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Thursday, May 4, 2017

MORE

I was not satisfied with the teaching in church....I knew there was more. I didn't know what it was, only that it was wanting. I knew this above all else, beyond the explanations of others that I was merely "prideful" or unable to take the teaching as truth. No, there was more, I knew it beyond all else.

When I awakened I was lucky to have seen how there WERE teachings by Jesus himself which he passed on to his disciples in books that spoke directly about a process whereby one entered the kingdom. These were central teaching that acted like a key to understanding everything else Jesus was teaching in his ministry. The problem was that these teaching were demonized and anathematized by the church. These were part of this something "more." I knew that in fact Jesus was teaching his followers about awakening and that the truth was hidden or obfuscated in numerous ways. History offered up her secrets and laid bare the many ways that contributed to our losing these central teachings. What is so amazing to me is that these teachings are actually the lynch pins in understanding all that Jesus taught about. It's pretty incredible to look at all of this and know that this went down in the way that it did.

I once wrote about this issue and had some of my friends asking me why I was so critical about Christianity, or why I hated the church. It's too easy to feel that way when dealing with this issue and to me, it is an easy way out of actually examining things closely and asking some very fair questions. But it's not out of a deep hate or any of that. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I want a religion that offers the keys to self realization, of actually knowing what this kingdom is. Truth is a curious thing; we can have all levels of it and still be missing key points.

I have done the hard work of inquiring and looking. I have poured through the texts of the New Testament as well as those that were not included, from apocrypha to the Nag Hammadi. I have studied issues surrounding translation, how the contextual nature of Aramaic actually does matter when translating to any language, as well as what biblical scholars are saying that pastors dare not touch. More than this, I awakened and saw that the only books that helped describe my new state of being were the words of Jesus teaching his followers about the kingdom, which fit my experience perfectly....but also happened to have been deemed heresy. They had been cast aside and had never made it into canon.  The more that I read, the more it became clear that what we got was a version of the truth, but not the full truth.  I'm not even suggesting that this was some sort of conspiracy.  It may have been simply a conspiracy of ignorance acted upon by those who had less than the full story.  But even half the story is better than no story, and it wasn't as if we weren't getting truths.  We just didn't get its heart, and this, dear readers, is the hardest one to swallow for some of us today.  It is covered over first by some 1700 years of tradition and then it includes a whole new dimension of thinking added, a great mystery that has been hidden from all of us (for whatever reason).

Since my experience in awakening is the same exact phenomenon as others who have awakened, and it's all described in the same way by nearly everyone, and is being described in these cast-away texts, it begs the question; isn't it possible that something very important was missed? And perhaps, then, might this missing piece be important to know the fullness of this man's great insight and teaching? If you found out that the teaching of Jesus was incomplete, wouldn't you, as a follower of Christ, want to know? I'm asking you to put your pride aside and get curious and be simple like children, ripe for hearing what might just be really big news.

Awakening, which is the kingdom, brings a renewed way of using the mind. If you can teach yourself to forgo mere rational thought, you can activate more and more of your capacity for understanding, which is truly liberating. It requires humility because there is so much to give up in order to see in this way. There is a blizzard of biases and beliefs that rage in such places, and the very religion that was created to support these teachings has essentially continued to demonize the concept of awakening in some quarters. Once these biases have been cleared, though, the mind becomes a luminous field of awareness in direct proportion to how much bias has been released. But it isn't just that, it's letting yourself be shown, led, taken by the presence of the indwelling divine and it's child which is the Christ consciousness. Others call it Cosmic Consciousness, or Cosmic Mind. It is all the same and emerges in the same way in each tradition because this is what we ALL are, rather than the beliefs we hold. Remember how Jesus said the kingdom is within you? That might just be an important clue to all of us. It's what's inside-this does not happen outside of any of us. Where, then, do you think you will meet God?

This more asks me to continually to let go of my familiar moorings to here and as I do, new understanding floods in, mysteries become knowns, and the universe resolves into a greater and greater miracle. But no words can contain this more...you just have to go and see for yourself.
All of this is like a seed that grows into a sprout, then a plant, and then a flower. The flower opens more and more and this flower is awareness. This is how awakening proceeds; it is the smallest of seeds that grows in stages. More and more, it opens, revealing still-deeper layers of comprehension. To get there, I lay aside all rational thought and allow my mind to go blank. Yes, blank. It is here that absent thought a great and ineffable presence grows that is a love unlike any other. Everything I could ever wish to know becomes available in that "space." If you believe you can't, you probably won't....but if you consider it possible, then it becomes possible. I wish this for everyone because it reveals our own foolishness and opens us to wonder and awe. The world so needs this right now.

