The Body As Soul

Our left brain does such a good job of identifying things, singling out details and examining them.  Without it, we would not be able to focus in on anything.  We would not recognize numbers, letters, or make sense of ANY kind of symbolic language.  We probably would look at art and see something wonderful, but lose what it is trying to communicate through the associations, which are themselves identifications made on a cultural as well as mass level.  And yet, for as good as this lobe is, it cannot bring all the parts together into a unity, to see the larger picture or interweaving of patterns.  We'd be stuck in the lines within patterns.  We'd see one or two messages in the patterns, but we would not be able to take it one step further.  Our brains are perfect mirrors of the energetic currents that move like lifeblood in our energy bodies, and our souls.  Without the plethora of organs and tissues, we would not be able to make flow from the material universe that mirrors the energetic one.  Just as our kidneys are tied into adrenaline function, which mirrors excitement and fear and caution, if we did not have that facet existing in the body, we would not have this one aspect of our soul's life living within us. Without organs excreting the hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin, we would not know the sense of union that we feel in the soul, for oxytocin certainly does this in a myriad of ways, from bonding parents to their children to bonding to lovers and to groups.  Without all of the symphonies of coordinated aspects of our physiology, missing just one of them would turn us deaf and mute and unfeeling and unknowing to what the soul seems to seek to express.  The body becomes a template, a prism, of the soul.  Through this very small space, this body, the universe somehow has a way to emerge in our experience.

Sitting on my porch, looking up at the stars one summer night, I felt "it" riding in the breeze. It was there with me, talking gently to me, playing off my own awareness, feeding me a stream of whatever it was I was most focused on.  For me, that means understanding what is not yet known by me, doing some sort of inner somersault of a kind in order to get at the fruit just beyond my reach.

I was thinking about how some traditions speak of how kundalini rises upwards through the body, through the chakras, which are wheels or energetic organs of a sort, that have no physicality save for being energy. Shaped and formed by this energetic blueprint, surely I thought that the body had some parallel in its function that revealed some tie-in with this force that wakes up within us, or that we wake up to in us.

An image resolved in my third eye, an inner sight.  My body was taken over in a sense of delight that "it" was speaking again.  It revealed how important it was that our brain, actually TWO brains, did a kind of mirror flip in our bodies so that one hemisphere governed one side of the body while the other governed the other.  for those who know about energy, it has long been understood that the negative and positively charged poles of our energetic selves are divided into the two "lobes" of the body; left arm is controlled by the right brain while the right is governed and controlled by the left brain.  The left side of the body is the negative or feminine while the right side of the body is masculine.  Taking the face you can split it down the middle and mirror it and you come up with two very different faces.  The two hemispheres control the two sides of the body (face) differently.  Even in men, at least in myself, when I did this little trick using photoshop, I saw how softer the left side of my face was than the right.  the right side was more angular, somehow carrying an intensity that was not present in the left.  the left was no less alive and unique, it was simply different.  Softer somehow.  Perhaps leaning into what I'd consider more feminine.

The energy swirling around me showed me how the two energies moved upwards into the head, but that the energy itself crossed each other as the feminine current went into the right brain instead of going straight into the left and the right sided energy, the masculine, jogged to one side and moved up into the left brain.  It was here, in this cross, that nature had assured us of a way to merge these two currents.  For all of the struggles and hurdles that the yogis had moved through over the eons in seeking to bring balance to their own inner energetic houses, nature had provided a path that was not elusive, nor even difficult.  In fact, it was assured.  It was assured by this crossing going on where one side becomes the other, where one energetic pole would cross through the other.  They would merge in what we call the crown chakra.  It is here that once awareness builds sufficiently, that we become aware of ourselves in our fullest sense while here on this plane of existence.  Even as you look at each hemisphere, it is hard to miss the similarities that each have with the energetic spheres of our spiritual experience.  We call them masculine and feminine, but I feel that they are in a very real way, beyond definition.  they are qualities that go beyond mere sexual orientation, and will most certainly confound our efforts at pigeon holing them.  So broad, so inclusive, one cannot say that any one person is JUST feminine or JUST masculine, but instead are delicately constructed currents more like a flowing poetry where aspects of each seemingly "separate" polarities flow one into the other and utterly confound our efforts at defining this new current combination as masculine or feminine. For as impersonal as it is, perhaps energetically, it is like the sine wave or the electrical poles of a battery or magnet.  They do not exist separately, but are part of a unity.  So a man is made more receptive by his own inner feminine traits his own personality chooses to take on in navigating this sea of being, and a woman is more decisive when her own inner masculine currents flow through her.  And perhaps we have leanings in one direction or the other, certainly, and certainly our own bodies have its own biological alignment, and yet even so, we have very masculine women who seem more man than woman all within  a female package.  Some men can be very soft, very feminine, too.  We have all kinds of mixtures, combinations, all expressions of the vast endless combinations possible in these bodies of soul. 

