The Fire

This Fire
which burns through
vein and muscle bone and nerve
casts knowing glances into my marrow
and echos your beating heart
in trebled metaphors
and conjugated miracles
with syntax as brilliant as the star from which you hail. 

We say this is all mystery
but really
the mystery is in choice
such a small price to pay for love
and belonging....

When fire strikes to my core
it reaches out through all universes
as the only thing that quells it is that spreading fire
or your smiling glance
your knowing smile
your rich laughter
and presence
setting me afire
an echo perfectly placed
in my heart.
This, something I doubt anyone
but you and I could appreciate....

All of this burns through me
returning me to simplicity
marking me forever
changing me for all-ways
this smoke is a prayer
that all will return to ash
and brilliance
as fire burns that which could not help but be set aflame....

Your Day Is Your Teacher

Before I went through awakening, I will admit I was not as aware of this idea as I probably could have been.  I KNEW I created my own reality.  I did. But what I didn't do was to see just HOW MUCH I was really really creating it.  All of it.  Who I was, what I was, how I was arranged, what I felt...the energy coursing through my energetic veins was determining so many things!  I just wasn't aware how deep it went.  I wasn't as observant as I could be, I don't think.  I didn't realize just how deep all of this went.

When I woke up, I got a second chance at getting a good old wake-up slap on my head.  And it sunk down into me.  Deep.  The force of awakening woke me to a level of knowing that's hard to explain....as though perceptual abilities were not just sharpened, but bloomed....the sense of Gnosis, what the Greeks called knowing, moved in me.  And what was in me was in the world.  HOW I FELT about that world was the flux field that determined what was happening with me.

So when it came time for me to backtrack in my work, which I did, I found that this stirred a world of things in me that I thought I was DONE with.  See, we can fool ourselves all the time.  Awareness is huge for us, and we do A LOT to hide things from ourselves.  What we hide, we do not see, what we do not see, we do not work on.  It remains until we realize there is SOMETHING in us that is putting off this vibration in us to cause certain things to happen because HOW we are serves to determine HOW events go.  We ARE NOT victims here.  Source granted us FREEWILL.  So HUGE was this that Source WILL NOT get in the way of that freewill.....even if it means killing or hurting others.  EVEN then!  Holy moley, right?  H-H-H-HUGE.

So as I did this, it actually showed me upclose and personal all the work I had to refine.  To work on. I had a history with people who claimed to love me actually hurting me, a very specific kind of hurt, too.  I had been married before all of this, had kids and this person who was someone I shared a life with and who I thought I knew turned her back on some very important issues she gave lip service to but didn't actually follow through on.  Thing is, I KNEW she knew these were important things.  She was going back on some pretty critical things simply to hurt me.  Now for as petty as that may seem (to me and to my lawyer, both), this was shown in the bright lights of my awakening as something I had to work on.  Afterall, I was attracting this.  I was.  And when I thought maybe I had worked through it, I met another person who I realized was going to do something very similar, something that represented the merry-go-round nature of karma and how we really can't attract anything different from what we are deep down. The saving grace is that we can change, DO change at all different places in our lives.  So this work, I was doing.  Digging digging....And I was releasing SO MUCH JUNK!  And yet, this issue remained and as a result, I attracted based on that.  This is the relentlessness of how this all works.  You just can't bullshit your way around this stuff.  You can, sure, but Buddha once said there were three things you cannot hide; the sun, the moon, and the truth.  So, it is going to come around.  Watch the tree and observe what it produces.  Watch people.  You don't even need to take their word for it, just watch.  Over months, years, if need be.  What they say and how they act and what they produce as the fruit of their lives will reveal itself.  Eventually, the truth will be revealed.  Known.

So as this all took place, I saw the Dark Goddess in all her terrible presence.  And I knew how it was going to go.  Dark goddess?  What do I mean when I say this?  Within us there is both shadow and light.  We have the power, we have the choice to decide.  Its freewill.  Quite naturally, there are not just the gods and goddesses that are all light, but are also consumed by shadow, by their dark sides.  When we, in the awakened state experience such negativity, we experience the ascended darkness or the ascended light.  Again, what does that mean? it means we have the potential for both, and it is WE who decide.  And in that moment, even as my head and heart all knew that nothing good would come of this, that all of this was following a pattern, and even when I spoke this truth, the fact that my root chakra was not yet cleared, IT vibrated at an energetic frequency that was not convinced.  Now, I tell you, there is no worse place to be.....for everything in you says this is going to be bad because it turned out bad with another person before this, and clearly with the third ey and heart I could see this....but the root would not let go, could not.  Such is the nature of the unhealed lightbody.  But even then, in partial knowing, it was read by the Goddess as rejection, as abandonment, hurt, pain, and all she knew to do was to strike back.....to seek to harm and hurt.

So for one relationship I had a child turned against me.  this child wont pseak to me because he believes what his mother has told him.  Buys it hook line and sinker.  Besides, why would his mother lies to him about such things, right?   In another instance it was said in a puvlic forum that I was sexually abusing the students I taught at the school I work at.  It was said that I used my abilities to manipulate people into doing my will.  Further, I admitted to this Dark Goddess that I did this in order to get what I wanted.  It wasn't just that I did this, I did so wantonly, with design, with malice!  But this was not all.  if soeone else was percieved as somehow coming into a circle of influence, those people, too, would be subjected to the same kind of behavior, which was an attempt to punish, to hurt, and to demonize.  So hurt, so broken from the past that the past and present cannot be seen for what they are or as they are.  So clouded the vision, so bloodied the heart.  When we do this kind of thing we grow more karma, we do more harm not just to others, but to ourselves.  It is unfortunate, but out of such things I had to stop and just look at myself and ask why I had attracted this.  I didn't make them act this way, no, they chose this, but I sure attracted it and THAT was what I had to examine and really look at, because once I did that, I was able to see more clearly the things that remained to be healed.

