Beyond Love As We Know It

Can we go beyond the love that we know
to reach a father shore?

Can we know that which has been hidden
all our lives?

Our lives are bound by certainties
but the greatest discovery lies in a question

a journey into the ineffable
where words cease
 and a new life begins.

Love is a force
not for a thing
and when felt this way
unwinds everything you thought you knew.

Ruined, your notions of the past
lie resting on this foreign shore
wrecked
dashed
destroyed.

But quietly
a new life begins
new life emerges
and a new story is writ.
Love as a force not for anyone or anything
it undoes every agenda
for this or that
for it is for the great All of everything….
Not a thing
a force
felt flashing and living madly within me
undoing me despite my efforts to claim otherwise.

Love as a force is not to be played with
but known
like wind
that cannot be captured.
What madness is there in those who love such things?

And who knows?
Perhaps this is just the love that Gods have
that leaks out from their presence around us
and we feel it as a force…..
in such places as this anything is possible.

Welcome to the furthest shore…

The Sacred Opposites

The first image that you see is the Glastonbury Tor.  The Tor is an ancient earthwork and is considered to be one of the most important centers of the pagan universe (like Stonehenge to the north).  If you will notice, you will see a seven-layered Yoni form with a Lingam sitting atop it.



The "Lingam" form is a building, but there has been a lot of speculation that the Christians who built it took down a large standing stone that stood in its place. Now if you look at the image below you will see the same imagery, an altar to the masculine and feminine principles of the universe.  This is Hindu. It is interesting to see how similar these two forms are.  The pagans sure do seem to have known that the way through our nature is by way of the seven main chakra centers to reach the core being of ones self.  As far as I know, no one has ever compared these two forms with one another, but their similarity is unmistakable and points to ancient knowledge of how spirituality was tied into the two "opposites" in the universe. 

Manufacturing Belief – How Reincarnation Went From Accepted Church Doctrine To Heresy

Theodora from a mosaic in SanVitale in Ravenna.

There was a time when reincarnation was understood to be a part of life in the early Christian church, beginning with Jesus himself who mentions it at various points in books that escaped the noted heresy hunters of the early church. To understand this story and how a central teaching could have been stricken so completely from the dogma of a religion, it helps to know some history surrounding the change.  So come with me on a quick tour of the past as I bring to you the documents of the time as they come alive with the mystique of a conspiracy to quell or silence something basic as the root of our becoming as spiritual beings.  It is a story that will have the power to leave billions without the awareness of who they are deeper down and what they are capable of as sovereign beings here on the earth. It is about, I think, about the true seat of power which has remained unclaimed by easily 95% of e3very person who has inhabited the earth for the last two-to three thousand years.

Stirring Up Differences For Gain

At least in part, the storm surrounding reincarnation has to do with Jesus himself and an idea that had little to nothing to do with reincarnation, but everything about who Jesus was.  This is what I call the “scattershot effect” of unintended consequences that we see  through history:  a ruler outlaws one thing while something unrelated gets pulled into the scope at the same time and “taken out.” Its sad to see and it happens a lot (and I assume this is what happened in the case of our story here—there may be still yet more to the story than I am uncovering!).  In this case, there were two schools of thought that raged not long after the church was founded under Constantine.  One were  people like Nestorius, the Abbot of Antioch (in Turkey), who said that Mary should be the mother of Jesus, not of God.  Nestorius explained that Mary birthed a man, not a God. Along with Nestor is also Origen and a few others who were writing about much more mystical and subtle takes on the teachings of Jesus. But it is this second view that I describe and the people surrounding it, that came under attack in the church. The subtext here with the view of these people is that we can all work and ascend to the same height as Jesus did (John 14-12).  This, though, amounts to heresy within the church today.

The journey of awakening that I am experiencing shows clearly that we have the means within to reach to a broader awareness of who we are, an awareness that can shatter and destroy our previous preconceptions of who we think we are.  It wasn’t always this way, though, as the history on the issue shows. When I went looking to try and find some understanding or a common voice on the matter of my awakening, I came across the Gnostic works of the Nag Hammadi and found page by page that they were describing the experience of nonduality and the awakening from which this experience so commonly springs.  And really, this is so uncommon an experience that you can’t fake or mistake it too often when reading someone else who is “under the influence” of having been awakened. You are dealing with a hyperdimensional phenomenon probably not too unlike some of the things that Terrance Mckenna describes in his DMT trips.  So unique are these that its hard to mistake them for anything else on the planet.  So the same was with my experience and the people who were saying “Here we are, we know what you are going through!”  were people who had long since left the planet.  Clearly, a lot had been weeded out over the generations.  Even if its ben done by an agency as holy and sacred as the church, I feel that we each have a responsibility to place the truth back where it belongs even if that truth has suffered or has been misplaced by a pope, even. And so it is that I write about these clashing factions because in some way the discussion is not yet over in regards to what happened. Perhaps once we know and we can reconcile it so that its mystery no longer captures us, we can then move on to bigger and better things.

The effect, though, is powerful.  In documents that the church puts forward, the issue of reincarnation is not even mentioned.  It does not mention how, by the way, the council  did away with the ideas of reincarnation while dispensing with Jesus as God or man.  It is as though the reincarnation bit just didn’t even exist. On an orthodox historical sight, there is not a peep about any of this whatsoever.  And this is how knowledge is rewritten or remade.  It is also how history is rewritten. It is done just as Napoleon stated; by the victors.  But how do you strike something from the hearts and souls of all men and women?

Another way of thinking was that Jesus was all-God and not a man who achieved godly status, he just merely “came around” (with some help from John the Baptist) to who he was, which was unmistakable and something he could not escape. This way of thinking was called monophysitism.  These were two VERY different ways of thinking about Jesus.  One way suggested that we each could become like Christ (see Gospel of Phillip who asserts that his master was actually making the disciples Christs themselves). The suggestion in this view was that we had to take on Christ by allowing him into our hearts and lives as our personal savior who also happened to have paid an ultimate sacrificial debt. This was itself a very different matter from what Phillip proposed and which many others in the newly-discovered Nag Hammadi codices have also asserted.  It is what I have noted as one of the most basic misunderstandings about ourselves as spiritual beings and will either assist us or limit us depending on which path you accept as a belief. And yet, here we are today, with the debt that Jesus paid as being so incredibly central to belief.

These were the two divergent themes that were working against each other, right along with the political aspirations of both the emperors and other rulers under the main emperor.  Imagine a world and a time when the church power and the state power were intermingled as a result of the Church’s rise of influence among the people a century earlier.

This church, along with its followers, were a rag-tag band of people who were the only individuals in the empire who were willing to die for their beliefs.  The Christians back then were like the death martyrs of the Muslim extremist of today who walks into a crowd, willing to give his  or her life in order to take out the unbelievers.  This was the condition of early Christianity decades prior to its being instituted as a state-accepted religion.  Pagan (Roman) statues were being toppled in highly public ways by these people, and they saw being nailed to a cross as an honor.  These people believed that a better kingdom was at hand and they were ready and willing to see the old kingdom (as they understood it) to be toppled so that the great peaceful world of their king Jesus could be installed.  This was at about three to four hundred years after the death of Jesus where they believed that when he said a new kingdom would come, that this was literal truth.  There was also the Revelation of John in which he describes a rather brutal take-down of the bloody harlot that most scholars agree was Rome.  The kingdom was at hand and Christians were ready to help tease it into existence.  Jesus had even said the Kingdom was at hand, didn’t he?  And I ask, given how brutal life was back then, why wouldn’t you yearn for a new Way, provided by a more peaceful leader, a Christ?  Given how people were choosing to understand the doctrine that Jesus laid out several centuries before, this became a rallying cry to those who would follow him.  Christianity was not going away, this much was clear.     There was a split that had to do with teachings that were largely scoured from the early church, but whose memory of them still remained in pockets within the church.  It was this divide, believe it or not, that would lead to the Inquisition centuries later.  It was partly due to a Gnostic-leaning Cathar sect in the church that threatened the established power structure of the church as authoritarian and paternalistic that the Inquisition even began (and turned into the bloodbath this it is now known for). That, though, is for another post.  Back to the 5th and 6th century A.D……

It was in this environment that there were many people with many different divergent ideas about who Jesus was and what his teachings were all about.  In fact, there was an “Old Rome” and “New Rome” split that was slowly taking place after the Council of Nicea which placed Christianity in its place of power where it would grow and eventually find a place at the table with every European government or colony of them that followed.  The split I am talking about was one that had to do not just with a church but also a State (Rome). So when you say Rome or Christianity, you are saying the the same thing, even though the two were different entities, they both aided the other in sharing power.

