Where Awakening Leads

Having lived with this for almost seven years now, the journey has brought me over and over to the irrefutable realization that kundalini aids in releasing blocked and built up latent issues within the energy body and within the subconscious self.  Realization is itself a clarifying process much like a small creek running into a pond helps to clear the pond of the muck at the bottom when the flow of its current increases.  This is what awakening does.  It churns us.  The current is quite simply turned up, and it has an effect.  Living with this intelligent energy has changed my life and the way I see the world.  It has altered how I see us as human beings, just as it has changed how I view myself.  What I knew intellectually before, I now know and feel at a much more fundamental level.  I do not live in a world of ideas but in a life that is vibrant with concepts that themselves touch and connect vast realities that sometimes live at the edge of our awareness.  And since this energy is itself a builder of awareness, there is much that comes to the fore that had been more at our edges. 

Along with this idea that kundalini charges us and churns us and moves sunconscious material to the surface of awareness has come a more recent realization which is that the part of us that is called the subconscious is itself merely the rest of our awareness liying in a latent form, unused during our waking hours.  I am convinced of it.  And I will tell you why. 

Part of my process of realization was how awakening was tied to right brain function.  I am not going to say awakening IS right brain function, because for how much this might seem, its only a seeming based on our being largely left-brained dominant as a species.  We just are.  We are highly rational beings who think in a very linear way.  our right brained functions have been largely ignored.  You might think this is a bold statement to make, but my sense years ago that this was so (in my bones) has been born out through ma ny new studies of the brain and how certain injuries to the left brain have opened up the cpacity and potential latent in the right brain.  For example, we now know that the left brain acts as a kind of filter, keeping the vast capacity of the right brain from entering in in any deeper way.  Sure, we have right brain fucntion, yes, but we do not realize that the right brain has much much more that can be tapped.  You see, the left brain is itself a linear processor, which means it does things one item at a time and it works with language, which is itself a reductive process related to how we communicate.  It is by its nature a limited way to communicate, and it does so in a very practical way.  IN order to get words to really do the work of communicating, we have to add inflection and a host of other things in order to get our ideas across.  A picture, though, is qorth a thousand words, and so in knowing this, you can appreciate how limited language is in its own way.  But in case after case where people have had injuries to their left brains, there is a sudden release of amazing potentials and abilities.  Some people have developed savant-like ability to calculate numbers, to see and then recreate through drawings an amazing level of detail of, say, a city skyline.  THis is all brought to you by way of the right brain.  Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, whose video I have posted a number of times, who is known for her TED talk about how she had a stroke in her left hemisphere that closed down her left breain function for a time, began to experience a mystical moment of enlightenment.  All courtesy of the "veil" coming down.  That veil, friends, is the left brain. 

When we talk about surrendering and feeling bliss, we do so because we are letting down the controlling agent that is the left brain.  I sense deeply that a very limited aspect of the ego is contained or is at least powerfully informed by our left brains.  And this makes a lot of sense when you know what the left brain does.  It identifies with individual elements, aspect, and then is able to create a cognitive ordering that makes sense to us.  Ego is right in line with these qualities as ego identifies with "me" and "thee" which is to say that it can see individual objects as separate.  Ego is separate.  Withing the vast space of the right brain awareness, there is also a sense of ego, but one that is quite different.  It is far more nuanced.  It still exists, but it is an ego that is in context with still larger things such as the higher self. 

The right brain function is also not rational in the way that the right brain is rational.  It is connected more to feeling, and thus in feeling, there is no rationality.  We feel how we feel, and it does not always have to make sense.  In fact, the harder things for us are those things that seem beyond our own rational senses.  When it comes to these feelings, we tend to shove them down into the subconscious where we think we don't have to deal with them.  They do not go away but instead age and become an engine for dysfunctional feelings and behavior.  Repressed behavior has been long recognized as having been the agent for many problematic emotions in our lives. The subconscious, which is where we shove most of this material down into has become a vast dumping ground where a LOT of material gets left.  Upon awakening, at least for me, the power of kundalini began to churn this graveyard within and began the process of releasing these old ghosts from my past. This took years to clear, but it has continued day in day out and finally after some years, a vast backlog of material that once looked like a vast warehouse, is emptying out.  In this empty space I have come to see that what we call the subconscious is merely a place we all have simply not felt at home for some reason.  Perhaps because of all our baggage stored there, the subconscious has seemed a strange and foreboding place.

