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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The Problem With Sublimation

Sublimation is  both concept and practice whereby the  fluids related to sexual operation, namely seminal and cervical fluid, are said to rise up through the spinal column into the brain where they  nourish the brain and higher energy centers, namely the crown chakra.  This method, it is claimed, is a form of alchemy, a transmutation of bodily fluids into prana.  The only problem with how it is thus described is that this process is itself a biological impossibility.  Anyone who has a grasp on biology can tell you that the fluid from our sexual organs do not cross into the spinal column to go upward into the brain.  This is due to what is famously called the blood-brain barrier, and it serves some important functions (namely keeping things like seminal fluid and other fluids that ARE part of the blood system and processed by various organs such as the kidneys and the liver) out of the brain and nervous system.  This notion has arisen as a result of how the sensation feels when one is actively sublimating.  It is a vivid feeling of pressure which rises upwards along the spinal column.  Yet, there are those who express an interest in pursuing an understanding of kundalini from a scientific perspective who continue to cleave to this notion that somehow these fluids co-mingle in the way that they are felt to do.  The creation of this model for understanding predates modern medicine and scientific models from the last hundred years, so it was very probably an effort to describe the phenomenon based on feeling alone instead of anything empirical.

In his book,  The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius, Gopi Krishna states the prevailing wisdom of his time concerning sublimation in this way:
"It is sufficient to mention here that during the whole course of this (kundalini) transformation, in addition to the blood and other fuels present in the body, every particle of powerful reproductive fluid in the system is sucked up through the spinal canal to irrigate and feed the various nerve junctions and the brain. This entirely biological operation is carried out in such an unmistakeable way that even a novice in physiology cannot fail to notice it. The semen in men is now produced in such abundance that a tiny stream rises day and night through the spine into the cranium to provide the richest and the purest food for the now heavily overworked brain cells. In women, the sexual energy and secretions involved in erotics are used as the fuel. This is a perfect example of the forethought and ingenuity of nature to keep the body equipped with all the necessities to make the completion of the evolutionary process, normally needing eons to accomplish, possible in the short span of one life."
My perspective is that as long as we use models that do not reflect reality, we will tend to misunderstand in a more precise way what is happening to us.  Ironically, the Indians and the Chinese were excellent observers of energetic phenomenon who were able to map out with great detail the channels that run through the nonphyiscal energetic matrix called the subtle body, the naddis and meridians, to a great level of specificity.  All of this was a masterstroke of accumulating a knowledge base for something that could not be touched, or seen, with our physical eyes, or monitored by physical devices.  And yet, we have this rather odd idea still circulating about how cervical fluid and seminal fluid are transmuted into prana through a physical channel which is simply not possible.  It is curious and it continues to be repeated.  Perhaps this is because of how the etheric body interfaces with the nervous system, that we get the sensation of something rising upwards in this way.  This is an example of how, lacking sufficient understanding, we as humans can sometimes come up with explanations that are less about what actually happens physiologically as it does nonphysically.  This is a distinction that is important if we are to learn how to determine the real forces at work when it comes to the action of sublimation.  After all, sublimation is itself a very important strategy or method for working through the issues that confront the individual when awakening becomes a presence in your life.  To better understand what is actually happening, I am going to offer to you some careful observations that I have made in my own life and offer them up to you for consideration, all in the hopes of forwarding understanding of this most important of phenomena.

The Brain Interprets

What I do know from my own observation over many years is that if the brain ever receives input from a source outside of the five senses, its tendency is to place that sensory input into a place that makes sense. This has been the result also of speaking with physiological psychologists who have all explained that this sort of things happens all the time.  There is referred pain as well as phantom sensations and what can only be considered an interpretation of information.  Let me explain by way of another example.

An excellent example for how the brain interprets  phenomenon that does not directly exist, is by observing what happens when a sensitive sees a human aura.  This energy, which they eyes cannot see, is still picked up by the person reading the aura.  The simple fact is that the eyes simply cannot detect the particular wavelength of energy which constitutes the human aura.  And yet, there are many individuals who claim to see them.  Being someone who reads auras himself, I have noted that what I in truth do when I see an aura is to feel it first.  When I observe very closely to what happens when I "tune in" is that I am feeling the aura with my body, with my own energy field which interacts or reads the energy directly.  This information is then translated by the brain as something akin to a phantom image which can be deciphered by me in a way that makes sense.

When I first came across this idea that we do not actually see the aura, I rebelled against it initially, but as my own mind came to accept the logic behind it, I ceased for an entire year, seeing auras.  In that time I came to peace with the idea that my brain may have been merely translating the information in the only way that it could.  After that, I began seeing them again.  I never stopped feeling them throughout this period of time, however.  There is a basis for our sensing these weak electromagnetic fields in living creatures, and we find them in the animal kingdom, most notably among those animals living in our oceans.  Similar kinds of sensory abilities are observed in other animals who have been observed as being sensitive to the weak electrical signals and electromagnetic fields around living creatures, most notably  some fish and sharks.  Some sharks have been observed, such as the Great White, to hone in on prey using a sense that is sensitive to electrical currents.  Before a shark goes in for the kill they have an opaque inner lid that comes over the eye to protect it, rendering the shark temporarily blind for the last few feet of its attack on prey.  It is this sense, marine biologists have discovered, that allows them to continue to track and locate their prey.(1)  Bolstering this observation is the fact that sharks will often chew wildly on metallic objects near boats when food is put out to attract them for study. They will often miss the food and go for metallic objects in stead, chewing wildly on them. This was a behavior that biologists observed over many years and were for a long time puzzled by it, with many surmising that it was due to a shark simply being hungry and being blind as they went in for the kill.  What biologists noted, however, was that this was a fairly consistent behavior, and sharks were often seen going for metal objects that were a good bit further away from the food being left for them to eat.   Metals emit a strong electrical current in sea water, an electrical current that would be strongest than living or recently living flesh.  Monotremes, most notably the platypus, are also known to have similar abilities.(2)  This is a sense that is called electroreception, and to learn more about it you can read this article to find out more.

There are other examples of nonphysical senses that have a physical compliment, such as healers using Reiki, a form of energy healing, to sense changes in energy as hot and cold.(3)   Healers who are sending energy to clients have reported that their hands felt as though they get hot.  While some reiki effects do seem to impact the physical body through increased blood flow in the hands, there are many effects noted that do not appear to be directly related to actual physical heat.  Some feel pressure, or lack of pressure while others will feel cold.  Again, as I have sensed in my own experience, there is something I am picking up on as it relates to this subtle energy (which kundalini is said to be) which is often expressed as a kind of sensation that begins first within as a feeling that is nonphysical and "rises" to the level of a full blown physical reaction.  It may be that the brain simply does not have a good way to deal with the idea of energy being sense directly, and so instead seeks to interpret in a way that makes sense to it.  Again, the brain is known to interpret what it may be receiving through the "ether channels" of the light body or pranamayakosha.

