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. . .

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The Nature Of Prana

As I look over our history as a species, from the Middle East and the religions it spawned, to the East and the philosophies, the almost-religions that stopped short of being those because they do not espouse worship of a deity or a god of any kind, I see a pattern emerge as it relates to our creative energy and all of its relatives; except under very specific conditions creative energy is only allowed to be expressed in certain ways.  I am dealing with creative energy in a very broad sense here, so if you thought creative energy was that part of us that solved problems or helped create new things like cars or rockets to the moon or music and art, hang on.  Creative energy, I have come to see includes all aspects of our being, from our desire to create art to our desire to build bridges and civilizations.  Our creativity also includes the forces that maintain our bodies and it also includes our capacity, our ability, to create more of ourselves through sexual intercourse between men and women.  All of this to my mind and experience is part of a cosmic strand that divides out in numerous ways in our consciousness but has at its root an energy that in its origin is wild and free.

The problem in our world today is that except as noted previously, creative energy has been tamped down, controlled.  Churches have done this by instilling a sense of shame about our sexuality. We were to not trust our sexuality or our urges least of all so we relied on our religions to tell us what was what.  And you know, I am not convinced that it was for good.  Look at the scandals rocking the Catholic church and they don’t seem to stop. The Pope speaks out about it, but its like it is some monolithic structure with little accountability or willingness to change.  If you doubt what I am saying here, just do a historical church of the scandals that have taken place with the Catholic church over the years and you will begin to see how difficult this issue is.  Part of it stems from requiring priests to be chaste.  I am just going to say that when our creative fires are so narrowly focused there will always be trouble. Creativity was meant to be wild and free, not tamed, and here we are with our religions trying to tame what really was meant to set us free.  And instead, we are prisoners.

I will admit that what I say about prana is my take.  People are keen to try and point out that our perception is just perception, so human, so frail, so likely to be distorted.  But you know, this time, I don’t think so.  As I read about the hundreds, thousands, even, of experiences describing the bliss of the flow of prana, I see the same thing. It’s seen as a goddess, perhaps, wild and free, powerful.  But this energy is in all of us, the place where our inner man and inner woman meet, the explosion of opposites.  That is the definition of kundalini….which is nothing more than this: prana in supreme abundance (finally!). What I observe is what everyone else observes.  People may have different reactions to it.  Some might close down, some might open up.  Some might open and close in turns.  Some will be highly insightful, some will realize there is more to their ability to plumb their depths.  All through it, prana is the wild child to me, a liberating and spiritually lubricating force.

Torus form with multiple sheathes/fields

Prana is creative.  It stimulates all centers of the body when there is an abundance of it.  The ancients described bliss that was off the charts due to the increased flow of this energy.  As I sit writing this, I feel a steady-state experience of bliss.  I came to this level of bliss as a result of a lot of inner work.  I instinctively knew that if I followed what kundalini was doing that things would get easier.  They have.  I still have my challenges that I deal with, but they change with every realization or inner breakthrough.  I know that in my case that prana has fueled wildly vigorous creative energy.  In fact, I had to be creative in the arts in order to build enough of a flow in my body to sustain the current level of bliss that I feel.  When I go into the energy I can feel its wildness.  I can feel that it was never intended to be tamed.  yes, it is like water and will flow into any container in which it is poured, but the vessel itself is what limits or allows the flow of this force.

As someone who deals with awakening on a daily basis for over a decade, I luagh at the videos of teachers telling people how to awaken the kundalini.  The “Sat Nam!” breath that is one part hammer and one part release into the Mystery.  i know that if I had to depend on an exercise like that to awaken I think I should wait a very long time.  Maybe someone figured out that it worked for some folks, but I direct the flow of prana by way of feeling only.  This has always been what has opened the gates….always.  Even teachers who say prana is breath are wrong; prana is a fine energy that is in no way contained in the air.  No, prana moves by way of feeling. In fact, feeling is how we actually communicate to the cosmos. it is how the dream is made manifest (I write about this extensively in the blog so do a search to find out more).

The chakras are energy centers and every one has an emotional vibration connected to it.  This “emotive power” inherent in the chakras is born out of this feeling quality I am talking about.  No, people shut down their chakras and thus prana when they feel a hard feeling instead of a soft opening feeling.  And even if a million teachers say prana is breath, it does not make it right even once.  It just means that they themselves do not understand prana or have not been able to stimulate prana with anything other than breath (and this tells me as the observer that they may be lacking in their ability to connect with their feeling side of themselves to boot!). I know it might sound pedantic, but I promise you that it isn’t.  When we understand something so simple as prana responding to feeling, we can get ourselves on the right track in our own work for bringin in more of it so that its flow can heal (which it does).

Breath, when properly used, has a stimulating effect on the body which in turn stimulates prana. It isn’t even that the chakras respond to thought, it is deeper still than that.  Feeling….the whole world is lacking in feeling and awareness of their power to feel.  People who are not awakened will laugh at this, but trust me, the world carries a level of numbness in them…..even awakened people.  The journey to full feeling can take some time.  I know that I have been gifted with a kind of energetic “reset” by a healer who revealed the true depth of my woundedness, which sent me into a very real sense of physical pain (which was itself emotional/spiritual but now boosted by the presence of prana so it feels physical), so I know that we can go merrily along with the work of awakening only to find, “holy bejebus! there is so much more!” even years later.  So this is why all of this can become such a journey for people.  This is a journey to realization.  Realization comes about as a result of awareness.  Sometimes, once in a great while, we can meet people who we connect so deeply with that they share something about themselves that can spark all sorts of realizations within ourselves.  Some are direct, some tangential.  Some are unintended.  But this is why relationship has been so important in awakening and is also one aspect that is largely denied by the world’s religions as a bona fide religious or spiritual “practice.”

Yes, prana is creative. There are stories of how women who have undergone awakening have experienced a sense as though they were pregnant, that they were going to birth something. A close family friend confided in me during one of our talks about her awakening process that she went through a period of time when she could feel her body wanting to physically birth something. She sensed that this was part of her awakening process, but it was a curious experience to her.  When I explained to her that many other women have reported the same experience it made her feel a little less crazy. The experiences have all been extremely similar and I think that it points to powerful energies that are creative in nature but that operate at higher dimensional levels and are having their effect in our day-to-day lives (because it’s all connected now).

So I think that when we are faced with the spirit and the higher self, it is quite natural for higher-order experiences to be transmitted into the language of the body, to be related to our bodies as well as all other levels of ourselves.  I have noticed that at a certain level the self knows itself to be One with all things, so naturally the creative energy of prana is the same as the creativity of our personalities, the same creativity of our physical bodies in making babies, and who knows what other forms of creative output there are in other realms of experience that we have yet to discover as sentient beings. What is universal is that creativity always feels blissful.  When we create babies in the physical our bodies provide us with an orgasm to make the experience that much more filled with reward, but creative energy also brings chills and goosebumps to creators of music and art.  It at once expresses and evokes powerful feeling. People who have awakened almost all go through intense creative bursts.  As an artist I can say that my awakening has fueled a number of new directions in my work that would have never existed before.  It’s a little crazy in a way just how crowded my inner landscape is with ideas.  My only challenge is in bringing these ideas to fruition.  And, in the way that prana also works, it speeds up manifesting many-times over.  For example, when I began thinking about how close I was to reopening my studio practice after teaching, without saying a word, but thinking how I would like to have some good assistants, I received one highly qualified request for being involved in some part-time capacity at the studio making work as well as two beginners who expressed a sincere desire to learn the discipline.  The interesting part of this is how well-timed it was.  By now, I am not surprised by any of this, but I know that when my prana flow increases, it accelerates manifestation of desired outcomes.  That said, it might bring me a person who WANTS to work in my field, but it does not guarantee that they will be excellent or that they will decide to stay with it a year or even a week later. Sometimes, you have to dig deeper to find where these glitches exist.  But that is for another time.