The two Romes that were splitting were doing so due to resentments having to do with the theology (not Roman law) of this new religion. The Eastern Roman Empire centered in Constantinople and the Western Roman Empire located in Rome experienced a split initially due to Constantine seeking to name himself a ‘Proto-Apostolos’  meaning ‘first of the apostles’, and placed his tomb in the middle of the cenotaph of the Twelve Apostles in Constantinople. (nestorian.org)

People both in and out of power were furious with Constantine’s efforts to write himself into the history books in this way, and it led to some bitter divisions.  The result was that those within the church who were divergent along these lines found themselves in disputes between two divisions in the church. This led to infighting between the more literal-thinkers and the mystic-thinkers in the church and was most likely the reason for a lot of the early finger-pointing and labeling people anathema and heretics.  I suspect that the diversity in the church up to this time may have been much more tolerated simply because the differences were not pressed upon or tested so much until Constantine got greedy and dishonest with trying to make himself seem chummy with the Apostle by being buried among them. The biggest divisions had already been worked out of the church, hadn’t they?  Hadn’t the heretics and their deadly books been dispensed with through hanging or burning (both the people as well as the scrolls they claimed were important to understanding Christianity) a generation before at the instituting of the church in the 5th century A.D.?.

When you point out the differences in another of your own kind, you can reveal division where a moment before there was none.  You can CREATE division.  It is through division that support, power, and riches, are all commonly taken either through force or by way of theft.  It is also how you take down an opponent politically at the knees. If I show how different you really are from the average person, I can easily gain more support for my cause or side.  Whether in politics or religion, the effect is the same.  Identify how they are different.  Boom.  All you need are enough people behind you and you can steer change within the government or church in the way that you want. You can ardently believe in your cause or you can not believe a word of it.  It does not matter.  The strategy works either way.  Remember, when we talk about history, we aren’t always talking about the high water marks of truth and justice, but in what people took to be right at the time….for whatever reason they did so. Knowing what is true and being in power were themselves often mutually exclusive.

A Difference In Gnosis

Against this background there is a rich history of early church fathers who wrote about the pre-existance of the soul and about reincarnation.  This had been in place for centuries before the 400-550 A.D. period which became so contentious where it was related to religion.  Origen was one such early writer who wrote about the soul existing prior to birth as well as what would become controversial thinking about such things as final reconciliation of all creatures, including perhaps even the devil (the apokatastasis). (wikipedia.org) Nestorius and others like him were early writers who all either hinted or pointed directly at pre-existance as an accepted fact of early church teachings.  It would be through various councils that these kinds of writings would be considered anathema and heretical.

The way that this most directly happened within the church was that a woman named Theodora, who rose from humble beginnings to be the chosen concubine of emperor Justinian. Later as his wife, she was instrumental in making the changes in the church doctrine that made reincarnation an outsider once and for all. The question is who is this Theodora and how did she wield such power?
Theodora was born the daughter of a bear-keeper of Constantinople’s hippodrome in about AD500.  Her father who died when she was young, led her mother to entering her daughters into the theater in order to make a living, which was again at the Hippodrome, a large 30,000 seat facility where major performances were viewed by the people of the day.  Thus, Theodora was an early actress. (Duffy, The Guardian)

Some of what we know about Theodora comes from  a searingly critical account of her and her husband’s lives that was so controversial that it was ordered to be printed AFTER the author’s life. This book, Procopius’s Secret History, is no doubt part fiction mixed with fact.  Whenever you have a critic that is as harsh as this author is, you cannot escape such a reality.  The problem though is that these kinds of accounts are mixed with what is true and what is not true.  Procopious was assigned to the same military leader that was called upon to depose a pope later on in our historical jaunt through time.

There is one school of thought that seeks to raise Theodora to the level of saint (which she is in the church) and another which does the exact opposite.  What we do know is that she had a child before meeting up with Justinian. We also know that she sought to be mistress to Hecebolus who was then-governor of Persipolos, which is located in what is now known as Lybia (northern Africa). She may have been a prostitute.  She was said to have so abused her position with Hecebolus that he had her stripped of her riches (which he bestowed upon her) and cast her out with nothing but the clothes on her back.  This was all at the insistence of the people being governed, who seemed to so despise this woman that they demanded such actions be taken.  (Seiler, facts-are-facts.com) Its hard to know precisely what are facts from the book written by Procopius, but one thing is clear; Theodora set up a home for women who had been prostitutes in order to care for them and provide them a means out of their former life.She is said to have “rounded up” about 500 prostitutes and forced them into a convent.  Was it forced, or was she doing them a favor? Was she thinking back on her own life when she was a prostitute also? I am not here judging the woman.  Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future, as far as I am concerned.

Theodora worked her way back to the circles of power in Alexandria after this fall, and along the way she was taken in by a hermit named Eutyches who was forced into exile by Rome for his doctrine of monophystism, which held that Jesus was all-God and not a man who rose to become godly, which was what Origen and Nestorius along with many other before them had written and taught about.  Theodora remembered the kindness bestowed to her and sought to press for the monophystic view as an accepted part of church dogma. Theodora was thus an important, central, even, character, in helping to bring the monophysitists back to the church (realize, they had been banished up until this time by the powers within Rome–this is the point where the church and state intermingled).
What happened in the early church was that when someone had an idea that they wanted to put forward, they did so in a public forum, hoping to gain populist support for it.  If this opinion was popular enough, it had a chance of making its way into the canon.  These meetings were called “synods” and numerous groups within the church would call them.  If there was a show of support for the ideas presented in the synod, those at the forefront of these meetings would press for an Ecumenical Council be called so that an important decision could be made about what was being presented or discussed. Synods were called both for and against this concept related to the nature of Jesus as both man and god.

It was in 451 that the 4th Ecumenical Council was called.  This was also referred to as the Council of Chalcedon and it was used to formerly condemn monophy. Theodora later pressed Patriarch Mennas to convene the synod of the Eastern Church of Constantinople in 543, which sought to revoke the condemnation of monophystism as well as the affirmation of reincarnation which was codified in the church law or doctrine in 451. And so it was that one council affirmed reincarnation while another just a few years reverses its position. And you know what happened?  Everyone who were followers began believing what the church told them to believe. It just happened.  And it spread like wildfire, apparently.

Now remember how I said that there was an Eastern and Western split in the church?  In order to gain the kind of support that Theodora needed for this action, she had to also bring the Western Roman Empire under her control. How to do this? Theodora was cunning in her efforts.  Belisarius was commanded by Theodora to depose the reigning Pope Silverius who had been installed by the Goths. This Pope was the former subdeacon Silverius, the son of Pope Hormisdas (Wikipedia, Belisarius).  In this way, Theodora was able to aggregate power both for her and her husband’s empire while also getting the support of a larger church under her wing to lend more power to her efforts to unify the church around the concept of a monophysite Jesus.

Some have argued that Theodora did not like the concept of reincarnation because it had the power to wipe away her ability to ascend to the level of a worshiped goddess.  By having one life, she would be judged based on those deed, not those of other lifetimes, and it was Theodora who wanted to be worshiped in the way that the ancient emperors and empresses were worshiped from the time of the Caesars.

It was reincarnation, though, that helped to explain why one person would be born into great riches, while another would be born into poverty, or why one person would have a club foot while another would have what would have been considered a beautiful body at the time. Reincarnation may have opened a huge can of worms that would also help to explain so much about why our world was the way it was.  It was this view, however, that was rejected in the 6th century and has remained the reigning view ever since.

The books  or codices that were dug up from the desert near the town of Nag Hammadi reveals Jesus speaking to his disciples and other followers about souls being “sown” back into new bodies, explaining why some people come into a life with advantages and others with disadvantages.  It was all because of what had happened in another lifetime. The journey-work of perfecting ourselves, it seems, requires a very long period of study over lifetimes in order to get to a place where we move into “heaven.”  Instead of a place, this is a state of being.  I will also point out that what has sparked awakening of the divine within has all been the same regardless of religious affiliation: it has been an encounter with a brilliant pure white light.  Those who have had awakenings have described these flashes of bright white light and those who have have Near Death Experiences (NDE’s) have also described the same encounter with a white light.  Both return from their experiences changed.  Many often begin work that seeks to serve humankind.  Some become healers, some teachers.  All feel driven to make a change in the world.  It was also a description within the Nag Hammadi codices that identify that this white light encounter is something that unites us with the part within that knows heaven and can learn to anchor this state of being to earth.  The experience is universal in the sense that anyone being so touched by this light will experience a range of symptoms that are the same.  The Hindu describe this as the activation of kundalini. The Christians describe this as the Holy Ghost, and the Pacific Islanders call this Kah. The Egyptians also called this force as Ka, and was the part of us that left the body upon death.

Next up:

Part II – If Reincarnation Is Real Why Can’t I Remember My Past Lives?
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisarius
http://www.nestorian.org/the_lynching_of__nestorius.html
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/10/theodora-empress-from-the-brothel
http://www.facts-are-facts.com/magazin/6-reincarnation-the-churchs-biggest-lie.ihtml
http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/procop-anec.asp

Share this:

• Press This
• Twitter
• Facebook
• More
• 
  

The Eternal Garden Of The Soul

How It Comes....

As simple as a cup of coffee in the morning
something in me opens up
I am curious
a map unfolds
a world opens
atoms in my body
dance and sing
as two energies
move through each other
in a dance that I know has been eternal.

The room begins to throb
quietly
I feel the electrons spining in my body
inducing a field around me.
It has been years now
and so much I have gone through
and it still feels the same.
Its earthy
but cosmic
it builds dimension
and leads to great longing
and desire.
I feel a field moving
rippling around me.
I know that this is what moves mountains
and awakens minds.
It all sounds so high and mighty.