It is extremely common in early awakening experiences for individuals to feel very real physical pain that is the result of kundalini becoming active.  Read any account or go through the list of awakening symptoms and this phenomenon is regularly cited as being connected with kundalini.  This is, though, a nonphysical energy streaming into our awareness, if our current understanding of the phenomenon is to be understood correctly.  As doctors will most often point out to their pained clients, there is no observable reason for the pain.  There are many stories of people who have awakened going to their doctors to find the cause of their painful dilemma, only to be sent home.  As awakening continues to unfold, the force of kundalini most often tends to assist in releasing blocks within the energy body that also has the result of reducing this pain.  In my experience, this pain was itself a form of extreme tension that was held so strongly by the body or reacted to by the body so that it felt like pain. Upon careful observation, in every case, the pain emerged from a state of emotional or psychological discomfort.  The release of the pain always came from an ability to surrender, to let go, to engage in what can be considered a non-rational method for dealing with a problem involving buried or latent trauma, pain, or old hurt.

Very recently I was reminded of how difficult this process was as I went through something poorly described as "ego death" by a reader of Waking The Infinite. It is interesting how often people in this situation describe it as feeling as though their bodies are being squeezed in a vice.  I experienced this same kind of pain in varying levels and in various places in my body as a sensation that was akin to having the bed of my fingernail being pressed very hard until it hurt.  This pain would persist for months until I was able by hook or crook, to release the old pent up block of material, after which the pain would transform into a radiant sense of joy and bliss.  I observed this same condition play out  many dozens of times over the course of a few years where the most difficult sensations of pain were released.  There are many other people who also describe these blocks in the same way, which is an exaggerated form of tension which begins to take on the sensation of pain.

My sense is that many people simply have a block when it comes to considering that something nonphysical could feel so physical.  It is my suspicion that when faced with such vividly charged emotional energy that we do the same thing that is done when there is no direct physical sense available to express a deeper truth that is taking place within the individual.  This is a place that is perhaps difficult for some people to entertain because it moves away from the physical senses, and we are anything if not overly tuned to the traditional five senses as the arbiters of our experience here on earth.  But just as kundalini will often reveal, there is much more than just the five physical senses.  But how we become aware of these nonphysical senses may create something of a challenge for some people when faced with them since they stream into awareness along untested or unknown pathways.  It may also help to explain why we wind up with ideas that seem to straddle the anything-goes world of energy with the more orderly realm of the physical.  As energy moves upwards along the charged and electrically capable spinal column, there is an accompanying sense of SOMETHING happening as the pitch or vibration of the energy is changed.  This becomes a near-universal sense of pressure, a pressure that feels like a fluid is moving.  It is my consideration that we begin thinking anew about these phenomenon and take a page from the book of the physiological psychologists who know that when faced with something outside the physical senses, we will most often have a brain that will do its level best and interpret this very real phenomenon for us.  It is just as likely that the pressure that is felt is the effect of the energy actually in the process of changing pitch or vibration as it then is passed on to a chakra cventer in the body that is able to sense it more clearly.  What was once a raw root energy and perhaps highly sexual is changed, and this change results in a feeling of upward pressure as the vibration shifts from a low to higher vibration.  We all seem to sense or know that the vibration of the root chakra is very different from the heart chakra and what the heart can feel is different from what the root can feel.  What happens when you transmute an energy in the root?  We all know that energy does not go away, it simply changes form.  In this case, we are the energetic vehicles responsible for the change, for the transmutation taking place.

When my third eye first activated in what was one of the more dramatic effects of an early stage of kundalini rising, I experienced a sensation that at the time I could not discern as being anything except physical, although I now know there was no possible way that it was.  In this particular experience, as I lay in bed, I felt what I knew to be someone grasping the temples of my forehead and squeezing my head for all their might. This was a very real sensation of physical pressure on my skin and muscle groups along the side of my forehead (these are the muscles that you can feel tensing when you chew, but are located well above the jaw into the side of the forehead)  At the time I imagined that some invisible guide in spirit was by my bedside doing this in order to achieve some effect.  This sensation was so vivid that I did not consider at the time that it may have had a different origin, which was as simple as a chakra opening in a dramatic way.  This happened not just once but a number of times until my entire forehead was engulfed in a series of bands of pressure that radiated out from the third eye center all the way to the back of my head. It was only after I placed my entire focus on my third eye in my inner vision that my inner sensory field exploded into a vision of a fiery eye rising up into my field of inner vision as the eye flashed from a brilliant blue to green.  You can see, though, how I could have easily thought that it MUST have been a nonphysical presence somehow acting on the physical in some unknown impossible way.  After all, how could it be otherwise?  There was no one else but me there!  What is so interesting is that one of the foremost awakening symptoms prior to full rising of kundalini is a third eye activation that results in a near-universal sensation of pressure along the third eye chakra that can often spread, in bands, all the way around the forehead to the back of the head.  And yet, for as vivid as this pressure is felt by those who go through awakening, there is simply no actual physical means by which this sensation could have been produced.  Again,  ideas like sublimation emerge due to how the phenomenon feels to us rather than stepping back and observing more closely in order to get at the underlying issue.  And for that matter, it may be difficult for some to do this.  It may be impossible for some, and so we wind up with something that sounds more like an urban myth than anything that seems logical in its explanation.  Call me pedantic, but if we are to understand kundalini in a "scientific" way as some seek to suggest they are involved in, then finding some models that fit known biological activity will need to be found.  I am just as interested in observing this phenomenon scientifically as the next person since I too have had direct experience with kundalini and would like to see some solid models developed that can help forward our current understanding.

I think that what is most likely is that the brain is an amazing device for handling an immense amount of data, but at the end of the day, it is known to interpret.  Does this interpretation fit what is possible physically?  We are surely experiencing something, yes, and it seems that our very crafty brains are doing their best to put together something that will help to communicate that something is moving upward somehow.  It may be just as likely that all of this is a sensory analog, an attempt to define something that simply cannot be sensed through our physical senses.  If so, it helps to illuminate who and what we are and also helps to guide us in understanding how we can perceive a host of phenomenon that simply isn't there in the usual understanding.  Either way, it helps to expand our knowledge of ourselves as well as what we think constitutes reality.  This idea is itself not foreign at all in the area of those who awaken as so much of the old literature about awakening is centered on undoing the "illusion" that is physical reality.  If physical reality is itself something that we can agree is illusory, then why not something as simple as how the brain deals with sensory stimuli that is coming in through less than physical channels?

How far fetched is it that the nervous system itself has the capability of reading the bleed-throughs of this electrical phenomenon called kundalini through its sheath of insulative myaline in the same way that an electrical wire running from a speaker to an amplifier can sometimes pick up signals from the environment outside it?  And indeed, could it be that all phenomenon like mind reading, reading auras and all the rest, comes from a hitherto unknown capacity for the nervous system to pick up on these "stray" outer signals which are not part of the physiology as modern medicine has suggested exists?   For if that is possible, then it is just as possible that something like changing vibrational energy in the light body can be felt and picked up and interpreted by the brain as a feeling of delicious energy rising upwards as a fluid pressure.

To understand how spinal and cerebral fluid is produced these articles may be of some help in explaining how this has been observed in a scientific context:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_is_the_cerebrospinal_fluid_produced 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1890044/   A bit technical,  the article explains in exacting detail how the fluid is produced.

http://www.anaesthesiamcq.com/FluidBook/fl3_6.php  This brief article also explains that this fluid is protected from the blood-brain barrier.