The subconscious is NOT just a dumping ground.  It is in fact a gateway to the higher self.  It is a gateway that has gotten cluttered with baggage, skeletons, and other scary things, but just like a closet or wardrobe, just beyond the coats all lining the front is something just beyond them, which is another world. In fact, I suspect that C.S. Lewis was picking up on this simple truth in writing about Narnia in his books.  Beyond the obvious is an amazing realm that is a mirror of who we are in a larger context.  By learning to navigate the subconscious, you can learn to feel more at home within the larger scope of all that you are.  And you are way more than what you currently think you are.  Period. 

To do this, you have to learn a new way of relating to yourself.  Being more accepting and more aware of your feelings is a very important part of tapping the subconscious.  When you can understand what motivates you and moves you in a seemingly irrational way, you can know yourself and develop a better sense of continuity within yourself.  Knowing why on earth you experience knee jerk reactions helps to point out the unresolved issues within yourself.  Knowing how you tick trational and irrationally is an important step in being able to accept who you are and where you are.  In doing this, you can also then learn to release or forgive the old ghosts from the past, curiously.  Only in being able to relate to ourselves and why we are the way we are regardless of how little sense it seems to make to us is the actual hand upon the veil that pulls everything back for you to see and understand better.  Within this, though, is the act of surrender, which is the right brain simply mirroring something larger within your soul-self.  Surrender is huge because this one act brings us closer to ourselves, to the divine,as well as to our loved ones and the world.   Surrender accepts, and in this acceptance, there is great discoveries to be had that you never knew you could tap or touch.

It is no surprise, then, that there is so much talk about the coming of the divine feminine in this age.  Indeed, it is something that is afoot, has been afoot for many many decades.  Life has mirrored it in its usual gradual fashion, and in our current time it is gaining speed and steam.  This feminine is also mirrored in the left brain, even though the left and right are not themselves masculine or feminine but contain traits we identify with these two poles of our being.  This is not a sexual identification, but a psychic one.  But in relating to this side of ourselves, we also are able to discover this vastness of self  that has been expressed as the divine feminine.  All of this falls in line with this unused portion of our own neuro-physiology that is gradually coming on line for us.  As more touch it, more will come to it.  And more are.  But to know it is to know how to be nonrational.  This is not to say that there is no order or design to the experience.  Indeed, there is a subtle and nuanced sense of order and awe connected with such an experience.  It is simply DIFFERENT from the left brain and from the egoistic level of our own awareness.  The most important thing is not to fear it for its being different.  Learning to respect differences and to appreciate how these differences make us whole and vital is one important key to unlocking vast potential. 

Being able to surrender, to let go,  to see non-linearly and more holistically are important skills in this effort.  Seeing a bigger picture and never deciding that you know all there is to know.  You in fact know far less than what you don't yet know.  As you come to know more you are struck by how little you did know previously, and in reaching that, it can be a little embarrassing how little you knew.  But to realize this, we all have to have something that shows us this in a practical way.  Sometimes this can take years in order to develop this perspective.  Awakening, which accelerates this growth process, can supply it in much shorter order most often.  We are all specks on a planet that when viewed from space is itself a speck in a vast field of specks.  Our own knowledge is itself viewable in the same way.  By being open to this reality, we also become available to the experience of reality expanding before our very eyes. 

The answer is not in some magic technique.  The answer is in learning how to be different.  Consider there is a different way and while that might seem mysterious, your inner self actually KNOWS the way.  It does.  This vast storehouse of ability is like a superman or superwoman.  It is beyond what you think about here and now.  It is like some interstellar visitor.  You are more than you know and you are only tapping a small part.  Bid it into your life if you think you are ready.  When you are ready, it will come.  This is how this has always happened.  Those who seek are always surprised that they find what they are looking for even when they are surprised that they didn't fully know what it was they were seeking.  Well, yeah.  How CAN you know this?  You can't very well know what this interstellar visitor might be like, right?  You have to experience it directly.  Awakening leads to this. 

