New Book Introduction

I am including the introduction for the book.  It has been stripped down from 12 pages to seven.  I have sought to keep it as short as I can while still giving a sense of the direction and content of the book.
-Parker




Introduction

Inside of you lies a pathway to your higher being,  a self that is more  connected to the world around you than you may be presently aware. This path is ultimately one that serves to bring the many parts of the self into a greater unity, a process that most often leads to the irrefutable awareness that we are all interconnected in a fundamental way, and that the energy and awareness now operating within is also without.  This pathway leads to self knowing, not just about ones own self  but about the world around you. 

Awakening is most often a reordering process that goes to the deepest levels of you. How it proceeds is more the result of who you are, and how you have grown, as you have come to this place of awakening. Patterns will be different, beliefs will differ, a few things will be the same or common, and here is where the conversation begins. 

Through the work in this book I will be pointing out those things which have best served my awakening, that have moved me from one point of belief into a more conscious understanding of what was at work at the time.  We are like blind spiders who weave a web of energy based on how we feel at the time, a kind of sum total of all of our beliefs and feelings going out into this little invisible thread.  We then turn around and look at all of the things that this web has attracted and shake our fists at it.  We proclaim how unfair this web of life is, all without the realization that it was we who had been weaving it all along. It is this sort of realization that can help fuel a giant leap in your own process of awakening, for as enlightened as some would like to say you become once kundalini hits, you still maintain the material that was brought forward into your new life, and the benefit of awakening will only be as good as your own willingness to become a responsible and active participant in it. 

My awakening was one that was nothing short of revolutionary, an answer to a very big question that I had been asking my whole life, a question that was much broader than many others I may have been asking, but are, I feel, universal, incredibly loaded, and central to a significant return to ones Essential Self or Nature.

This is the urge, the desire to reach beyond one’s own known bounds, to understand why we are here and what our purpose is.  Its so broad that is can be seen or expressed in myriad ways, none of them even closely related to any religion, practice, or dogma of any kind.  Conversely, because of its breadth, it can fit perfectly within any religion, philosophy or belief, too.  What we find to be divine has existed prior to any religion that was subsequently wrapped around it, and it will keep on even after the need for those things ceases in their present form. This urge is so basic that the divine can be felt in what happens to a person when they reach deep states of fulfillment. The thrill of getting a new job can have more divine energy bound up in it than many religious ceremonies do. The divine is in everything, is not bounded by belief or dogma, and is hence everywhere around us. Awakenings most often bring a sudden sense of this realization….it was there all along, quietly waiting.  Fulfillment is the key ingredient.  Divinity leads us to this sense of experiencing this, and this, I would argue, is the whole reason for all of our searches, questions, and yearnings.  The problem to my mind is that we have so cordoned off vast tracks of human experience through distortive beliefs that we live lives that are a shadow of what they could be. Being a shadow, its hard to imagine how it could ever be anything different.

I have decided to come forward with my experience because of how different it was from most awakenings, or what is most generally accepted or understood as an awakening. I do this also because we are now witnessing more of these events in what can only be described as a landslide event world wide.  I feel that we need to continually broaden the discussion, and continue even now to keep asking questions, examining and keeping our understandings current with what is happening in our environment.  I do this because I suspect that many more will experience it as I have.

On the one hand, old texts can provide some valuable insight into aspects of the experience, but they can also add some distortive influences as well, since the world of a thousand years ago is very different from where we are now. The world of a thousand years ago reflected a much more paternalistic approach to seeing and understanding the world, and the issue and understanding of personal power was very different.  These values and beliefs have had wide ranging ramifications for those people at that time.   Some will say some aspects never change in regards to spirituality, but what they miss is the fact that the blinders we wear within a given time are the elements that also inform or misinform our spiritual experience and day to day lives, two aspects that aren’t separate from one another.

While we may seek an authority from outside to help us come to terms with a transcendental and life altering event, the ultimate authority, I have found, rests within.  The better we are able to bring our own inner resources to this experience, the better able we can apply an understanding of a phenomenon that is clearly changing, and may be different from others who have lived in the past.  We can work with old texts all day long to pluck out the applicable truths that we need most to be reminded of.  For myself and others, this has been the value of all writings whether contemporary or ancient.  The one element in this search that makes all the difference is awareness.  We don’t always have this, and when it comes to old ideas about how things are, we can easily gobble up the distortions or chaff along with the wheat.  Awareness, again, is key.

What I will share with you is the perspective and experience of someone who has been a careful observer of his own experience  who has been willing to question what has been taken for granted, a process that has resulted in greatly broadening my perspective, beliefs, and skill set.  Sometimes when we are lucky enough, this process can work well to point out what remains to work through. The reality here is that everything that you see is a reflection in some way of who you are inside.  I know this is counter to everything that the modern world seeks to teach, but there is most certainly a linkage that emerges in a more highlighted way in awakening that begins to reveal this connection.  We often tend to want to attribute this to miraculous phenomenon, but it is not.  It FEELS magical, and while it is good, I think we need to resist attributing this all to some “will of god” as we have done in the past.  It is this issue that touches upon some elements emerging in quantum physics, but in many ways we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. The ancients, though, have been saying these same things for millennia.

The goal of awakening is to bring heave to earth.  It is not to seek some better life in the afterlife.  It is to populate this world with the seed of this powerful force, which begins like a mustard seed. We limit the spread of this seed when we carry old notions about our selfhood.  Since awakening is not predicated on beliefs but about something far deeper, there is nothing to be feared over losing a belief or two.  This is where the rubber hits the road and it takes being brave and inquisitive even if it does put you at odds with consensus reality.  If consensus reality is so damned great, why do we have such a messed up world?  If religions are so great, why do we have so much violence born from repressed emotion?  Has anyone bothered to take five seconds to wonder why we have the problems we do? Religious leaders will continue to seek to keep old limiting beliefs installed in their followers while never once considering that those very same beliefs are causing very serious problems within.  Its madness, and those within the system will fight to the death as they have for centuries to keep this very wrongheaded thinking installed.

