Binaural Beats - Self Improvement Through Technology?

NOTE:  I have used binaural beats from time to time in my meditation work.  I was able to observe how this technology worked when a friend loaned me a Hemisync CD that he had bought his from the Monroe Institute (which is located in Faber, Virginia). I was already having the forward edge of awakening at this time, just not a full rising of the energy, and the CD most certainly helped with awakening symptoms.  I noticed that I began getting all kinds of very unusual light phenomenon happening that was tied to my third eye, which had been recently activated as a result of listening to this CD (I can't say you will get the same light effects from a Hemisync CD because I was kind of in different waters at that point, so there is that).  Be that as it may, I found that I felt different when I listened to these sounds which had out of phase vibrations as part of their technique to help to cause the two hemispheres to "line up" in its circuitry vibrations. The Hemisync CD was designed to get the two normally different hemispheres, which both put out different frequencies of energy (as seen on an EEG) to begin putting out more similar frequencies, to essentially "sync" together.  The idea was that this could lead to a brain that was entrained or "synced" to itself for better learning, awareness, and a host of meditation work.  While Robert Monroe pioneered the work in the West, there is ample evidence to show that the Germans were aware of this effect and had used it for a host of rather nefarious reasons (to get people to buy Nazi propaganda).  It is important to understand that a hemisync or a binaural beats audio track can only entrain your brain to a certain frequency.  It does not make you do anything you would not otherwise want to do.  It does not brain wash you, it provides a frequency effect to foster different brain states depending on the frequencies and how they are used in the audio file. it is a very effective way to stimulate your brain to fall into a given brain wave frequency range for doing certain kinds of self improvement work, meditation, learning, etc. Yes, you could listen to a higher frequency binaural beat that is pitched to help support or stimulate high levels of alertness as you study for that difficult exam, for example. You could also use the slower frequencies for absorbing information more deeply, which has its own benefits as well.  So to better understand how this all works, it is helpful to dive into the technology a little more.

An Intro To Binaural Beats

The concept behind Binaural beats is that the brain can be entrained by certain frequencies in sounds that wind up having specific effects on us.  It has been known for centuries that certain rhythms were better for inducing trance-like states.  Aboriginal cultures have used drumming (beats) of very specific frequencies for reaching accelerated states of mind.  A medicine man I spoke with once explained the reason behind the type of beats they use when they are gathered together; he says the pulse is akin to the heartbeat and this beat helps people to be calm and more meditative and thoughtful.

Harmonic effects in choral music within the Christian church can have similar kinds of effects.  The large echo-chambers of European churches help to create a dream-time effect, and the chanting of Tibetan monks can seem to put you on what feels another world.  Binaural beats take this understanding one step further by recognizing that the two hemispheres of the brain actually tend to operate at slightly different frequencies, and when sound is introduced into the ears that are out of phase with one another in just the right way, the two hemisphers can be entrained to work together and not be out of phase as is usually the case.  Binaural beats actually causes the brain to supply a frequency of sound energy to make up for the sounds that are supplied that are out of phase (one ear is hearing a frequency that is a few hertz faster or slower than the other ear) as a result of the out of phase sound. Here a source explains how the effect is produced:

If the left ear is presented with a steady tone of 500Hz and the right ear a steady tone of 510Hz, these two tones combine in the brain. The difference, 10Hz, is perceived by the brain and is a very effective stimulus for brainwave entrainment. This 10Hz is formed entirely by the brain. When using stereo headphones, the left and right sounds do not mix together until in your brain. The frequency difference, when perceived by the brain this way, is called a binaural beat.
SOURCE: http://www.bwgen.com/theory.htm

With binaural beats, the thing to realize is that it only offers a sound environment to support or help induce a general state of mind.  You yourself have to be willing to be swept away on the rhythms in order for them to work well. It is in effect, a launching pad, a meditation tool that is is utilizing an understanding of how the brain works so that it can speed your entry into target brain states quickly.
It is important to point out that binaural beats work when using headphones in order to properly isolate the two different phases or frequencies.  Being able to isolate them in this way is key to using them effectively.  Listening to stereo speakers will not provide you with the right separation since the beats from the left channel will bleed into your right ear, canceling a lot of the effect that takes place in the brain itself. In many ways, what is happening is exactly what is happening when you watch a 3-D movie.  By having one eye see one view and the other eye see a slightly different or offset view and feeding these two different images into the different hemispheres of the brain, the brain creates a tapestry out of these two images that results in the effect or sensation of depth.  In the case of binaural beats, instead of depth being produced, it is a vibration that is being created that supports a given brain wave frequency and leads to a general state of mind.

In the links I am providing, I am including beats for deep and slow brain wave patterns.  These are best used for learning and for deep meditative states. Since I am all about getting down to that lower substratum for deep substantive removal of old conditioned emotions that trip up most people, I tend to feel these slower beats are most effective for this type of self-improvement work.

I have found that the way to work with these is to allow yourself to drift as though you are going to sleep, without going to sleep. You want to learn how to skirt the edge of sleep without going into it since this is where the deepest and most effective tapping of the subconscious is achieved.  It also is where you can do the most substantive work, too, at least theoretically, provided you are ready to process old emotion and free yourself from it forever. It is here at this deep level that many of these emotions can be tapped into and properly processed.  Don't worry; an old trauma might seem scary at first to face, but I have had hundreds, thousands of these releases, and each one really was a non-event.  You are left wondering why you let it bounce around in you for so long.  These unprocessed emotions can lead you to being attracted to people and events that are not in your highest.  I had a friend who used to call me up in the middle of the night wondering why she was always attracted to "Mr. Wrong" and while I didn't have an easy answer for her back then, I know its directly tied to these unprocessed emotions most people don't even realize they have.  Its hard to explain to someone who has never done this work just how healing it is, so you must trust me on this and discover for yourself by doing the work and engaging in this type of process (which I write about voluminously on my blog).

This is in effect what many who have meditated over the ages have sought to do in their inner work, which is tapping these deep states associated with sleep and dreaming.  It is here that the subconscious can be tapped into and the conditioning that causes so many people difficulties in their lives which can then be melted away in a more or less conscious way. This is what so may in the spiritual community call shadow work.  It is simply being able to face the emotional material that has been shoved down and that keeps emerging into awareness as the result of certain triggers (which are all based on memory: a sound that reminds you of something traumatic in your past, etc.) and by sticking with the feeling, the emotion is properly processed and can actually be released.  This work is important because the skeletons are never so bad as we fear they are and it frees up the consciousness so that it can more clearly perceive the energetic realms that are the other side of our physical sensory experience.  This is, in a phrase, about growing up and breaking free from negative patterning and conditioning, some of which has been instilled in childhood while others touch on other lifetimes.  Doing this work opens the self up so that it is no longer a prisoner of its own cognition. By dealing with your skeletons, you are simply more free, and that is a beautiful thing indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgwd_3k3pOw

This audio (above) I have used for what turned out to be a very useful meditation with some significant shadow work.  Was it just a coincidence?  You will have to decide.  I found that while the sounds were a little much in some ways (a little spooky), but it also moved me quickly into a state where I had something akin to a waking dream where I was able to become aware of material that I had not previously gotten to. It included being brought into what was very much like a white-light experience with an illustration of how it is that heaven can be all around us and we simply don't see it for what it is, because there are layers of material we either choose to look through, or we don't tune out enough to be able to perceive these realms within us continuously. I include it here for your consideration, and of course you will need to find beats that you relate best to in your own inner work.  The beats I am including are intended to bring about a deep state with Theta wave activity, which is very much in the dreaming range of brain activity.  These are good I think for going deep while remaining very lucid.  Also, there are many other videos/audio pieces on youtube with different ranges that you can check out to find what works best for you.

