Interview With Kayla

This is the next interview in a series that I have been conducting with individuals who have had kundalini awakenings. I have a battery of questions, all the same, to hopefully form a baseline for understanding awakening. While the questions are the same, what makes these interviews so interesting are the variety of responses provided for the same set of queries. In some cases, there is overlap from one interview to the other while also having divergence from one another. All of this is a rich bed of observation that I hope will help others in their own awakening experience, as well as to inform those who are interested in the topic but who may not have had experience with this “cosmic light switch” yet.

My thanks to Kayla and all of the others who have chosen to participate. Each interview is given its own page on the blog so it is readily accessible at the top of the blog when you visit directly at https://wakingtheinfinite.wordpress.com

Additionally, I would like to invite anyone who is interested in telling their story to contact me and I will happily include your answers along the growing list of participants. You can be anonymous if you prefer, but in every case each interview is with a real honest to goodness person. So far I have had two people from the U.S., two from the U.K. and another from an E.U. member state.

My hope is that the questions serve as a way to organize discussion but hopefully can be open-ended enough for you to have your say. In some cases, answers can prompt a few more questions from me, but I try to keep those limited. In addition, you are welcome to include links to websites or blogs that you are involved with so others can read or interact with you. My sincere desire with this is to spread the word and increase our knowledge base at a fascinating time in our history when awakenings are on the rise. You may contact me at info@staffordartglass.com.

With that, the interview follows.

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1. What was your spiritual background before awakening?

In retrospective, I acknowledge that I had an affinity and sense for supernatural things since early childhood. Around the age of three, I once woke up from a nap and a “ghost” or other dimensional being was standing very close to me and stared at me. Due to my infantile innocence, I was not scared of this being and so I tried to touch it. It was then that this creature freaked out and hissed at me before vanishing into thin air. I could also see colourful landscapes when lying in the dark. I experienced them so vividly that I was even scared to get up due to my fear of stumbling over roots and plants.

Growing up and getting conditioned made me lose these senses… but I was always drawn to religious/spiritual themes, I used to pray every evening.

2. Do you know if you did anything to trigger your awakening?

Oh yes, I did. But with no intention other than to finally know the truth of our existence. I had a time were I was obsessed with reading through any material known handling ancient occult/esoteric knowledge. I guess the kick off for that was when I started a two-year education in screenwriting. My chosen topic for my script: A story about a person with multiple personality disorder. As multiple personality disorder is often associated with ritual abuse, research led me to themes like occultism, mind control etc. etc. etc.

From there on, I was madly driven by the question of what is going on on our planet behind the scenes, what is kept hidden from us and why?! What is the meaning of life? For a long period, this sent me down deep and endlessly deeper down the rabbit hole. It was dark there… it freaked me out what I was digging up… Too much darkness, so many secrets… until I realized that were there is so much darkness, there also has to be the same amount of light. This did not make me stop to look for the answers but at least I was turning to the light, to the hopeful view of all these secrets.

Simultaneously learning a lot in education: Parallels of Spirituality and telling a good story became obvious. It is all about the journey, the losing yourself, nearly dying, the coming back as a different person… when you understand the covered longing of mankind it is then when you are able to tell stories that hit that deep spot and therefore move someone’s heart.

3. What was your initial awakening experience like?

I divide my Awakening into two. First, there was a conscious awakening. It was at my lowest point, still in the middle of my relentless quest for truth. It was then that I had a spiritual awakening – a psychiatrist would label it as a psychotic episode but I now know better. I was aware that my awareness shifted and which part of the experience is kind of delusional. But what I came to realize in this very moment was that if I want to keep a sane mind, I have to let go of all the fear!!!! Or better said: It “made” me get rid of a lot of long held, deeply rooted, universal fears in just one instant. From there on, I was a different “me”. The rug had been pulled under my feet and I was falling. Falling, until I was not scared anymore of falling.

At a certain point, I kind of hit a dead end with gathering “outside” knowledge. Time and again, I read the firm advice of experienced people that you have to turn inside as you will not find your answers in the outside. Numbed down, I surrendered and had to try the only way I haven’t pursued so far: started to meditate in December 2016. Expanding duration to up to 4 hours a day as I enjoyed it more and more.

From there on, slowly the other Awakening started to show its signs. Initially, I was having some kind of a rumbling experience in my pelvis and lower back area. Something, one could be freaked out about, but I felt intuitively that this is a good sign.

Following: sudden idea of attending Yoga Teacher Training. Waiting list – somebody cancelled – I am in.

With TT starting in April 2017, speeding up of process to the point where I had this intense experience in a class: 

Our teacher was reading a Buddhist text to us when I felt the strong urge to just shut my eyes and listen quietly. Then, like out of the blue, the inner layer of my lower belly area seemed to loosen grip to the gross body, became very light and kind of swirled up to my head.

I became incredibly light and the energy went out my crown… but leaving me with fast thoughts about what now… Should I just let it happen – but how will I react in the middle of the class?!? I thought about quickly leaving the room, locking me up in the bathroom in order to let it play out… but that wasn’t a very intelligent option either, of course.