Belief can on its worst day be viral in nature, something that is installed with hardly any says-so on our part and will continue turning in us until the day we die.  It does no good to say that you know that the belief is good when you have never bothered to examine it closely enough to understand the broader effects it has had on you.

If you have not yet reached the place within awakening where your most cherished beliefs are being rethought, I  am a walking example that doing this does not lead to chaos within, or anarchy, at least not for long.

It’s as though we have locked a tiger in a cage, and in so doing, anytime it is let out, it goes on a rampage.  We never bother to ask WHY the tiger is on a rampage and then seek to get to the core of that behavior.  If we did, we might find it has more to do with just how unnatural it is to keep the tiger penned up in the first place. We never consider that it is possible that our divinity lies deeper within this caged tiger and if we were to heal the divisions within it, we would set free the deeper spiritual compass that we are all born with.

Our knowledge base is never static, no matter how much we may want to rely upon the traditions of the past to suggest that this is so.  We are like beings caught between wanting to lean on the safety and certainty of the past while being catapulted into the future.  It is here, in our present, that we can take what we have learned from the past and continue to question in the present with the realization that in that sifting process we will naturally tend to innovate, and create anew.

I have been given a great gift in my life .  I have been shown quite clearly, in others as well as myself,  that we tend to see what we want to see, that our own beliefs or inner biases limit what we experience in the world.  This gift was at first achieved at great cost to me in my personal life, but has shown the depth to which we can as human beings be blinded by the truth that is all around us.  This is an important lesson even in the midst of awakening, and it can lead to more honest appraisals of yourself which is necessary the deeper you go into your own shadow work. 

Even in the midst of such a transformative process like awakening, we can still remain limited in these ways, deluded even by those half-noted blinders that have been with us for so long that we have hardly given them a second look.  This gift has served as a daily reminder for me to always look beyond the obvious or accepted notions of what we believe is real, to do my level best not to take anything on faith, but to always examine it and ask myself what it is I could be missing.  This thinking requires us to be very honest with ourselves and it draws upon the power of the depths in helping us to remake ourselves.  We can see the glitch in others very easily, but it becomes much harder when we turn it on ourselves.  This is where some humility helps immensely!  In the end, all of this is not about changing the world, but about changing my own self so that it can make its appointment with the infinite.

Most who have gone through the challenge of awakening find themselves utilizing just about any resource they can in order to get through the more challenging parts of the process. Often this has meant that there are teachers, but these can just as easily be found in books that happen to pop off the shelves at just the right time. Because the process of awakening is so reflective in nature, we often seem to need something that will aid us in coming to grips with our own inner wounds and hurdles that are before us, a process that seems very much to be looking outward but that ultimately resolves back into the self.  It is true that in awakenings you will receive just the right thing that you need in perfect timing, be it a friend who offers a book, a conversation, or the meeting of a teacher who embodies the skills that you will need to learn to get through the next phase of the journey. 

Just as I was beginning to question my own experience and what others were saying about it, I found that this act of intention served to accelerate events in my own life concerning kundalini.  I subsequently met Alison Neville, a gifted intuitive who has lived with kundalini since she was a small child.  Her perspective and her concepts in the beginning helped me to see things in a new light, and she was a continual source of compassion and help through what would become a very challenging process. I would not be where I am today were it not for her generous assistance. Her kindness and compassion was the catalytic force that helped me to take those first substantive steps out of my old world view, out of what had become my own spiritual cage. At a time when I did not feel safe in my process, she was the only voice of understanding.  Many of her ideas have been folded into the pages of this book and I owe her a great debt for how selfless and kind she has been.  She has served as a model for how awakenings ought to be treated in our contemporary society.  I have benefitted greatly from her wisdom and insight.

My experience was not born out of the eastern path, and as a result, I have a different view in some ways, and I feel that by not being involved or invested in certain viewpoints I have been more free to relay this experience with a fresh voice.  Much of what I espouse is a reliance on your own experience while utilizing the new tools now available to you. We have changed very much from the days when monks had the luxury of living in a community of like-minded people, in ashrams meditating, and seeking to awaken kundalini. Our inputs are very different, and we cannot always live a life of silent contemplation or find the support of a larger community that will give us the time to work through the thorny issues that remain within us.  Many of us do this on the fly in an environment that is far more complex then it has ever been.  While we may begin an awakening while still having a foot in our old lives, and while we may change our lifestyles to better suit the needs that an awakening offers, we still need a way that helps to serve the person on the street since this is the very type of person who is now answering the call of awakening in the greatest numbers today. What was once a phenomenon that usually occurred at mid life is now emerging in very young adults.
 I know enough from some of the literature that I stand at odds with what much of it says.  There is talk of ego death, about the false self, that this world is an illusion. I know where these notions come from, and in my own path have seen that these things do not add up.  After ego death, there is still a sense of self, of the individual still remaining, so quite naturally I have to point out the obvious.  The self we have used prior to awakening is now seen as somehow false, yet it remains as an important part of navigating duality. Perhaps it is just as possible that the consciousness that has created this world found that it needed to create agents of itself that could identify itself as separate just in order to survive, and so our arrangement could be a very practical solution to the reality so created.     Instead of seeing the self as false, I have been working to learn a new balance between all aspects of the self, a new synthesis of being that makes sense for me here in this world. Saying that something is false is like saying the elephant in the room does not exist or is somehow unimportant.  If the world is a creation, rather than illusion, then we can learn to create in a new way.   It is my experience that you can shift so far into the realm of non-duality that nothing here makes much sense. You can reach a place where your two selves become disengaged, what Krishnamurti described as a "de-clutched state."  What I do know is that the energies which have moved in me have been creative in their essence and I use that as my guiding principle.  Likewise, there is this tendency to eschew many of things that are physical, and much of this strikes me as a kind of collective self loathing at work as well as an avoidance of the more prickly issues still remaining.  