But here is the problem as I see it, at least as it relates to many of our institutions on earth,  which is that our creativity has been hijacked.  It’s not some demonic conspiracy to enslave humanity, just a desire to tamp down creativity because it scares people who are in positions of power.  One thing I know about power is that the vast majority of institutions and the people within then have a great need to control.  This control on the one hand may have been intended to keep people from killing each other or behave badly, but the other side of the coin has been that it also limits freedom.  It limits our creativity.  When I look at what I have seen in my meditations about creativity and how wild and free it is and when I look at the human race, I see a big disconnect.  And the problem? Here is your problem…..

We value war and destroying in the name of greed and the usurpation of land and wealth through military invasions and keeping our race held hostage by the fear of the next fabricated threat that the military industrial complex decides to come up with next (read your history on this—most of our wars have been coups on the part of the CIA or an effort to fool us into war, this didn’t start with the invasion of Iraq, this has been going on for a long time). We are taught that to be a man we must be warlike, unfeeling.  Women have their place, perhaps one of the greatest fonts of creative energy alive on the planet and our women are shut down to such an unbelievable degree. Their thought process mimics men in their rational approach, with that fabulous intuitive and feminine character of soul nearly gone.   Really, you have no idea.  But so are the men shut down.  We all are, so don’t think I am picking on anyone in particular.  But men are shut down in such a way that it creates this rage and it just keeps feeding their desire to go to war so they can just kill something.  This, my friends, is creativity turned into itself.  This is the dark side of the creative force.  Do I really need to point this out to you? Men who don’t know how to command their sexual energy, women who are afraid of these men, and then women who aren’t in command of their own sexual energy too, and use their emotional forces of manipulation to work things in their favor.  It is a crazy mixed up mess if you ask me.

Our institutions by and large forswear sexual expression as a necessity to make babies, but by and large, we have incredible taboos placed on our sexuality.  While there are good reasons for governing behavior in theory, my observation is that our attempts to govern sexual energy result in greater dysfunction than ever.  Men pitted against women, the war of the sexes, men not in possession of their source of power and women not in full possession of their source of power either.  All the while we are taught that our sexual nature is dirty, that lust is not redeemable, and forget having sex if its lustful.  In fact, most of our institutions teach us how to sublimate sexual energy as a convenient way of side-stepping the issue altogether. In many parts of Asia its as though the teaching of Zen Buddhism and Taoism and other strands of Buddhism would rather deal with packaging bliss so that its no longer sexual as their axis mundi for solving the problem.  Women no longer in possession of themselves will never engage a man at the level of his divinity for very long, but the exact same can be said for men with their women.  I ask; how did we get here? I feel like I am in that video by the Talking Heads for the song Once In A Lifetime where a clearly out of control David Byrne seeks to illustrate the chaos of our lives as controlled beings while desiring finding the flow of life.

When I step back from this madness, I can feel a world within me swirling with the forces of creation in a way that I had always hoped to be able to feel, actually.  I had always hoped prior to awakening that creative energy was this vivid and strong (and it is). But when I look at the world I see we have a long way to go, baby.  We have a long way to go because we have squashed the creativity of the feminine and masculine both.

It’s interesting to me how as men begin to soften, kundalini is coming onto the scene also as women are learning how to find their own strength and their own sovereignty.  I observe that on a collective level humans are reaching across the aisle and integrating more of their opposites into their lives especially over the last twenty years (which also corresponds with the sudden increase of awakening (I could be wrong, but I don’t buy that these awakenings are due to someone decided it will be, but are the result of a myriad of factors all resulting in the changes we see today.  If you know how awakening is itself defined by the fusion of opposites in consciousness, then you can perhaps appreciate how it is that we now have a mass awakening taking place on the planet. Right. Now. And honestly, I observe that the progress we have made not just for hundreds of years, but especially during this last century, just happens to be of a kind that favors the fusion of opposites.  What if instead of this being some grand cosmic event as many want to say it is, we are simply glimpsing the natural result of people having reached a kind of threshold point in their development with awakening being the result.  This period has shown us more possibilities and people have been able to shrug off the control of their institutions just enough to begin to evolve in new directions, directs that favor awakening.

I think we need to be less concerned about how others will react or treat us.  We already are made into a kind of outcast by the differences in our experiences moment by moment from the average Joe and Josephina.  I mean, admit it, even as you go through your life undercover as the awakened being on the planet, you also find that this makes you feel so singular and lonely.  Social things for social creatures.  I think that the teachings of Tantra have a lot to explain about bliss.  While tantra is itself not necessarily sexual, the parts of tantra that are do not seek to shy away from confronting issues in our consciousness (well, it is the same with white tantra or black, both head straight-away right into the center of the fire which is how all emotional release work is done in fact).  The lesson is that you never skirt the briar patch, you head right into it and liberate it of whatever hitches that reside within the self.  Free yourself from shame, guilt, and repressed emotion. I know that in my life I have worked to dissolve as much of it as I can.  I have more to go, but as this last block rears its head I am reminded that if I am to be able to hear the voice of my intuition and my inner guidance as clearly as possible, I have to continue to be clearer.  Don’t be tamed, friends.

Reclamation

Wakulla County, Florida, Copyright Parker Stafford 2018

I have been doing a lot of travel recently ( I plan to do more now that I am officially an “empty nester”).  Some of it has been traveling to  places I grew up in, others to places I haven’t been before.  What is interesting to me is how when I travel, how it impacts the way I dream. This summer my daughter and I spent some time along some islands in the Gulf of Mexico.  As we traveled further south, every night for me was like digging deep into some deep barrel to lift out something long forgotten.  I have found over the course of ten years that the things that have led to releases energetically have been extremely broad.  I have used movement, Qi Gong, meditation, breath work, shaking and TRE (Trauma Release Exercises), dream work, and I even released a block on the advice of my guidance by drinking alcohol one evening just enough to get tipsy (and the next morning the release came-magic!).  No matter what the yogis or masters tell you, if you have a voice of guidance, follow it.  If that guidance says “find the nearest body of water” or something odd-ball like that (which happened to me) trust it.  Follow it.  And even if you don’t have a clearly defined thought-voice in your head, follow your gut, follow your urgings, and even try doing something you are afraid to do or that you have resisted. So much of our buried emotional material has to do with what we resist or bury, or try to ignore.  The bodhisattva in me wishes very much to assist you in realizing even more the bodhisattva that is within you…