 My chakra centers, nearly cleared, KNEW this would not go well. I was able to predict just how it would go......how she would seek to punish me, hurt me, even though what I was doing was true and fair......not an effort to hurt or harm, but to cast truth...to speak the truth about how this all was a replay of old hurts.....that we would simply be banging our heads against the wall.  I had already had this experience with a spouse a few years before, so you would think I'd have this one all worked out.  Well, we heal when we heal, and having someone do what my spouse did was particularly hard because it involved children, but the effect was the same pattern of retaliatory behavior in the following relationship, which is the Dark Goddess in her wrath.  She is the image of Kali, the angry one, the one who vents her rage.....but as humans, when we vent our rage it means people get hurt.  The powerful energy behind rage has to be very carefully wielded. 

As a result of this experience, the humbling effect has served to bring me back into myself, back to where I need to be to place my awareness on the parts of me not yet fully healed  What is interesting is that all of this is energetic in nature.  The energy pattern is not physical, so when it heals, IT can heal immediately and completely if we let it.  Whatever lingers can then go on to create disease in the body, so it pays to clear all of this up as these unhealed places represent lifeforce that is being choked off and used for all the wrong things.  So often we wind up experiencing diseases that are all part of a series or spectrum of energy effects that transfer effects through the body wince all of this is delicaely connected (energy feeds into the body!).

Some people say forgiveness is important in healing.  It is.  But what forgiveness does, in all truth, is that is clears the way perceptually for YOU to realize that the truth is that all along all of this hurt and pain and terrible junk that has been happening TO you is actually YOU creating situations in your life where this junk that is IN you plays out in FRONT of you.  So we say we are not aware of our fractures, and yet those fractures are right there IN your life.  The women in my past were all very good at putting on a face at the beginning of their day, but this face was the ace they thought they had to wear.  I too in a way was doing the same thing. I finally grew tired of the masks and when that happened, the masks began to fall away.  The layers of hurt and propriety fell away.  the bullshit fell away.

And this is the fear that we feel when we wake up. We fear death, we fear change, we fear it being different.  Knee-jerk.  Totally.  But once we DO change, its never so bad as we thought.

So let it go. Your higher self will lead you perfectly.  Think of it as being like a cosmic parent that is there helping to mold and shape your life and wont lead you to the wrong place.  Just to the places that you need to go to learn. And you will realize that none of this is being done to you.....this is happening for a reason, no exceptions, and it has to do with who you are and HOW that "are" puts out a vibration which magically attracts certain events and things into your life.  Want to change that equation?  Change yourself.  All the way down, truly, fully and honestly.  That is the answer.  And the work is what lies in front of you since the hardest part has already been done; the realization that there is more work to do!

Good luck and all my heart-felt blessings for you in this!

How You Can Make a Difference

Actions speak louder than words.  It is true, they do.  Or can.  However, that is not the whole story on how things come to be or are influenced.

At a certain stage in my awakening, I was really having a hard time.  I was struggling.  I couldn't let go of something, I don't know what exactly, but it was a slew of junk.  It all dropped away piece by piece over a pretty short period of time, but as I was in the midst of throes of the EXPERIENCE, things were hard.  Just just were and I felt backed into a corner and unable to find my way out.  It was tough!  Hard.  Scared, struggling, angry, feeling like my soul was in a vice, I felt like I was walking around wincing the whole time. It was during this time that my third eye began to aid me in my experience of guides in the etheric realms.

This guy showed up.  He was Asian.  He had this funny face.  I had seen it before, many many years before.  It had come while I had been driving many hours one night and there he was.  He was trying to show me how to empty my mind.  I was dumfounded how he was able to look at me and have no thoughts.  Only his presence was there.  Amazing.  And impossible!  Then he showed up again.  He looked like a dead ringer for a guy whose book I had read whose name was Taishen Deshimuru.  He was a zen monk and was a bit of a maverick in his day.  He died in the 1980's.  Anyway, the point is, this guy who looked like Taishen was there speaking to me.  I was down on myself and he asked me why I was having so  much trouble.  He explained that a template had been ordered, formed, and prepared for all of us here.  This self transformation process need not be so hard.  He explained that it was more like taking of one pair of shoes and slipping into the next.  I just needed to take one small step and this step would be for all humankind.  I was making all of this too hard.  My needing to make this hard was itself a belief system, a construct I had created based on how I thought things would go (well, they did....)  We each would bring up the collective vibration of the race as we each woke up and stepped into the new human that had been "prepared" for all of us to be.

 This template is being fashioned by the collective awareness of humans all the time and it is in a state of evolving all the time! We are, though, at a crossroads and change is taking place fast on the planet as some things get adjusted. 

So what you think, what you feel, it all makes a difference.  Don't feel bad if you aren't doing all that you think you should; your own thoughts and prayers are not ever lost.  They all have their effect. They do.  So when you wonder about where it all goes, why, it all goes into the whole.  Nothing is ever wasted or lost.  Our thoughts do have the power to change things and you just never know when a thought will be the thing that tip the scales!

