.2 million dollars in debt. It was startlingly easy to do with the cost of a single dose of IV administered chemo at nineteen thousand dollars. They went into receivership just trying to keep her alive. I knew the only way I would see a doctor was with insurance. I also knew every case was unique, and I knew the clock was ticking. The back story on this was that I could feel a block in a region of my body corresponding to the LV 12 meridian point and I had had several therapists work in and around that energy line as early as 2013 onward. I could FEEL the energetic block for a while before it manifested into a physical malady. Being me, I assumed the worst instead of staying open and receptive.

The symptoms were all consistent with cancer, though. When I would research the symptoms, this was all that ever came up with. How could it be anything but that? After two years of this dogging me, I finally was able to see a doctor who ordered a battery of tests. The abdominal pain had gotten so bad that I was having difficulty using bliss states to ameliorate the pain. This tossed a few more pints of gas on the fire of my fears. It turned out, though, that it was just that; an unfounded concern based on symptoms that sounded nearly identical to the “big C.”

One big reason why I fell for this was that in years past, as I worked through blocked energy with kundalini assisting, I could feel the presence of the blocked energy in what I identified was the LV 12 region of the meridian system. I had been to an acupuncturist, which did result in some releases, and then later I was guided to a Kahuna healer whose therapy room was within walking distance of my home. Of all the people out there, I had a therapist who knew and understood energy work using a modality that focused on the balance between yin and yang energies, which was exactly what I had been hoping to find. She had lived in New Zealand where she first learned her craft. Here she was, within walking distance of my home. She too helped me when a group of Reiki healers could only go so far. I wrote a few years ago about how one of these healers admonished me to not “go trying to find problems where problems didn’t exist” because she could not feel the presence of the block herself. I thanked her and the rest of the crew. A month later I found Violet, my Kahuna healer, who felt the block and went straight to work letting a portion of it go. There was still something there that I could feel vividly, that remained. About a year later, another energy healer worked on this area of my body, revealing still more material stored there. That, too, was a welcome relief. I said that I was concerned about moving this block because I was afraid it could wind up turning into disease and kill me. Because of some cancer in my family, my mind went to that as the potential invisible culprit. It was there that things stayed and after a few more years, I had the uneasy sense that the energy was turning into a physical symptom of illness. I was ready for the worst, which has been one of the Achilles heels in my life. Why had I fallen for the negative instead of remaining open to the possibilities?

Somewhere along the line I allowed this niggling fear to eat away at my bliss, the same kind of bliss that I felt when an angelic presence entered my room one early morning at four a.m. and did to me the same thing that I would later read had happened to St Theresa of Avilla. An arrow had been thrust into her heart, which set her ablaze with bliss and a love for God. Her insides felt as though they were being drawn out of her. I had the same experience, except that my angelic presence pulled something that felt like my insides out of me, leaving me emptied of something I knew was old past material. It was this experience with that angelic being that I was able to taste a bliss that was beyond all bliss. It was that one experience that forever changed me from that moment forward, leaving me to reach for some semblance of that bliss felt on the morning of Good Friday in 2008, about a year after kundalini first rose in me. It showed me that I didn’t need to be a believer, much like Paul wasn’t a believer either, but was nonetheless struck by a blinding light which changed his life forever. I am not suggesting that I am a Paul, no, but rather to underscore that belief is not a prerequisite (like it was with Paul). It is something that is in all of us, a potential which is revealed in each of us just as Paul described it as the Christ that was revealed in him in that moment. We don’t get it by looking outside of ourselves, but by always looking within to find the “architecture,” the structure in our own consciousness that makes such a state possible. The reward is this brilliant bliss that heals and transforms. It humbles, too, while opened the mind to our greater potential. It’s as though we often suffer at the hands of our limitations, of feeling cut off somehow from a quality that we in truth have but do not realize that we have. I had allowed myself to drift from that perch that I had found. I am reminded that this is a daily challenge to always attune myself to this quality and to do so in silence and in thanksgiving.

So finally, I was able to go to a doctor. Tests were ordered up, a whole battery of them. One by one, the results came in: negative for cancer. I was happy to have been wrong! I had reached a place in life where the world just seemed like it was going off the rails. It was like the world was going mad to me, and it was disheartening to witness it all. I saw how terrible people were being to one another in the midst of a pandemic, I saw how those who questioned the mainstream narrative were being treated much like any group in our past has been treated: they were the enemy. Why? Why was one narrative being pushed so hard? Why was early treatment being treated as though it was the worst possible thing a person could do to themselves or to others? Doctors lost their ability to practice medicine. People were deplatformed from social media sites for speaking up about alternatives. I read meta studies that showed the efficacy of other methods. And why not? How had so many seemed to have lost their minds? Fear. That’s what happened. In fact, I had also fallen for the power of fear myself with the concern that I had cancer, so I wasn’t immune from this. My condition all seemed to fit a given illness trajectory, except fear kept me from considering other alternatives that could have led me to different conclusions or the possibility of them. It took tests to show that my fear was unfounded. All of this left me feeling like maybe leaving this life might not be such a bad thing.

I know how that sounds, but if you know me, you know that working with kundalini left me largely free from the fear of death. I knew what waited for me on the other side of all of this. And yet, I was not completely immune from fear about something else. So? It was for me a big lesson, an important one, and it had more to do with not giving up so fast, to stay with the challenge that this life offered me. The lesson was one of having a better attitude. The rest, I have come to learn involves availing myself of how to help my body heal from a couple of issues that created the symptoms that I thought might be cancer related.