The folks who run the channel that made this beats version also have other beats pitched to different frequencies for different ranges of consciousness/brain wave activity, so whichever range you are interested in helping to activate, they likely have your range. I have used this audio, but it has had less of a direct effect for me. The lower the number, the deeper the brain state.  If you want to do work that requires a high level of alertness, look for higher numbered beats that are followed by the "hz" which indicates the sound frequency being used.

There are many different binaural beats on youtube.  It looks like some of them may not have real binaural beats in them but will have more in the way of music and intonations of sound to achieve certain effects.  The two examples I have provided have these beats at a fairly low frequency, which can help to entrain you closer to what is known as theta brain wave states.
 
The concern that is voiced over and over is what if they have subliminal messages in them, how do I know that what I am getting is the real deal.  I can't speak to audio files having subliminal messages in them, but I can say that binaural beats do not make you think anything you do not want to think.  They simply help to induce a certain state of mind and you do the rest.  The work I have done using this technology has all been very positive, and I hope that they might be of some use to you in your own work.  Like anything, it takes some time and patience to achieve results, but binaural beats is a tool that can get you there much faster than the old ways of doing things, especially if you have trouble really being able to calm your mind down enough to do this kind of work.

As I was writing this entry, I came across a documentary produced by Gaiam as part of the Open Minds series, as well as another under the Buzzsaw series that both delve into how our own government has used technology like this to control the mind.  However, it is important to understand that there is no market for the kind of bets that our government might create for creating disgust, instead of elation, or upset over deep meditation. And it is not like you wont know if you use them.  The research I have done makes it clear to me that while there have been efforts have been made on the part of our government to do just this, we don't see these type of effects in the binaural beats used for self-improvement.

You can order Hemisync CD's from the Monroe Institute and through licensed representatives for the Monroe Institute as well. In addition, the Monroe Institute provides training on a range of subjects including learning, meditation, and out of body experiences (Robert Monroe wrote several ground breaking books on the subject).

https://www.monroeinstitute.org/catalog/hemi-sync%C2%AE

The Essence

You glimpse it when the opposites merge into one, creating a trickle, a stream, a cataract that emerges into a roar of the flow that is all of life; it is as though an infinity of things flows through you.

"We have to use our brain like a bicycle. In this exact instant, act in that exact way. Each instant is different. Here-and-now changes every instant, so our brains must not be one-sided. If we decide things according to our own mental categories alone, our brain does not develop and we cannot act with wisdom.".  -Taisen Deshimaru

All of the esoteric wings of all thought have one similarity; merging the opposites results in the golden flash of realization. This was for the Taoists the Golden Flower, the Hindu the Kundalini, and the earliest Christians the Kingdom. It is in bringing ourselves into this still-deeper union within that we taste the fruit that is bliss, satori.

But the essence, which is unspeakable, resides in the smallest and biggest of things. It is an unending chain or web that unites everything big or small. The force that does this exists before all realities, creates all realities from itself so that everything that exists does so because of the force that unifies everything. Instead of rising out of matter because of matter, it makes matter so that it rises and lives in it.

The essence is not dependent on spatial relationships and so the chain or web that connects it through everything is not even a web; it exists without space, without time, yet exists here in it. If you split the seed you cannot hope to see it with physical sight because physical sight is not it's truest domain. Here, you can only see physical effects, traces, of a deeper mystery. It can be glimpsed by an uncluttered mind, a mind now-unified through that golden moment where the fullness of what we are rises and falls, while unifying us even more.

The presence of this essence, the true reality of all is so powerful that to remain with ones own karma, our illusions, is to experience deep pain. Such is the unbending nature of it. But by watching where we hurt, we can change our position, like a calf caught in the coils of a serpent; it relaxes and finds relief. The serpent nonetheless eats the calf, transforming it from what it once was into a new form. We are daily transforming in this way when this essence shows us the way. Each time this happens, we are like the blind facing a door that opens into the light. We only know enough to flee the dark even though we fear the newness of the light. Each time we do this and each time, we enter more and more into a greater light, a broader awareness.

Our karma is what blinds us to the light. But dissolving karma, which the essence will do naturally, always results in a surprised state; each karma blocks the Light from shining in that one shadowed place within ourselves.

People want to make this complicated, but it is not. Remember that the essence is like a seed that splits itself by our own divisions and is reunited in us when we dissolve what divides us. What divides us inwardly divides the split seed in us. It was never split, you see. We were split. Returning to wholeness with fewer divisions allows for the energy of the cosmic order to circulate. The spirit and self contains the technology for powerful transformation, a simple technology based not in the machinery we know here, but of an enduring timeless presence that is the gateway, the portal to the All.

Techniques, the best of them, serve to remind us who we are. I know; most think that a technique is intended to create a certain condition, like you press your hand into clay and there is the result; an impression.  But when it comes to the soul, it is all about opening channels so you can FEEL.  So is that technique helping you to open up, to remember how to feel in a way you might have not felt before?  Most require us to inquire within. It is like finding a crack in the wall through which we see a wonder. But the wonder is what the soul is, and as the small self in the body learns to surrender control, it is able to glimpse parts that are beyond here soul to sense and see freely the soul of the world.

Such a simple thing, an essence like this, is hard to know because it is at once itself and occupies all other things. When I smile and look at you, the essence is there observing and looking, too. But even so does it look out through every other kind of experience. It is there in war and in peace. It's regard for freewill is absolute. When we cry where was God when things go bad, the answer is that we simply stopped being aware that the God exists within each of us. When things go wrong, it's usually because we have stopped listening. We have become like the calf who fights being consumed when deep down it knows that it is timeless and ageless. We learn to die to ourselves and become filled each time, more and more, with the light.

We think but must reside outside, that a teacher has the magic formula. But Krishnamurti sought out those who "had it" and realized it was not catching. When he did get it, he did so out of a silent recognition of what he was at a still deeper level. To know enlightenment, it helps to be a grave digger. In digging so deep within, a place beyond thought exists, a part of the brain that is presence but does not think thoughts. It is like a place beyond this life, the resurrection and the life. No teacher has what we ourselves do not also possess.

So this essence exists in the balance, in even use of both sides of the brain, in a balancing of the yin and yang. When opposites exist equally within. We are ready to begin seeing more of what the world has to offer.

The Big Adjustment - Coping With Kundalini

Awakening can be a sudden and bewildering change that pushes a relentless process of clearing stored emotional material, ultimately with the light at the tunnel being a better more peaceful life with bliss as the centerpiece of this new level of attainment.

Right?