Until next time....

Monday, March 13, 2017

Music For Yoga, Meditation Or Just Getting Through Your Day!

yoanu.com
 Image Source: yoanu.com


Do you find yourself having trouble with much of the music out there today that gets airplay over the radio waves? Do you find yourself having trouble with your old play lists that you listened to before awakening? Old favorites that have just….fallen away?
Oh so much changes, doesn’t it? I know that at a certain point in my process, I could no longer watch certain movies or even listen to certain kinds of music. So much of our world is drenched in this vibration of hardness, and it shows in the music we listen to. I recently began to reflect on all of the really great music that I have listened to over the last ten years that helped me to find a place to be where I could still listen to music without going into the wrong kind of overwhelm.

So if that has been the case for you, I have a treat or two hiding in here for you!

I have a list. It is in truth, a lot of different stuff, but its been selected because it has at different periods of time, helped to support me in my process.  Some days, I just could not listen to ANYTHING deeply rhythmic because, awakening.  But other times, I NEEDED that deep beat.   But mostly?  I needed something that wasn't drenched in the drama and BS of popular culture. Some of the music is great for work, yoga, meditation practice (if you use music at all) and for just getting around through the day. I have selected out all of the things that didn’t put me in a funk and that usually tend to lift me up or helps to put me in one great zone or another (some very quiet and subtle). I don’t know about you, but my tastes range all over the place, and what suits me one day does not work the next. I have all kinds of play lists often just to suit the mood. So the list….it ranges all over the place, too. I hope you can pick up a few things to add to your sonic tool box. So sharpen your pencil, take down some names and head over to i-Tunes to listen to the free samples, or try them on YouTube.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, and there is a lot that is not included because it might only be one great song on one album, but this should be something to get you started on a new sonic-mind space groove. Note: everything I am listing, except for a few noted exceptions, can be found on i-Tunes. Injoy!

What's your favorite music these days?  Care to share?  I'm expanding my list on a daily basis and would love to hear from you.



Elephant Revival. An eclectic blend of styles rooted in folk, but without slavery to instrumental styles that hem them in. My favorites from their most recent album Petals are Peace Tonight, Petal.

Their album These Changing Skies is their second most recent album and it’s worth taking a look/listen because the sound is a little different in some ways, while staying true to their quiet calming meditative music. In some ways, there are songs on this album I like even more than their most recent Petals. Make sure to check out
Birds and Stars, and Down To The Sea – I do have to admit that these soft-sided works often get a little much for me; I like some variety, so Down To The Sea feels a little turned inward, but I am sure you will like it in the right pairing, right? Also, Rogue River is worth listening for a bit of unexpected bluesy variety on the same album. Rogue is a bit hard in the lyrics, though.

Here is a link to one of their songs on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LgHDFHzMI4

Jai-Jagdeesh. Taking a sudden turn into the Bakhti vibe, there is the work of Jai-Jagdeesh who blends western with Indian sensibilities. This is good for those who want longer songs, more contemplation, less just easy listening, but often delightful and uplifting. Her album I Am Thine is made up of mostly long six to eight-minute tracks that help to keep you in the groove. I liked the first song on the album Aad Guray Nameh. And while the title track I Am Thine might be pretty popular, I liked Om Namah Shivaya Raam more because it departed from the more mellow rhythms and had a more bluesy feel, which is always interesting to me from a creative standpoint. Her earlier album Of Heaven and Earth has a little more upbeat feeling overall, and might be worth a listen.

Bachan Kaur is another artist whose work seems to be designed for yoga. Her album Anahata has a very folk feel, but this is not because it has traditional folk instrumentals, often just a guitar and a sitar in the background. Her work is spare, but if you want to have a fifteen minute tune, her work could be just the ticket.

Mirabai Ceiba is a duo that blends an interesting range of instrumental styles. I found myself grasping for a way to describe their sound. The best I can say is that it is a Celtic-meets-Latin feel. I find that I’d like their work without the singing because the instruments shine so beautifully on their own. Their albums Sevati, and their most recent Sacred Love Meditations, along with several others, are all on i-Tunes.

Matisyahu is less meditative music as it is something with a positive message. It has a reggae backbone, toss in some world, and you are done. Light is one of his recent releases and personally, I like the track on Light, One Day the best.

Trevor Hall has a great message, and isn’t into the trancy eight minute journey’s, which means that Trevor is a bit like Matisyahu not so much in style, but in that they have a rhythmic instrumental style that lacks the rawness often present in music of this type. I like Trevors music a lot and I find I pepper my play lists with his stuff when I need to break up the longer “trancy” stuff with something that has a nice beat. His last two albums Kala and Chapter of the Forest are two you should start with and explore his earlier work from there. I wouldn’t call his work yoga music though. Its really nice thoughtful music with soul.