 So, I forced myself to open the eyes, pulling the energy back down as good as I could… and then, right after that intense moment, we chanted an OM all together and the sound vibrated literally through my body. It was not separate from me anymore…

 As the energy stayed very high that whole day, I felt like just getting through the day and then sit down quietly in the evening and let it finally happen. As high as the energy was, I thought that would be easy. But, of course, when I tried in the evening, nothing happened.

 (Maybe… that was luck. As I then had the chance to do it more slowly and more in control.)

The next nearly two weeks were very intense, especially, because I felt a bit like those superheroes in the movies – but the worrying part: I just did not know how to manage these high energies! I literally worried, that when in public and being involved in a slightly emotional encounter yet, my energies could just burst out of my body uncontrollably.

What strikes me the most about all of this: Even though I was obsessed with Spiritual topics for nearly two years, I never stumbled over the term Kundalini before experiencing it myself. Considering the vast amount of literature I digested and how prominent this topic in the Spiritual community is… this is quite surprising.

Further symptoms during that time which had positive and negative aspects, not always possible to match it to one or the other:

 – Feeling very light, all the energy wanted to constantly go up. Even my hair was kind of fluffy like when electrically charged. Gave a nice feeling of lightness and inconvenient things like pain in the body were just gone. But it made me also feel very unstable, like a wind could just blow me away.

– Senses like hearing and smelling incredibly heightened.

– Concrete experience of the magnetic vortexes in the body and how energy moves around them, tightening, loosening the grip in constant change.

– When laying on the floor, able to somehow melt into the ground.

– Involuntary body movements, especially in the neck which helped me to lose tension as energy could find its way through.

– Sudden insights like: It is all there to wake us up! A beautiful piece of music, enjoying art, that moving moment in a film, an honest hug… if only we were able to surrender to what is beautiful. It would not have to be the hard way… suffering only creeps in because we better surrender when hitting rock bottom… Seems as it has its purpose… If we cry when we are hurt then when we see beauty – so be it. Time takes its toll on that and every hardening makes it more difficult to find that soft spot of the surrender. 

– Sensing other people much more, seeing misalignments in the body very clear.

– A glass and even a knife broke after holding them in my hands and putting them aside.

– Realizing, that when not having the knowledge about these energies, it can be quite dangerous. Nighttime worried me especially because I had even less control over what is happening there.

 After two weeks, finally addressed the issue to my Yoga teacher. His advice and the assurance of somebody taking me serious in that crucial moment, helped me to slowly ground again.

Two weeks later, I was kind of stable but the fast way into meditation was laid and stayed with me.

Since that incident, lots of things and work going on in different layers of the body/mind followed but sometimes, it is a lot to take and it is a constant tearing between the feelings.

– The strong movements of the energy can make you crazy but when silent, I miss “her”…

– Character changes come like gifts but on the other hand, demand a lot of work which means: I have to do it now or I pay with enormous tensions. Have to sit down. Have to do the work.

– Knowing, just knowing what to do. Not being afraid of certain things happening. Things that in a “normal” state would have freaked me out. On the other hand, feeling utter despair for always having to know on my own. 

– Much more able to just trust and let things happen, evolve, develop in time while on the other hand being much more upset about things that are out of my influence and therefore the “me” being forced to accept it.

– Losing the grip of the ego more and more while standing clearly in the “I“. No longer having patience for attacks of any level of severity against me that have nothing to do with me. 

– Accepting other people in their way of being while when sensing it is coming from an egoic state of mind, not having lots of nerves for dealing with petty problems and/or eg. resistance to make changes that would help getting better.

– Days like at work, sitting without movement for a long time, can create lots of tensions and a kind of nausea-feeling like when I was pregnant. Need for rest while need for lots of movement, stretching, bending.

– Sleeping hours very uncertain: Lots of sweating during nighttime, vivid dreaming, not being able to sleep more than 5 – 6 hours but feeling very tired in the early afternoon.

– Heightened senses come back slowly, this time more gradually. Even sounds traveling through the spine came back. Strong ones like thunder and – if I desire, I can draw certain music inwards.

– Thunder seems kind of “there“ anyway. Sometimes hearing thunder-like sounds, feeling energy exiting my body like thunder into the ground.How has your awakening progressed?

4. What year did awakening come for you?

My Kundalini awoke in 2016, so it’s been 4 years now. Progression is ongoing and unfolding in circles. Every time I thought that NOW! This is it! I had to realize that I am still nowhere…

So, for me, I had to learn to accept that this process is above all a humbling one. And one that will go on for as long as I live. Right now, I am at a point where letting go and having to realize that I can’t force anything and that I still hold myself back with illusions of wanting to achieve something and arrive somewhere with all of that.

Letting go of control… coming into trust… my ego still being squeezed by life, by experiences and by felt physical symptoms of that same holding on to control, not being able to fully soften into trust even though my rational mind knows now without a doubt that this is all I would have to do… but being conscious of something and really living it are two different things and the experience of the Kundalini energy does not allow me to fool myself. She knows and she shows.

5. What do you feel kundalini/awakening is in your experience?

I actually realized quite early on in the process that this must be something rather “normal”. Not normal in a sense of common (yet) but it seems to me that I just entered a process that every human soul will eventually experience. I seem to take part in an early cycle but numbers of people experiencing an Awakening are on the rise and so for me, this is just an evolutionary process we happen to not know a lot about yet.