Despite this, I had already begun to have big shifts in my life, with an ex who finally came to apologize to me for her treatment, something I never thought could or would happen. This had happened in part as a result of what power truth has in our lives. We can run from the truth, but it gets harder and harder to hide. Eventually it eats away at your peace, which was predicated on something that was false. I am not suggesting that karma is something that is some righteousness coming to take anyone down, but rather that when we hide from the truth, the truth stalks us since that truth is so important for our happiness and wellbeing. My ex’s life had been whittled away because of living an untruth and seeking to promulgate untruths about me. I wrote about this recently, just as it caused me to consider the effect the same acts others have perpetrated in my life which involved being dishonest. Would it stalk them too? Of course, but that wasn’t my story and they were out of my orbit, thankfully. I too wasn’t being honest about my truer nature and had allowed the worst of my fears to grip me. Luckily, I was able to dispel those fears once and for all. I mention this recent event with my ex because in that moment I felt this great weight lift, and when that happens, many more other things often tend to have a way of happening, too. But as for my condition, this swirl of concern over my health and mortality? It showed me that there is something beyond the pinched view I had in regards to what my ex had done and I read this event as my soul finally being heard before I might kick the bucket. But there was another possibility beyond my thinking that this was a presage to some kind of transition. Silly me.

I had so much to do, I thought, so much left to do that my soul came here in physical form to work through. I had several writing projects hanging over my head and I really needed to finish those so I could tick them off my soul contract. I had not spoken to anyone about these concerns except for just a few people, and none of them in my family. I didn’t want anyone to worry, least of all my daughter who was getting ready to finish up her last semester at college. I figured if it was bad like I feared, then I would have to look at chemo and surgery perhaps, and that would be a bridge I would have to cross once I got there. No use in setting off alarms and distracting people. On the other hand, I still considered this could be something else, so I stayed quiet. I am glad that I did. I am also glad I was able to get the question cleared up.

This experience has helped to also underline the importance of taking care of my gut health because my gut has felt like it has been zapped with electricity since the rise of kundalini 15 years ago. Those who practice Chi Gung claim that chi resides in the gut, and it may be that it exists as a kind of biological battery of sorts. I had developed symptoms of nausea after awakening (kundalini flue they call it), as well as a five month period where my body stopped feeling hunger, a period of time that led to the shedding of loads of blocked energy and also helping my system adjust to this new normal. The zapping of my gut though was always an issue, one that came and went, and now as I write this I find that the many notes that I wrote in my journal about way of supporting good gut health are now coming in handy. While I am not a doctor, I can feel how food effects my system and how I need to change my diet a little more. Some of this involves getting rid of wheat as a possible culprit for one aspect of my symptoms, another involves supporting healthy gut bacteria. There is more work to do, and my hope is that I can heal a very cranky system that has led me to a great deal of discomfort at times.

I remain concerned about the state of the world, one that feels like it is somehow running off the rails emotionally. I see groups seeking to seize control of the narrative in order to direct policy in a global way that I frankly find beyond worrisome. When I see leaders embracing a green ideology while at the same time banning the use of fossil fuels while they themselves are opening up new markets for their own liquified natural gas in Europe, I see hypocricy. When I see passports for tracking our carbon footprint and whether someone has had a vaccine, I see another form of control and the loss of freedom in the process. Freedom is messy, but the ability to speak freely even though it means listening to voices we do not agree with is the cornerstone of our form of government here in the U.S. and in other democratic societies. Without dialog we lose the means of thrashing through our challenges in a broader way, imperfect though it may be, and even if it inconveniences our own personal values. We have so much promise as a species and yet, if we are not free to work through our challenges in an open way, we lose the very thing that will help us to find new solutions to old problems. We have so much potential and I hate to think that we as a species might squander it. Only through freedom do I sense that we will open up the lanes of possibility which could lead us to a brighter tomorrow.

My big lesson in all of this is not to shrink from controversy, nor to allow my own inner fear get the best of me. Only by being neutral and open will I be able to see with clearer eyes. I am glad that I was wrong, at least on this one thing. There is a bliss that exists at the center of our being. So many have been cut off from this fundamental nature, and so often fear is the killer of this bliss. But even death does not stop it, as this too is part of the natural order of our existence. For myself, I am getting back to the pass of bliss again as the way through, but not around my own challenges. It is in the bliss state that I find my own mind is expanded and curiously, my own intuitive powers strengthened. It is as it has always been, this new mind birthed from the union of opposites in our consciousness. This bliss represents the fullest expression of the synthesis that takes hold of those who “wake up” and find their consciousness changed in a twinkling. I think this is the way through for many of us, and hopefully it will be the way for many more to follow.

A Waking Reminder

Just a note, I don’t know who needs to see this, but for those who have done clearing work, the act of allowing the force of prana (often expressed as kundalini, but not always) then you are familiar with how this works. If you aren’t, there are numerous modalities that can help, with or without an abundance of prana present. Many of them involve movement of the body: deep tissue massage, chi gong, ecstatic dance, acupressure/puncture. Whether the stuck emotion is in the body or there is an important feedback from the body for unlocking stuck emotion, the body plays an important role.

The release of stuck energy is a bit of a rabbit hole, though, and this is because the energy body has five nested aspects that make it up, which is your full energetic expression on this plane. This means that you can clear an energy center once, twice, three times, and on up to FIVE times. It can be a bit mystifying sometimes. When it happened to me, I wondered if I had somehow missed something. This was the result of these layers of the energy body that in the Sanscrit is called ‘kosha’ which means sheath. The energy body is like a multidimensional nesting doll, with multiple aspects all nested one into the other. This is why you might have a fabulous clearing of the root chakra only to come back the following year to be at it, clearing it again.

Koshas are like the layers of an onion.

The clue here that you aren’t just clearing new material you managed to store away, is how the center feels each time you perform a release. It is like entering a room, say the living room, and it feels completely different and even looks different as you enter each of its different aspects. It’s possible to clear a center five times, and each clearing feels as if you are in a different space.

