What Remains For Us

It is time to remember the Feminine in the spiritual.  Looking across the world you can see how she has been carefully hidden. For whatever the reasons, it is time that she be brought out into the bright day of our own awareness.  Hiding her only makes for unhealthy yearning and desire for what is native to each of our own beings. She rests within each atom along with her male counterpart.  They take up residence in everything and give force to that which creates form and all phenomenon. They are never not present. For it to BE they must also be.  They are IT. 

Below is an old illustration of Shakti and Shiva.  It shows how Shiva has this powerful aura around him, a nimbus, often seen as the presence of illumination, a powerful spirit, even divinity. We all have this inner light that shines through our own energetic field.

I took some time and worked on giving Shakti her own nimbus as well.  I thought it needed to be complimentary because these two forces work together so well.  So below is the result, an updated version of how things need to be....

My Rendition Of Shakti and Shiva, © Parker Stafford, 2012

Now tell me, is that not perfect?  Shiva's glow is radiant.  It is green, a very healing color.  Shakti is a lovely warm violet, itself very intuitive and receptive. Green in its own way is also receptive, too, and I think while different, the two now are more on par as they gaze into one anothers eyes.  You see, the music hasn't even begun....

She Is Everywhere

The truth has never been lain so far beyond us that we ourselves could not see it, but have instead been reminded of it daily in the moment.  Lied curled within the present lies all the sparkling truth, like a bud waiting to bloom, and in its awareness, it blooms in you.  As it blooms in you, it is like a tree that is given life in this world and spreads its pollen and seed as the fruit of its greater being ripens and is known by others….a reminder working at the edges of your own awareness that there is something marvelous growing in our midst….and as the bloom grows within others, we each see a new species growing within built upon our conceptions of what went before, forver altering what it was that we once thought we knew.

What we think that lay within people is but a mirror of something larger.  The very code of life is duty bound to align itself to those forces from which it has emerged.  Our own bodies and all of nature reflects these larger forms.  Thales, the Presocratic who was teacher to Pythagoras once said “All things are full of gods.”  Within each form that you see, down to the smallest, lies a connection to still higher forms. Each facet of our being resolves into still broader forms, like a diamond. With the veil in place amongst most, it is difficult to view this larger form, and yet, its presence has been lain in front of us, even if we do not recognize it for what it is.  Our own consciousness has not just the ability but the nature to know this larger form as a direct result of our heritage as beings resting within these larger forms.  You are each like a bud that awaits opening still further, whose only sparest of petals is in evidence to our conscious awareness.  As we ourselves open, so too does our awareness open.  We do not see it with our senses, we feel it as a resounding truth that was never seperate from what we are or who we have been. When you begin to feel these seemingly deeper forms, or gods as Thales expressed, you will see its reality reflected all around you in nature from sentient to non sentient.  It is a voice which cries out through all of what we know and even what we do not.

The feminine has had to labor for a very long time under an attitude of denial and repression. I know; what a news flash, right?  All women, all life, has been subjected to this attitude which has been put in place and perpetuated by men.  At a deeper level, we all have struggled with power and truth….the correct use of power within men and the correct use of power within women.  If it had, there would be a fuller fairness and awareness of what each represents in its broader scope.  We struggle against what appears at the surface while the truth resides perfectly within.  This truth is less an annunciation of some principle but is a self evident quality that directs in its higher forms what is divine.  By feeling deeper into ourselves we may find the direction.

The truth is that in reaching these higher state, the presence of the feminine resounds with absolute certainty.  It is as plain as the sun.  For those who seek to ignore the sun, it could be said that there exists a need to somehow lie to ones self about what is plain. 

Our ancient history bears the knowledge of the importance of the feminine.  In aboriginal cultures across the world this evidence still shines.  Mother Earth and Father Sky reside in a harmonious synergy.  Shakti and Shiva were known as the two forces which underlie all matter and consciousness, and even though in that tradition it was Shakti who was often viewed as the unrefined energy, itself reflecting less on its truer nature and reality and more upon the biases of those within the tradition, they could not escape the inevitability of Her reality.  In other eastern traditions these forces were seen in the yin and yang, forces which were in all things, that had within them the seed of each other as that symbol suggests.  In early Christianity, the issue becomes clouded.  In the beginning, it would seem that there was only a son and his father.  Documents were favored that expressed this notion, while many other documents, which were destroyed in the wake of the forming of the religion some 320 years after the death of its teacher, were pronounced as heretical and distanced by the power structure which instituted what they felt was the truth.  And yet, there has existed those difficult things, facts that the Mother was part of this triadic arrangement of divine consciousness.  Instead of a mens only club, it was a family. 