While the "rise" of awakening can be a very quick event, it instigates a transformative process that can be years in the making.  One of the big challenges among the many that come with awakening is how to BE in the world.  Most specifically, after awakening, how do you go on doing what you have always done?  So much is irrevocably changed within you; how you see, how you respond, how you interact with the world around you. Its a big shift that brings with it a lot of self examination about what it was you have been up to for all these years. Often you can be left feeling at odd ends about your work, your relationships, and how to move forward with awakening as the "new normal."
Most importantly to bear in mind is that everything has changed. Trying to go back to the old way tends to repeat old patterns and methods.  This is a wonderful opportunity to be brave and leap into the breach, into the void of the future in a new way. I know as well as you do, that if you are going through awakening there is a new aspect being brought to bear.  This new "element" within the self is discovered while awakening.  It is itself the nonlinear, more feminine aspect within consciousness.  It is what I think of as a missing link in our own awareness and consciousness that sparks great change. You can see just how big a change it is because this unfolding of this part of you results in events happening differently. You are interfacing with reality in a different way, or perhaps I should say, in a much more efficient way than ever before.  Like what you think has a way of coming to pass very quickly.  We refer to this as synchronicity.  It is in fact a kind of "upgrade" to our own native ability to co-create with reality.  You create your reality. Now, though, its just a touch more seemingly magical because of this added and once missing element.

So the trick, I find, is to not try to go back to the old ways. You have been changed.  Period. Let the new filter into you and as a result of it, even though you are different from the masses, you will feel a flow and freedom as well as wonder joy and awe about this new life. And the more that you are able to anchor this sense of being within, the more it surrounds you in your life.  Slowly, or even quickly, your energy body is released, cleansed, of the hundreds of hitches that has gotten caught up in the co-creative cycling that is your karma. Letting it go clears the decks and makes thing easier in direct proportion to the mass of inner material released.  You are now better able to NOT know what the future holds, willing to ride the wave of bliss and maybe even find how perfect things happen when you are in this zone.  Trusting.  Happy.  A little breathless, intense sometimes, hard at other times, too, yes, but getting better and better.

But.  Sometimes you want to take what you may still love to do and adapt it to your new life. I can tell you that in my own experience, so much changes.  If you are a business owner like I have been, being able to steer the ship in a way that supports you in basic ways as well as all of the new ways can be a daunting task.  This is where listening to the force within will guide.  I was an artist in production. Nothing got done that I did not myself do. I worked 80 hour weeks and loved it, and yet I brought to the work a lot of issues that disapeared once awakening came along. I was left lost for about a year, bereft of creative juices, new ideas, or even the drive, the old fire in the belly.  Intuitively, I knew that the fire in the belly could be supplanted by a different kind of fire.  It would attract a different kind of client just as it would support my new life. Before I went in a very linear fashion, a rather rational approach to all of this. But post awakening, I saw a world of new opportunities for collaboration and leveraging my brand as well as my own creativity by working with others with similar interests as mine.  I found that instead of being so aggressive, I simply did what I had always done; let the work speak for itself and let the chips fall where they may.  If I needed someone to help market the work, someone would come along in perfect timing.  It has always happened this way.  I don't go looking for resources, I am now attracting them magnetically. Less about money and more about having fun and enjoying life, I have opened the door to a world of possibility.  I simply say, "bring me the highest" and for the time and the place I am in, it almost always has. All of this requires me to step back and let the universe work its magic. This involves faith I think.

Along with this change is also what I experienced as my mind entering into a persistent state of stillness and quietude.  To get there, I had to ride some pretty serious waves of bliss for extended periods. This took place over about a two to three year period that culminated not in ego death, but in what I call ego rearrangement. Its important to understand that there is no such thing as ego death. Those who use it are trying to explain what feels like might be a death, but is in truth a gentle but tragic-feeling change that asks us to allow ego to drift into the background.  Once that is done enough, the self will feel immense relief as well as a number of new benefits to consciousness and how you feel on a day to day basis.  But for a time, there is also a kind of "spacey" quality to your mind.  I forgot things very quickly.  On the one hand, the chemistry behind this was important for letting go, but try getting through a day with a long list of things that need to be done.  I have found that I make written lists so that my bliss state remains without any feelings of tension or anxiety about missing something.  I can say, though, that there were many times when I was in that "daze" of the quiet mind that I would end up being in all the right places, a little embarrassed to realize that I had forgotten an appointment even though I was there at just the right time.  I found that the more I let go, the more flawless this worked. But it didn't work every time.  I was not always in the perfect flow, so being able to set up a note system has been a nice way to remind me when I am soaring through the day.

I was pleased to find that this state of mind was described by Zen monks as the goal of reaching samadhi.  It was a necessary precursor, they said.  This is often referred to in Buddhism and the Vedic tradition as the "empty head" or "no-head," suggesting that the normal operations of the mind as a linear thinking rationalizing organ have been disrupted. In my own experience where I have carefully observed the chemistry at work in my body, I identified the chief compound involved in this surrender state as being primarily dopamine.  I arrived at this as a result of a lot of careful research and study into the effects of dopamine as well as opiates on the body, and all opiates have had an analogous enough effect as dopamine since the signature of bliss in the body is far more complex than any one compound- this includes hormones as well as oxytocin, and even small amounts of adrenaline in order to modify the spacey quality inherent in dopamine).J. Krishnamurti described that he went into a "declutched state" where his mind simply refused to work.  He would often forget names, would look at himself in the mirror and simply not recognize who it was that was there (this happened to me several times).  This state persisted for some time, and while it moderated later, he retained an aspect of it throughout his life. And I think that its a necessary state to have in order to deal with cosmic consciousness.  You simply cannot rationalize your way through your day and expect to get through in one piece.  Linear thought becomes the short-order cook in your life, very good for specific short-termed tasks, but terrible for the bigger stuff.  The Zen master Taisen Deshimuro explains that people who are rational and "mental" have a lot of trouble with awakening.  They have trouble just being a monk, too, but its because they  use the mind in a way that is no longer compatible with awakening. You just need to be much bigger than the narrow linear mind. You have to be bigger-hearted, more soulful, to navigate the energy in greater peace.

For as much as I like to be my own boss, awakening sparked in me an interest in working with others, so I have.  I have been able to bring to my work in teaching something that few teachers do.  School is still very much a mechanistic process.  Some of it is necessary in order to teach technique in art, for example.  You simply have to learn how to lay down paint well, or to know just how to move a tool across a surface in order to get a smooth surface in clay.  This is what dancers study for years, what ballerinas will repeat endlessly in order to train themselves to be the best they can be. Its important, but its only one side to the coin.  Along with this is the human soul that is part of our creative expression, and how we access creativity.  Instead of teaching through pressure and the fear of deadlines, I create an environment of freedom that includes personal responsibility to ones own work.  To be an artist, you cannot hope to succeed if you don't have discipline within you as a choice instead of imposed from outside.  So doing this work, while very different from how I was trained, I have used and I have hoped that it will yield results for the hundreds of students whose lives that have transited my own through my work. As more and more students "come back" after graduation by asking to be 'friended' through Facebook or through other forms of social media, I see how what I do has been catching on.

Creativity goes crazy when it is stripped of fear and is instead infused with joy and wonder.  Something very special happens.  And I have been dedicated to supporting this way of teaching because I know how great it is to experience creativity in this more expansive way.  Each of us has genius inside of us.  I know you might not agree, but I have seen it when someone pokes their heads out of their own fear and desire to play it safe.

Another aspect of my teaching work has been to do group projects so that my students can realize a much broader range or scope to a finished work.  The result has been that we have made hundreds of pieces for an installation, larger-scale work that has grabbed a lot of attention by other students and faculty as well as the world at large.  By learning how to collaborate my students also learn how to work with each other in an interesting dynamic that involves give and take, as well as making choices and going with them.  They do less overthinking their choices while in the process and learn how to follow their instincts, an important non-rational aspect to creative work.  Ultimately, my hope is to empower my students so that they might develop greater confidence in themselves and use their experience with me as an example for something they want to do later in life.