Why Tantra Is So Important

When you awaken, you awaken to a world where nothing much is the same as it was.  Clearly, there is a channel within that is opened.  Thought energy is more than just your own private thoughts.  You come to realize that thoughts really DO have power.  And here we are on the planet, chattering away inside of ourselves, and its possible to hear all of this.  Your own thoughts aren't as private as you may have previously realized.  It isn't that people are snooping on you, no, because once you awaken, there just isn't the desire to such things.  It was like when I began seeing auras.  For a while it was interesting, novel even, but then I realized I was SEEING people....their private things being expressed in their aura. So when that happens, you have a new responsibility and you take it seriously.  But thought energy isn't just nothing.  From thought new creations come. The quality of thought counts.

So thought is itself energy.  We ourselves are made up of all kinds of sheaths or facets within us that all process energy in a different way.  We have maybe five basic bodies that bend the energy in certain ways the way that a prism bends light and breaks it into different colors (if you are into dividing us into such neat categories)....physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, etc., and so each of these will experience the same energy differently.  Each will be a facet or expression of what you are. At one place it will feel as exquisite sexual energy while in another place it will feel more sensual, less sexual.  In another place, it will feel so powerful as though you can do anything.  In another place within you, this energy might be like divine love, in another place it might illuminate and clarify your inner sight....there are so many ways that energy from the cosmos can be experienced!

One aspect of your energetic being is sexual energy.  Now we have a lot of weirdness surrounding this part of ourselves.  There is a huge amount of shame as a race on this count.  This shame that has remained unresolved has made us prisoners to old hurts and old karmic threads that have kept us on the merry-go-round of karma for lifetimes.  LIFETIMES. But sexual energy is one aspect of who you are, and it is easier to deal with the more you allow yourself to be healed. Once you are able to clear each vehicle (as the Hindus call it), as you clear each center that channels energy through you, you can begin to have a clearer and more peaceful existence.  You can also use each center for life in a way that brings you fulfillment instead of snags or problems.

What makes Tantra so important isn't that its about sex, its that it deals with sexual energy as a way to reach union with the divine.  See, the divine does not have the shame you have.  The universe has no problem meeting you and merging with you in any way you are willing to merge with it.  The vast consciousness that IT is simply has moved beyond shame a long time ago.  As a result of this, it seems perfectly capable of experiencing bliss and wonder no matter how we approach it.  the only thing missing is how WE react to the same thing.  Learning how to be without shame is important.  By this I do not mean to say that you are shameless and thus unstudied in your morality, no.  What I mean is that you are more like a child.  You return to a purer place within before all of the guilt and shame about your body, about who you are or how you are was put into place by you. When you do that, you experience whatever it is more directly, less encumbered.  When you do this sexually, you are dealing with a very powerful form of energy.  This energy can speed yourself along, but it is not for the feint of heart.  Using all of you is a beautiful thing in spiritual work.  It reaches into religion but without the dogma. Sexual energy, then, moves fast and is felt by others.  You need to be careful about how you direct it and use it.  As a result, your own mind and your own issues need to be healed and worked on so that the quality of your experience will continue to be more and more refined.

It is hard for some folks to know what remains.  What remains in you is what gets in the way with a direct experience of yourself and the divine.  What remains to be surrendered?  What is not in your highest?  It is hard to know what isn't in your highest always.....because sometimes your highest is a few steps ahead of where you are.....so this means that you have to be willing to accept what your higher self sends to you as signs, as directives, or as outcomes or events that can lead you to the next step in your path.   In time, with enough attention, the answers will come.  I know this may sound laissez- faire, but I promise you that this is an aspect of co-creation that will work if you allow it.  the secret is that you can make ANY technique work IF you believe in it enough.  If doing a series of incantations allows you to believe that something will come to pass, then by golly, it will!  That is the nature of belief!  Ask that you be shown.  And be patient. 

Keep at it. 

Sometimes you need to be ready to see before you can see. Let the universe pave the way for you.  You think you are this limited being in this small body when in truth you are one life looking out through this one body but you have many many many more bodies, lives, experiences beyond comprehension.  With time being an illusion, ALL of you is available NOW.  Your future selves, your God or Goddess self in its advanced state is available to you.....and its at your fingertips.  Accelerate yourself....and you will see.

So tantra isn't really about sex, but it is about sexual energy.  There is a very big difference, there.  Some feel the need to respond in a more typical way with tantric energy and release the energy.  However, it can also be used to elevate ones self.  You can use it to do things, create things, or to live a life that is devoted to love in a more subtle way.  There are countless ways to utilize the energy, and no one way better than another. But its not always about sexual union only.  Feeling sexual energy is not the same as being engaged sexually, and this energy when felt powerfully enough actually has the power to transform you.  This has been the aim of many followers, many monks, many priests and priestesses down through the ages.  It isn't the only one, of course, but it is one very valid way toward self transformation. 

I have found how love and sexual energy go hand in hand....for love is NOT sexual energy, but sexual energy is an expression of love, or CAN be if love is holding its hand.  Do you see?  Sexual energy is like a raw fire.  Now we can use that fire to burn down the house and barn or we can control it and manage that fire within the bounds of discipline and love and devotion.  By allowing yourself to be open to the All, you can experience something here on the planet with the divine that is simply not here with other humans yet.  Being able to FEEL something HERE on the planet is huge.  It is what I call Anchoring The Vibration.  Being able to anchor a vibration here is HUGE.  Really.  So by doing this kind of work, you aren't JUST doing it for yourself, you are also laying down a path that makes it easier for others to reach it.  You are setting up a frequency that will be easier for others to match or follow or find.

And I am just here reminding you that this is so.

So with tantra, you can find God-dess or the divine.  It is right in front of you.  Now breathe deep and just let it in.  Let it be.  realize and remember who you are.  You are more than just your life.  You re so much more.....now breathe it in and let the divine cradle and love you....

