What Is Kundalini?

There are many resources on the internet and in books that will give you perspectives on what kundalini is.  It is NOT a spirit, not a religion, not even a thing distinct from you.  It is instead, more verb than noun.  It is what we each are in potential.  This I have learned from direct experience with this incredible experience.

It has been described by some as a serpent power, two energies that move up an invisible set of channels along the trunk of the body where they meet in the crown or brain.  It is said that this force is latent and "stored" in the base of the spine until it is awakened. 

The reality, as I have found, is that this force has been described in most traditions by different names, in different ways and with different images.  When describing something that touches on the nonmaterial, it gets very hard to explain something that impinges or affects us here in a way that becomes physical.  

Activating this force is a powerful way to move a person into a greater understanding of their soul.  It is also something that should be approached with caution and care.  I like it to the roller coaster ride that does not ever stop.  You must be so ready within that once you get locked into your seat, you are ready to roll with what comes the rest of your life.  If you are this dedicated to this lightening path, then you may have what it takes.  It is a humbling experience.

In essence what awakening is involves the merging of opposites within the self.  This is done at first broadly and continues through a process that involves a continual purging or cleansing process.  Be you Native American or Eurpoean, Hindu or Muslim, it will not matter since this is a human experience.  It is true that once the process gets underway, you have achieved what many seek their whole lives.  the reason for using yoga has been realized.  You do not need yoga.  Nor do you necessarily need a teacher if you know how to be honest with yourself and look within yourself to see clearly what remains to be cleansed.  I have found that teachers wind up being more of a hindrance than a help during parts of this process.  If you feel you need a teacher, then by all means, seek one, but know also that you will almost always find a teacher who is nearly at your own level.  You need to be willing to entertain radically new ideas or possibilities in order to manifest an experience that will push you well beyond your familiar known bounds. 

Many traditions want to place their own stamp of approval on all of this.  The Hindu tradition has many beliefs about how things should be done. Theirs is a tradition.  I can say quite clearly that you do not need to go find a guru.  The reason why you are here having an awakening is because you are finding yourself.....in a way that you have have never known yourself before.  This moment is laden with a power of possibility so great that you cannot help but manifest your highest.  So why not shoot for the stars?  Why allow yourself to be laden by the weight of ancient tradition when we are now waking up without the help of gurus or postures or methods? 

As someone who has been going through this process of awakening with kundalini, I can offer my perspective, my experience as a primary source to you.  Awakening predates all religion.  It returns you to yourself.  It returns you to the universe and to your higher self. It is  as simple a thing as turning up the volume on feeling.  As this happens, the small things that you did not notice come into view, and what once was a modest life force current now pours through you in powerful surges that had simply never been known to you before.  This can be scary at first because its effect or feeling is so different, perhaps so unexpected.  However, if you know how to ride the wave with grace, what once felt turbulent will refine and become a joy, a blessing.  This energy also churns your dormant or hidden subconscious material in what can only be described as a process of inner cleansing of all old accounts.  It changes your life because the simple self you thought you were is suddenly littered with material there was no way you could have accumulated in one lifetime.  This leads to the realization that you have been at this a long time and you are just now waking up to the wreckage within that you have been carrying around, nearly unaware of.....and which this increase in volume and light that is kundalini is now conferring to your awareness.  It is here that you feel as though a giant work crew has been mobilized in your awareness and is beginning to clean up the mess starting over in the far left hand corner and working methodically, constantly, lovingly within you.  Sometimes the light has to be shone brighter in order just to see through the mists, and as this happens, sometimes the self feels like it will collapse under the scrutiny, under the sudden awareness of the weight of this hulking accumulation of what now is know to be lifetimes of working at this thing called life.  The old way of doing business has finally come to an end......and the degree of success is determined by your willingness to surrender to a process.  You effectively learn to get out of your own way. You surrender to it, you reach into an ancient emotion or state of being called grace.

The curious thing is that as this happens, what was hard becomes soft.  What was difficult becomes increasingly easier.  What once was veiled is not seen more clearly. The unknown becomes known as the self reaches into its karmic accumulation and plucks yet another barb from its side and learns that something beautiful is happening.  Some may want to ascribe methods and ways of going about this process, and some of them may work very well, but most who awaken find that there is a guru within.  As one keeps ones eyes on the prize and learns the devotion necessary to keep up with this tirelessly for years at a stretch, something changes, matures, refines, bit by bit.  Healing the separation that happened in our Garden of Eden, we begin to undo the centuries of wrong-thought or hard feeling, what some call karma, some call illusion, until things get better and better.  Because we each came to this in our own way, we each move out of it in our own way.  Compare if you want, take notes if you want, use any and every tool at your command if need be, but listen to what your insides are saying to you and do not be afraid to follow it at all costs. Even if it means that you lose something cherished.  If it was meant for you in the highest way, then it will remain.  If not, then it does not align with the divine that awaits you.

This is not a race.  There is no expiration date.  You have infinity spreading out before you like a vast sea.  You are here to do two big things: know that you are divine and to find fulfillment in wherever you find yourself.  There is a lot of talk about 2012 nowadays, and I find this to be largely unproductive because underlying it is a current of fear.  Fear of missing the cosmic bus.  But there is no here but a construction of ideas and energy.  And who creates this? Certainly it was created for us, but clearly also is the emerging fact that we are in a co-creative role as we were made in the image of the deity.  We come from that and to it we will return.  This will not be a going but a simple realization, wherever you are, that you are connected into a cosmos that is divine.  Surely there is great change afoot, and if all 2012 is is a marker for this period of shift, then great.  But don't fall for the fear because fear limits you, suggesting some final end.  the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end, no?