In the case of this Summer, being in places where I grew up but have not been in for a very long time seemed to have an  effect on my state of mind and a kind of reverie I felt that extended into dreaming. In my case, the place I was in I hadn’t been to in close to 20 years, and before that, another 20 years which takes me all the way back to my early childhood. I find it interesting how traveling to familiar places that you haven’t seen in a long while can help spark or catalyze transformation, a kind of reclamation of the soul and its lost parts through buried hurt or trauma from the past.  This is actually what yoga seeks to do for the individual, which is to help clear the energy body of this stuck energy so that the primordial self might know itself in presence. I know that when you think of yoga you think of all of these postures, but true yoga is actually about realizing the divine within you.  This is its ultimate goal. Now as to whether yoga teachers are teaching yoga with this emphasis/awareness or not is another question altogether…

It has been a great Summer for me because I was able to spend time with a child whom my ex has worked diligently for years to lessen my exposure to.  Anyone who knows me knows how much I love my children and how engaged I am with them.  It has been a hard seven years but my child turned 18 and she was able to assert her rights as a person and that has meant that we finally were able to have a real summer together traveling and enjoying each others’ company.  We have been out boating, kayaking, snorkeling, swimming, taking walks,  and laying in the hot sun. We have been able to visit old family friends, and for my daughter, meet people from my past who are like family who my daughter had only heard in story.  All the while, in a way I can’t quite explain, my insides are being effected as I sleep at night and have these dreams that seem to access long forgotten parts of myself.  Some of it feels so peripheral I am not completely sure what is happening (sound familiar?) and some of it feels more familiar or known.  There is a lot in dream that has felt like accessing points or places within me that were concurrent with a certain place and time….

Sunset over St Marks Nature Preserve, Wakulla County Florida. Copyright Parker Stafford 2018

I’m writing this urging you to consider breaking up your regimen by going to places you haven’t been to in a long time.  If you are  like me, and moved from your childhood home a long time ago and haven’t been back, try going back.  But relax, enjoy your time, see the sights and soak in what it was like to be there. Even if you didn’t like growing up there, there is really something to be said for returning to those old brambles….sometimes only to find that the brambles are all gone, or are ready to be rooted out of you. Sometimes just being there can be enough to connect you by way of geography, the smell of the place, the change in altitude or weather, or even the slight disorientation that comes from being in a new place.  We generally think of these things as disquieting, but in release work, it really can be the very trigger that lets an energetic loop slip out of your energy body and fall away.  I think that it could hold some surprises for you as it relates to release work. Sometimes dropping a pebble into long undisturbed waters can make for change….

Key Largo, Florida. Copyright, Parker Stafford 2018.

The Seat Of Your Soul-Exploring The Psoas

A large part of what I write about on this blog has been about how to release stored emotional energy that is in the body. I do this because of its connection to our ability to know the deeper self. It also is work that can make an awakening experience far less chaotic or difficult. Some people who either awaken without preparation or do so spontaneously can wind up in a state of psychosis. While I speak and write glowingly of awakening, it is our own backlog of stored trauma that causes great difficulty with so much prana (which is kundalini) now animating the good and the not-so-good within.

There are numerous ways to assist in releasing stored emotional trauma. One of the ways that I have been exploring this has been a direct result of earlier releases which have made an awareness of how fundamental the hips are in aiding in clearing trauma that is stored there. This is where the root chakra rests and it is also home to a set of muscles yogis have dubbed “the seat of the soul.” These muscles make up what is called the psoas (pronounced “so-as”). These muscles are where the most basic and earliest traumas in life are stored. Without proper care, this muscle group can not only store trauma, but can also lead to a number of lower back problems that include a weak, unnatural, or shuffling gate,  and body pain that radiates down to the knees and up though the hips into the lower lumbar regions. Knowing how to stretch and tone the psoas will leave you feeling as though you have a new lease on life. While Voltaire claimed the pineal the “seat of the soul,” the psoas is in my experience the real honest to goodness seat of the soul. This region will impact your self worth, feelings of abundance, and creative fire, to name a few.

The psoas is so basic and foundational a muscle group that it governs our most basic of emotions and feelings in our bodies. When this muscle group is stressed our whole being feels out of place. When this muscle group is cleared stretched and toned you can go from feeling trapped and oppressed and full of pain to feeling light and like a child again.

I’m going to describe one of the most effective ways to begin to release stress from the psoas. There are also some stretches that are used in yoga that have been used for centuries for stretching and toning the psoas.

To understand how foundational this muscle group is,  you need only look at the illustration below to see that the psoas is the bridge between the legs and torso. Like back muscles, if this muscle group doesn’t get  enough stretching and toning, it can develop soreness and rigidity that telegraph’s that pain and rigidity throughout the body making you feel “yuck.”

Trauma Release Exercise (TRE) is one of the most effective ways to release stored trauma in this muscle group. A quick look on youtube will reveal countless videos that reveal how this method works, and I also have a detailed post that delves into this extremely simple yet effective method (search on my blog “TRE”).  It works by causing the body to go into tremors which help release stored emotional energy that is in the body (who knew, right?).  Humans are the ONLY mammal that does not have the instinct to shake after a traumatic event has occurred. In fact, more often than not humans will freeze when trauma is experienced. This is how trauma is stored in the body, and it will remain there as an energetic and physiological imprint until it is removed or released. By inducing shaking in this important muscle, everyone can utilize the therapeutic effect of shaking as an effective means for releasing trauma from earliest life.

This method, which I have detailed before (search “trauma release” in the search section) involves lying with your back on the floor and your behind lifted up about six inches off the floor, doing so until the leg muscles become fatigued so they begin to shake. This shaking begins to help release stored emotion. You might find that a lot of hard emotions come up, and it’s important to not hold these emotions back. You need to let them flow without “grabbing” for them. If you adopt this approach, you will find success with this method.These emotions are in the past and there is nothing to fear.

In the illustration above, a large pillow can be used to rest as needed. The lifted position of the pelvis is very helpful in getting the stress to move deep into the hips.

Next, stretching the psoas is very helpful. In fact, if you do it regularly you will feel as though you have a new lease on life. Believe it or not, this very simple act can lead to releasing karma. The one way we release karma is by forgiving ourselves (not others, although this is indeed helpful and an important prelude to self forgiveness when it comes). Feeling the weight of past “debts” bearing on you is not how karma is ever released. Once you shift how you feel deep down, it is easier to reach into the light that is the new life that comes through this work. It might sound unlikely that such a simple thing as stretching can shift and evaporate karma, but it is in fact an important run-up to getting into the right space where these debts can go forever.  It always involves a deep recognition of forgiveness.  No God or outside agency can do this for you; it is an inside job.  Winks.

auraspa.net

This stretch, shown above, is very helpful. Start off slow and don’t stretch beyond your comfort zone. Over time, you will loosen the psoas more and more.
If this stretch is uncomfortable  at first, you can lie flat on the edge of a table or bed and let each leg dangle over the edge, allowing you leg to flex at the hip. This is a little lower impact than a full stretch. You can detect imbalances in your energy field by way of tightness, muscle pain, pressure, as well as issues with balance while performing this stretch.  As I have gotten into using this stretch I have found that I am increasingly more off balance, which might not seem correct at first.  The nature of releasing blocks is that as the block begins to let go (this can be of short duration while stretching or it could occupy weeks or months of time as you work this block out), unsteadiness can often be a symptom of your becoming increasingly aware and present with the block.  This is not a bad thing!  It is a wonderful sign that your body is beginning to “speak” to you to let you now that something big is up. It is also possible to feel a range of sensations from a liquid-like feeling of motion in the body surrounding the block, heat, cold, electrical shocks, and waves of emotion.  Don’t let a strong wave of emotion stop you; this is where the best work is actually being done!

