When I awoke, when I had that burst of energy up my spine that left me changed as a human being, I really only had at that time the one thing I had always had at my command to make heads or tails of this experience; observation. I didn't know what it was that was happening to me. I wasn't terribly scared, but I was alarmed a bit and wondered what on earth had happened. Observation is a powerful thing. This is what I observed in that first year....
Once I realized that this energy was going to stay with me and was not some accident or stumble into some unknown land, I began to observe what this thing was doing to me. It wasn't hard. I just sat quietly and began to do a simple form of what I would later learn was Mindfulness. I just watched.
As I observed, I noticed that my awareness seemed to clarify. I realized that I had not looked so closely at myself. I had taken myself, my insides for granted, I suppose. It isn't that I didn't observe myself before because I certainly did in meditation that I had developed over the years that I developed that was a good fit for me. But this form of observing myself was.....different. And the energy in me was different, too! I guess it was like a new day. It was. It is hard to compare anything from the old ways to this thing. What I noticed was that as I got very quiet, I could really feel the bliss flowing through me. When my mind was stilled from the rush of a thousand things we endlessly think about and chatter to ourselves about in any given moment, I was just amazed at the WOOSH of bliss.
Looking at this bliss, I asked what it felt like. What was it? How would I describe it? What I realized was that one side of me felt masculine while the other side felt feminine. I wasn't always completely sure which side was which, and other times, it was very clear. What was always clear was that there was this feeling as though something was embracing within me. Something was now in an embrace that was without end. It was an endless moment of love and the bliss that we feel when we are with someone whom we love, whom we yearn for, whom we cannot get enough of. I felt into myself and found that the more I placed my awareness on them, the stronger their embrace became. It really was an embrace. I saw my body from a distance and as I looked down at it I saw these two forces as a masculine warm energy and a feminine cooler energy. The thought here is that hot goes to cool. The man is drawn to the woman, and she is receptive to her beloved. That was how this energy was. And there was an intelligence within it! As I let go of the who what when where and why's, and simply let go and let this amazing crazy thing happen in me, I felt their energy grow in the way that a gentle wind might fan the flames of a fire. As this energy grew, I became distinctly aware of an energy beginning to form between these two columns that went up my torso.
I didn't know it, but I was describing kundalini. I just wasn't there yet. I was there still observing, feeling into it, and wondering what on earth was happening to me. I was lucky, I think, because it helped me to realize something hidden within Christianity that I had suspected, sensed, but did not know what it was....something had been missing, I knew it all my life growing up. There was a secret.....not some kind of conspiracy....just something hidden. But what? The answer came when I awoke. The answer was there, and as I looked later, I saw it. It was going to become plain as day.
Feeling into this this third energy, I thought about how I might describe it. And really, it only had one description; it was a transcendental child. It was the product of their union. This was the most elegant image I could come up with. And yet? There was nobody there. So odd. And yet, there was someone there, a higher order consciousness was emerging within me and I was getting to observe this. Something about consciousness could be described as a family unit!
I was at this early time in conversation with a pretty intuitive person who had gone to seminary but left because he found it too restrictive. When I explained what I was feeling, he suggested that I take a look at the Nag Hammadi documents, those scrolls discovered in the desert of Egypt outside of the town the cache of documents is now named after. These were early Christian documents that had a vocabulary that was very different from mainline Christianity.
As I read through some of these documents, two things stood out. One, was that these old writings seemed just as riddled with distortive elements as any other Christian document, some because of translation errors, and others as a result of a story being told verbally enough that it changes or shifts depending on the person telling it. There was enough evidence to show that these stories that make up the gospels were written a good pace from the actual events. Memory shifts, changes....and small misunderstandings creep in. I say this because so much of what I read in these hidden documents were speaking directly to the experience of awakening. The thing though, is reading the mainline gospels, the King James's version, you might never catch on to what was being said....the deeper story. For all its faults, these books were saying something pretty huge and the interesting thing is that they were the very first documents that I read that put me on the path to understanding what was going on with me. Jesus was talking about Awakening! The Kingdom, he said, was in us, all around us, and we see it not. The Kingdom, he said to his followers, had already come, but they just didn't know it. They didn't know it because they had not yet awakened. Did they wake up? There is some suggestion that they at least got a taste of the Holy Ghost descending on them, but the degree to which they each tasted the elixir of this experience, I can only guess.
What I did find was Jesus saying "I am one with the father and the mother." Exactly. He spoke about the death of the ego as the seminal event that takes place prior to moving mountains, the means by which the power of awakening is realized in ones life as evidenced in strange coincidences, small miracles, or synchronicities. He spoke of this mother in a few places, yes, enough that it was clear that his followers had been told about it. Philip probably guaranteed that his gospel would never see the light of day when we mentioned the elephant in the room when he said, "Those who say Mary begat with the Holy Ghost are in error. For when has a woman begot with another woman?" He was pointing to a misunderstanding some had at the time about the family unit within human consciousness.