 You are infinite in scope and you are eternal. You are meant to, wherever you happen to be, to begin recognizing who you are deeper down.  If this is not a race, then you are free to drop the old awareness you have lived with for so long and consider there is another realm within you that you have up until this time simply not tapped. But this is not a place or a time or anything outside of you. It isn't a date or philosophy or edict.  It is simply what you are.  Be still and know.  If it tells you that you need to live simply, ten do that.  If it tells you to live in the world as it is in order to accomplish what your soul seeks and craves, then do that.  Some say that you have to give up things in order to be spiritual, but stronger is the person who can use the wealth of the world like the toys of a comsic child without fear, without attachment to greed and jealousy, but instead to help move mountains in service to his or her brothers and sisters.  The spiritual is not found just in someone resting and meditating in a cave in India, but also in boardrooms and hostels and restaurants and factories.  We can take what was less than perfect and bring the inspiration to be more perfect and beautiful, and in our own way help bring what is ours to bring.  The teachers say you have to give it all up because of the temptations that money and wealth and fame offer, but this does not mean that you cannot use these as tools to achieve great things.  Invariably the spiritual leader does not need things as s/he is provided them.  But there is always something providing them, and in providing them, they can be used.  With billions on the planet, it is not possible always to bring a message to the masses in the old way.  So we use what our world offers us in joy, in wonder, in awe. 

It is so simple that we miss it. It is a secret buried in plain sight.  There is an old Hindu story that tells of how the gods decided that the best place to put the key to the universe was in the soul of humankind because that was a place where they were least apt to see or to look.  This is a journey to realization, and it really is just that simple.  The realization brings you an almost overwhelming sense of bliss, joy, and good feeling over what you are deeper down.  But we are like beings who have drilled down 100 feet into the crust of our beings and never found water and thus decide there is simply no water there. But a torrent runs just beneath those 100 feet, and so this requires that you dig just a little deeper.  What you are digging into is feeling.  What you do to awaken is you dissolve the things that have kept you divided. It really is just that simple.

Kundalini is a word and the same phenomenon has emerged in numerous cultures across the world.  This is not something you get into a posture and induce.  If that were the case anyone doing kundalini yoga would have awakened by now.  It is not sought, but you may feel as though you are a seeker, but awakening comes at that place where you stop seeking and begin learning how to feel and be different. Perhaps it is pursued until the day you find it.  It is not outside of you but is in the spirit of the world and runs like blood in every vein.  When it "rises" in you, all that is happening is your own awareness of what has always been rises. If you can understand this one simple precept, you will begin to see that the world is brimming with this energy all around you and the universe changes in a significant way.

There are even rules some have made for kundalini, but the curious thing is that as soon as you do that, make rules, someone comes along and explains how that old idea just isn't true.  Perhaps this is merely the march of human understanding down through time as we fine tune all of it, and I suppose in the end keeping ourselves like a solid island that can float on the sea and go where it must is the way the human mind needs to be.  Solid, but able to flow with the tides and currents of those things larger than itself.  Take the good, but always discern.  Buddha spoke of the middle path and what he meant was that the efforts of the Hindus in starving themselves or mortifying the flesh did not bring about enlightenment, nor did other practices. As he sat under a tree, he found it.  No guru, mo method, no teacher.  Just like the Van Morrison song from the album of the same name entitled "In the Garden."  And this is often how it happens.  You awaken to what you are. 

There are many practicioners who believe or who will say that you MUST have a teacher and you MUST do morning prayer and meditation a certain way if you are ever to perfect yourself.  Well, we here in the West don't have time for that.  Having spent many many lives in the east, I am giving the West one final chance.  And I woke up this life.  And I can tell you, no, there is NOTHING that you MUST do when you awaken......although some things are much more helpful if you do them, such as learning the art of surrender.  But the moment someone say you must do something is the moment when someone comes along and shows the world that this is just not so.  In fact, I fully expect someone to make a comment on this very post.  We will see how it goes, shall we?

Awakening is much more like falling in love.  It is like coming alive.  It is found in the spark of inspiration and leads to a constant state of inspiration as if some on switch has been flipped and then left on.  They called it the "resurrection" at one time but very few understood what it meant. They speak of people being as though they were dead living as "normal" people but upon the stirring of the spirit, they are as though awakened into a new life.  This reveals a very different take on some fundamental Christian precepts that may well have been misunderstood from the very beginning, and got related to a man being crucified instead of dealing with a still deeper teaching that some of his disciples sought to explain but whose gospels were hidden in those desert sands of Egypt for so long (the Nag Hammadi).  This is just how much contrast there is between the life before kundalini and the life after kundalini. And it changes your physiology too.  It pushes for change so that you may enter into a holy life, a life where the spirit of all moves around you and through you.  It is not the holy life of the church fathers or of anyone from any religion.  Religion is human made and this is the pure distillation of the divine being conferred upon your own spirit.  It has no one voice or one brand.  It is all life, all things, and no simple part is devoid of it and cannot be expunged or kept out entirely.