Why should the modern human be the end product of an evolutionary process that is ongoing since millions of years? We are not cave men anymore, we changed! And so we will also in the future. Common sense when considering even scientifically, no?

6. Did you have challenges with the energy? And if so, what did you do that helped you get through those periods of difficulty? Or, has it always been easy?

Numerous! Especially, because the energy gathered much more on the right side of my body. Sometimes, the energy feels very pushy and this can make me feel uncomfortable, even in pain and restless. But I learn a lot through that and by pushing me with physical symptoms, she urges me to get relief by working on these blockages shown in the body by examining my blockages and long held fears or doubts in my mind and soul.

Slowly and now over these four years, I start to understand how the energy moves and what I can do to bring more harmony into the flow. But this learning process also goes in circles and cycles, with plateaus where I get back to the feeling of just suffering in this journey.

Then, breakthroughs happen and I trust in this “happening” again. Despite these physical challenges, I would not treat this experience against anything else. Thanks to it, I have been given my answer to my most urgent question: There is more than our common senses can grasp and there is more meaning to our lives than what most of us are living out right now. And to ask for truths intensely will be met with answers…

7. What do you think makes the experience easy or difficult?

In short:

Letting go and trusting and letting it humble you vs. trying to be in the driver seat and doubting and believing, this experience has only to do with you.

8. How has the experience impacted or changed your life?

Hmmm… in so so many ways. My awareness and how I see reality, of course, changed completely. And there is not a lot anymore that can freak me out. My ego structure changed completely in the way that I like myself now so much more since I know that I am not very important. It is all not that “loaded” anymore which enables me to stay calm in very uncertain and chaotic situations.

Two years ago, all of this had been tested when I was confronted with a life changing decision: Two cousins of my kids were thrown into a horrible situation because they were living in Columbia with their parents when finally, their father ended up in jail and the mother was being found in the streets, unstable because of years of alcohol and drug abuse. Without my Awakening, doubts might have kicked in strong enough about whether this is a good idea for me, as an already single mom to two boys, to take these two kids to Switzerland so that they can live with us. In my new “me”, doubts were just bypassing without the slightest chance to get a grip on me. I did what was best for those two kids and I did not have to regret my decision for one second.

9. Did you employ, or do you employ now, traditional meditation practices, and if so, how have they been helpful to you? If nontraditional, could you describe them?

I still practice Yoga regularly and teach Yoga lessons twice a week. But what I need the most is to lay down, get into a meditative state and just be with the energy. Sensing how she moves, “getting” her and letting her bring up themes I have to work through mentally and emotionally.

It is nearly an addiction. Every free second, I lie down and do and enjoy that work and that can mean hours of lying somewhere a day : ) But, hey! I can not hide like a hermit somewhere in the mountains and let it work through me for a couple of years and then come back perfectly balanced out. I have to include this in a normal, modern and Western lifestyle as a single mom with four teenage kids.

10. What do you think is happening with the large number of awakenings taking place today? Why do you think this is happening?

As I mentioned before, my feeling is that this is just a normal evolutionary process which started out slowly but is gaining momentum. For the “early ones”, this means that it is somehow a rough ride because of two reasons:

You can not tell people about this intense experience happening to you due to the very reasonable fear that they will think that you went totally bunkers. And secondly, because we are still Kindergarteners in this process, therefore, the impact – physically and mentally – can be very strong. It is my hope that as soon as enough work has been done and the Collective Awareness can catch up, it will get easier for generations to come.

But that is also why it is my intent to raise more awareness about what is going on. That is why I start sharing my story more often and I am as open about it as I can be. People need to understand that this can happen to anyone! It is not exclusive for “saints”, the hermits and well-behaved ones who live a god-fearing life. It can happen to a normal woman like me.

One that, even to this day, is still smoking too much and likes to drink alcohol and enjoying a night out. One, that still has her biases, her self-doubts and her skepticism, confusion and disagreements with god/the Universe. The only thing this woman did was to ask for the truth in a very vigorous way…

11. Where do you feel that this all leads you, and all of us, to?

I am not going to pretend like I would know the answer to this question. I just feel it in my heart and soul that it is leading us all to something more true. And truth does not hurt. Illusions do.

The development of man is hitting a dead end due to it’s destructive base, so it might seem… But the longing for growth, reaching goals and “be” someone while on this plane was an intended driving force for all of us since the beginning of time.

However, for a long time, we were trying to fulfill these needs way-off the intention and we now find us in a point of time were we already nearly destroyed our planet completely.

But only, because we tried to fulfill these inner needs by wrong terms: By getting it from the outside world. Now, an other force seems to come rushing in and pushing individuals to wake up, halt and make an imperative return to what it was initially meant to accomplish: The growth from the inside out. As more and more individuals are being thrown into this experience, the Collective has to and will follow.

Outside time, the plan is that it will be for the good of all of us – this is my feeling that this is what is being meant. Or maybe, it is already all good outside time but on our plane, we do not have the awareness of this fact yet. Either way, here, in felt time, it stays our choice of how long it is going to take for us to get it. To not miss the mark anymore…

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New Interview Upcoming

I will be putting up a new installment in my ongoing effort to provide information about awakening (in the context of kundalini) through interviews. Being my busy time of the year for me at the studio, I am happy to be able to get this next one out to you in the next week.