The Myth Makers

When we think about the traditions that have preceded us in our lives, I think we tend to look up to these as established, sometimes even larger-than-life figures.  Myths, which are ancient, are like this.  They get told against a background of high-flying images that capture and engage our imaginations.  We have centaurs, gods who change forms as in Greek myths, and a vast panoply of images and beings that express all kinds of aspects of who and what we are.  In a way religions are a bit like this in how they get stuck or are installed in our sense of the collective awareness of humankind. We often think of these as always having been, and yet, each one of them has at one time or another, been entirely created out of thin air. 

Before centaurs, there were no centaurs.  Before Leda and the Swan, there was no Leda and there was no swan.  Before Jesus, there was no Christianity.  So all of these institutions and myths and legends have all been created from us.  Some would say that Jesus was a real man, and to those of you who have recognized this, I would heartily agree.  But if you look closely even at Jesus in art over the centuries, you will see a changing face.  For example, did you know that when Byzantine art was at its apex, Jesus looked very different from what he looks like in our depictions today.  Jesus actually had no beard in these images.  Only later did Jesus show up as having a beard.  Why?  The answer has to do with how we invest images with meaning, and this is just how myths are in fact made.  So one culture who sees wise people as taking the time to shave their beards and remain clean-shaven, will naturally create images of their wise people as clean-shaven.  This was certainly the case in the example of Byzantine art that I just gave.  But that image changed.  Many times, in fact.  Jesus, today, is often depicted as a white anglo-saxon looking gentleman in white robes. This version was created by the very people that he wound up looking like.  If we were honest, Jesus would have been much darker skinned.  This is an act of creation, and I say that we need to keep all of our stories and institutions fresh so we know how to relate to them.  It's just how we are. 

So at some point, everything we see in our culture was created.  It came THROUGH us.  Even magnificent books were themselves created through our hands.  Even the bible.  There is this joke that Moses wrote the bible, and while its funny, it still points to our tendency to want to invest people with the authority of having gotten the message straight from God or some other deity.  Moses probably was a good listener.  He was also likely a mystic, otherwise he never would have discovered the means to hear God speaking to him when everyone else was obviously unaware of anyone speaking.  Some want to think that God came to him as though a being outside of himself as evidenced in the burning bush experience and other instances where he heard God speak to him. But if God did this, why weren't there stories of how others heard who were in close proximity?  the truth here is we hear the divine, which has no body or means to speak to us save for through our one connection to that realm, through our souls.  In this place, we can color and create.  We put what fits us into those images.  Quite naturally, Moses was a leader, so his God would wind up being authoritarian by necessity in order to get those wandering ex-slaves to follow him to a better place.  And really, in all truth, if the God of Moses who was able to bring plagues and part the Red Sea, then this God would have been able to provide Moses and his people with a place to call their own.  And yet, even in wandering for 40 years in the desert, this side of the story has its colorful and storied explanation for why this had to be that way.  And its fantastic!  I am not kidding you here.  I am serious.  This is all a great act of creativity in motion and shows how we have all helped in our own way to support or even create myths and stories about ourselves that express aspects of who and what we are.

So knowing this, knowing that WE are the ones who create all of this, or are inspired to create it through divine inspiration, let's consider how we can be utterly creative and consider that all of our myths and stories could be remade into forms that suit us better.

For me, I'd really like to see the Garden of Eden be turned into an epic story with fewer black and white lines and more shades of gray.  I'd also like to think that the fruit was itself not forbidden, but known to be something that we all would lust after and seek since being an all-knowing God, God quite naturally KNEW that we'd probably go for the one that was forbidden.  Curious, we had to find out.  And what if the serpent was less an enemy of God and more an agent OF God?  After all, the Seraph, the angels from Judaic times, were all described as "fiery serpents" with wings.  Honestly, I think the serpent was once a symbol of wisdom and self-transformation as is evidenced in nearly every culture on the earth!  In the image below you see a serpent with wings from an Egyptian tomb, and we all know snakes do not have wings, so this was quite simply a creation in order to express an idea about what serpents were to us.  The thing, though, is that this idea, giving serpents wings was something that is native to the Hebrew, the Egyptian, the European, the Chinese and Japanese as well as the Mayan cultures.  Even in South America the serpent represents aspects of transformation, alchemy, and vital force.  In Europe, the stories of dragons depict them with wings.  Have we ever wondered why?  Clearly, there have been no known earth-bound lizards or dinosaurs of any size that had wings.  All of the dinosaurs who had wings were those that flew and were thus built for flight.  So were the dragons of our older years in Europe a remnant of the myth making of our ideas about serpents and what they represented to us way back then?  I bring this up as a way to illustrate a point, which is that its just as easy to see the serpent as beneficial.  What if there is a world where the serpent wasn't seen as the enemy?  If the Garden of Eden came to us by way of the Hebrews, then weren't these people enslaved by a people who revered the serpent? 