Awakening is passion, love, awareness, connectivity, awakening to a new sensory world within you, and a brilliant light that shines its presence upon you in such a way that you cannot hide anymore from the things that keep you separated from the divine flow that is in all things.  It is also one of the most challenging experiences of your life for how unrelenting that it can be.  Talking about it prior to knowing it is often like speaking about life on another planet.  How do you even do that?  Your eyes will be opened, your ears will hear. It is so simple you will wonder how you missed it.  And you will be ready when you are ready.  If you are seeking this, leaning into it, consider that you are seeking to ripen yourself like a fruit in the sun.  Let this ripening happen and when it is time, when it is perfect for you, it will happen.  You might be meditating, or someone might tap you on the shoulder.  You might be driving (this happened to me) or you might be standing  outside just watching the world happen (this happened to me also).  It will happen when you are ready.  And to make things go more smoothly, my recommendation is to take stock of your life and all the things that BUG you and consider that what BUGS you is connected to your karma.  THAT.  Then, work on softening those feelings.  If you need to forgive someone, do so.  But above all, live your life and be ready.  Just BE perfectly here and now and FEEL all that you are.  the most important thing to do is not some posture, but loving yourself, learning to care for yourself as the fountain of life force that you will become.  Instead of being empty and seeking to be filled, seek to first be full so others may be filled by the inspirational sight that you offer as another blissful soul on the planet. 

So, for you, what is kundalini?  How does it help you strike to the center of all that is your soul's worth and wonder in the world?  Does it crown you or bring you low?  Does it chasten while revealing a new kind of truth?  Did it change how you saw the world?  Yourself?  Your pride, your joy, the very contents of your life?  Did it bring a new yearning into your life so that nothing else mattered like it did, setting your heart afire for all that is of the spirit?  Did it leave you dumbfounded and lost?  Did it move you a nudge enough to realize you knew the truth all along?  Was it a whip like force of passion making its way through your body, and did it take you as its own, or were you promised to another?  Did your very world get changed by it?  Does the air now breathe your great secret?  Does your soul now yearn for things you never knew existed?  Do you find yourself revisiting the golden days of childhood and reflecting back into your heart what you seemed to have missed?  Is all of this returning something essential and entirely beautiful to you?  These are my questions for you because I think we need the world that is waking up to say "we are waking up" as those who are themselves in the predawn hours of the big wake-up for the world.  Wouldn't it be great if that was just how it happened?

So a little Van for your day.  Its a shaky video, I know, but its the best live recording of the song I have heard to date.  It details an experience he had in a garden in Ojai California.  Note that the woman he was with "was a violet color as you sat beside your mother and your father."  She glowed with the radiance of intuition as her spiritual mother and father were present upon that awakening....
 

Blessings To You!

Another Example Of Manifesting

Very recently, the glass studio has been reopened after four months of it being shuttered.I have been involved in glassblowing now for the last fifteen years professionally and very recently between an injury, some economic upset and a divorce and a full blown awakening, this has made running the studio difficult at best.  As I have begun to get it back online and operational, this has corresponded with a class that I recently offered to some people interested in learning how to blow glass.  In the run up to this I thought how nice it would be if i could have music in the studio. I thought that it might be nice to have some weekends at the studio where we have musicians offering a few special events where people could gather.  Since the studio is a large 3200 square foot space, this seemed like it could be a good fit....I just didn't know how it might take place.  I also thought how nice it would be just to have some music to help clear the cobwebs in the space.  Good vibrations and all that.

So it was so very interesting to find that on the evening of the first class that I would get a call from an old friend who had been in the studio a couple of years ago who was on his way up from Florida to do a gig at a local music house in a nearby county. He was calling to ask if his friends could crash at the studio.  They showed up a few hours later and after getting situated, they began whipping out their instruments and played for a few hours.  It was great!  Perfect, I thought.  My wish manifest.  In perfect timing.  Then, without any prodding from me some of the guys from the band looked around and remarked "You know, this is a perfect space for doing a private party....."  and thus the idea of having a music event in the studio emerged quite innocently all on its own as I sat back and smiled at how all of this was taking place so perfectly.  How it all turns out will be up to the universe.  If it is to be, it will be.

So to share  a little of the magic of manifestation, here is a little of their music on that night.  The band is called The Funky Seeds....Enjoy!

One Small Step For A Man

I have taken the step of sending my manuscript Waking The Infinite to someone who has worked in the publishing industry and who knows it from all angles.  The hope is that she will breeze through the book and find its worth taking on.  I will be utilizing this person's skill and eye to help polish the book into a proposal that I hope to turn into an accepted book contract.

The journey from a journal to a 750 page manuscript and then back down to about 260 pages has been a process that has taken me from those difficult days of struggling with my own egoic stuff to learning how to surrender and heal.  In the process some truly remarkable things have transpired.  I am not one to underplay the magic of life because I think that if we live lives like serious knitted-browed monks, we miss the great opportunity alive in wonder.  To be honest with you, I think that the most rewarding thing for me is in anchoring the childlike wonder which never left me and which keeps me forever young and vibrant.

I don't really know how long this stage is going to take.  Each step has been something of a challenge in that I do not consider myself a writers writer but rather someone with a story to tell....a story that I think can help to bring some awareness to the issue of awakening and to our own self made blinders.  Removing these can liberate us in ways I just can't describe except to say that it is all very good.

If the book is taken on by this editor I expect that I will be involved in still more rewrites, but this time with a different eye towards structure and how to tell the story in a way that will be more effective than if I had ploughed ahead on my own.  We all benefit from the feedback of others.