This is his Youtube channel:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96SGUEnI2uw&list=PL11s0VhvKvosz9kjROX5j11NrnP8meHCJ


In a similar kind of rockin’ vein is Michael Franti. Again, his stuff might be too fast for some yoga, but his message is supportive and strong with his hi-hop reggae blended style. In fact, his music is often really great to dance to. His most recent album is Soulrocker.

Deva Premal was music I listened to when I did my Qi Gong practice. Her music has a contemporary backbone but well within the New Age style. The focus is on her voice, which she uses very well for create rich landscapes that can help carry you along in your work. It tends to be faster tempo than, say Bachan Kaur. If you want a really wild sound scape, try her Tibetan Mantras for Turbulent Times. This album is most definitely for trance work, if you ask me. Much of her work tends to be mantras sung in the Sanskrit.

NOT ON I-TUNES: Now for one that might be hard to get to, but at a certain point in my work, especially meditation and Qi Gung, Vyas Huston’s Victory Over Death fit the bill. It’s a bit severe sounding sometimes, but when its good, it can be really good. I copied the file twice and burned a disc for listening for long periods since it is one giant circle of mantra (but somehow, it doesn’t listen as repetitive because of how the phrases are paced out with the music). And to be fair, he isn’t singing mantras, but reciting a prayer whose words can be found on other sites dealing with Huston and his work.   I was introduced to his work by my teacher Robin and I was able to copy his disc. If you do Thai Chi or Chi Gung, you might see how the pacing of his recitation works really well with the moves of Qi Gung (which my teacher Robin presented to the rhythm of his piece, which is almost half an hour long-perfect for getting in a number of important moves in the Gung).

When I went looking for his work on i-Tunes, it didn’t show up, and honestly besides a Youtube video, I am not sure where to tell you to go to get it (if you like it). Vyas is mentioned on the internet here and there, so maybe you can get lucky (and maybe share back here for a link?). Let me know what you think of his work! Until then, this is the link to the youtube that has the piece on it (and a few images that are a dead-ringer for places where I live):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv4DcBDNwI8


Moksha (featuring Kanchman Babbar). If you want something in a similar and perhaps more traditional vein, try these Vedic chants by a chorus of 21 Brahmins. Just type “Moskha” in i-Tunes and it should be the first choice that comes up and give it a try. All of the chants are done in a pitch and style that does not vary except the mantras being chanted.

Odesza. So nice. One album worth listening to is In Return. First track: Always This Late. This is not meditation music per se, but its great texture and a sonic landscape for….running, working on writing (if the vibrations match what you are doing), cleaning, dancing (?)and heck, maybe even an active yoga routine. Check them out and let me know what you think. Very upbeat, bright, and lovely vocals with a definite electronic backbone to it all. I own their work.


Emancipator. Another electronic trance groove kind of sound-scape in a similar vein as Odesza. See their album Seven Seas, safe In the Steep Cliffs, and Soon It Will Be Cold Enough. I like their stuff. I have a few of their songs, too!

Peter Gabriel. I know, “isn’t he that pop artist who was once with Genesis and did Shock the Monkey?” Yes! If you listen to his music, you will find that all of his work has a driving desire towards awareness. He is a modern Gnostic in my book with his revealing More Than This. He is a kind of revealer of important issues concerning our place in the world. While his music has hit the charts and has had a lot of play, giving his music a listen to revealed, at least to me, a great depth of comprehension about spiritual issues. His album Growing Up, which was also released as a DVD of his live concert (in France, if I remember correctly).   While his work with Genesis was more in the pop/rock vein, his work began to mature once he broke from the band. Some of his work gets hard and even edgy, but some of his songs, like Signal To Noise are dealing with the issue of disinformation and seeking truth. His music was indispensible at a certain phase in my awakening. Blood of Eden speaks to the union of the opposites in consciousness.

  1. IZ. Also known as Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Iz is Polynesian and has a beautiful melodic voice that he matches with equally sensitive lyrics. Iz is no longer with us, but he has left a number of albums like Facing Future, and Alone in IZ World. His is a Hawaiian experience.

Yoga Music Co. These folks create music expressly for yoga. Might be worth a try. If you want a quick intro, you can go to youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij28wzJMijI

I am not sure if they are i-Tunes but their web site is www.yougamusicco.com. I liked what I heard!