I step over and slip open a book
and there is a description
of Buddha who had thousands
who awakened whilst he was here
on Gaia...
and I know
we all serve as this
in our way
a steady torsion field
of influence
of the serpent people
the dream makers
the tapestry weavers
the love makers
the magical breatheren and sisteren
that waits with heaving breath
in hope and wish
of ushering in the new way....

I look into your eyes
which are the eyes of legion
everyone
for goddess dwells in everything
everywhere
-split the stone and she is there
she is everywhere....
a calm breeze
a rush of realization
of the sacred androgyne
that this makes of us
and explodes all notions
opening us up to the new
as skin after skin is shed....
as I feel you there
in the kitchen
as the water hasn't even begun to boil
but the universe opens up
so simply and wildly.
I am reaching the goddess
reaching the goddess within
so as to heal the god
and make my world
a garden with no competing weeds

You react in the air around me
as I ride this wave
moment to moment
day to day
a great big silly silence
with nothing present
no one there
with a room full of something
entirely quiet
but screaming too...
the universe yearns this way
and bids us to
so we might create as it does
moment by micromoment
in scales measured in
milennia curled up within nanoseconds
as all time expands perfectly within its one great moment
alive in all other moments
and my inners seek the flow from one polarity to the other
to unlock my own secrets
that I am here to find
in the eternal garden of the soul....

Working Through The Centers

Imagine that overlaid on your body is an extremely fine webwork of energy lines, fine as spiders thread which create a vast jungle of pathways that align to organs and centers in your body that are physical that these lines help to feed the necessary nutrient of life force or prana to. You can't see or touch these lines, but you can feel them.  In fact, there are people, like myself, who can see the energy radiating off of them which can tell you all about where that person is physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  It sounds a little wild to some people, but really, its only because you have never heard of it or experienced it directly for yourself.  But when you do, it is a game changer.  But you don't have to see this energy in order to work with it.  There is a lot that you can do with it that is healthy and beneficial.  
 
These lines that make up the energy body begin so small that they are difficult to see.  They go down in scale to subatomic since the energy force literally does feed right into and out of the subatomic.  Its a very very detailed system for carrying energy.  Most systems for understanding this only show the seven chakras that go up the core of the body.  In the same way that your vascular system goes from extremely small structures that feed into organs and cells, they get bigger and bigger like the branches of a tree.  Finally they go up a central main trunk, which is where the most obvious centers of vortex energy reside.  We call these "chakras" which mean "wheel" or "disc" in the Sanskrit.
You don't need to know anything about esoteric traditions to know and understand what a chakra is or what your energy is.  I can tell you that by becoming sensitive to energy fields that are in others around you and by feeling your own energy, you can learn right away FROM the energy itself to know how it behaves and how incredibly complex but beautiful it is. By learning directly with the energy, you can allow your own natural intuitiveness to bloom.  Most people feel they have to learn this from another person, but I say that you literally have the capacity within you to decode the information for yourself because it is what you are.  But absent that, a few very basic guidelines about how to reach a place where the energy of the infinite can move through you with calm and peace.

Blocks As Solid (Ideas and Emotions)
 
We like to think of energy as something that is not solid, but I want to propose to you that at the level of energy itself, the energy body has amazing structure and a kind of "solidity" to it that makes the lines that run through it that the Chinese have charted as "meridians" as incredibly consistent from one person to the next.  Far from being just a current or amorphous flow of energy, the energy that makes up our consciousness is amazingly structured.  It is out of this "solidity" that energetic objects can get stuck in the system that is our light body.  In the same way that food can get stuck in your throat, energy can be stuck, sometimes for years, lifetimes even, in your energy body.  The result of removing the block is that perception and awareness changes and the person feels much more peaceful and happy. 

But we are a cluster of thousands of these blocks.  These blocks are always emotions that were not fully felt in one way or another. Do you fear your rage? Do you find yourself putting it away or stuffing it down?  That breakup with your boyfriend or girlfriend where you pulled yourself together and stopped crying because you were afraid you were going to just fall apart? Its possible that you were stuffing something down. Or how about that moment when you feared something that you did not understand...a feeling that just hung there like dirty laundry on the clothesline?  Afraid, we leave it alone.....and we shove it down.  By not fully processing any form of emotion, we literally create a kind of bottled knot of whatever that emotion is that gets stored in the energy body.  

The Body Thinks
 
There is a lot of evidence that I am finding that shows HOW the energy body and the physical body work together to either store or to release these blocks.  It has to do with the nervous system, the brain, as well as the current of prana and how it is polarized in the life force field itself. 
The light body is made up of two fields of energy that are joined and that replenish each other. They aren't really even "two" but two ends of a spectrum of energy that represents a kind of cosmic totality that makes it possible for you to then connect into the totality that exists beyond you.  This is the way this energy works, and is why you can feel the rush of the universe move through you in moments of nondual awareness (or as a continual awareness depending on the extent of your experience).  Two-in-one (energies) who then birth a transcendent third energy.  You see? All of this activity is felt as taking place not in the head but all through the body.  
 
What I am getting at is that there is already evidence to support that the body "thinks" and stores memory.  Now this stands in direct opposition to what we all have been taught, but what we have learned about our capacity to store memory is simply lacking.  Consider that the tissues in your body contain neurons, enough neurons in your gut for the brain of the average cat.  THAT is a lot of processing power.  What do you think our gut is doing with all of that?  What does your gut tell you? :-) So you see, the body has this capacity for dealing with memory, yes, and there is also a way to use somatics (body knowledge) to aid in releasing these memories.  Unlike the brain, the body seems to be more selective in the memories it stores.  It seems at this point in time, to be storing memories that it has had trouble with.  These can now be released once the individual is ready to release them.  And doing so is a saving grace because whatever the short coming was, or the fault or hurt or fear or rage, it all evaporates after releasing these blocks. 
 
In the work I was doing with my friend Alison who is herself awakened and a gifted intuitive, we found that even matter itself has a propensity to hold blocked energy.  I one experience that unfolded that I write about in my book, I describe how we unlocked an energy that had been blocked at a physical site that involved the murder of a man who had been drowned in a lake.  At the time, we did not know that a body had been found in the lake that we saw in our inner vision, but it had been discovered as the waters receded in what was then a dry lake bed (and his body was discovered along with some of his belongings enough to identify him).  We were able to describe a scenario that had a group of friends going out on the lake in the middle of the night with one of their friends not returning.  By simply recognizing the truth of this event, we were able to release it.  Six months after our encounter our local newspaper printed a story about the man who had died in the lake!  It was pretty amazing that events in the physical world would be so closely tied to our own encounter.  The newspaper story told the story of the four friends who took this man out onto the lake.  What we saw was that he was murdered for an elicit love affair with the wife or girlfriend of his friend. It was perhaps the reason why the blocked energy could be released....because someone was able to see what really happened on that night.  No one else would have been able to really see the events as they took place.  While we had testimony from his friends as part of the historical record, it is interesting how no one seemed to even entertain the idea of foul play at all.  Basically, it came down to four people all saying that their friend drowned. As long as everyone sticks to their story, then no one is the wiser.  
 
And of course, this lead the skeptical to suggest that I saw something that was not there, or that I was making it up or seeing a real event bu interpreting it to fit my own life where I felt as though I had been drowned. And I will concede that this is certainly a real possibility.  What suggests to me that we were seeing real events was because both Alison and I were picking up on all the same information, information that was in line with the story when it came out in the newspapers.
And this is where the second lesson in doing this kind of work comes in.  When we went up to this lake, we were simply going to see the sun setting.  But what unfolded was an event not unlike one that had taken place in my own life. There was something eerily similar to what had happened to me and to our friend who drowned in the lake.  While my life was not taken from me, my experience in my marriage was that I was being held underwater to be drowned before my own children.  It was itself a really painful experience that happened to me, something that people in the psychiatric community call 'Parental Alienation Syndrome."  One parent tries to destroy the other parent in the eyes of the children.  When it happens to you, it feels like the life is being sucked out of your body.  it feels like you are drowning.  It was appropriate that I would pick up on this eerie energy that was skulking about in those hills.  It was scary at first....sinister....but as we worked through the memory, I found that I was touching on a whole host of feelings that were in me as well.  By working with one block we were able to clear the other block. 
 
But what took place in the wake of this experience is also very telling.  In the same way that clearing a block in your body leads to a world of new possibilities, the area where this drowning took place also underwent a lot of changes in the years following our event.  Renovations were called for in the main buildings, a new arts initiative was called for with new people with progressive ideas coming onto the scene.  It was as though a new window opened for the people who lived and worked around this location.  To date, a slew of new initiatives have been undertaken on the part of the owners of the property where this lake is.  Its interesting to see how a location can be stuck for years only to see how it becomes unstuck, with a flow of new people, new ideas, and new possibilities entering the scene.  The same happens to you when you release these blocks, too!
 
