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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The Way of Things

I read through sites that explain how to attain enlightenment with a posture, a breathing technique, with a way of holding the hands, a diet to follow.  These are all tangible things that we can wrap our heads around, something that feels stable and useful.  Its like a recipe.  If you follow it, you are likely to get a good result with some practice.  The makings of the cosmic muffin might be mysterious, but at least you have a recipe.

But what if I were to tell you that kundalini can be awakened with just a word, with just a breath of intent, with destiny flowing in fullness....that all of this has within it a miracle waiting to be known....and until this great secret is revealed, we cleave to what we think works best, which are words and chants and prayers.  All good enough, and sometimes will work.  But they don't work just by saying them.  Within is the power of intention.  Within is a new way of feeling.  Breaking through to that place is what its all about.  Moving enough material within to spark the shift, to begin the movement of the fire within you....

There is an idea that certain words like Sat Naum will help you to raise kundalini energy.  Or certain mantras.  The idea here is that they have a certain vibration in sound that helps with raising a certain energy within.  The other part is that countless adherents over the centuries have chanted this word and when you chant it, you are accessing a wellspring of that collective awareness and intent that has been pushed into service with that one act, the mantra or chant.  All of this makes some sense, and can be useful in a certain way.  But I am going to suggest something far more powerful, more direct, and more true about all of this.  It is what Awakening has brought to awareness and knowing, it is what this experience of the cosmic that visits one, changes and informs. The presence of awakening IS knowing, for the Awakening is an energy, a universal life force energy that is conscious.  When it inhabits you, it brings gnosis. It is simple, like looking out across a field of grass and knowing something in that instant that had escaped you for years, but whose answer seems now to be so simple, so obvious now.

Intent is key. The way to Awakening is not through a practice but an intent.  If a practice helps you to focus intent, good, otherwise, it is a corpse and you may not realize that you are doing things that do not serve awakening.  I will say the unpopular thing and explain that chants and diets will not work.  Releasing yourself of those entangling issues enough for your body to register cosmic energy will.  So if you imagine the energy moving upwards, fine, but it wont move upwards unless you have cleared the way for it. No amount of chanting or mudras or postures will do it, even if it is a centuries' old and respected method.  I am not a traditionalist.  I do what works instead of getting stuck on the romance of what a way or affectation will bring.  Perhaps I am a fire brand. I don't think so.  The same thing happens in the church where people go to church thinking going there will somehow confer purity and divinity upon them.  The act will not do it. The intent will, or can.  The bread and wine do not become the body of Christ unless it becomes that in your own intent.

Awakening is about being different.  Its not about chants or postures or ways of life. When you are ready to peer into the center of things, when you are ready to look at your life in a way you have never done before, to do the heavy lifting and work required to release the material clinging to you that will free you to ever greater realms of awareness, you may be left wondering just what this is all about.

It is about being.  You do not need a method, or guru.  You can listen quietly to it and it will tell you if you will but listen.  And then, when you hear it, be ready to love in a way you may have never loved before.

This may not be popular or believed, but it is true.  It is simple, and it is beautiful.  It is also you, and it is mysterious and amazing.  It will fill you with purpose while emptying your life of it all at the same time.  Your old life may dissolve like an alka-seltzer while something else almost beyond your control takes its place. You might want to end it all, or you might wish you could sleep for a hundred years.  You might want to shine like the brilliant diamond  you are or throw your hands up, trying so hard to align the world you thought you knew with the new world that faces you. Its not an easy path, this, but its real.  You might need a practice just to stay sane, but it could be as simple as knitting or listening to a certain kind of music with your eyes closed. There isn't a special magical or properly proportioned recipe or method that will make you feel a certain way.....you will feel a certain way by FEELING a certain way.  Do you get what I mean?  How could this be so simple as being a FEELING, and yet, its ALL about the FEELING.  Its not about methods or intellectualizing or egoistical postures or ideas or any of that......so going into its flow could be as simple as calming down at the end of day while in bed (I used to do this a lot and it worked GREAT!).  Or it could be done in full lotus in the middle of day in your office while striking a water bowl and holding your tongue on the roof of your mouth and your eyes on a certain spot, in just a certain way.  But just because a Buddha did it this way does not mean you have to.  Things change, and this is not some complex equation, but a surrender into something deep.  However you get there, you are there through something genuine, not faked, not affected or like dressing up on Sunday thinking this will make you something just by doing it when it all springs within.  A robe or a turban wont confer anything on you that you do not already have.  Its your human-ness that you have to plumb deeply into in order to get to this special place.  Its your human-ness that will spark the awakening.  And then you will be a goner. In the best of ways. 

And when you do come to this, you will come to all of us, and some part of each of us will welcome you on that day. Its within your grasp. 

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