For that matter, there are a number of channels on youtube now with music like Yoga Music, so it might be worth a listen and a little seeking to find things that you like.

Deborah Van Dyke is a chanter and her work is, as you might have guessed, very repetitive, but these are mantras after all.

In a more melodic and musical vein is the work of Donna De Lory, a mix of English and Sanskrit language styling.

So what music do you like? Please feel free to share and we can make a nice list for others in desperate need of a sonic transformation!

Until next time,

-Parker

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Marks Of My Awakening - Pt II

NOTE: This is part two of a two-part work that details the marks that have emerged on my body throughout my awakening process.  I am finally including this information here in the hopes that if anyone else encounters them that they can rest assured that they are not losing their minds and that all is well.  If you are finding this and would like to read the first installment please look at the previous post before this one for that.

I want to reiterate that everything that you are going to see here was in no way faked or created in order to make this claim.  All of the marks occurred all within the context of awakening.  I have held onto these images for ten years, uncertain about ever posting them.  I am doing so because by now I have had two people who have written to me to tell me about their experience with similar looking marks (one of whom who was kind enough to send me photos).

Continued from the previous...



When I awoke and saw this burn on my hip, I was at a complete loss as to how to explain any of this.  How had I managed to burn myself and never even notice?  If I had burned myself, I reasoned, whatever had burned me would have burned through my clothing. I would have noticed this kind of burn.  It would have been a circular or semi-circular object.  I would have clothing that was burned through near the hip.  As I searched memory, I had not been in the kitchen or near anything that was hot enough to create a burn like this.  It just wasn't adding up the morning I got up and saw the mark plain as day as I sat on the side of the bed before my feet hit the floor.   I knew there was no way I could have gotten burned just lying in bed asleep.  No sharp objects, no chemicals had come into contact with my body in the last week. And a burn?  I would have noticed it.  I would have felt it.  I would feel it throbbing, begging me to put something on it to ease the pain. This was a complete mystery!

Over the course of the next couple of days I shot the same mark several different times in a variety of different light just to make sure that I had captured it.  Had I been branded? A friend later suggested that maybe I had been branded, but perhaps branded by spirit. Had I been taken out and abducted?  Why a burn?  And why didn’t it hurt?  Why didn’t it behave like a burn?  It simply faded over a period of about three days with no marks, no scaling of the skin, no itching, no scarring at all.  There was no evidence of bruising or abrasion either. It was a complete mystery…at least as the time.

Below, see a close-up of the mark.
aut_0024

The Second Mark

The next photo is of a mark that manifested in 2012 after I experienced a powerful heart clearing.  This was the third such clearing that I was aware of, which suggested to me that this was the third kosha, level, or dimensional aspect to be impacted through the clearing process that kundalini helped to facilitate.  In the case of the mark at my heart chakra, it took a number of days before this mark emerged. Prior to that, I felt a powerful magnetic effect of energy surrounding my heart center that I can only describe as a beaming energy that was moving outward from my heart center.  It is worth noting that I had two years prior to this had an experience with an angelic being who reached into my heart center in a kind of psychic surgery where he pulled out what felt like a part of my insides.  All of this was energetic in nature, but felt very physical at the time.  While he had his hand in my heart center, I was on fire with an unbelievable pulse of love that radiated throughout my entire being at a pitch that I could scarcely believe was even possible.  It was this experience that initiated a series of powerful heart openings that continued over the following three years that resulted in a number of releases of old ancestral, physical, karmic, and emotional material from my field of awareness.  Once the release came that resulted in the mark in my heart center, my heart felt more different than it ever had.  It felt as though I had a beaming light shining from the center of my heart.




heart-mark-72-dpi-copy

This mark began as a single circle and over a period of months as my heart center grew or expanded, a second lighter circle developed on top of the first.  This had the effect of two hoops or circles making a figure “8” on my chest.  I did not take photos of this new or expanding of the mark on my body.

I noticed that when I looked at it in the mirror over that year that the circle took one a look as though it was a circle with many smaller flames encircling it.  It reminded me a lot of the image of Shiva dancing and being surrounded by a circle of flame.  In fact, this mark was different from the first in that it was more like a series of marks making up a circle.  It also has the effect of being like a string of red burn-like marks strung together, which the picture above illustrates.  Again, this mark did not come about as a result of a fungal infection like ringworm or psoriasis and has been a mark that at various times reemerges when I am moving strong heart energy. I can in fact feel its presence all the time, but it gets stronger at different times. Besides the burn mark shown earlier, I have never had these strange burn marks that I could not account for.   If anything, the marks are more like the result of my body being slightly irritated by the energy across the skin, perhaps more like how electricity might burn the body more than anything. Could this be a reaction to strong pranic energy flowing through the heart chakra?  It’s interesting to me that it is so small; this ring feels like it corresponds to the central channel, the shushumna as it transits through the heart chakra because my heart chakra takes up nearly my entire chest now.  There is an emergence of the most brilliant part of the heart center that starts at the center of my chest and radiates outward.  This ring corresponds to this most intense center of energy (and might be a slight overloading of energy that irritates my skin?).

