The Lineage of Light

Once a long time ago there existed the Makers of this world.  Their work was a masterful stroke of genius that left no particle untouched.   Theirs was a work built from the inside out, a blossom that emerged from the heart of Light, from their very essence. When their work was done they gave birth to themselves and emerged here like one emerges into dream.

At first, the Children of Light who woke up here on the green beautiful earth remembered who they were and where they had come from. As time unfolded, however, these Children of Light forgot who they really were and something most curious happened.  People who named themselves the Keepers  forged a great key and built a door between the worlds and said to all the Children of the Light that they were the ones who held the key to the world of Light and because the children believed that this was so, a great shadow fell upon their minds and hearts. The Keepers, curiously had forgotten the most, and in their fervor, convinced many that what they were saying was real. But because it was not real, it meant that the world was no longer built on what was true, but a corruption of what was true.  the corruption was just forgetting what everyone knew deep within themselves.  Somehow, people on earth began to believe that it was possible to hide the truth, to lock it up, and to have a key that would bring you closer to it that existed within someone else's hands.   Wars moved across the land.  Threats to the world emerged and battles were fought in the name of what they then believed was right.  The children of light sunk deeper into a world that became more and more difficult to navigate and to understand.  They had forgotten something, and in forgetting, they lost their ability to save themselves.

For ages, humankind sought to find the elusive key to the world of light, to their salvation.  There were countless people who would come and claim that they had found the way to open this door.  Each claim seemed perfect and certain, but it seemed something was missing.  Teachers would come, showing them that there was no key except what lay within themselves, but the children sought even more fervently to find the key in the hands of those who promised that they alone had the one true answer.

In time, the edifices that had been built around this great door began to fall away, edifices that were falsehoods, illusions, and even lies.  The cracks that began to show began to reveal to some that the wall was not real, that the door was not real, that the key was itself a forgery. When enough light came streaming through, the children of light would be transformed, for the knowledge within that light was so irrefutable that one could not stand in it and not know who they were.  Ancient memories about the beginning of time would flood into their minds, joy would fill their hearts, and their being would become illuminated. 

One day, standing before the crumbling walls, a child asked "If we created this, then how can this wall be beyond our ability to breach it?  What key could not be beyond our grasp?  If we are the Makers, then we are the light."  It was then that no wall could hold the children of light, no lock, no door, no appearance or illusion could keep them from knowing what was always theirs.

Looking deep within, each person closed their eyes and dreamed a very old dream where in every heart there lay a great key.  Within each person lay the means to scatter the illusion of the world for they were the creators of the illusion.  Just as they had built a wall around themselves, they took down the wall and let in the light.

A piece of the great wall was left standing for all to see and when children ask who built that great wall, parents smile and say, "You did." 

Forgetting Power

Have you sought the person with the keys to the universe?  Have you looked through religion after religion?  Did you convince yourself that there was someone who had all the answers and would one day sit down with you and make it all just plain as day?  If you have, you aren't alone.  We all tend to do this.  It is a reaction that is tied up in several different but related characteristics we have as human beings.  Don't beat yourself up over it.  The power, though, is not outside of you.  When you can turn from looking outside to inside, a remarkable change is now up for grabs, is within your grasp.  Suddenly you are ripe for the idea that the power is inside of you and that no matter how fervetnly you have wanted to find THE thing, it was always inside of you.  You can also begin to dissolve how you give your power away to others which I have written about and have a good bit of experience with directly, and can say that when you turn from thinking the answer is "out there" to "in there" you begin the process of ceasing to make someone else responsible for your happiness, for the answer to life, to the mystery of the universe and all the rest. When you do this, you return to a place of sound authenticity and something screams in you that it is time to begin taking responsibility for your own stuff, your own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, actions, reactions, and all the rest.  When you do, when you return to the place of ultimate responsibility, a curious thing can take place.  You become free.  You begin to become free as you loosen all those old entangling lines that had you tripped up. Just keep at it because it takes some time and you need to be patient with yourself.  It tooka while to get to this place, it will probably take some time to undo everything up to this point. 

You have the power.  Claim it.  Realize it.  Become it.  No guru, no method, just the divine within you seeking to shine.  Let it shine. 

Perspective

:):  

(It's up to you how you want to see it)

The Forgotten Power

We all develop tendencies, beliefs in how we must be.  Sometimes, our beliefs do not serve us, do not serve the naturally supportive rhythms of who we are.  For myself, I have been at this a long time.  I do not consider myself any teacher, but myself,  looking inwardly for the answer.  Always imperfect, but seeking greater degrees of what may unfold perfectly.  For myself, I know that what we think of as anger is itself a misplaced sense, a distorted version of a still very powerful thing that lies within us. 

Anger is most often a very natural force that has been pressed through the channels of ego and emotions, born often out of repressed emotion.  Anything shoved down will come back up violent or bent or distorted.  Fearing anger is just as bad as repressing it.  Next time, consider that anger, behind the associations that you attach to it, has something purer and powerful driving it.  You might be able to discover this power if you strip anger of all attachment to the world of things and use it as a dirving force more like a gale that blows through the trees.  It brings rapid change, it does what must be done.  It does not seek to harm or hurt, but has within it a cleansing effect.  it is like a flood that rushes through the creekbeds and flushes it of mud and muck.  It is like a sweatbath where your body si purged of toxins.  No one would dare suggest that a good sweat bath is itself dangerous if done properly.  Nor would we suggest that a strong wind that knocks out dead wood is itself bad or good. It is simply what is

I know that when I allow myself to feel this force, I move closer to the core of something that is what I am.  No, I do not mean that I am like a strong gale or wind.  It is thatI have the capacity to move directly and with purpose.  A summer breeze is sweet and is nice when it happens.  It is a delight, but also is supportive while these powerful winds are about cleansing.  If we try to make the wind into something, we can wind up directing it like how one might seek to direct nature. Let nature be.  Let this wind be.  Let it blow, but let it blow within you without a focus outward.  Focus it inward.  let it turn you this way and that.  Anything healthy will remain.  Anything that needs clearing will go. You might find that if you do this, you can experience a forcefulness, a power within you that does not need to be shaprened for a purpose or focused on others, but experienced directly.  It is a subtle, small, but important difference.  I suspect that we tend to feel that when we feel this force, it seems so much like anger, except it is not.  We need not shrink from this.  It can be a great sacred power just as important as stillness and introspection is in its own place and time. 

Don't fear your own propensity toward intensity.  Its force will blow just as long as it is needed as long as ego and emotion is not seeking to harness it.  Let it blow and see what effects it has.  By not turning it towards the world for a change, you might just find something that has lain hidden and forgotten or ignored that can bring you change and cleansing within. Just as we cannot argue with cleansing diets or sweat baths or other means, this force may well acquaint you with a part of your nature that will feel more natural, more easy, and nothing to shrink from, an ally in the cause, whatever that might be.  It may be, too, that at first you will feel such an association with this force that you will think it is anger, in which case I would say then feel it like that without directing it at anyone.  Do this until you feel its force spent and then, when you are not in anyway frustrated or angry, allow it to rise in your for no other purpose then to try to see it in a new light. Allow your past associations drop and try to see if you can see and feel it in a new light.  This new light could well bring you to new understanding.  By doing this, I sense that the explosions of repressed emotion will become less likely to occur and a greater peace will prevail in you.  Just because we have associated certain things with this force does not mean that this is all there is to it.....So run and jump, feel the forcefulness of your body and how it feels the force within it.  Feel the force needed to lift weight, to do a job, to do push ups or run or bike up a steep hill.  Do you feel the force necessary? Certainly we do not feel anger when we exert in this very physical way.  But it IS intense.  It is focused.  IN the same way, let yourself feel this force in you and let its own fire burn so it does not explode.  We are many things, many colors, and all are part of a larger pallet of choices that are true to our nature. 

The Mill Race

The land which belonged to my grandfather and where my father spent his last days was a farm near town that had once been home to a mill during what I can only figure had been in operation during the civil war era and before.  I say this because what I once took to be an old road was what I would find when we sought to sell this farmland, was an old mill race.  Walking the land in the run up to our sale of this land, I became aquainted with this recent discovery and realized that yes, this was a careful earthwork that had been made a very long time ago.  So long ago that its purpose had eluded many as it lay in dissuse, its road-like canal filling up with debris and tumbling stone from the rocky soil. 

It was itself a masterwork of design.  It had to follow some simple rules that had to do with the flow of water and the lay of the land.  It had to cut through certain portions of the property in order  to make use of the natural slope in order to get the most effeciency out of the water.  In a place that was no longer, stood an old mill, a ghost, really, whose very foundation stones had long since been removed and used for a house, perhaps to fill potholes in the marshy road that criss-crossed the low-lying meadow.  It is easy over the course of time to forget about these ancient purposes and designs that slip from memory due to change. 