Sitting there on that quiet warm night with the moon out of sight and the winds blowing in the trees above, I felt this silent voice or presence abiding with me, almost smiling and encouraging me as if to say "It's not meant to be some kind of struggle; it was all made very simple to achieve.  The path was in your souls and the path is mirrored in your bodies.  The two cross and merge in the crown.  You simply have to know that they are doing this.  The divine marriage happens all through you, but is assured at the very least, before you exit the crown vibration and out into the cosmos."

For years, decades, even, I have remained certain that the brain when brought into a unity, will bring us to creative heights.  Being an artist, I have been a careful observer of my own experience.  Awakening has certainly helped to seal the deal in my mind and heart that we aren't JUST creative in the right brain, but are most alive when we are balanced in both.  Watching carefully, I have become a student of my own experiences in art.  There was something of the answer in all of this.  there was a reason why I could not escape the orbit of art.  I could certainly no longer be a part of the religions of earth, I had had enough of those.  I once wrote in my application to the art program at a college I attended the quote from Jean Cocteau which reads "Art is not a pastime but a priesthood."  For me, if there was to be a path or discipline, art would encompass it in a sense.  It HAD no rules, and even though some would try to apply them, we all knew they were there to be broken.  To move forward, the old cognition had to be broken and refashioned in a new way of seeing.  this new way of seeing was a parallel of how the self comes to greater levels of awareness spiritually.  In a sense, I was grasping onto the spirit a discipline that was entirely nonsectarian, nondogmatic, but gave enough room for belief, for trying on ideas, but not needing to take them so seriously.  Somewhere in art lay some answers.  Oh, not The answers, for I rather think that THE answers, if the exist, exist more in a sigh, a smile, a moment, a turn this way or that, or the urge to become, and this has no path and is big enough to encompass all of them.  All of them.  It wasn't that I was ambivalent, it was that I was on a search, a mission, and none of the other paradigms like religion or science could give me what I needed.  I needed something that would not require me to buy into any authority save my own experience.  I was not interested in being a guru or teacher but a reporter and inquirer into my own experience.

In some ways, no words can contain these thoughts, and art itself sometimes feels like a tight fit, and yet in other times, it is perfect.  I can work alone, I can worship at the feet of nature, the great mirror of what we are here to realize without anyone or anything clouding the discourse, the experience.  The rule, which we each accept, we are free to take on, but the rule is what fits our own hearts, our own measures.  The authority exists within instead of without. The wonder that is the world is free to unfold before us as we ourselves bloom in our awareness and know the wonder and glory that is this creation, which is the world.  There is nothing higher, this direct communion with nature, with my own energy, with the world around me, a subtle as well as overt communion with all of these aspects and my own eager inquiry into what is next, wht leads us into the mystery of all of this.  Here, true religion is realized.  It is without bowing down before some temple or altar, but the simple realization of what we are in this moment.  Anything can become religions I suppose; the glance, the touch, the swaying of the flower buds in the breeze.  It is in living and being in this state of wonder that returns us to some more clarified and true state.  With all the rules and ways and books and words clouding and crowding the way, it can be hard to keep the focus on ones own self.  Certainly some traditions seek to downgrade this inner sensing, but it is we who make ourselves available in the moment and the movement of the Divine is not one predicated on anything except the meeting place within ourselves.  As such, there is no path required, save for this simple realization that it is within us and is ours to find.  So if it be by way of making houses, healing bodies, building institutions, or leading  or following or by art or by craft, or by a million other things, whatever it is, the singular point of awareness that is our own soul's purpose and presence always enters in despite the trappings surrounding it.  Not one person is better than another, each is endowed by the creator with this and need only reflect enough to know its point of entry, its means of expression in the individual, to know that we are each sons and daughters of the great All.  And for me, it is by way of art that I commune with this, a mirror of sorts, a means or vehicle that works as any other can work, none more suited than any other save for what the self seeks in fulfillment.  To understand how the body mirrors the truth of the soul has been a path, a trail of light I have sought to trace, to know, to become.  Within us are all the means that we need.  Dress them up in all sorts of methods and techniques if you wish, they are like a form that has many faces or points of understanding yet remains consistent regardless of the discipline wrapped around them.  Two seemingly separate currents merge and dance within us, a mirrors of the universe creating itself constantly through these two opposites