In the meantime, I will be looking for ways to get the children's stories published.  I am considering at least one project might be a self publishing effort and am considering some illustrators who might be good fits for some of them. Putting the very best of intentions forward, I am asking the universe to guide me perfectly as it has done in the past.  Fingers crossed.  And stay tuned.....

A Children's Book Of Magic

So far, I have a cluster of stories for children.  They are all about relationships, but deeper down they re about acceptance, loving yourself and being true to who you are.  The story Izzie and Harold is a story about a bat and a frog who live in two very different worlds.  So different, in fact, that all their friends and family think its crazy that a frog might be thinking about a bat or that a bat might pause at night while flying over the frog pond to feel entranced by the singing of those slimy bug eating creatures.  But each of them point out that for as different as they might seem at first blush, they do both like to eat bugs, and both fly even though one is a leap while another swoops and dives.  They get along famously.  In the book Booger Under The Bed the main character, Lucy, is afraid of the dark.  After having slain her imaginary monsters that she fears, she finds that one of them has magically come to life and has something to teach her about authentic bravery and freedom from fear.  His lesson is nothing short of a triumph of the heart.  In yet another story, Mr Skunk And The Kingdom of Heaven, the character who is most reviled by the forest animals winds up literally going down the river never to be seen again. But when he emerges again, Mr Skunk returns a changed man.....or a changed skunk. His own change inspires all of the creatures of the wood to think differently about the things that might at first blush make us different.  The story of Mr. Skunk is that what makes us different or even hated by some is just what makes us great.

In the next story, I present a very different kind of book, a simple and direct how-to guide of magic for children.  It begins with an oath to always do what is in the highest and continues on to explain the true nature of all magic, which emerges from what we are in our divine natures. By explaining the nature of our ability to intend and thus manifest, children are guided through understanding how their own thoughts form their wishes and how wishes, properly given can bring a world of wonder and opportunity.

The book makes a break from the notions of most magic and explains how we have sought to darken or demonize what we all do naturally moment by moment, which is to create our own reality. The book, then, is really about how to manifest your dreams while understanding what we think and even fear can be conquered to set the stage for a different kind of life.  There are no pagan rituals, no sacrifices or even eye or newt. It is spoken in a clear and simple voice and helps to show that we are all magical creatures beneath our own ordinary skins.

These books all help me to learn how to relate to the material of awakening in a new way, and they all spring from the fact that I am a parent who knows how precious and wonderful childhood is and how the magic that is so naturally present in children is best nurtured and seen as something that need not be put on a shelf but held deep within the heart no matter what the world might say about it. Our magic is our very beings that are capable of glimpsing the wonder that is in us and in all things around us.  Magic is in the moment!

So whether I wind up finding a publisher for these books or if I publish them myself, I think they all offer something worthwhile to children. In the last book, which is still being edited, Mr. Skunk, I am utilizing my daughter's own sense about how the book ought be written.  She thinks right now that its a bit too heavy....so I am finding a way to keep the pace light and the path brightly lit.  It is little surprise that my daughter is also afraid of the dark like so many children often are, so Lucy in Booger Under The Bed takes place in a fictional landscape that is every person's home who ever was unsure about what might happen when the lights go out. If we are lucky, though, we wind up making the monsters real only to discover they have something to teach us about what it is to actually BE a monster.

With the work that I am now doing on the book about my awakening, I am hoping that I can get these projects moving and at some of them accepted as actual printable manuscripts.  Keep me in your prayers and let's all exercise our own magic for a better world more full of compassion, tolerance, and understanding......

Manifest

When I first had my awakening experience, one of the things I was keenly aware of was this new energy moving through me.  It was conscious, I knew, yet I could not explain how I knew this for the fact that this was something that I sensed within.  We are notoriously distrustful of our insides, and if we are not busy feeling that way, we can also be uncertain about HOW we feel.  The truth, I think, is that most of us wind up being like a basket where we carry all sots of notions and feelings, good and bad.  Some serve us, some don't.  But sensing what you are is so very important for it leads to feeling more solid about who you are and what you are.  When you do that, I think that you reach a place of peace and in that peace you can feel things that might have escaped your notice previously. This was so for me in awakening.  It was as though some new channel opened up inside of me...like I had this great piece of stereo equipment but never touched this one dial.....and that dial seemed a big mystery.  One day, for whatever reason, that dial responds to touch and suddenly the volume moves up.  The sound is suddenly richer as this knob adds a whole new dimension to this marvelous piece of equipment.  The big a-ha has just happened.