heart-mark2-72dpi-copy

What I do find interesting is that in my inner work I discovered a characteristic of prana while working with a Kahuna healer one day.  When I am having her work on me, I feel very relaxed and secure and I often drop into a deep trance state in the hopes of facilitating the energy she is moving in my body.  As I looked down into my meridian system I noticed something I had never seen before, which was that each energy line was surrounded by a series of other lines, like a bundle of fiber optic cables surrounding a central sheath.  The mark on my chest is very similar to how the channel looked when viewed in cross-section (I am able to use the inner eye to get all kinds of views of my body ethereally, including what is essentially a cross section view). But I don’t know if this is connected to this discovery I made with my healer or not, and will be something that I will be bringing up with healers in my area to see if we can develop this further to see if these bundles can be further looked at to work out ways to work with them for moving energy and for healing work. So much to ponder and consider!   All of this, no larger than the size of a dime.  This is one reason why I think that this mark corresponds to the central channel and not the entire chakra because in both the Indian and the Chinese methodologies, the channels are described as quite small.  The Ida and Pengali (which are nadi, or channels, for prana) are said to be as thin as the hair of a boar, for example.  Each of the spots or flames are themselves closer to that size while the central core or inner circle is more in line with the shushumna channel size.  I bring this all up because this might possibly be a way to study the anatomy of the energy body (until a scientist or engineer gets curious enough to build a device that can detect and read prana in the body!). So given this size of these channels, does this circular mark correspond to the diameter of the center channel, the shushumna?

channels

If you would like to learn about the nadi, which are many, and the larger system of energy that transmits prana throughout the body you can begin with a pretty good wiki article first.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadi_(yoga)

What I have noticed is that my chest continues to feel different.  It even seems to have had an effect on how my skin reacts to this energy.  Radiant, glowing almost, there is an abiding presence of all that I have worked to bring forward within myself.  The energy, though, seems to have a slight irritating effect, which is mild, but is ever-present.  Sometimes it can lead me to want to scratch or rub it, which can also make it sore very easily.  I have to remind myself not to touch it, but to be aware of it, to feel what this all represents and the change that it has brought into my life.

Marks Are Not A Given Nor A Necessity

I don’t think that you have to have ANY physical manifestations of awakening in your life to prove anything about your awakening experience.  In fact, the central phenomenon of awakening that is most important to my mind is the Presence that emerges and never goes away, which is itself, at least to me, a higher dimensional aspect of who and what we are potentially, and that this Presence can help to bring great change in our lives if we allow it to do its work.  This Presence can bring awareness if we can be humble and if we can be honest with ourselves.  Then, it burrows deeper into us, integrating and clearing as it goes.  Resist, and it too will cease its development, its movement ever-deeper.

I also consider the great likelihood that I may have been a mystic Christian in an earlier life and either knew of, or experienced, some aspect of stigmata before, and this may be part of why I am experiencing these marks as I have in this life. Or not.  I will give you a couple of examples of how past life experience can inform our experience in the here and now (hoping its not too far a jaunt off our beaten path of the marks of awakening).

Thirty years ago, in an effort to project consciousness out of my body, I was approached by a serpent with the face of a man where the face of the snake should have been. This serpent was coiled and was floating in the air.   This face looked decidedly Mayan.  In the projection, I was being told that I needed to project my consciousness into the form of the snake. I looked at it and thought how odd an image that was, because I knew about a Mayan God name Quetzalcoatl, but always imagined it to be a winged or feathered serpent, not a floating serpent with a man’s head.  I wondered why it was that I would experience this image, obviously connected to Quetzalcoatl, in the way I had.  There was a reason for it, I just didn't know what it was, at least not right away.  Later in life, however, I would have a series of dreams that revealed to me that I had lived as a Mayan in the Yucatan Peninsula and probably had some experience with this same god.  In my studies in art school, I came across a nearly identical image of Quetzalcoatl I had not seen before in the Museum of Natural History in Mexico City that depicted him in just the same way I had seen him during my projection work.  I also read later about Quetzalcoatl and found out that the priests who worked with this being were said to be visited by this god and would be taken on spirit journeys. Curious, that, I thought.  It was exactly what I was being told to do when I was younger, yet I knew nothing about Quetzalcoatl.  Not at least in this lifetime (and not until I took a course in college later simply because my curiosity had been piqued). And in still another interesting turn, that lifetime spent in the jungles of Palenque would bear upon many things that would take place in a life in the future which is the life I am living now with the whole “end” of the Mayan calendar-round in 2012.  Life is not without its interesting coincidences, and seems to be woven into a dynamic fabric where one life informs another in useful and coherent ways.