In 1945 many more documents would emerge which supported this knowing. Philip in his gospel explained that even the story of the virgin birth was based upon a misunderstanding of some fundamental truths, which is that the Holy Ghost was the feminine expression of the divine, and thus Mary could not have begotten with a feminine force.  Even then, in his time, people were either willfully or with ignorance, seeking to make the Holy Ghost into a masculine form when this had never been the case. He goes on to explain that Jesus came as a teacher to heal the separation between these two forces so that the kingdom and the resurrection of the flesh (awakening) might be known to all.   In the Sophia of Jesus Christ, which was a discourse about how things are between Jesus and his followers, Jesus repeatedly explains that our very being came about as a result of a reflecting between the father and the mother of the universe.  She was called by many names including the Holy Ghost, Sophia, and also Pistis. In numerous other documents within this trove the presence and reality of the feminine was repeated over and over.  We owe our lineage to a blending of spirit much like the blending of dna in the creation of new life.  Within each of us, Jesus explains, in the Gospel of Thomas, there resides seemingly separate elements, which when brought together, results in a unification and revivication of the self.  These seemingly separate parts are the masculine and feminine.  When we make each a part of the other, we draw them together within ourselves and we begin to feel the kingdom begin to unfold within us, much as a mustard seed sprouts and grows, containing within it those elements from its beginning that spreads into the larger world that resides in all things.  The kingdom, he said, was in us and was in all things.  One thing that an awakening does is bring awareness of how all things are connected in this way as there is a renewed drive towards the union of these seemingly separate elements within us….and what is within us is also existing in all things.  As such, those who awaken can feel the presence of this union in all of nature, in the entire universe.  It is simple first step, the sprouting of a seed within, the unfolding of a bud from a few smaller petals to many petals and reveals a much larger world within and without. I suggest reading the Nag Hammadi library for more on this.  There are numerous books which go on rants difficult to understand, but its the understanding that the essence of the masculine and feminine as explicit that is most interesting and consistent with the act of creation.

Some would say that the early Church fathers knew what was best for us and knew that these books feel outside of normal doctrine.  Yet, most of these books actually predate the accepted gospels now in the bible.  For as much as some have tried to suppress her reality, she keeps popping up.  She keeps popping up because she cannot nor will not be silenced.  It is in this age that she is blooming ever more powerfully and is realizing that power is merely something that exists, and she need only step into her truth in order to grasp it.  Her power is different from that of the masculine and relies upon his cooperation and wisdom to see how important her own power is in this world.  When a man is able to feel her presence stir within him, he will know his own power increased.  In the same way, a woman’s own power is increased through knowing the masculine. They cannot exist apart in all truth, for they were never truly separate.  They exist as cooperative elements that need both if creation is to spring forward.  The flower waits for the pollen to infuse it with the spark she herself cannot produce on her own, but neither can a male bring forth this life without her presence either. It is not in his nature, and so must rely upon Her for this nurturing to occur within her.  Even prana moves in this way as a result of the infusion of one into the other.  When we become creative both sides of our brains are awakened and begin to work together cooperatively, not alone.  The right brain, which is more reflective of the feminine needs the left brain with all its structure and linearity and fact basis to give support to her broad flowing nature.  Hers is not to provide this structural support.  Her is to dream the impossible, and our masculine traits are there to provide the means for sparking this creative fire.  Then, as this happens deep within the brain, we come up with ideas or creations that are often beyond anything we could have done in our own separate hemispheres of thinking.  Somehow, we make that quantum leap that is the miracle of creation. This happens in spirit, consciousness as well as all of nature, for the two are of a piece. 