I soon realized that the energy moving through me was a negative and positive energy.....one cooler or more receptive while the other was dynamic, directing and "warmer" in a way.  One moved into the other and both seemed to hold one another in an energetic embrace. This was the universe, this was cosmic consciousness. Using language to describe all of this or to relate to it can be tricky because this energy is without form even though it gives rise to form.  I have long believed that we have to be careful about the words we use because they create a nonspecific picture in people's minds that can be interpreted many different ways.  When I discuss art projects with my students in the sculpture class that I teach at a local university, I require them to provide a drawing.  I do this because my experience has shown just how poor words are at conveying information.  A picture is incredibly efficient, and it brings to mind the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words."   It was Philip in his newly discovered gospel in the desert of Egypt in the Nag Hammadi scrolls where he said the same thing, which is that we need to be careful about the words we use, for words create images and we then can become prisoners to these images.  So while it may sound terribly pedantic to you that I say all of this, it is important for reasons you may not even realize.  Words can govern how you think.  Words can free just as they can imprison.  I want you to consider that when I say masculine and feminine, I am being very specific but I am also being very broad.  I know that what we see here now in this place has ever higher expressions in other realities.  Our own awareness is capable of glimpsing these realities.  Thales, the Presocratic philosopher once said that "All things are full of gods" and I firmly feel that he was referring to what I glimpsed in the process of my awakening, which is that all of existence is multidimensional in nature and that what exists in us here exists in still "larger" scales of consciousness. Everything is connected, and it is this connection that allows for every part to communicate to all other parts.  It is what happens when you are able to manifest something in your life, too.  Imagine this quantum ripple that spreads out at light speed through all of matter, like some giant search engine of the soul to find the perfect thing to match your wish, to help you to manifest it.  I am jumping ahead of myself though because there is more to fill you in on first.

What I knew in the process of awakening was that the energy was a teacher living inside of me, showing me the one thing that as it would turn out, would be reflected in nearly every aspect, every nook, every cranny of existence.  It took a while to understand how this could be so.....and while the knowing came in a flash, it took some time to see how it applied itself throughout life. It showed me that it was like a two-stranded energy that wove itself through the center of all life, much like a necklace of beads is held by a cord.  It is this cord, you see, that is the essence of all life, is the soul of the cosmos, the bearer of life and light to everything that is.  And when I say "life" I am not speaking only of sentient life.  No. The universe is a living thing since its body is filled from top to bottom with this energy.  The difference is that most people simply are not aware of it.  The language of the cosmos is feeling, and this is one thing that you will come face to face with when you go through an awakening which is that you now have added sensing ability or awareness.  You don't just SEE the universe, you FEEL it.  This is what all the monks and sages and gurus have been talking about in relation to this seemingly elusive state that leads to samadhi.  When this energy filled me, it showed me how it was present in everything.  It was a yin and yang principle.  Just as in thermodynamic hot moves to cool, as positive moves to negative, so too does this energy in all things.  I very much feel that this principle can be seen reflected throughout the cosmos.

So take manifestation.  You wish for something, you let it go, and it eventually comes back to you as a fulfilled wish. Consider for a moment that as the universe is itself neutral, a kind of living canvas upon which you create your life, that the energy of manifestation is the result of two seeming opposites working together to help make your wishes happen......two energies that follow the content of your own energy to a "T."  This means that if part of you believes, for example, that you can manifest abundance, but that you may also have a competing belief that deep down you aren't worthy of it somehow, you send that out with each wish and you wind up with abundance  with strings or little glitches attached to it.  Maybe its a great money deal that winds up having some problem that emerges somewhere in the process.  Its that feeling like "I know I deserve good things, but it seems things always go to !*%# in the end!"  This is the result of some competing issue that is in the way that helps to form events, and the universe, being neutral, takes the energy as it comes and fashions you this event or opportunity in order to aid your fulfillment.  In dropping away the competing beliefs and resolving those things, suddenly your own being becomes a clearer transmitter of information to the universe.  The glitch is gone.  The "yeah but" is edited out of the situation.

But about this yin and yang, though.....

Consider that just as your own body has two currents of masculine and feminine that rise right up into the brain and crown, the hemispheres of your brain are themselves also formed and informed by this same energy.  The two energies cross in the head where the bliss of union is experienced by the awakened  yogi's and yogini's.  The left hemisphere is masculine, the right is feminine.  The masculine is linear, rational, and is most often good at language. It can pick out the tree in the forest, but his eyes glaze over when you look at the forest.  The feminine, which is the right brain, is holistic, intuitive, irrational, and sees the forest and can be bored looking at just one tree. Brought together, however, and there is a spark and a flame of inspiration kindled. Here great ideas are born. No, the right brain is not the artistic side because in order to make art you need a way to express it.  The right brain very much needs the left brain to help give it form.  The feminine turns to her consort and says "Oh I am feeling something so deep.....but its so deep that I just can't quite put it to word....." and the left brain is able to put it to word because that is what it does.  It is great at being able to hone in on one thing and identify it. Left alone, though, the left brain can chop and dice the universe until its so may little pieces....and it will only be able to see each piece, not how all the pieces go together.  I needs the right brain for this, the one who can magically conceive the implicate order in all things.  How she does this is not rational in the least.  Its almost like magic.  But together, they do a wonderful job of helping to create.  They are the very engine of creation. And when it comes to manifesting, I am seeing the same circular loop of the masculine and feminine energies working together.