In an odd twist, I also found out a year after my experience with the seraphim that visited me while reading up on Christian mystics that there was an account written about a seraph who visited one Christian mystic which was strikingly similar to my own experience.  The mystic was St Theresa of Avilla. Theresa wrote about her experiences, and the account was similar, right down to the side that the angels would come to her and how the seraphim had pulled her insides out of her while she was “on fire with a great love of God.” While Theresa offers no insight into why the angel did this to her, I suspect that this was nothing short of a kind of “operation” performed in the etheric with the matter of the meridians, prana, or chi as the substances or systems that were being worked on.  All of this sounds crazy of course, unless you have seen and felt these systems for yourself.
440px-ecstasy_of_saint_teresa_september_2015-2a
Ecstacy of Saint Theresa by Bernini, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome
What I am saying is that I think that we may have a predilection toward certain experiences over others depending on our own turn of mind, reincarnation background, beliefs, and our constitution.  Some of us may need this “surgery” while others may not.  Some of us may “remember” the lost or ancient gods and goddesses as they seem to make a return to us in this age.  If I could count the number of people who I know who have had some significant experience with Isis, I would have a large room full of people who all know an important aspect of this woman who once walked the earth, who taught, and who was revered above mere saint and reached goddess status.  Lying deeper within us are these memories.  We are often just too busy or unaware that they exist.  Awakening can be enough to shake them loose in us and bring us face to face with these forces in the healing and resurrection that is this experience.

For some time, I have resisted putting these images up because I suspected that there would naturally be those who would be skeptical.  However, I know I am not the only one, and I place these images not for the skeptics, but for those who may have had unusual or baffling physiological changes taking place within them that might seem alarming or strange to them. While all of this takes place in the context of a grand sort of unraveling and rebirth and a coming to know one’s self in a new or expanded way, we also remain physical creatures with our own frailties sometimes.  Everything is as it should be.  And things will continue to change along a path that is certain and for your own betterment.  Believe in yourself, your own inner voice, and the authority placed there by the divine!  The universe, while neutral, is set up to allow you to succeed if you just know how to be authentically in the world. Others might not understand it, or might not even get it.  And this is, in its own way, part of how things are.

Finally, and lastly, I would add that for some time I considered that this phenomenon might not be unlike some of the burn marks that are common amongst those who have experienced abduction phenomenon.  I hesitate to put it too front and center in all of this because of how loaded all of this is. Having a few things in my own past experience that have made me wonder about the nature of my et experiences in my earlier life, I often consider the very possibility that some of the et encounters are themselves not entirely physical and belong to a range of experiences not unlike those experienced in awakening.  That is, that they may be a form of out of body experience, or inner “synthetic” reality which the ancients knew and wrote about at some length. Now I know that for some people, these are traumatic experiences and it can be hard to hear someone suggest blithely and perhaps unknowingly that they might not somehow be entirely physically real in the normal sense.  But I ask you; what is real?  Do you actually know what is real?  It is curious to me that the early Christians (Jesus in his “secret” teachings to his disciples) knew about these beings and described them as a spiritual agency that behaved more like spiritual parasites than god-like beings (although they behave in both cases as if they are on this kind of level). While mainline Christianity barely mentions them, the newly discovered documents in the Nag Hammadi do, and it is there, in the Hypostasis of the Archons that so much can be discovered about them and how similar they are to our modern et experience in certain strands of the phenomenon.  What books like this describe is a phenomenon with beings that fit the modern et abduction scenario perfectly, and are too similar one to the other to dismiss out of hand.  I suspect that in these cases, we may have a presence that is psychic or spiritual in nature that could be so present and powerful enough to create effects in us in just the same way that hypnotists have been able to cause burn marks to emerge on their subject’s bodies.  It is also likely or possible that what we have seen is a kind of transiting between dimensions so that physical dna can be taken, while in other cases, their presence is more of an internal nature.  What is sure is that these beings behave more like shape-shifters than anything we normally know in our world.