Allow and Observe

©Parker Stafford

Sit down for a few quiet minutes.  Give yourself permission to unhook, to not have all of your worldly tethers on and demanding your attention.  Instead of your life pulling at you, I want you to try and watch your life float on by.

So slow down.  Feel your life as like a river.  It is noisy up close, but you are going to get very quiet inside so that any noise is merely incidental.  It wont matter so much to you.  We all can have very noisy lives, and it can sometimes be a bit like street noise.  It is all lovely, but let it all drift into the background some.  Let the part of you that is Observer be that; observe.

So sit comfortably and calmly. Think about your life, but do not get caught up in it. You now have permission to look at all of it in the same way that you might watch the landscape move past you as you float in an inner-tube on a slow and lazy river.  No worries. You cant stop it, but you can watch it all happen.

Whatever it is that bothers you, the universe can take care of it and WILL take care of it if you just let it be.

So let it be.  Watch your life pass before you.  See your mother, your father, your brothers and sisters, your children, your coworkers, your friends and the whole wide world just slip on by you.  For a few moments just BE here and watch.  Observer. Be neutral.

And if your life is one big drama after another, try this; yes look at all that llvely drama you created.  It is such a mess, is it not?  Oh my goodness!  But you know, even though its a mess, I bet that if you let it be and start living differently, the mess will just take care of itself.  You just wont contrivute to its being a mess anymore.  Perfect.  Oh sure, you might have to dip your hands into the mess a little to finish it, but you would be surprised to know just how many things are already about as done as they could possibly be and would never be improved on by our sticking our hands back into it to try and make it better.

it doesn't mean that you don't care when you are being the Observer.  You are merely not being so reactive and being so engaged so that you can't see what is in front of you or have any sense of perspective.  Relax, breathe, and tell yourself that with the help of the universe, everything is going to be okay.  Even the stuff that seems messy now will sort itself out in time.

I tell myself this one a lot when I come across the harder things in my life.  I say this and keep saying it.  Each time things that were hard get a little bit easier.  Its not like running a fast race, but its worth it I think to no longer being so ruled by things.

So sit and take it all in.  This is your life.  All of it.  Now go live it!

Your Biggest Questions About Awakening

With the work on the book I realize that at any point anything can be changed, added, deleted....and it has me thinking; now is the time to get input if there ever is to be any!  Given that you know that the book Waking The Infinite is about my awakening experience, what are some of your own questions about it?  Is there something that didn't make sense to you about it, or that you needed clarity on?

What are your questions and ponderings about awakening?

Is there anything that does not make sense to you, or that you wonder about?

If there was something you most wanted to see in print about this subject, what would it be?

What are your questions about these things? 

Please feel free to comment!

~Parker

The Tantrics

What is often not understood is how sexuality can itself lead to salvation.  For lifetimes, for centuries, we have felt such shame surrounding this part of ourselves. And yet, like a great secret buried in what seem to be the most shameful parts of ourselves, lies an answer to what we are, who we are, and what we can become.  Here, sexuality in awakening can begin to clear a path quickly within the self and Pranamayakosha, the Light body so that lifetimes of old shame is sloughed off.  Karma slips away. It is like an epiphany when just one karmic knot slips away.  As the knots lessen the flow increases and what was once strong flow becomes a clearer flow.  What is an incredible desire and yearning grows into an incandescent fire that is both hot and cold at once.  The body is lit up for hours and hours, days, weeks, months at a time.  Slowly the self learns that its natural state is in bliss not in the seemingly grounding sense of being separate and singular.  With awakening to this great power residing within, one knows oneself as connected into all other things, a nodule on one rung of the great cosmic dna of the cosmos.  The flow of this energy within is also the flow of this energy in all things.  It is the force that connects and binds all things.  And it is orgasmic.  Beyond orgasmic.  To be able to allow its energy to flow within we learn surrender so deep there's nothing there to catch the current, nothing to limit it or impede it.  Anything that catches the current causes a great deal of turbulence and trouble.  This would be something brought about by maya. 

A spark of the divine is lit and burns, tended by the one who moves with it.  So hypnotic, so beautiful, so incredible, what was once sexual becomes the basis of worship.  A man's love, then, for a woman, moves from being mere interest or attraction to something so all pervading and consuming that it illuminates the opposites all through nature in brilliant relief.  These opposites become forces within the psyche that churn and move the old latent material of the self, spitting out old splinters, coughing up stones and bile and clarifying the body and soul even more.  The self becomes a channel, a pathway for the divine spark....the fuel comes from the universe and is without end.

For those who awaken to this depth of illumination something changes in them forever. Instead of sexual energy making them obsessed, they become saintly.  Holding this incandescence within in grace and silence is the greatest of grace, the most sublime of pursuits.  And for as incredible as all of this sounds, every single one who has been touched by this is as human and as down to earth as anyone else you might meet. Perhaps because of this, these can appreciate the need for getting hands dirty, for making food, for building fences, for mending paths and growing gardens.  Acceptance, surrender, and love, resides in the moment, as each moment serves a purpose.  A tantric is never bored.

The more one touches the divine, the greater the bliss.  The less one is able to know or observe a division between the worshiper and the worshipped. When in tantric practice a tantric is not just reading the Other's mind, s/he IS the others' mind.  Over vast distances, one may feel and know even more intimately than when in conjugal union with the other.  One's gaze becomes powerful as it can be as strong as ones desire to be near.  The beam of attention can be known as traveling as light travels into the body through the eye.  Currents of awareness become like extended sensory organisms, nerve endings that extend one's reach and knowing. A touch is an earthquake, a smile a summer breeze, a whisper the rolling of thunder. One becomes more than merely human and touches upon the capacities within the self to know and to become, to evolve, to embody this.  Tantra reveals the capacity of the self to know and to become.  One may be spellbound for days, resting in this union of two souls separated by miles or continents.  Some can be separated by death and still connect on the deepest of levels. When one soul looks into another, when both are aware of no duality existing between them and the infinite, the souls who touch in this way realize a point of sacredness, of worship, of deep devotional practice that abides moment by moment like a prayer upon ones lips.  Beyond obsession, it is  bhakti. 