Complimentary Blocks And The Law Of Attraction
 
Until a block is cleared, the block can be the basis of an attraction by others who are either similarly blocked or complimentary blocked.  What this means is that you either have someone who has had the same KIND of experience or someone who compliments the experience as in the case of someone who has a fear of being pushed, say, and you attract a person who seems to like to push you a lot!  THAT would be an example of a complimentary attraction.  A positive complimentary attraction would be somethign similar but in the positive, not negative.  In either case, however, the two people feel the similarities even if they are opposites, and these dynamics open up the flow of energy within us. They fill a role be it positive or negative.  These aspects of the other person can lay dormant for decades before expressing themselves, or they can be playing in the background all the time.  However, when you release this material, you release any possibility for this same kind of blocked material to ever be of any consequence to you in the future.  it is gone like a poof of smoke.  And this is why this kind of work is so important and life changing; you can change your whole life based on one big critical pivotal move in clearing your blocks in your body.  The result is that you NEVER feel energized by behaviors that would have effected you before.  It's as though your mind has been completely rewired when it comes to whatever hot button issue this block represented to you in the past.  There is a lot to suggest that this event does literally have the power to rewire the brain in seconds flat!  How's that for a speedy transformation?
 
It really is that fast and that easy.  When you have enough of these you realize that you can actually become a free person in ways you have never experienced before.

Ways Of Clearing Blocks
 
The best way to work through blocks is to pay attention to the ones that come up the most for you.  This is one most obvious way.  But these blocks may also be the hardest to clear away.  I am of the observed opinion that clearing smaller blocks is the way to go since it can loosen up material surrounding one block only to result in a kind of energetic avalanche with other blocks going at about the same time. 

You can identify blocks in your body by simply observing when you feel a sense of resistance or even pain in your body when you move a certain way.  Your energy body changes frequency from one end of the field to the other.  As a result, different emotions are stored at different places along this "column" in the body.  This is why some issues are stored in the root chakra than in the crown. The root chakra deals with nurture, abundance, and safety of self, for example.  When you feel a sense of resistance or even pain from tightness in a given area, you can gain a good bit of understanding about the block in general by thinking about where that block is located.  If its between two chakras, then it will contain aspects of BOTH chakras in some way.  
 
If you can identify the spot where the hurt or twinge keeps happening, you can point it out to a therapists who can work on that spot for you.  The types of therapists who can do this work will be people who do both energy work and body manipulations such as deep tissue massage.  Acupressure, acupuncture, reiki, and deep tissue are all methods that can help.  In pranayama yoga there is a lot of attention given to moving certain parts of the body, something called "locks" that help to move blocked material.  All of these involve vigorous movement of the part of the body where the chakra is located and, presumably, the blocked material.  Even placing your attention on the spot and holding it there through the day is one way that you can help loosen up a block in your body.  If it gets enough aware energy, it can trigger the release of the block sometimes. 
 
Chakra Clearing VS. Meridian Clearing
 
This is especially true for the chakras.  When a block is in a meridian line and not in a chakra, it seems to be harder to release it unless you are using acupressure or reiki, systems that actively move energy through the meridians of the energy body.  The chakras, conversely,  have a churning effect on blocks so that if you can use the chakras in meditation to swirl and move around a block, this can be very helpful because unlike clearig one small block in a meridian, a whole cluster of blocks can often be released all at once when its associated to chakra movement.  This is achieved by simply visualizing it and allowing the chakras to open fully and begin their movements, which often feel like you are moving or floating or even flying sometimes.  By placing your intent to clear the blocked material in a given chakra, the energy can begin to melt away the block.  
 
Clearing along a meridian line is more exact and may only clear one block.  It can also lead to other blocks letting go, though, and these blocks can be worked through by acupuncture, acupressure, and deep tissue most often.  The larger blocks can be "swirled" away through vigorous chakra movement and can sweep away lots of blocks at once, leaving a person feeling as though they are a changed person.  Many people who have these types of clearings describe feeling as though their body was being purged by a wave or by a force that sent a whole series of bubbles or shots of energy up along their spine and out their body.  Fundamental to all of this work is intent (willingness) and willingness to surrender at a deep level even into the body.  By reaching this deep state of vulnerability, you will also be reaching a deep state of awareness somatically about your body and your own body of feeling, too. Trust me, when the moment comes, it will be like suddenly seeing things in a very different way, the way perhaps that things really are instead of the way you have chosen to see them through the colorings of the particular block that you have.  Be ready to see things in a very different way, or to feel them very differently.  And remember; this is nothing at all to do with reason.  This is NOT about working through your emotional backlog rationally.  To try to do so is a trap.  Yes, reason can keep you OUT of the thick hot stew of your feelings and can help you to calmly identify what needs to be released.  However, you need to actually jump in the water with no fear or resistance to what you will find since this is a necessary state of mind and heart that you will need in order to clear the block. If you turn away, you are effectively saying to your body that its okay to keep the block in place.  
 
Some blocks go quickly.  Some take months, even years to dissolve.  A good rule of thumb is that if you have a strong investment in a given block, the harder it will be to rid yourself of it.  The more ego focuses on it, the harder it will be for the block to simply dissolve.

Part of prana is the energy body that expresses itself as a vortex, a kind of doughnut-shaped field of energy that is common to most anything that has an electromagnetic field around it.  It is this field that carries your consciousness and also the energy that feeds into your cells. When the energy is blocked, illness and neurosis can result. Life force is literally being squeezed out of you when it should be more abundant. 

When you remove these blocks you can realize stronger energy, a more peaceful state of mind and greater bliss that is not at the whim of whatever blocks are turning in you at the time. 
Until you are able to release a block, the block itself will be energized by prana in your body and it will remain active.  It can cause any number of problems, all of which will revolve around some kind of meme that is less than who you really are as a divine creature in earthly robes.  These blocks can cause no end of trouble for you.  There is little else work that is as important as this is. 
There are numerous ways to clear away blocks in the body.  One method is through energy work like White Crane Chi Gung.  This method of blending movement with energy work will aid in the removal of blocks throughout the body.  In order for it to work, it requires patience and persistence.  By working at it for weeks and months at a time, you can begin to see results.  Deep tissue massage by a practitioner who knows or understands about blocks is helpful.  Also, body movement is key.  The very act of shaking or massaging or moving the part of the body that is blocked can aid in removing material from it.  
 
Until you have cleared one chakra region, you will be dealing with what blocks remain in that region.  You will likely find that less obvious blocks come to the fore in your awareness now after having one bigger more obvious block removed.  Your attention can become much more highly tuned in this way to detect blocks in your system.  As this happens, you can also become much more sensitive to the presence in blocks in yourself and others if you are interested in learning a healing art.  I have dug so deep into myself that I have had some practitioners unable to detect the blocks.  One actually scolded me, saying I should not try to CREATE problems when there were were not problems there.  This practitioner was not able to pick up on this material, and I went on to have a number of clearings surrounding this region, so yes, there was more there, but not all of us will be as good about picking up on it.  While I have done the bulk of the clearing on my own, I have used a variety of methods to assist in clearing my system, and these have all worked well for me when they came along in my awakening journey (almost as if they were perfectly suited for the blocks kundalini was churning away on at the time!).  In many ways, I have been very gifted to have found a certain modality at a given time, as though the timing was perfect.  I was talking with my latest therapist about doing more work in the Fall recently as she expressed some surprise with the level of release I was experiencing with her work. I had to explain that while my being able to release blocks was different from her experience, it wasn't from my experience.  For many people, it seems they get a deep tissue massage and maybe loosen up some material a bit.  For me, I am headed into the final stage of releasing material, a process that has taken years of steady daily attention and work, and I am having flashes of past lives, of deeply held traumas from my ancient past. It seems the deeper I go into it, the harder it is, the deeper the shadows. New things come up, things that had not come up before.  Because I am dealing with the root chakra last, I am encountering a landscape inwardly that shows me all of the feelings that have arisen in me ever since I was a baby.  These are very old things, lifetimes in the making, and yet even so, I am here to deal them a kind of wonderful kind of death, which is in truth a redemption.  I let them free, no longer prisoner.  As this happens, I find that I experience emotions that I have long since pent up.  It isn't easy!  I am afraid I will offend someone, that I will get caught in the vortex of its energy while I am actively trying to clear it out!  But regardless, I go forward.  I go forward relatively alone because I would not want my anger and rage which was so-long suppressed in the root to be bubbling up with people near me.  How would I respond?  What would I say? In moments like these I feel like someone with terrets syndrome, afraid of walking into public places and calling the nice old lady at the counter something I shouldn't.

I know.  I hear that voice in my head, too.  "Oh really, fellah? You mean you might call an innocent old lady who did no harm to you an ugly old hag or a bitch or something?  Is that what you are saying?  Doesn't sound very spiritual to me, fellah....not very spiritual at all!"  This is of course where I give the voice in my head the virtual finger and turn back to what I am focused on.  You see, all of this is spiritual.  The sooner we get that, the better.  Some people will point out that calling someone names is not really spiritual, and I will say you missed the point.  This isn't about pretending to be something we aren't.  But the path to becoming what we know we can be is one that is involved in removing the error (shadow) that gets in the way of that perfection.  So its all about being real.  Its like being the Velveteen Rabbit. 

So don't be afraid of the shadow, I say.  That you get down into such shadows is cause for celebration.  Who on the planet has managed to get this deeply into themselves....to overcome the world?  That is pretty special and pretty damned spiritual.  :-)

This is why clearing blocks is so important; it is all about overcoming the world.  Would you like to see with new eyes?  With clear bodies, we can build a clear world.  And that is why I am writing to you today.  Pass it along!
~P.