You certainly see the serpent in Egyptian culture as an image of vital energy and spirituality because they sprout from the heads of Pharaohs and even Moses had a little duel with the Pharaoh of his day where his staff turned into a snake and ate the Pharaohs snake. Is it possible that the early Hebrews simply demonized the snake as a result of their dislike for their enslavers?  I do think this is entirely possible and even likely.  So if we consider this, could the snake have been something entirely different?  And if so, what could that snake have been?  When you remove the elements within you that see something in a negative light, you can see it in a different light.  So what if the serpent was a friend, not a foe?  Certainly the Hebrews saw the highest angelic order next to God as being winged serpents, the Seraph. 

The truth is, we already have two stories of the Garden of Eden, if you can dare to believe it.  In one, the woman chose to leave of her own volition.  Her name was Lilith, not Eve, and in that story, the details are quite different!  So knowing this, seeing this for what it is, we see different currents of identification existing that tell another side of ourselves in these myths, these ancient stories that speak of who and what we are as a race and a people.   With Lilith, not much is known after she departs, but what if the creators had a longer story about her after she left the Garden?  What would that story say?  And instead of the version we have today of a woman who has been scorned for bringing so much trouble upon the race, was Lilith instead a pioneer, a free thinker, a powerful woman in her own right?  What IS the story of Lilith, then?   If we create these myths, then how might we have gone on to tell her story?  What if we were to do that today, right now? 

I am illustrating myth-making in the making, you see.  Right here, right now, we create something new.  In doing so, what you will find is that engaging in this kind of creative act, you allow yourself sometimes to see things from a fresh perspective.  You embody your creations with something that is inside of you.  So given this, what could you create?  What could you weave and breath life into that speaks of your own soulfulness?  Do your myths represent an uncertain world full of gods and goddesses playing tit for tat or is your world filled with often misunderstood beings that in the end seek the best for you even if you aren't always aware that this is even so?  I know; the old myth of God saying not to eat the fruit was itself an example of that, but you see, I am not clinging to any belief system here.  I am not knocking any one's belief system, I am using some examples to show how we come up with things and give them a life of their own.  Our myths, you see, reflect values that we ourselves hold and in looking at those myths, you can learn things about yourself that you might not have even realized existed.  Otherwise, you might put no stock in such myths as they reside as mere fancifulness. 

As for me, I think its time we got busy and made a few new myths of our own!  For certainly we are the makers of such things, so why not?

A Technical Note

Apparently, on occassion, when my connection to the internet is going a little wonky or it looks as though my browser is not registering a post or when Blogger tells me that some update or "save" has not been saved, it in fact actually IS being saved.  Not aware of this, I try to save the post, which happened not too long ago with the post The Tuning Fork.  For some reason blogger was telling me that the post was not "taking" and thus I continued to post until it showed me the screen that tells me that it is successfully posted.  This may be the result of an older browser lacking some elements that include updating correctly.  As a result, I created a flurry of the same post many times on my blogroll and may have pumelled those of you who follow the blog with a slew of identical or nearly identical postings even though there is in fact only one.  I found that there were numerous copies of the post while I was done with my editing and quickly deleted them, but not before those numerous copies went out into circulation.  My apologies.

So note to self; update that browser and consider keeping each post in draft form until i am sure it is fully edited. 

Many writings, especially the older ones, were not part of a traditional writing or blogging experience.  These were highly spontaneous creations that sought to give myself great freedom, which also meant that some had no edits at all and often bore misspellings, grammar issues....things that would drive a pendant crazy.  But for me, they were gold, and were part of the nonlinear process of creation, reflection, and inner development involving finding ones voice.  If you are familiar with spiritual work, all of this can come in waves, layers, and deepening moments as one proceeds through ones divestment process which often goes hand in glove with karmic release.  Like a distilling process where grapes turn to wine, it goes from one thing to another and has many points along the way....

So my apologies to anyone who was buried beneath piles of these posts and I will try to remain more conscious of these little technical aspects as I am able.

~Parker