Next, lying flat on your back, bring each leg in turn up to your chest, which will also stretch the “glute” muscle group in the behind. This will also stretch the psoas where it ties into the lower back, an important place for releasing stored stress. Take it slow. Hold this for many minutes. Begin holding one minute and slowly extend it into the three to four minute range. In time, you will be able to naturally stretch into these deep positions naturally. Go slow; this is not a race and your muscles groups, if they have blocks in them, may also be very tight, so you will need to move slowly but persistently over time to help loosen things up.  This will help release body armoring (also called emotional armoring) when you bring thought, feeling, and body together as one in these movements. In fact, as I do these exercises, I will often begin getting intense sensations related to the psoas that in the past might have made me wonder if I should continue, but don’t let feeling emotionally rough stop you; this is a sign that the healing is happening.  Continue with it until it is stretched, massaged, and released. Wait for it; it will come, simple as sunshine.

One final note: stored energy isn’t just in muscle. It is also in the interface between tendon and muscle. By holding a stretch long enough, you give the time needed for the stress to release in the tendons. During a therapy session recently, I had a body worker releasing stress in my elbow, something that had developed as a result of over stressing it in my work. By pressing down and stretching the tendon in a hold, I was able to feel the tension/stress release which felt like water pressure leaving a tube. Once this happened, the tension bound in the tendon was gone for good.

I found that the tension went deeper into the tendon where it connects to the bone. Having learned the technique for release, I pressed deeper and closer to the bone. Once clear, the memory of the trauma was released. While the stress in my elbow and forearm wasn’t emotional stress, the body responds to it the same way. When stretching, let yourself stretch deeper as you go, gently but persistently. You do not want to create tears. Slow and gentle is better than being overly aggressive.

So there you have it: practice this and you will find immediate relief from stored emotion in the hips.

Great Music For Yoga, Meditation, Workout, Or Getting Through The Day!

Source:  yoanu.com

 

Do you find yourself having trouble with much of the music out there today that gets airplay over the radio waves? Do you find yourself having trouble with your old play lists that you listened to before awakening? Old favorites that have just….fallen away?

Oh so much changes, doesn’t it? I know that at a certain point in my process, I could no longer watch certain movies or even listen to certain kinds of music. So much of our world is drenched in this vibration of hardness, and it shows in the music we listen to. I recently began to reflect on all of the really great music that I have listened to over the last ten years that helped me to find a place to be where I could still listen to music without going into the wrong kind of overwhelm.

 

So if that has been the case for you, I have a treat or two hiding in here for you!

 

I have a list. It is in truth, a lot of different stuff, but its been selected because it has at different periods of time, helped to support me in my process.  Some days, I just could not listen to ANYTHING deeply rhythmic because, awakening.  But other times, I NEEDED that deep beat.   But mostly?  I needed something that wasn’t drenched in the drama and BS of popular culture. Some of the music is great for work, yoga, meditation practice (if you use music at all) and for just getting around through the day. I have selected out all of the things that didn’t put me in a funk and that usually tend to lift me up or helps to put me in one great zone or another (some very quiet and subtle). I don’t know about you, but my tastes range all over the place, and what suits me one day does not work the next. I have all kinds of play lists often just to suit the mood. So the list….it ranges all over the place, too. I hope you can pick up a few things to add to your sonic tool box. So sharpen your pencil, take down some names and head over to i-Tunes to listen to the free samples, or try them on YouTube.

 

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, and there is a lot that is not included because it might only be one great song on one album, but this should be something to get you started on a new sonic-mind space groove. Note: everything I am listing, except for a few noted exceptions, can be found on i-Tunes. Injoy!

 

What’s your favorite music these days?  Care to share?  I’m expanding my list on a daily basis and would love to hear from you.

 

 

 

Elephant Revival. An eclectic blend of styles rooted in folk, but without slavery to instrumental styles that hem them in. My favorites from their most recent album Petals are Peace Tonight, Petal.

Their album These Changing Skies is their second most recent album and it’s worth taking a look/listen because the sound is a little different in some ways, while staying true to their quiet calming meditative music. In some ways, there are songs on this album I like even more than their most recent Petals. Make sure to check out

Birds and Stars, and Down To The Sea – I do have to admit that these soft-sided works often get a little much for me; I like some variety, so Down To The Sea feels a little turned inward, but I am sure you will like it in the right pairing, right? Also, Rogue River is worth listening for a bit of unexpected bluesy variety on the same album. Rogue is a bit hard in the lyrics, though.

 

Here is a link to one of their songs on youtube:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LgHDFHzMI4

 

Jai-Jagdeesh. Taking a sudden turn into the Bakhti vibe, there is the work of Jai-Jagdeesh who blends western with Indian sensibilities. This is good for those who want longer songs, more contemplation, less just easy listening, but often delightful and uplifting. Her album I Am Thine is made up of mostly long six to eight-minute tracks that help to keep you in the groove. I liked the first song on the album Aad Guray Nameh. And while the title track I Am Thine might be pretty popular, I liked Om Namah Shivaya Raam more because it departed from the more mellow rhythms and had a more bluesy feel, which is always interesting to me from a creative standpoint. Her earlier album Of Heaven and Earth has a little more upbeat feeling overall, and might be worth a listen.

 

Bachan Kaur is another artist whose work seems to be designed for yoga. Her album Anahata has a very folk feel, but this is not because it has traditional folk instrumentals, often just a guitar and a sitar in the background. Her work is spare, but if you want to have a fifteen minute tune, her work could be just the ticket.

 

Mirabai Ceiba is a duo that blends an interesting range of instrumental styles. I found myself grasping for a way to describe their sound. The best I can say is that it is a Celtic-meets-Latin feel. I find that I’d like their work without the singing because the instruments shine so beautifully on their own. Their albums Sevati, and their most recent Sacred Love Meditations, along with several others, are all on i-Tunes.

 

Matisyahu is less meditative music as it is something with a positive message. It has a reggae backbone, toss in some world, and you are done. Light is one of his recent releases and personally, I like the track on Light, One Day the best.

 

Trevor Hall has a great message, and isn’t into the trancy eight minute journey’s, which means that Trevor is a bit like Matisyahu not so much in style, but in that they have a rhythmic instrumental style that lacks the rawness often present in music of this type. I like Trevors music a lot and I find I pepper my play lists with his stuff when I need to break up the longer “trancy” stuff with something that has a nice beat. His last two albums Kala and Chapter of the Forest are two you should start with and explore his earlier work from there. I wouldn’t call his work yoga music though. Its really nice thoughtful music with soul.

 

This is his Youtube channel:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96SGUEnI2uw&list=PL11s0VhvKvosz9kjROX5j11NrnP8meHCJ

 

In a similar kind of rockin’ vein is Michael Franti. Again, his stuff might be too fast for some yoga, but his message is supportive and strong with his hi-hop reggae blended style. In fact, his music is often really great to dance to. His most recent album is Soulrocker.