Kundalini and Flu-Like Symptoms

I have been away for a bit and have not had time to work much up on the topic of awakening, so my apologies.  I had a wonderful trip to the West coast to celebrate my 50'th year here, and it was a marvelous gift from a wonderful friend who is one of a kind.  I like to travel because I have found that the very location, the particular flow of energy from the earth itself can trigger a different turn of mind or some new realization.  It is true that the electromagnetic field that protects us from plasma from the sun has a different feel or flavor that really has little to do with the surface appearance of the location. Its just....different.  And out there on the Island of San Catalina, it was an energy I was so ready to feel into.  So what a wonderful gift, right?

I have noticed that there are a lot of search inquiries on my blog about flu symptoms connected to kundalini.  I don't look at my stats enough, apparently, because this is a topic that I may have touched on from time to time, but never directly. So given the interest, I am going to hopefully give you some insight into these symptoms that might make the going a little easier.

As many of you know, I feel that we have everything we need inside of us to discern the manner of our condition and how to heal ourselves. This is especially true in the midst of awakening.  Even so, the sheer volume of symptoms and the fast-paced change can be a lot to take in and try to make sense of! 


The Reaction To Solar Energy

The Hindus describe the qualities of energy (prana)  in our bodies as solar and lunar.  It isn't that your energy is tied to these solar and lunar qualities, but rather it seeks to describe the character of the energy.  It is no different from the Chinese yin and yang. Simply, we have and are aware we have two complimentary energies that we often ascribe a character like male and female, hot and cold, solar and lunar, etc. Sometimes different qualities of energy are needed to help dissolve the blocked material that awakening brings.  A very male-leaning energy (yang) might need the compliment of the cooler feminine to help move it along (yin).  Solar energy most often can cause stomach upset.   The answer is to find ways to unblock and let ourselves FLOW in a more balanced way.

Solar energy, or yang, can be very healing.  It can be the "fire" that burns away blocks.  But because of the nature of this energy (which is not always experienced as heat, but this is how many traditions describe it), you can also experience varying degrees of over-stimulation from it.  Good, yes, but if you have too much of it, it can lead to discomfort.  For what it is worth, in my own experience, I experienced a lot of yang energy in my body that helped to move a lot of blocks very quickly.  I also suspect that it also led to my body protecting itself by producing extra fluid to insulate it from the energy that was so strong. What this means is that the body creates mucus, and mucus can lead to feeling of nausea.  It is kind of a double-edges sword.  Hair of the dog: you sometimes need that strong energy to clear you out, but it can also make you feel....bad.  The light at the end of the tunnel is that as the body is cleared of stored emotional material called "blocks" or "knots," you experience a much calmer and peaceful state with the energy. This has been my experience, and I have noted that others who I know have expressed similar observations. But this is all intuitive.  What do other sources have to say about this?

To illustrate to you how you can know intuitively what kind of energy you need to help bring a fix of healing, I just typed in the paragraph above my feeling that yang energy was tied to the stomach/colon, and is responsible for problems we see there.  But the truth is, I had no outside source telling me this.  I just wrote it and then figured I could find out if this was right.....and if I was wrong, I would correct it.  Want to know what I found?  Look here to read this very interesting article on the type of energy in the stomach and intestines (you will need to skip down several paragraphs....I will excerpt the information for you but the link could prove helpful so that is included also)

http://www.steppingstoneacu.com/blog/2012/08/08/The-Large-Intestine-Transformation-Change-and-Letting-Go.aspx

Traditional Chinese Medicine is all about relationships. The Large Intestine energy also has a special relationship with the Stomach energy, in that they are both designated as “Yang Ming” or “Yang Brightness”. Yang, as we have mentioned, is the active, hot, fiery, expansive parts of our being. (As opposed to Yin, which is the passive, watery, cool, inward parts.) Yang Brightness, as the name implies, are strong Yang energy systems. This means that they are easily affected by heat. This heat may be generated by long-term patterns of stagnant energy, a poor diet, or physically or emotionally toxic environments. The Yang Ming designation also means that we can effectively use these systems to clear pathological heat from the body. Some of the best acupuncture points in the body to clear excess heat are on the Large Intestine meridian.  One of the ways to clear excessive heat (such as a high fever) with herbal medicine is to use herbs that stimulate the Large Intestine to promote a bowel movement and bring the fever rapidly down.

In the excerpt above, the tradition comes from Chinese medicine.  As with all healing modalities, there is always, or tends to be, a leaning in one direction or another towards certain ways of seeing and treating a given issue.  The gist in this article, though, as you may well find, is that yang energy is tied into the digestive track and is probably often responsible for problems when this energy becomes stagnated (which can also mean it is moving too strongly, the other side of the coin!).  If this is the case, how then do you correct for this?  You move that energy!

These energies become much more intense during awakening.  They can be so intense that they can have very real physical effects.  The question in people's minds is if these effects are bad for us?  What is important to bear in mind is that when the self resists the flow of this energy, there is always pain, anxiety, etc.  Whenever the self surrenders, the energy flow goes from hard to blissful.  This is the important lesson of this new world of energy. It is simple: don't fight it.  I guarantee you that at any point at any time when someone is feeling difficulty in the midst of awakening, it is ALWAYS attributed or has its root in some resistance in the individual.  But when you awaken, you don't just magically enter into it perfectly formed for letting this energy flow through you.  Yes, the INITIAL awakening might have involved a blast of white light up your spine that sent you into a transcendent state for a few minutes or even a few days, but everyone, and I mean everyone, returns to their lives to work at the level of the personality to work to clear and purify all levels of the self into a finer form.  This takes time.  As a result, you can be dealing with the effects from the dross or old material as it exists side by side with this other energy.
Flu symptoms are not unusual.  I had them.  I had them but without the accompanying high temperatures that might tell me this was a real flu.  Instead, I had stomach upset, nausea that would come and go, and even diarrhea which would itself also come and go with no rhyme or reason.  My appetite was effected, and my stomach often would feel on edge at certain stages of the cleansing process.  The observations I made were that just prior to and just after a big release of blocked material, I would get these digestive anomalies.  They would come based in large part to how big the block was.  I found that breath work (I was shown that I should pant like a wild cat....a type of panting that is not unlike the breathing that yogi's teach to their students when dealing with kundalini), as well as physical exercise, mild foods, and proper hydration were all aspects to my working through these symptoms.

The unique problem when talking about kundalini is that we have what I would call "referred" symptoms that happen a LOT.  I define "referred" symptoms as energetic symptoms that aren't even physical that get picked up by the brain and then are interpreted to BE a real physical symptom.  The way to tell the difference between real and referred is that when you go to the doctor, they can find nothing behind the symptoms.  In time you will be able to discern for yourself what is real and what is referred.  Many people do go to the doctor in the beginning of their awakenings because they think there is something wrong, only to find nothing is to be found. The real danger in this situation is the doctor who feels he or she must prescribe SOMETHING to make the patient feel better.  The accompanying sense of relief that you get when they give you that piece of paper called a prescription begins to bring relief right away, long before you even buy the prescription.  However, as you may know, the placebo effect is not improved upon by taking drugs that we really do not need, so patient beware.

When I awoke I was having this nagging stomach problem that would come and go with no seemingly good explanation for it.  Of course, I worried about what it might mean since it was unlike any stomach problems I have ever had, so I thought it was something new.  Well, the short story was that it was something new, just not what I thought or feared it might be.  Luckily my doctor did not give me medication, but suggested it was some kind of re-balancing of my system and to just give it some time, watch what I was eating, etc.

In my case, I was having bouts of diarrhea for no known cause.  I would feel a little sick during these bouts, but not as if I had a flu or some bug.  In my mind I thought this could be some unknown effect from something I might need to be careful about.  The clue for me was that each time that I took pepto bismal, the symptoms went away, only to come back about a month later.  This happened a number of times in the six months between my first initial epiphany encounter with nonduality and the sudden rising of the force that came up my spine in serpentine fashion. I simply had not connected the dots yet.

So some strategies for dealing with this

Treat Yourself Right

• You might want to see a doctor first to rule out anything that might be the root of something physical first.
• Take simple remedies that will help settle your stomach(pepto worked well for me)
• Lighten your food intake to include bland softer foods (barley, oats, wheat, etc., for morning)
• Certain foods will be easier on your stomach than others such as eggs, eggs, high fiber grains

Help Yourself Move Energy

This is what is causing the flu symptoms if it's not due to a bug.  Learning to move energy and help with blocks is an important long-term strategy

Breathwork - See Pranayama and Hatha Yoga. Using a panting type of breath while concentrating awareness on the solar plexus and imagining the energy rising out of the stomach into the heart, is a good way to encourage energy flow through your body.

Physical disciplines that help to dissolve energetic blocks in your system.  Consider Qi Gung (also called Chi Gong), Thai Chi, as well as yoga all can be helpful in dissolving blockages.  Acupuncture/pressure and deep tissue work can aid in energy movement. Deep tissue massage with a therapist who is good at energy work can also be extremely helpful.  You will have to do your homework here.  I have found two extremely good practitioners who know how to listen to my energy and then help to move what they can feel is causing me problems. One therapist was trained in Kahuna massage and turned out was only a few blocks from my home. The other is a dear friend who approaches this type of work in a big picture way, integrating a broad range of methods all used when the moment requires it.  Sometimes she will make things up based on what her inner guidance is telling her at the time.  As a result, she is one of the most sought after masseuse in her area. 

