What Remains For Us

It is time to remember the Feminine in the spiritual.  Looking across the world you can see how she has been carefully hidden. For whatever the reasons, it is time that she be brought out into the bright day of our own awareness.  Hiding her only makes for unhealthy yearning and desire for what is native to each of our own beings. She rests within each atom along with her male counterpart.  They take up residence in everything and give force to that which creates form and all phenomenon. They are never not present. For it to BE they must also be.  They are IT. 

Below is an old illustration of Shakti and Shiva.  It shows how Shiva has this powerful aura around him, a nimbus, often seen as the presence of illumination, a powerful spirit, even divinity. We all have this inner light that shines through our own energetic field.

I took some time and worked on giving Shakti her own nimbus as well.  I thought it needed to be complimentary because these two forces work together so well.  So below is the result, an updated version of how things need to be....

My Rendition Of Shakti and Shiva, © Parker Stafford, 2012

Now tell me, is that not perfect?  Shiva's glow is radiant.  It is green, a very healing color.  Shakti is a lovely warm violet, itself very intuitive and receptive. Green in its own way is also receptive, too, and I think while different, the two now are more on par as they gaze into one anothers eyes.  You see, the music hasn't even begun....

Into This Sacred Realm

Image ©Stafford Artglass, Parker Stafford

I use words to explain what surely cannot be explained.....a rough outer world fashioned to ape the fineness within.  In everything, scattered, lies this fineness, this sacred realm which bears the very feeling of the reverence we feel when we go to church or temple or try to summon the Gods, whatever form they take.  It is in this simple slip of a moment.  It is with me every moment.  Even as I pull from the world out of hurt.  How could such a fine thing hurt anyone or anything? I am still working that one out.....but it does not change the wonder of it, the beauty of it. Taken into it, I feel, is the power to forgive and forget it all.  And perhaps that is the whole point. To forget. To reset.  To resurrect ourselves, to be reborn, refreshed, cleansed and remade.  Whatever it is that others have tried to make this into it is all so simple and belongs not to any faith or belief but to all human beings because it was there the moment the All brought our world into being.  It was present in everything because the All was that very thing.  We feel the presence of the deity, the spirit, the ghost, the holy of hollies.

Meditation is not an effort, but a flow.  Every moment has been spent in this way.  No method, simply like children slipping into the water.  We all actually know how.  It is so simple that it is hard. You try too hard.  Its more like falling in love.  It is like dying, like letting go, like falling; all of these things means letting go of old conceptual bounds and tethers in order to feel the immensity within. You wont get there I don't think worried over whether your foot is in the right place or if your chest is moving in the right way.  Its so much more fundamental than that.  And so the methods sell like crazy because people are so hungry for it but want it handed to them in a handy little four step method that will deliver it safely to their doorsteps, even if that isn't about to happen anytime soon. It is why my own words probably wont catch on anytime soon. They don't need to I don't think since its about being ready.

The infinite is here with you. Even as you are this rough creature, untried, uncertain, limited and faithless.  When you eliminate the things that divide you, its presence comes closer.  It dives into you, makes you its love, brings you into a sacred state of knowing.  What we once called the ordinary is rendered extraordinary as the scintillating wonder of the energy of the deity's love is like this.  We feel it as a fiery force with cold water jets shooting through it. We never thought heaven and earth could be joined in such primal ways. But it is all of this, and more of it and beyond our current knowing and awareness.  It exists most greatly beyond our conceptualizations of what is real and what is not real.  It lies beyond us beyond all form and conceptualization and resides pregnant in potential.  It rests like a vast wellspring waiting to be tapped.  We were meant to tap it here, beyond perfection and here on earth.....and when we do we fill this world with the memory of awakening and more inevitably follow suit.  The ALL awakens within itself.  Reminds itself.  Just as I am reminding you.  Whispering into the corners of your dreams, through the brighter realms of your familiar lands and the forgotten realms waiting for activation in your cellular memory and in your awareness.