I decided to create a battery of basic open-ended questions a few years ago for people who have experienced this phenomenon. While the questions ate limiting on the one hand, they serve to build a reference source because as each new interview is added, the same questions get asked. My hope is that the answers from my interview subjects will begin to create a spectrum of responses that may help illuminate in the mind of the reader the degree to which this phenomenon can vary from person to person while still standing under the big tent cover of awakening.

I am happy to include anyone who would like to participate in this project. You can choose to be anonymous if you wish, but I am happy to link to any web sites that you might be involved with so others can read your blog, or learn more abput what you do or up to our there in the world. Stats show a steady review of these interviews on weekly basis. Each interview is first posted and then a dedicated page is created where the interview remains at the top of the WTI blog so it remains easily accessible.

For inquiries about participating, you may reach me at info@staffordartglass.com.

Have a great day!

The Secrets Move Among Us Now

When I was young, eight years old, I dreamed of a very unusual building. I had never seen it before, but because of the content of the dream I suspected that it was a location I had lived in, or maybe it was created in my mind-it was so unusual looking.Enough information was there in the dream to inform me that this had taken place in the 1800’s. When it is important to find a way to convey the information, dreaming will accomplish it.

Years later I saw an image of the exact same building I had seen in my dream. I saw this building on the cover of a magazine. The building was the Tibetan monestary in Lhasa, the location where the Dali Lama resided before Tibetan monks were persecuted under the Chinese invasion of their country.

I know very little about Tibetan Buddhism. I grew up under a kind of inner decree as a child with a directive which stated that I was not to join any school of thought or any religion. This voice or presence said later when I asked why that I would understand this in time. For a particular reason it was important for my own path to not become invested in systems.

When awakening came, it soon became clear. My final chapter in dealing with the innermost secrets of Christianity was it seemed to show how its secrets are the secrets of all other traditions and that these secrets are accesible to all.

This has not been the case before our time now. In fact, the secrets have been surrounded by traditions that have locked them within veils both cultural and dogmatic. There have been reasons for secrecy in order to protect people who had not properly developed their minds and bodies for a force of understanding and presence that can send a person into shock and overwhelm. But in recent years, something has changed…

A series of events worldwide has resulted in a condition whereby what was secret is now being known. These events go back through the centuries and were catalyzed by what you could call steps backwards by humanity. There are too many to count, but they helped yo create a condition by which a threshold was crossed. I will say that I do not see this effect as being like God coming to our aid, but rather is part of a requirement for there to be balance if at all possible. The appearance of many people within so short of a time on earth who are awakening is just such an example. On the one hand, it communicates that we are in a dangerous time, but it also indicates that there are ways that we can eliminate or heal this danger through understanding better our relationship to each other, to our consciousness, and the interrelatedness of all life.

Dangerous times? What??

Yes. While the wave of awakenings is a very hopeful sign, it also is a sign of possible danger because something is being countered. Like? Like extremism of all types, like a darkening rift between those seeking illumination and those stuck in shadow. When I awoke I saw just how deeply some around me tumbled into shadow just as I awoke. One of the people tumbling down asked me if I had noticed this. Oh yeah, I noticed. I remained quiet about it because I knew what it meant. I knew these people would become purposefully ignorant, cruel, even bestial. And they did. The message was “respect freewill,nothing you say will dig them out, only they can do that.” And so it was. I fled the burning world.

So yes, our presence is part of a balance. Its also part of an evolution. This is an innevitable rise of a long-turning tide. In time, the tide will likely turn in the other direction. There will be a flowering for a time, and our movement or day in the sun may turn to winter. That is, if we let it. If we don’t teach, or spread knowing nondogmatically, people could devolve again. It is a cycle. It could also becone part of a new evolutionary spiral. It is up to us. Freewill. Anyway, I digress.

One remarkable culture that walked the talk of kindness and compassion has been the people of Tibet. They remain an important example for how we can be and what is in us to know. Their insistence on compassion and nonviolence is something we all could learn from. Many cultures that have remained sequestered from Western culture in the last 16000 years often developed keen insights into these secrets.

Venerable Nupa Rinpoche

This morning I had a video come across my feed. I wasn’t looking for it and I hadn’t looked at anything related to it recently. When I watched it, I saw someone in it who I felt an immediate recognition of. It was completely unexpected. I found myself in tears. Okay, so he is an old friend, someone from that time most likely in Tibet. He chose to reincarnate there as a monk later, but I chose to reincarnate in the West. I saw that what he is doing now is not that different from what I am doing, it is just that I am learning to do it without the presence of a tradition or teacher. I needed to have other experiences in order to break open the cosmic egg once and for all.

The Tibetan tradition is steeped in learning how to harness tummo or kundalini for perfecting the body and mind. The video I stumbled upon today is a rare look into what many believe is a tradition that is dying out. I suspect it is in the process of transforming. The Dali Lama has said he will choose to reincarnate outside the Tibetan system next time. I did this a few lifetimes ago, choosing instead to explore the golden thread that runs through other traditions instead. I think this is what will transform some traditions, force them open, and make the secrets more accessible to everyone. I think also that awakening can be spread through a simple act of Presence now. This wont be enough, however. It wont be enough to “trust in God.”