I often will simply ask myself why I am having trouble.  As I do, I observe myself carefully, and I zoom in on my feelings as I ask myself this.  It is really amazing what you can find out about yourself when you are no longer invested in hiding things the way you used to.  Access to the subconscious is much clearer now in awakening.  You might want to sit quietly and ask your stomach or gut why its feeling this way.  FEEL into it, don't think into it.  Is this feeling reminding you of a feeling you have had before?  As  child?  Or in a certain circumstance?  What do these instances all have in common? You would be surprised just how quickly you can do this type of inner inquiry in order to get to the root of the cause or issue.  This type of work can be very healing and very helpful for you in all other forms of healing work (releasing blocks).  Don't be shy, give it a try.  :-)

Alternative Methods

• Diet

Try changing your diet.  You might need a higher fiber diet.  Very high fiber has helped me to deal with some of the fallout from energetic block movement.  In fact, I often use "All bran" as a kind of tonic in the morning and make sure that I eat food high in fiber. Cut down on sugar intake and eat foods that are high in beneficial bacteria.  This aids digestion and also gives the immune system a boost.

Often "cooling" foods will help with these symptoms.  Try melon.  Melon also has the effect of calming symptoms of kundalini, something I discovered early in my awakening process (I was told about this by a guide in the middle of the night-he showed me an image of a cut piece of cantaloupe or all things, I only later read about how melon can be helpful) Try cucumber and light vegetables.  Fruits have also been helpful.  Things that never caused you upset may now be upsetting.  Foods that you didn't like you might find that you like because of how they can help you feel in the throes of awakening. 

Bland foods often work.  Fiber could also make it worse in some cases, before it gets better.  Your body will tell you what feels the best.  Consider trying different methods for more than just a few days since it takes time for your digestive system to re-balance itself. 

During the early stage of awakening, I used Pepto-Bismal to calm my stomach.  It worked for several weeks until the next round came back around.  

• Fasting

Fasting may help tone your gut.  How you choose to do this depends on you and your health.  There are many ways to fast, some that involve still consuming food.  Some fasts involve colon cleansing.  While you will want to check with your doctor whether fasting is right for you (if you have health issues that could be affected by a fast), there are a lot of resources on the web today about the many ways to fast.  When I fasted, I found that it really helped with my energetic flow.  It helped the energy to flow less hindered.  My fast was a draw-down of food so that I ate half the amount the second day of the fast, then I ate nothing the third day and then did not eat anything for the next three days.  I made sure that I always had water on hand.  I was physically active the third day of my fast, but not excessively so.  I drove on a four hour trip one way and had no problem with being light headed. I found this type of fast to have been very beneficial to me.  Everyone is different, so the results I have may be different for you.  My experience has been that fasting tones my body as well as my mind and seems to help open channels of energy.  Fasting was long considered a way to open ones self to the world of the spirit. You can read up on the history of fasting from a number of different cultural and religious perspectives.

In a story about Pythagoras who was seeking entry into the Mystery Schools of Egypt, he was told that to "be different" he needed to fast, do breath work, and focus on different places in his body (such as the third eye).  Fasting was done for extended periods back then.  When Pythagoras had done as they instructed, he returned a changed man. Did he have an awakening?  Its certainly possible that this was exactly what took place.

This link is ALL about fasting.  Really. An entire site dedicated to it. :-)

http://www.allaboutfasting.com/types-of-fasting.html

~As in all practice, extremes are to be avoided.  Good luck in your work!

UPDATE: 7/2016

I have been doing a lot of research on the dopamine connection and Kundalini experiences. Without going to deeply into this let me just say that there is I believe a very real connection between the experience of Awakening and the production of dopamine in the body. The effect of an opiate like opening is almost always something that produces a certain degree of knowledge. I am not a researcher and I do not have studies to back up my contention, but I do think that this is an area that warrants more attention. I think that it is possible that the increased level of dopamine in the body can contribute to feelings of nausea and loss of appetite. I began by looking at what compounds similar to dopamine did to people and their appetites.  Opium, for example, kills appetite, and often creates nausea.  While opium is not exactly like dopamine, it is a natural analog to it, and I think it is very likely that there is a connection with the effect in one being expressed in the bodily produced one. What I have found in my own experience is there is little to ameliorate the effects of nausea other than altering my diet so I take in foods that are more bland and soothing to my stomach. Everyone may be different but my experience has shown that protein sources like Greek yoghurt and eggs have helped me to get the nutrients necessary to remain healthy. Also a vegetarian diet has helped in many instances.

Not directly related to this have been several foods that have helped to smooth out the more difficult sides to intense energy. These are cantaloupe (try any melon that you like) when energy is running high. Also Indian curry has helped at early stages. Later on hot spicy foods have seemed to provide a smooth bliss during times of intense energy. This was only beneficial during a stage in the process, but it gave me a couple of hours of relief, which was a welcome change at the time. 

Breath and Prana

I have explained many times how it has been that I have found the idea that so many yoga practitioners put forward which is that breath and Prana are one and the same to be off base.  I have sought to explain the incidental alignment of these two issues through my own experience with awakening and never having done a single moment of yoga in my life. For me, I was given an inside view I suppose, but it was a clear one.  I have sought to explain what Prana is and how it is excited in the body in an effort to give people the tools they need to really understand this force in a more thorough and genuine manner. My sense is that if you really understand something that seems mysterious to you, your depth of understanding will be manifold when you start with the foundation of what it is you are seeking to understand.  Unfortunately, there has been a lot of parroting of information.  This is just what the Veda's explain is the trap of reading books or seeking to absorb teachings from someone without the requisite work to really "get it."  "Getting it" requires feeling instead of thought, and this is what trips so many up.  Its a hard shift to make for us Westerners.  "Feel? What do you mean feel?" What I mean is that you slow or cease thought and allow feeling flow.  You become more sensitive to what is around you.  You begint o sense through your whole being.  You realize that sensory perception is much more than just your physical senses.  You just need to be able to stay with the feeling side of yourself long enough to begin to get the flow of information that is coming through.

Prana is moved by your willingness to surrender, to open, to become quiet, and to just feel. Feeling Prana is very much like entering into the inspired moment.  Being an artist, I am very familiar with how this state feels, and just as there are levels of intensity to it, Pranic movement is also very similar.  Using breath DOES help move Prana, but breath is not Prana. It isn't.  And now, finally, after reading the first few pages of my first book on Pranayama, there is a guru who is backing me up. 

So read the following quote from Sri Swami Sivananda, author of The Science Of Pranayama ©1937, 1997.

Svasa’ means inspiratory breath and ‘Prasvasa’ is expiratory breath. Breath is external

manifestation of Prana, the vital force. Breath like electricity, is gross Prana. Breath is Sthula, gross. Prana is Sukshma, subtle. By exercising control over this breathing you can control the subtle Prana inside. Control of Prana means control of mind. Mind cannot operate without the help of Prana. The vibrations of Prana only produce thoughts in the mind. It is Prana that moves the mind. It is Prana that sets the mind in motion. It is the Sukshma Prana or Psychic Prana that is intimately connected with the mind. This breath represents the important fly-wheel of an engine. Just as the other wheels stop when the driver stops the fly-wheel, so also other organs cease working, when the Yogi stops

  the breath. If you can control the fly-wheel, you can easily control the other wheels. 

Likewise, if you can control the external breath, you can easily control the inner vital force, Prana. The process by which the Prana is controlled by regulation of external breath, is termed Pranayama.

What he explains in a similar vein is that breath is just the way by which to stimulate the flow of Prana, but don't mistake breath AS Prana.  So I ask you, if this is front and center in a foundational book on Pranayama, which is the Way of Prana, why is it that so many people focus so deeply on breath work and speak of Prana as BEING breath? Perhaps it is because it sounds good to them and it makes all of this simple to understand or to relate to.  This can only be so when someone has not felt a Pranic movement or "rush" of the energy enough to be able to observe the energy in its fullest scope and learn from it and to understand how it moves and effects the mind and body.

It is time that we develop a means to stimulate prana without breath in order to help illustrate to students of yoga just what prana is.  It is time to show how prana can be induced in order to better understand this force which interpenetrates all things. This is the key to regulation of kundalini and in discovering ones own energetic constitution so as to keep from wrecking the mind and the body, which is easy to do when the kundalini moves. 

THAT will have to be the next installment, a series of exercises to help illustrate how prana moves independent of breath.  I will give you a sneak peek.  It involves focus, engagement, surrender and inspiration ("in-spire").

Nemasté

Trimorphic Protennoia

This is an early Christian initiatory rite developed by the Savior, whom we know to be Jesus, discovered in the cache of documents now known as the Nag Hammadi codices.  These scrolls, some predating the gospels By Mark, Luke and Mathew, have brought back into sharp focus that which the early church dismissed out of hand and represent a powerful understanding of the route to the divine that lies within each of us.  These documents were discovered in the mid-40's outside of a town in Egypt at a time when we were more ready to see them for what they are, which is a sacred path to awakening the divine that is within each of us. 