Tonight as I sat watching a story about Howard Hughes, who was an aviator, I felt the strong presence of my grandfather near and words moved silently between us about the generations, about how things had been for him and I, and how things could be, and how change will continue to move forward.  My grandfather was himself something of an aviator, and he had to ditch a plane in West Virgina one night under a stronger than ususal head-wind that left him short on gas before his next fueling stop.  Hughes had just ditched in similar conditions when testing a plane that broke a speed record.  One was in a creek bed while another was in a beet field.  Both stepped out unscathed.  Remarkable, lucky, or blessed. 

Things like lost mill races have been running through my mind lately, the thought that we are sometimes lost in knowing the lay of our own inner landscapes, uncertain as to our own capacity for knowing what we are made of.  My sense has been since I was a young thing that we have some inner capacity, an inner earthworks that lay, just like that mill race, unused, hidden by brambles, or ignored.  But in living, in our focus outward into the world, we can lose sight of what we are, who we are, how we are.  We can forget the ancient multidimensional nature of our own beings.  We are cosmopolitan, varied, multifaceted, and most certainly cosmic.  But we forget this.  We grow into ourselves while losing sight of what is in ourselves.  our mettle, our purposes, our inner design.

In all of us is the means to know and o grasp all that we need to make the reat shifts in our lives that will bring us fulfillment.  That is a big word, fulfillment.  It is so incredibly relative, and yet, it moves evenly with us each step along the way.  What fulfills one step is itself a sieve that leaves us dry or wanting.  Sometimes I wonder if life doesn't just conspire to gently place us smack dab in the midst of plainness so that we, sitting in such drab surrounds, begins to feel that old mill wheel turning in our imaginations and a world rises up full of promise, water, and grist.  Perhaps the very fuels for our forward motion is our ceaseless desire that also evolves as we rise upwards, lighter, more gossamer.  But whatever the individual story, we have the means.  Its all been packed into us perfectly, like rations and machinery to make the craft of our lives move with elegant speed.  Until we learn the means of its power, perhaps we sputter along.  But even in sputtering, we feel around like blind mechanics twisting this and turning that until some lost knoiwing fills us and is lost no more.  Observant, engaged, what was once a road becomes a canal.  What was once a brambled mass is something waiting to become known in its intended purpose.  Perhaps just knowing this is so is enough to move the wheels within. 

We dont even need to know how it all works....least not that part that we comfort ourselves is so knowing and up on every trend and facet and method and means.  This kind of knowing goes back to the smile a baby feels spreading across its face before it even knows what a smile is.  Something deeper seems to know, something deeper will guide. I rather think its a matter of learning to get out of our own way.  We might be inspired by worldly events, by those who have been there before us, or by those who are just now stepping into its sparkling stream.  While this may be so in some cases, the grandest means, the most enduring way, I suspect is what we meet on our own as a part of the universe realizing itself, a relfection reflecting on itself.  Not an illusion, but a tunnel of perception, another way to be to see, to know, to feel.  It seems that we need only be encouraged by ourselves simply to reach it.  Perhaps you can feel it yet not entirely know its contents or means or purposes.  Perhaps in knowing, we play tricks on ourselves and make the mind too central to all of this. 

I can't, nor wont, suggest the way to this.  I know how it has been for me, how the path has been traced thus far.  I know in a thousand different lives there might be similarities, and yet, each trace, each mill race, will itself run perhaps in different ways, perhaps for divergent purposes.  It is enough though to reach for it, to make myself available to learn, to become.  Some may dam the water to control it, and that may work well for some.  Others might have an entirely different way to their own fulfillment.  Who is to say?  How are we to say?

Greatly changed, my grandfather felt to my heart and mind tonight, and yet, still the same in some ways.  His energetic presence perhaps unleashed from his older limiting views.....perhaps more cosmopolitan, refined, even.  Within him, though, a vitality that can be sense in our flesh as blood carries it, an energetic fingerprint alive and renewed in each moment, never aging, but always in the flux of becoming.  His presence suggested change and a steadiness in such change.  He was in a very similar position as I even though our positions are now greatly changed.  Even as each row of petals bears some pattern and choreography from the past, there is always this change that opens up those old races within and discoveries are made about what is yet to be fully realized known, or embodied.  It would be wonderful if we could all just get the answer and let that be that, but if that were the way it was, this world would dry up like a desert in no time flat.  Life would probably just dry up with it.  Diving deep, we discover the most when we remain unafraid of that which remains to be discovered or realized.  Less a truth as a living truth that is renewed like blood each and every moment.  Following the wisdom of the flesh, there is much we could learn from this temple that we have been gifted with.  As it was dreamed in the beginning, my temple has the headwaters flowing directly below it. No need for a mill race. Here, whatever mystery is to be revealed will probably be in evidence probably long before I am even aware that it is even there.  The discovery of what is, though, is what seems perfect. 

Breaking Bounds

Awakening is an experience that leads to the release of what some call "patterning" or old programming.  Some call it "DNA Activation" and even "Uploads."  All of this is an attempt to give voice to this feeling, this force, that causes us to stir and melt away the old ways that have not served us.  Our bodies, our very neurological structure, is built around a type of patterning or pgrogramming from the earliest moments when we are alive from embryo forward.  The neurological system is vast and we learn before we know how to mimick behavior that we see as early as a few weeks after birth.  A baby will smile back at its mother because she has smiled at it because the nervous system has cells that actually help the baby to do this long ebfore it might know what the smile is supposed to mean, long before the brain is mapped.  But we see these things, we copy them, and then learn from the world what they are supposed to mean.  We are building a library of reality that will inform us about what we think we see.  And yet, we know that our library of reality is itself built less on real things as supposed things, on feelings and ideas highly internalized.  If we see someone tall and thin who scares us as a child, we may go about our lives being afraid of tall thin people even though there is nothing inherently wrong or bad about tall thin people.  This meme built up within our minds remains like a blueprint until it is changed.  the path to this change is rather radical, since it requires a momentary brush with the unknown, the very realm that those who awaken find themselves living in. 

It isn't just the province of a mystical or spiritual experience, but is also something that is present in art.  The very act of making art can involve breaking down these old conceptual boundaries we have set for ourselves, which is this inner library of what we think the outer world is.  It doesn't matter whether this inner version of reality is correct or not since this inner view will predominate and distort what it is we think we see in the physical through our senses.  Carl Jung was all over this notion  in his work with projection and how someone who has this distorted sesne of reality within will porject it upon his or her neightbor with absolute certainty that the problem lies in the neighbor and not in him or herself. 

So thinking about this, as I usually do, I am often reminded or given opportunities to change how I see it or think about it by a chance meeting her or there.  This morning, being rushed to get to work, I had not gotten breakfast, and so I decided to duck into a local coffee shop for a cup of coffee to sip on my way to the studio.  While there I noticed someone whom I often would talk to about nothing in particular, but my friend is always thinking and writing.  I asked him what he was writing about and what he told me, in a nutshell, is about how we create these patterns, how we, from the ground up, create a kind of illusory existence out of any number of things even as we seek to break out of those bounds by various methods from Eastern practices of meditation and art. 

This is why I continue to feel that art is itself an important way to go about clearing our lives since it allows a wide beth for the subconscious to enter even while we ourselves, our ego selves, aren't even aware that this is happening.  I think that the freer we are, the less anaytlical we are in doing this, the more effective we are in bringing forward information that can help us to identify the patterning within.  it is also a way, too, for breaking the old patterns through a singular act of intention, imagination, and self recreation.  The wonderful thing is that we do not even need to know how this is done, except that we let go and allow this broader current to simply exist.  For the artist, the current it seems is inspiration.  It is the forward edge of awakening.  It is here that the spark of knowing or gnosis enters and illuminates the brain from left to right.  The structure in both is enlivened, brought into a kind of energtic balance while also existing in a kind of suspended tension that is about the orbit of opposites.  It is in such a place that an old cognative bias or belief can be changed forever.  It also has the power to change how others see and think and feel. 

In art, most often, this has meant a new stylistic development such as Mannerism, or Pointalism, or Impressionism.  All of these were in their own time radical new ways to express and form reality in a creative way.  They also recieved a great deal of criticism from people within the art field as some chose to resist the change in themselves.  But these changes are tidal in nature and sweep all form with them.  A tsunami itself is often just a six foot wave of water, but it has so much steady force behind it that it has the power to wash away an entire village within minutes.  It does not look like much sometimes, but this is how it achieves its effect.  Simply, quietly, the old order is there one moment, and is gone the next.  This is the power that the creative has.  It is one reason why I have chosen to not be a part of organized religion but have taken art as my guiding discipline.  It is the one thing that has no rules.  We are encouraged to break the rules, to change how people see or feel. It is also how one, in awakening, also makes a break from the old to see what is there in a new way.  Sure, in some cases, art may simply bear a new form to replace the old which may itself be in its own way a distortion of what is there, but all of life is imperfect, yet also perfect.  We are like blind children who are led by a great golden string that ties our heart to heaven.  We are pulled by this string so that we come face to face with those things that will at some point clear away our eyes enough that we will begin to see.  Bit by bit, we pull on this string and feel the weight of heaven coming nearer.  We re each bound to heaven by this golden string, and if we are to realize heaven on earth, we will have pulled this string so hard and well that we have given up everythhing except heaven that stands in its way of being here.  For heaven is not a place, and there is no string.  But when we remove the boundaries we have erected, it is ever closer as we breath into its crispness and vibrant presence within us. 