If you know someone close to you who is going through an awakening, perhaps my words can serve as a reminder of what it is your loved one may need from you if they are to travel this path along with them.  The truth is, an awakening can shake the foundations of the person so awakened, and no part is untouched.  It is true that these events can test and shake relationships to their core. The other side of the coin is just as it can shake, so can it heal.  I know that it is very easy to discount what a person is experiencing as a result of an awakening because it may not be a part of your own personal experience, so I hope that you may realize just how key compassion is in the midst of such an experience.  Imagine how vulnerable a caterpillar might feel when they awaken to realize they are now a butterfly.

I hope to shed some light on some lesser known aspects of awakening that involve the role of synchronicities, which have been a feature of the experience for every person I have ever talked to who has gone through this. It hints at a powerful tool that we have at our disposal that can be developed to make life more pleasant and extremely efficient.  This discussion will lead into the seemingly unusual phenomenon of the quantum world where some important linkages will be made between how these effects can be seen working in your larger life as the synchronistic event.  It can lead to what I have learned to do, which is to ride the wave of this energy in such a way that I utilize these events to bring me just what I need in perfect timing. When you understand what is behind the phenomenon of synchronicity better, it will also inform your own process because all of this phenomenon is tied into some very basic principles that if mastered can serve to direct your life in a more realistic and meaningful way.

Part of this will be how I have observed consciousness as behaving both as particle and wave, and this can be an elegantly simple, and accurate way of relating to these powerful aspects of your awareness. Granted, it is only a model, but it has been my sense that it is one that helps me to simply and quickly navigate through my experience in a fashion that is less chaotic and more natural feeling.
In both a personal and archetypal way, what I observe in my own experience is what I would call the emergence of the divine feminine in a much more purposeful and powerful way.  My earliest experiences of awakening pointed this issue out and it has been a recurring theme that is persistent and telling.  I think in the collective, perhaps archetypal level, we are learning how to bring forth those qualities of the feminine which are most needed in this age.  It is no wonder then that feminine archetypes are beginning to populate many people's awakening experiences.  What is happening at the macro-scale is also happening on the individual level also as men learn how to become more sensitive and aware of their more feminine sides and as women discover the goddess that dwells within. The effect that this will have on our world will be huge.  Civilizations that have stopped warring enough to nurture themselves have had sudden accelerations of growth such as the Renaissance and Enlightenment. As cultures become more liberal in how they treat women, the culture has a corresponding benefit that is reaped. When you consider that there lies in each person a dual current of energy that can be described as being masculine and feminine, the importance for being able to give both a voice in our lives becomes obvious.  When I look back on the old spiritual traditions, I see a lacking presence of the feminine contribution.  To me, this has got to change.  It has to change because the consciousness of humankind can no longer afford to continue on the path that it is on without spiraling increasingly into the shadow side of what the masculine consciousness has and will continue to bring. Many of us do not even know how things could be different, so for those who embark on this journey, it will be one of curious adventure and openness to experiences that could be very different from what has been known and handed down for generations. For many cultures that are now beginning to wake up to this necessity for change, it very much has to do with seeking to find a balance within ourselves in the smallest and biggest of ways. It was not that long ago that in accord with prophecy, the men in the Lakota culture handed power to the women.  In this ceremony the women asked that this power be shared equally between BOTH sides of the equation. This is a sea-change kind of event, it it is one that I feel we must now begin to emulate in order to cease the constant swing from one extreme to the other and simply find balance. As this begins to happen, the question to me and others involved in this work is how can we best help to heal and usher in the feminine and give her a place of honor as she so rightly deserves? Lacking good models for just what the Goddess is or could be, we can open a doorway into the self that Carl Jung called the Collective Subconscious.   As those who awaken learn how to heal the feminine within through long-lost archetypes, we can begin to populate the world with the ancient knowledge that is so badly needed in a world that sometimes looks like it is teetering out of control from an over-emphasis upon masculine characteristics, values, and ideas.  

In life, everything is a progression.  Where I was in the beginning of my experience is different from where I am now.  All of life’s moments  are  snap shots along a spiraling path upward and outward.  This has been so in my journey as it has been with countless others.  This book is a snap shot.  There will be more to learn, to realize, and embody. We are all here to do the great work of realizing a wonderful secret, and a tantalizing mystery.

The Book: Waking The Infinite

Very soon I will be posting some pages from the introduction to my book Waking The Infinite.  I have been hard at work editing and getting a very large work down to a more manageable size. The work is going well and I would like to share with you some things covered in the book

• The story of my own awakening-since it was not a textbook case, its worth noting as the phenomenon broadens
• The protective effect awakening has on the light body
• The effect the quantum field has on experience
• how the shift fuels synchronocity
• its more than synchronicity---learning to fuel the universe
• the role of karma in awakening and broadening awakening
• how karma can tear your light body, inviting numerous effects through the Law of Attraction
• the soul connection:  understanding Twin Souls, and Twin Rays in a new light
• the role of karma in soul connections
• reaching beyond old cognative boundaries to consider the far reaches of what awakening can bring
• a powerful means of understanding how the physical system holds onto past trauma and karma
• understanding the role of forgiveness in an expanding Awakening
• The role imagination plays, how it opens us to the opening of the soul to awakening
• how inspiration is connected to grace, and how grace can lead you to speeding release of old karma
• beyond The "science" of kundalini:  how to keep perspective while glimpsing the mystery
• Practice Elements:  Understanding how Practice works to craft methods that work powerfully
• The truth about ego death
• The non-locality of awakening
• and much more

Currently there are seven chapters which involve personal experiences to help illuminate aspects of awakening.  The journey will include visiting other lifetimes that have had a bearing on today and why this period in history represents a shift in our awareness as a planet. The book helps to bring new awareness and expands understanding about the potential that awakening offers.  In clear and straightforward language, unencumbered by dogma, I do not lean on New Ageisms or concepts to explain the phenomenon.  In truth, this is itself a formless thing that we all seek to put to form.  As a result, its better experienced than talked about.  When we do talk about it, simple language is best.  Having said that, the awareness that this book will bring will help many to become more cognizant of the great gift that a kundalini awakening can bring and how to utilize the awareness the work represents in going further and finding many more resources.  The gift, in the end, is love.....perhaps the greatest there is.