Collaboration means inclusiveness.  If you find yourself hungry for working with groups of people as so many who awaken do, you might serve as an inspiring presence that suggests that while the way forward may not always be known, things have a way of working themselves out perfectly when we let go of expectation and just throw ourselves in projects with joy and enthusiasm.  It might be that your work sustains you but you find that it is not terribly rewarding.  I think you have two choices, either you find a way to work so that its more interesting, or you find something beyond your work that fills the bill for you.  Between my creative work and the five sites that I manage for it, my spiritual work and the three blogs I manage for those writings, along with my work teaching and being a father, I find that life is just packed. I am constantly tuning and fine tuning my inner work in order to harmonize with a life that continues to change and clarify.  Things change as they need to, and the timing always seems to be just right.  I know that when I say I go with the flow that it sounds like I am somehow inactive, it is less that I am inactive as I am at a deeper level very engaged in the river of my life in a way that does not involve the same level of physical manipulation needed.  I am simply not pushing the river as much, but finding ways to be "like water" (thank-you Bruce Lee) and to use the flow of my life in as harmonious a way as I can.  I'm human, so its not perfect, but in the imperfection lies an opportunity to know more about myself as long as I am willing to be honest with myself.

The answer to coping may not be in trying to do things the old way, but to navigate life in a new way.  This new way may require you to have faith, to not always know what the future holds but to find that the more you are able to suspect that a"bad" outcome one day is just setting you up for something not yet in your present. I recently had a pretty significant equipment failure, but instead of letting it get to me, I saw that there had been a series of these odd little glitches happening that made me feel like I wasn't supposed to be doing the work I was doing.  For reasons I do not know yet, the work that I would have done had the failure not happened, probably wont be needed.  Thus, this has given me two additional days away from my production work in order to get ready for an open studio event.  I have learned that when I go with this flow, there is always something that comes along that shows me that had it gone differently, it would not have been "right" or that the flow of events were perfectly arranged in the way they were for certain other events to happen as they did.  Without the equipment failure, I would have missed something, or something important would likely not take place.  I don't know what that is, but I have faith that everything is unfolding as it should.  In the old days, I would be banging my head against the wall.  The flow of events have been sufficient to put me where I need most to be.  And sometimes the right place is not something that I might even want or recognize as important at the time, but often winds up being significant in some important way.  So the job that you lose, which is seen as a tragedy, also means that you wind up taking off time and find yourself swimming in a pool with someone who is to be a major player in the next chapter in your life.  Had you not lost your job you would not be swimming in the pool at just that moment meeting your new contact in perfect timing. These things happen with great frequency the more we can open ourselves up to being available to them.

What you might lose, you also win.  There are compensations in this new life.  Limits tend to go out the door as you ask yourself, "What can't I do?"  And that is just the spirit, right?

My Religion

My religion is the wind swept plains, the tea shared on rainy days with wordless joy passing between us. It is the pulse within me which finds the pulse of the universe as I find them the same. My religion has no beliefs but is filled with presence, and a joy that grows ever-bountiful. Like a hermit I live, and every moment with those whom I love grows more precious by the day.

My heart is filled from a deep well from within as it's waters never lessen or subside. I do not have to believe anything when what I know burns and flows with a power I just can't tell. But I do wish the world could know this. But until then, I do the curious things we creatures do and find excitement in the simplest of things. This eternal flame of a presence contents me and rouses me to a new life.

I wish it were true that love is found in another, but this pulse of life that animates my awareness says this is not so. We must find this love first within us if we are to know it in another... for how else could we ever love them rightly, speaking such different languages which we want to call love. No, I must first overflow, be so enlivened and filled that it will ward me off from loves mistaken, loves that seek to take and make others responsible for what we truly each must find for ourselves. It's been one of my latter realizations that I am here building a vibrant love inside myself so grand that its often hard to stand. But I do, and sigh into deeper folds of its mesmerizing wonder.

I am left utterly stripped of belief, and naked as I am, I am so much closer to the one that animates and guides. Listening quietly, I do wonder that if this is all there is, how grand that I may have just come to it, ready for the consummating kiss that is it's promise made somewhere hidden in the folds of our bridal chamber.
I do not believe, but I bear the riches of the heart of religion. I have the temple without the priests. It is the deepest and most holy of the mysteries, and it is the only one you ever need to know to see how it alone reveals the rest. She bids me enter her most sacred of mysteries. She shows me where her lover meets her which is in the triadic chamber of my heart. No priests or priestesses, no law, no guess work. No prophets, no holy wars. No hymns, save my warm breath and yearning. No candles, save the flame of it all, and no opinions, no pronouncements in the deep chamber that is my soul knowing itself.

To love that the divine moves in you is no sin but sacred. To know beyond all dogma is a healing hand. With just a glance my whole life opens to it with no eventuality ever being just sheer chance. To honor the love that lives in me is to love and honor how masterfully I was made...and I do hope that you find this soon, too, so we can share Summer's last fading light with tea and thunderstorms and the honor of pure religion flowing in our hearts.

A Technical Note For Readers

Back in 2009 when this blog was created, secure connections to sites like blogs was simply not important.  These are mostly read-only kinds of sites.  Having secure connections weren't as important.

All of that has changed, though, as blogs can be the subject of efforts by others to hack or install malicious software through ever-increasingly creative means. Sadly, a lot of this material is made to direct your computer to a given site, I assume, to drive up traffic so those sites will show up better in search engine rankings.  None of this makes a lot of sense to the average person, especially why someone would go to the bother of doing things like this. Don't people have better things to do, and better ways to drive real traffic or to get eyes on their sites?

As a result of the site being http based, this has begun to cause some problems with accessibility with search engines and navigating through the archives on the blog.  This does not mean that there is malicious software on the blog, however.  Lacking the "https" method for transferring data has simply gummed up the process of file access in some instances. 

The site is now https based, with the emphasis on the "s." You will notice, now,  that your browser bar will show a green "lock" at the top, which shows that the information is being encrypted during transit, which also protects you from anything that might try to get between you and reading the content here.  It should also clear up some minor glitches for searching the blog. 

-P.

Mudra's & NRG Work

I offer you this link to mudra's and how they work. Your body is a sophisticated system for energy transmission, and mudra's allow for shifting currents to different channels of the light body for specific effects and benefits.

I began experiencing the very real effects of how energy flow can be shifted about a year ago when I tried a few mudra's during deep meditation. I found that in normal waking focus that it was not easy to detect the differences in NRG flow that mudra's can create. I find a quiet mind helps if you want to be able to actively observe the energy shifting.

Mudra's

A Recipe For Creative Juiciness

(this was a post from 2013 that had been sitting, patiently, in my drafts folder...time to dig it out for you)

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

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

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

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

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

There is also some suggestion that when we use different sides of our bodies, like our left hand, for example, it helps to trigger greater use of the right brain, often thought to be a critical hemisphere in the large picture thinking that makes visual art so engaging for us because we can take in a scene so quickly through that part of the brain.  Playing what I call "mind games" which are ways to help you to step out of your normal patterns of thinking can spur creativity.  It is known that as children get older, the choices for a simple creativity test change significantly.  Seven year olds, when presented with the question of what a paper clip can be turned into almost always, on average, return many more possibilities that children in their teens.  When you don't think of the possibilities, you are not aware of them, and your options are naturally limited.  By thinking more outside the box, we can incite the energies of the creative in a more dynamic and fulfilling way.  The idea that some people are just not creative, I have found, is simply just not true.  People FEEL like they are not creative, but this is different than it being a quality available to them.  Sometimes people just need to be inspired, to glimpse the possibilities through a teacher or another artist or an experience of some kind that opens us to more options.