Clearing the heart center years ago left me wondering what was going on. Hadn’t I already had a dramatic clearing already? I shrugged and figured it would make sense later. It did, luckily, as I found by accident the concept in yoga of the koshas.

I found that by clearing material in the heart, it got hard for me to relate to certain people the same way as before. Turned out, we shared an energetic arrangement and karma that created a kind of tense ‘cord’ between us. I was able to observe what dissolving that glitch in me did to another person who was not ready for change. Now this is highly individual. One person might just feel an emptiness tied to peace, but another person who is invested in their inner junk could feel unsettled. I saw how many of my releases definately impacted my then-wife who, it turns out, was not a person interested in doing any inner work to speak of. Meltdowns ensued within 12 hours of each release. This happened over a dozen times. The important thing to remember is I never told anyone about my releases as they happened, so this type of coincidence goes beyond coincidence in my book (most likely probably 🙂 )

This work has also meant that by releaaing so much, it effectively allowed me to step over the wall of people’s own limits as a personality on Earth to go into the realm of their soul so that I could feel the sublime character of souls in communion….even as that person could not feel what I felt and seemed incredulous about my insistence that I could feel what I felt. Since all of our hopes as social creatures is to have the other share in the experience, it is like having someone meeting you in a restaurant but who can’t see you when you show up. It has happened before, and it is a sign that real substantive work is being done. It can also be lonely, too.

Just as an aside, this is why I often say traditional methods of psychic protection are not that effective by putting up resistance. What happens perceptually with ANY consciousness is when you change your energy signature to something finer, it is difficult for others to see you or sense you etherically. Lower level entities can’t hook into your energy neither can they see you since to see you would mean matching your vibration. This is to my experience the only real “protection” from untoward influences. Your energy doesn’t contain unhealthy desires that can hook or be hooked by something.

That said, I am not convinced that the goal is to ever be without desire (and their corresponding hooks) because even the Dali Lama admitted not long ago that some desire is noble. Me, I think some desire can be of a very high quality that avoids the coarser qualities that may have been present in our nature or consciousness at one point in our development. Some desires lead us to God. And no, that union isn’t one that is devoid of junk, but full of a live that isn’t divided, which means all aspects of love are present in that moment, regardless of how embarrassed you might be about it. Mystic union is in fact heresy were the Christian church to know its fullest reality. Luckily, we have other arrows in our quiver.

The work for me was a slog at first. As time went by by sense that each release would acrue to a better state that woukd be persistent and not subject to swings from amazing bliss to horrible depths of shadow…a dark night of the soul. I dug myself out by digging deep. To dig deep you just need to feel deep and allow your intuitiin to guide you. It might not be perfect, but it is far superior to anything your rational mind cooks up. With the rational is also the most restrictive form of ego. It has forgotten that it is a budding creator. The path to understanding this is the feeling part of the self. Doing this is so simple many people make it too complicated (I did). It drives a simplicity along with a joy as you realize that all of this is a creation. Are you creating a sense of limitation and the poverty of heart and mind it brings? It doesn’t matter how rich you are because this is about feeling. Learning to conquer feeling opens up a vast dominion that is what you are.

I hope you can put this to use to assist in freeing yourself. . .

A New Project

Life is full of surprises.

Copyright, all rights reserved

I have been working methodically on a manuscript about early Christianity. It’s a slog in order to have all of the right sources. My project presents the thesis that in earliest Christianity there was a very different understanding concerning some foundational concepts that would inform the religion for centuries. It’s a story of one group that pitted itself against another and sought to wipe away its influence for all time. But like the sun, moon, and the truth, what was hidden was later revealed when documents began to surface from early on in the movement that told a very different story. It is one of the greatest stories never told about a religion that exerted tremendous influence for centuries.

It’s here that someone from the distant past emerged, a seeker herself, and artist like me, who was keen to collaborate with me. What has emerged has been a new project on a facet of awakening most commonly known as twin souls or twin flames. This is an aspect of awakenings today that link people who have karma in common.

I have been critical of the concept, though, and it was a surprise finding myself considering a project like this. The result has been a flood of information that provides a new perspective on the phenomenon that I have been bringing through. Because of my familiarity with the subject already and the history of awakening, I found I have been able to bring what I think may be a new perspective on the phenomenon.

The agreement was that the project had to be small. I didn’t have the time to devote to a 200 page manuscript. As a result, a book of 120 pages emerged very quickly. The collaboration begins with me writing and my coauthor providing illustrations and proofreading the manuscript.

The illustrations in some cases reveals the artist’s own discoveries of her brush with a new energy in consciousness, which shows up in her work, which I think helps to bring added meaning and comprehension to the project. Being able to have the work illustrated is a plus, something that makes the project unique, I think. There will be some intersections with the book I am working on related to early Christianity, which is awakening and how kundalini was actually being taught. Other cultures and traditions that have teachings or writings on awakening also tends to include the phenomenon of union both on the individual level as well as between two people, which is a second wrinkle in the awakening phenomenon. The book shows that the history on twins as they are called today is scant in the way some would like them represented, but a more abundant field of understanding awaits when you can shift your focus. To this end, I show instances through time when high vibrational relationships emerge. The phenomenon has been hiding in plain sight, but is not obvious to anyone unfamiliar with the subject. It helps if you know how and where to look. A little sleuthing can make for interesting reading.

A lot has been done in a short time, and with our moving into the Fall, I am facing the busiest time of the year for my studio business in glassmaking, so work on the book will go into a less intense phase now which will be a refinement period where I will have friends help review the work for editing. It managed to get slipped in just in the nick of time!