Note: Before having watched the entire documentary myself, I went back to it after writing this to find the documentary expressing aspects of this sense about balance I have been describing. For me it helps to see how, for me at least, that this was a confirmation of the things that I have sensed inwardly.

It is with that that I reccomend to you this important documentary. It is not the be-all, but a piece of a longer strand of truth that runs through all traditions. We are the secret. To know this secret we need only know ourselves beneath the day to day monkey-mind that keeps so many distracted.

Yogis Of Tibet

Understanding Desire

Here is a draft from a few years ago, part of my backlog of posts that I am bringing forward so it can be out there for what they are worth. This is a very busy time of the year for me, so it is nice to have this backlog….

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I came to awakening without having been raised in a tradition or philosophy. Yes, my family went to church for a time, but I didn’t join when it came time to do that (and luckily I was allowed to decide for myself). I was always listening to the voice in my heart that tended to caution me about buying into a religious or philosophical construct.

I spent my life in a solo singular approach, seeking out those sources that reflected back to me what spoke to my own growing body of inner truth. In the 80’s I heard the album by Van Morrison “No Guru No Method No Teacher” and found a common sense of belonging to a path that comes from within.

The advantage, to my mind, of this “path” is that we learn to rely on our own inner compass point instead of relying on dogmas from other outside authorities. There is so much in our world that has distortions. Most every philosophy and religion has them. I would be called a nit-picker to point out some, but others are quite big and substantive. This is not to say that there aren’t traditions that aren’t good or useful, it is just that my inner guidance kept me from buying into any one of these paths. Along with this resisting joining or buying into a religion or school of thought was the feeling or expectation of a ‘big reveal’ that was going to happen further down the line. That inner voice was telling me that all of this was building to something.

….And then awakening came and so much was made plain to me about religion, spirit, the world….

It feels like to me that in many ways (not all, but many) that I have been called to seek the light within in order to bring forward the perennial teachings. Now, I know what this might sound like, but I do this for myself. I know growing up, the one thing I was most interested in were the “secrets of the universe.” I also realized that no one else was interested in these things like I was. Not many, anyway. So it isn’t as though I do this for an audience of any kind….I do it because I want the truth. I know; and now I’m writing about it…doesn’t that suggest that I am all about the audience? Not like that.

I share what I come across for anyone who cares to read…so in this way, I very much keep away from the teacher and guru model. Over and over people want a link, a book, a teacher, when the real rubber- meeting-the-road moment happens within. I understand, but enlightenment is waaay simpler, way more foundational an event within the self. No methods, no postures. It is so simple but hard for most it seems. So simple it can be transmitted by a look, a breath, a sigh.

I prefer to be an example for a way to be. It turns out that others have done this also and it is Jiddu Krisnamurti who espoused the “Pathless Path” in his own work. So my impulse or inner directive is not a singular one since there are others who have done the same thing. So with that bit of babble, what I am saying here is something that I came across from what I would call an inner teaching has helped me to understand desire in a way that isn’t often talked about and is also often misunderstood.

In most religions and philosophies, there is a strand or need to describe desire as something that is bad. In other traditions, desire is considered a bad thing, something that is meant to be eschewed. What I have found, though, is that this is actually being filtered through a bias that serves to cause a good deal of misunderstanding about the natural path through the self as a way to work through the issues that remain.

These issues are stored emotions that are contained not just in the brain, but are all throughout the body and is contained and recorded from life to life through the pranamaykosha or the sum total of what we think of as the Light Body.

The “problem” with desire is that what we call prana is itself full of desire. EVERY SINGLE PERSON who has ever been touched by high levels of prana has felt how desire has been intensified. Now you might think that this is just a reaction to an outside stimulus, but in the world of the nondual, any belief about the seperateness of phenomenon quickly is dismissed when you experience how all phenomenon is connected (like Dr. Bronner used to say: “all-one”).

This is one reason why awakening bears with it considerable desire of all kinds. Now, this is not just because when you awaken that prana is stirring these desires (of all kinds), but is the very basis of prana. Yes, personal desires are stirred, but this isn’t all that is at work. The crux of this is that there are issues that we each have that result in desires that are distorted.

Imagine a pure light streaming through a window that is colored with stains that distort this pure light. This is what I am talking about here. We forget the nature of prana and thus also kundalini as being full of desire. Who doesn’t see the stimulating effects that kundalini has on the body who has gone through this? I saw effects of age slow, then reverse for a time before age continued forward more slowly than before.

This desire, though, is a perfected light that does not have the same distortions or blocked forms within it. We are experiencing this advanced energy in our bodies and consciousness while also experiencing what happens when that light strikes our own light bodies, which are most often chock full of blocks when awakening comes (because in the West we do not have traditions that properly help us to prepare for awakening—at least not yet). But we often hear about how bad desire is and how many monks will spend their lives eschewing desire. This leads to all kinds of problems.

One problem is how in Christianity we have shunted aside women as active participants in it (there have been no female popes and no female cardinals or priests (or priestesses)). In Islam, it is much the same. The covering of the feminine is considered a form of protecting modesty, but it is actually doing something else, which is holding back men from learning how to deal with their own energy in such a way that they can work on their blocks and move into this purer kind of light. This is simply one example of how this state of being has been distorted and so misunderstood. The path through desire is not to resist, but to work through it and you cannot do this without facing all of your junk. If you think desire is some bad thing like I have described, then you are hobbling yourself. You will find that your capacity to bring heaven on earth will be greatly limited. But the question naturally arises, does this mean that we must embrace our desires in order to work through them?