Sources Cited:
1. Scientific American, R. Douglas Fields, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-sharks-electric-sense
2.  http://web.archive.org/web/19981206164009/http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/bionb420.07/anelson/platypus.html
3.  http://www.iarp.org/reiki-sensations.html

My Yoga

0a63b-tantra_yabyumI have been an ardent seeker my whole life, but my seeking was singular in the sense that I always felt that whatever truths might exist for me to discover would be somehow found within.  I was not always like this, for when I first felt that deep urging within me, I was all of nine and knew that something, some great secret, had somehow been hidden away from me, and from all of us.  I did not know then that this secret was hidden away within each and every one of us, and so I sought to find the answer outside, in the things which were hidden or taboo.  My reasoning was that if there had been something indeed hidden, it would be likely hidden in those places where we had placed taboos on their access somehow so that no one would bother go looking.  This seemed most plausible.  By age thirteen, though, I began to sense that somehow this was not without but within.  It began with an intuition about how we sense reality and the role of the individual in sensing this reality. It expressed itself as the world not being quite what it appeared to be and fueled an almost conspiratorial sense that things were not quite the way we thought they were.  In very short order I would read a book that would speak many of these core intuitions back to me.  It was a book by Jane Roberts and her trance personality Seth who proclaimed that we create our own reality and that our sensing of reality is itself very personal, individual, and while we each see the same tree and sky, we also choose to see it a certain way.  It is this choosing that would become the basis for the undoing of so much inside of me when I experienced awakening many years later.  I did not know then that our own inner biases about HOW we though the world was would play so heavily in what I would eventually come to face.
I have, perhaps, as a result of my own journey and predilection for seeking within, have always sought the source of things and not just how they seemed to appear either directly or through the lens of our own bias, our own karma.  Bias is easy enough to overcome, but karma is harder.  Karma, though, I have learned, can be completely undone and is the greatest liberator of all, for its bias lies deeper yet within us and moves without our awareness always.  By bringing the force of awakening to the fore, it was enough to also bear awareness in greater degrees.   Surely energy is consciousness and consciousness is awareness just as awakening has shown these years.  It is also curious that we do not simply do what we wish to do, but to do what we are, what we are in our larger context, which itself is not always glimpsed in the day to day but in those often rare moments when we feel an acceleration of consciousness and begin to see things in a larger context, an undeniable one, and the self begins to turn within itself so that it sees things from a different perspective, often a more honest one.  If yoga is about union, then what is the purpose of all of the positions and methods and poses?  Its a highly developed system, and so if union is the goal, then what is it that yoga does on a physical level to feed into us a sense or feeling of union?  And what is union?  That may sound like a too-simple question to ask, but it is what I know is a question that has all kinds of realizations that go unnoticed by many for the very fact that if yoga worked so well, we would all be experiencing a deep abiding sense of union. True union resolves us back into our authentic selves, beyond karma, beyond bias, beyond what we have adopted based on a fear of how we think we should be or ought to be.  If there is a false self, then it is this self.  Otherwise, all that we choose to be is the gift we have received from the Creator which is that of freewill.  Saying something is false is like saying we are not being honest with ourselves, and if that is the meaning, then it is true.  So much of awakening is about unwinding the great cosmic spring of our vitality to find that the spring was wound the wrong way.  The current of energy reverses, the world changes, we follow a new path which others do not always understand, appreciate, or value.  Much of what we do, then, becomes a silent prayer, a silent process that is true to no other but our own selves.  The self re-learns, remakes, is destroyed to be rebuilt again, but built in a manner that is more honest, true, and satisfying.
The essence of union is the removal of all that divides you from this one thing that your consciousness rides upon, is carried by, and is a part of.  Through an awareness of self, of ego, through the left brain operations of object and self, we create an appearance of separation that only exists as a kind of conceptual construct.  But like all constructs, once erected in our consciousness, it begins to work like all constructions work; unaided and with fidelity to the rules under which it was installed with in the first place.  Beliefs are this way and if you have any question about the power of belief, all you need to do is look at how a country can move its populace to war under the slimmest and weakest of pretenses.  It is all a carefully understood process that involves the left brain and ego.  It is amazingly simple to do and it is done very well by those with an understanding of it whether conscious or not.  These things are the manipulation and creation of belief and it is ego that identifies with them and will hold onto them for the simple truth that ego is installed centrally in most people rather than peripherally.  This is why upon awakening and the movement of ego away from the central font of awareness that those thus awakened are much harder to manipulate in this way.  The old process no longer works quite as effectively.  It still works to the degree that ego rests near the center of the self, but less as ego moves to the back of the bus.  When you go through awakening the sheer force of the energy now moving in your awareness shifts and changes these beliefs and positions.....and even then, it can be a mighty struggle for some to undo the programming.  For me, I unknowingly struggled with this shift in me for many months until ego was gradually shifted to the side of my awareness so that it did not act as controlling agent in my consciousness as it had previously.  It was then that greater union was possible for the simple reason that more had been moved out of the way to allow greater flows of energy to move in me.  Simple.
But this was all done without yoga as one commonly thinks of it, and yet, all that I have done has been a constant process of it.  Every day I sought union within, quietly, silently, feeling into those places that served up a sense of resistance and letting kundalini wash away the resistance.  I will say that I did do Qi Gung as a moving method for helping to assist in removing blocks.  While we may want to think of awakening or kundalini as some exotic energy that is entirely nonphysical, it is not  It makes up everything here and is wed to the physical just as it is wed to the spiritual.  So what we do in the physical can create an effect on it just as how our thinking and feeling can have an effect upon it as well.  It is not one or the other, but both. the body is the soul IN FLESH.  Both sides of the coin benefit from the presence of life force, of prana moving through them and is the result of sound integration of it within both.  So while I know that physical disciplines can work if you know what they seek to achieve, and sometimes even when you do not, some of the methods are there to guide you to a way of feeling.  Kundalini is always here with us.  What makes the difference in feeling it is our awareness.  So how does a posture help with awareness?
As I have said, I do not do yoga, not as one would normally think of it, and yet if the core of yoga is to be known or understood, my life has been the very essence of it.  I am aware, however, of lives spent in the East.  I know that I have spent many lives in silent meditation.  All of it has helped in what is happening in this life I am sure.  But I am more than a Tibetan in Lhasa or in Angor Watt.  I have sat atop mountains in California's Yosemite Valley and watched as the Thunder Beings moved very quickly towards me, beings that spoke of a day in the future when the earth would be going through changes, a time when the "Great Wheel comes full turn."  It was in experiences such as these that I was shown that I and the Thunder Beings were in truth one and the same, that my higher self WAS that self and that through accelerations of consciousness (which some called "altered states" which is a term I do not like for how misleading it is), our own consciousness expands to become aware of larger dimensions of itself and of reality.  It is curious and telling that I have no other recollections from the past that served to bear such incredible flows of energy, of consciousness, into my awareness as simply sitting atop a mountain crying for a vision as that experience with the Beings in the storm did.  For me, it is a lesson to my own self here and now that by simply removing that which divides us, we may inherit our birthright, or realize it in the moment.  It waits for each of us as surely as the dawn.
All of this has led me to the inescapable conclusion of how consciousness works and how we have access to still larger realms of awareness, which is a recall of what we truly are in all of our potential.  These experiences, for me, help to form a core teaching or reminder of what we are and that as humans, we contain a lot of material that serves to block our view of this world waiting to happen to us through an act as simple as becoming aware.
In my life I have observed the function of two sides to our awareness and both of these have corresponded to the left and right hemispheres of our brain.  One side of us is incredibly restricted in what it can do and how it processes information, but it is a necessary agent in our lives.  This part of us is the left brain operation and the brain itself mirrors a certain part our own consciousness.  This part of us is necessary for being able to get anything done that is sequential in the world.  Without it, we would not know what comes next, or how to put a clock back together, make logical and sequential rationalizations.   The other side could not be more different because it sees wholes instead of parts.  It has the capacity to ponder the infinite and does.  It is not so restricted as the left but it also does not have all the answers either.  It might be able to glimpse incredible realms but it wont know how they work exactly.  That is the plodding job of the left brain.  And yet, these two worlds can be made to converge, in UNION with one another, to create a cooperative sense of realization.
When union, these two sides of us can serve to create a new synthesis.  Their union is the essence of creation.  You see it everywhere you look where opposites, attracted, merge and there is an explosion of energy.  Always.  Sometimes the explosion is destructive, sometimes we consider it creative.  And yet, when the two currents of consciousness within us merge we call it inspiration.  We see the world anew, we break ourselves out of our old conceptualizations in order to consider something different.  This merging is in no way within the box at least for that brief moment when the incandescent energy of union happens, the kind of orgasm of the mind which is the same orgasmic energy we feel when we awaken, something that is the result of UNION.  It is the same when a woman and a man make love. It is so with all forms of union whether conceptual or physically literal.  This union can happen within the self,  within couples, groups, and even institutions, all in accord to how they are made to move energy. While the union of sex may feel different from the union of the self, a similar kind of energy is created and is nonetheless just as liberating.  Energy is energy and it takes on different effects as it moves through the different wheels of our own energetic realization, which we have come to call chakras.  Even the chakras, themselves, are "lobed" to carry both masculine and feminine energies, the yin and yang.
Why My Yoga Does not Bear Kriyas
It is interesting to me that it is mentioned that those who awaken experience something called kriyas, a kind of involuntary movement in the body which is a physical feature of assisting with the flow of energy through it.  While I have experienced some of these, I have not experienced them a lot.  I have thought about this and it has occurred to me that the reason why these jerking motions have not happened so much is because my own consciousness has been focused on moving this energy within it in less physical ways.  I am aware because of my work in art that there is a subtle flow of energy and an interaction between left and right brain in order to bring about what we call inspiration. The energy is moving through less physical channels and is being assisted through the self and the neurophysiology.  I am not here to say it is preferred because I know that there is no one way to go about this, but only to point out that this is one tool that can exist in your toolbox for how to assist in e greater flow of energy through you.  Certainly, physical movement helps.  Sometimes it doesn't even need to be Qi Gung or yoga.  Just MOVING the body helps  A nice walk, a run, or even just moving your arms around so the core of your body is not so rigid is very freeing to energy.  Because so much energy is taken up in what I'd call more dream experiences, not literal dreaming, but in subtle accelerations of consciousness, I tend not to experience so many of these jerking movements.
At a certain point, which I identify with the period of time in which the ego was moved to the side of my awareness more (to the back of the bus as I often say), I began to experience these very quiet and expansive states of awareness in which thought itself was entirely stilled.  Over time, this stillness of thought has become more of a feature of my makeup.  It isn't that I can't think, I do, but that there is simply less chatter and more....observation....of everything.  This was first introduced to me many years ago while I was driving late at night and saw in my inner vision a presence that was practicing this "quiet presence of mind" as he looked back at me.  I found at the time that I could not practice this same quietness of mind and found the encounter to be interesting but also beyond my ability.  In truth, I think it was within my capacity, I was simply not living a life that was conducive to that sort of thing.  But I am glad that the presence who came did at least introduce it to me.  Only later did I see the same face on the back cover of a book on Japanese Zen and in that same book the person describes the same emptiness of mind and quieting of thoughts.  it seems it is a pretty universal experience.  What I think I was afraid of was that it would empty me, that I might lose something of myself at the time that this happened. We seem to fear obliteration, and for as much as some monks and yogis seek to do just that, the self continues to be. And not just be, but it evolves as we ourselves are aware of still "higher" states of awareness where there is another identity much like our own here now, but more advanced....perhaps more refined.  The sense of self and ego is an important part of what we have created for ourselves here. However, learning to move some of it into a more harmonious position is itself  what has aided in helping with still deeper ranges of union within the self and with others.