When you wish for something, it most often comes about as a result of the left brain being able to give form and order to what it is that you want.  Here, there is a brilliant spark that is made, but this is all that it is for now.  This spark must be released entirely and allowed to go out into the "world" into the receptive realm of the feminine.  It is interesting because the Hindus often refer to the feminine as being the world.  Jesus, in the Gnostics texts speaks of the world as being the Great Mother. The native Americans call earth "Mother" also.  But what I am talking about is the energetic principle IN the world.....in all things......and as the spark of intention is released, it moves through the inner world and is nourished into existence, into full being by the body of the feminine force.  This can emerge as an object, event, or idea. The more that the spark can be utterly released, the better able it is to move freely through the universe to find its moment of conception in the feminine force.  Then, in perfect timing, the feminine brings forth this new thing that is the result of your wish, your hope, your intention. Because the feminine force is so broad, so infinite, she can give birth to anything in the same way that a woman will conceive and then give birth to a child.  This child might be short or tall, dark or light headed.  She might bring forth twins.  Part of what she will give birth to will be how the spark was sent, the content of that spark.  She is capable of bringing forth such a profusion of things, you see, and just as a woman can do this, so too does the mother of the world do this.  Her presence is in everything, and when you touch her with your intention, your intention winds up touching everything.  Instantly.  Holographically.  Events can take months to come to fruition and they can also happen in a flicker of an eye.  What makes the difference?  When you are able to release a block in you that is keeping something from taking place in the world around you, you may find just as I did that this is when the phone starts ringing with someone asking you if you would like to take part in an opportunity that you had been wishing you could be involved in for years.....and in that moment, the world didn't just align with you, but merely was able to receive the right message devoid of any competing material.  Maybe it was that you felt that you would love to try some new kind of work but that you might not be good enough at it......who knows really, for the reasons can be legion, and all I can do is pluck examples for why this might be so in order for you to begin to understand how this all works.  But when you remove the blocks, the energy flows.  And it flows from one pole to the other pole, from intention to manifestation, from masculine to feminine.  This, then, is the very engine of creation and manifestation.  When you can bring more energy through your system, this speeds up the process of manifestation as everyone who has had an awakening speaks of or experiences.  In fact, the lag time between through and manifestation can be measured in seconds or minutes, not days, months, or years.  If you can allow yourself to FEEL it as deeply as possible, as vividly as you can, you are literally magnetizing your own energy field so that the universe conforms to that image.  The more energy you move through you, the faster this happens for the simple fact that energy is magnetic.  Electricity creates magnetic fields, for example, and part of your own biological functioning does involve weak electrical fields. Your own iron rich blood helps to build and propagate an electromagnetic field around your body which we all refer to as the human aura.  For those who can see them, you can read all kinds of material present in thought, feeling, and even in the biological functioning of the body.  I know this because I began seeing auras when I was 18 and was a careful observer of all that I saw.

This is how your own brain works, two hemispheres in consort together to bring the light of inspiration. They are themselves manifestations of the yin and yang principle in your own body, in the giant filing cabinet and control center that helps organize information in your physical organism.  It is how you fall in love.  It is how new life is formed, and it is how the universe is threaded with these seeming opposites which in truth are aspects of one another.  In the particle/wave duality, we know that while these two states are different, they are one. I write about this in my book Waking The Infinite in terms of the particle/wave duality, and consciousness itself also exhibits traits that fit very well into the notion of the finite particle and the infinite wave.  We are both. When these two forces are in harmony manifestation can happen much quicker.  What happens when your brain works together?  Inspiration happens.  What happens when a man and woman are in harmony together?  Pure bliss.  When the two are in harmony within you, this union of yourself brings their union as energetic forces.  Quite naturally, this union creates ecstasy or bliss, and this is just what all the yogis seek and describe as the ultimate in self realization.  This bliss is orgasmic in nature, the very moment which is conception in the physical body, and which is inspiration in the energy body.  Normally, in the physical, this orgasmic energy is expressed or experienced as a release.  In the energy body, however, it is not limited and can build in potential in awareness so that it becomes a standing wave whose crest does not break.  As long as these two remain in your awareness in union, their energy remains as their very essence which is bliss. When this standing wave is present, all who awaken find that synchronicities and unusual events take place in rapid succession.  The world suddenly begins to be much more responsive in a moment by moment way.  Manifestation is now no longer just a spark, but is now an ongoing flow of events.  You are now living a life that is a discovery of what is possible in this new terrain. This is the engine of creation, and just as the creator's own continuous union within supports the universe, so too does your own continuous union within support creation at the level of your life.  It is true, then, that you are learning the basics of creation.  For creation to continue as a river flows without drying up it requires this same continuous attention.  The fulfillment is the result of your own creation. Again, Creation 101.

This same aspect can be seen as operating on so many levels.  Perhaps it may seem that all of this is just a convenient way to see things.  If you feel into it, perhaps you too can begin to experience this directly.  Everything resolves into the dance of the yin and yang.....all threaded through creation, all present at every level.  All is love, all is focused in this dance of gazing one into the other in the greatest secret that will ever be revealed to you.  It is, in truth, THE secret, for they are mother and father of them all.  if you know them at the smallest level, you know them at the largest.  Their presence as the mechanism for manifestation.  From the subatomic to the cosmic.  So when you are wondering why things happen as they do, consider the content of the masculine pulse and what it contains, which is the light of your intention.  It is both divine as well as karmic.  Upon its wave your awareness and intention rides.  Then, just as importantly, consider the content of the feminine within you.  The more free you
are from hitches and issues, the more at peace you are and the more peace will come to you.  As more peace comes to you, this becomes a naturally self reinforcing condition. Trust it, lean on it, devote yourself to it and always seek its grace, it unending capacity to forgive and allow you a path towards ascension, which is assured if you are willing to take it.

The energy is circular. It builds as long as the union remains  As awareness remains balanced on the quantum wave, you will see the presence of it in your life. This is the greatest love, the love that someone once told me "is you and the universe."  We are all connected by this. We are all this.