The answer to my mind is no. However, it does mean that you do need to raise your awareness about where you are in your development. To do that, you need to be able to see how your desires are causing you problems.

Can you ask yourself if your desires are causing you problems? Can you observe the truth in this by observing what happens in your life? If you are experiencing awakening, you know how powerful this desire can be…and you can feel both this higher desire, which is this light that is moving through you, but you can also feel how this same light of prana is also activating a slew of other lesser desires, and it is natural for us to be drawn to our earthly desires. This is about learning to align to a higher vibrational state. When I hear about people seeking to “ascend” I wonder do people really know what this even means?

Sometimes I see people who are trying to ascend the hardest are the ones who are suffering the most. Simply, this is just holding onto blocks that keep these lower vibrational desires activated. So here’s a secret; if you respond to the reaction that you get from a block, you will never dig that block out. What you need to do is to actually find the stored emotion, not what that emotion is generating. Address that, and you are at the source. Blocks can fool you. You got hurt and you have been placing blame on others ever since. The problem here is as long as you are doing this, you are NOT addressing the initial reaction that you had that causes the block to begin with. I know people who are still going around in circles with something from childhood that they are too invested in how they felt they were hurt by others. This is the trap, you see. The universe does not give a whoop who did what. The only thing that matters is your reaction. You can let yourself be stuck in your reactions. You can be stuck for your whole life, even.

I say this as someone who has known this all too well. We hold onto these things because they feel so wonderfully strong and when we feel something that is so strong, we naturally get drawn to it. What I can tell you is that there is a higher power, a higher vibration that is available to us when we can do the work to cleanse the pranamayakosha (or Light Body).

Early in my awakening, when I began to really get involved in figuring out ways to help assist in releasing these blocked energies (which are often traumas) I began to be visited by higher vibrational beings. They came after awakening ramped up and began to accelerate, which made awakening difficult for a time. One of these spiritual visitors was someone whom I learned was my life guide, someone who revealed himself over twenty years ago to me, but who seemed to disappear for a long time.

When he showed up, he explained who he was. This turned out to be an angel from the Old Testament, called a Seraphim based on what it was he said to me. I never knew much about the angels, so I had to look his history up on the internet. It’s strange to find that the things that I saw about him were actually described in his description in the Old Testament accounts.

He showed up in my room at about four a.m. He walked over to my bed and explained that he needed to take something out of me. In a very matter of fact way he said “You are much more beautiful without this…” and he reached into my heart chakra and removed a dark body from my light body. This was itself amazingly vivid and it felt as though an inner body was being pulled out of me that had no bones. It was pulled away with a feeling of tearing at two points at the top of my lungs, up in the shoulders. But the moment that he reached into my heart center, I had a pulse of energy that was beyond anything I can even begin to describe. I was completely awed by my ability to experience this energy. I had never felt anything like this. It was like bliss X 1,000.00. This was a transformative experience in that I was able to see what is possible for us resting in potential. I wondered how on earth I was able to feel this, it seemed so beyond anything in our world. What this did was it showed me what I had to do in terms of work.

Needless to say, this has served as a kind of peak to look for within myself, to know that as I release more of the hurdles that are in the way within me that have accumulated over this life and other lives, I know that with dedication to this way of being that I can attain this pure light that is known by others seemingly more advanced than we.

You see, these blocks are tied up in beliefs that we have about ourselves that serve to hold us back. These are big and small and very often they are almost always limiting us. When you think about this energy of prana as a sentient energy (which it is), you are dealing with an energy that is limitless. Is it any wonder, then, that we experience synchronicities and perfectly timed events when kundalini (prana) begins to flow so strongly? When we are aligned within ourselves without limitations, what we wish for is unimpeded in its movement through the pranic field. When this happens, the field responds and it begins to create with us. Well, it is actually always creating with us, but the problem we so often talk about is how some of our wishes don’t come true. Instead, we have other things happen that hold us in a state that is “less than.”

The reason this is happening this way is because there is a competing belief that literally cancels out the signal of the wish that you wish could come to pass. Remove or resolve/change the belief and you open the flow and path for this wish to come true. To do this requires honesty and surrender.

Now bear in mind that I am not espousing some materialistic angle on spirituality that will bring you your wildest dreams for the sake of greed. Instead, when aligned to the highest within you, and when that alignment is not being cancelled by competing beliefs, that energy will flow in accord with how clear you are and the result that you get wont be filled with glitches like they so often might be. For example, here you are, you are finding you can wish for things and they happen. Great. You land that job you really needed in some new part of the country for the next leg of your journey and it is just what you need. That is one hurdle removed. But once you get in that job suddenly you find people emerging from the woodwork who seem to be the same color of some past experiences that you thought maybe you had dealt with, but obviously not because here they are causing you trouble. These people are part of a pattern from your past and they remain for as long as you have this belief still within you because that belief about yourself is actually activating physical reality along those same lines. The universe is super intelligent and it will bring you things that are bizarrely perfectly aligned with your stuff that you have not yet dealt with. Its like God is sending you something. But you are doing this. You. You are working with this amazingly creative force that is forming the physical and supporting it and bringing you all of this energy. It is up to you how you use it. If you are holding limiting beliefs, the universe dutifully brings you limited results.