Everything Can Be Yoga

For me, everything has become yoga, but it is not itself a physical exercise.  I do not sit on a mat, but rather I observe quietly and intently as my hands move together to wash dishes, or to make tea, or to rake leaves.  My yoga creates a space of presence that is not mental only but is like a presence that opens up the cover to a deep well where my soul enters into the moment so that small self and larger self merge and experience union within, which brings bliss.  As I give myself over, I realize that this feeling of yoga, or union, is like giving myself to a lover.  I feel the yin current in my consciousness open unabashed to show me how to open to the universe of me and the All by simply surrendering so that world womb may touch soul womb so that my yin womb may feel all of this in ladder-like fashion as heaven descends into me.  This is, you see, the secret of Heiros Gamos, the union of the two currents in us, in consciousness, in our bodies, and in the universe.  It is all of this, undivided, and yet our own consciousness, by not being in union, chops up the thread or current so it SEEMS to be separate. 

When I give myself over to it, all thought stops and feeling begins.  This is why I find the words of so many teachers who speak of feeling as being the enemy.  What do these poor minds know?  The way to the All is through feeling!  And yet, unless you yourself have experienced this enough to know it well, you might be tempted to believe these very authoritarian people who have entirely missed the boat.  I suspect it is because they still are caught up in the thousands of years' worth of paternalistic and left-brained functioning that has gripped our species for so long.  I hope that they themselves can feel this rich and delicious experience of the feminine side of their being without fear or queasiness and know that we are all like this....that you cannot experience the feminine as a male and not be able to know the All.  You can't just feel it a little....but the more you feel the feminine, the more you can feel the ALL.  And it isn't because the feminine brings the missing pieces, but because she has been hidden.  Its been buried under layers of denial and chauvinism for centuries, millenia.  When the yin side is opened, we feel it so strongly and identify it as kundalini because all of us, women and men, have become so used to the masculine awareness.

The feminine current has nearly been lost on the planet.  And I am sorry for those women who are reading my words.  I know it might seem like I do not know the truth of your own experience AS female, but what I am writing about it the yin current, which has the capacity to bring the deeper range of the feminine experience into the world. Yes, women are here and yes they do experience a wide array of perspectives by simply being in flesh as female, but there is a vast amount of feminine awareness that simply does not exist just yet in the world.  It is like a woman holds a cup of water, which is her feminine nature and thinks that this is what she is, but what I have seen and felt is that she is a vast surging ocean, unlimited and wondrous.  If you reflect on the world and its ways, you will surely realize that this surging sea has never had any real place here because all of us, women and men alike, have been so shut down.  What matter does it make when I look at the world of women and see such vast seas churning silently and without awareness, within them?  They would all get mad at me to presume, as a MAN to say such a thing.  Truth is, we just are not aware of just how dumbed down we have become, or how limited we have been in our experience of the feminine.  And one more thing; I suspect that we have done all of this for the very reason that SHE feels so incredibly good.  Suckling at the breast without a fear in the world, feeling her depths in love, being carried away within her is pure ecstasy.  And loss of control.  Our world has been a model of control....rigid control that you don't begin to appreciate until you feel this restless sea churning beneath you....churning beneath all of us.