The yoke is easy, the labor rewarding.  This path dissolves shame and returns one to the origin; the fabled garden of Eden.  No longer cast out, the way back is realized.  The division we have long felt is erased, god and goddess reside here in all things.  The love within is total.

I raise my hand and I feel Shiva raising his hand before Shakti; his presence moves all through her and a current of white energy flows through them both.  This, the sea of milk is churned by their mutual affection into a more refined material, the sacred ghee.  All of this, stories, clothing to drape over that which is not but that is known and felt and which fills the gap of each moment and glues everything together.  It is a great nothingness that is something, everything, a potential waiting to be. 
The sword of the soul shall in its own time shear from itself that which does not belong and call to itself all that serves the highest.  Until then, bliss turns and sways within us in countless nights and days as we each learn to anchor heaven to earth. 

The Great Wheel Is Coming Full Turn

When I was eighteen I had a spontaneous memory of a past life as a native American man (we weren't called Americans then) who was sitting having a vision of the Thunder Beings in the grassy meadows atop a hill in western California at a time when some of the first encounters with White Europeans were taking place.  The experience was extreme for me in that it was as though I had been placed into a culture completely foreign to me in some ways.  I felt familiar, yes, but it was hard to understand what was happening.  I was being told about the future, about a life when I would be reborn as a new person.  The being in the storm explained that I would know when all of these things would come to pass because I would remember the vision in this future life.  That future life is this life, now.  The being spoke of earth changes, about a need for the earth to cleans herself.  I was shown a form of cleansing enacted by the Thunder Bird, something that involved its merging with me in my body so that I became one with this bird.  The heavens or sky was connected to the earth by way of a thunderbolt. This merging of heaven and earth changed the energy of the earth.  The earth lit up with a supernaturally bright light; the light of the lightening bolt.  The earth was then cleansed.  I was told that the Great Wheel would come full turn in this day.  I had absolutely no idea what that meant.  I spent years reading up on native culture and customs and belief.  I found that I only discovered the tribe when I gave up looking.  I also found that the vision was itself a story about how, in our age, in OUR day, we would witness a fundamental shift in our world energetically and that we would see a return of the feminine in each of our lives.  This is itself the balance that the Hopi speak about, a balance that has been lost in the Western world, that has been systematically destroyed in the aboriginal cultures.  It may have been nearly wiped away, but it is not gone.  This ancient knowing and reverence for the Two-As-One remains.  And I am here to tell you, remind you, how important it is.

Its really simple, and yet, it has been forgotten and shoved under the rug for so long.

It is the return of the divine feminine.

The return of the divine feminine is something that will be on offer to all of us.  Her presence in each life, not just a woman’s life, will be potentially life changing.  Men are softening.  Women are noticing this.  Women are reclaiming their power, discovering their deep current of feminine energy and presence.  As we all do this, as we all soften and are changed by the presence of Her on the planet, we will continue to learn and see more through those eyes than ever before.  Not to worry; her presence does not make a man any less of a man. In fact, it makes a man far more sensitive to what a woman needs and how she feels.  Its just that as a collective, we are now ready for her after centuries and centuries of not having her all that present.  IN the warming days that face us, she will offer up new discoveries about what we are and what we can become.  She will have a humanizing effect upon us.  She already has.  We have a long way to go, but I tell you that this movement of the wheel is so strong that while you can resist, the most natural current will be to follow it.  It will be like fighting an undeniable current.  And she will teach you how to flow.

The presence of the divine feminine will teach you how to surrender, to allow, to receive, and to let go. She will be a presence whereby she can take any spiritual poison into her and transmute it through the power of her womb, through her natural ability to receive and treat all things in her own uniquely alchemical fashion.  For ages woman has often been forces to take poison into her womb and her heart, but the tables will turn and she will discover what she can do when she is in full possession of her powers individually an en masse.

The one experience with the divine feminine that I had most recently was how she moved down all around me and then said “let go.  Let all of it flow into me; this is what I am—a great engine of transmutation….just let go…” and in that moment, tears streaming down my face, I felt Her all around me, like this giant presence, a womb of the world and instead of holding on to this ancient poison in my soul, I let it go.  It streamed out of me and rippled out all through her.  It was as though it was nothing for her; snake bit turned to gnat bite.  I felt nothing but love.  Within my own heart I feel the dual current of kundalini and She resides within one of them.  She exists as the divine template, literally the feminine guru within.  I don’t need a teacher to tell me how she needs most to be, she dwells in me.  Touching another with Her in my touch reminds them without words of what they have been missing, craving.

She has been away for a very long time. She is gonna come back with a vengeance (but without vengeance).  How will it play out? What will it look like world wide? This, I cannot say.  But what I know is that it will help soften us.  What we do with it will be up to us.  Perhaps this is the universe’s way of planting a seed for us, amongst us.  Or it is us, yearning so much for this worldwide that She is returning.  The Mother of the World.  Certainly the Father as God has been locked up in that cloudy heaven for far too long!  I mean, who wouldn’t be an angry father god in a place like that!  Mother and Father deserve to be next to each other (I think it would be a lot more peaceful, too!).  So let’s give them some space in our own lives.  You have nothing to lose!