I know that such a mention might seem far afield to you, but I suspect that all of these things may cross at a place where body and mind might have a lot to tell us about ourselves and the capacity for us to release or express hidden or submerged memory, emotion, or knowledge when a thought or feeling contains sufficient force to manifest in these ways.  And it is here that burn marks emerge along with a few minor other types of markings as well.  We may yet be only on the edge of understanding the full breadth of what all of this means or is about.

So the marks of my awakening are my own.  Others have experienced them, and still others may experience them in the days, months, and years to come.  I simply want you to know that all is well, it’s just your body expressing a truth or a knowing or awareness that it needs to get out for your conscious mind to see.  In the case of my first burn mark, this took place just prior to the full rise of kundalini.  However, I will remind my readers that my awakening was gentle and gradual (taken in phases or steps).  I had a six-month period where the full power of awakening was released in distinct stages through my own inner practice and hearing a voice inside of me that guided me.  I was brave enough to not think I was going crazy and I listened to that “voice” or inner prompting.  As a result, it led to what I think was a much gentler form of awakening that could help others to awaken more peacefully and with less worry or fear.  And still, even then, it was quite a wild ride because….well….kundalini.

Finally, in sum, I would like to add one small point that might be why the first mark emerged as it did.  Ten years after that mark emerged on my right hip, at a time when I had removed layer after layer of piled on junk from my consciousness, I found myself at a place where I felt like I had reached nearly the end of the material I had worked so diligently to remove after this decade of inner work.  As this vista came into view, I have noted that it is in this same location in my body that the single most difficult block has remained. I have learned a lot about what this represents in the esoteric systems that describe it.  This is the point, an acupuncturist once observed, that resided along a meridian line that was tied to the gall bladder.  Being solar in character, it could create specific digestive problems aligned with this hot or solar energy (which I have had throughout awakening related to bouts of nausea and even diarrhea in the first six months of the awakening process).  Here in the hip, so close to the root chakra, along the yang energy line, we have masculine energy stuck in a realm having to do with nurture and a sense of safety, and personal abundance.  Here, too, is very likely the emotion of both fear as well as anger, stopped up in a block, held in tension without a place yet for the psyche to know how to let it go, and which can be felt as an almost physical sensation which no physical doctor would be able to ever detect unless the block were to manifest as a physical condition such as illness.  So in the last few weeks I have received guidance on the inside that has told me what next I need to do to neutralize this last block.  This is ultimately bringing in the feminine yin to balance the masculine and neutralize the block and to heal this last rift which has been so stubborn.  I suspect that blocks can be this way; the easiest and least activated are likely to go first while the more dug in and most activated ones remain until the end.  But by the time that day comes and one block remains in a field that has been cleansed, having even the stubbornest of blocks does not feel like an impossible feat to remove.  I know that when I can bring up all the right feelings that I need to both acknowledge and move through, this block, like the hundreds before it, will also go into the ether as it is transmuted back into a clear and brilliant body that has been my life work here these past number of years.  And maybe the crescent holds some symbolic meaning for me. It might have been the image of the seers of old, or emblazoned on the heads of priestesses and priests in Atlantis, Egypt, or pre-Christian Europe. Perhaps once this cycle is complete, I might just find out.  Until then, it’s for me a sign of the times playing out on the intelligence of my body.
Until next time...


©Parker Stafford, all rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied or republished without consent of the author.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Marks Of My Awakening - Pt. 1


Over the course of my awakening my body has had a habit of expressing itself as kundalini has unfolded.  I have up until this point not posted the pictures from these curious effects, although I wrote about them a few years ago. Since then, my reservations about publicly documenting this phenomen have subsided significantly. Instead of keeping them to myself, I am making them available not as novelty, but to aid both in a broader understanding of the phenomenon, as well as to assist those who may have been similarly affected. It might also serve to calm concerns about other symptoms of awakening, too, which is a very regular occurance since search terms are a part of the stats that I see here on WTI. I put this here for broadening awareness and understanding.
In my reading about the symptoms of awakening, having physical manifestations of awakening appear to be uncommon.  They are not unheard of, though.  U.G. Krishnamurti (that Krishnamurti...there were two of them sharing a similar experience but both were very different from each other), for example, described how during a certain phase of the awakening of kundalini  he had a series of physical effects that were witnessed by others.  There were swellings of the skin, his neck flared out in a hood-like effect people described as like a cobra.  In one case, he developed a breast on his yin and Shakti side of his body (left). (1)