©Stafford Artglass, Parker Stafford

We have reached a point now where it is clear that the old concepts are being exploded. Kundalini does not JUST rise.  It has been there always.  We ask what is the thing that makes it feel as though it is rising? And what is holding back such mighty rivers of spirit?  It does not move orderly but as is required which may mean it cleanses one place to jump far away to another.  It has its own intelligence.  We may feel posture does it, but belief in those things is what does it. Belief.  it lies at the root of all things.  It is the port through which all the programming for this world flows. If you believe it is impossible, guess what; it is. But once the heavy stones of your conception have been moved and you are rendered twice-born, such notions escape you like hungry foxes fleeing the den.  Your old world is lost and a new one is found....a world lying just beneath the thoughts and concepts and beliefs of the one you just spent a lifetime creating.  Peeling back the veil, the fineness of it is astounding.  It will erase all memory in its pure pulse.  Even my own awareness of myself as myself will go away and melt into the All perhaps, I suppose, only to re-experience itself as individual again.

Maybe if I told you that I know who has the keys, who holds the sacred scrolls, who has all the answers, perhaps you would awaken so much faster.  But it would be on a falsehood, for all the answers are available to all of us.  It is who we are, who It is, what the entire universe is.  Its not like it is a secret that can be kept for long.  Well, okay, here on earth it seems the secret can be kept for thousands of years.  Maybe it was because we wanted to see what forgetting was like as a collective.  Now, though, the circle has come full turn.  the clock is resetting itself.  A new program unfolds. A paradigm shift, a wrinkle undoing itself, revealing itself in the fine sacred moment as time shifts into its gray mistiness and is forgot. 

We will each come to it.  Over and over until it kneads and shapes and molds us and old things fall forgotten. 

Secret Dialogues

When awakening came along with it came....the epiphany moment.  That epiphany moment would become an extended period that might last for hours, days, perhaps even weeks.  This state was where I felt immersed in an accelerated sense of awareness.  I will tell you that I LIKE these states even though sometimes they have left me feeling a little frazzled around the edges. All of my central insights have come from these sessions in the silence. Most of the ones that came while I was working on the book Waking The Infinite were incorporated as a way to help explain the nature of reality and our roles here as co-creators.

Image © Stafford Artglass, Parker Stafford

Today as I worked in the yard I dropped into another of these reveries.  I was cutting the grass and coming up the hill and was watching very closely for things NOT to run over while mowing.  It began:

You do know that chakras are actually the basis of all energy systems, right?

What do you mean?

Here, let me show you:  if you know about the chakras, what is their most basic operation or underpinning?"  It does not wait for me to answer but continues "The chakra is actually part of a toroidal pattern that is common with all electromagnetic fields and reveals the presence of both the negative and positive fields in one.  ALL matter has these fields.  Every atom has it."

I was then shown how nonliving objects have these chakras, that this was not dependent on living material although with living material the energy is accelerated a good degree.  There is more organization, reliance on other parts for the whole, and most often more energy produced, used, and processed.

I thought this was for all living things.  I thought the chakra system existed only in living things.

the chakra system is more developed in living things, but the chakra system is not built on the concept of life but on energy.  As a result, it dips into energy fields, electrical activity and radiation and frequency.  I wont tell you that an atom has a seen-fold chakra system.  However, without atoms, you would not have chakras.  Each atom has its method of drawing in energy. An atom is NOT a static quanta of energy.  It appears to be set and stable but is in truth changing all the time.  It is more that an atom has the same potential energy all the time in the same way that a river has the same amount of water able to flow through it at any given time. Without this pulsation or movement of energy through it, the atom would cease to be.  All things are designed to be carrier or conduits for energy.  Even your atoms.  Especially your atoms!

Each chakra will have a positive and negative aspect.  One will draw inward and one will draw outward.  One will bring in energy while another will send out.  One side is positive and one side is negative.  One is masculine, the other feminine.  One active, one is receptive.  This sets up a torus or field around itself.  