So my yoga is tantra.  It is this moment by moment attempt, at least, of seeking union within.  It isn't even about sex, but about larger archetypes and energies that we can learn from and evolve with, and how integrating this into ourselves actually changes the patterns IN OUR CELLS.  If we have lost our ancient knowledge of the feminine, then it is here in such a place that we can find it.  Silently, as I move my hands to the coffee pot, I feel the yin current move through me and I feel a stab of bliss that is like a petal opening deep within me that pushes all the petals behind it open.  It is like being taken, seduced by this warm presence that makes me realize that I can be opened entirely, taken apart entirely, loosened and cracked and given a means to flow more surely.  My own masculine is like the force that opens up ancient creek beds so that my own vital force may flow down into the sea and know itself as itself connected to still larger portions of itself. 

This is my union, this is my yoga and none of it is done through any movement of the body but in a quiet realization that MUST happen here or else it cannot be realized in the physical.  And I wont say I have it all worked out, for just as a creek must join with larger portions of itself without any resistance, so too must I join larger portions of myself without similar resistance, and just as a creek learns to know it is a might river at other parts of itself, so too do I realize what I am in its larger context.  Ego is not always so agreeable, or the self so courageous.  It is like any discipline, a practice where I slowly but surely release the blockages in my own cellular and etheric memory so that I wipe the slate clean so that I might dream something anew.  Until those old programs are running, I am a prisoner in some fashion to them.

Last night I had a dream that helped to illustrate what I have known for years now, which is that it is possible to reset our inner programming and erase ancient patterns by connecting with those aspects of ourselves which do not have such patterning.  A life lived on another planet, seemingly foreign to us, could well have been lived in order to pick up an example of a template that could be used "later" by a self waking up.  Certainly our world does not have a lot of good examples for how to be enlightened.  Perhaps it can be reintroduced from somewhere else.  I am not sure that it can be found here on this planet since so much of our journey has been one of collective self loathing, manipulation, murder and mayhem.  By being able to culture a new template, we can learn how others have managed to do it and escape that very precarious position in evolution where technology begins to outstrip our own commons sense.  I think if you look around you can see the trap that our own technological advancement has brought.  And yet, we work hard to not let that impact us negatively.  Sometimes we give in and do silly things.  And yet, this is our story.  Maybe we will get our act together and grow a world that is just and compassionate and much more awake and aware of itself, its connection to all things, and how it is only existing within a small portion of its physical potential.

There is nothing more important to me than to do this, this type of yoga.  It is quiet and requires no teacher or guru, but it is true and makes me realize we all have this amazing resource at our fingertips.  It is what we seek, what we yearn for, what we hunger for and it is only as far from us as the beating of our own heart.  The authority does not exist outside of you, it is well within you and will work if you simply let it have a voice in your life.  Authority from the past may be in error; things change, we change, the world changes.  Not everything is as rock solid as we think.  Some have said what I did was not possible, to awaken as I did, and yet, thousands have awakened in just this "impossible" way.  So what voice do you listen to?  Clearly, the best voice is to listen to your own.  Have courage, it will lead you where you need to go. Indeed, it has led you to this place, reading this here and now.
What do you think it is telling you?

The Simple Path To Follow

Two currents reside in your awareness, your body, and the universe.  We call them yin and yang, Shakti and her Shiva.  This is so because when we let go and allow them to be in us, it results in bliss.  To do that means letting both sides flow.  Restrict one, you effect both.
7fb6b5d780adc694b4946978ea101bfbSo let me suggest very certainly to you that we humans do not realize just how much we have choked off the yin side, the feminine in us.  For centuries.  This has had a big impact on us, but like frogs which boiled in water, the effect was gradual and we just never noticed it. We do not notice it even now.  We just don't know how things are changed by having more of the subtler and more fluid flow of the yin in us.  But when you do this, when you let this side flow in you, it has huge effects for you.  The feminine current in your flows up one side of your body, the left and then flips when it reaches your brain or crown.  This sends the current of the feminine flow into your right brain.  Learning about HOW the right brain feels is knowing this flow. the right brain is not the linear processor that the left is.  It is not limited.  It can take in VAST amounts of things and details.  Research into brain function has shown that when people have left brain functioning impaired, they experience mystical states, develop incredible visual memory and can do incredible calculations that are on par with "Idiot Savants" (and is a term I find distasteful).  It seems the left brain serves as a controlling filter for the right which has no such limits. And isn't this so very feminine?  I mean, who else is able to take a spark and turn it into a world, a baby, in nine months?  Amazing when you think about it.  Well, in a very similar way, a conceptual and feeling way, the feminine or yin in you can achieve similar results.  To do this, though, you HAVE to let her flow. Balancing the flow can lead to orgasmic energy within you.  This is a very good thing because of how healing it is.

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Let yourself FEEL.  Don't be afraid of your feelings.  Many people try to control their feelings for fear that they wont be able to keep a grip on themselves.  I say let yourself go.  Let yourself go some, and let the carpet unroll.  Sure, in the beginning things might feel chaotic, but a curious things happens when you give yourself the freedom to feel; you return to a kind of point of stasis.  For everyone this point is different.  After years of living a controlled rigid emotional life in some respects, you might need some significant unrolling. So let it go.  Eventually, once the rougher energy is worked out of you, a more peaceful land will emerge.  And the plus is you will most likely have learned how important it is to cultivate a more balanced self that includes this other side you have been ignoring.  The great thing is it can actually lead you when you are uncertain of where this will all end up. Really!  But allow yourself to flow.  Allow yourself to not always have the answers.  Allow yourself to FEEL the answers.  Some answers are arrived at through non-rational means.  Give yourself the opportunity to feel this and do this and be this.  Your mind wont be thrown into disarray, and if it does initially, the ship is merely learning to right itself.  Trust your process, and welcome the divine feminine, the yin, the right brain, into your life.  Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is through non-rational means.  Some things are just that kind of a mystery. the left side wont ever be able to work that issue out in any meaningful way because of how it is built.

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So instead of thinking it, you will FEEL it. It will tend to happen that you can do odd things like BREATHE in peace and contentment.  The left brain says "WHAT???"  but the right brain smiles knowingly.  "But of course, that makes purrrfect sense!" she says.  And it does.  No way you could ever really breathe in the universe through your nose and yet, it happens because with the feminine, these things are commonplace. Letting HER show you the magic way is one really great way to expand and potentiate your consciousness whether you are a man or woman.  As a man, just being near this kind of spiritual fire is real nice.  What will YOU discover with this world within your reach?

Atlantis Discovered?

Plato mentions it.  The Olmec had a name for an island that sank beneath the sea with a very similar name; Atlanticu. It was described as a cataclysmic event.  Is it possible that we have found some pyramids off the coast of Cuba?  Well, if the information coming in is correct, as a result of some changes in the plates along the North Atlantic region, a portion of what is now known as Cuba may have been a larger land mass with……ancient urban structures.  Pyramids, possibly. I am always cautious about these kinds of things, rushing to judgement before all the facts are in, but some very interesting, tantalizing, details are surfacing.  One source indicates that this is actually a DELAYED discovery; these structures were found just before the Cuban Missile Crisis and have been put on hold ever since.  But information coming out now is suggesting some interesting details which will be forthcoming, hopefully, in the near future.  Until then, we can dream…..

The most recent discoverers, Arclein and Zelitsky,  explain that the area that is below water corresponds with geological changes that could have taken place at the end of the last ice age, a date that places the structures in a time period before the Egyptian pyramids.