Nemasté

To Thine Own

Whatever you are, whoever you are or will be, it is perfect.  The great sea of consciousness is so vast, you will always fit perfectly under its broad sweep of sky.  Its love is so perfect, no matter what you become will be cherished.  Even when you feel lost.  Or not living up to your potential.  For the divine has always been this.  Its awareness is the essence of love....a love that supports all unconditionally.  It is the sighing of the wind, the crack of thunder, the longing for love, the absent of it.  Even in its absence it dwells.  Its so awesome, you see, that whatever world you create around it, it is....and yet, it will be more. It can be your very best teacher.  It dwells in you.

I have to tell you, though, I am very glad that I do not get into the methodologies, traditions, all the rest.  Looking at a publisher, I came across a blog for nonduality.  It was discussing how one group takes one stance while another takes a different stance.  It all seems kind of silly to me.  Maybe its my lone wolf-ness. I like seeing out through my eyes and following my own guidance.  For in us is what we most need to see and to know.  And in not seeing it, we will draw it to us as needed.  I think its important to be true to yourself, and unlock the great wonder that is inside of you.  It truly is worth it.

So sit back.  Look inside.  Feel the universe unfolding.  In you, outside you.  Everything connected.  Perfect. 

Defeating the Victim

I recently read a quote that was attributed to Eckhart Tolle which described how life can be as we choose to paint it rather than how it is. I have written about this quite a bit, including a quote by Anais Nin which states we see the world not as it is but as we are.  It is true, but in the moment, we can be overcome by our investment in a feeling or some past hurt or trauma where we slip into an old way of being that is less than healed or truthful about the world and how it is.

Tolle was saying the same thing.  He said something about riding a bus and perhaps in doing so, you feel how horrible it is to be scrunched in there with so many people.  The experience for you winds up being uncomfortable. In truth, though, its just a bus full of people.  You choose to feel a certain way about it. Its experiences like these that can be great teachers if we let them.  They can show us how we are and what we can do to change the world around us and help us create a much happier and more content life for ourselves.  The trick is learning to bring awareness into the moment.

Our karma is like falling asleep.  We fall away from the divine current within and we begin thinking that the universe is not going to take care of us.  We wind up feeling alone.  We wind up feeling at the mercy of elements in the world, or the actions of other people.  Any number of uncertainties crop up and grow in such a medium as this.  And as we feel and think, our own world begins to mirror that reality for us. Even feelings that we are only half invested in.  I had one such feeling that was very much at odds with other beliefs.....and it was interesting how I would get caught up in what I can only describe as a kind of tag team match between these two very different sensibilities.  But you see, I created it.  No one was doing it to me.

In your life you can probably go back to childhood and identify how all the wrong and bad things started for you and point out quite clearly the origin of those troubles in your life.  The reality most often, though, is that the events in early life are in truth the continuation of events from a previous life. Imagine that in each life you leave a piece of baggage that is the sum of all your feelings and misgivings that are less than divine.  This piece of baggage has your soul's name on it and it stays at the gateway between the worlds.  Each time when you are born into a life, that little black satchel is sitting there and you pick it up without ever even knowing it and you carry it until you empty it entirely of its contents.  When you do, you are free from it.  All of its contents resolve back to a peculiar feeling that the divine is not going to help us, will not be there.  This is how karma got started, at least the negative kind.  We turned away from the love that is the Source, the deity, whatever you wish to call it.  By trusting in this source of life, you are able to let go of all fear or anxiety over how things are going to turn out because what you learn is that this being, this vast consciousness loves all of creation, and has been sitting outside your door for the day that you gesture to let it into your life.  It isn't that it does not love you, for it does, but you must also understand that you have been gifted with free will and in so doing, the source cannot force you to see what you yourself are not ready to know, feel, or see.  So there is a lot of waiting going on when it comes to the divine and your own soul.

Until that time, we tend to feel in some way as though we have been shipwrecked here, or that we are fallen, or that we are not good enough.  Maybe we look to our childhood and see how terrible things were and point to that as the reason why things are the way they are. In truth, it goes back to a First Cause as I call it.  If you can trace back to the first cause you will always go back to the one element that started the problem in the first place.  The First Cause is YOU.

The problem with being a victim in life is that it denies our involvement.  The victim very much wants to make others responsible for why things are the way they are.  I know.  I have been there.  I have also, as a result, lived with people who were also in this same energy.  I have siblings and others who have been hung up by this need to point to something, anything, that explains why they feel so shitty about the world. Its a very hard energy to deal with, though, because pretty bad things have happened to many people.  Someone near them was killed, or someone was raped, or someone was dispossessed of their children, or a relationship was ruined because of the actions of someone else.  A co-worker is mean and cruel.  The undeniable truth is that until we can change how we feel about things, we are doomed to repeat them.  They will show up in our lives over and over.  We get defensive when we see horrible acts of barbarism in the world and I know the  tendency we have to want to say just how callous and unfeeling this statement is.  And yet, it is true. Yes, even when children die at the hands of another, yes even when someone is brutally raped.  Even when the worst possible things are done to others like a Holocaust or the wholesale killing of innocents.  What we do not see is the karma. What we also forget is that there is no death. Certainly all of life is sacred, but we are also more than our bodies.  We are in truth immortal.  Even the youngest soul is itself an ancient amongst us who has chosen a given life for a given lesson, even if that lesson is learned by their dying.

I am not saying that people deserve what they get.  I don't. I am not saying that we simply toss up our hands and let karma do what it will.  I don't.  The purpose here is to dissolve this karma and until we do, we remain caught in its web.  The web is made by US.  Even the most horrible events that emerge in your life are there because of something not yet complete in you.