Image © Stafford Artglass, Parker Stafford

There are boundless chakras, but the seven main ones are the ones most people know in peoples' bodies.  Your body is made up of minuscule chakras all through it.  If you want to know how many chakras you have look at your skin and observe each pore.  AT LEAST that many chakras do you have on your body and more deeper down.  These are much like how nerves or the vascular system is integrated into the body and are as numerous as the capillaries, veins and arteries and are also built in similar fashion (the seven main chakras are like the trunk of the arteries for example).  Everything brings in energy and sends it out.  All of life, even non-sentient, is alive in its own way.  It has to be.  The energy within all things is itself sentient or alive even if the material according or your science does not deem it alive.  It is nonetheless very much aware, just not with eyes or ears or skin to feel it. The universe is alive. 

Summer Reading List

This time of year is a big transition as I have the summer “off” from teaching and can devote more time to flower gardens, cleaning the pool, starting the garden, mowing grass and running my glass studio. There is less time to devote to a blog.  I have been writing and soaking up life and coming to new things, better things, ancient things.
What I’d like to do is to share with you some writing I have done on another blog that presaged the roll out of this one. It began as a much more personal space and has become much more public over time. It was more a conversation with myself and for sharing my own inner self with another who I could not be with.  Devotional writing as well as plumbing my depths and hers.   It’s not something that was written for everyone, so its personal, and yet perhaps in reflecting, it might inspire you to consider the things that are your own to ponder, roll around and see anew….So here is a little Summer Reading List for you to get your appetite for the different whetted just a bit…
For poetry about love and the divine masculine and feminine read this free verse:

An Open Book

When things feel like they are getting off track for you and you feel like you are just trying to keep up with the Joneses, consider reading
 Of Motes and Beams

To learn about how sound affects you and how tuning can have a subtle effect try this entry which I recommend for anyone wanting to dig into the science and psychology of sound
 A Conspiracy of Sound

For fun and novelty I offer you things that could not be, are part of the impossible, and yet they do exist even if they are a little problematic for science….
Our Ancient Past
An Ancient Forgotten Naval Power

So for now, I share those things with you because I have so much glass to make,  many flowers to plant and so much beauty to take in. I have this giant yard that needs tending (and you will get what I am saying when you read Of Motes and Beams).

Awakening

Awakening is like the dream you dream
so real
alive
full of magic
and life
wonder
and power.
As you awake,
as the world comes flooding back
you loose your grip on it
bit by bit
as you come back to your senses
and your senses tell you
the wonder was wonder
but not real
just a feeling
a marvelous dream
that transported you
to other worlds
which felt so real
yet your rational mind
says “not.”
Awakening is like this
except upon awakening
your senses do not slip down around you
but slip down away from you
as the inner master holds on
to that one slip of golden wonder
and does not let go of it
until it thickens
and builds
and grows into a flame
as the pages of waking
are turned to fire
and your life becomes
an epiphany
a dream
that does not end
but continues
endures
and carries you on its new wings
in waking
on earth
as in heaven.
This is the secret of awakening.
You can point to all the magical movements
and breathing exercises
but my heart knows that THIS
is the sacred nexus of the divine within
and it has far more to do with the dreams
of children
who dare to dream of other worlds
that get carried into this one.
If you want to taste awakening
then carry your dream wonder
into waking
and in waking
you will know
just what I mean.

In Love

What follows is a reblog from this writer.  I came across this piece while getting ready to log off and saw this piece at the bottom of the page under a search "love" for writings on Wordpress. I am including it here in the hopes that you find it as I did...