In the meantime, I will be publishing excerpts from the book as the editing work proceeds. This has moved along so quickly we don’t even have a title yet! I am including preliminary illustrations from the artist, which will help give you a sense of the character of the artwork and the flavor of one important aspect of our story telling.

Thanks for stopping by!

Entity Fundamentals

Someone asks about implants or entity attachments. Beyond this, you’ll need to read my book when it’s out.

So much said about these. My observation over years (40) of active energetic sensory perception is that we become vulnerable to energetic entities of every stripe, based on the emotional issues we carry. Read that again and let it sink in. Some can be akin to simple life forms all the way up to bipedal types (but still not all that intelligent). There is alot out there that isn’t physical that is entirely energy beings. Also, some beings are fragments of consciousness. It just takes enough energy focused in a particular way to create them. Homes often have them from their occupants. We call them ghosts, but I don’t think people understand what ghosts are in all truth (not completely…and that’s a post for another time).

Every single case I have seen, the entities attached due to a “trauma” or emotional wrinkle in the psyche of the person. This is always dependent on the person. What hits you wrong might not impact me…at all. This is to say that this is all because of you. Your choice in feeling led to this outcome. As hard as that may be to hear, its true. The good news is by doing your inner work, you can naturally clear these entities by clearing your backlog of emotional material. The other side to all of this is that there is no real protection in a universe as fluid as this. Vibration is everything. If you carry an off vibration somewhere in your field, it can be fair game.

Some have said drug use can cause it, but that isn’t correct. Most drug use stems from a condition of deficiency, a perception of deficiency, even if subconsciously. Something the drug supplies, that the emotion felt, robs the body of. The drug type doesn’t always track the emotion, but rather the personality type determines the drug used. I could experience the same trauma as another person but medicate with a different drug because I have a different constitution or turn of mind.

I have seen one entity daisy-chain with people. It does this because of the law of attraction. One person will attract certain people, and in that circle, many will be interesting to an entity because of the similarities between them. People do flock together.

If you use drugs of any kind, ask yourself what are you medicating? The true answer leads you right to the problem that needs your attention. Feel it, acknowledge it, and let it go, like a spirit leaving a bottle. By doing this, you engage in soul retrieval. Remember not to fall back into the habit of what the drug use represented. If you think that this is too hard, you might have become hypnotized into thinking this work is hard, and you might not be used to using the wisdom or intuitive part of yourself. That part knows where all your shit lies. It’s so easy, you will think, “That can’t be it…that was too easy…” That’s the brain washing. I can go deeper into how this is done, but this would be a chapter in a book.

There are ways to get at this material. Body work (deep tissue massage), energy work, chi gung, cranial sacral, acupressure/puncture, and TRE (trauma release exercise), holotropic breathwork, Rolfing (deep tissue again) are all ways that this material can be released. Kundalini and awakenings in general can often release this material also. You have to be very clear about whether you are ready to let it go.

People hold onto their stuff while swearing they are ready to let it go. Be humble. Be honest with yourself. Some things that feel great are in fact the illusion that a constriction in your field will make something energetic feel more intense and fool you into thinking it is “the bomb” or the thing, the person, the experience. You have to watch closely, honestly, and be able to see how inner feeling relates to how you respond to the things in your environment that are matching that unresolved issue. When it goes, the tight intensity goes and an expansiveness replaces it. It’s good to let it teach you how to be in this part of the new you.

I knew a person who had an entity attached to her. I described the being and she recognized it, saying, “He is my guide!” The being was a text book demon. Red skin. Horns. I was careful to confirm her description of the being. I offered that what I saw was a being just like Hellboy. She agreed that it did look just like him. In another case, I saw the entity which looked like a kind of dragon/dinosaur with terracotta colored skin, male. The person replied that this was her guide also. I had seen this being attached to a well-known psychic and it was attached to many of his female clients. When I offered to the woman that this was what I saw, she threatened me saying that this kind of talk was slander, and saying this could destroy the man’s ability to provide for himself. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone? I suspect both people still have their lower level entities still in place.

I chose not to remove them because I had done this once before and it made life difficult for me. I don’t regret it, I just know there are better ways (hint: it is an inside job). It is much better if the person can be made aware of what might be atrached to them so they can let them go.

I hope this primer helps. There is a lot of nuance I have missed, but posts can get long when I really dig in and I lose people. If you have questions, ask, and if you have experiences, do share! We swim in the ether. The nature of life is that we are made up of aggregates of consciousness. Our bodies are cells that have their own consciousness. Not all of this is bad or negative. The path to your higher evolution is in knowing what hinders you and what helps you.

Follow-Up On Energy Spike

Not long after what I would describe as an over-the-top energy event, I had a new wrinkle that surprised me.

In the midst of feeling like I may have been responding to turmoil in the world by getting blasted with energy, I received some suppliments in the post that I had ordered just before this latest spike. The irony is that one was a human growth factor precursor and another that boosts testosterone. Like I really need it, right? Was I crazy? My intuition said I should get them, sense be damned, it seems.

I began taking the suppliments about two weeks ago and found that they helped to moderate the very high bliss with sensual energy down to something that made me feel more like I was in my body and more grounded. Curiously, this led to less sexual/sensual bliss and more of a feeling of physical energy and groundedness.

It was like drinking an espresso before going to bed in order to sleep. You wouldn’t have thought that would be what I should have taken, but it helped a lot and it has boosted the hours that I work. I’m not sure that is a good thing since I am working seven days a week now and I really ought to take more time off for myself.