A Shared Experience

On my other blog, Divine Alignment, which is on the blogspot platform, I wrote about my experience a few years ago and someone wrote to comment that she had had a similar experience that involved the same shaped mark as my own, which was a crescent shaped burn that appeared out of nowhere and then quickly faded once it was noticed.  What is interesting here to me is that her mark was close to her heart, she described it as being on her right shoulder.  When I think about the energetic polarities of the masculine and feminine, the root in the male is polarized positively (transmittive) while the male heart is negatively charged (receptive).  The energetic circuit for the woman is exactly the opposite.  I have often wondered if what she and I experienced was part of the same spectrum of experience, but that hers would naturally manifest at a transmittive center along the torso like mine, except in reverse.  In the case of the person who had searched the web and had found my post, she explained that she had been practicing a projection technique in order to have an OOBE.  While her experience was not couched in a kundalini experience, OOBE’s are themselves part of a range of human experience that can put a person in touch with divine energetics and the energy of consciousness.  Both of us appeared to be in the early stages of a spiritual process.

The first mark, which came just prior to the full rise of kundalini, appeared after I awoke one morning in the early Spring of 2007.  What was so curious about the burn mark was its position and the fact that I had not had any contact with anything hot that could have caused the burn.  This mark lasted for about three days and faded away.  It left no scar, and at no point did it ever hurt or behave as a normal burn would.  I realized that if I had gotten a burn like the mark on my skin, I would have been in pain for a few days and the scar would have scabbed over after several more days.  It simply made no sense, all things being equal.

I have thought about this phenomenon and what I am most certain of is that whenever there is strong psychological material that is rising to the surface of feeling or thought, the body can manifest a whole range of effects.  I was put in mind of what Christian saints would experience in ecstatic experiences which most often would happen while in a trance state while experiencing visions of Jesus or Mary, for example.  This phenomenon is known as stigmata.  While many stories about stigmata strike some as self-inflicted, there have been some cases of stigmata where witnesses saw the marks manifest before them.  As strange as all of this may seem, I think that it is not so unusual given the ability of the body to manifest thought very well.  Take for example how subjects placed in a deep hypnotic trance will, when told they are being touched by a red hot poker, will produce welts and blisters moments after they are touched lightly with a pencil and believe that the pencil is in fact just what they are being told it is.

The Marks

I have decided to make these images available in the event that anyone else out there has found themselves similarly affected.  And for those who have not gone through this, it can serve to illustrate the broad range of what can happen in awakening.  The following photo is of the burn mark on my right leg near my hip. There were several photos taken of this burn over a period of a few days.  It is worth pointing out that the burn had a center that was brighter than its surrounding, if you will notice, there is a lighter band surrounding a redder center.  When I get burned normally, the object tends to leave a fairly uniform burn of the skin across its surface. This burn is almost more in line with a radiant burn rather than contact with an object directly on the skin.  A closeup of the same burn follows.

cropped-burn-mark-hip-2007
Because of the length of this post, the remainder of the work is found here along with the rest of the photos of one of the other marks that developed later.  Read the rest of the story in the second part, posted right after this entry (check back soon!).
(1) Krishnamurti U.G. Arms, Rodney, ed. The Mystique of Enlightenment.  Goa, India, Dinesh Vaghela Cemetile Corp. ©1982.

Friday, March 10, 2017

Update!

Over the next few days I am going to be sharing with you variety of different posts. one of these will reveal the marks of my Awakening. A few years ago I had a post that was titled The Marks of my Awakening and described how I had burn marks on my body as part of my Awakening process. I have felt for years a little funny about posting these images of the marks that have appeared on my body that have been directly related to the kundalini process. However in recent months that resistance has softened and I have decided that I'm going to publish some of those images. Since posting images on another blog I have already found that there are other people who have had similar types of marks on their bodies. In addition to this material I'm also going to be sharing a post that's lighthearted in nature that will cover a lot of the really good music I think that is out there that's great for people who want an alternative to what's on the radio these days. This music could be used as part of a yoga practice but it's also really great music to listen during various stages of my awakening process when I could not handle regular music. The music that I'm going to be sharing with you is much easier to handle while you're going through an Awakening and also being changed in your taste level for music. So that's something to look forward to. I also have a few other tidbits that I want to share with you including a recent clearing that occurred just in the last few days thats been fairly significant.

I will begin to make these posts starting on Saturday and these will be published over a period of several days so there will be a fresh batch of new posts with new information which I hope will be of use to you. Sorry for not posting here more frequently but life has been very busy. I look forward to getting the information out to you and I hope that your spring is shaping up nicely!

-P.

Saturday, January 14, 2017

More Poetry...

This is a nice piece about the love one feels when stepping onto the innermost path....let me know what you think...

https://wakingtheinfinite.wordpress.com/2017/01/05/the-leader/