This does not happen in masses, but individually.  Life may conspire to inspire us or bring us a friend in a coffee shop who tells us the right thing at the right time, but each of us is feeling the current passing through this cord that is our lifeline to the infinite, to wonder, beauty, grace, and awe. What we will encounter when this happens will be for each to know and feel.  It will be ours, our heaven.  It is less a place as a state of being, an undivided sense of presence, a quietness amid great movement.  It is the whole, the totality, and this is a great mystery. 

Asking what method will do it seems itself beside the point.  There are many methods, many paths, and all of them serve in some way to help assist you in plumbing something in yourself.  If it achieve that and is a good match for now, then it works.  For some the Rosary could do it, or sitting still in the kitchen looking out the window, or listening to music, making art, dancing, or any number of things.  Most often what works is what allows us to let go of that which has haunted us, those distorted memes within us that have held back the deluge, the tsunami of energy that is part of breaking old bounds. 

Into The Essence

It comes as it has always come. It was always there, abiding, it says, worldlessly.  This great ball of a thing. But not a ball.  I just can't explain it with words.  Not to do it justice.  But it comes each time, each time it is the same, I am just in a different place.  A visitor with a thousand different faces, waiting patiently, never telling me that I am not seeing it right, merely waiting in a place that if it isn't perfect, I sense is so close to perfect.  But then, I am the traveller who sees the visitor in a thousand different faces and places and moments.

It rises up all around me.  I have been seeking it and running from it all at once.  Until I removed the last straw and felt it bouyantly rise up to touch the surface of my awareness in a way I had not known, at least not in this life.  But I had glimpsed it. My initiation into the first of its mysteries as an adult happened on a dirty orange shag carpet in a friends house one Saturday night as I breathed the freedom of being away from the clamor of my college dorm and suddenly felt like something was about to happen.  Not just visited, but taken back through time to a touchstone to what would come forward through time into my present, a confounding "gift" from a past life wherein the future was being forecast, described, a time when something of some importance would take shape.  This experience, more a warping into time than just a past life memory, would change my life forever and put me solidly on a path that I was most often afraid to dare walk.  And here you thought I would say it changed my life and I lived happily ever after.  Nope.  I was haunted by it, confused by what it was seeming to say or suggest.  I thought I needed to parse out itse details as if some great message would be revealed to me in this future life which is being lived now.  Curiously, it was only in letting go of that that I discovered the most.  I had been holding its secrets out in front of myself telling myself there was no way I would ever understand it.  And in so doing, it dutifully became that.  There was no way anyone would believe my story of a past life that foretold of the future I am living in the present.  But that was just silly because what I didn't realize or trust was that it could be anything I wanted it to be in my day to day journey. 

It curls up next to me it seems, a radiant sense of something I have known as familiar, a mist with a voice, but it is not misty.  It is everything.  How can it be everything I wonder, and it just shrugs and says "You will just have to find out what I am by doing what you must."  But what is it I must do?  "Doing what you must is not like a commandment.  Only when you know that it is not a must that you realize that yes, it is  most certainly a must......it seems one way while being a different way.  The same word, but a very different meaning.  A completely different perspective."  I look at the Visitor who has had so many different faces and smile because it only seems a visitor. I know it is who I am, have always been.  Will always be.  I just have to say visitor because how else can I even describe it except to speak and in speaking, lose the sense of an experience which has unfolded over time?

Thoughts pass without words wrapped around them.  All of this takes no time.  It is how it is, how it has always been.  My writing is itself a pale shadow of what it is, and I suppose that is at it should be.  It speaks in me as I know this visitor Is me.  Has always been me.  I know the lesson has been in no longer helping anyone, no longer doing anything, for this task is so much more simpler.  It has always been this way.  We all complicate it so much, and we forget to simply Be.  So its Presence grows steadily and I see there is all the time in the world.  How can there be love in the world when one does not yet know the greatest love within?  How can one know how to bear light when they seek it outside of themselves?  It is so silly.  Don't try to make sense out of it, for the madness of life has been this.  One giant ball of this, rolling down through time, and defining part of our journey.  And even as I say this to myself, there Is no time.  All are like beads upon a necklace, a necessary means to an end, but each life lies curled like prayers wound so tightly that they only seem to have a beginning and an end.  "The truth is there is no real beginning and no real end.....and when you know this and feel it in your body, the very presence of that truth shakes you out of this shell of conception.  Here, you are free to create and do what is next for you to do."

So I thought life was to be fashioned, made, ordered, and in some grace-filled way, controlled by a gentle guiding hand.  But no, this is not so.  What is mine will come as needed and it is I who must stop trying to control and simply participate in what the higher order is bringing down.  All of this has been one effort at anchoring the higher with what is Now.  Just that.  Sitting here, with this Visitor, now shifting and moving in my presence, showing me that there is more yet to realize.  Just take what the world gives and let that be a lesson, the substance of your prayers.  I look at all the efforts, and it was all pushing a current that had its own measured pace, its own amazing way of reinventing the world.  I was perhaps arrogant thinking I could change it.  It would change me if I would but listen so clearly to it, and in so doing, I would find my greatest rewards.  And still, time seems to have a hold, does it not?  Follow the silly illusion, for it is here as a creation itself, its own lessons to be gleaned, its own seeds to grow and bear new fruit.  "Stop trying to make sense of it and embrace it.  It is much too big for your brain to make any sense of......you will feel it much better and in each moment the seed of its greater becoming will be present to you, expanding outward in every direction."

So now things take a turn and events accelerate.  I have no idea what will happen next except that they will conform as if by some magic to what must be just now, and life will bloom like the flower it has always been, the petals of me being this seeming visitor, now no longer separate but part of a great mystery that I am now happy to let be a mystery.....for it is in seeking to channel it and make it into something that its great potential is somehow limited, perhaps lost in a sense.  It is like grasping water.  The moment that you do, you lose most of what it was to begin with.  SO now, with hands open, my hand glides through the waters of this life and I hold onto nothing, and everything at once.  Opportunities flood in effortlessly, perfect for the moment, one iteration, one creation emerging to offer nothing on its own save a canvass upon which to create and filled with boundless possibility.  It is I who realizes that the potential is limitless and what a grand thing this is.  I am hurled back through the tunnel of time, less a tunnel as a turning in the moment where all moments are connected to every other moment that has or will be.  The air sparkles with possibility and I do not try so hard.  I do not lean in so hard.  This is simple and I simply need only get what can be received in the moment.  "Through what you do, you will do nothing and everything.  In learning the final lesson of letting people be who they are, you will finally be free to be who you are.  DOn't expect to know what that means, for its potential is infinite.  You are here to realize what this is when you are ready and you will drink of its fountainhead in the same fashion in which you came and letting the seeming illusion of time and linearity explode your notions of what you are and what the world is."

The ghost of the past is felt as sadness, hurt, abandonment and rage.  And yet, it says, it can all be released with a simple recognition of it through whatever method you feel is right for the time.  Even as I begin a practice of body work, of movement I have not felt moved to use, something is happening, and I feel more keenly some ghost now no longer feeling as though it is at home in the deeper layers.  Deep roots sinking down, no longer nourished, something in me moves and turns, entirely uncertain of the consequences or outcomes, but happy to be led and happy to shake things to their core.  The thunder rolls within me as I feel what it was that this old self from another time has to teach me.  It was what never matched anyone, was not understood because it was always buried in karma.  It sought to reach the surface of awareness and life but could not as long as these old ghosts keep the waters roiling with dust and dirt.  I feel the thunder again and again as I embrace the Lightening and stop trying to understand what it all means. 