Arclein  explains: “when large portions of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge also decreased including Lyones and islands and land mass around the Azores. Even if this has not happened, this collapse was big enough. “This would have produced an orthogonal pressure forcing the collapse of East or West. Since the cord between Cuba and Yucatan is the natural point of weakness between the subsidence of the basin subsidence Gulf and Caribbean basin, naturally gone deep. The driver of this was the hydrostatic changes caused by both the original cortical change 12,900 years ago I called the Pleistocene Nonconformity and slowly lift the basin of Hudson Bay prompted by the end of the Ice Age.
According to the BBC:
In July, the researchers returned to the site with an explorative robot device capable of highly advanced underwater filming work.The images the robot brought back confirmed the presence of huge, smooth blocks with the appearance of cut granite.  Some of the blocks were built in pyramid shapes, others were circular, researchers said.  They believe these formations could have been built more than 6,000 years ago, a date which precedes the great pyramids of Egypt by 1,500 years.  “It’s a really wonderful structure which really looks like it could have been a large urban centre,” ADC explorer Paulina Zelitsky told the Reuters news agency.  “However, it would be totally irresponsible to say what it was before we have evidence.”
The duo hope to return to the site, which is off the coast of Guanahacabibes Peninsula in January of next year.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1697038.stm

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The Great Tuning Fork

When I was younger and I began seeing auras, it made me realize in a very tangible way that we are all energy; our bodies, composed of this seemingly coarse matter was energy vibrating at a  certain frequency.  Different types of matter has different densities.  Different things have a different vibration, such as light and sound; all vibration.  We live in a sea of All Energy. All kinds of energy moving at different frequencies, and yet, there is this sense that I have and that many others seem to have, too, which is that "behind" all of this or resting "within" all of this energy is a core energy source or force.  We have all kinds of names, and for years and years every name I heard seemed to fall short of really explaining it.  What I realize is that any name IS going to fall short of the grandeur of this living presence in all things.  So anything will seem mundane or silly almost.  Bearded man up in the clouds?  Silly!  Buxom Lady, Mother to all living in the springs and oceans?  Silly!  And yet, even as we say that we can dream such images into being and experience them as virtually as any vivid dream or vision.  This is so because everything is a creation, everything IS creative energy.  It isn't nothing means anything, it means that anything can mean anything you need or want.  Understand how this deeper level creativity works and you can find yourself living a much less effortful life.  (yes-I just made that word up...)

The Gods and Goddesses are reflections of what we are able to realize or know. Its a little funny that for some a God has meant a beaded guy up in the clouds.  It shows that we have pretty well excluded the feminine in ourselves and in our deity.  Well, all of that is changing. A delicate vibration of bliss is coming back to us as we reach the End Times.  Set your hair on fire chillens, cause the seals are about to be undone.  Seven of them; right along with the seven chakras making up the pranamayakosha or light body.  The End Times means that we are coming to the end of the old way and we are now seeing the New Way.  And I am here to tell you that.  Didn't you know?   That, and the fact that by being energy we all have our effect on the world around us....and that the core of all things can have its own effect on YOU?  Well  sit back and let me tell you a story......

This great presence in all things I will boldly say is like a tuning fork.  Its vibration is so pure, so incredibly refined.....it is like observing a master at work.  I understand how those who can pause to see the incredible masterwork that exists all through creation would feel awed and become worshipful of this presence.  I will tell you though that there is nothing about this presence that has ever once demanded that I go down on one knee.  I think this has to do with our own limited conception of what a deity is, and what a deity was for us thousands of years ago may have been more like observing a Lord or ruler of some kind. I can tell you that this being seems to observe and flow through all things lovingly more than in any egoistic way.  It wants us to be happy and to find our own freedom in expression and in fulfillment....and just as it has created so much, it is itself curious to see what WE will create.  And what WILL we create?

Within this Presence lies a central vibration that is pure love.  I can't even begin to tell you how incredible this thing is.  I don't even know why I am using all this time telling you about it when I could be focused on the bliss that it confers.  But here I am, explaining that there is something truly remarkable inside of you.  It is a piece of the divine and that slip of divine has the capacity to vibrate at the same vibration as the central force in all things.  This vibration is love.  This love, however, may be unlike anything you have thus far experienced.  It is not something that you feel FOR something, it is a force that IS everything.  It is kind of awesome that way.  Truly.  But in order to embody it, you need to become aware of it. Can I help you to recall this? 

When the sages speak of "self realization" they aren't talking about decades worth of work and yoga postures, they are talking about a simple act of recalling who we are deeper down. We are like amnesiacs who have been shipwrecked on this planet and we wake up one day to realize we are travellers from a distant land who are all artists of one kind or another.  As our memories unfold and sharpen, we realize we have all of these remarkable abilities.  Some amongst us say we are here to be punished.  These people, those are the ones who have not fully remembered, because were they to remember fully, they would become speechless and just stand gape-mouthed at the realization of just what we are.  How do I jog your memory?  All you have to do is to look inside very quietly and begin to FEEL your energy.  When you FEEL your energy, you feel it from one central place within the core of your awareness.  In this place, in this stillness, stop taking your own energy for granted.  Ask yourself what IS this energy that is you?  FEEL that energy and center on it with your attention. You do not need anything more than this except that.  The quieter you can become, the more still you can be, the better.  This is not easy, so by gently bringing your busy mind back into a center of focus each time with becoming quiet and centered on feeling your own core of energy, you can slowly begin to learn to develop a practice of developing a capacity to rest within this energy in a way that can lead to a revolution in memory.  Breathing has in the past been connected to this process since breathing inward also helps to move energy in your body.  If it helps, breathing in a deep and steady way, much like how you breathe just before you fall asleep, is the perfect way to breathe for recalling your soul self.  You can also bring great relaxation by pressing one nostril closed and breathing in and out four times each and then changing to the other nostril. You can do this as many times as you need in order to drift into a deeply relaxed state.  You can also press your hands together as in prayer and then focus on the place where the hands meet.  The reason why this method is so powerful is because the hands when brought together in prayer actually complete a circuit in the body that helps build and accumulate energy.  By placing your attention on the place where the hands meet, you are activating the quantum potential within the energy to vault yourself into a new form of awareness.  This form of awareness is one that moves you from object-based awareness to what I would call field-based awareness.  It is the basis for a method I call Divine Energetics which uses the power of the brain and body to accumulate the type of energy that can lead to awakening and to greater awareness.  It is actually as simple as learning how to shift from an "I" object-based form of awareness and reasoning to one that is not based in objects but fields, waves, of awareness.  It is in the wave or field (the forest instead of the trees) that the awakening experience awaits you.  Having said that, being ready by working through the more thorny issues of your life can be a big help to you because once awakening comes small things are greatly magnified.  It is my sense, though, that sometimes the only real way to work through our small things and big things is by having them magnified by the presence of awakening or kundalini.  It is what it does; it helps us to see even the most minute grain of sand in order that we can cast it aside from the great turning of the wheels within us so that it does not scratch or harm or hurt our very delicate inner workings.

Our energy can serve as a tuning fork.  Just as the central sun or light or presence serves as a tuning fork for us, we too also attune others whether we know it or not.  The more receptive or open we are to this attunement, the more likely it is to happen.