We live limited lives in part because we believe that we are limited beings. We think we are just this one body, and we have created both consciousness and culture to close our larger being down, but we are much more. Being able to tap into what we truly are, which is a vessel for this shining light, is a very good first start. Only then can we know what is possible.

You can begin to taste this by removing the blocked energy in your field. As you do, you will find gradually, that things will get easier and easier. In fact, desire itself will change. It will get better, stronger, more cosmic, but also more peaceful. I think we all know just how chaotic awakening can make us feel especially in the beginning. But this is not because of our upbringing or because of another person making us feel a certain way or any of that. We feel this chaos because we are the chaos. Work through it, and it will go away, never to return.

The thing about doing this work is that desire does not go away, it get better. The thing about this work is that we realize over and over that no one else is ever the problem, we are. When you can turn the lantern of your awareness into yourself and dare to see all of your broken places and roll up your sleeves and ask the universe how to heal it, it quite naturally will begin to show you ways to do that. When I said I wanted to clear away the dross, my awakening accelerated because I had someone telling me where the blocks were and who to go see to take care of some of them. I had books and I had dreams, I had realizations in meditation or throughout the day, all showing up in amazingly perfect timing over and over. These things were not based in the old way of doing things but of being willing to finally be really honest with myself about my own shit.

The other side of desire that limits us is our shame. It keeps us locked in a prison most often. We don’t want to be seen as “less than” so we put on these masks or we try to hide in order to get through our days. Someone once said that we should be as children and we will know the kingdom. We need to return to a kind of openness and innocence in our work I think in order for it to go more smoothly. We might need to get used to the idea that things are going to change and that the intense current we are feeling in awakening is likely coming from holding our fingers over the end of the hose. No, more energy is not flowing, it is being impeded. Impeding the light will make everything seem intense and strong, but it is holding back the flow. This happens the first five years of aeakening for most people (some it can take much longer, some, fewer, for less time).

When we hold back, we are also holding back or denying what we are destined to be. There is no reason to feel shame that you have not reached perfection. The truth is, no such perfection exists, we just keep getting better and better. I mean really. if you think of the supreme consciousness and how advanced it is and how it interpenetrates the entirety of all things and knows each sparrow that falls, then that is a pretty high bar to set, don’t you think? So don’t be silly; ascension is simply a process that goes on and on. Maybe its even a good idea to let that old husk of an idea go because at some point all that striving will actually serve to limit you. There is no arrival, there is no real ascension save for a continuum of becoming and improving ourselves continuously forever. When we can be like children, we are no longer impressed so much by big productions and hunger for the really simple things…like play (creating).

So I say this to speak to myself because I am telling myself what I need to remember. Since I have experienced this, I have no hesitation sharing it because when you share what you know and what has served you as genuine, it will work for others too. Our fields are part of the same field. All are connected. Our consciousness divides “this” from “that” creating arbitrary and sometimes not too arbitrary divisions. Some are important for a time but fall away.

Even as I am writing this, I can feel the presence of the future and those who will be reading it. I know that my own energy will meet the reader, you, and something in me that is entirely without word will remind you of what it is that you are and what you are capable of. And this happens all the time. It is only a reminder.

The goal of desire is to teach us about our need to create and how central this is in our universe. We create all the time and we do so out of desire….desire of all kinds…and those creations are a mirror for where we are in our development like how children are a biological mirror in part of who the parent are. As you clear desire of the blocks, desire will grow ever more powerful and it will be….simpler, less impeded, and it wont trip you up as much as it did in the past. it wont be that you will feel any less desire, it is that the desire that you feel will be free from limiting ways of getting energized by things that aren’t good for you. It isn’t that desire is bad, it is that so many people can’t get over the hump of their own junk enough to see that desire actually changes and does so in a wonderful way. No, this is not about denying desire, and if you do, you will forestall your development, I promise you that. If you release fear then you might find yourself more easy with others so your own energy can just fill a room without any hesitation. You wont be afraid of somehow being captured by another person’s energy because you are so sure of your own. You will be more easy in yourself and desire will simply be aligned to a higher purpose. This wont be something that you think with your mind, it will be something that you feel all through you. And even then, you might still have things to work on…like all of us.

But the homework for today is; what is the source of desire? What IS desire? if prana IS desire-filled, then what is its parentage, its origins? What is animating prana?

I think desire is here to help us to refine the way we feel. It is to help us to feel. Most tend to pooh-poohs feeling, but the truth here is in order to know peace and contentment, we first need to understand all of the things that color our feeling. When the consciousness is clarified, we don’t get tossed about by our knee-jerk and hot button issues all of which are being driven by the result of the repressed emotions, the blocks I have been discussing all along here. I’m talking about a version of you that you were always meant to know. Now isn’t this interesting, a great mystery to help yourself unravel.