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

Creativity will play a role in the book simply because as an artist I recognize that the power of awakening is the same power as the flash of inspiration.  the sad thing is that we in the arts call it the flash instead of the steady state flow or the dwelling place or something else that would suggest that the experience is continuous.  The fact remains, it just isn’t.  We still are beings that find this part of our experience to be something of a mystery.  It need not be.

By learning how to turn this faucet on you can learn how to bring fulfillment in your own life as well as inviting in the force that can dismantle lifetimes of dysfunction and trauma and hurt from your light body.  And if you didn’t know already, the light body records ever single thing that ever happens to you, at least of an energetic and emotional nature.  We are fast realizing that while the brain may be the locus of recording memories, it may in fact be more of a biological switching system for nonlocal as well as locally recorded or imprinted experiences which we call memories.  The realization is fast upon us, though, that the body itself records past emotional impacts, and by learning how to erase those impacts from our energy memory, we actually free up the energy system of the physical and etheric bodies to operate in a way that is far more optimal, efficient, healthy, and clear.

When awakening hits most people, they are bowled over by the experience and are in wonderment over the power of the experience.  And yet, in time, people who learn how to move through their awakenings in a successful and fulfilling way find that this same intensity is itself more a steady-state experience that is the new way of being for humans.  What is on offer for us is a truly incredible way to be and to feel every moment of the day.  To get there is the “work” that so many talk about, which in truth is merely a surrender of those patterns, beliefs, and old feelings that stand in the way of a clearer flow of the cosmic in your seemingly tiny frame here on Gaia…..which is herself a speck in a sea of specks.  And yet, even on the micro-scale, the atomic scale, everything still vibrates with knowing.  This knowing may be beyond science at the moment, but everything in our world is alive.  It may not be what science call sentient life, but it is certainly what the ancients observed is part of a universe that lives and breaths in its own way.  When you consider that energy is conscious, the whole universe, bound together by energetic forces (an atom is mostly energy, not matter), then you can perhaps begin to appreciate the impact that this has.

Creativity is itself one of the most healing of activities.  To use it as part of an awakening is not a surprising outcome because the way creativity is felt is the same way awakening is felt....it is an expansion of the self and its energies now felt in a whole new way.  Being creative roots you in your personhood, and is most often unifying in nature.  

True Buddhas

Forget the Buddha, sitting in quiet meditation as he sits on a golden lotus. Or Christ as though asleep quietly napping on the cross...Forget what you think you know...

For these and others who were real men and women of greatness among us, they have been dressed and redressed over countless years so that they have been made from our own desires, which is been that they are made into more than us.

But the Buddha in you is not this. This is the wish of the unknowing....and the Buddha, which is a nature, rests in everything. It is not one person but all of us. It is not resting on a pedestal or made more than it is. It is not one person, like Jesus was made into this God-man....only accessible by letting him into your heart.  I say, he is always present, the same as a Buddha, all pointing to the exact same thing...It is us, right here as we lose our car keys, mend broken cabinets, taking in sweet evening air. And because of this, Buddha lives right along with our common selves, smiling a world of joy because it is this and all the rest.

To heck with our false sense of divinity. Buddha farts and burps and....and oh did Jesus Christ the middle Eastern Buddha love to cuss. "Those damned Pharisees!" He said that, you just need to look. Its kind of a secret.

But you see, this makes these heroes real. We resist this...but we need it badly because we look to them for how to be. Don't be false! See the humanness and the divine as easy partners with each other. They are not a paradox to be solved, only a reality to be experienced. No I am not saying not to try to improve. I mean be realistic. If you do, you are closer to the Buddha nature in you.

Those who study the Kundalini yoga and say how they look forward to lessening personality are fooling themselves. That, and setting their poor friends, for some eventual neurotic behavior. Anything you seek to control only winds up going out of control. Work with it on its own level and you will know the path best suited for its greater becoming and fulfillment...be it a person place event or thing. All things seek their own specialized balance. Some things may be correcting course even as they seem totally "off." Don't pretend to be the Buddha hero man. Be the Buddha that yearns to be within you. You begin with where and what you are now.

There are Buddha's who are butchers, singers, carpenters...mechanics and masseuse's and writers and prostitutes. Some are thieves, some are leaders. Some hide in the seemingly most diminished amongst us. This nature resides in all things. Beyond time, you can glimpse your infinite nature as time unravels your sweet mystery for you to see....and you are infinite....expanding in all directions as you and then all the you'd you have ever been.

Don't put on airs. Be yourself. The universe cherishes the diversity of itself....seen in you and the endless others,craftily hidden inside every particle and every one of you.  Don't fool yourself; be real and honest. Be easy and be true. Show no shame and don't shame others....for someday their Buddha will bloom and you wouldn't want to have hurt a Buddha and her chances of opening her petals all the way.

Let's just be real. Let's strip away the glaze and gloss on our hero's and see them as each of us are...traveling and seeking for the hidden trigger that will release the flow of the cosmic in us. It is there...in each of us.

Namasté,

P.

What it is like to be a Bee? Do Insects Have Consciousness?

There is an interesting bit of science happening about the consciousness of invertebrates such as insects. It centers around using computer modeling in conjunction with known anatomy to see how the brain and nervous system of insects developed and whether they have consciousness or not.  For a long time science has tended to see insects as akin to programmed robots, an idea some of you may find kind of sad an lacking for creatures that appear to be so complicated.  Simpler than us, the study finds, yes, but also that these ancient life forms also may suggest how consciousness evolved over vast time scales.

Using the insect's analogue to the human's midbrain, biologist Andrew Barron and philosophy professor Colin Klein have found that the activity being displayed there suggests that an individual insect has some sort of sense of itself within it's environment: where it is, what's around it, and how it needs to respond.

With this, Barron and Klein propose that the basis of consciousness may very well be traced back to the Cambrian period, a 56 million-year period that started 541 million years ago, when the first invertebrates first developed.(1)

Insect awareness may be debated by materialistic science, but as our ability to develop new methods for probing consciousness, we may be able to begin to bump up against still larger implications for our understanding of what consciousness is.  We can hope.  The source goes on to explain that,

"While insect brains are minute – the largest are far smaller than a grain of rice – new research has shown that they perform the same ancient functions as the human midbrain.
The insect central complex ties together memory, homeostatic needs and perception in the same integrated way. This integration has the same function as well: to enable effective action selection.

In the bee, this detailed representation of the animal in space is what allows it to perform remarkable feats of navigation. Thus, while insect brains and human brains could not look more different, they have structures that do the same thing, for the same reason and so support the same kind of first-person perspective.

That is strong reason to think that insects and other invertebrates are conscious. Their experience of the world is not as rich or as detailed as our experience – our big neocortex adds something to life! But it still feels like something to be a bee.

If this argument is correct, studying insects is a powerful way to study basic forms of consciousness. The honeybee brain has less than a million neurons, which is roughly five orders of magnitude fewer than a human. That is a lot easier to study." (2)

Sources - (1)  http://www.unknowncountry.com/
                (2) http://theconversation.com/what-it-is-like-to-be-a-bee-insects-can-teach-us-about-the-origins-of-consciousness-57792

Emotional Responsibility

Have you ever had an experience where you became upset with someone for making you feel a certain way? They kept pushing your buttons and you reacted in frustration or anger. In life it is easy to see how it is that people are the ones who upset us, hurt, or cause us pain. 