I go back and find photos of my people from that past time.  Their look is the same as me.  They were called "Grizzlies" because of how fierce they were.  But this was itself not understood.  In them was a flow of energy so strong that it rattled the cage of complacency.  They slept nearly out in the open in bark huts and were with nature in ways that make you a very different kind of human.  It isn't that I want to go back, but that I know something I need to reclaim for this life, a sliver of something that this embodied, for the trip forward.  A fearlessness, a boldness, a power rippling beneath the surface that was perhaps only glimpsed for what it was, just like I have only been glimpsing even now.  It isn't a race, it isn't a destination. This winds upwards into the infinite.  If you think and order your life in terms of beginnings and endings, you will have a very nicely laid out path marked with signs that say "Here I awoke" and another "Her I awoke a little more" and "More."  But nowhere do the signs say "Heaven 5 miles up ahead."  No, it just does not work like that because it was always within, and this is what this very patient Visitor is now saying with its eyes and its heart, and all that it is.  It knows that I am already what it is, I just need to realize it here in this place this time as it has been done down through what we call time.  All of it lies within our reach, all of the oceans flow through our fingers and there is nothing to do but what we feel most immediately will fulfill us. There is no more grasping, no more ordering, but a hand that lets itself feel the currents as the current fills me with one word "remember..." Always, the power that is this Visitor, will govern and guide based on whatever choices are made.  This is karma and the Law of attraction.  Any road that is seen as an irrevocable choice will be that, like clay fashioned into a pitcher even though it could have become a circle of friends dancing or a butterfly with outstretched wings, or a million other things.  Beyond what we think is our limit is what is limitless. 

Yes there is desire and hope and dream.  But now the dream lives in front of me instead of in my head or imagination.  It comes to live more vividly as I begin, just beginning, to learn about this new creature that has been around me even though I was but dimply aware.  I knew with my head, now I know with all of me what it is to me. Desire, freed from the dross of what was in the past, emerges as the thing it always was, but was not fully understood.  Camoflaged in a sense.  Layer by layer, spiral course by spiral course, the wheel comes full turn in each nanosecond, but also on larger scales that may be tied to stars and planets and rivers and earths.

It is a mistake to make of this work.  It is in error that we must somehow become something.  We need only remember, and sometimes it take time, but sometimes, it takes listening to the one thing that you have denied the longest.  This is the thing that we each miss the most.  Until we reach that, it is like living a half life, and until that comes, discontent and all troubled things do this way pass.  Even the hardest life, the most difficult past is redeemed by this realization which is itself what we are.  And you might think perhaps there is something to do to get to that place, but if you trust in this thing to get you there, you will be closer to that Visitor than you have been in a long time.  If you can trust that, then its voice will speak to you in dream as your world cracks open and worlds of trouble spill out as what you thought were the hidden lands of your own secret world reveal that in truth, it was a simple interface to what you always were.  We call all of this illusion, but it is in truth a creation, and in thinking this way, we free ourselves to create in entirely new ways.  We just have to realize that we can.  Forgiving it seems to be the key to allowing it to be what it was while no longer being what you are.  By simply holding its precious gift, I learn that everyone just has to be who they are even if I am something different.  And in so being, we are each freed to do just what it is we most greatly seek deep down. 

Watching

Here on this earth
round blue dot
a light in the sea of lights
many watch as something nears
like ripening fruit
taking millennia
but a blink for others.

We have been visited countless times
by those with the same thirst for adventure
and discovery
that has driven us forward out of the dark ages
and into an uncertain light.

But what stands as our next great achievement
is not yet filled
but is filling
like a lake before a dam
whose waters swirl and press
the soft edges and purposes
of a burgeoning tide.

Most stand and watch
waiting for the verdict
the outcome
the many timelines bearing
offering
pressing
rising
and falling
as we make up the script
from parcels and pieces
within and without.

They watch to see if we can become
more like they
speaking a language
an understanding
beyond this illusion
a step out of shadow
and into the light.

Will we cast off the robes of our enslavement
to find it was never another who did so
but that it was we each
individually
who sought to keep the cage tightly sealed
or will we turn one step back
or make some decision
that will forestall what may well be the inevitable?

My mind turns on this
I have seen their forms
moving in from incredible distances
ancient presences
entirely made of dust
waiting to send the signal
the all clear sign
vast arrays of brothers and sisters
creatures of every sort
ready to celebrate a rare achievement
a day of graduating
into a cosmic maternity
a fraternity of life seeking life
in all its varied forms.

If we step put to his
it will mean the end of our old world.
If we are brave enough
to let the old shackles fall
the new world that awaits us won't be any less challenging
but rightly lit and more enduring
and promising than all that followed.
I can't say exactly how it will be
but I see a giant keyhole
unlocked by a great key
that is the very universe
as we loosened
move out through stars
no longer watched
but shown
what was always ours to discover.  

The Fountain

The motion picture The Fountain, released in 2006 is a romantic drama film that weaves history, religion and fantasy as well as science fiction, into its story.  It is directed by Darren Aronofsky and stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. The story takes place over a number of lifetimes covering the timelines of two people who have known each other as husband and wife, as Queen and Conquistador, and as Oversouls.  In each wrinkle, in each life, there is a struggle or challenge to work through and discover just what the fountain of life is.  In each life, there is a grasping at it in one way or another, first as the fountain of life as symbolized as a tree in the rain forest of South America, then in another life as a researcher using the same tree as the Spanish sought for eternal life, and discovered in the realm of the spirit as the greater sacrifice made of ones person's life in order to revive the life of another who was dying.  The answer finally comes when the Superself or Oversoul realizes that he can change all time, all eventualities with his now realization that the fountain of life lies not in a tree on earth, but within our very hearts.  Only through dying to what we were do we realize what we can become.

The issue of death in the physical haunts us, tears at us each moment of the day.  We seem driven by the certainty that we will someday be no more, that we drink deep of what is in the moment.  And surely, this is part of the richness of life.  But living under the sky of fear of an end that will blot us out is only, perhaps, seeing part of the truth.  When we die, we surrender, we let go, we each must meet this seemingly final end until we realize that it is not itself an end, but a liberation from an old way of being and thinking.  It may seem an end to our bodies, but I suspect the illusion is that there is an end even though each moment is preserved in timelessness and goes on, accessible in each past and future moment.  We surrender to what we were to become something more.  The quality of our experience is in how far we can launch ourselves into awareness in that powerful moment.  Do we conceive of an end, or do we conceive the infinite of what we could become?  When we can, I believe, in the moment, realize that life is itself made up of endless deaths and births in each and every day can we, I feel, reach closer to the essence of what death offer us, which is in dying to our old notions through a seemingly final act of surrender to discover what is on the other side of so much uncertainty, which is simply more of what we are.  And so, in this way, we pass through countless deaths as we are reborn each time.  Some deaths are small, some larger, some are struggles, some are not.  Every new thought, every new belief, is itself the birthing of something out of the death of something old or outmoded.  Like a snake shedding its skin, we think each shedding is the end, but it is only a continuation of what was before.  When we master this, we make the process of living larger, amplified in our day to day.  It also makes the seemingly final exit much easier, for then we have the capacity to sense and see into the next world with fewer veils lifted around us.  Our old beliefs no longer limit us as much as they were.

The Fountain is a wonderful story.  It is also sad, but the way it seeks to tell the story not in a typical Hollywood way, but in a way that is full of surprises and interesting turns while having a deeper message to convey is what makes it such a great work to me.  As Jackman stands before his beloved, tears streaming down his face, he realizes that he must die if she is to live.  But his death, though uncertain, results in a miraculous thing.  It suggests that faith, properly placed, can give us the foothold that we so need in climbing the stair into the next realm of our being.  As the final stages of the movie play out, as the leading character goes back yet again into his lifetimes to conceive anew, perhaps you might glimpse a piece of what we each can do in changing in our present all eventualities.  Perhaps there is a piece of the First Father and the Tree of Life, in all of us.  When we merge with the unknown, the very essence of it seems to change as we, pollen-like, are scattered to help bring about a revival of something that could only be when we let go of our old notions of how we think things should be.  

Makers Mark

Your body is itself an expression of the work of the Maker whose mark has been lain within you.  Encoded into your very cells, from top to bottom, is a vehicle for your awareness to dwell.  No shoddy house will ever do for such riches that were used to make you and your template.  Only the best was used, which was consciousness itself acting as creator.  So in this way, you see, the master work was laid right straight from the beginning, and we are still unraveling its secrets in science.  So when the world looks dim to you, a horrid waste, surely this is what we have been choosing to create.  But this is itself a choice to do with the masterwork what is our very right to do.  This right was granted us, and within the confines of the All, balance was sought.  This balance means that for everything we do, there is a mirroring of that to keep balance.  As darkness is added to our storyline, so too is the light added in due course.  As there is an action, there will always be a reaction.  The work, though, is about as perfect as one could possibly do, and this echoes out through countless worlds with countless races and minds who are aware of the great stroke of genius that laid such foundations within us.

As we have choice, the choice is in the choosing.  What we imagine is itself a choice.  What we think, feel, or do, all a choice.  When we begin to glimpse the responsibility present in our choosing do we begin to spiral upwards into knowing and awareness.  It is not a perfect thing, for each step contains a piece of what we have just left within it until swirling and moving, we find ourselves in a new kind of place.  The world changes.  Your body changes.  This vehicle was made perfect.  Perfect to destroy with or create with.  Each choice has its own repercussions.