Soon I will be posting the new revised introduction that helps to set the stage for the book.  I am currently revising and editing the book prior to "shopping" it.

Regards,

Parker

The Feminine Spirit (book excerpt)

The following is an excerpt on the role of the two energies of awakening; masculine and feminine and seeks to point out where even the teachings of Jesus contained them but were largely scrubbed from mainstream texts or were simply left out altogether by their authors because of their chauvinism. 

From Waking The Infinite

When you awaken, you realize the very act of this energy moving through you is this transcendent love, which is the embodiment of the trascendent in you. While I was never church-going or a big fan of Christianity, I understood THIS was what Christ Consciousness was!  Had to be.  I had to discard all those Sunday school notions of purity and piety, though....I don't think they were true....but was replaced with a much more realistic and believable indwelling spirit.  You begin to realize that this was never something outside of you but an integral part of your own experience, and further, is the result of something that is universal amongst all humans, despite religions, caste, or sex.   Further, The Gospel of Philip  points to how it was understood in his day that there was a feminine aspect of the divine and its role in awakening  when he said 

“Some said, "Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit." They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman?”

Philip was merely expressing what many already knew, something easy to miss in our current day when reading such a loaded passage as the one I have just shared with you…..which was that the Holy Ghost was known to be the feminine aspect of the divine,  and so the idea of Mary conceiving from a feminine force was absurd, and as Philip correctly contended, an error.  It looks like there  was an effort underway even then to sweep the divine feminine’s own validity under the rug in order to lessen it in the face of this new radical teacher named Jesus.  In our current day the divine feminine has not been swept under the rug but it HAS been masked in the same way that a ghost might be masked or is mysterious to us.  As time has gone by, the feminine aspect of the divine was increasingly set aside, denied or ignored until very few even knew what this anonymous seeming “holy ghost” was all about. We mention the Holy Ghost in rather vague terms.  It is an aspect of the deity, yes, but of what kind?  If God is the father, and Christ the child, then what is the Holy Ghost? Anyone?  Under a paternalistic  banner, the Holy Ghost was subsumed into the paternalistic view and the roots of the feminine were forgotten by many in the mainstream.  
This doesn't change the reality of the masculine and feminine dynamic in our spiritual life.  
The gnostics, long sidelined, knew and even practiced a religion that included both the masculine and feminine traits of the deity. By the time the Nicene Council was called, some of Jesus’ words were shortened to simply include “I am one with the Father.”  And yet, the voices from the past have not been completely silenced.  We have books where Jesus is known to have said he was one with both the Mother and the Father. These documents have come back to us at a perfect time, actually, a time when we are much more ready to move out of centuries of paternalistic control and embrace the larger reality of our spiritual selfhood.  The message, through the Nag Hammadi, which emerged from the sands of Egypt, has been revealed in a time when women have begun to see more and more rights afforded them, in a world slowly but surely coming to grips with issues of egalitarianism.    

In a text by Hippolytus that has suggested that there was a secret teaching of Jesus that he gave to Mary and his other followers, it revealed that the followers of Jesus prayed ‘From Thee, Father, and through Thee, Mother, the two immortal names, Parents of the divine being, and thou, dweller in heaven, humanity, of the mighty name . ..’ (Hippolytus (170-236 AD), Refutationis Omnium Haeresium 5.6). 

Its understandable how such teachings could have been lost.  They were lost because they were stamped out from the beginning.  What has been removed may be difficult for others to reclaim, absent an awakening where the truth becomes manifest within the self in a very simple and clear way. There was a very strong desire to try and demonize Mary, and when I grew up, Mary was considered a prostitute that Jesus turned into a follower.  In truth, Mary was more than that.  She was the wife of Jesus as the older documents, some which predate even the ones chosen to make up the bible, point out explained in various ways such as  “. . . the companion of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene. [But Christ loved] her more than [all] the disciples and used to kiss her [often] on her [mouth]. The rest of [the disciples were offended by it . . .. They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’ The Savior answered and said to them, ‘Why do I not love you as [I love her?]” (Gospel of Philip 63.32 - 64.5; Nag Hammadi Library p. 138) 

The Gospel of St. John describes the Holy Ghost as female explaining, "the Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Her not, neither knoweth Her; but ye know Her, for she dwelleth with you, and shall be in you."  In the Gospel of the Hebrews, Jesus is quoted as saying "Even so did my Mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away to Mt. Tabor. Again, in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, "My mother gave me a body, but my true Mother (the Holy Spirit) gave me life."  Even the early Hebrew Christians, referred to as the Ebionites, described the Holy Ghost as feminine.

In the Apocryphon of John, the author recounts a vision that he has had of Jesus shortly after his crucifixion.  John describes seeing a triadic being in the vision that speaks to him and goes on to recount the encounter of what Jesus’ spirit was saying to him, 'He said to me, "John, Jo[h]n, why do you doubt, and why are you afraid? ... I am the one who [is with you] always. I [am the Father]; I am the Mother; I am the Son."

Sadly, the history of the rising of the feminine in the Christian tradition was met with derisive and often calculated cunning designed to stamp out any suggestion that women were somehow on par with men spiritually. Bishop Irenaeus (ca. 140 - 203 AD) wrote about efforts to include women in the ritual practice of the tradition by taking and active part in them.  Irenaeus goes on to suggest that one man who has given women such a high position in the church must be involved in concocting aphrodisiacs in order to lure them into such practice! Marcus, the man in question, was seducing women into the church, using his powers on women like a sorcerer, bidding them to prophecy, and to be involved in all manner of things that only the men were considered able to do within the newly  formed church. (Irenaeus, Book I, ch. 13, § 1 - 7; Refutationis Omnium Haeresium, )

Sadly, by sowing fear, we play on the worst in people arousing fear and even hatred.  This is how nations are tricked into going to war with other nations, how one sex is caused to be seen as taking the fall for some past deed that explains why things are the way they are (supposedly).  Fear is used.  We must go to war with Iraq because we do not want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.  As we all know, the pretext that Americans were given for invading Iraq was entirely without merit, but the fear card played well in an across the board concerted effort to demonize and galvanize public support.  In the same way have people down through time sought to use these weapons for purposes of propaganda, to turn minds and hearts from their greater natures to a lesser one, one crippled by fear and made little by hatred. 