The Nag Hammadi Library

Trimorphic Protennoia

---

Translated by John D. Turner

I am Protennoia, the Thought that dwells in the Light. I am the movement that dwells in the All, she in whom the All takes its stand, the first-born among those who came to be, she who exists before the All. She (Protennoia) is called by three names, although she dwells alone, since she is perfect. I am invisible within the Thought of the Invisible One. I am revealed in the immeasurable, ineffable (things). I am incomprehensible, dwelling in the incomprehensible. I move in every creature.
I am the life of my Epinoia that dwells within every Power and every eternal movement, and (in) invisible Lights and within the Archons and Angels and Demons, and every soul dwelling in Tartaros, and (in) every material soul. I dwell in those who came to be. I move in everyone and I delve into them all. I walk uprightly, and those who sleep, I awaken. And I am the sight of those who dwell in sleep.
I am the Invisible One within the All. It is I who counsel those who are hidden, since I know the All that exists in it. I am numberless beyond everyone. I am immeasurable, ineffable, yet whenever I wish, I shall reveal myself of my own accord. I am the head of the All. I exist before the All, and I am the All, since I exist in everyone.
I am a Voice speaking softly. I exist from the first. I dwell within the Silence that surrounds every one of them. And it is the hidden Voice that dwells within my, within the incomprehensible, immeasurable Thought, within the immeasurable Silence.
I descended to the midst of the underworld, and I shone down upon the darkness. It is I who poured forth the water. It is I who am hidden within radiant waters. I am the one who gradually put forth the All by my Thought. It is I who am laden with the Voice. It is through me that Gnosis comes forth. I dwell in the ineffable and unknowable ones. I am perception and knowledge, uttering a Voice by means of thought. I am the real Voice. I cry out in everyone, and they recognize it (the voice), since a seed indwells them. I am the Thought of the Father, and through me proceeded the Voice, that is, the knowledge of the everlasting things. I exist as Thought for the All -- being joined to the unknowable and incomprehensible Thought -- I revealed myself -- yes, I -- among all those who recognize me. For it is I who am joined with everyone by virtue of the hidden Thought and an exalted , even a Voice from the invisible Thought. And it is immeasurable, since it dwells in the Immeasurable One. It is a mystery; it is unrestrainable by the Incomprehensible One. It is invisible to all those who are visible in the All. It is a Light dwelling in Light.
It is we also who alone have separated from the visible world, since we are saved by the hidden wisdom, by means of the ineffable, immeasurable Voice. And he who is hidden within us pays the tributes of his fruit to the Water of Life.
Then the Son who is perfect in every respect -- that is, the Word who originated through that Voice; who proceeded from the height; who has within him the Name; who is a Light -- he revealed the everlasting things, and all the unknowns were known. And those things difficult to interpet and secret, he revealed. And as for those who dwell in Silence with the First Thought, he preached to them. And he revealed himself to those who dwell in darkness, and he showed himself to those who dwell in the abyss, and to those who dwell in the hidden treasuries, he told ineffable mysteries, and he taught unrepeatable doctrines to all those who became Sons of the Light.
Now the Voice that originated from my Thought exists as three permanences: the Father, the Mother, the Son. Existing perceptibly as Speech, it (Voice) has within it a Word endowed with every , and it has three masculinities, three powers, and three names. They exist in the manner of Three ... -- which are quadrangels -- secretly within a silence of the Ineffable One.
It is he alone who came to be, that is, the Christ. And, as for me, I anointed him as the glory of the Invisible Spirit, with goodness. Now the Three, I established alone in eternal glory over the Aeons in the Living Water, that is, the glory that surrounds him who first came forth to the Light of those exalted Aeons, and it is in glorious Light that he firmly perseveres. And he stood in his own Light that surrounds him, that is, the Eye of the Light that gloriously shines on me. He perpetuated the Father of all Aeons, who am I, the Thought of the Father, Protennoia, that is, Barbelo, the perfect Glory, and the immeasurable Invisible One who is hidden. I am the Image of the Invisible Spirit, and it is through me that the All took shape, and (I am) the Mother (as well as) the Light which she appointed as Virgin, she who is called 'Meirothea', the incomprehensible Womb, the unrestrainable and immeasurable Voice.
Then the Perfect Son revealed himself to his Aeons, who originated through him, and he revealed them and glorified them, and gave them thrones, and stood in the glory with which he glorified himself. They blessed the Perfect Son, the Christ, the only-begotten God. And they gave glory, saying, "He is! He is! The Son of God! The Son of God! It is he who is! The Aeon of Aeons, beholding the Aeons which he begot. For thou hast begotten by thine own desire! Therefore we glorify thee: ma mo o o o eia ei on ei! The Aeon of Aeons! The Aeon which he gave!"
Then, moreover, the God who was begotten gave them (the Aeons) a power of life on which they might rely, and he established them. The first Aeon he established over the first: Armedon, Nousanios, Armozel; the second he established over the second Aeon: Phaionios, Ainios, Oroiael; the third over the third Aeon: Mellephaneus, Loios, Daveithai; the fourth over the fourth: Mousanios, Amethes, Eleleth. Now those Aeons were begotten by the God who was begotten - the Christ - and these Aeons received as well as gave glory. They were the first to appear, exalted in their thought, and each Aeon gave myriads of glories within great untraceable lights, and they all together blessed the perfect Son, the God who was begotten.
Then there came forth a word from the great Light Eleleth, and said, "I am king! Who belongs to Chaos and who belongs to the underworld?" And at that instant, his Light appeared, radiant, endowed with the Epinoia. The Powers of the Powers did not entreat him, and likewise immediately there appeared the great Demon who rules over the lowest part of the underworld and Chaos. He has neither form nor perfection, but, on the contrary, possesses the form of the glory of those begotten in the darkness. Now he is called 'Saklas', that is, 'Samael', 'Yaltabaoth', he who had taken power; who had snatched it away from the innocent one (Sophia); who had earlier overpowered her who is the Light`s Epinoia who had descended, her from whom he had come forth from originally.
Now when the Epinoia of the Light realized that he (Yaltabaoth) had begged him (the Light) for another order, even though he was lower than she, she said, "Give me another order, so that you may become for me a dwelling place, lest I dwell in disorder forever." And the order of the entire house of glory was agreed upon her word. A blessing was brought for her and the higher order released it to her.
And the great Demon began to produce aeons in the likeness of the real Aeons, except that he produced them out of his own power.
Then I too revealed my Voice secretly, saying, "Cease! Desist, (you) who tread on matter; for behold, I am coming down to the world of mortals for the sake of my portion that was in that place from the time when the innocent Sophia was conquered, she who descended, so that I might thwart their aim which the one revealed by her appoints." And all were disturbed, each one who dwells in the house of the ignorant light, and the abyss trembled. And the Archigenetor of ignorance reigned over Chaos and the underworld, and produced a man in my likeness. But he neither knew that that one would become for him a sentence of dissolution, nor does he recognize the power in him.
But now I have come down and reached down to Chaos. And I was with my own who were in that place. I am hidden within them, empowering them, giving them shape. And from the first day until the day when I will grant mighty glory to those who are mine, I will reveal myself to those who have heard my mysteries, that is, the Sons of the Light.
I am their Father, and I shall tell you a mystery, ineffable and indivulgeable by any mouth: Every bond I loosed from you, and the chains of the demons of the underworld I broke, these things which are bound on my members, restraining them. And the high walls of darkness I overthrew, and the secure gates of those pitiless ones I broke, and I smashed their bars. And the evil force, and the one who beats you, and the one who hinders you, and the tyrant, and the adversary, and the one who is King, and the present enemy, indeed all these I explained to those who are mine, who are the Sons of the Light, in order that they might nullify them all, and be saved from all those bonds, and enter into the place where they were at first.
I am the first one who descended on account of my portion which remains, that is, the Spirit that dwells in the soul, which originated from the Water of Life, and out of the immersion of the mysteries. And I spoke, I, together with the Archons and Authorities. For I had gone down below their language, and I spoke my mysteries to my own - a hidden mystery - and the bonds and eternal oblivion were nullified. And I bore fruit in them, that is, the Thought of the unchanging Aeon, and my house, and their Father. And I went down to those who were mine from the first, and I reached them and broke the first strands that enslaved them. Then everyone of those within me shone, and I prepared a pattern for those ineffable Lights that are within me. Amen.