But I promise you that your body reflects your soul in ways that you may scarcely imagine or know.  Even how the brain is ordered is itself a reflection of the great guiding forces of the yin and yang.  The left brain, in all of its structural magnificence can come up with solutions and processes that can bring us incredible wonders.  And yet, for all of its genius, it is only one aspect of what we are. And so, it was that the right brain was married to the left in a ring of union guaranteed from the start in what we know to be the corpus colosseum. This bundle of fibers allow two brains to move as one.  The right brain allows you to know the mystery while the left seeks to parse it.  Even as the left brain seeks to navigate us, the right brain knows that in the infinite there lies the perfect solution.  Sometimes you give your brain a left orientation and dominance, in so doing, you become uneasy with mystery and the lack of knowing up front what the game plan is going to be.  For a man such as I, this was certainly a big challenge.  Sure, I knew what mystery was, but I was not easy with it.  It was when I began to allow it to take over more of my life that I began to appreciate the wonders that would emerge fully formed from its capacity to conceive the infinite.  If we allow ourselves a more balanced stance in our bodies, health and wonder is ours.  How do you tell a world that has been so starved of its counterpart, the path back to that self?  How do we find it, except through a deeply laid instinct?  It is there, I know it is there, and it is nothing but the return to the garden of Eden for us, to the primal state, the the authentic self, for how things were originally intended for bliss and joy to prevail and predominate.

It is just a way to operate optimally.  The choice is your own for how you guide and steer the ship of your being.  We each can learn through the pleasure and pain principle if we know that pleasure was created to help guide us to the right place.  No pleasure created outside of us, but the pleasure that we can each find within first.  Here, the body will heal itself, care for itself as intended.  The firing of signals in the brain bring a cascade of chemical compounds that themselves help us to feel what is already present in spirit and now entering our awareness.  As we decide to allow these good feelings to come in, our bodies being to follow suit through the creation of endorphins, oxytocin and similar compounds that bring us out of the funk or chemistry of fear or anxiety.  The body mirrors how we feel and can change on a dime.  You, the master of your ship, need only decide to do so, and life will have a way of conspiring to bring you what you seek.  Each cell and fiber of you knows this even if you do not.  But if you give it hals a chance, you will begin to see the masterwork undoing years of trouble and forgetfulness and return you to something better then before.

Knowing what you are is your own birthright and your own journey as a spark of the infinite in this canvas world of creation.  As each awakens to this, will there come a time when many catch the flame and feel the old dry leaves of the past burn in such a heavenly fire?  Or will we seek to put out the flames for fear that we might descend into some lost world where pleasure runs out of control?  Certainly this has been the emblem of our journey so far.  But there lies the middle path through all of this, which is neither too far one way, nor to far the other. Moving out of extremes, we find the balance that seems to be part of the thinking of such creators that put the code of our being here to unfold.  We emerge drunken on spirit, no no longer needing the crutches of drugs or dependency to make us feel wonder and joy and marvelousness.

Down to your cells, the atoms, there lies a dual current of awareness and energy that serves to build the form of you from the ground up.  A marvelous world of shimmering light slowed to the speed of matter, but always containing light, and waiting for the moment that you catch up to it and awaken to all that it is offering you.

This is the tender voice which sings through me that sings to you, speaking in song that is as old as the world.  My syllables are compounds of hydrogen and carbon, and my syntax is DNA.  My melody is the pulsing of the energy and the blood as it sings it was way through every fiber of every blade of grass, every eye, every smile, and every world that is.  The masterwork, carefully laid, shimmers through spiraling galaxies and spiraling conchs.  Its message is seeded in the stars,  tidal waves, hurricanes, and tornadoes. It seems to egg us onward, forward, into amazing discoveries of the wonder of our rich nature which is itself built from a template entirely made of nothing but energy that is alive and seeks to explode into more to itself.  This is the voice that sings through you, through ever rain drop, through all that is here for us to hear and see and know.  It speaks from the very depths of all that you are, and you need only stop long enough to hear it, and its voice is your voice and no other.

So speak, sing, dance, and be.  It is that simple a thing.  Wait upon its mystery, wait upon its greatness.  Let yourself just LIVE and be.  Its emergence into your life will be like a veiled thing that has always been but poorly glimpsed, but waiting for you to take notice.  When the soft and sheer fabric is pulled away by some impulse within you, suddenly the light will come on, and the world will become a different kind of place.  The same, but different.  Ready now, to be sung a little louder, a little more melodic, a little more purposeful as each step you take in this spiral dance moves you and each of us heavenward.

The mark of the maker is here, and heaven can be glimpsed wherever we find ourselves, in whatever world or realm of place.  Everything that Is carries its own harmonies and syntaxes and vocabularies for spelling out and uttering a piece of its great infinities.  It is all within us, all with us, always and forever.

Namaste.

Great Mystery

The greatest mystery
is the soul
whose broad palette extends
infinite
against the sky of All.

Ever present
becoming
potential
resting.

Within it everything is known
as each particle
wedded
to something greater
dizzying in complexity
but only grasped in simple-mindedness.

Only in bearing thunder
is the sky cracked open
a lofty image
of a simple purpose
of becoming something more.

Lightening streaks across the sky
nothing is not illuminated
by a fire that burns
at a thousand degrees.
There is nothing that cannot be known
but to what end is this born upon us?

What matter is the heart when the heart is everything?
How can it know itself
as itself
realizing itself
as itself
inhabiting the lives of all
who are themselves
as All?

Perhaps it is enough to realize
just what we are
and in so doing
stand in victory
over our own self-made ignorance
lifetimes in the making.

From the start
there was never not union.
The integration of the two
into three
through me
was perfect
even though I was not.

Some lasting impression
lightening from lifetimes past
staining my eyesight
reminding me
of a chapter rewriting itself
a book strewn to the wind
returning to itself
shades of the infinite
and miracles
wonder
and peace.

Each moment
a rewrite
holy revisions
in some lost book
of our becoming
each hand echoing the one before and after
until the prayer is perfect
and the mind and heart and body
all resound with a simple
"yes"
to this new life.

We run wounded and afraid
of what we imagine could be
in our wildest nightmares
until we stop and see
it was only our fears pursuing
and the world peels back upon its layers
and reveals a paradise
opened by thunder and lightening
as layer by layer
moment upon moment
we each learn what was always true
and what could no longer be.

For some it is by water
some by fire
or earth
air
or sun
and some by lightening
as the crazy zig zag makes of us
the heyokah
sacred clowns
and others by a million different things
yet all merging into one vast current
for some purpose
not yet conceived
but existing
in each particle
a great mystery
a miraculous outcome.

Aethos Sound Meditation

Through an odd bit of synchronicity, I came across a sound meditation created by Tom Kenyon and tried it without the requisite explanations and prelistening information.  I am curious to see what others think of it.

The link to the audio is here and you need to agree to the terms of use before being taken to the page that has the audio downloads (you can also listen online without downloading also).  Once you click the agreement to the terms, you are taken to a list of audio links and you want to click on either of the Aethos links.  One is short, about five minutes, and the other is longer, about thirty minutes.  Try the five minute audio first, but if you want to listen more, Kenyon requests that you download the audio instead of listening online since it bogs down his server.  Depending on how quickly you can sink into a deeper state, you can choose one or the other as you feel suits you.

I am not familiar with Tom Kenyon, but he was drawn to be in what looks like is Orcas Island in Washington, which is itself a little interesting.   I haven't even read all of the instructions on how best to focus in the sound space.  I know that for me what took place was automatic and rather clear. 

Let me know what you think. Winks.

Dream Work

It is free, it is fun and even entertaining.  It also be a catalyst for change inwardly.  It can move what were heavy loads to your waking self.  I am talking about the dream self. Yes, that mysterious part of you that you might look at a little askance and wonder what is up with that denizen realm within. 

If you want to relate better to who you are deeper down and do some good work in the process, taking a look at the dream realm might be a great bet for you. Why?  It is such a rich bed of possibility, and it is one that really doesn't get mentioned very often.  Truth be told, we just don't tend to feel like we have much to say in that world.  It's that "other" world of us.  A mystery.  But this need not be. 

Try to look at it this way and start seeing things from your dream self. So hop into your mind and imagine you are floating in dreamland in a sea of creative juice as time expands and contracts and consciousness is more mobile.  As you look at your waking self, what do you see?  Probably you see the day to day activities, yes.  Work, coming home, dinner, the evening.  Over and over until the weekend.  The weekend is like a break in the schedule.  You see all the parts that make up the waking self such as the emotions, the mind, intellect, and ego. Ego is a bit of an interesting creature.  In dreamland, ego is slumbeing for the most part, so perhaps its a mystery to you.  That's right; ego is most often out of the picture in deeper realms of sleep.  To your dream self, it is a mystery, perhaps even an anomoly.  Isn't this a bit like how you view the sleeping self?  So come on, now, why was it you thought doing serious dream work was a silly thought? 