All of its keys are here for us to turn in the great lock, the great womb of the creative both within us and in the world in a collective way.  It has also been a way to collaborate, to work in any way necessary for the moment.  It has been flexible and impossible to define or pigeon-hole.  Its own structure allows it to grow organically, something that other traditions seemed to lack.  Sure, people had their own ideas about what is worthwhile in art, and yet, no one was going on crusades against another. There were pitfalls, too, like worshiping instead at the feet of ego, or keeping old notions firmly in place.  Somewhere, though, there was always this voice, this yearning, no matter how faltering at times, that drew me along, always curious, always mystified, always wanting to know more, a nub of something that was the nub of everything.  It is kind of hilarious, really, since this nub, the seed of All, I have been carrying around all along.  By ceasing thought and rambling mind, I simply abide and KNOW without word, without a need to even express it.  In some ways, there really IS no way to explain it or express it.  And sometimes, for the first time in a long while, I really do grow weary of even trying.  Something is pulling me along, out of this life and into another, yes for a time I thought what lay ahead of me was what I was seeking, some destination, some great discovery that was yet to be uncovered.  And certainly, this did happen, and continues to happen, but now it is as though I realize more and more that this same seed will remain with me even as I ask "What is it going to turn into?  What will it become?" which is silly because in a trillion years in earth time, I will still be carrying that seed and it will have burst into a billion different lives and experiences and yet will have also remained a seed swelling past its shell, almost, the very force of newness which draws me forward.  There is no end in sight, nothing but the infinite spreading out like some  vast undulating blanket lain beneath a shade tree with stars and oceans mixing in with it.  The cosmic picnic has commenced.

My journey through art has itself been one facet for giving voice or form to the formless. It is an institution, a creation made up in the moment, and it has showed me what I already knew but had not realized before; our bodies are mirrors of our souls.  Our bodies ARE our soul flesh made manifest.  There IS no division, for with each step into awareness, the gap tightens and there is this growing bud of a sense that they never were separate.  Fish and ocean were always together, expressions of each other and utterly dependent on the other for their own expression.  Within that frame this body is like a prism for the soul just as the soul is a prism for the body.  This is itself a sacred marriage, a manifestation of what we are. In turns we have seen this body as a cage, a prison, a dirty low realm of existence as well as a boundless heaven.  It was never one or the either, but  canvas through which our own creations emerged.

The union is assured, it is no mystery as long as you pretend you think it is some kind of mystery.  In each moment, its majesty is here, and we are here, just trying to comprehend it, kicking ourselves for having made it so complicated.  Step by step, we unwind that great wheel of karma, that giant spring of pent up energy so that all is but loose ends fluttering in the breeze as everything becomes easier and assured.  "The union was always assured" the presence said.  So here, this one tidbit of my own observation; take it for however you need or do not need.  See it or not see it; it does not matter.  I am merely trying to realize what it all means as this seed is bursting in my hands as I try to remember what the next step is.....

On Awakening

You can find a number of traditions that seek to support awakening, many of which are from the eastern cultures where the issue of awakening has been a tradition for a very long time.  These can provide the needed structure and support a person may need during the journey or process.  They bring an awareness of ourselves as being more than mere body but also energy.  This goes beyond many western expressions of our being and deals in a much more direct way with the issue of our multi-layered or multidimensional nature. 