 The Gnostic teacher Marcellina claimed to be in possession of secret teachings handed down from Jesus to Mary Magdeline, and  if this seems exaggerated, consider that in the Gospel of Mary, shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus, Peter said to Mary, "Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember - which you know (but) we do not, nor have we heard them." Mary answered and said, "What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you."   So Mary begins to speak to them of the things that Jesus had spoken to her in private.  After hearing this, Andrew says "Say what you (wish to) say about what she has said. I at least do not believe that the Savior said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas." Peter then erupts in anger saying “Did he really speak privately with a woman, (and) not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?’ Mary replies to him saying, ‘My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?’ Levi, who adds at this point a mediating principle in this interesting exchange says,‘Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you, indeed, to reject her? Surely the Lord knew her very well. That is why he loved her more than us.’ (Gospel of Mary 17.18 - 18.15.). 

In yet another exchange between Peter and Mary, which occurs in the Pistis Sophia, Peter complains that Mary is dominating the conversation with Jesus while taking priority away from Peter and the other male apostles. He urges Jesus to silence her but he is swiftly  refused by Jesus! Mary admits to Jesus later  that she does not dare to speak to him freely because, as she explains ‘Peter makes me hesitate; I am afraid of him, because he hates the female race.” 

            It would seem that even amongst the followers of Jesus, there were tensions and egoistic struggles.  They had trouble believing that Jesus had told Mary all the things that she had expounded upon.  But this is not a singular expression in the texts, though, for Thomas was also taken aside by Jesus and told some things that the other followers were not told, and when he was asked what they were, Thomas deferred, saying that if he were to do that, surely the disciples would stone him to death.  What could have been so radical that Jesus could have told Thomas that he himself would not disclose it to even Jesus’ own followers?  Could it have been the role that both the male and female have in an awakening, what he called the kingdom? Could it have been simple truth that the people of that time simply would have difficulty in hearing?  Could it be the same fear of derision that Irenaeus heaped upon Marcus who included, rather than excluded the role of women in spiritual life?

©Parker Stafford

Coping With Kundalini

With kundalini, you soon see how everything is connected.  You feel it.  You might even feel yourself becoming it.  The physical body is caught up in this trans-formative process, and there are some very physical things you can do to make its presence in your body easier to deal with.

I think that it depends on where you are in your process.  I lived with kundalini for about four years before things began to get difficult.  I certainly had some difficulty before then, but nothing compared to when I began to question my experience, which led to a deepening of the energy within me and this highlighted the issues within that had lain more dormant as the energy seemed to have a place to reside, but was, I think, coming up against strong internal resistance on my part, albeit subconscious in many ways, against its going deeper.  When I began to work on loosening blocks in a much more conscious way, life became very difficult because the inrush of kundalini through all these knots made things very painful.  I think its possible to live with kundalini but have its energy only go so far.  Its as though it wont go where it is not welcomed, and while some would see the coming of kundalini as nothing they ever asked for, it is my feeling that on a deeper level it was most certainly bidden, and if you consider that there was something moving deeper within you that did bring this on, you are in a better position to begin to consider why this is so, and to feel less like a victim of this torrential energy and more as someone who has just awakened and is now growing up, so to speak.  I know that when I ask the energy to come on stronger in order to do some work, it does.  Sometimes it feels like it is kicking my behind, but I know that this pain or difficulty is merely lack of alignment to its perfect energy. I know that I did not have the trouble with adrenaline until I began working to remove blocks.  Only then did adrenaline rev up like nobodies business. 

The effect that this has on the adrenals and kidneys is very real.  Some can suffer adrenal burn-out, and having adrenaline pumping through you in this way can be very wearing on the body.  This can be part of the trial by "fire" that many talk about. But one thing is for sure; for as hard as this part of the journey was, it taught me come hell or high water how to be the captain of my own ship, which meant learning how to flush out latent fear in my body and soul and to get a grip on my physiology and actually learn to control it.  Your body will mirror your feelings perfectly, but in awakening, you might be a few steps behind what your body is trying to tell you by having anxiety or fear or adrenaline going full tilt.  Consider that kundalini IS a few steps ahead of you and is trying to tell you something.  the adrenaline side of this experience, when it winds up being a daily phenomenon until it finally gets resolved can be incredibly trying.  Maddening, even.  But if you have encountered this, you are not alone and it IS possible to get through it.  Many have, and you now have it in you to do so also, if there is stored fear in you somewhere.  I do suggest surrounding you with people who either understand you very well or who love you unconditionally and regardless of whether they understand or even KNOW what this kundalini is all about, are willing to be there to help you talk you down out of a tree when you need it, if you need it.  Sometimes the best thing that you can do is listen to a great joke or blow off steam in moments like these.  If it feels like you have been gritting your teeth for the last week and a half, its time to do something that will break this cycle and focus you in a different way.  there is something that some call kundalini syndrome and it has resulted in some people kind of losing it.  You have to stick with this and work through it in order to dredge the latent material in your psyche.  It is curious because its less about chucking something out the door as its simply not mattering anymore.  More on this towards the end....

Listen to what your body is telling you.  If you are not hungry, eat when you are hungry. If you are a strict vegetarian and feel an urge to eat meat, this is not something you should ignore.  If you can't bring yourself to eat meat, at the very least look into what it is your body is craving and seek to supply it in other ways if you can. Some foods I have found that have been very calming have been curry, cantaloupe, and eggs have been a very good "smooth" form of protein that I do not have many reactions to. I have read that any kind of melon can have a calming effect.  I often have issues with meat sometimes, especially beef.  Not always. We pump all kinds of things into these animals and we do not have good ways of slaughtering them. All of this can be felt in the heightened state of kundalini. Soy has estrogenic compounds in it, but Mung beans are almost as high in protein as soy without these compounds which might have a calming effect, and they might also have the effect of working against your own hormonal output. I have found that greek yoghurt, while higher in fat than other yoghurt, it also has a lot of protein too and tends to stick with you.  Peanut butter has been a staple for a morning meal on toast and is something that can stick with you if you want to stay away from meat.