The Discourse of Protennoia: One

I am the Voice that appeared through my Thought, for I am 'He who is syzygetic' since I am called 'the Thought of the Invisible One'. Since I am called 'the unchanging Speech', I am called 'She who is syzygetic'.
I am a single one, since I am undefiled. I am the Mother of the Voice, speaking in many ways, completing the All. It is in me that knowledge dwells, the knowledge of everlasting. It is I who speak within every creature, and I was known by the All. It is I who lift up the Speech of the Voice to the ears of those who have known me, that is, the Sons of the Light.
Now I have come the second time in the likeness of a female, and have spoken with them. And I shall tell them of the coming end of the Aeon and teach them of the beginning of the Aeon to come, the one without change, the one in which our appearance will be changed. We shall be purified within those Aeons from which I revealed myself in the Thought of the likeness of my masculinity. I settled among those who are worthy in the Thought of my changeless Aeon.
For I shall tell you a mystery of this particular Aeon, and tell you about the forces that are in it. The birth beckons; hour begets hour, day begets day. The months made known the month.Time has gone round succeeding time. This particular Aeon was completed in this fashion, and it was estimated, and it (was) short, for it was a finger that released a finger, and a joint that was separated from a joint. Then, when the great Authorities knew that the time of fulfillment had appeared - just as in the pangs of the parturient it (the time) has drawn near, so also had the destruction approached - all together the elements trembled, and the foundations of the underworld and the ceilings of Chaos shook, and a great fire shone within their midst, and the rocks and the earth were shaken like a reed shaken by the wind. And the lots of Fate and those who apportion the domiciles were greatly disturbed over a great thunder. And the thrones of the Powers were disturbed, since they were overturned, and their King was afraid. And those who pursue Fate paid their allotment of visits to the path, and they said to the Powers, "What is this disturbance and this shaking that has come upon us through a Voice to the exalted Speech? And our entire habitation has been shaken, and the entire circuit of the path of ascent has met with destruction, and the path upon which we go, which takes us up to the Archgenitor of our birth, has ceased to be established for us."
Then the Powers answered, saying, "We too are at loss about it, since we did not know what was responsible for it. But arise, let us go up to the Archgenitor and ask him." And the powers all gathered and went up to the Archgenitor. They said to him, "Where is your boasting in which you boast? Did we not hear you say, "I am God, and I am your Father, and it is I who begot you. and there is none beside me"? Now behold, there has appeared a Voice belonging to that invisible Speech of the Aeon which we know not. And we ourselves did not recognize to whom we belong, for that Voice which we listened to is foreign to us, and we did not recognize it; we did not know whence it was. It came and put fear in our midst and weakening in the members of our arms. So now let us weep and mourn most bitterly! As for the future, let us make our entire flight before we are imprisoned perforce, and taken down to the bosom of the underworld. For already the slackening of our bondage has approached, and the times are cut short, and the days have shortened, and our time has been fulfilled, and the weeping of our destruction has approached us, so that we may be taken to the place we recognize. For as for our tree from which we grew, a fruit of ignorance is what it has; and also its leaves, it is death that dwells in them, and darkness dwells under the shadow of its boughs. And it was in deceit and lust that we harvested it, this (tree) through which ignorant Chaos became for us a dwelling place. For behold, even he, the Archgenitor of our birth, about whom we boast, even he did not know this Speech."
So now, O sons of the Thought, listen to me, to the Speech of the Mother of your mercy, for you have become worthy of the mystery hidden from the Aeons, so that you might receive it. And the consummation of this particular Aeon and of the evil life has approached, and there dawns the beginning of the Aeon to come, which has no change forever.
I am androgynous. I am Mother (and) I am Father, since I copulate with myself. I copulated with myself and with those who love me, and it is through me alone that the All stands firm. I am the Womb that gives shape to the All by giving birth to the Light that shines in splendor. I am the Aeon to come. I am the fulfillment of the All, that is, Meirothea, the glory of the Mother. I cast voiced Speech into the ears of those who know me.
And I am inviting you into the exalted, perfect Light. Moreover, (as for) this (Light), when you enter it, you will be glorified by those who give glory, and those who enthrone will enthrone you. You will accept robes from those who give robes, and the baptizers will baptize you, and you will become gloriously glorious, the way you first were when you were .
And I hid myself in everyone and revealed myself within them, and every mind seeking me longed for me, for it is I who gave shape to the All when it had no form. And I transformed their forms into (other) forms, until the time when a form will be given to the All. It is through me that the Voice originated, and it is I who put the breath within my own. And I cast into them the eternally Holy Spirit, and I ascended and entered my Light. I went up upon my branch and sat there among the Sons of the holy Light. And I withdrew to their dwelling place which [...] become glorious [...]. Amen.

On Fate: Two

I am the Word who dwells in the ineffable Voice. I dwell in undefiled Light and a Thought revealed itself perceptibly through the great Speech of the Mother, although it is a male offspring that supports me as my foundation. And it (the Speech) exists from the beginning in the foundations of the All.
But there is a Light that dwells hidden in Silence, and it was first to come forth. Whereas she (the Mother) alone exists as Silence, I alone am the Word, ineffable, unpolluted, immeasurable, inconceivable. It (the Word) is a hidden Light, bearing a fruit of life, pouring forth a living water from the invisible, unpolluted, immeasurable spring, that is, the unreproducible Voice of the glory of the Mother, the glory of the offspring of God; a male virgin by virtue of a hidden Intellect, that is, the Silence hidden from the All, being unreproducible, an immeasurable Light, the source of the All, the root of the entire Aeon. It is the foundation that supports every movement of the Aeons that belong to the mighty glory. It is the foundation of every foundation. It is the breath of the powers. It is the eye of the three permanences, which exist as Voice by virtue of Thought. And it is a Word by virtue of Speech; it was sent to illumine those who dwell in the darkness.
Now behold! I will reveal to you my mysteries, since you are my fellow brethren, and you shall know them all.
(5 lines missing)
I told all of them about my mysteries that exist in the incomprehensible, inexpressible Aeons. I taught them the mysteries through the Voice that exists within a perfect Intellect, and I became a foundation for the All, and I empowered them.
The Second time I came in the Speech of my Voice. I gave shape to those who took shape, until their consummation.
The Third time I revealed myself to them in their tents as Word, and I revealed myself in the likeness of their shape. And I wore everyone's garment, and I hid myself within them, and they did not know the one who empowers me. For I dwell within all the Sovereignties and Powers, and within the angels, and in every movement that exists in all matter. And I hid myself within them until I revealed myself to my brethren. And none of them (the Powers) knew me, although it is I who work in them. Rather, they thought that the All was created by them, since they are ignorant, not knowing their root, the place in which they grew.
I am the Light that illumines the All. I am the Light that rejoices in my brethren, for I came down to the world of mortals on account of the Spirit that remains in that which descended (and) came forth from the innocent Sophia. I came, and I delivered [...], and I went to ...
(5 lines missing)
... which he had formerly, and I gave to him from the Water of Life, which strips him of the chaos that is in the uttermost darkness that exists inside the entire abyss, that is, the thought of the corporeal and the psychic. All these I put on. And I stripped him of it, and I put upon him a shining Light, that is, the knowledge of the Thought of the Fatherhood.
And I delivered him to those who give robes - Yammon, Elasso, Amenai - and they covered him with a robe from the robes of the Light; and I delivered him to the baptizers, and they baptized him - Micheus, Michar, Mnesinous - and they immersed him in the spring of the Water of Life. And I delivered him to those who enthrone - Bariel, Nouthan, Sabenai - and they enthroned him from the Throne of Glory. And I delivered him to those who glorify - Ariom, Elien, Phariel - and they glorified him with the glory of the Fatherhood. And those who snatch away snatched away - Kamaliel, [...]anen, Samblo, and the servants of great holy luminaries - and they took him into the light-place of his Fatherhood. And he received the Five seals from the Light of the Mother, Protennoia, and it was granted him to partake of the mystery of knowledge, and he became a Light in Light.
So now ...
(5 lines missing)
... I was dwelling in them in the form of each one. The Archons thought that I was their Christ. Indeed, I dwell in everyone. Indeed, within those in whom I revealed myself as Light, I eluded the Archons. I am their beloved, for in that place I clothed myself as the son of the Archgenitor, and I was like him until the end of his decree, which is the ignorance of Chaos. And among the angels I revealed myself in their likeness, and among the Powers, as if I were one of them; but among the Sons of Man, as if I were a Son of Man, even though I am Father of everyone.
I hid myself within them all until I revealed myself among my members, which are mine, and I taught them about the ineffable ordinances, and (about) the brethren. But they are inexpressible to every Sovereignty and every ruling Power, except the Sons of the Light alone, that is, the ordinances of the Father. These are the glories that are higher than every glory, that is, the Five Seals, complete by virtue of Intellect. He who possesses the Five Seals of these particular names has stripped off garments of ignorance and put on a shining Light. And nothing will appear to him that belongs to the Powers of the Archons. Within those of this sort, darkness will dissolve and ignorance will die. And the thought of the creature, which is scattered, will present a single appearance and dark Chaos will dissolve and ...
(6 lines fragmentary)
... until I reveal myself to all my fellow brethren, and until I gather together all my fellow brethren within my eternal kingdom. And I proclaimed to them the ineffable Five Seals in order that I might abide in them and they also might abide in me.
As for me, I put on Jesus. I bore him from the cursed wood, and established him in the dwelling places of his Father. And those who watch over their dwelling places did not recognize me. For I, I am unrestrainable, together with my seed; and my seed, which is mine, I shall place into the holy Light within an incomprehensible Silence. Amen.

The Discourse of the Appearance: Three

Trimorphic Protennoia, in Three Parts
A Sacred Scripture written by the Father with perfect Knowledge

Original translation of this text was prepared by members of the
Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont Graduate School.
The Coptic Gnostic Library Project was funded by UNESCO, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other Institutions.
E. J. Brill has asserted copyright on texts published by the Coptic Gnostic Library Project.