As you peel back the veil that exists within, you can see the infinite potential these forces serve to offer in every realm.  When we go beyond the self imposed limits and beliefs of the individual earthbound self, we are offered something of what the “god” that Thales was likely suggesting.  Like a divine parent, we can look to these higher forms and learn from them. How they are, in their perfect forms, we can model here and change our world. It is the same in our own creative stirrings; we reach out beyond ourselves to conceive anew.  Since all is connected, we do this individually, with each other, and as a race and world.  It is when we follow the higher form that we harmonize, we find the divine alignment that resides in our own higher consciousness, which is in truth part of a vast ocean of being in which everyone shares in even though they are not presently aware of it.

Kundalini is not a striving for union in all truth. the very force of kundalini is the universe, already in union, entering into your body.  This is your divine parent coming to call. It is what drives such incredible bliss within.  From the moment that it is felt, you feel the union.  It has to be, for without it, there IS no bliss.  The two must touch.  Then, the “rising” of the energy is the effect that this perfect union has upon your own awareness as expressed through your awareness, your chakra system and your body.  It will begin to work out the knots that are concentrated backwards thinking that is not harmonized IN ITS CREATION with the higher forms, “the gods.”  If you follow the energy and allow it to move freely, it will dissolve still more knots and issues.  During this time, those knots still serve to attract like energies to it, so for a time there will be a kind of competing element at work that can sometimes serve to confuse.  If the person merely surrenders to this force, it will in due time show the person what it needs to know and to be.  Surrender, it seems, is not a strong suit in human nature. So we keep at it, learning to trust that this presence and its effects will ultimately resolve to peace. 

She is alive.  She is coming into her own, and we each can encourage her entrance into the light of day.  Still, what we conceive of the divine feminine can be enlarged and known even more fully.  What the Goddess is still remains a bit of a mystery.  She is known locally, but as more people manage to conceive of her in her fuller form, her presence will grow in ways that will surprise all of us.  What begins as a small bud, which She is now shall bloom into something remarkable. How this is done wont be done through the usual ways.  We must be willing to enter into a mystery with her, to know that we may not be able to know what will come from this. It is when we think we know that we most often prejudice the facts before they emerge.  Being willing to know that you do not know is the surest way towards knowing…..which itself is less knowing as it is being.  

The Divine Counterpart

This is a piece written over three years ago that discusses an aspect of awakening that involves something called a soul connection.  Some may think that the awakening of kundalini is something you do in a solitary way, but kundalini is about connectivity, of waking up to realizing that everything is connected.  As this happens, the Law of Attraction kicks in and a journey begins that can lead you to unexpected but marvelous places while learning about your birthright as an unfolding soul on this planet....

Almost two years ago I embarked on a journey that has changed my life in a pretty fundamental way, and is one most difficult to explain or relate. I suspect the terms used to describe the phenomenon could well be distortive, but for many experiencing this, its a place to hang your hat.
The "hook" or term used for what I have been going through is the twin soul or twin flame experience. Regardless of what you might think of the terms used to describe this phenomenon, it shares a host of symptoms and experiences which have a tendency to be common amongst others going through this same experience.

Imagine waking up one day to a curious feeling that you are aware of another person.....not someone you can see with your eyes, not someone whom you may even know, but a sense of presence near you, in your head and heart. Then imagine having a series of odd synchronicities surrounding the issue of this other person, as well as dreams. Some will dream of this other person and know what they look like, or might see the inside of their home. Suddenly and without warning, its as though some new set of experiences have come and made their home in your life. At first, you think you are going crazy. You begin having all kinds of crazy thoughts about this person. You notice an incredible pull to this person. You think that for whatever reason, you are just having some innexplicable psychic communication happening and it will go away after a few days. It doesn't. It grows stronger. What' more, you seem to know who this person is, and in my case, it was someone I knew relatively little about who was on a message board on a topic I was interested in. While we both danced around the issue for a few weeks, we both admitted that we were both feeling something. This would be where you begin to question your sanity a little bit, but something deep within you drives you forward. You suspend disbelief for a bit and see where this goes. There is something about the FEEL of this that is very compelling. As you do, more strange events occur that mesh with the physical, some are oddly synchronistic while others might tell you details about the person involved that you just could not know otherwise. Enough happens to keep your attention piqued and in the game.