 

Deva Premal was music I listened to when I did my Qi Gong practice. Her music has a contemporary backbone but well within the New Age style. The focus is on her voice, which she uses very well for create rich landscapes that can help carry you along in your work. It tends to be faster tempo than, say Bachan Kaur. If you want a really wild sound scape, try her Tibetan Mantras for Turbulent Times. This album is most definitely for trance work, if you ask me. Much of her work tends to be mantras sung in the Sanskrit.

 

NOT ON I-TUNES: Now for one that might be hard to get to, but at a certain point in my work, especially meditation and Qi Gung, Vyas Huston’s Victory Over Death fit the bill. It’s a bit severe sounding sometimes, but when its good, it can be really good. I copied the file twice and burned a disc for listening for long periods since it is one giant circle of mantra (but somehow, it doesn’t listen as repetitive because of how the phrases are paced out with the music). And to be fair, he isn’t singing mantras, but reciting a prayer whose words can be found on other sites dealing with Huston and his work.   I was introduced to his work by my teacher Robin and I was able to copy his disc. If you do Thai Chi or Chi Gung, you might see how the pacing of his recitation works really well with the moves of Qi Gung (which my teacher Robin presented to the rhythm of his piece, which is almost half an hour long-perfect for getting in a number of important moves in the Gung).

 

When I went looking for his work on i-Tunes, it didn’t show up, and honestly besides a Youtube video, I am not sure where to tell you to go to get it (if you like it). Vyas is mentioned on the internet here and there, so maybe you can get lucky (and maybe share back here for a link?). Let me know what you think of his work! Until then, this is the link to the youtube that has the piece on it (and a few images that are a dead-ringer for places where I live):

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv4DcBDNwI8

 

 

Moksha (featuring Kanchman Babbar). If you want something in a similar and perhaps more traditional vein, try these Vedic chants by a chorus of 21 Brahmins. Just type “Moskha” in i-Tunes and it should be the first choice that comes up and give it a try. All of the chants are done in a pitch and style that does not vary except the mantras being chanted.

 

Odesza. So nice. One album worth listening to is In Return. First track: Always This Late. This is not meditation music per se, but its great texture and a sonic landscape for….running, working on writing (if the vibrations match what you are doing), cleaning, dancing (?)and heck, maybe even an active yoga routine. Check them out and let me know what you think. Very upbeat, bright, and lovely vocals with a definite electronic backbone to it all. I own their work.

 

 

Emancipator. Another electronic trance groove kind of sound-scape in a similar vein as Odesza. See their album Seven Seas, safe In the Steep Cliffs, and Soon It Will Be Cold Enough. I like their stuff. I have a few of their songs, too!

 

Peter Gabriel. I know, “isn’t he that pop artist who was once with Genesis and did Shock the Monkey?” Yes! If you listen to his music, you will find that all of his work has a driving desire towards awareness. He is a modern Gnostic in my book with his revealing More Than This. He is a kind of revealer of important issues concerning our place in the world. While his music has hit the charts and has had a lot of play, giving his music a listen to revealed, at least to me, a great depth of comprehension about spiritual issues. His album Growing Up, which was also released as a DVD of his live concert (in France, if I remember correctly).   While his work with Genesis was more in the pop/rock vein, his work began to mature once he broke from the band. Some of his work gets hard and even edgy, but some of his songs, like Signal To Noise are dealing with the issue of disinformation and seeking truth. His music was indispensible at a certain phase in my awakening. Blood of Eden speaks to the union of the opposites in consciousness.

 

1. IZ. Also known as Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Iz is Polynesian and has a beautiful melodic voice that he matches with equally sensitive lyrics. Iz is no longer with us, but he has left a number of albums like Facing Future, and Alone in IZ World. His is a Hawaiian experience.

 

Yoga Music Co. These folks create music expressly for yoga. Might be worth a try. If you want a quick intro, you can go to youtube:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij28wzJMijI

 

I am not sure if they are i-Tunes but their web site is www.yougamusicco.com. I liked what I heard!

 

For that matter, there are a number of channels on youtube now with music like Yoga Music, so it might be worth a listen and a little seeking to find things that you like.

 

Deborah Van Dyke is a chanter and her work is, as you might have guessed, very repetitive, but these are mantras after all.

 

In a more melodic and musical vein is the work of Donna De Lory, a mix of English and Sanskrit language styling.

 

So what music do you like? Please feel free to share and we can make a nice list for others in desperate need of a sonic transformation!

 

Until next time,

 

-Parker

Turning Tradition On Its Head

In Indian Yogic tradition, the seven rungs of the ladder to cosmic consciousness involve preparation.  You can spend lifetimes climbing these ladders.  Many do.  The belief among nearly every person brought up in this tradition is that you cannot achieve the cosmic without years of preparation.  You just can’t. It is also one reason why I have witnessed people telling me on my blogs from India that what I am talking about cannot be kundalini.  Oh.  And you need to get diksha from a teacher.

A teacher.  Wait…the guru is in you, am I right?

What is happening to most westerners who have been experiencing a broad wave of awakenings is that this old notion is just not so.   Does this mean that the old rules are no longer applicable?  No.  In fact, the “rules” never really applied to us in this regard.  You CAN get there without preparing.  Most Swami’s and yogi’s are fond of saying that when you awaken, you are not attaining anything.  You are only reaching what has always been there.  I agree.  It is the authentic state which nearly every person on the planet has been holding back the flood waters of.  Yes.  But preparation is not a prerequisite.  Preparation is a very good idea, though.

The fact that so many have awakened without a discipline or belief or structure to support them helps to turn old notions on their head.  It also provides me with a view of awakening that comes at the experience from a completely different vantage point.  Without preparation, the self if pitched into a very intense experience where a lot of work needs to be done fairly quickly in order to assist in the reorientation of the self so that large sums of prana can flow through the self and body unimpeded.  Without this, the self tends to crumple, contract, freak, become anxiety-ridden, fearful, or even psychotic.  It is like taking a step outside of your home one morning and finding that there is nothing there and that in order to get to anything, you have to take a giant leap forward in order to land on solid ground.

It means you hurry up and do the work that you need to do.  But it also means that you come at all of this from a very different direction.  The traditions are turned on their head.  This means that with the accelerant of pranic flow present that what you do is also much more effective if you apply yourself to your own intuition and seek ardently.  The higher self is available to you if you just realize that you CAN tap into it.  Awareness is key.  The moment you slip into the old concept of ego, you lose a bit of its power, its majesty that can shoot you to the moon.  Feet on the ground, soul soaring high and free.  There is abundance in both modes of being.  It is not either/or but both. Events will change and life will become your great teacher in ways that show you that every single moment has been a lesson for you.  Good golly, how can I even begin to describe the lessons that pop up in the moment for me in each day?  Life is now rich with these now that I am looking for them, aware that they are there.  And this has the effect of transforming how you see everything.  It sounds grandiose, but its actually quite simple. It is a new way of seeing that is the result of the self thinking to itself that it is mundane and singular and not connected to the All. When you feel the connection to the universe in a nondual way, it is a revolutionary experience because it changes your world view so radically, but also very quietly.  Only here do I crow about it.  I crow about it because of just how amazing it has rendered the old tones and hues of my life.