Long before I ever had my awakening but a few months into seeing auras, I was sitting with one of my room mates as we spoke.  I was talking about something, I forget what exactly, but I noticed that I was feeling what I know now to be my own core energy.  This energy is strong.....its not a flowing kind of energy....it certainly wasn't at the time.  It is like I am most often; animated, intense and with a brilliant kind of flash to it.  That same year I had a memory from a past life where I was a native American man who had a vision that had Thunder Beings in it.  Like a bolt of lightening; that was what it was like. I had felt this emerge over  the years.  It was in some ways what I thought to be a very masculine kind of energy.  As it turned out that the Sky was most often polarized towards the masculine in native imagery and belief while the earth was considered the feminine polarity.  Certainly in the vision I was being shown an archetypal image that served to merge the sky with earth in a cleansing that I was told would happen when I was reborn as a new person.  The vision from that past life was a prophecy about the life I am leading now.  "You will bear a power to the earth that will be cleansing...."  How could I have known that kundalini would do this?  Certainly kundalini was a cleansing force, yes, and perhaps, then I was here to help in the cleansing of the earth....which is within us just as we are within it. By learning to cleanse ourselves, would be manage to cleanse the earth?  It turned out that there were all kinds of prophecies about this Day of Cleansing from the Navajo, Hopi, Lakota, Ojibwe, and more.  All agree that we are in the Day of Cleansing period and those who teach about it tend to do so in a way that is dynamic; we are not separate from the effects that are happening before us.  The junk on the face of the earth is the junk in our own minds. CLean the mind and heart and the world can itself also begin to heal.  When my vibration changes, it becomes easier for you to change.  It is possible to change the world this way, you see.  We just need enough people here to effect this change.  From all accounts, I'd say that it is happening.  But on this day, I was talking to my room mate and feeling this energy.  As I spoke to him, I explained what I saw in his aura.  I could feel myself feeling this vibration of energy very strong.  I would later think of it as my tuning fork effect.  As I spoke to him, he began to look at me funny.  I asked him what was up and he explained that he saw a light all around me.  To test to make sure my room mate wasn't pulling my leg I asked him to do something that I knew meant nothing to him but that would help me to gauge if he was actually seeing auras. I asked him to take off his glasses.  Now to understand this, you need to realize that John wore these coke bottle glasses.  The poor soul had such poor eyesight that his eyes looked like big fish eyes staring back at you through those thick panes of plastic.  When John took off his glasses, he was blind.  But instead of going blurry, John's face grew even more amazed.  He said "the light!  It is so bright!"  It was then that I knew that John was indeed "seeing" auras.

Over the years I would find that when I was feeling my own inner core energy and reading energy that people had a habit of beginning, right then and there, to see auras.  My intuitive sense has been that all that has ever really happened is that by feeling my own energy in the way that I do, the people who were receptive enough, were able to tune into the same frequency I was on and it opened the sense up within them as well.  This phenomenon has happened about five times and I often can feel when someone else around me is about ready to activate this sense in themselves.  I can sense a similar vibrational frequency.

It turns out that Reiki is a healing modality that does something similar.  At least this is the read I get from it.  Last week I had my first attunement and what I experienced was how practicioners could help conduct universal and soul energy through my system in a way that was beneficial for my own healing.  By shifting my vibration it helped to move old energy blocks in my body that had been there for a very long time.  By doing this I was better able to feel my "own" energy which is itself like being a fountain for a source of energy that is the universe.  The more I do this, the closer I get, I achieve a divine alignment and it is in this divine alignment that I feel peace and joy and bliss while working on what remains for me to heal in my own energy body.  That we manage to hold so hard onto these old hurts and blockages is testament to how our own individuality becomes accustomed to a less than marvelous way of being and feeling.

Its weird.  It really is.  And yet, we all do this.  All of us.  Slowly and sometimes quickly, we are moved to the center of some great wheel.....to an axial point in our awareness where so much just falls away.  It is like a cosmic seduction.  I feel my soul grow naked under the great vibratory force that is this divine love.  I find I just don't care anymore.....and in not caring, I lose my fear over what I am afraid might lie in the center of my soul.  Some dark pit or some glitch or something less than perfect, less than lovable, less than beautiful.  And yet, this seductive force teased me out of my shadows, out of the old feeling of not being good enough or strong enough or bold or smart enough or handsome or any of the rest.  It floods me with such incredible love that I just melt.

I am returned to a baseline vibration.....to a primordial state.....and its not harps and angels.  Its fiery flowers bursting open with passion and stars exploding into new worlds in the night.  It is the grinding force of gravity hending space and the passionate love that bears a moon to its planet.  It is the force that brings blood to churn in the heart, the nutrients to flow from root to leaf, of a boundless frequency that pervades all and makes all as it changes from one thing to another and is all things all at once.  It is a dance around the maypole, it is a passionate kiss by the fire.  It is a love of great art and science and devotion to all things great and hopeful.  It is the incredible reach and trembling grasp of our kind as we seek to break the bonds of one cradle to recognize the bonds of a still larger one ahead of us.  All of this could be some remarkable miracle or a mundane blurp of accident and for those where it is all mere accident, there is a kind of pall of death that comes over the soul.
So what do you want?  Do you want to follow rules laid out ahead of you or are you willing to realize that its all in your to know the infinite realm that spreads out before all of us?  In touching this wonder of wonders, doesn't it just seem such a waste that humans would spend time making war and enriching themselves when there is more than enough for everyone here and that we could be doing such incredible things instead of merely seeking advantage.  Isn't it time for the Goddess within each of us, the part that sees the larger good for all, to awaken collectively so that we might all be softened by this part of us that we shoved under the rug so long ago?  Isn't it time for love to reign in heaven, the kind of love where God must close the door so he might be with his Beloved Goddess?  And isn't it time that we allowed ourselves to see our Gods and Goddesses as loving and affectionate instead of angry and vengeful?  Aren't the Gods and Goddesses our own projections anyway?  And in so being, might we not ourselves be able to remake our world in a finer sort of vibration where we become not the lost children of an angry father-god but the children of a happy and loving family of father/mother?  Because, I have to point out, that  it is in this vibration that their bliss is known.  Isn't the bliss of this experience equal to the touch of the higher forces reaching one into the other for completion.....and isn't this the same thing that happens to us as we ourselves awaken, which is that we merge that which is lacking in us, most often our opposites, in order to know bliss and love and joy and all the rest?  Isn't this what we seek the beloved for?  Isn't this really  just the way to clothe and describe a great mystery where there is no father, there is no mother, but there is a wondrous reality that is entirely beyond words even though we do seek to put it all to words?  Touch the universal force and you shall know the product of their love, their union, their hearts as vast forces that dream worlds into being.  I know that this may all sound like utter madness to you, but in the realm of the spirit, things are not always anchored to objects the way they are in the physical and this experience is very much bringing the heaven to earth. It is.  It is the Kingdom.  Here. So if that sounds crazy, what can I say?

All of this may all sound grandiose to you.  It is.  I admit it.  But so is the force that turns at the core of all things.  In fact, it is just beyond all description.  We, so little, like ants really, we are just feeling the far edge of its wonder.  What will happen when we learn to bite fully into it and know it rich flavor and juiciness?  And when, really, are you going to stop your inner struggle and just let go of that river bank and trust that the river shall take you to a still greater sea?  There is a tuning fork inside of you and you need only find it.  Then let yourself feel it.  In feeling your energy, you can know the wonder that is the universe.  People seek this for lifetimes.  I ti s here now on the planet in a way it has not been in many many generations.  By saying yes to it in your heart, you will say yes to a great love that is what you are and that is the universe.