In every single case were I dissolved karma, it was very easy to point to someone else as being responsible.  IN fact, there was some of that going on.  I was not able to get to a place where this karma was entirely dissolved until I began to process of forgiving those who I felt were connected to the event.  What has happened in each and every case was I tended to begin to forgive others, then felt that layer of the karma peel back like an onion only to find another layer.  This was the true layer.  I had to remove the outer layer of what I thought was true in order to get to what really was true, which was that EVERY single time, I have had to forgive myself. Every time. Its been relentless this way.  However, no karma has been released yet that did not involve my returning back to the First Cause.....which was me and my reaction to something that caused me hurt. In every case it resolved back to something very simple.  There may have been deaths or great suffering involved, but this was the consequence of not being able to bring love into my life. Every time I was left in this place where I either begged for forgiveness from the universe or I was able to forgive it myself.  In either case, I felt the healing power that this forgiveness brought. it was always myself that had to be forgiven because the debt always had lain on me even though it seemed as if events were happening all around me and TO me.

Victim energy is hard, real hard.  Its hard because of how much we are unable or unwilling to face up to our own inner fractures.  But its relentless and you cannot make deals with it. You either remain in the victim energy or you entertain the idea that there IS a different way to be.  If you can make that shift in your own mind, you have done the first thing needed to move out of the victim energy.  It means being brave and it means being willing to face what your own involvement was originally that has attracted the events, no matter how hard, into your life.  Until you can do that, the old trauma or hurt remains and you will continue to look outside yourself at the causes for why things are so bad.  Until then, you will be caught in the loop of this recursive energy.  You can even tell yourself intellectually that its due to some First Cause and yet still not resolve it.  You can KNOW but knowledge is itself like a tool in a toolbox. It will only work when you utilize its very essence to do the work that is the deepest and most fundamental form of forgiveness on the planet.  Until then, you will continue to get hooked into situations that will bring up that old unresolved feeling.  Until you make your peace with it, it is your master even though you KNOW you are imprisoned by it.

You are an infinite being underneath all of your seemingly limited and bounded self.  You are more than you presently realize.  You are infinite and you exist in many realities all at once. What you know as you is one petal on a much larger flower.  Every petal on this flower is not forgotten or lost, but is entirely cherished.  We are all part of a larger family of being, and encoded within every single particle of matter is the mark, the cosmic dna of the Creator.  This creator is waiting outside your door waiting to be let in.  This is not the best way to explain it because the deeper truth is that its inside of you, looking out through your eyes all along.....you just need to wake up to this fact.  Until then, you may remain caught up in what so many call the illusion of this world with all of its suffering.

The only good way forward is defeating this little victim in you.  To do this does not mean killing it or driving a stake into its heart.  It merely means forgiving it, letting it go in favor of a much better feeling.  When I feel into the field that is the Collective of human kind I see how we have had precious little of this sense about ourselves.  It emerges from time to time in various people and is present in all of us and can emerge at certain important moments when we become aware of it.  We have such a backlog of old dysfunctional behavior that we almost don't know a better way to be.  Not knowing that this different path even exists, we tend to go with the familiar, which is the dysfunction, and the cycle continues as it has for ages.

A lot of what we need is tied to learning to bring in those qualities that are inherent in the archetype of the Goddess.  Even though we each have an alignment in each life along certain lines in regards to our own sexual identity, we nonetheless are beings that have a dual current running in us that is both masculine and feminine.  In every aspect of life we can see how it manifests.  We see it in the yin/yang (positive negative) charges of ions, in how the two hemispheres of the brain mirror these two qualities of consciousness.  It is in us as a kind of birth right and we can choose to bring certain aspects of those two currents into our own awareness at any given moment.  The great power of the feminine is in her ability to absorb pain and sorrow and diffuse it and transmute it into something creative. Her great power is to take and transform. You don't always even need to know how it works because there are scales of awareness that are akin to gods and goddesses all around you and connected to you that have the power to heal and protect you if you simply let them.  These aspects are connected to who you are.  You are infinite and there are aspects of you that reside at higher ranges that are like your divine parents who are entirely capable of taking away any hurt or pain even if you yourself do not know how to.  It only takes surrender and the consideration in your mind that this may in fact be so.  Once your awareness makes this connection, the energy from your intent will flow more easily to its conclusion.  It is only a matter of time when your own creative self finds a way that it can learn to simply surrender and let go and seek forgiveness.  The great thing is that once you can reach this deeper place beneath all the layers of he-said/she-said kind of things, you can be completely free from the burden that you had only moments before held so strongly to as a kind of badge of honor or some wound that shows how we had fought some brave battle.  In truth, the only battle we win is the one that we forgive and let go.  It is in this way that the path to the divine in us is a simple one, uncomplicated, perhaps too simple for our egos that want to make things more than they are.

So come home now.  The world is asking you, moving you, seeking you.  Breathe into your essential nature.  Feel into it and decide to feel differently.  Let go the hurt. Let it be a great burden so heavy that you have no other option but to let it slip from your grasp.  I know it can be hard.  Ego can make it harder.  But ego has only been designed to help identify things for us, but if we over identify, we can miss the more subtle truths of our infinite selves.  The love is waiting for you, and you can change the story in a moment when you are ready.  Until then, someone is waiting for you to come around the one undeniable truth in our world.....