What I observed in what triggered my awakening is something that I think is of vital importance for us when we speak about awakening.  The Hindu tradition masks this to a certain degree with all of the methods and years of preparation.  And it is this: when you remove what divides you, awakening comes.  I noted this as central to my awakening experience.  When I went to look for some corroborative evidence out there on the internet that others had had my same experience (I didn’t know this had a name like “awakening” or “kundalini”), I found ancient Christian texts that had not made it into the orthodox teachings and were considered heretical.  These documents, it turns out, are part of the origin of Christian thought and instead of being heresy as those in the church have tried to maintain, are now being revealed to be part of the very origin of central teachings of Jesus.  Things get complicated with this, but trust me….I have done extensive research into this area and this is supported by significant research in the last century by historians and linguists.

Awakening without preparation is not impossible.  You just have to contend with a lot of very intense things, many of which are the product of things shrouded in the old belief systems you have had in place previous to it taking place until you can see things differently and BE different.  YOU are the change you want to see in the world.

I know that with all the info out there with systems and methods that it might sound simplistic for me to say that ALL of this is about allowing the flow of prana, but really, that is JUST what ALL of this is.  Along with pranic flow comes the breaking down of your old beliefs along with certain parts of your personality that have been tied to ideas or beliefs that were limiting in nature.  A LOT flows out from prana moving in high volume in the body including the Dark Night of the Soul, siddhis, and a whole range of awakening phenomenon.  But it is just this simple.  Like a mustard seed, you see. It grows large, unbelievably large as it develops.

This can be done.  It is how I did it.  I know, that in a way, I was preparing for years, I just never did yoga or adhere to a belief system or any of that. Is it really effective to go about it this way?  I know that for myself, there was a level of perspective that came with awakening that I don’t think I would have been able to embody had it not been for the whirlwind cleansing that took place during awakening.  I was stuck in my life. I was afraid to make any more because of how the people were in that life.  Awakening helped to shake me out of complacency and showed me my life in brilliant contrasts.  I don’t think I could have gotten to where I am now without it.  It was the missing ingredient I had been seeking my whole life.  In fact, my “seeking” simply came to a complete halt once awakening came. I felt this odd sense of, “…..I am here.  I have done it.” When I thought I had lived an examined life the higher self showed just how pinched and small my perspective had been.  Like a fool, I woke up and realized that yes, this thing is a whole other realm of understanding the self.  And in order for it to keep doing its work, you cannot delude yourself but remain open like a child to the possibilities that what you know today, while vastly different from before awakening, is itself just another point along the road.  the road, meanwhile, goes on for light years….. right?  Each moment can thus become a humbling moment if you let it.  Precious, special, and the only one like it.  So much around it expands into larger dimension making everything here seem inconsequential…..and yet I find that no; every sparrow falls and it is known.  This thing, the divine, interpenetrates everything. And so?  Everything waxes sheer marvel.  There is no such thing as inconsequential.

Waking up is a call to hurry up and do the “work” which is surrendering to the spirit that is what connects you to the divine, the higher self, and to what you are within.  Simple.  Everything else is details.  No I know; what position to sit in?  Whatever is most comfortable to you.  Really.  Diet?  Your inner self will tell you.  Your body will tell you.  Mantra?  “Surrender.”  You don’t need a method.  You only need yourself and a willingness to see it in a new way.  I know this because I have done it.  So can you.

नमस्ते

The Subtle Energy System & Leg Chakras

I wanted to share this article that has just gone up on my sister site Divine Alignment about leg chakras and developing a keener awareness of subtle energy.  Enjoy!

http://divinealignment.blogspot.com/2016/05/energy-awereness-leg-chakras.html

Breathing The Leopard – A Follow Up from Last Time

This post is what was promised from my last post about the core of methods of practices….

I was flush deep in the roiling seas of kundalini.  It was 2009.  I had been moving a lot of blocked energy and with each release I could feel how the prana impacted my body in the turbulent state, energetically, that I was in.  It had an effect on my system that included a lot of nausea.  Every few days I would come against not just one, but a series of blocks.  this is good, but it also made things intense and a little much to take physically.  But it was in the midst of this that I was shown a vision of a desert cat.

The whole scene was meant to illustrate how we shift out of our “dry” left brains into the fluid flowing world of our right brain, the kundalini shakti, the flowing feminine side of our consciousness.  To feel this flow meant removing blocks and still more blocks.  I was shown this leopard and I watched it breath.  I could feel its breath, which was actually a panting breath.  Because I was seeing and feeling the content of this vision, I immediately was able to feel what it was I was supposed to feel.  So I began to breath like this cat was breathing.  I thought about being this cat.  I don’t know why, but cats seem to put me in touch with a sensual aspect of my masculine energy.

It is in truth I think a blending of aspect of both feminine and masculine.  And when you do this in awakening, it brings peace and bliss because two aspects of the self are held so closely within awareness without any division.  So for me, the cat was a good image for my own turn of mind.  Strong, rippling in strength this cat was sleek and sensual.  I felt bliss move all through me as a result.  I was taken, seduced by the bliss of prana.

I panted; the energy moved very strong as my stomach lurched and turned.  I kept at it, and within a day I had moved through the nausea and the block was gone.  There were more blocks to deal with, and many were taken care of with this panting breath which I found moved a lot of energy for the very fact that the image and the breathing helped to support an openess within me that allowed energy to flow.  Since your consciousness IS energy, it isn’t that difficult to understand that the character of your consciousness will help focus and even determine the nature of the energy that flows through you.  The more open and trusting you are of the natural universe, the more direct a connection you will have without any prejudices or biases coloring your perceptions.

But the thing I want to point out is that the important thing in this was the image inside of me, which just “did it” and opened me up.  It was less the breath than this image.  Yes, breath did stimulate my body in certain ways, and breath IS coincident with prana or chi, but it is NOT chi.  Sorry.  It just isn’t.  Breathing CAN stimulate the flow of chi, though.  But as you will see, so can your pure feeling….which is the coolest part….because when you consider that in spirit, in All-Time, you exist without a body.  HOW do you breath?  You breath in your awareness.  If you can get that the breath of your body mirrors the breath of your soul, oh my goodness, the worlds that this can open for you conceptually as a creator of great methods, new methods for people to use that help bring in new aspects of awareness that just weren’t possible a century ago but are now just at our fingertips! Yell it at the top of your heart, your soul, for this is true; amazing things await us….and the boundlessness of creativity will bring it to you if you will but OPEN to it.

I was opened, seduced by the flow of this very sensual of energies, this pranic flow. It was so strong that it almost made me sick.  I got over it, and I would in the following days  use the panting breath as a way to tap this state.  But for it to work, the image must be there.  I have to know what I am reaching for.  I am taking breath into me the way one would say yes to a lover.  Prana is this. YOGA is UNION.  Yoga means just this.  So?