But in truth, it is we who choose to react the way that we do.  We don't like to admit that this is so, but it is.  Just as we think that others cause us pain, we also rely on others to bring us joy and happiness.  The only problem is that the source for joy is found in us, not in others.  When we do make people responsible, what we are doing is handing our power over to them so that we are unable to feel anything without someone else's involvement. In psychology, we have a concept called projection, and its pretty common for all of us to project onto others our own faults so that we swear that our neighbor or a family member or co-worker is actually the one who is at fault or who falls short. 

I have seen this behavior in action in my life with people I was close to, and it is the strangest thing to experience.  It has also been one of my own.....hot button issues.  People seeking to skape-goat me.  And you could say that what I really need to do is not worry about what others do and tend to my own stuff.  As I have worked over the years to clear away countless blocks in the light body, what the (in the nadi or meridian channels of the light body), I have found that I become less and less effected by the shortcomings of others.  Slowly, the stone is worn away. 

Being able to come to a place where you can stop making everyone the source of your happiness or your displeasure is significant.  It is a point of power.  When you take back what is yours, you shift the rules of engagement so that you are clear about whose stuff is whose.  By letting people be who they are without needing to get in the middle of their mess, the mess can remain theirs.

The benefit to seeing in this way is that it can help you to identify your own junk that you need to let go.  This material is almost always unresolved emotions that have been submerged into the body where they form blocks in the light body.  I know how that sounds, but everything points to this as a fact. While the literal memory of the emotion may not be stored in the body, there is a direct relationship between hundreds of thousands of small points in the energy body that can be massaged, or moved in order to release the stored material.   It is also possible that we do actually store unprocessed emotion in the body through a process that we do not fully understand yet. The body itself has as many neurons in the human gut, for example, as in the brain of the average cat.  That is a lot of power for processing information.  While it may do this in a very different way than the brain does, the idea that our bodies think is new to western medicine, but an ancient observation among many cultures throughout the world. 

When these blocks release, the emotion that was associated with it also goes.  It is akin to having a "reset" and is as though the issue had never been there. The cease "dwelling" on whatever the block was about.  Is it possible that this helps to rewire the brain in some way? I think that this is indeed possible.

You might know, rationally, that the way you wind up feeling when it comes to one of these blocks makes no sense, but you will be virtually powerless to do much to resist it.  But not letting the emotions stir in you is different than the release I am writing about.  It is a whole other animal, in fact.  Something significant happens when these releases take place.  It is like rewriting some script.  The freedom opens up new vistas. 

Being able to become responsible for what you feel, knowing that no one makes you feel anything is an important step in self realization. 

For more on blocks and how to work with them, search blocks and healing them on this blog.

Namaste

Conquering Anger

The hardest thing that we face as a species is our habitual tendency to want to shove our emotions down. We are told in many ways that hard harsh emotions are not good.  The solution has been to simply push them away.  This winds up being a much bigger problem than the emotion in the first place!  Psychologists all know about the idea that an emotion that is suppressed only comes back far worse later. This can lead each of us into neurosis-disease of the mind and emotions.  The answer is simple and takes a shift in how you relate to your emotions. 

Anger is a natural emotion, and one of the hardest for us to deal with constructively.  It is also one of the most intense of our emotions because it is so driven by energy.  Anger uses a lot of energy and when it is pushed down, you are pushing a lot of feeling down into your subconscious self where it only festers and gets worse over time.  This can come back as emotional problems like anxiety and depression, or even disease over time. Suppressed anger can change your physiology in ways that you do not notice, small changes, but given enough time, can result in very real physical problems.  Adrenaline and cortisol are two very powerful chemicals in the body that relate both to fear and anger. They can deplete the body of a whole range of very important nutrients.  When this is allowed to go on for a long time, decades, the result is something that can emerge later in life as a chronic problem.  It is important, then, to learn how to deal with anger constructively and not push it down.

When you get angry, let yourself feel the emotion.  When you feel anger, remind yourself that the emotion is not you, it is a phenomenon like the wind blowing through you.  Let it be like the wind and think of it flowing through you.  What you do not want to do is to direct your anger at a person, because this can be hurtful to others.  You also do not want to fall into the trap of defining yourself in relationship to your emotions because this means that you ARE anger.  You aren't.  Anger is an emotion that you feel.  We call emotions because they are in-motion. So let it BE that for you. When you are angry, practice being clear with yourself that this is your reaction to outward events.  It is not who you are. By associating so closely with anger, you allow yourself to be defined by it.  When you do this, you are no longer the master, but the slave.  Slaves will then complain about just how terrible the world is to them.  I ask you: is this a good way to live?  There is indeed a much better way to be.

Do not treat your anger as an entitlement.  You are not angry because someone made you angry. No one makes you.  You make you. You are angry because of your reaction to what someone else has done. Be clear about this one important point no matter how much you might want to make it the other person's problem.  It isn't the other person's problem.  It is yours.  Own it.  The world may be a terrible place with mean hard people, but without you, there would be no reaction to it.  You are simply reacting.  Own your reactions.  When you are more mature and developed, you will grow enough to see that the world is the way it is for reasons that, if understood, would change how you see any "problem" in it. 

By taking offense to something outside of you, you are trying to make your reaction someone else's problem.  It isn't.  The person who was short with you earlier and cut you off in mid-sentence may have had a drama playing out in their lives which you are not privy to.  They might have been hurting inside from something that is happening in their lives, they might have been terribly late for their next appointment. it could be anything.  Try not to let things become so personal.  When you identify so strongly with "I" you have trouble.  Most often, it isn't so personal as you tend to make it.  When you can do this, you will find that your reactions to others is greatly decreased by owning your feelings and letting things go. The other side to this is that you wind up taking a banner against what angers you and you will very soon be using your anger to hurt many people, and you will wonder what is wrong with everyone around you.  After all, your identification with your anger has blinded and blocked you. 

Allow anger to flow but do not direct it at people.  If you do, you will hurt them and then the effort of letting anger flow will have created more problems than they have solved. By letting anger flow, it will move through you and will not become subsumed within.  Do not capture or trap anger or else it will come back in larger uglier forms later. Anger can build up like an account that you pay into each day.  Later, the account will be so full that you will be paralyzed by the sheer mass of your anger and you will feel helpless to the power that you feel it has over you.  Anger will lead to emotional blocks in your body and awareness that can have very troubling effects, from hampering your relationships to harming your physical health.  You will also be very difficult to be around.

Children know very well how to deal with anger.  One minute, they are red in the face, their eyes are filled with rage, and the next minute, they are completely different, wanting to grab your hand and get into your lap, smiling all the while.  They are done with it, you see, and they do not think any more about what had just happened.  This is how we should deal with anger, too. So let it flow. 

By following these simple set of ways of dealing with anger you can allow anger to move through you without hurting other people, and you will not be harmed either.  Let anger be a storm for you, a storm that will naturally pass as all storms do.  When you do, the sky of your inner environment will be fresh and clean after this emotion has been allowed to blow through you. Most of the problems related to how we deal with anger are themselves the very root of our problems, so do not let business as usual capture you.  Like every storm that comes, it will leave you feeling clearer and ready to feel happy again. 