  To this end, there are things you can do to help support your body during this time.  One of these is simple, but very useful.  Its exercise.  Some have said that exercise can make it worse, but my experience has been that it helped to burn adrenaline at a critical time when I was in a kind of misery physically.  If this get to this point, strong exercise can do the job.  Realize, the reason why there is so much adrenaline is because of fear rising to the surface.  This is not JUST a physical effect, but one brought on by kundalini pushing fear out of your subconscious self into waking consciousness.  As hard as that is, it is what Kundalini will do.  It is a very hard blessing because it will clear you out in the end.  When I say exercise, it may need to be strong exercise in order to burn off the adrenaline.  Understand that adrenaline is there to power your muscles.  So power it.  The adrenaline comes in proportion to the presence of fear that has long been suppressed. During some of the hardest times with this, I had a bicycle that I would ride.  My bike is a mountain bike, so I took it off-road and rode up and down grassy hills around parks and in natural locations.  Instead of feeling totally jazzed, I felt a measure of peace after these rides.  This is of course a stop-gap measure, but if this is a big issue, a painful one, then for the time being exercise that will get your heart rate up will most likely be the best.  The other side of this is learning to deal with the fear, which I will get to later.

One thing that was pointed out to me by a friend who had lived with kundalini her whole life and who was educated in eastern practices, was how the eastern cultures tend to have an alkalizing diet.  It is in these cultures that there seems to be the greatest awareness off and perhaps incidence of awakenings.  Is it possible that the by products of adrenaline,the fight or flight end of our experience, creates compounds in the body that serve to keep it in a frightened state?  A kind of chemical reminder that we are still very much swimming in the chemical soup of fear and the shadow side of ourselves?  Alkalizing the body serves to actually change the body from acid to alkaline.  Its totally unintuitive, but the results are that it does.  One way that I introduced this into my day to day regimen was to put two teaspoons of organic apple cider vinegar in water.  I eventually got to a place where I would just quaff a tablespoon of it straight with a good dose of water to chase it down. I tried to do this twice a day.  Another way would be to use lemon juice.  You can also make sure that you eat salads that have vinegar in them as well.  One things you will need to watch is how it might effect your digestion.  Normally stomach acid is very strong, but in some people who have problems with acid reflux, making sure you don't aggravate your condition with the addition of more acid could be something worth considering.  The other side of this was how to help the kidneys, because it is the kidneys that are involved in the production of adrenaline.  One very good tonic is organic wild cherry juice.  It can be had as a concentrate added in the same way to water as the vinegar.  Take a few times each week, it is supposed to help support the kidneys.  At the core of this, though, is learning how to deal with adrenaline.

I am of the opinion that the reason why the adrenaline is there in the first place is because of an unresolved issue concerning fear.  Kundalini highlights this and builds on it in a kind of unmerciful way where everything is put under the spot light so WE SEE IT instead of just shoving it down.  We may not even know WHY we are shuddering from the adrenaline and having such a hard time of it, but I do believe that the whole purpose of the adrenaline syndrome is to learn how to transform or transmute it in the body.  This is huge.   HUGE.  Being able to figure out intuitively how to change this set up in your body, this end of the chemistry is a form of spiritual alchemy.  We can analyze it all we want, but ultimately it requires an ability to gain some control over our bodies and how they react to this chemistry.  Adrenaline, I suspect, is only part of the story.  In fact, I believe that my bliss is not simply a dopamine/serotonin cycle but a cycle of adrenaline as well (but in a much smaller dose---we have kind of gotten off track with our feelings and this has affected our body chemistry).  Adrenaline mixed with dopamine gives me the "high" that feels perfect with kundalini.  I also suspect that most addictions to opiates (which are dopamine mimics) and to speedy drugs like cocaine and amphetamines (which mimics the adrenaline) are the inner yearnings we have towards trying to find a balance of them in our bodies, a subconscious effort to bring about a balancing of them, and thus a craving for them.  I think this MIGHT work in the beginning of using such outside forms of the chemistry, but it quickly devolves as it almost always does with addiction into something that wrecks health and life.  We recognize this chemistry, but learning how to foster it in our bodies is the trick. Its very much like learning how to ride a surf board.  Not too much forward, not too much back.  You have to be in balance on this mighty wave.  Its a kind of way, very hard at first, for finding that balance point where through feeling (feelings are the catalyst for all our chemistry internally I feel), we are able to steer our own vessels into waters that were entirely unknown before all of this took place.

So let's think about fear for a moment.  Why do we have fear? And what does fear accomplish?  Most often fear is the result of something that has happened in your past that created a strong memory.  We all know that the event is in the past.  It is gone now, but we carry the fear into the present and even project it into the future.  This does two things. It takes us out of the present which is the point of all power and it also keeps us from meeting the world in a more direct way free from prejudicing it with fear.  The cycle of fear continues until the fear is either faced or let go.  Learning the art of surrender is a powerful way to stop the cycle of fear. But how do you do this? It takes some doing.  It takes being willing to relax in the moment and tell yourself that there is nothing you can do about the fear. Fear is from the past, not something in the present.  You are merely projecting it into now or some unknown future and it robs you of what resides in both. Tell yourself that there is nothing you can do about whatever you are fearing.  What happens if you feel fear but feel like it is so irrational that you do not know its source? The same. Tell yourself as you sit quietly breathing that there is nothing you can do about the fear except to let it go.  You tell yourself that you will, step by step, reduce your reliance on this frame of mind.