I was curious to see if it was just my imagination. After going off the suppliments, the pranic energy came roaring back like before. I found that I missed this feeling of being grounded. Instead, I found myself meditating on a feminine presence that served to ground my energy. I am under no illusion that this is an aspect in my own “subtle psyche,” which is that part of us connected to, or aware of, other lives lived and available for tapping into them for insight and help in gaining awareness into certain psychological states, for instance. In Gnostic terms, this is the szygy, the blend of like-masculine and like-feminine into a unity, that unity that serves to give vigor or life to kundalini.

As the last weeks have shown, a major operation has been underway in the U.S. under Biden and the allies, which has been to induce an invasion on the part of Russia so the U.S. could slap on sanctions and then legally sell it’s LNG to Germany which once was being sold by Russia.

With the propaganda machine being ratcheted up, casting this as being about democracy, the invasion would stop if Ukraine did what Russia has called for for decades: remain neutral and stop attacking the separatists in the Dombas region. Instead, the U.S. has been determined to ignite a new cold war with Russia. The maniacs are in control, and they are trying to play on our patriotism to push their agenda. Meanwhile Condaleeza Rice says on t.v. that Putin invading Ukraine illegally makes him a war criminal. God help us all. Invasions, the U.S. stoking a new cold war, unnecessary actions that suggest a deeper agenda…and all of this perhaps causing the ripples that I would feel as an over the top energetic response?

I am glad to find that my intuition was on the mark in regards to the supplements, I am feeling much more peaceful. None of it made any sense, though, not conventionally. Is it possible to get these effects as we age? I am sure a lot of this post doesn’t make any sense either.

I work weekends so yesterday and today were my days off. While I ran some errands, I wound up back in the studio cranking out new work, working until past nine p.m. when I realized how late it was and that maybe it was time to relax and go to bed. That in fact is what I am about to do. That’s the news from the wilderness…

A Spike In Energy. . .

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.

Dinner is served at 6 o’clock sharp…

The Energy Moves

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.

~Parker

Welcoming Prana/Qi

Mudra

So far, these are the main means I have found for facilitating the flow of the energy called prana or qi (chi). There may be more, and I would be glad to know of the ones you are aware of. This comes from someone who has no practice or teacher and is from a Western perspective. I used the simplest of methods and listened to my inner guidance that came as the river of light opened more and more within me. The one observation I have made after raising kundalini was that all of this is not difficult, and nor should it be hard to understand. All of this is about being human. Do not attempt raising kundalini without adequate preparation, however. Learning the art of surrender is one very important prerequisite. The main ways of facilitating the flow of prana:

• Quieting the mind
• Feeling
• Breathwork
• Movement

Quieting the Mind

This is not as simple as it seems. One goal of meditation is to quiet the mind, but as is often the case, we sit for some time waiting for all of our thoughts from the day to settle before we can begin the innermost work that meditation can bring us to. And then, once the thoughts do settle, what is the point? It has been known that when we quiet the mind enough, there is something that arises from the substratum of consciousness that can begin to show us clues to the deeper nature of consciousness as energy. Thus, as a result, for as simple as it is, meditation has been used by many cultures as the way to get to this point where the normal “monkey mind” is stilled. This takes work. It takes discipline. It is very helpful to do meditation the same time of the day each day if possible. I always meditated before bedtime because that was when the house was its most quiet and I was able to drop into a much quieter relaxed state. In the East, early morning (say, 4:00 a.m. for example) is often chosen as a good time to meditate because the body is not busy with digestion, and the mind is quiet from having been in sleep for a number of hours. By having a schedule your mind will be able to go into a quiet state must faster. Many years ago I practiced projection of consciousness and I was able to have some limited success with it. I practiced this each night as I went to bed. I was able to go immediately into an altered state and then “switch on” the astral state automatically whereby my astral awareness came to the fore. Before this, it took months to develop this state. My brain and body had become trained and it seemed to know that when I directed my attention along certain lines, it would follow along much quicker. Meditation is the same thing. If you train yourself through practice to reach a certain state with regularity, it becomes a snap to go into that state later once it has been practiced. The benefit of meditation as it relates to prana or chi is that you can begin to become familiar with the energy. By simply watching it or observing it you can find that it reacts simply to your act of observation. It is also possible to inhibit it as well, depending on how you respond to this activity. The best way is to try it. Prana will feel like the tide or flow upon which your consciousness moves, so they are very closely bound or connected. Feel “below” the thought to what is supporting your thought. What is it that is animating it? What is that quality that is making me alive, vital, and that gives my consciousness this presence and vitality?

It can often help to quiet the mind by keeping it busy with something else. I found a meditation technique very helpful in this regard where I placed my hands together and then put all of my awareness on the point where my hands touched. I held my attention there as long as possible. If my mind wandered, I didn’t beat myself up, I just went back to imagining I was looking at the point between my hands. I put myself there between them. After a while, I found that I had this very open and vast state begin to open up within me. It came about not by focusing on how it was happening. Being aware that it was happening using the “I” awareness caused it to stop immediately. It was at first a very odd sort of state I was reaching, but it was a prelude to a full blown awakening. It was very similar to never focusing on anything in particular when you are using your eye, except in this case it is your inner attention. There is a defocusing that seems to be happening in this other state. If you begin to focus on anything, becoming self-conscious, anything that was happening would immediately stop. I was dragging in my sharp focus of ego-awareness (left brain activity) into a state that was much more broadly “focused.” The usual way just didn’t work. The wave of cosmic consciousness would collaps and I would be left grasping at straws. Over time I found that a lot of energetic phenomenon began to happen once I entered into this defocused state, along with suddenly being suffused in a brilliant white light. After that encounter with the white light, things began to change. I began having more and more prana-based events, and not all were known to have been prana at the time. But being able to enter into what is called a state of “presence” helps to still mind by training the mind to be more and more quiet. This could take a good deal of time to achieve even moments of silence or relative quiet, but the brain will learn to fall into a meditative state when you train it through repetition, and then it will be easier each time. The point is not to do anything when there, the point is to feel and to be aware of the energy that is present in you. It is possible to train the mind/brain to enter a deep state through just about any trigger, really. It is all about association and the mind needs that association to remind it where it needs to be. Sitting in a certain posture can do it, even. Music or a certain song can also do it. Routine.