Pranamayakosha - The Lightbody

In my awakening,  I observed that after I had removed a good deal of material from my light body, things that are old blocks or unresolved emotional issues, I found that the energy which had gone from root to crown was going other places, was starting back at the root or near it only to go back up again. I wondered – what gives?  What little I DID read from the eastern information about kundalini all said the energy rises from root to crown and once there you have had the system swept clean.

Well hang on a moment. Not really. For me, it went up down and all around.  What is up with that?
If you know about awakenings and how entirely miraculous events wind up being, then you can very likely guess how easy it was for me to ask that question in my mind only to get an answer in short order without even going looking for it.  It is how these things go.

What I discovered was the concept in the Hindu tradition of something called the Light Body or the energy body, which was described as having etheric sheaths. It is called the Pranamayakosha  and was mentioned in the previous post.  This body is made up of five layers of nonphysical material and one layer of physical matter (which is the physical body).  These layers  are like layers of an onion. Nested into one another.  This explained a lot about what I was experiencing!  Being able to be present but not standing in the way of this energy and what it is doing has been the hallmark of my work in many ways. I might try to focus on some problem areas and I might congratulate myself on my progress, the truth is that an agency more than I was doing this. And good thing, too, because what comes after these clearings has been extremely helpful to me.  The notion or idea that the guru is inside of you has been literally true for me as there is a self that exists here that is me but seems to have a life beyond just this one focus.  Call it a cosmic parent, a higher self. from it, I can actually learn how to be, to grow, to become.  This is helpful to know how to be when there may not be good mentors available.

Learning to trust this force alive in you, which is you and is the universe, will go a long way in bringing you peace and contentment.  You are in good hands. That kind of perspective is very good to feel wrapped all around you. Now, the universe is free to conspire to help you the most and in the best of ways.

Its Afoot...

Today is a gift.  Another day that I get to spend working on my book.  I am taking a break from writing in order to write. I just finished a section that had to do with larger effects across the Collective Consciousness that are happening currently.  And it is exciting.

I can remember those early days of awakening where I looked out through new windows, a returned sense of perception. I sensed I could feel the collective awareness, knew I was doing this now, and in sensing it, could feel, like a pulse, what was moving in the Collective Awareness.  I had never heard of anyone sensing in this way so I kept quiet about it for a while except for my closest of friends like Alison who has been experiencing this since she was young.  About six months ago while visiting my grandmother I listened to an interview with U.G. Krishnamurti when I had little to do in the house where I was staying.  Krishnamurti was describing the same thing I had experienced and said how we awaken to this state, less of just the individual and more of the Collective Consciousness. “Yes, yes!” I thought, “like shifting gears from one singular focus to a much larger focus which now makes up the whole of my experience now….”

What I experienced in those early days was a very clear awareness that something was afoot!  It was!  All these beings, people, all awakening!  I could feel them like stars shimmering against the dark coat of night….each pulsation having its effect on the whole.  A giant webwork, a network of being that was becoming conscious at this level!  What I felt within this was how the Collective felt “pregnant” with awakening, that the incident of awakening would expand.  You could just FEEL it.  It wasn’t rocket science, it wasn’t something hard to get at, at least I didn’t think so.  As I observed it seemed that more and more younger people were waking up all in a more spontaneous way, or with the barest of triggers.  What I feel now is a feeling of something rolling out, unfolding.  In some ways, I have focused much more on my own process, on me, instead of looking out into the Collective.  I think at the time this new feeling felt novel so I spent a lot of time just poking it and feeling around inside of it like some new skin.  I know, that probably sounded weird.  At least it isn’t an old bear skin or something…

Something is being birthed.

After about two years of experiencing kundalini, I had this feeling like there was something more, and that some of the ideas that people were saying about soul connections, twin souls, just didn’t make sense to me anymore.  The idea that kundalini yoga being the only way to wake up was obviously proven incorrect since I had done so without it or without any discernible practice.  I mean, yes, I had my own form of meditation which I had used for years, but I never read up on it, I never followed anyone’s method or technique.  I was a do-it-yourselfer;  DIY kundalini!   And then kundalini shifted into a whole new gear, ripping me to shreds pretty much (or so it felt—I was actually just resisting it…that happens when you resist the waves instead of surf them!).  Tsunami waves broke apart the old me and left the core of me on the beach to decide what was next.  As I struggled through this portion of the process I was visited by someone I call “my zen guy” and who wound up looking like an actual zen master named Taishen Deshimuru.  I mention it because of just how similar he appeared, although the living Taishen died about two decades ago….This was what I was writing about in my book just a few moments ago….

But anyway…..zen guy.  I was feeling this hard spot inside of me and it caused me sadness and upset.  He came to me and sat down to my side asked me “Why do you struggle?  Don’t you know that all of this is happening just as it should?  Don’t you realize that all of the monks and followers and aspirants all through the ages have each unwittingly had their effect by helping to create what is here now?  Each devotional prayer has helped to shape this template and now it is ready for you and all of your kind to simply step into it.  This is not a crevass to jump.  It is like stepping outside.  It is one small step.  You only need to step into it to inhabit it, to be it. “  After he said that, it seemed such a simple thing; like all of this was about stepping out of an old suit of clothes into one that fit  better.  Thus began my thinking in terms of the Collective not just as something I felt but that was now a tangible part of life experience.  On the one hand, it all seemed so big and formidable, but on the other, it seemed to simple.  We get to choose whether we want it easy or hard, since we are creating it.   We can, in the words of someone I recently read — we can “unfuck the world.”  I know perhaps it sounds  bit indelicate, but this is what is happening.  We are loosening the threads that bind us and freeing ourselves…..person by person.  Can you feel the sweet air of freedom?