In Chinese medicine and practice, there is a subtle body that can be effected by acupuncture, movement disciplines such as Thai Qi and Qi Gong (also spelled "Gung") that help to keep energy from becoming blocked, and which those traditions observe confers health and perhaps even longevity.  There are currents in this subtle body which have been mapped by these traditions, and are steadily finding a greater and greater niche in more traditional forms of medicine.  In India, there are similar understandings, too, and a lot of what we know has come from the east as it relates to the subtle energy body.  These traditions have their own form of expressing the same fundamental sense which depends on the cultural "turn of mind."  The problem for some people is that they do not feel a connection to these other cultures.  For as much as the East meets West process has brought us from the 60's and 70's, there can still be a disconnect.  For some people, its like a long lost home and very western individuals will dress and appear to be very eastern in habit, practice, and belief.  Certainly there are kundalini yoga teachers who are very much western who look and dress in an eastern way, which is testimony to how these traditions "speak" to their sense of knowing.  All of this is certainly valid for the self seeking, but depends on where you are in the process of becoming.  The self will find any means that it can to fashion a boat and get across the waters, and my feeling is if it gets you there, then it has served it purpose.  Sometimes the problem becomes that once used, the boat becomes a kind of shrine, and we have to let go of that shrine or else we become stuck in a sense with ritual magic that does not push us to move froward into the next explosion into realization.  I am increasingly realizing that there is no one way that we must go about this.  If you are active in your process, you will tend to find some interesting resources coming to you.  This is because I know there is more than the intellect and mind involved in the game, but also the presence of a higher form of consciousness, entirely connected to you moment by moment that can and will begin to guide you in its own way.  Many will often gloss this part over because they themselves are very western in their approach, which gives a good deal of lip service to the intellect and mind.  But there is far more to it than that.

Awakening is a process of stripping away a lot of the conditioning that you have grown up with and perhaps consider your most cherished notions about who you are and your life here.  While many stop here, I go a little further, because this does not merely stop at the individuals' awareness level.  This moves into the larger waters of your being, and this is the great prize in all of this, the thing we so ardently chase after when seeking spiritual fulfillment of one form or another (whatever we may think this means at the time).  The magic in all of this is not just stripping away conditioning, but understanding just what this conditioning is to begin with. 

Let's take the idea that your conditioning comes from how you grew up.  When we think of our early lives, we tend to think that we had no control over how the stage was set.  We think in a very materialistic way, in a way that also relieves us of any responsibility in a larger sense over the matter.  Everything that happened to us was a result of what we were tossed into in our early life.  Whatever is wrong with us is the fault of our parents, or our family, or even society.  Everything happens TO us, but we never dig deeper beyond this to consider a still larger truth, which has to do with the Law of Attraction.  While some will want to waive this off as so much mumbo jumbo, I can say without equivocation that the Law of Attraction is huge, and if you can begin to learn to shift what it is you are attracting by changing yourself you WILL change the outside contents of your life.  The seeming solidity of the world will form itself around you in an new way.  What you thought was not possible will become possible, and it can become possible as soon as you make the change within yourself.  It really does happen that quickly.  We do not consider sometimes that what happened early on was the result of issues from other lifetimes which had not gotten resolved, and as in ANY book that ends with some lack of resolution, the issue has to be resolved in a subsequent chapter in order for the story to make any sense.  We think this is all just accident.   Its not.  So if you want to know what your karma is, look at your childhood, look at those conditions that existed in your family and there you will find a mirror of your own karma in them.  If you do this, you can go from being victim to realizing that this is all a play put on for your benefit, with people and events coming in and out of that play as your teachers, mirrors, helpers in an unusual way.  If you can begin to see in this different way, you can begin to see into the fabric of your own being, and deep into your past in order to find a better present now. 