Feeling

Feeling is the other side of the coin. It is also the one aspect that gets discounted the quickest by most folks. Prana is an intelligent energy and it communicates through feeling as does the intelligence of the cosmos. It is the rational mind that then takes the stream of information and assembles it. This is also how remote viewing works, by the way. So much of our capacity to feel, which is an important part of our capacity for awareness, can be hijacked by a rogues gallery of buried emotional material that can crowd out deeper feeling into the flow of prana. Pick something that inspires you, and there you will find your prana being released. It doesn’t matter what it is, but most often it will be something that makes you feel good in an authentic way, that makes you open up as you feel more and more expansive. Does a painting do that? Music? A certain line of thought? Thinking of someone you love also opens up channels for prana. Watch yourself when you feel this energy. Do you feel how effortless it is when it begins to move? That is its secret. Prana flows naturally and does not flow as well when we shut down. It Prana shuts down when we are self-conscious and opens up when we aren’t. Just don’t try and force it, just be present with it, watch it and learn what you are thinking and feeling when it does flow. Can you feel how different those two states are? In one state the valve is closed down and in the other it is open wide. You might think that there are all kinds of technical diagrams that you have to memorize, but no, it is much simpler than this, so simple a child can do it (and children do this naturally as they are less shut down). Walks in nature, the beach, your favorite places. Can you feel that shot of energy that goes from your pelvis up into your heart? That is prana moving. You can learn all about prana by learning to be exuberant. Gratitude does more to boost prana than any special meditation technique. You see, while you can focus prana with thought, prana responds to how you choose to feel in the moment. This is amazingly simple, and hopeful.

It is true that one reaches the highest state in samadhi through feeling. It is less what you do than what you don’t do. Any wonder why it is so hard to reach? Also, it is a unitary state that sparks kundalini awakening. This unitary state is where the two sides of the self come into unity and spark the generative force to move through the body, no longer “stored” in the base of the spine. People have spent decades studying it and attempting to get it to rise. The secret is that it is how you feel. Feeling moves the two opposites together so that nothing can stand before what it can do when joined together. Much of what kundalini has to teach you will be based less in rational thinking as your capacity to feel and then release stored emotion from the past (which kundalini does in its process of cleansing). This is not a rational process. Placing your hands together like I explained earlier is a form of this unitary state, and is a good start for being able to feel what energy does in your body. But do not play with trying to raise kundalini. Once it rises you are on a roller coaster. Learning the art of surrender is of singular importance. Whatever kundalini strips from you will be what does not serve you. People can “lose it” in a process like this, especially those with little appreciation for or understanding of how to work with this energy instead of against it. It is a great disrupter, all for the better in the end, but you need to ask yourself if you are up to the task, which will be life-consuming.

Breathwork

It is often said that prana is in the air. I find this a little funny because when tracing this down I see that people who say this go on to explain that when you breathe in the air, you can feel the energy. In my study I found that there is something about the act of breathing itself that is actually the thing that is stimulating prana. If you quiet your mind and settle in and take long slow breaths, holding them at the top and bottom of each inhale and exhale, you might find that your body begins to feel buoyant, calm, peaceful, and lovely….blissful, even. I sense that when we breathe like this we are telling the mind that we are calm and the mind and brain work like a loyal servant and begin putting out the chemistry of calm and bliss. Learning to keep the mind still and not running lots of thoughts, will make your ability to feel this energy beneath all of this easier to perceive.

Breathwork has evolved into a complex science in India with the practice of pranayama. You can hold breath and still the movement of prana. You can move prana through breathwork, too. The best way to be aware of how it can move in you is to do the simple types of breath exercises first to see how well this can work. You can wind up feeling so good sometimes that it can further train your mind to prefer those states where you can learn how to be much more simple minded, or single-minded. Again, this is not complicated. Keeping your field of awareness quiet and still might be the hard part. But this is something achieved through feeling, wanting that feeling more than you want to grab onto a thought. Don’t beat yourself up when your mind races ahead. It is natural. Bring it back, each time you teach yourself to be calm and quiet for a few moments longer. Moments turn to minutes, minutes can stretch into half an hour. Breathing has the power to quiet the mind and help you to forget the worries of the day. What I found and which was supported by the science on the parasympathetic nervous system is that when you breathe like you do when in a relaxed state, like sleep, this sends s signal to your brain and body that you are calm. You can sometimes even feel the shift or change in your physiology as you do this. Full and deep breaths with pauses at the top and bottom are veryeffective in calming yourself down and slow the monkey-mind. I have had students use breath work to calm down and to stop feeling stressed. it is not uncommon for breathe work to be so effective that within minutes of doing so when stressed, you forget what you were even worried about earlier. A different part of the mind is now being used instead of the part that “grinds” away at the things that you cannot control.

Another very effective form of breathing is alternating nostril breathing. You begin by holding one nostril closed while taking a long deliberate breath in, holding it for the count of three, and then exhaling. You can then close the other nostril and then do the same type of deep deliberate breath the same way. You can also take several breaths with on nostril closed and then alternate to the other nostril, making sure that you keep the number of breaths through each nostril balanced. You can begin to meditate, turning inward using breath work. Use it for as long as you need to reach deeper and deeper states of calm. Then, the only thing you will have to guard against is falling asleep! But what is the harm in doing that? None. Perhaps you need sleep. Try again the next day or next time and don’t beat yourself up about it. Eventually, you will be able to cultivate this quiet calm while being alert. Again, it is all conditioning. Like a body builder, this takes time and discipline. If you fell asleep in meditation, try next time to be as relaxed but try not to fall asleep. It is being alert but not busy in the mind. It is at this place, as you meditate, that you begin to feel your energy. It is really just that simple, because it is at this place where you can begin getting aquianted with your true nature.