To start, I am going to tell you what has worked for me over a long time frame.  Some of this came to me through other sources. I tried them, and many of them worked. 

The first technique to try to get the ball rolling is suggestion.  You simply think to yourself before you fall asleep that you want to DO something in dream.  Whatever it is, it is up to you.  Maybe it is overcoming a fear, or some issue that has been bothering you.  With the dream self so invested in bringing you dreams that run through these things already, you have an instant connective to dream you didn't realize you had before.  What works best I have found is to not just plop down in bed but relax, take your time, and then when you notice that your breathing has changed to a deep slow rhythm and you feel the beginnings of your awareness slipping off into that slope into dream, start with your suggestion.  Speak clearly in the center of your mind and be specific about what you want to do in dream.  Do this a couple of times if you wish.  I see multiple suggestions as akin to planting seeds.  If you plant enough, you are bound to get something that germinates.  "I want to deal with what's behind my anxiety with work right now." is a very good way to word things.  You don't have to have any sense of what the answer is.  In fact, it might help if you simply remain in the dark for now.   This signals to other parts of yourself that you are ready for those other parts of you to step forward and help with the heavy lifting.  It may also be that your suggestion is more specific such as, "I would like to begin resolving the anxiety that I have about work."  It all depends on what it is you want to accomplish.  See, what you think and say inwardly matters. 

Another technique that has worked very well for me has been a suggestion that I heard mentioned by Lynn Andrews on a decades-old interview with, I believe, New Dimensions on NPR.  Back before the internet, this was one show I would tune into on Sundays from time to time to hear the most interesting interviews from people in spiritual, mystical and self help disciplines.  IN this interview, Andrews said that you should say to yourself before going to sleep, "Ego, I am going to go to sleep and I want you to slip into dreaming with me and just stay asleep.  I am going to wake up in sleep and for now I want you to remain quiet for now.  I am going to use dream as a springboard into other work...."  At least, it was very close to that, even if my quotes manage to misquote her exactly.   The result that very night was that I DID indeed wake up, lucid and fully aware within dreaming.  I was pinching myself! 

Another technique that you can use in consort with these that I have just mentioned is great for helping to condition the soil of your awareness and can make a difference in better results later, which is to stop what you are doing during the day and simply remind yourself what it is that you are wanting to do in sleep.  Do this quickly and without spending time belaboring the idea.  Just plant the seed for now.  That is enough.  You can do this a couple of times each day, in the early morning, at mid day and then in the evening as you are having dinner.  No need to be obsessive about it, just keep it light and keep your mind open.  Another technique that can help is a little of what I did in the beginning of the article, which is to see things from your dreaming perspective.  Turn the tables on yourself some.  Shake things up.  This can help to break you out of old cognitive biases that serve to hold you back.  Cognitive biases are beliefs that limit what you think you can or cannot do.  If you thnk you can't, then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, for surely you are sending the signals to your subconscious self that you can't. 

yet another technique that has similar effects is to stop yourself in the middle of the day or at random times and ask yourself "Wait....am I dreaming?" When you do this enough in waking, you can more easily carry this into dreaming, especially if it has become something of a habit.  I suggest (ahem) using these and all the other methods for at least five weeks.  It is possible to get results on the first try, which has happened more than once for me in the past, but I have also had results that have developed over time.  Factors that can have an affect on dream recall and lucid dreaming are how rested you are before going to sleep as well as your diet.  Try different meals in the evening, for example.  Instead of heavier foods, go a week eating lighter foods with a lot more fresh vegetables, fruit, and eggs.  Sometimes that can be just enough to break your body out of a pattern it may be in physiologically.  If you need protein, consider a salad with a lot of mung bean sprouts, which are very high in protein, and then have an omelet.  You might consider throttling back on how much wheat you eat.  Believe it or not, but allergies to wheat are more common that most people realize.  the allergy itself can be mild but go unnoticed.  People who have gone off wheat have noticed greater clarity and less fuzziness and better physical strength and less stomach trouble.....they just never realized the low level yet persistent effect that wheat has on the body.  So shake things up in the body temple, too, and see if it helps to shift things some for you.

One good method is to awaken at about four in the morning for a brief period, but then go back to sleep.  Often, in my experience, I am through with the deeper states of sleep and am a  lot more "shallow" into dream and closer to waking.  When this happens, it is easier for my waking self to be more aware of what is going on in this still fairly relaxed and deep state of awareness.  Of course, if you are a light sleeper, you may not be able to get back to sleep. Use it only if it will work for you.  If it does work, you can plant more seeds and suggest that you go back into sleep in order to do dream work and then let yourself slip into dream again.

Another technique is to speak in the language of the subconscious self, which is in symbols and images.  When you think about your dreams, do you ever notice that sometimes you will have an experience or be in an environment in dream that feels highly charged emotionally?  or maybe you feel as though someone in a dream represents something that is really inside of you, like a feeling of some kind?  In the same kind of way, you can write your own symbolic script and speak to your subconscious in a way that it can relate to.  i think it;s less that the subconscious only KNOWS symbolic language as it uses this language to convey information to other parts of you.  Regardless, though, if you have an issue at work, you could imagine yourself walking up to work and seeing  a big scary monster that you then embrace and then find the monster becoming you and then being transformed.  When you do this, you are signalling a desire to integrate this emotional issue into your being in a different way.  You are ready to face the monster and melt it into you so that it is no longer a problem. 

Sure, the act of being able to come to lucidity by sheer will alone might be elusive to you, but look at it this way; you wont ever know how until you try.  When you try, you practice, and when you practice, you get better.  if you can com at this with the attitude of patience and open mindedness, I think you will find your results will happen much more quickly and you also give yourself the flexibility.  If you do this work and you do not have any discernible results, try this one trick: instead of waking up and going "Awww.....it didn't work" say instead "I guess there is a long queue to get into the problem resolution place of dreaming.  I will be patient and wait since dream is having to finish up some old business first."  If you can do this, you do not create cognitive biases that serve to limit you by thinking "I failed, this isn't working..."  Consider a different story and feel into that as a very real and valid possibility.  Keep your mind open, but consider there are more reasons for why it did not work the first time then your just not ever being able to get this right.  There is a genie in you and sometimes that genie has a lot on its plate.  Give it some time, and be persistent.  I think you will find that these methods will be very helpful to you. 

Now another method is to allow yourself to slip into that very deep relaxed moment and simply begin imagining what it would be like to deal with whatever it is that you are wanting to deal with in dream.  Pretend as you drift that it is happening.  As you slip into dream, you are already headed in the right direction. 

Now, the other part to all of this is to consider that you may have dreamed the answer but you don't remember.  Consider the likelihood also that you dreamed the answer but do not yet understand it for what the images are trying to tell you.  Keep a journal of your dreams if you can and write them down along with your subjective feelings that are tied to the imagery.  It might just be that the answer is there, but you have to get to that place of realizing it for what it is.  You might just have more to chew on still in order to "get" the memo from your deeper self.

I wish you all the success in your dream work.  If you consider it to be a rich bed of activity and possibility, life will tend to conspire to make it align to your expectations.  It might just be that a lot of dream which is so mysterious is that way simply because we THINK it is so. 

And now, it is time for me to go do my own dream work!  Sweet dreams!

Seasons Turn

The seasons are part of what we are, the storms on earth are storms that brew within.  When we look out into the spring day, we feel the spring rising in us.  When the earth is quiet and bare of life, we grow quiet within ourselves.  In the movement of earth around its sun, some of us experience different degrees of seasonal change.  Some live in desert where it grows so cold at night that you would think it is winter time, yet each day gives birth fully to a warm blistering heat that bakes the sands.  Others experience mild swings in temperature and weather. Some have great storms that wash through and purify the land and the hearts of all upon it.  I think that if we did not have these changes, we might all go mad, for these things connect us to more than just the land but to the rhythmic and energetic tides that keeps us moving, evolving, growing and becoming.

So today it was known that we would get a big storm.  It had been raining for most of the day.  For the last week we have had unusually warm weather.  Spring like.  On the one hand, it feels a little out of place, but these kinds of things have a tendency to bring strong weather in the other direction.  So as the warm air that was moving through our region brought moist air, a cold front moved in and turned rain into snow.  Within just a few hours, so much snow fell that the earth was rendered into a quiet landscape of white.  Cars ceased trying to drive down the roads since it was falling so fast the snow plows could not keep up with it.  My side street steadily got deeper and deeper.  I shoveled my drive several times as the snow that I shoveled was replaced by a layer of very slick, damp, and hard packing snow.  It was a good thing to do for me at a time when my body and mind has suddenly stirred along with a deeper urging for a new kind of movement.  For so long I have felt a kind of paralysis almost, a need to remain in a stasis like position in order for this energy of awakening to do its work.  My life had been slowly and methodically been taken apart in the last few years, and I remained receptive, open to whatever it was that I needed to know or feel.  The signal lately, actually very suddenly, is that the inner self must begin to move....to move beyond old feelings, beyond neutrality, beyond the old things I had feared.  I had been waiting for the icebergs to move of their own accord.  But now, a vibrant turning is moving in me and I feel the masculine energy beginning to move.  I had grown to fear it, did not trust it, but now a voice rises up to say that its deepest impulse was always correct and true.  It just lay like a fish deep in the depths, uncertain of its shape or form. Whatever may have clung to it, whatever hurt or pain or rage had become associated with it, it was time to stir and froth the center of the self to join in the creative process of the self remaking itself.  the quiet of the storm makes everything stand out. Thoughts still like statues.  Everything stops.  Time slows.