Energy Awereness & Leg Chakras

When we discuss the concept of chakras, most everyone who knows about them will conjure the image of seven chakras with differently-petalled flowers, all with colors that run through the rainbow hues from red into brilliant white, going from root to crown. 

This is a popular image, but for someone who wants to dig down deeper into what this is about, this popularly held awareness of the seven-chakras is just scratching the surface.  The human body has thousands of chakras. The seven major chakras has persisted so well because they are the easiest to identify right out of the gate.  You might think that each of these seven major chakras might be characterized by the colors they are most often associated with.  There is so much more than this. Some of it you can learn from what has been gathered by seers from the past, but all of this information is also available to you directly through your own inner perception.  Everything that we know about the subtle energy system has been gathered from the inner sensing capabilities of those who have gone before us. 

Through my years of studying energy that we each have this ability in a very native way.  Most people, though, do not know how to bridge the gap between the realm of the outer senses (the physical senses) to touch on the awareness that exists within the sensing ability of the energy body. But really, you can.  I have been witness to numerous people who didn’t think energy as being a real “thing” that a person could see or detect in any sensory way, but I have been lucky to have had an odd habit of having people develop this ability while I am doing a reading of them or others.   

This characteristic of energy means that a wave thus has no mass, and, is a channel for travel through time.

The energy body is made up of over 70,000 channels called by the Hindu as nadi. Some say that they are beyond numbering.   In the Chinese tradition they are called meridians.  There are no chakras conceived in the Chinese tradition.  The reason for this is because the science of acupuncture and acupressure does not affect the chakra centers directly, and because they do not, they have not become part of the Chinese system.  Chakras are the result of an accumulation of forces in a type of vortex, which in the old language was called a spinning “disc.” When each of these nadi cross each other, a chakra exists. 

The number of branches in the nadis means that there are many thousands of chakras in the body.  These are not unlike how capillaries in the body join to make veins and veins join to make larger trunks called aorta.  As the channels join into more channels, the force builds and larger more obvious chakras exist.  Because this system is not made up of dense matter but energy, what governs them is energetic.  As a result, each chakra, every nadi or meridian will have its positive and negative compliment.  Every chakra is thus double-lobed in a sense, of positive and negative energy flow.  In the same way that a magnet has a polarity, so too does prana have a polarity, which is what flows through the nadi channels.  Those who were able to detect these channels and the chakras mapped them carefully so that we have very dependable locations mapped for identifying acupuncture points, for example.  When the mind is clear enough and you can focus on the energy centers, you too can detect these.  To do this requires an openness to detecting prana flow and then an ability to translate this information into some visual form in order to make sense of it.  When it happens it can seem like you are making it up, or imagining it, or grasping for something that you can’t quite see, with images forming in the mind.  This is the cognitive bridge that happens when you use the inner senses.  It is possible, too, that others will experience the process differently.  As westerners who are informed by a materialistic view (everything happens because of physical matter), it is easy for some people to tend not to trust themselves.  If you will relax, chill, and open up to the notion of your innermost capacities you can discover what you are indeed capable of.  If you haven’t caught on yet, I am keen on people being able and willing to inquire for themselves. 

The energy that flows through the whole entire body, while following these paths called nadi are also  made up of energy that is electromagnetic in nature, which means it is not merely a particle-based energy form, but a waveform.

The body is thus made up of a complex web-work of prana that is fed by lines of force.  When viewed with the inner senses, which is how all seers have detected them, they can look like extremely fine webs like spider webs that go all the way down to the atomic level.  Lines of force will at the deepest, most fundamental level go from lines to a kind of mist or “fog” at the lowest subatomic level. This is just how deep all of this goes.  

This system feeds from the extremities and concentrates along the trunk of the body where there are three main vessels or channels for carrying different aspects of alignments of the energy.  One is called Ida, which is thought of as lunar or feminine and resides along the left side of the body, with the Pengali (or Pengala) channel, that is thought of as solar and male, which is on the right side of the torso, but closely tracking, in parallel, to  the spinal column. The central channel, which is very close to the spinal column is known as Shushumna.  This third channel carries an energy that is felt as the sum of the Ida and Pengali channels. Being aware of the energy flowing in this channel leads to Cosmic Consciousness. These channels all branch out throughout the body in a flow of negative and positively charged lines of force. 

Working with clearing these channels is most often done through the yoga of pranayam which involves body movement meant to "massage" these blocked nadi while also using breathing to help to move the prana. Other methods include Qigong, which means "energy work." It is possible also to release blocks with such therapies as deep tissue massage, reiki, and polarity massage, to name a few. Alternating nostril breathing helps to charge and awaken the Ida and Pengali channels in the body, and is an important first step in clearing the nadis.

it is just as important to stimulate and accelerate the flow of these channels as it is to be able to slow them down.  Sometimes by clearing one center higher up in the body, for example, you may need to go back to "lower" chakras in order to clear "new" blocks that seem to emerge, blocks that have always been there but whose presence were blocked in your awareness until another center was cleared.  The clearing of the nadi is, as a result, a dynamic process that has many feedbacks that are the result of one "leg" of work revealing new aspects that had been previously not known or detected.  Like the uncovering of a layer, the new layers come more into focus.  What worked at one point in the process may need a different method or technique in the next.  While sitting and focusing on an energy center may have worked extremely well in the beginning might not work later on where, for example, more aggressive physical movement is required.  What is so helpful is that the energy of prana is itself an intelligent energy and when you can feel its flow in greater amounts, its intelligence has had a tendency to reveal itself to me more clearly.  As a result, by opening myself up to the wisdom in this finely tuned energy, I find my own intuition increased.  You find that you have a teacher within, you see. 

 As a waveform, this means that the energy has what is called nonlocality.

The energy that flows through the whole entire body, while following these paths called nadi also is made up of energy that is electromagnetic in nature, which means it is not merely a particle-based energy form, but a waveform.  As a waveform, this means that the energy has what is called nonlocality.  Nonlocality is hard to comprehend for those who are used to thinking of everything as being made up discreet particles, pieces, and lines of force through which energy particles flow.  Nonlocality is the gift of the nonphysical in a sense, a characteristic of energy whereby particles can emerge seemingly from “nowhere” and everywhere at once.  This means that prana can reach out across vast distances without any travel. This characteristic of energy means that a wave thus has no mass, and, is a channel for travel through time.  Let those who have the ears to hear, hear this!

I know that this might seem to be off the topic a little, but bear with me.  The energy of the wave cannot be controlled by the rational part of your mind.  This also means that for the average person, they rarely, if ever, experience what this “state” of energy is all about because we are all so focused in the linear and the rational. This is itself a central teaching and a discovery that I made in the midst of working through my own awakening and in developing and honing my new sensory awareness that was inherited through the awakening process.  I know it may seem exotic or strange to some, but this is only because it is a larger than normal leap that happens and is a normal facet of awakening (to make leaps instead individual steps). If you are a creative and deductive thinker, you can figure out how to harness this awareness in a way that is meaningful and fulfilling in your own journey of understanding this seemingly “hidden” dimension of our experience. 

So in this vein, I will tell you that In order to support the waveform as an energy that carries your awareness, you must learn how to be in alignment with the different polarities that exists within the energy and how these also correspond to aspects of your own awareness.  This requires moving out of the rational and linear part of your mind and awareness. One hint I will give you is that instead of an analytical state of mind that needs to figure it out,” this is instead the part of you that instead considers a more expansive sense of your being.  Some examples of how this feels is how you become open to new ideas or possibilities.  The excitement of beginning a road trip that has no agenda, just the pure enjoyment of discovery, is one such state that is very similar to this mode of awareness.  It is much more aligned to feeling than analysis, you see, and is one reason why it is missed by many who seek. The fact is, you have it all in you.  We are all beings of amazing potential who are often barely aware of it!