In truth, this conditioning from your family was a self-chosen set of conditions your own soul was attracted to.  This is karma.  This is how all energy works, and consciousness IS energy.  You probably have karma with the people in your family, old "debts" to repay or issues to resolve.  So that draws you together, but even more than that, these debts are the result of a given attraction to behaviors, to emotional and egoic attachments that you have.  Its less that you are attracted to a group of people for the past debts that must be repaid as the quality of their energy, the place they are at, that can attract you.  Certainly the issues of some past debt will draw you, but so will the nature of the energy attract you.  So families will represent on a broader soul level, issues that each are working through in a common fashion with slight variations from person to person.  No person will be exactly alike, obviously, but many of the lessons to be learned can be. Seen in this light, the old forms of conditioning can emerge as part of something larger in your own being, and these become the issues that are pushed up from the psyche and subconscious to be dealt with in an awakening.  Learning how to release these things, this karma, is a very important way of digging out the weeds of your own inner garden.

How do we release karma?

This is a tricky one, because very often, we simply do not have the inner perspective necessary to see into ourselves to know what it is that is working in us.  We look out into the world and away from our own selves.  IN the background, deeper within, are all those old things that we have shoved down because they were the result of hurt and pain.  On the one hand, this serves as a survival mechanism. On the other hand, awakening brings all this back up to the degree that the individual is willing to see them.  This is why, most often, the chaotic environment of the self at the end of their rope offers such promise in change.   The ego is one tough nut to crack.  It will often hold on for dear life, obstructing the view of your own inner awareness to understand what was wrong to begin with.  Sometimes when one is at the end of their rope, there is a breaking point that leads to a solution.  This is only one way that this can be done, and there are other ways, other solutions, but most often it seems that in order for the individual going through this process in a solitary way to learn how to let go of ego, it involves extraordinary pressure.  We just don't seem to be very good at knowing how to let that ego go. 

What is the solution?

There are many solutions.  In much the same way that there are many traditions that deal with awakening, there is no one way that will absolutely be said to work.  In Christianity, there is a great and effective way of dealing with these impossibilities of the self; handing it over to God.  Calling upon a higher power to deal with it can be a very effective way for the ego to let go of whatever it has been battling or hanging onto.  Its a mechanism that can work, and does call upon the higher self for help...be that a deity or some great teacher such as Jesus or Buddha.  Another method that seems to be present in every single person is the Observer.  I had never heard of this part of the self until I experienced it directly as part of a release of a particular karmic thread this past year.  I was at the end of my own rope and reached a place where I simply gave up trying to work it through.  I was emotionally distraught and "little me" was quite upset, while some other part of me simply came forward in the moment to help me to feel into all of this turmoil in a different way.  See, this part of us, I suspect, is a part of the larger self or at least a part of us that we often tap in times of great turmoil when nothing else seems to work.  A car rolls over onto a loved one and while distraught, we find ourselves in a sudden state of absolute clarity and calm.  Then, somehow, the physical body is able to tap incredible strength to move the car.  This has and does happen. I see it less as miraculous as suggestive of what we are all capable of if we can marshal the right suite of qualities within.  If you can feel into this Observer (which I called "The Watcher" until I found out it actually had a name), it can help you to find a measure of detachment from the impossible emotions that you are feeling in the moment.  Feeling these emotions can be the very thing that keeps you IN the karma, IN the attachment to this way of feeling or being.  Going into the hardness of loss or lack of love does not solve the problem, though, it only keeps you in the consciousness of the karma.  Remember, this is about learning how to pluck out the briars in your garden that gave rise to such problems in the first place.  You don't take those briars and make a shrine of them, because if you did, you still have the briars present to tangle you up at some point.   In a very real way, its realizing that this way of feeling or being just no longer works.  You give up trying to rationalize it.  You give it over to god or Jesus, or you pray to some higher being to come take it from you.  You let go, you surrender.  Your little self says "I can't figure this out...its just too much..." and something will shift and change as a result of that so that the issue does not rattle around inside of you.  You are done fighting with it.  You are ready for some kind of relief.  If that kind of magic works with your belief system, then it has a very good chance that it will work. In order for it to work, you must be ready for it to work, and this might mean being at the end of your rope.  Nothing else has worked, so you are going to give this one a try.  And in so doing, you invest your attention and belief and HOPE into the situation. And you let go.  You let go of all of it in that moment in a way that is not something you even need to analyze.  Ultimately what gives you the means to release these patterns is what works and what is perfect. 