You begin to notice that this other person has an incredible ability to know what you are feeling and when. If you are suddenly sad, this person can feel it. You begin to have the sense that you know this person not from the outside in but from the inside out. It begins to feel as though you both are sharing something deep and fundamental, and the sense of familiarity with this person goes beyond anything you have experienced before. It feels like this person is joined at the hip with you, but in an unseen way. Your own inner psychic space feels more cramped than usual.....because there is another person there in that space. You get used to this feeling, but in the beginning you wonder if you are not going through some odd form of possession.

Then the chakras or energy centers in the body begin to fire up. It begins at the base chakra where all of the strong sexual and primal feelings emerge. This energy begins to move upwards and as this happens, you begin to be aware of a subtle presence that seems to guide this upward flow. This energy has a sense of sentience, of will, and intelligence. As this energy presence rises, it begins to come into contact with a host of blockages which you suspect are the result of unresolved issues from your past hardened into dark rock- like stones which you had forgotten had been lain there. These are seen for what they are and cast aside, and as this happens, this presence/energy drives upwards through the chakra chain. Suddenly, one day, the energy is ringing your heart. You have this odd certainty that this energy is attempting to fold itself into you, to bring about some inner change in you, and its a result of this connection to this other person, someone who feels like they fit into some long since forgotten void, like a puzzle piece so well fit that when you feel your inner self it gets hard to know where this person ends and you begin. Thus, the term "Twin Soul." This is not about knowing as much as it is about feeling and trusting what it is you are feeling. Its as if the invisible world is suddenly coming to life in a way that is both disconcerting yet oddly familiar.

Over time there is no question something is happening. This twin is connected to you and will sometimes tell you things about you that you have never told anyone else before. Whatsmore, your energy body does not feel the same. There is a growing sense of radiance, of intense bliss that comes in waves. At its root, it is intensely sexual, and the energy moves upward as it is "filtered" or modulated through the different centers (or chakras) until it reaches the top of the head where the energy loops back around in perfect torus-like shape to begin the cycle again. At its root this experience is an energetic one, and makes one feel as though there is a divinity to human sexual experience, that a large part of the sexual experience had simply been missed in prior physical experiences. In time, this nonphysical union feels far more blissful, more majestic and right than any physical experience before it. Its as though they physical and spiritual aspects of this experience overlap, but the inner merging that happens moment by moment in the mundane passing of time with these two people offers something that is head and shoulders above mere sex. Over time, as this energy situates itself in you, you feel a steady stream of near orgasmic energy moving through you. This takes time, and a whole lot of thinking that your libido just suddenly shot through the roof. Instead of one big burst of orgasmic release, this experience offers a slower, gentler but steady sense of orgasmic flow that seems most at home when allowed to simply be without any physical encouragement. It feels as though by letting this gentle flow move through you that you steadily increase your ability to feel its force in your ongoing. While it can be incredibly distracting at first, learning how to steady its force instead of letting the energy fly free like horses unbridled is important for developing a state of balance with this new presence in your life.

What many people say they experience is the divinity in this inner spiritual union, and often with someone they may have never met! (its very easy for onlookers to think that this is just a weird infatuation). What's so striking about the process this connection takes is how the presence of an energy which feels at once raw and powerful and also subtle and gentle and finely tuned awakens one to a slew of issues concerning ones spirituality and inner being. Suddenly, the gnostic texts begin to take on new meaning. Twins see something more to what Thomas described the Master as saying when he spoke of the left hand becoming the right, the male becoming the female. It feels as though, at a deep and fundamental level, as if two souls (or divided halves of a larger whole?) have been joined or reunited and that this union generates a third energy which has a sense of presence, a divine triad, if you will. It comes as no surprise to twins that the Taoists spoke of this union and the creation of this sacred third. Many feel that they are experiencing Christ Consciousness, or at least some aspect of it. This experience turns many people's notions of Christ on its head for the fact that this experience can feel so incredibly sexual. It has led to a lot of acting out while trying to come to grips with what it all means. Many twins are aware that there is a very real force that is masculine and feminine in the universe, that these are basic to how energy of all kinds interact. What twins experience, they feel, is just an extension of a divine reality that may well fly in the face of traditional dogma, but which they feel is the true vine, the real facts about our soulhood or inner being.