Now, back to writing!

The Greatest Love

Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.
― Hafiz

Secret Dailogues II

The world is alive.  All of it. 

I know....I can feel it, yes, what can you tell me about it?

The very energy that holds everything together, that keeps everything so ordered seems to be just this static kind of energy.  Many on your planet see it as JUST energy.  But that energy is itself a multifaceted expression of a myriad of other energies that make up the entirety of existence.  All energy is conscious even if you do not have a way to measure this.  The level of complexity is truly mind boggling.  To glimpse it is to appreciate the great work that was made to create everything that you know....

How did things get to a place where they were created?

The idea of the big bang or the burst of creation comes close, but in truth, the moment of creation never really happened, not in the way you think of it.  Instead, it is more as though the creation unfolded as all of our own awareness unfolded or became increasingly more and more aware.  The very pulse of being that is the Creator chose to reside within all things but it also chose freewill, so while the creator is there, it is also silent and watches.  It observes everything.  This is why it is said that it knows of every sparrow that falls from the sky.  Instead of directing creation, it gave freedom, freewill.  It knew that if it held on to individuality as its own, the creation could stagnate into madness.  In a very real way, the creation was thus an idea, an idea with such close ties to pure essential creativity that it bore the means to recreate itself and become far more than what the creator could itself even conceive, or believe, was possible.  The arrangement worked out very well, for the creator was increased by this in incredible ways.  Living within all things silently, it was increased as each increase took place.  It grew right along with creation.  Thus the nature of creativity is completely open-ended and without limit. 

The creation was itself a pulse of awareness that took up shop inside of all things.  The idea that matter is dead or not conscious is entirely without merit.  You simply have not been able to view with the right set of eyes to see into the atom and realize that it is conscious in its own way, that there is a current of consciousness and presence which is exactly what is animating the atom or any other things for that matter.  It isn't that this process is magical, it is in truth entirely supported by fact and natural laws.  But you do not know all of these laws and how they work.  Your planet is trying, but there is a lot more yet to understand or grasp.  Science is fast reaching the point where it will face the irrefutable evidence that nothing is by accident and that there is an underlying force that is conscious and in its own way, aware. 

This awareness has the power to animate matter.  All of this, though, goes forward according to a set of rules or design requirements, for lack of a better word.  If you are stuck in the materialistic model which is most widely held at the moment on your planet, then you are stuck looking at dead matter and where the entry point is for life.  Only then can life be a random series of events entirely by chance that brought about the creation of some simple form of life.  This is most often explained in a telling way.  it is most often suggested that lightening, when mixed with certain chemistry, that life is formed. Forget, though, that this would then place life creation entirely within the hands of mere mortals.  A flash of lightening.  Sounds telling; I can say that there is indeed a flash of something, but it comes from within instead of merely through this seemingly dead matter your scientists see or believe is all there is.

All of this puts experiencing aspects of the creation within your own grasp here and now.  There is no device currently able to capture the entirety of the creative pulse, although there are devices that can measure the results of that force such as life force and the energies that arise from life force being present.  Your own consciousness is uniquely suited to see into this realm of energy and become the ultimate telescope or microscope.  All of this is entirely possible and will require individuals who can set aside old notions of what an acceptable apparatus is for viewing the world.  That time is fast approaching and you can now observe this seemingly invisible world which is all around you right now. You can glimpse it in your own life and the lives of others.  You can also see how people block the energy and how some allow it.  These abilities are entirely within the realm of your inner senses right now and have been used for millions of years by you and by cousins of the human race. 

Doing this, though, requires you to feel and to not doubt what you feel.  You are yourself just as much a product of this creation as anything else, so within you is the means to relate to all of this at a deep root level.  Don't be afraid to do it because it can help bring you to new levels of fulfillment and challenge on a collective and individual level.  

So is all of this a projection of consciousness?

Ask what is real.  Ask yourself this and ponder it, feel deep into it.  What is real?  What is the stuff of reality?  How did it get here?  If it comes from consciousness, then how does that come to be?  Is it illusory?  And if so, then why is that so?  What purpose does it serve?  The answer is that it serves many  purposes.  Consciousness is turning itself inside out and making itself into myriad things...endless forms and things.  They all seem entirely real.  They are.  They are a creation.  Unlike illusions, a creation has a purpose beyond merely teaching you something.  A creation has a life of its own, too.  This, you see, is how the vast profusion took place in reality and is a stamp of all other forms of life....a drive to complete masterworks.  There are of course levels and layers to all of this.  Orders of magnitude.  Some part of you agrees to fall asleep and dream this, and for a time, this is all that is real.  Until you awaken.  As you do, you remember what you were before all of this started.  So what is the point?  The point is to ask the question.  The answer will always be there for you, supporting you unquestionably.  But the question is what nags and eats and grasps you.  Here is where creation becomes something more than was bargained for....even for an all-seeing Creator or All That Is (especially that!) !

A Recipe For Creative Juiciness

I will admit that like my spiritual journey, my journey through the creative has been studied, considered, and lived for many decades now. I have pondered long the nature of creativity and I have been a careful firsthand observer of it.  Over the years I have had pieces of the puzzle,  I knew deep down that there was a way to help make creativity FLOW instead of merely flash for a few short seconds.