Branches lean down as the snow piles up.  This snow storm brought a special kind of snowfall.  Instead of light and fluffy, it was dense and hard packing.  It makes for good sledding and snowman making.  It also covers everything and silences all.  I like this kind of snow because it insulates the house and keeps it warm longer.  In my house, with its ancient boiler with giant pipes that move water through convection only, there is a giant bank of warmth in this system that run to radiators throughout this old house built during the height of the Depression.  The house is cozy in the same way that a house is cozy when there is a fire burning within.  Air fed furnaces do the job, but there is something comforting about this kind of heat.  Warm, radiant, it feels soothing.  With a cup of coffee, I sat down on cushions on the living room floor and watched a movie.  All was quiet.  Any noise was muffled by the snow.  These are the kind of days I look forward to since it is a good excuse to remain in the warm cocoon of home.  With so little happening, I look inward and feel the comforting flow of this river inside.

For days I have felt this urge to move.  the winter is like this sometimes.  Quiet, but in the quiet, a new awareness emerges.  What I was dies to what I am.  Old ideas are seen as working for the time, but shift like moon phases do.  Clear, it was just me and the divine masculine.  Feeling into my past, I saw the refrain playing out over and over again.  He was always there.  There is nothing not to trust about our natures but to see beyond the clouds that sometimes obscure it.  I am doing for me what I should have done years ago.  And yet, a tension had to build up in remaining in a static position.  Fear had not left me, small threads still wrapped through like serpentine vines, barely noticeable, not seen for what they produced in me. the fear did not always make me afraid, you see.  Sometimes it made me feel other ways.  I decided it was time to stop being afraid of what I am.  Stop playing to others expectations, or in trying to help others.  Until the fountain head was cleared so it could flow freely, I would always operate from a place of lack.  Only when I was full could others be filled simply by being inspired.  Each life, a masterwork, a masterpiece that only we can create. And here in this time, He was moving and seeking to rise.  His certainty, power, strength, surely is too much for people.  I know this. It is why I hid him away, let the dream of thunder and lightening that was my Heyoka nature ebb away.  It was here with me once, solidly positioned within.  As that phase of the moon waned, another chapter in my life began that mirrored a feeling of lack.  It was in its own way, what had to be in order to hold up a powerful enough mirror for me to see.  Until the lesson was learned, until the self finally just ran out into the street and cried "Stop!"

the difference I think now is that I do not know where it leads or what it means. I suppose it does not need to mean anything.  It just seems to need to BE.  This part, which bears fire from heaven came here for this, and my mind is in the place where it is ready to let the heavenly guide.

I think this is all of our jobs, to bear the heavenly light within us to the earth.  As the world fills up with this light, perhaps it will be enough to help usher in a new kind of day.  Or, it might just be enough to keep us all from going crazy.  I really don't know.  But I suspect that whatever it will become will be just what it had to become.  We will have created it. 

After a season of cold, the coming of Spring is so much more precious and anticipated.  Without the cold shortened days, the summer days might not seem so welcome or quite so wonderful.  So whether you live where the sun-baked days give way to cold nights, or atumn storms help to cleanse the rives, bayous and land, in all ways the changes of the earth help to mark the changes within, which surely need the tug and pull of forces larger than it to remind it that there is more, that more will always come and that this is a big world and universe and we are all turning through it, finding our way and bearing a sacred fire within our hearts. 

Journal II

In a follow-up to the last posting, today I had a family friend in the studio today who brought with her someone who does healing work in our area.  My friend was saying how she wanted to do a body of work about her experience with kundalini to show at a local gallery.  I was interested in what she had to say because I had conceived of a body of work over the last few years which I had imagined, as a way to anchor it as a show in my mind, to be placed in the same gallery. I just had not spoken to anyone about this idea.  I said how I felt that in making work anchored in the vibration of this awareness of ourselves I felt would be a powerful way to change the vibration, to bring a sense of wonder and awe about who we are within.  I mentioned an incident with Ramana Maharshi and his gaze and how perhaps everything else is just anchoring a vibration which we all feel at the soul level, and that in making work of this kind, I felt that it was enough because it served as a reminder for those who have the ears to hear and the eyes to see.  Her friend asked us if we had ever been reading someones words and felt as though they were in the room, as if they were alive and present, even if they weren't still alive.  I smiled and said "That's so funny that you mention that...." and said how just two nights before I had been reading the words of Krishnamurti in the afterlife. Sometimes the words of those long gone do indeed spring alive in new and unexpected ways.  Sometimes a book which we read one day is entirely different from the next.  I have some books I have been reading over and over for the past 30 years and I often see them differently when I set them aside for a few years.  It is less that the writing has really changed as we ourselves have changed. 

As we got to work getting colors laid out for the large globe we were going to blow together, I put on a leather glove and thought to myself "Tatanka" which is Lakota for the bison.  I wished that I had gloves made from bison, I thought how good they would feel.  I turned and as I did my friend explained that our guest had been in Canada spending time with the same band of Indians who were descendants of Sitting Bull who had been given refuge in that country when Sitting Bull was still alive.  It turns out that our guest had been accepted by the group to take part in the Sundance. A good way to bring this up.

With this group, the Sundance is all about the balance of the masculine and feminine in the world.  It was beautiful to hear our guest speak about how this was done, how this balance was honored in a ceremonial context to help keep balance in their culture.  It was a timely talk about how front and center these issues were for them, for the Lakota, and to hear of  this sacred rite.  I wondered how we could have activities that helped to honor the balance of the masculine and feminine in our own lives, even if they were stories, or movies, music, art, or even ritual for those who need it. 

Life is full of these events that serve to reflect and manifest meaningful coincidences that are the larger self speaking to the smaller self.  They can sometimes help to underscore a subject, or to bring the awareness into the moment more fully.  Keeping on the lookout for what the universe, which "speaks" to us, can be a way towards new understanding. Sometimes, too, these serve as reminders along the way.   Life is full of opportunity for learning, while listening to subtle clues for what might be something that is bringing our attention into the moment perhaps as a meditation one moment, a reminder the next.  We may never be completely sure what it is the universe may be telling us, or what our higher selves may be whispering, but time surely will tell. 

The Journal

Last night as I lay dreaming I found myself reading the handwritten words made in a journal.  As I read, I realized that this was a letter to the person, a way to put thoughts and feelings into a form where it is recorded.  As I was reading the pages, looking at the hand that put the words down, I had the realization that this had been written by U.G. Krishnamurti, and that this journal was written after his death.  When I say this, I mean to say that after he made his transition from this life to the next, he went on to live a life not terribly unlike the one he had in physical life. It was a continuation of something.  Maybe we think that once we die, we wind up in some nebulous realm of something very very different.  And perhaps this speaks to our uncertainty about what life will be once we make this transition ourselves, but my sense is that we very much are ourselves but without the body.  We continue and use some of the things that we picked up here as a way to put things into a known context.  Like a journal, for example.  All of this, at its root, are manifestations of energy, but we assemble these energy forms into patterns and we create with these patterns.

I was struck by how the piece was written.  It was his own mind, his own thoughts, but some things had changed.  Some harder edges had been honed and the thoughts seemed clearer.  The fact that he was not addressing anyone also seemed to make a difference.  As I say that, though, I sense that even he was aware that every thought, created, is recorded, and we can all access this vast library of what Jane Roberts' trance personality Seth termed the "World View" of a person.  He described it as being like a living library of a person's inner thoughts, ideas, and perhaps work.  Most often, these existed in this library as an afterdeath journal.  Jane had dictated several of these journals during her work, one being William James and another by Cezanne as a gift to her artist husband, Rob.  These were those things that the personality felt willing to "put out there" for others to access.