Breath in deeply and slowly and as you do imagine that you are breathing in nothing but the present.  You are not breathing in the past. Imagine that the air of the present is not touched by the past and that what you are breathing in is perfectly pure air free from all troubles. As you breathe in, imagine this pure air exchanging itself and as you breath out carbon dioxide, you are also ridding your body of a fine layer of fear.  With each breath, you are doing this.  As you think through the day, focus on your breathing.....and all you have to do is imagine this, image it in your mind. This type of practice is very powerful because we go where our thinking goes. If we can imagine a different outcome or condition, then this will eventually take hold. Its how we are. We are  like computers that get programmed. What you are doing is reprogramming yourself.  In order for this to work, you must work at it and give it time to work. The next type of breathing is very helpful and the most potent and it involves breathing in one nostril with a finger covering the other nostril for a number of breaths.  Four would be a good place to start.  Then switch to the other nostril and do that four times.  Do this as many times as you feel works for you.  it does a very good job of calming your mind. You see, your mind has been allowed to run this fear program for years, and now you are beginning to put that program to an end.

Relaxation CD's  have also been very helpful for me.  The best have been the ones where someone is simply guiding you with a minimal of other bells and whistles.  I used a CD for dealing with anxiety at the hardest point of my process.

Another very simple yet effective way of dealing with energy is to lie on the ground to help discharge it.  Another is simply surrender, a practice that will loosen your field up some and just allow all this energy to flow. If one area feels tight, it suggests there are knots there.  Kundalini can help to dissolve these, but it seems to work best when absent having any understanding of what the block is about. You do not need to consciously know all the time what these are. Allow yourself to be led. Consider knowing is not necessary.  Feeling will lead you there and using the mind can sometimes get in the way. The mind is not always the greatest tool for getting yourself around this. Surrender will tend to allow the flow to increase and also run more smoothly.  If it all feels too much, surrender more. This is the act of realizing what you are deeper down.  If this brings on anxiety, its most likely the presence of ego. The only way around this is to let the ego drift into the background. It can cause most problems especially early on. The phenomenon of "ego death" which I consider a misnomer, is a rearrangement of the ego within the self so that things function more smoothly.  Ego has been put front and center where it occupies the same space (kind of) as the essential self should.  Moving it out of the way will help immensely.  However, this can be a difficult process.  Some call it crushing, a kind of collapse of all kinds of artificial constructs that we thought were so important. But this is not the end, but the beginning. You will find great relief in letting the ego go.  This is why meditation can be so helpful because the ego has a tendency to drift back and away.  In sleep this happens in the normal course of dreaming, too.

Meditation can be helpful because of its naturally relaxing tendencies.  Allowing the self to quiet down and open so one can flow can be very helpful in coping with kundalini. Sometimes it can also make one feel less grounded, so you have to decide for yourself what works best.  I am of the mind that an increase in the energy is a positive thing, and the only problem lies in feeling safe with it. If the energy feels adversarial, it is best to realize that this is not coming from the energy but from you.  The energy is colored by this and it will seem it is true.  Removing the "problem" is the solution. Surrender.

I have used Chi Gong (also spelled Gung) during my process that helped a lot. Chi Gong means "energy work" and involves a very low impact physical workout.  It helps to move Chi in the body. I found it helped to dissolve blocks very effectively.  I spent close to a year going to these weekly classes that were held by a man who had learned White Crane Chi Gung that is part of the Shaolin tradition. I think it is good if you have a teacher who is calm and supportive.  You don't need someone yelling at you or barking orders. Ordering a DVD on this type of work could be good for a daily routine alone if need be.

Another aspect of healing blocks is shaking.  Many people will go into shaking fits when kundalini hits them. There is a reason for this.  The instinctual self repsonds to try and remove or make the way easier for the energy to move and shaking will do this.  This is just another form of movement.  People who reach ecstatic states most often do so with shaking and even jerky movements. There is a reason for this. It has a neurological, energetic, and physical basis. Do not feel funny about shaking or moving.  It is nature's way. Even vigorous dance will no doubt make you feel much better. Past trauma and hurt and other issues are lodged in the body on all levels and this shaking helps.  People who do energy work in the body find that by moving the body this can help release blockages.  Ida Rolf had a very aggressive form of deep tissue massage that she found helped to release old impacted emotional material.  You need someone who knows intuitively where to work on you in order to locate and then liberate your body of this material.  Shoulders and upper back can be a popular place for material to rest, but so can the abdomen, the hips, and other joints. Often people will lodge a lot of emotion at the location of an old injury. Anything lingering from than injury can often be found there.  It happened to me that I had emotional material lodged in my shoulder after an injury there.

Movement is something I am dealing with in my book Waking The Infinite, and in it I have observed through numerous traditions that movement, even ecstatic movement, serves an important function in the physiological connection to the effects that trauma has on the body.  As you awaken, I am sure you have discovered a whole new way of sensing energy.  Things are much more apparent in this way, and you feel through the energy body to the point where you can feel others around you.  You feel patterns of past trauma in others as energetic patterns that can be translated into etheric pain that gets referred to the body as well.  This is where extreme stomach tightness can occur, headaches, and pain in the heart or just about any other part of the body.  As a result, you can become more acutely aware of those issues you have in your own etheric body and which have become lodged also in your physical body since the etheric and physical feed perfectly into one another.

Something that can also help you is to simply use intention.  If you reach a place where you feel like you are all out of answers, if you feel like you can use this method, do.  Ask the universe to send you the resources that will serve your highest.  You do not need to know what this will present to you as.  You can also ask for more specific things like a teacher or assistant of some kind.  The more open you are to its coming in many different forms, the quicker it can happen.  This could come as a person or it could come in the form of a book or an experience or conversation with someone who mentions to you just what you need without your having ever mentioned it. If you have not yet experienced the power of this during awakening, it is time you tried.  It is known that there are these odd events called synchronicities that happen in greater number with those who are awakened. If you look up synchronicity on this blog there should be some examples of my own experiences with it. It does no good if you simply do not believe in it. The way for it to work is to hold the hope or wish as clearly in your mind as you can. Imagine how you wished for some toy as a child. Do you remember how excited you were when you wished like that as a child?  You need to do that and as you do, hold it only for a moment and then entirely let it go. Give it to the universe.  Don't hold onto it.  The energy has to do its work FOR you. It does no good to simultaneously wish and then feel like it can never happen because what you are doing is asking the universe not to give it to you. Its going to mirror you perfectly, so send the wish with as much hope and excitement as you can and let it go. Put your mind on other things and forget about it. I do this all the time and its as simple as making the wish and then not obsessing over it.