If you ask the question how do I do this work, the first and most important step is to learn how to help facilitate the release of stored energy in the body. Kundalini helps immensely with this, but you can also facilitate its removal greatly with a variety of methods. Qi Gong is very helpful especially in the first five years, but so is a method called TRE which uses tremor movement (shaking) to tap into an ability that we have to release stored trauma. It can work remarkably well. There is body work or deep tissue massage by an intuitive therapist who can feel blocks in your body. There is also forms of yoga that involve helping to clear the energy channels in the light body that hold these blocks. Being creative is itself very helpful also. There are many methods that can assist you in releasing this material.

~P.

A Surprising Outcome

I was working in the studio making a new type of work recently when something surprising happened. The work involved a body movement that required me to reach to a tool that was needed for the next step. I work with hot glass, and some steps involve very precise timing, and if a movement is not made correctly it can result in problems. In the case of this one step, I had to reach around a glowing red metal pipe in order to get at a tool. Since this movement was new, I was still learning it, putting it into “muscle memory” so that this movement could eventually go off without a hitch.

What happened was I wound up pressing the crook of my arm against the hot metal. And then something interesting happened, which is the reason for the post.

First, with my eyes on the tool, and not where my arm was, I realized what I had done. This had happened once before but without so much contact as was taking place at this moment. I continued to grab the tool, though, neither flinching or drawing back. This move took three seconds. I was aware of my skin on the hot metal all the way through this. I could hear and feel my skin sizzling. Then I could feel the nerve pain come barreling into my awareness. I had an odd calm through all of this…idd because for the first time ever, I just didnt react as I normally woukd have in the past.

I finished the movement, shaped the glass, turned around to get ready for the next step and found myself choosing a state of calm instead of a big reaction to the pain which was coming and which I knew would soon be so strong that I might need to stop my work because it would be too much. That’s when it happened.

A thought arose in my mind that I should try to not feel the pain, but instead to try and make it just go away. Up until this time I could feel an emotional and mental tension building like “steeling” myself for the inevitable rush of pain. Instead, something in me just relaxed a little and I felt myself aware that I might be able to change the outcome. Instead of feeling inner resistance, this felt more like surrender. This eliminated the tension, and it was immediately followed by a surprising change of events.

As I turned to make the next step in my work, I felt the pain being replaced by an entirely different sensation. This sensation was not pain at all. In fact, I experienced a coolness where the burn was. My arm exposed, I faced a furnace blasting heat at me. Normally this would have been like pouring salt on a wound. It would have made the burn howl with pain. But it didnt. I felt myself in a very calm detached state and I completed the piece I started in another five minutes without a hint of any pain whatsoever. This turned out to be one of the worst burns I have ever gotten in the studio.

The burn two weeks later and after the scab came off

I realized that what I was doing was controlling my autonomous nervous system, a kind of “brain hack” that enabled me to completely change my natural response to this burn. It wasn’t a moment of smugness, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was as easy as it was.

There was no pain at all until the following day when the burned skin began to dry and started to pinch and pull at my burned skin a round the edges. It oozed for several days after that. This was not a feeling of burning, but a different form of pain related to tender skin being covered in a crusty layer. After a few more days I put honey on the burn, which is known to have natural antibiotic qualities and the healing moved swiftly along.

Truth be told, I was always interested in these kinds of “feats” that seem to defy our normal understanding about how the body works. I read many years ago of Indian monks who could slow their heartrate incredibly slow, selectively lower blood flow to one arm or other extremity. And then I heard the story on the radio of the Tibetan monks who would go out on the coldest night in Winter (the full moon in February) with nothing more than a wet sheet, which they would dry with their body heat.

I always felt that there was more to ourselves than meets the eye, and I have begun to realize that at least in part, I knew this because in other lives, I had done things which were similar in nature. I was surprised at how effortless this turned out to be.

When I think about it, I began to realize that I had been practicing similar forms of deep control at the root level of my body. I had turned on and turned off all kinds of responses over the last few years. Just yesterday I found a pain in my abdomen wound up being energetic in nature, something our doctors might chalk up to as neuralgia or something similar, and as I sank into a meditative state, I reached a place where I could really feel the body response, look at it, and then just make a small effort at letting the tense energy lift away, which instantly addressed the pain. In this case, the pain was not even being induced by way of an injury or disease. My body was treating it like it was pain, or maybe it was my brain that interpreted this energy as pain and made it so. Whatever the exact case, the problem was no more.

You might be thinking, “Yeah, but pain is an important warning sign that helps alert you to trouble, Parker.” I would agree. Pain let’s you know something is wrong. But in the case of my burn, I knew I was being burned, could feel the pain crowding into my body like a freight train in flames. I just chose to reverse it. My stomach pain turned out not to be an injury at all, or disease, but instead a kind of persistent tension energetically that was being interpreted as pain (or as something wrong). If I hadn’t gotten to the bottom of my stomach pain, I might still be feeling something that might have only gotten worse and who knows…in time it could lead to physiological and chemical changes that could lead to a very real physical dysfunction.

I am passing this along because my sense is that the more we meditate, the more we spend time deep in the subconscious digging out stored emotional debris, the easier it is to begin brushing up against not just our emotional codes, but our physiological ones as well. I think that things like this may be a natural turn of events, much like how the Tibetans who were practicing g-tummo meditation were able to gain control over their body heat in order to dry sheets in zero degree temperatures. Not a boast or a brag, but to share with others interested in our own inner workings. If I can do it, so can you!

~Parker