I related to this because at one point this effort here was not a public one. It was anonymous, a nice quiet corner where I could record and work through what I was working through during the process of awakening.  Somehow, the writing was itself a way to dream a new way of being into being.  the curious thing about creativity is that it has the ability to break down old barriers or borders in the self, to dissolve conceptualizations that limit our thinking and awareness.  Sometimes I think we are tempted to wonder if what the person thus creating is really real, or if it is somehow a fabrication. Do we really believe in these creations, or are they just nice ideas to talk about, to bat around because we think they make us look a certain way.  Certainly we do things because we think that it is the thing to do without paying heed to the deeper voice within.  Most certainly we get caught up in things that do not serve who we are authentically.  But what is real?  What is our nature?  When you consider the great infinite nature of the higher self, this question becomes increasingly irrelevant.  I mean this because we have been so many things, so many people, so many experiences.  I sense that there is always a sense of self, of individuality no matter how much the sages say we melt into glorious nothingness upon awakening and ascending.  If you know me and what I have written, you will know that I sense that even at higher ranges of awareness, we continue a sense of individuality within that broader context.  there are things that do drive us that may not interest others.  We continue even in our higher forms to pursue fulfillment based on what interests us even if those realities are ones that when we here encounter them, seem like a vast space of cosmic awareness.

What are we, who are we?  This question continues.....not because we do not know, but perhaps because we are ever in a state of coming to it.  Even in awakening, this question, while stilled in one way is enlivened in another.  It is like we ask why we are here as we seek.  We wonder what our purpose is, and once we awaken, we touch this very still presence of our own natures deep within, and it all seems simple. We just ARE and that seems all we need to know.  It is in that knowing that the layers fall away.  We might say we need to do something and certainly there are things you can do that will help you in this journey to embodiment.  But everything that I have encountered serves one thing; knowing who you are.  Beyond the troubles, hitches and glitches.  So HOW do I get there?

Whatever works to help you to be still and know what you are is perfect.  it might be playing music, it might be meditating, it might be walking outside in nature.  It might just be not worrying about your problems and just centering your awareness on this sense of presence.  It might be that using mindfulness on a continual basis to become aware of how your mind works, how hard feelings rise and the nature of your own thought and feeling process in order to identify that the reason why you are now feeling crumpled emotionally is because as you walked through the aisles at the store you saw a product that triggered a memory from early life that was only in that moment half recognized, and because it was not fully felt and moved beyond, it is now dogging you in a kind of low level way.  Mindfulness could be useful in helping you to find where you went "wrong" or how you ended up feeling what it is you are feeling.  It may be that visualizations help to shift and change your feeling and open up for new growth and change.  It is curious how we can use tools that turn ourselves inside out and remake ourselves.  This very much was what kundalini did to me and it seems to do this to most everyone.  there is this sense of the self being torn down and being built back up again.  the image of Isis and Osiris often comes up in people's awareness because this is very much the same idea.  I had an image of sitting on the fallen foundation of an old building or temple that was myself and wondering how on earth it would ever get put back together.  the silent hand of kundalini would pass me a stone and I was, in this new place, to lay it down in a more thoughtful way.  This was an image that showed me or conditioned me for being able to be more supple, more flexible, to let old things that had not served me to go. This is like plowing up hard ground.  the self becomes more succepitble to the needs of the larger self, or to ones deeper nature which may have been denied because you somehow thought it was too crazy or weird or that you had to serve others before you served yourself or a hundred other reasons for not taking care of you first.  Maybe it just seems like we are remaking ourselves.  Maybe we are following a path or trek that has already been travelled and we are just now realizing that this is so.....that we live also outside of time but that our awareness limits our awareness of this fact so that we are surprised when we arive at the perfect place in our lives and wonder how on earth we managed to do that.  Slowly, the veils drop and we become more and more aware of just what it is that we are and the choices we may have already made.  And yet, it seems an infinity of choices were made, already have been made, and it leaves one with a dizzying sense of what is this all about.

Sshhhh! It says.  Be quiet, pay attention to what your essential being is.  The view may be cloudy or less than perfect, but keep your eyes on the prize.

I know that there is an awareness that we all have that allows us to see beyond the debris of our karmas. We can see and know the authentic self perhaps because we ourselves are not ingratiated in the karmas in that person that keeps them from seeing it themselves.  We can so easily see because the signals or noise is not the same, and yet, we may ourselves have trouble seeing our own authentic selves.  Ramana Maharshi once looked at a man after being asked how he could find God.  Maharshi has said just a moment before that he would not find it outside of himself.  So Maharshi gazed at him, his soul speaking without words to this mans own soul.  A reminder, a moment of presence that, on that day served to awaken him.  He was not, just a few moment prior, pleased with Maharshi's insistence that he wasn't going to find it from a guru or from some teaching.  He was looking outward, you see. 

So maybe we just keep our gaze centered on ourselves without expectation of what we will find, but to be quiet and know, to open the universe up in the only real way we will ever know, which is within.  By bearing our own seemingly hidden knowing, we learn to come by a knowing that is beyond all thought or deed. It becomes just what is, perhaps has always been simply because while we are here enmeshed in time, we also exist outside of it.  Whatever it is we think we need to do, has already been done.  In finding this part of ourselves that exist in this place of no-time, a seed is planted, or is germinated where our personalities bloom in the light of what this larger self is. Ineffable, how can anyone describe or explain it properly?  We can say it is the most marvelous thing, the most miraculous moment, sheer bliss.  We can only know it when we are ready to know it, and yet every moment exists trembling with powerful potential for us to realize things that we here would perhaps think incredible.  Yet it is so simple, this key that unlocks us from our old conceptualizations and notions of what we were or have been.  We each know what we are, and many of us have hidden that self under a bushel or lain piles of concerns that never served us while we turned to lives that never really fully satisfied this deeper knowing of being.

So much now is turning back to what Is wordless, and it gets hard to even put words to paper anymore.  What I have to do is what I have to do, to realize beyond this illusion of what seemed.  I lay in bed in the morning, perhaps the bst time for me to do this realization.  Here, I am quiet and feeling.  I am not focused outward but inward.  I am resting in the sea of all I am right now.  I can feel what is missing in me, what SEEMS to be missing, but is only an effect of my awareness.  I can feel my heart, which feels like a pair of lungs, gasping for air.  I ask myself, why does my energy body feel like it is gasping?  I know it is a lack of life force energy, that even now as I am more full then I have ever been, it is still not where my essential self knows itself in its natural state.  I feel into that and I know that I am divided from the feminine energy that moves through me as surely as the masculine does.  I reflect on how this must have effected my behavior in this life and others.  I consider that all of this, this simple little division in the yin and yang, the positive and negative, has played out in myriad ways. I know that I must swim for all I am worth to feel into this part in order to bring the circuit into a fuller sense of connection within.  This, for me, is by allowing myself to feel.  This is the right brain, the right side of my body, the cool, the night, the feminine, the womb, the compassion, the flow.  I searched through my feelings and felt this thing where in some lives I believed I was just male.  I was certainly this, but the universe is composed of this yin and yang in order to fuel it. But in this focus I had, it lost some of what it needed in order to complete. It wasn't that this aspect made him more feminine, it just made him a closer mirror of what or who he was in his larger aspect of being.  His own larger self was composed of a vibration of energy that had a blending of aspects and qualities, and as he sought lifetime after lifetime what this great secret was, he pondered why he felt the way he did.  It is in every single particle, and it is the key and lock that allows energy to flow.  The two energies touch and a third energy arises from their union, which is a sense of transcendent bliss.  It is a gift, and learning to hold onto it and nurture it, is the guru within.  We might not even know what comes next or how to work through the mass of material, but kundalini remains quiet, soft-spoken, yet powerful too.  It waits for the moment when we are ready to reach that next stage of realization, as layer by layer, our vision becomes clearer and more refined.  Something stirs within and the universe serves to manifest in perfect timing just what we need while also bearing the marks of what we have yet to know more fully.  So inch by inch, yard by yard, we move through these layers of realization.  I don't know hat comes next, but in not trying to let my mind work on that problem, I am more open to the universe bringing me something that I may not have even been able to dream of before.  It is this part that perhaps seems like the part where we make ourselves into something different.....yet in a way we are, but only in becoming what we truly are.  By not being confused by what my inner rifts and fractures are trying to tell me, I seek to keep my eyes on what this deeper sense is telling me.  Sometimes, it is beyond my comprehension.....but I think this is the magnum opus being brought to bear.

Our bodies are mirrors, a double-lobed being, bipedal.  We have two brains that carry very different aspects of our expression and experience.  Each align according to this energy as physical representations or expressions of this cosmic bi-poled energetic reality of who and what we are.  When the two brains, the left and right can work together, they can create something greater than the sum of their parts.  

So saying this, it is all so personal.  How can I say to you what will work or what has value?  Only you will know this.  Only you can work through this.  I am more compelled to begin writing in a journal that I keep by my bedside than ever before. And maybe what we are ready to publish we will lay on another shelf, signaling to the universe that we are done with that chapter and are on to the next.  Perhaps we then read the journals of light of others to ponder what another pondered, yet what we each find is our very own as the nucleus of a larger life seeking to rise in awareness in this world as heaven and earth are each wedded to the other.  In that moment, the realization is, heaven never was in some far flung place beyond death, but right here, waiting for us to slip the key into the locks so that we may open to what we are.