If I were to tell you how this has worked for me over the years, you might have a hard time believing it.  And yet, if you let yourself consider it as a possibility, you can see for yourself how you can begin to utilize this very powerful ally in your own journey.  You do not need to know how it will work.  If you ask for something that does not come it could be two things.  It could be you have a competing belief or it is somehow not right for you. I do not mean to say that it wont ever be right, but trust also that there might be other things more pressing that you have to get through. If you can feel a sense of trust in this vast power that will do what is best for you, it can open you up to just the right attitude that you need.  Consider being led.  Let your own will become the will of the universe.  Feel devotion to it, feel peace that everything will work out as it should.  You are small, and you may not be able to see the bigger picture.  This also does not mean that you should simply sit idly by for it to happen. Follow your instincts too. Make yourself ready or open by living your life.  Allow accidents to happen.  Follow a hunch. It does not always have to make sense.  I have made my greatest discoveries when I pulled a random book off a shelf or followed a completely odd urging in my head to go somewhere or do something.  These can be the things that can lead you to the resources that you didn't even know exist.

One of the single most effective stances during awakening is courage.  Being willing to meet every single skeleton in your closet and let it go is a powerful tool at your command.  This is important, at least in my experience because a very interesting things happens when you are sitting there at two in the morning aware that there is some great wall of menace bearing down on you as you sit in meditation; when you let yourself step into that wall of menacing blackness without fear, a very curious thing happens; the fear is transformed into a sense of buoyancy, even of bliss.  What you thought one moment was the end of you was in truth a new beginning.  Whenever I have stepped into the unknown in this way, the very nature of the thing before me changed.  What once was like a giant dragon became a small mouse.  I laugh; over and over I seem to have to relearn this!  My goodness!  So in the beginning of awakening, you might be faced with something that might paralyze you with fear, but in that moment be brave and ask yourself; are you going to die from some faceless fear?  Will this REALLY be the end of you or your ego or identity?   I think of that old scratchy recording of FDR saying "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" I smile because you know, he was right!  Its the FEAR that is the problem.  Once it is gone, most challenges tend to pale in comparison.  Your faceless fear (okay, so let's say it has a face....its still being driven by fear after all....so consider that) can morph and change into anything because it really is beyond all reality.  By facing it, you bring it into reality and realize that the REALITY is that within you is this divine creature seeking to emerge (really!!).  Try it sometime, and I think you will see what I mean.  You are actually in the process of shedding layers and for a time these layers might project themselves against the wall of your fear and make you concerned.  But I encourage you to take courage.  Believe in yourself.  Be easy on yourself.  yes, we have all fallen short, yes we have all done things we are not proud of.  If you must seek forgiveness or confess, then do so.  Do what you need to do to reach  a place where you feel right with the world.  Piercing the depths of our own ignorance and fear is one of the single most laudable acts a soul can make here on this planet!

See, when we fear something, the fear itself serves as an attractant for whatever that vibration is of that thing that is upsetting or dogging you.  You are like velcro inside with loops custom made for whatever that thing is that is upsetting you.  Your job is to let go of it, and when you do, all those little loops just relax and it just slips away.  Its very much like this!  By changing your own inner energetics, you make it to these things that were drawn to you or that still hang around you to just go away.  This is so for old hurt or trauma, to people in your life to even etheric critters that might show up to give you a scare. Like attracts like....and it might only be a fragment of like that is in you, but you really do have to let go and the rest will slip away.  Layer by layer you will go at this, so do not be surprised that when you clear your heart center one time, you wind up going back to it a year or two later for deeper clearings.  Its almost like dimensions within your energy field.  the Hindus, I have come to learn call these Etheric Sheaths (and I have a post on these, so you can search using that term and find the post).  Its like you go from one dimension within one chakra center only to find that you emerge into another world within that chakra, and then another and another.  This I think will take some time, and do not be concerned about it, because once you get to that point, you WILL be in a much better place (its all a process, layer by layer....).  So don't feel defeated if you make a big release only to find yourself having another in the same place.  It wasn't that you didn't do it completely or somehow failed at it, you certainly DID release material, there was just more of a different vibration.  It might be a smidge of something at the first level that has to be flushed or it might be a block deeper down.  Be easy on yourself.  Keep your perspective!  And when worse comes to worse, don't forget to laugh!  I mean it!  Don't get to serious!  Ego loves serious, and you need to keep the bugger at bay.  And when we laugh, we most often tend to put things back int perspective:  "Oh my goodness!  I was so serious about that big knot in my chest!  Now that its gone, I see it wasn't such a big deal as I made it out to be!"  Just go easy on yourself, okay?  And if you can't do that, realize that you are here at a time when the vibration on the earth is changing and its changing in part due to YOU and thousands, perhaps even millions like you in an event that is unlike another in history (hows that for revving your ego engine?) which is that there are more people now having spontaneous awakenings than at any other time in recorded history!  I think that is pretty awesome, don't you?  What does it mean?  Well....that's for another day.  For now, chop wood, haul water!

I am a firm believer that as you seek, so shall you find. Doors will be opened to you as you ask for them in the right way.  Believing in the possibility but not dwelling on it or anticipating their happening has always been the best key to their happening. In this way, they feel entirely effortless, and this is I think the whole point. Things can be much easier if you let them. If something is tripping you up, maybe some pain in your field is resulting in fear or hurt.  Maybe through movement or a simple act of forgiveness, you allow some long lost issue to simply drop away, one that had gone past its due date.  And as it does, the hurt resolves into its opposite, which is joy.  And love.  Being able to do this kind of work for ourselves is a profound act of love towards the self, the soul.  it seeks to make YOU right before trying to make the world right. Since the world IS inside of you, getting better inside you is a fabulous and very healthy way to find authentic happiness and fulfillment.
I hope you find the magic that is your own soul peering back at you through these marvelous events that are great gifts!