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I am in love.
This is more than thoughts, patterns, phone calls, and familiarity. This is different from clever inter-plays, practiced reactions, fear, and anger. This transcends schedules, date nights, and wedding dresses. This is another realm entirely, a higher vibration, a place of wonder.
This is a feeling experience. I feel it with my whole body.
My chest is full and open at the same time, alive with sparkling gold energy. This energy moves through me in twists and torrents, gorgeously illuminating me from the inside out. I follow it, and allow it to burst in beautiful explosions inside my heart, shoulders, hands, fingers.
My solar plexus is melting open, and I express myself perfectly when I speak. Love is on my lips, in my words, the way I kiss. My cheeks pulse and my scalp tingles. My tongue is sweet and lucid in my mouth. Everything I say has a sheen to it, the words perfectly placed.
I am in a state of wonder. I feel timeless, connected to everything. God is here, is my best friend, and is so happy I’m in love. My body moves with effortless grace. I am wide-eyed and innocent. Love has made me so.
Colors are brighter, and I see the life deep within all things. Magical sounds reverberate through my body- waves crashing, monkeys screeching, lemongrass frying, drums beating. The moon is full, the tides primal. I am in a world of fuchsia, mandarin, lush green. The jungles are sultry, and I know them intimately. The fruit trees bloom for me~ papaya, mango, banana. The moss is springy, the water cool, my skin singing as I slide into your arms.
My heart is full, open, and celebratory. The back of my heart, near my spine, tingles open. My ribs melt in love. I laugh and laugh. I trust so deeply, I become perfectly myself. This river of warmth and excitement streaming through my body softens my thighs, heats my cheeks, and creates wetness between my legs.
In communion, erotic innocence. Wonder. A feeling of being high up in the cosmos, a favorite of the gods, expanding the universe with each touch, each kiss.
We are divinity, embodied. Shiva and Shakti. Isis and Osiris. Timeless lovers in a pantheon of legends. Source Energy flows through us, lifting us, making us holy. We remember we are gods, and make love reverently. If only everyone could feel this feeling.
I write, and poems slide off my pen~
When you look at me with bedroom eyes
I feel like I’m underwater.
My lips part involuntarily
The blanket slides from my shoulder.
Conversations, electric. Fights, passionate. Body language, compelling, even to strangers.
There is such a free flow, it is effortless. Love is effortless. Perfection is effortless. I am aware I’m glowing, I am aware people are watching, and I inhabit this gift fully.
My cells are awake, tingling, dancing with each other. Laughter bubbles up from my belly. Tenderness is embodied, graceful. I have soft eyes, Buddha hands. The air in my lungs is lush, alive. I allow higher and higher frequencies of love to flow through me. I am an innocent, masterful creator.
This isn’t theory, conjecture, or philosophy. This is a felt experience, a profound journey into deeper and deeper dimensions of myself.
This is love.

Of Motes and Beams

The problem sometimes with ones own spiritual work is that we allow ourselves to get caught up in the work of others.  This is a trap that we can easily fall into and it has the effect of rendering our own path and work compromised.  It isn't that we can't work with others, no, its that when we seek to compare our path to another that we wind up getting in trouble. 

When we compare ourselves to another, we are no longer dealing with ourselves.  We look out across the patchwork of backyards and we see the Smiths and the Jone's and we begin the comparison process.  Everyone is different, everyone has their own challenges and lessons to learn.  When we start worrying over what the backyard of another looks like, we forget what it was we were involved in.  This becomes the wedge through which all kinds of things enter.  With such a strong reliance upon the ego, the sense of differentiation between "me" and "the" becomes distorted, exaggerated, and we lose sight of what it is we need to be attending to.  They eye of your heart is best served by keeping it on the prize, which is you. This isn't to say that you don't care about others, you can and should, but when you seek to judge others for that which rests in your own field of inexperience and lack, you become not unlike a Pharisee, which is a nice way to say "hypocrite."  The problem is that its so easy to do, and we all do it.  Learning the lesson of self love includes, I think, keeping our eyes on what matters most, which is ourselves.  The moment we begin to compare, we have a world of differences at our disposal.  The differences will always be there and they can serve to trip us up and get us tangled in what should probably best be kept in the past. 