The Healing Way

I have been going to have reiki treatments recently to assist with some clearing in my chakras, and my energy field in general.  There is a lot of talk about chakra clearing and chakra meditation.  It is useful to know, though, that your whole body is a vast network of criss-crossing energy lines that go all the way down to the atomic level.  If you were to see your energy field, you would look like a densely packed fibrous body of light, with branches that are big, like arteries, but also with a very fine system like capillaries.  Where energy draws towards the trunk of the body, there are vortices of energy that are called chakras.  There are many many more than the seven we normally talk about, but that is mostly because people aren't as aware of them, but they are there nonetheless.

All throughout this body of light, energy flows. It seems that anything that we do not experience fully and acknowledge completely emotionally winds up getting lodged in the same way that a splinter or scar exists in the body.  When I began this process of awakening almost seven years ago, I knew next to nothing about Chinese medicine and when I hear that the light body stores old memory, I thought that was a little funny. Didn't the brain do that?  I am sorry to say that up until that time, I had been seeing auras and reading energy for years.  I had been seeing how the aura, which is in the body, would show or exhibit emotional states all over the body and I certainly learned to read this energy. It wasn't until I awoke that I became aware of the phenomenon of releasing blocks.  These blocks are merely unprocessed emotion that gets lodged in the energy body.  Once you are able to go down deep into the very block, you can release it. There are a number of methods I was shown how to use by none other than the intelligent energy that has been living in my bod all these years.

Having the reiki reminds me again how these blocks contain memory in them.  Last week I was able to go back into the first year or less of my life.  This was pretty amazing given that I have no memories of my first year of life.  Its just a haze to me.  However, whenever I dig up a block and release it, its almost like uncorking some ancient emotion that I feel again perhaps for the first time.  I was speaking to a friend today while taking a break between teaching my classes at the university how I had encountered this last block and how I had actually KNOWN that the problem that the block was existed all these years but somehow in my own physiology and energy field, I seemed to need to experience the actual  feeling directly instead of having a version of it resting in my awareness.
Isn't that kind of weird?  To me, it actually feels like the block is a living being, locked in ice and waiting to be let go like some KundaliniMastadon whose organs are preserved and all that is needed is a careful electrical jolt to get the creature up and moving again. In a real way, though, this was what this last release was all about.  I KNEW that I hadn't grieved my father's passing as an infant.  Of course.  That is obvious, right?  And yet, deep inside the block there was this very specific feeling or awareness that lived in the pit of it.  When I felt THAT, I encountered a week-long process of grieving ina powerful way.  Call it speed grieving if you wish, because that is just what it felt like. Long since dead, I had to get on with it and not stand on ceremony. I was raw for about five days and slowly began to feel more healed from the ordeal.

So I know that I am not any different from the rest of you.  I know that others who have gone through the release process have also described allowing themselves to really FEEL the blocked energy as a way to help move the energy. This works, but it assumes you know how to access the energy.  Its not always possible.  There are other ways to access these blocks, and each is about as useful as any other.

WHile feeling deep into the block is one way, another way is to remain aloof, to allow the Observer part of you to come to the fore.  This Observer is actually very detached and it may help you to allow yourself to feel the same sense of detachment that comes with the Observer,  By allowing yourself to watch everything as though it is just a play, you can watch and see, but not become emotionally enmeshed in what is happening in front of you. Being able to step back like this is useful because it allows the focus of awareness to be present in the healing process, and while it may seem crazy, I have observed that it is observation or awareness being brought into the moment that serves to heal these blocks. Interestingly, the folks doing the reiki on me were saying the same thing.  I never learned this concept in any book, I was taught it by kundalini itself. It showed me years ago that my job was to SEE the block.  Just SEE itl in time, the block will go away.  If you can imagine that just behind your eyes is an infinite consciousness using your eyes to see through you, you can actually begin to allow more of the infinite through because.....that is exactly what is happening!  The method used to dissolve blocks is not to think it but FEEL it.  Thinking it or rationalizing is a very limited activity and is good for solving small problems like how to fix the kitchen sink but is really horrible at being able to divine the core of an issue that might stretch back lifetimes for you. It is the feeling self that must be enlisted for this.  I know; curious that I was just speaking of being aloof. Think of it as using your eyesight to SEE a problem but not get enmeshed in it.

There is another method for releasing blocks and this is movement.  Movement itself can be divided into several different classes.  One is shaking. Shaking has been shown to help release trauma stored in the body. It was first observed in animals that had been attacked by large prey animals.  Turns out, humans also use this method without realizing it when releasing old trauma sometimes. The other form of movement is the kind of movement found in the eastern traditions of Chi Gung and Tai Qi.  Both methods are designed to help move energy and eliminate blocks. Both are gentle workouts for the body and have been shown to bring a variety of health benefits. For anyone dealing with a backlog of blocks or who is aware of the blocks more than the average person, I would suggest keeping with a form of movement like Qi Gung and staying with it for at least a month with one or two session per week.  This is because some clearings take time to happen as well as once clearing does happen, you can sometimes get more clearings as a result of one clearing. Everything affects everything else.

There are a lot of very good visualizations to try when releasing blocks.  One is to stare into the block and feel your gaze breaking it up.  Another is to imagine a large hand opening up instead of clenching. Another is to imagine a river that is flowing and carrying you with it.  You do not control anything, you let the river take you.  Yet another very good visualization is imagining that your body is like a conduit or straw and energy flows through you unimpeded.  You let go of trying to be in control but become more of an observer.  By doing this kind of work, you can begin to shift your focus so that you can help to facilitate the movement of energetic blocks in your system.
Image © Stafford Artglass, Parker Stafford
Image © Stafford Artglass, Parker Stafford
By studying and knowing the chakra system you can learn more about how to dissolve a block.  If energy is stuck in one center, say, the heart, you can meditate on what the heart does and how the heart might be blocked and how to release it. For example, when dealing with root issues, like I have, I have found that I have been feeling emotional energy surrounding things like survival, nurture, and even abundance and sexuality. I can begin to get a clue about why the material is blocked, but knowing the basics of the center wont always lead me to the block, I have to allow myself to just FEEL it.  Somewhere inside of you, you do know the content of every single block in your body, but we do a lot to filter all of that out from conscious awareness. That is why meditation can be so handy. It can help to bring back into focus those things more on the edge of your awareness.  It is known, for example, that the left hemisphere acts as a giant filtering agent and that by letting down our "guard" so to speak, we can begin to broaden our awareness and filter less.  When you filter less, you also feel a flow of energy.  You don't necessarily have to focus on everything that moves by, but being in a place where you can observe is very helpful as I am sure you can imagine.  Its different, but a very good kind of different and is within your own abilities to try.

The advantage of clearing is that you can better feel and hear the flow of the universe in you. If you want to know cosmic consciousness, this is a good way to do it; by reducing the noise!  It allows you to feel more clearly and it also helps to erase karma.  Being able to reduce karma in your life is huge.  By releasing blocks you are releasing also the vibration that the energy that has exerted all this time.  You will find, bit by bit, that you will attract based more on what you feel you want and need instead of constantly getting stuck on a karmic merry-go-round with different faces and names but the same behaviors popping up over and over and over.  It isn't the world that needs to change, it is merely conforming to what you are.  It is you that must change if you with to attract a different kind of world in your experience.  The really great thing is that you can!