 In another post I would like  to share with you how to anchor or to cultivate this mind and body focus if you are interested. Explaining how this is done in a more complete way is beyond the scope of this article, though.

While the energy body has a positive and negative polarity all through it, these two polarities also align along certain parts of your awareness. Are you familiar with how some anatomists say that thought is partly determined by how our physiology is constructed? The same idea is applicable to the energetic system. The yang or positive polarity tends to align with the rational parts of the mind where the yin aligns more with the holistic right brain. Kundalini is often described as the "kundalini shakti" which points to the shift from one current of awareness to another.  In truth, BOTH currents of the "Shakti" and "Shiva" must be present as they are aspects of each other, not mutually exclusive (remember the particle/wave duality I was telling you about? This is the same; one does not create the other or flows out of the other-they exist concurrently as part of their broader nature).

The earthly ego-mind and the linear parts of the brain that give rise to it cannot handle the scope that the nondual mind offers, and this is, coincidentally, where the infamous Dark Night Of The Soul enters in along the journey of awakening. By learning how to strike a balance between these two in a new arrangement or focus, the self can allow for a better flow of prana and awareness within experience. This is usually more important when the charged force of awakening is churning in the self. On a boat that encounters only mild winds, tuning the sail perfectly to capture the wind  might not seem to be as important to the captain.  But on a boat where the winds are often extremely strong, how the sails are hoisted can be much more critical and their role more obvious. It is the awareness of the self that can lead you to understanding what this energy is all about through inner inquiry, which is how all of these discoveries have been made. Without this inquiry, you are merely taking it on another person’s word that what they say is so, without determining for yourself. As a result, most people are not aware that there are countless chakras. By being aware, you see, you can learn to feel their location and know character.

Take for example the ear chakra.  Most people have never heard of this.  It is certainly not even written about anywhere that I can find.  And yet I and my friend Ali have both experienced these ear chakra activations.  What is most interesting is that as a male, I experience the ear chakra openings as a cool “lunar” energy while Ali, who is female, experiences it as a warm yang energy.  This lead me to the next consideration about chakras and how they are experienced in the body, which has to do with overall alignment to masculine and feminine energy, or yang and yin force. 

The male lingam, or genitalia, is normally polarized in the positive while the female yoni, or genitalia is normally polarized in the negative.  The heart of the male, however, is the opposite from the root. The female heart is also polarized in the positive.  This, in heterosexual couples means that in sexual intimacy, the masculine energy is “received” and transmitted upwards into the heart of the woman, which then transmits the energy back to the man. This is what I call the “short cycle” flow.  The energy in fact can be experienced as flowing beyond the heart up into the crown, which is itself another level based on how the chakras are active and how aware you are of them.  At each center, the energies continue to change vibration as prana expressed through desire, is focused in the body of both people, both probing, and receiving all at the same time.  The heart center of the feminine is initiatory while the root chakra of the male is initiatory.  This short cycle flow circuitry is thus complimentary. Because of their complimentary polarities, spiritual union is possible.  In a similar way as how two merge energetically, each individual has fully merged energy that flows from one polarity within each chakra into the other.  Thus, union also exists within each individual, or the potential of its awareness.  Not everyone is aware of this, but becoming aware of it leads to increasingly higher levels of bliss.  This bliss is a healing force.

Having brought this up, let me explain that while I am speaking in terms of heterosexual couples, there is another level of understanding about this energy that takes in other orientations, so don’t think that my words are in any way exclusive to heterosexual experience.  At all.  Prana is like a very large tent that is like the sky.  It is big enough to let us all in to experience its reality  in a myriad of ways.  I think that a book on LGBT sexuality from a tantric perspective is just waiting to be written. 

When prana is at a high enough level, it is called kundalini. But kundalini itself is only prana in excess.  This is all.  A new threshold is met whereby a self-sustaining “fire” is maintained that is both yang and yin in the individual.  The two polarities are experienced, and thus known, more keenly and this has a powerful effect on the awareness of the individual because of the flow of prana which can confer even greater awareness when one avails themselves of it.

Leg & Arm Chakras

Each leg of the physical body also has chakras and the two currents that flow up the main trunk of the body.  Each toe has the same two currents as do the arms and fingers  and the trunk of the body, with much smaller chakra centers in each.  Because they are so small in appendages like toes and fingers, most do not detect their presence. To detect them requires a focus most often in meditation. The male genitalia and the female breast also have similar lines of force and chakras throughout them.  This is one reason why the hands are so often used for healing as there are terminal points akin to the top of the head where the energy flows from positive to negative, what is often referred to as “zero point.” It is here at this place in the energy that anything can happen.  Similarly the male genitalia has many hundreds of “points” that correspond to points in the female genitalia. In the male these are positive and negative and in the female they are positive and negative as well. Each polarity allows for a continuity of energy in the same way that an electrical circuit is made.  This is the path for higher union spiritually.  The clearer each center is, the broader the experience of this union is.  But having said this, even the skin has a vast network of energy points all across it. Think of every single pore on your skin as being an energy point that is joined to all other points along the surface of the body.  In the same way that the skin is criss-crossed with a vast network of nerves to tell the brain what is happening at that surface, so too does the physical sensory have a nonphysical sensory component.  One flows out of the other and thus each can take information from both to input into their respective sensory system. It is pretty amazing when you think of it. 

In the Hindu system, the chakras in the legs are seen as  both negatively and positively charged centers. That is, they are referred to in a negative and positive light as corresponding to our more animal natures, and are said to belong to the “underworld.” These centers are just like all other centers.  They are neither positive or negative but depend on the emotional, physical, and spiritual energy that have been invested or cast into them.  In the same way that a sacral chakra can convey a lack of good self image and a lack of sensual beauty, so too can the same center be magnetized in the opposite direction. This is so with every single center in the body. 

While you are probably familiar with the Muladhara, Swadhishthana, and Manipura chakras, for example, the chakras in the legs have also been  named. The Patala, located in the soles of the feet, is said to be aligned with malice and hatred as well as forgiveness.  The Mahatala is located more centrally in the foot near the arch and is aligned with a sense of entitlement and lack of conscience as well as expansiveness.  The Rasatala is located in the ankles and is aligned with selfishness and charity, while the Talatala is located in the calves and is aligned with a materialism for the self and an awareness of being conscious.  Sutala is in the knees and is aligned to inadequacy, inferiority, but also self-confidence. Vitala in the thighs aligns with blind wrath while also aligned to forgiveness.  Atala in the hips is aligned to lustful promiscuity and the ability to be healthily sexual. 

The way that each of these centers are charged by your awareness and your feeling, will determine your experience through them.  As with all chakras and the nadi system, blockages can occur in them and removing these blocks is important in freeing the old perception of the self in order to open up to a new awareness of who and what we are. The work of release is the same as with any other part of the body.  There are numerous methods and they can all work for a variety of reasons.  There are posts on the blog that are about these different methods.  Search using tags like “healing blocks”

I hope that this was illuminating and helpful to

you.  If you have questions about other sources, feel free to let me know and I can dig them up or you. I hope that you can find the information served up today will help you in developing a broader awareness in your own life about who you are.  :-)