Someone once said do not seek to point out the mote in your neighbors eye when you have a beam in your own.

We are all imperfect.  We are like balls of clay that we are kneading into more perfect form.  In awakening, the higher self serves as a kind of template, what Jesus called the Mother and the Father.  I know you may not be familiar with the Mother part, but old documents suggest quite strongly that this was what he was talking about and that he used these very terms in describing the Kingdom which is made up of two currents moving in the body, a source-point of higher consciousness, a more expanded sense of awareness that is what you are.  These two higher forms of awareness can serve as a perfect example for you.  It isn't anything that exists outside of you.  It isn't in your neighbors yard or in some far-flung country or ashram.  It is in you.  Its like you were given this marvelous kit with all the tools necessary to get things right within.  With all of our own self loathing and unhappiness about ourselves I know it can be easy to look and compare, but don't.  Take what you have been given as well as the accumulation of all the things that you yourself have created up to this point and say "I accept all of this and will begin working on it right now."  Then go into that silent garage of your soul, the temple of your highest holiest place, the lab of your own inner creation, or your ocean of being and begin doing the work.  Observe, feel, ask yourself the question, not your beighbor "what is it I most need to know right now, what must I attend to in this moment?"  If you are quiet enough, observant, and receptive, the answer will come.  And sometimes it will be pretty obvious.  Maybe the answer will be "quit looking over the neighbors fence" while at other times the answer will not be so cut and dried.  You might have to just let yourself FEEL without expectation. 

When you get to this place, you are so much more centered. Quiet and observant, you can better become aware of all the loops and memes that play through your being at any given time of the day.  This will further help to cultivate a deeper sense of awareness and a meditative state.  Life itself becomes a constant meditation, not a distraction.  You go from being reactive to proactive.  You go from slave to your feelings to a master of them.  How long this takes, I don't know.  I am not you.  Maybe it takes years. Maybe it takes lifetimes.  Maybe it can begin to be cultivated and put into practice within a few weeks, or even right now.  But right now is what you have.  the past is gone, the future keeps slipping one step ahead of you, so the NOW is the point of power for you where all change can take place.  Don't worry how long it will take.  Be like a child and be curious about all of it and don't worry about the time factor.  It will come when you are ready.  You aren't going to change any of that anyway, so letting something take you out of the present isn't going to be very productive I don't think. 

The other problem with looking over the backyard fence is that we see what we want to see.  We see through our own filters, our own lenses. Someone will see an old craggy plum tree and think "my goodness, that tree is so ugly it needs to be cut down" while the owner might say, "plum tree, I planted you when I first married my wife and I have had four children, lived in three homes, , had two different careers, and now all my children are grown and my wife has died and I am all alone in the autumn of my life, and here you are still bearing the most delicious fruit...." 

I have had some hard lessons in this area with people who could not or would not see things clearly that was in my own backyard.  I allowed myself to get caught up or hung up on what these very misguided people had to say, and instead of getting a chuckle out of it, I let it affect me.  I became too concerned how others viewed me, a kind of reverse form of the whole motes and beams idea, and yet it is all still very much the same thing.  Why on earth would I have let someone shake my confidence about how lovely my old craggy plum tree is?  I told myself that it was because it was the mother of my children doing this, so I had to correct the noise being generated.  "There are plenty of people looking to crucify and tear you down.  Why let them knock you off your game?" my inner voice would say.  So these kinds of things served as the focal point in my own work, which is to heal that part of me that might be hurt or affected by the harsh judging words of me by others.  "Stop looking over the fence and look at your own backyard," it cautioned.  You see, we all do this, so saying this is a reminder to me as much as it is to you.  Maybe moreso for me.  So you never can judge for yourself the worth or importance of something in a person's life. Of course you can, but then, you will most certainly lose sight of the very things that you need to work on, which is that beam stuck in your eye.