You will know you have really let go of something when you are not obsessing over it, are not affected by it the way you used to be.  This is not simply ignoring something or hoping you are done.  You are DONE. Being hopeful is very important, but the issue of letting go is one that has a kind of absolute nature to it.  When something leaves your field of awareness, it represents a shift in your own consciousness, in what you feel invested in. I will tell you that when I let go of one thorny issue within, I had someone who was wanting to buy my house.  They had not dealt in a way that was anywhere near being realistic in terms of price.  It was laughable, actually, and it resulted in my ignoring the offer.  I had no communication with this person for months and when I let go of this old energy, I had a new offer the following day in my mail box that had the price increased by $100,000.00.  The block, by the way, had to do with my own feelings of self worth and an old guilt I had carried that had made me very much a scape goat most of my life.  With the stuff I was carrying around, I was a perfect mark.  But I was ATTRACTING this, ever since I was a kid and even into my adult life.  It resulted in my getting blamed for a lot of stuff that simply wasn't mine.  Once this left me and was resolved in totality, everything changed along a certain avenue. Because I ran from my own inner truth, others were free to interpret my own truth however they wanted.  It attracted all sorts of people who would hurt me, blame me, and treat me in less than above-board ways.  But as soon as this left me, I was free.  I KNEW what the truth was.  I had changed the magnetism of the energy and this in turn stopped short all sense of energetic attraction to the old energy and set up a new pattern. When the energy that was clustered around my heart that had created great pain during my awakening had vanished, I had a sense that my own inner truth was that much clearer.  Say what you want about me, but I knew I was worth something!  While the new offer was itself still not where it needed to be, it was a vast improvement, and the timing was perfect as it related to my own inner events.

Affirmations may also be one way that you begin to put space between you and this old karmic attachment.  Doing this in the right way can begin to supplant old ways of thinking and feeling with new programs, and these begin to have an effect on you, inching you ever closer to that territory within feeling where genuine and permanent healing can happen.  Its a bit like cultivating the earth around those briars until you reach a place where you can simply pull the weed up for good because the new programming has sunk in deep enough.  This is a regimen that I suspect will take some time in order to change how you think and feel. Just as simple breathing exercises can train you how to learn how not to respond to some stressful situation, it also serves to train you to recognize the area within yourself where you will always find greater peace and contentment.  Knowing you have this option or space within is a huge first or even second step.  Your consciousness has to buy into it, and you need to remain engaged with it.  From everything we know about self-help and cognitive functioning, you have to believe it will work.  Sometimes hope can be the gateway.  It can serve to adjust your insides enough so that you are much more susceptible to change later. 

Do I need a Teacher?

There is a lot floating around that suggests that you do, or that having such a person who can help bring a larger perspective can be of some benefit.  I think a teacher can be a very helpful element in your awakening, but I also know that in the end, its up to the individual.  I think we are made to work through this in relationship. The teacher, though, can come in many forms.  Ultimately the power of awakening will be your single best teacher.  It can guide you to where you need to go, and a teacher supplies a sense of support in hard times as well as a few good tips for you to try.  Being able to draw on others' experience can sometimes, not always, help you to point out pitfalls that you yourself can avoid.  Absent a teacher, you might have books or other sources, which we have a great deal of now with the advent of the internet.  These can all be very helpful in their own way, but realize that due to the nature of karma, to emotional attachment, we will all tend to attract that which is where we ourselves are. 

If you have a lot of issues overhanging your life, you will naturally be attracted to those sources of instruction that will reflect those same attributes in yourself.  Remember the Law of Attraction?  You will also be attracted to those passages in a book, say, that speak to your own experience....and for a time you may feel a strong attachment to a given passage  until you grow and change and begin to see that this one so very important passage becomes largely meaningless later on. Its not to minimize it, but this is a process, a journey, and as you remove these old layers from you, the world will feel and look much different.  Money back guarantee.  As long as you are genuinely removing material, things will look and be different.  The pieces from a given teaching will be seen for what they were in hindsight; important to you at that point in time, but in no way does it mean it carries some huge truth necessarily for the rest of the journey through this.  This is not to say it can't, only that chances are, you will simply see it differently later on.  I'll give you an example...