Now, I will say that up to this time, I was not familiar with a breathing method, a well-known one in pranayama and kundalini yoga which is called “breath of fire.”  It is this type of breathing that is supposed to aid in the stimulation of kundalini. When I finally saw a demonstration of breath of fire, I saw that there wasn’t a big difference between what I had been shown to do from my own inner guidance and this method that has been in use for thousands of years.  The question I have for you by way of teaching you about this feeling part that I think is so central, IS central, is how does breathing like this make you feel?  What does it conjure?  If it does not conjure any feeling in you, if it leaves you flat, relatively unmoved, you may not be getting an arousal of prana in the body.  In this case, I would suggest that you let your imagination move you.  Whatever you find is most natural to you will work because prana is bid by how we feel, how we think.  When we are stressed, we are often shutting down these channels of energy and it is this that leaves us, often, feeling tired or worn out.  Feeling a warm thick fluid moving up through you, or the movement of water, or alternating currents of cool and warm air…..if you can put your imagination there, what you conjure by using images like this can lead to moving energy if the stimulating effects of just breathing don’t do it.

So consider trying to pant as a method for moving energy.  In fact, letting your tongue extend slightly out of your mouth might get your feeling this energy. Prana is not just electricity….it is an energy full of feeling.  It is what we feel when we feel bliss.  We release a blockage in our bodies, the energy body, and suddenly things feel clearer, lighter, but there is also a surge of bliss, too.  There is a reason for this, and it has everything to do with what prana IS.  You are matter made conscious, now able to observe itself as the cosmic moves through you.

Prana is your saying yes to life, yes to allowing the bliss of the union of your body with the sustaining life that is the breath of the Tao. So then the breathing movement of the cat breath was what I needed.  But I will let you in on one important secret; once I had the breath work anchored in me, I was able to move energy simply by thinking or visualizing the method without actually doing it.  As a result of this, I was taken deeper into the core of what all breath work is about.  I discovered a form of pranayama that has no use of breath. How do you think you control the flow of energy in your body without breath? You control it through feeling!  BUT.  To do this, you have to have control over your feeling states. It is simple, primal.  Other parts require more practice. All of it is built on an image and this image either does it for you or it does not.  But the core of all of this is caught in feeling.  I know I keep hammering away at this, but this is important.  It is important because the “body” of the universe does not respond to the touch of rational thought, no.  It responds to the touch of the feeling thought.  When you can master feeling, you can bid the universe open to you in ways that it had been closed to you. I can’t begin to suggest how wonderful this can be for us all here.

It emerges from that. It is just that when I say feeling, most people are stuck because that does not give them much to go on.  They start fidgeting and they want the safety of their yoga mat.  I get it.  Its so simple, this.  But the work, the great work of this age, is going to be about people returning to their humanity.  To what it means to be humans, instead of the barbarians we have all collectively been for so long.  Time for healing, cleaning, and this will be the age where humans will get deeper and deeper connected into their feeling states.  And you want to know what this looks like?  Each and every block removed, things just get simpler and simpler. Like how joy is simple.  But it cannot be faked.  You have to reach this authenticity, and it is just as Jesus exhorted his followers: be like children. It is the feeling part of you that is the conduit through which all prana will flow.

It will not flow through your reason. No.  It is not some dry feeling-less thing.  It lives for bliss and joy and creativity.  Match an inner image with this level of boundless joy and wonder and you begin to anchor a whole new feeling within.  The joy I feel is like joy distilled into star light (really).  I cannot begin to even describe it very well….except to say that if you can match an image to a practice, you can use the practice as the anchor.  See? THIS is what so much yoga is about.  And really, folks, there is not a lot of magic in the movements.  Some of them are about helping you to dissolve a block or to open up flow in the body.  But sometimes it is to help just anchor a feeling. Your yoga can be about giving yourself in wild abandon to this thing that is all around and within everything……and after that, anything that anchors that feeling in you will be a practice worth its weight in gold because you know what the practice is intending for you to feel.  So make your own.  Let them flow effortlessly through you and ask yourself….”what does this FEEL like?”  or “If I were a painter of methods, what scene would this feeling wind up being?  How do I instill the same feeling in others?”  That is just what you are seeking to do.  Anything that stimulates the flow works. So maybe the brush of a feather against your neck will give you chills and a sudden warm flow up your leg and into your side and into your head.  Boom.  Pranic flow enabled.  What does this tell you?  it tells you that your body, the flesh, will itself respond to triggers as the energy currents are excited in the body along its surface to trigger a deeper flow of energy.  This then leads to feeling differently in your consciousness.  A perfect example of how working with the body can bring about a change in your consciousness.  Because they are all connected, this makes perfectly good sense.

So not to belabor the point.  Once you get to this place, if you are a creative person, you could come up with dozens of new methods, then spend years honing them in order to bring into them aspects of reflexive elements or trigger points or any number of other supportive moves or methods for what it is that you want to accomplish with your newly minted method.

Until

I sit and speak with the light.   It is opening up to this great love that lives inside of me.  It has been the one thing that has driven me forward in my process of healing the barrage of blocks, the breaking of old patterns, the dissolving of karma. It is at once the force of awakening as well as my own love.  it is interesting and lovely how my purpose can be a part of it, to learn from it, to heal with it.   It is nestled into each of us….a part of us. It can BE us and we can BE it.  It can also come, probably like Moses saw it, as a burning bush.  Part of it, I know, are aspects of my higher self.  But I also know that in all of that, this extension of consciousness, that I am reaching something more….something else.  It is the thing that granted me my individuality.  it is funny because if I told you how I experience it, I don’t think you would believe me.  It lies utterly silent, but aware within the core of everything.  I can feel what it feels as the interior of all things and I can also see it on the FACE of everything through the sentient universe.  But to get there I find that I have to use my imagination.  I think that most people think that when they are using their imagination that what they come up with is a fabrication….a creation….itself only real for the creator. What I have found is that what we call the imagination is like a path that we only go down but so deep with.  It goes deeper, though, and will birth phenomenon while the higher self becomes engaged.  It becomes like a way for information to be projected from the so-called higher self to the so-called lower self and also as a way to create, to birth what has been waiting in the wings.

All of this is what interest me, teaching me about the nature of creativity, the dance of opposites, tantra as a creative and healing art, and the nature of time, as well as our relationship to higher order consciousness.  reaching the zero point, what the zen monks call “zero” is also a big part of all of this.  In fact, you  could say it underpins all of this.  It is what I write about over and over and over…..which is a return tot his zero, something that I have engaged passionately in since awakening took place.  In fact, it is this one thing that has been the core of my work all this time.

If you had something in your brain that made you think you saw enemies when they were actually your friends, would you be concerned and go to the doctor to see if there was a way to fix it? That sounds pretty troublesome, right?  Well, in fact, we are all afflicted with this tendency. We see others as for or against us in ways that wind up being off the mark.  I have had this happen in my life several times since the rising of kundalini.  Some had been in place years before.  I have been able to observe in others as well as myself how these lenses blind us completely or partially.  In either case, the result is chaos and pain.  Who needs that, right?  What is it that has made us so messed up that we would cleave to that even as something inside of us says “boy this sure is crazy.”  As if we are possessed.  Except, there we are, making the choice ourselves.  Why?  When you turn from something as perfect as this love that the divine is, it can make a person mad.  Plus we are a kind of crazy crowd, us humans.  Crazy and beautiful all at once. What a trip, right?