Movement

How you move can help to open you to prana. Sitting in rigid postures will be less effective as more opening postures. How you move through space can have an effect on your awareness of prana flow. Ecstatic dance or any movement that feels particularly good to you will work. Prana responds to thought. Thinking that is hard and harsh will wash away a lot of the flow of prana. That said, intense emotion can release prana, too, but the emotion itself may be shaping the prana into forms that may feel less natural or organic. Many of the Chinese disciplines of Tai Chi and Chi Gung (also chigong) are designed to move prana or chi in the body, although tai chi is often described as more of an exercise using mindfulness over energy movement). It can release trapped emotion and it can also free up energy in the body. All good things.

Chigong works by focusing movement with attention on different areas of the body in a routine that seeks to open up awareness and the energy in each major part of the body. Energy goes where your attention is, and this discipline focuses it through movement as the hands move through the energy field and are used in a way that places or focuses energy in some areas and then others. Your mind follows the movements while having very little happening with the mind. It is cool trick. White Crane qigong is a very good system to follow and you might be surprised at how it helps you to feel. The movements are slow, meditative, and purposeful. There is an order and purpose to all of the moves since each move works on one area of the qi field. Like making sure you alternate nostril breathing in a balanced way as I told you earlier, the series of movements in a “set” is important to follow.

Qigong is itself like a moving meditation. It is good to do chigong with a teacher who understands what is being achieved for each movement so they can explain what the point is, but you can also follow along watching a video of a qigong practitioner. Is there magic in getting the moves exactly right? This is a system developed over centuries. Estimates place the age of qigong as being anywhere from 5-7,000 years old. Qigong stimulates the same points in the body that acupressure and acupuncture also stimulate. Qigong masters were often great healers as well.

In similar but different ways, yoga does achieve some similar results even though it is from a different tradition. The idea of bringing mind and body together is an important first step in any inner practice. Many of the stomach pumps that yogis do help to open up blocked energy in the body, for example. Also, by focusing on your body movement the mind is naturally quieter, so movement in this way has a great benefit in this regard. Over time as you become more and more aware of the flow of prana in the body, by placing different fingers into position with your thumb, you can often sense if you are sensitive enough (quiet mind), how those finger positions can route energy through your body in different ways. These positions are called mudras and each one achieves a different result. I can remember the point where I tried mudras at a time when my mind was quiet enough and I could feel the difference in the flow of energy. It was very much like how one might direct the flow of water to different parts of the body. Most often, when my mind is very busy, I cannot feel this flow of energy with the change of each mudra. I need myself to be very attentive, mindful, and quiet.

Finally, having your body worked on by a body worker who understands energy is another way to free up prana flow. Acupuncture achieves this, and deep tissue massage also does this. Observe how you feel after a good session with an acupuncture practitioner or a message therapist. You know how “out of it” that you feel? That feeling is what happens when prana is opened up in the body. The more this happens, the more effect that it can have on your consciousness. This state is excellent for meditation work, too. You can also learn or identify this “out of it” state this way and then look for it in meditation work. The problem is not feeling “out of it” but being in too focused of a state, having to do with the rational mind. It is precisely these parts of the mind that are best able to relate to energetic effects and that part is also the feeling side. Are you getting it? I tend to think that most people are naturally inoculated against feeling this way because it goes against the active “doer” that is seeded into the Western mind. It is very beneficial to let that sense go in your work.

Now this might be the hard part. Trust yourself and listen to your intuitition. Is breathing better to do first or will meditation get you right into the baseline state? The best way to know, if you have no idea where to begin, is to experiment. Intuition improves with greater pranic flow. It is possible to begin to hear the voice of your inner guidance begin to direct you. Or maybe not. It all depends on what your proclivity in this direction is. What is clear, though, is that a greater flow of prana or qi aids in better health. The entire endochrine system is stimulated and this has a benefit for healing and even slowing down the aging process. I am the second to youngest sibling in my family and while all of my other siblings have long since gone grey I am still holding on to my dark hair. A fluke? I noted prior to the awakening of kundalini that I was beginning to show some grey, but after awakening that process quite obviously stopped. It went onto pause for about ten years and has only recently begun to slowly advance. That, and I don’t get sick like I used to. Colds and the flu are all things of the past pretty much. That isn’t to say that when it is time to go that I wont get sick, but by that time, I will be ready.

You can, though, bear these main points in mind and use each of them in an effective way to tap into your own wellspring of energy. You can use breath to calm your mind prior to meditation. You can then use feeling in meditation to use that to explore more deeply your capacity to feel energy. Once you do these things well, you can begin to incorporate movement in a conscious way in your day to day to begin opening up the body and also feeling its native vitality as more energy begins to flow. Those are my tips and learning the art of becoming inspired is the single most important driver for being able to feel life to its fullest. It can be said that when you are able to cultivate gratitude in your life it has a way of washing away regret and any negative tendencies as you begin to see the good that is there waiting for you there. Prana responds to this kind of mental and emotional landscape. In a sense, like breathing, prana responds to saying “yes” to the abundance of life that is your birthright. This can become, with practice and exploration, and the cultivation of greater levels of prana, the path of ecstacy.

Swami Rama On Shaktipot

Shaktipot or Shaktipata is the process by which a teacher aids the student in stepping over the last barrier that divides them from an ordinary state of being and the expansion of consciousness that takes place with kundalini. If used incorrectly, it can awaken students who are not yet ready and it can cause problems. It can also not “take” because the student is not sufficiently prepared. However, it is possible to use it correctly when the teacher has a discerning mind to aid the person to step over that last barrier.