I can remember reading about Gopi Krishna's trials with his own awakening.  He was convinced he had only awakened only one side of the kundalini, which was the masculine side.  When I was going through my trial by fire, I could totally relate.  I was having incredible bursts of hot Qi in my body, I was feeling amazing pressure in my body and a lot of physical pain.  It all seemed incredibly real.  I felt like I had to DO something. What wound up happening, though, was I learned how to surrender.  I also learned, slwoly, how ot divest more ego from the moment.  At the time, big small things had become incredibly big. I though this was what kundalini was doing.  I was convinced of it.  In some way, this was right, but I suspect what is more true is the ego was making everything seem bigger than it actually was.  This took some time to realize.  It didn't happen overnight.  It was part of a process of coming to understand by creating some distance from that event in the rear view mirror.  I had to get out of it enough to see it more clearly.  At the time I could only say what it felt like.  It was not good.  However, what  realized later was that in a way Gopi was right and in a way he was not right.  The masculine and feminine, I knew, move together in all of this.  We simply respond based on where we are with it.  Its less that the feminine had to be brought up in the energy, but brought up within him so he could mirror this larger energy that was flowing through him.  A big A-ha moment ensued.  the same was for me. I had to mirror all aspect of the higher aspects of my being in order to feel any kind of peace.  this is an upward spiral happening in us, a kind of change in vibration that we wake up to one day and it begins to reveal to us all the things that do not harmonize with this already developed consciousness within our being.  This is one reason why many masters and sages and gurus will say that this process is not of becoming something, but rather undoing what you thought you were in favor of what you already are underneath all that stuff.  Its a very beautiful thing, really.  So not surprisingly, I saw Gopi's own "breakthrough" not as a mental effort on his part, but in truth a surrender to his feminine side which helped him find peace once I got through one chapter in my journey.  Because his own belief structure meant that he would feel the cooling current of the feminine balancing his energies, he experienced this.  Looking back, it all looked much different to me than it had just a few months previously.  I noted, too, that he was also at the end of his rope.  The ego really is that hard of a nut to crack. It seems that when the chips are down, we dig deeper than we have ever dug before, and its this kind of effort that serves to get down to the root of things and marshals all our inner resources, whether we know what it is we are marshaling or not.  By saying this, though, I am not suggesting that this is going to be the way for all people.  Its just one aspect of the experience based on certain character traits. You can be very different.  It can be easier, much easier for you.  It just depends on what you have thus far divested yourself of in order to get down to this essential self or higher being that is and has always been a part of your present awareness.....just maybe pushed to the side enough that you were not able to feel into it in any significant enough way.  Otherwise, you may have had an awakening sooner than you have, or sooner than you would otherwise.  The point here is that we can latch onto some things and believe they are the end-all be all when in truth, its a step along the way.  Ego can get into this game, too, assigning it greater importance than it needs to have.  Being able to be more open to the possibility that there is a good deal more yet to go through and learn (its limitless actually), is I think a very good way to keep your own inner landscape tilled and loose so it does not solidify into some concretion of what you THINK is going to happen.  This is where you learn to let things happen.  This isn't easy with ego, but there is an art to stopping worrying about HOW things will turn out, how things will be.  Your soul self has all this under control if you will but stop struggling against it.  You will lose things, yes, but understand they were never for you if they are going away in this context.  I don't mean wanton disregard for what will serve you, but rather how shifts in us can result in people behaving differently around us, events in life changing so the old opportunities simply no longer come along.  You are changing, and you are also changing what YOU attract.  This sounds like misty-eyed mystical talk, but I promise you that it isn't.  I can write an entire blog entry just on how this alignment happens and the wild events that can happen that reveal just how this law of attraction works. 