Until we heal these rifts in us, we will think we see outside of us what is actually inside of us.  We will see as one person saw, nothing but enemies.  Another person saw reasons to be fearful.  I saw threats to my ability to love and I responded over and over and over by pulling away.  Suspended, not fully present, I learned to protect my own soul castle by not fully engaging.  This sense of being “out there” was certainly part of who I am.  I am so Pisces (believe it…I said it…), but this lovely ability to flow in the etheric realm has also meant that I have a means to escape. I have sought to do so in healthy pursuits for the most part, but I can admit that it meant in some cases that I would pull back from the stings and arrows others have shot my way in the hopes that I might never feel the sting of such hurt again.  Sometimes I think that I am to learn to take every single arrow with bravery and realize not a one can hurt me.  None.  So shoot me.  Kill me.  Hang me.  It has been done a thousand times anyway on this planet, so why am I so concerned about someone who is just being a little human?  THAT becomes the corpus of my own “stuff” which I must heal.  Until then, being able to see into the divine realm will be limited.  I might be able to lay down at night or in quiet moments, yes, but I wont be able to feel it in the moment when someone is cutting me off in traffic or someone is yelling at me because, well, they are in some way hurting.  Until we can be unmoved by the suffering as others as THEIRS we continually seek to grab onto others’ stories to somehow make them our own through a host of suppositions based less on what is true as it is how we are deep down.

The writer Anais Nin said that we see the world as we are, not as it is.  And it is so true.  But we CAN see the world AS IT IS by removing these lenses, these old beliefs, what the easterners call illusions, but what I like to call creations (we created them, we can create something different and new).  As I am able to remove this material, it has resulted in being able to see more clearly.  Truly.

For me, the way this has all gone is most of my issues lies in my ability to create.  As a result, a LOT of material that has been stuck has been stuck in a place between root and sacral.  It literally feels in my body as a sore womb is slowly being chipped away at and released from its prison.  It means also that my masculine character goes through changes as this happens as the feminine character in my awareness also goes through some changes.  How I feel, how I respond, all change incrementally as incremental things are healed.

Right now the project feels more like dredging an ancient canal.  the methods I have used to release this material have been wide ranging.  I write about them in my book which I am hoping to submit for publishing in the next year.  The “methods” if you want to call them that, include a broad range that turn out being the same things that the ancients have used for centuries, but it also includes some new ones. Until this is done the energy field of a person remains susceptible to the very forces that mirror the junk that has yet to be removed.  It is not uncommon, then, for most people to have energetic entities attached to them in one way or another.  These range from small inconsequential to much more human like and very likely form the stories of vampires and succubi/incubi.  Early in my awakening I dealt with removing these beings, but no more.  My work deals with getting myself right first.  Everyone actually has the means to rid themselves of these forces when they are ready.  And not everyone is ready.  Following ones readiness is also a great way to bring healing in a more perfect way.  In this way, we can be the doctors to our souls. We really do know best deeper down.  It might not seem that way sometimes, but there is intelligence that we are each a part of that is way beyond anything you could imagine or believe.  But it is the core of what each of us is.  Beyond time.  Beyond belief.  🙂

This isn’t about changing how you think or changing your habits.  Yes, you can bring change into your life this way, but what I am pointing to is an alchemy of the soul that results in instantaneous change.  It is a way where we can actually throw off massive amounts of junk in a relatively short period of time.  It is what modern psychotherapy has largely missed (with the exception of a few notable examples).   By doing this we can each reach this seemingly elusive “zero” point that so many seek, including me.

This is not about being cool and hip, doing yoga and all the newest methods.  It isn’t even about having a fit body or a nice house or anything else.  You can build your life with all of these things around you, but until you fix what is at the core of you that is off, the rest will always be problematic in one way or another.  The great job will bring you angst….the fancy car will be in the shop more often than it needs to be.  Something you thought was awesome winds up being riddled with problems.   That lovely house wont make you happy because you are not happy.  In seeking happiness in things, we each have forgotten the core of what happiness is about. It is not in another person, or in a different life.  It exists right here with you and it is waiting for you to LIVE it.  Like me, it is waiting for me.  I am seeking to grab hold of it as I can, as I can manifest it.  This is the love that waits for you, me, and everyone else.  It is waiting for each of us to learn of its existence.  Until we can feel this love in our own selves, we will each be a near-miss in our lives.  It is a self love that we allow ourselves.  When we ALLOW it for ourselves, we can allow it IN our lives with others.  Its really pretty cool and awesome.  So let’s get to it, shall we?

What is waiting for you?  Here’s hoping that you find your bliss and the greatest love there is!

Waking Up – First Things First

If you have had mental health issues in the past related to depression, anxiety, or trauma regardless of whether it is from childhood or is more recent, seeking to awaken kundalini is not the smartest thing that you could contemplate doing. Seeking to knowingly awaken kundalini before doing inner work to help resolve old conflicts from within can lead to problems later on. Spontaneous awakenings may well be the result of many smaller clearings over a period of time, but actively seeking kundalini without a practice to support it I think is crazy. It is crazy because if your own psyche is under a lot of conflict and strain as it is, what do you think that an awakening will do?

I have said before here and in other places that the term kundalini psychosis is not some mental disease, but is rather a person’s response to the flow of life force in one’s being. Some people can let go and allow it to play through while others may respond in fear. Some do a little bit of both. But this psychosis is firmly planted in our ability or lack thereof of surrendering to this force within. It isn’t that kundalini is dangerous, it is that having a self that is less than healthy and ready for “the ride” IS a danger to itself. It is not pretty watching people express multiple personality disorder, fits of anxiety, delusion and psychotic episodes. Really! I don’t ever speak about this aspect of the experience, always seeking instead to explain that it is very much HOW you look at it. And it is. Part of this is in how you, right now, are ready for such a life changing process to unwind in you. If I had done kundalini yoga, I would have worked more on my own inner life prior to awakening if I had a chance.

That said, the first year saw the removal of more psychic material in that time than had happened in my life up to that point. This is just how powerful this force is. No guru, no therapist, no one to except this abiding force doing the work. Except for a few rather memorable events with a therapist which involved an energy “reset” and a guided journey into the self using visualization to help plumb and release old stored material, the force of awakening has largely been the responsible force for the work done thus far. But by understanding the sheer weight of dross we all carry, all of this comes up in awakening. Think of what happens when you stir a pond that has been still for years. What happens? Muck is stirred up. You must have a very good grip on yourself to not become reactive and wind up hurting others around you. Again, a practice would help in cases like this. Think of how often we are not honest with who and what we are with ourselves, with our families and friends. I wound up redoing all of this and it was not easy with people who were caught in the trap of the dysfunction. It is like a circular argument: how do you exit the dysfunction when you and the Other are caught in it and are reinforcing each other? Round and round it goes. And then, you simply step off the merry go round and swear not to go back on it again. I have been there before. Until the material is released, problems can continue. Honesty with the self and others is huge here at a time when you may feel the most laid open and vulnerable.

So as kundalini becomes ever-more popular in yoga circles and the blogosphere, bear this in mind. Being prepared is the first step, not the last. Sweep the path clean so when you roll over that path, it is smoother. We all owe it to ourselves. There is nothing like it, and because of this, treat it with respect and care; once you turn it on, it is most often on from now on!