When I awoke many new  pieces of the puzzle came into view.  When the bliss field emerged as a part of my experience more as a steady state  experience I realized that what we call the human orgasm is part of a larger spectrum of bliss energy that is wildly creative and that once we awaken and can properly ride this bliss wave without falling off of it or needing to bleed it away through sexual union (this doesn’t happen in awakening, but that is itself another blog entry), this same baseline energy can be used in the same way that the flow of energy in a river is used as long as the water flows.  What I am saying is that in awakening energy that is orgasmic in nature flows through every corner of your being, the proverbial genie in the bottle being released and bathing the entire body in the rich nourishing flow of what the Hindus call prana. It is the very locus of ecstasy, of expansive states of consciousness, of the very essence of self transformation and of intense, wild and wonderful creativity.   Its just that in our unawakened experience that we only see this high level energy as expressed through the orgasm as being the only way to experience such high levels of energy, that we can become biased as to what is or is not possible.  When you awaken, you can open up the floodgates to inspiration.  Ask anyone who has gone through this experience.  I know people who began writing music, writing poetry,  designing clothing, artwork, etc.  In my case it fueled a whole new direction for my business which was a hot glass production studio.  I wrote short stories, children stories, music, poetry, and began a journal that turned into a book several hundred pages later.  It has also helped to illuminate the nature of creativity as being essentially an intimate encounter with the two “opposite” forces within the body, within the self and soul that we call yin and yang.

The elusiveness of the creative state is really not elusive at all once you understand how it works. We have allowed ourselves to become alienated from a fundamental instinct or way of being that is native to who and what we are.  We are operating with only half engines on full.  We can in truth live in a constant state of inspiration as the next dimension of experience unfolds in experience. There is a way  for the creative to flow unhindered. It involves the two seemingly opposite aspects of your being reaching  unity within you.  When these two forces come together, some very interesting thing happen. I have experienced ongoing creative energy flow continuously for years at a time. The nature of creativity means every corner of human endeavor is littered with creativity.  Its not that art is the place where we feel creative, it is that human experience rich and rewarding moments of creativity in every single facet of experience.  We ARE creativity.  It is in our blood bones and nervous system and souls.

When you understand the nature of creativity, it becomes much easier.  To learn more about this, read about it in my upcoming book Waking The Infinite.
 



In it, I go into the relationship that both the yin and yang energies have as purely etheric and nonphysical manifestations of cosmic consciousness and how the physical body then is designed to be a perfect biological mechanism for the expression and conveyance of that energy physically.  I also explain how the etheric or pranic current moves through the body and how it intersects with the nervous system, informs it, modifies and enriches it once kundalini is awakened in a more or less conscious way.  I also show how the two brains that we possess themselves are mirrors of this cosmic couple and how we can in a very practical way, learn how to marry them in order to discover that moment when the two explode in that moment of genesis, the moment of inspiration.  I further explain that it is possible to actually LIVE in a constant state of inspiration and what effects or benefits that this has. This is nothing short of learning how to ride a wave of bliss and wonder that these two energetic currents create when the consciousness of the individual is able to focus the energy in the arena of the conscious self.  Learning this is about learning the correct type of balance of feeling necessary to generate the physical chemistry needed to support the etheric or nonphysical state that those who are interested in awakenings seek to do for themselves and for the race as a whole.

These energies are all around us all the time.  They have always been and shall always be.  In awakening we make a lot about how we awakened, that the energy “rose” in us.  What “rose” in truth, was our own awareness of a universe that was, right out of the gate of creation, awake and aware with this vibrant boundless energy.  The truth is, it has the power to change your life tremendously and for the better if you are engaged enough to recognize what it is that seems to stand in the way of your realizing this state.

So creativity will play a role in the book simply because as an artist I recognize that the power of awakening is the same power as the flash of inspiration.  The sad thing is that those (including myself who am a visual artist)  in the arts call it the " flash" instead of the steady state flow or the dwelling place or something else that would suggest that the experience is continuous.  What do you think the flash of inspiration stretched out into a daily experience would feel like?  How do you think such an experience would change your world?  (the answer, at least for me, is "radically") The fact remains, it just isn’t.  We still are beings that find this part of our experience to be something of a mystery.  It need not be.  By learning how to turn this faucet on you can learn how to bring fulfillment in your own life as well as inviting in the force that can dismantle lifetimes of dysfunction and trauma and hurt from your light body.  And if you didn’t know already, the light body records ever single thing that ever happens to you, at least of an energetic and emotional nature.  We are fast realizing that while the brain may be the locus of recording memories, it may in fact be more of a biological switching system for nonlocal as well as locally recorded or imprinted experiences which we call memories.  The realization is fast upon us, though, that the body itself records past emotional impacts, and by learning how to erase those impacts from our energy memory, we actually free up the energy system of the physical and etheric bodies to operate in a way that is far more optimal, efficient, healthy, and clear.  When awakening hits most people, they are bowled over by the experience and are in wonderment over the power of the experience.  And yet, in time, people who learn how to move through their awakenings in a successful and fulfilling way find that this same intensity is itself more a steady-state experience that is the new way of being for humans.  What is on offer for us is a truly incredible way to be and to feel every moment of the day.  To get there is the “work” that so many talk about, which in truth is merely a surrender of those patterns, beliefs, and old feelings that stand in the way of a clearer flow of the cosmic in your seemingly tiny frame here on Gaia…..which is herself a speck in a sea of specks.  And yet, even on the micro-scale, the atomic scale, everything still vibrates with knowing.  This knowing may be beyond science at the moment, but everything in our world is alive.  It may not be what science call sentient life, but it is certainly what the ancients observed is part of a universe that lives and breaths in its own way.  When you consider that energy is conscious, the whole universe, bound together by energetic forces (an atom is mostly energy, not matter), then you can perhaps begin to appreciate the impact that this has.