The great yogi and teacher Swami Rama speaks to this issue in a way that I think is one of the more enlightened and balanced ways of any teacher I have ever had the chance to listen to speak. Swami Rama also has many other teachings which have been recorded and are available online to watch. I have found that his approach has been the most sound and the most balanced.

For example, he points out that kundalini is not a goddess only, but is instead a fusion of the opposites of those qualities which we consider to be masculine and feminine within our consciousness. This is important to understand if you wish to understand what is at work with kundalini. Most say it is a goddess. If you know why that is, you might understand how “masculine” we are in our thinking and being. This in no way takes away from the experience the importance of the feminine, but it helps to show how kundalini is itself an act and phenomenon that seeks balance. I will say that what we term the feminine aspect in all of our consciousness (men and women both) is normally dormant, and it has as much to do with the “cosmic egg” resting at the base of the spine as it does with the two hemispheres of the brain.

For anyone who has experienced awakening you may have felt how a very feminine quality has suddenly come online. Have you ever considered why this is so? Could it be that as a culture and a species that we have favored the rational, linear and logical parts (and thus “masculine”) of ourselves more than the nonlinear, holistic, emotional (and thus “feminine”) aspects of ourselves? I consider kundalini to be a way whereby the two powers of mind are now brought into a unity, which then leads to the generation of a “new” mind which we call cosmic consciousness. If you take one away, the wave of awareness collapses. Both are necessary to produce this kind of mind I call the Meta Mind. It also shows us in our own lives how all of life matters, how all people matter. If we lose sight of this kundalini becames one-sided and our minds become one-sided, too. I know that I digress a bit, but sometimes these small points are important for helping iron out confusion.

Kundalini will clear the self of blocked emotion, and this is itself the imperative that kundalini has, which is to bring the person to greater balance, not drama or intensity or just “cosmic” experiences. For a time it feels dramatic as the kundalini is clearing out the blocks, but once this is done the energy settles down. The ancients describe how it becomes smooth. No ripples, no disturbances.

As a result, there is an entire generation of awakened people who have gotten used to its “intensity” when in fact it is kundalini doing what it does in the early stages of the process. The endgame is peace. The problem is that people can get stuck on the intensity and not let kundalini do its work. They like the intensity, the drama, the strong emotions that it brings up all without realizing that this emotion is the poison leaving the system. So to say that kundalini is one or the other misses the point and can leave you “one-sided” in your awareness. Yes, it connects us to higher order energies and those energies include what we think of as divine feminine and masculine….but so too does it connect us to other energies in consciousness that are just as beneficial to us.

Swami Rama’s teachings have been the most consistent in how it goes beyond any agenda. These kinds of teachers often are not as interesting to people who want something dramatic, but he is a teacher who has gotten beyond many of the conceits that often plague non-dual teachers. These conceits as I call them, often result in distortions of awareness and become an article of belief (which stills further investigation). As a result, these teachers repeat teachings that can only go so far and are not born out in more final or complete results. What do you think the result is when you have a teacher who does not know the true nature of self? Ideas like the self is an illusion, that all of life and reality are illusory, not real. While it is true that we are constantly judging or filtering what we see in the world, that alone is not what makes our world illusory. It is possible to see into the core of physical reality to see how it is composed. When I did that, it wasn’t that the world was an illusion but rather that it was a creation that was creating the appearance of solid matter from a source of great energy and purpose.

This is one example of how these teachers, no matter how much acclaim that they get from their followers, have missed important realities of the self and how it relates to cosmic consciousness. But who would know if the teacher him or herself does not know?

The teacher teaches something that is based on his or her own lack of understanding and awareness and this gets handed down and gets passed around to all of the other students, and it get repeated until everyone takes it as an article of faith. What do you think that person’s capacity for discernment might be under such a situation as this? But it gets worse; teacher after teacher then goes on repeating the same ideas and it seems to others who study their teachings that it must be, and the pattern only gets more deeply impressed on the community at large. If you say an untruth enough times it has a way of being accepted as truth and no one bothers to question it.

In my own experience I have seen that we take on selves and identities as an important part in our learning process. At no point have I ever seen self as false but instead as part of the process of becoming. But do not mistake the expansion of consciousness that comes with awakening to mean that the self is somehow false, it is simply part of a much larger story of how varied our consciousness is. We can experience both feeling separate as well as one. Both. They are not mutually exclusive. Why would they be? You come from the infinite and you have divided part of yourself to fit into this body, one chapter in a host of chapters called lifetimes. And despite how the self is decried as false, there is not a single one of these teachers who have shown how they can remove it with a waive of their own awareness. If it is an illusion, then why not pierce that illusion once and for all? Not a one. And so this is telling, the elephant in the room. Hopefully that elephant is Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, lol! Rama has much to say about ego, not as something to kill off, but to master. He even touches on this in the short but revealing video below.

So Rama is unique in the field. His teachings continue to show a great deal of awareness on a host of fronts. I am not one who “follows” a teacher, but what I have seen in his work has been a considerable level of insight. Yes, it is because without a teacher I have seen how his teachings have aligned with my direct experience.

How do I know that I myself am not buying into a belief? My earliest memory in this life was of choosing my parents. This was before I had a body. If ego is false and identity is false, how did I manage to have a sense of self at that point? Further, how did I recall numerous past lives? Given my level of recall (including two lost languages and historical accounts to back up some of my memories) I see the chance of simply “imagining” these things hard to square with Occams Razor.

I invite you to watch what he has to say about what a teacher can do for the student when it is done correctly…