Twins are engaged, in the day to day, with something I'd call a cosmic game of badmitten. They are batting back and forth their energies, and as the masculine energy interacts with the feminine and vica versa, greater energy is produced (it feels catalytic and it creates in my mind all manner of images to explain what's going on with the energy...images of rivers flowing into the sea, of salty water meeting fresh, of polar opposites meshing and generating a sudden reaction like an explosion.....but curiously subdued....as if "exploding" is not the point, but driving this energy through us in a constructive way is. This is in no way predicated on physical contact, and while the sensations are more subtle than the act of physical union, eventually the presence of this experience builds to a great height, and if lucky, the twins are able to better tune their own energy fields in order to allow for more even flows of this cosmic energy. When the energy is built up between the two, all manner of things can manifest. In my case, I had definate physical effects. I had been having some problems just before the twin encounter with what felt was a drop in hormone output, resulting in depression for the first time in my life as well as sexual dysfunction. I had just been to the doctor to have this looked into to see what could be done when the twin experience came crashing into my life. That doctor's visit quickly became a distant memory as I felt invigorated not just sexually, but physically ( started reading up in the concept of Qi in eastern texts to see if perhaps I was tapping life force energy...interestingly I saw some similarities with these Qi masters and the health benefits they were said to enjoy as a result of channeling this energy in a more conscious way through their being). I could not escape the feeling that this was as nature had intended, even though I had some residual guilt as a result probably from my upbringing as a Christian as it related to the sexual nature or side to this experience. I began to feel, though, that we had simply gotten it all wrong, or that the "truth" may have been hidden all along because some priesthood somewhere felt that the great unwashed simply could not wrap their heads around an experience such as this. I suppose Jesus did the same thing, hinting over and over that there were some things he would tell his disciples that he would not tell the general public.

I think that its entirely possible that we have not been told the whole story, that the concept of the Christ is more about a natural state, slumbering for the moment, within the hearts and bodies of all human beings, and that this is not about ideology or one religion over another, but part of who we are and part of what we could become, but I suspect that the path to this state has been obfuscated either purposefully or through missunderstanding. To say what Jesus offered was revolutionary is probably an understatement. When Thomas asks the Master to tell him the deeper things about life, they go off for a time to discuss these matters out of ear shot of the others. When he returned the disciples all asked what he had said to Thomas. Thomas replied that if he were to tell them what he had been told, they would surely want to stone him. This to me is very telling. No wonder, then, that the concept of the bridal chamber is so often missunderstood by those who have not experienced divine sexuality. After all, we have been told by countless traditions that sex is a necessary evil, dirty, and tied to original sin in the case of Christianity. Its part of what makes us weak, not strong. We then have to subjugate our will to some other person's in order to get out of the hole of sin we find ourselves in.

I have suspected for years that the resurrection has more to do with energizing ourselves, bringing us into a higher vibratory frequency or state of consciousness, and that by building up our capacity for holding greater and greater amounts of energy can cause us to pass over into higher and higher thresholds of awareness. Jesus spoke of a kingdom that was all around us and within us, yet few saw. I grew up thinking that the kingdom was heaven. You have to die to get to heaven, right? Imagine my interest in the gnostic texts when the Master spoke in terms of the resurrection needing to happen BEFORE we die. Much is said about people in the Nag [Hammadi] about their normal state as like being "dead" but are resurrected by a process that was only hinted at, probably because it would have just been too scandalous and would also have made people more self sufficient and at peace....perhaps too at peace to want to join a church or depend upon a priest to help them in their spiritual life. What this experience does for me is to awaken gnosis as a living thing in my life. I wont pretend to have all the answers, but I know I have one and its an amazing mystery. It is not understood by trying to analyze it or crack it open like a rich fruit, but whose presence must simply be experienced and observed much as one would observe a butterfly flitting from bush to bush, flower to flower, instead of trying to kill it to dissect it in a hope of better understanding how it works. Once that is done, the thing you were looking for is completely lost.

What I find curious about this twin experience is how more and more people are beginning to experience this phenomenon. It feels almost as though something is up, like something is happening with all these people experiencing the same thing. There are certainly enough hallmarks for most twins to recognize it in another person when they see it. Was it perhaps that Jesus was not here to save us, but to show us a way to save ourselves, to begin awakening that hidden potential within all of us that happens to deal heavily with the issue of the divine feminine and masculine and bringing those within a unity? Could these joinings be a clue to the lock and key nature of our being that could lead to a reformation of the self?

 Nemasté

www.hypersmash.com