The higher self in all of this is always present.  It is a broad sense of awareness and being.  It is what I call the Authentic Self, but is also called Presence.  This Presence, as some call it, can be a powerful tool in your transformation.  The more you are open to it, the more aware you are of its potential which also is your potential.  Just in learning how to feel more clearly, being that aware of this presence can begin to stir the pot and drive old issues upwards.  Its quite natural a thing.  However, sometimes, some things simply stay put even though you are aware of this Presence.  It seems that letting the ego drift back some is a very big help.  I wont say you kill the ego because ego remains regardless, and I think ego death is something of a misnomer.  You do, however, find a new arrangement of self because most of this infinite talk is just too much for the ego to deal with.  Learning how to have it do its job without getting in the way of feeling is a very important step.  This being or Presence can actually guide you if you let it.  It is super conscious and IF you can engage with it, it can often provide you with a wide array of things.....which I saw some time ago about the nature of the universe which felt like it opened up to me like a flower blooming.  It can also lead to all sorts of insights and abilities emerging, too.  These things are all part and parcel of the experience....not an important facet, only insofar as they help you to understand that you are changing.  Staying in your hurt or feeling like you are working through something is merely staying in the old behavior.  This is a very grace-filled place where you can find it in you to forgive both yourself and others.  By listening quietly, perhaps even in meditation, you can tap even deeper into yourself for the answer you may need.  Sometimes when you are focused on what you need, it comes.

I have said it before and will say again, the synchronicity is itself evidence of how we interface with the world, how the power of Attraction works, and how through what you wish for can actually become reality.  It is also a powerful way for this higher self to begin to interact with you on  a physical level.  How?  Consider this series of events, all very indicative of how these synchronicities work for me (and others).  I had the impulse based on a feeling from the higher self that I should get to a body of water. I was sitting at a light in the car as this happened.  Instead of wondering what this could mean, I simply paid heed and got to the nearest body of water.  I went to  a pond and walked down the path alongside of this pond.  At a certain point I turned to walk around a tree that was near the water.  It had a big long limb that stuck out shielding a plaque from my view.  I walked around it and saw the plaque.  It was a quote from Teilhard De Chardin about how we as humans can tap the limitless power of love.  I thought how interesting, but didn't give it much thought.  I stayed for about an hour by the water wondering what this was about. I left there and went to someone's house nearby.  As I entered the house there was a book lying on the table that I picked up and there, in the preface, was a mention of this same person whom I had never heard of before.  Later that day, I went to another friend's house for dinner and found myself in an odd corner of the room where I had never been before.  There, tucked out of the way was a book by the same man!  I asked if I could borrow it and as I leafed through it, most of the work was of little interest.....until I came to the section that had the SAME quote I had read at the pond earlier that same day.  There, one page after the quote I read, was a section that dealt with higher order energies, and his discourse on how we can learn to bring these energies through from the higher realms into our day to day experience.  What was most interesting was that at this time, I was actually writing about this very topic, about how the higher self can serve to bring us these things in our day to day through learning how to anchor these attributes that are a facet of our experience here, but that also exist in higher forms seemingly "beyond us." 

This is one example, and I have many more just like this one that all wind up bringing me the resources I need just as I need them.  I am convinced that if you learn to listen to these urgings, that you too can find that these events can bring you resources you could not otherwise have even found on your own.  Supermind meets human mind.  Supersoul meets earthly soul.  These things can and do happen and DO happen with regular frequency!  So, in this way, you can magnetize the events that you most need for that time in your life.  This is one tangible way that the higher self can help you.  The degree to which you block it based on what you believe is possible, is the degree to which I think you experience miraculous events happen.  Consider anything is possible, and it just may well be!

The issue of limiting beliefs plays into all of this in an important way, and often goes hand in hand with your karma.  I wont go into it here right now because this post is long enough, but some people can find a good deal of victimizing energy in some traditions that only serve to make them ever more suspicious, scared, and even paranoid....hardly a good mix in an awakening.  If you are awakening and are convinced this is demonic, you have some very hard days ahead of you.  If you can open like a flower to this, you can actually get past the hardest parts of the trial by fire and find more peaceful regions.  Again, being able to consider what you thought you knew before all this began was limited can be a big help in opening your eyes to the depth of the bliss and beauty that this experience will bring to you, which is authentic peace.

Nemasté