The Holy Ghost was the mother! Same as Shakti. Same as Yin. And in Christianity, it is a very important, but missing, piece. It was not correct that the story would say she begot with a consciousness that was female, no, it would have been that she was overshadowed by the Father. What this points to is how there may have been an effort to obfuscate the role that the feminine has within cosmic or Christ consciousness by effectively anonymizing her into a "ghost" early on in the rise of Christianity as a path. Perhaps even during Jesus's own life, even. It is clear his disciples bickered with each other, and did not "get" everything that Jesus was saying to them. He even said so. Were some of them simply dedicated to his cause but asleep?
"I place you back where you belong by SEEING you, knowing you, drinking deeply of your essence, and letting your sweetness undo my bitterness....show me."
The Ghost is this vast presence within all of matter, within all of creation, bred and born and replicated all through everything, and this ghost is She. A vibration of energy, or consciousness, which we all seem to feel or know is part of the world dreaming, the creation, and is active in each and every moment that we are alive and rides on our own waves of creativity. The more you are aware of this part of you, not as a literal woman, but something that is receptive, grace-filled, wonder-filled, and awe inspiring, the more that you can feel it. Just as I sat and observed, the energy just went off the charts. I am one with the Mother. But to be one with her, she must lay upon my lips each moment. In my journey, it has been easy and hard to do that, in turns. I just keep asking, keep surrendering, keeping myself humble.
"Show me. Please. I am hard. Soften me, melt me. Take me apart; show me how I can be....different. Birth me anew."
I will tell you that looking back into my past pre-awakening, for as artsy and right-brained as I was, I was also caught in the tide of paternalism as everyone here is. There is so much that we are not even aware of that is taught, handed down, but not looked at. By not really looking at it, we leave it as it is and it remains static but alive in us. This is how the generations can hand down behavior for thousands of years until something disrupts it, shakes things up, and changes things. I woke up knowing there was this force in me, male and female-feeling. I am returning to that awareness again, today, yesterday, last week, last month, asking it to teach me anew. Teach me. Show me. I need you in my life. Soften me, break me apart. Take me down to chaff and wheat. Blow gently across my soul and leave only what is best in me. Let the rest go. I am ready. I now know the love that you bear is powerful, once scary, now seen as so wise, so ruthless in its honesty. I am the fool. Make me into what I have not yet been able to become. Maybe this is my practice.... If there is to be one. I never really thought of myself as having a religion. I haven't. I have sought using my own compass to guide me. But silently, quietly, privately, I pray to the light. I do.
This is not an abstraction for me. It is right here, swirling in what the Taoists call the 10,000 things. This presence is in everything, yin and yang, female and masculine-feeling. It is the Shakti and her Siva. And yet? And there is nothing material there! But there is Presence. When my awareness opens to it, I feel something beautiful in me, that KNOWS the feminine superconsciousness because it is in some way inside of me. Looking into myself, I see out into the multiverse. You see, you CAN learn a lot by inquiring within. We think we only learn by looking outward. But the road goes both ways. Look both ways.
Your parentage is waiting for you there. They will help you to grow up.
For me, I let go of any expectations. I let go, reached another level where I was holding on to something else in a deeper way, and loosened the grip.....
I have learned that the more I do this, the looser I am, the more ready I am for a strong wind to blow my petals open and spread the seed, or the chaff, or whatever it is that needs to go. There is an overarching presence that is not without purpose. You can think me crazy, I don't really care. But it is true. It is beyond any religion, beyond any need to believe or spin stories or tales, even as we try to do just that. In the midst of it, this coarse self, so hardened, so unmade, dissembled, is somehow redeemed. I am shown the way to BE. And for years, I have slowly learned how, the way one might learn a dance. But this dance requires that I do these dance steps each and every moment. Every breath, every moment turns into a prayer. This prayer is not for anything except to learn to be like "it." "Please show me" I ask it. It is as if it is aware of me but says nothing. It knows just as I know that the only way is for me to surrender to its presence. Its hands are like a strong-handed doctor reaching into your being and taking out what does not belong. Sometimes this is just hard. Sometimes it is easy. Sometimes I am afraid. And this is the insanity I have practiced all these lifetimes, round and round; I have desired the devil I have known instead of the angel that I could become. Maybe I feared change. Maybe I was simply addicted to chaos. Maybe I wanted to be right even though deep down I knew I was wrong. Wrong! But wrong how?
I was wrong in how I chose to see, to feel, to be. I say I was born into this life and was raised with no choice in the matter, but I now know that is not true. I was DRAWN to this place, this time, this life, as a being living outside of time, within all possibility. We are all immortals, taking on bodies. We come here from the infinite, from all-time.....and look at the poverty with which we have painted our world! We are our bodies, but we are an eternal spark, too! Animate matter! We have allowed ourselves to be fooled by the "coarse matter" which is in truth vibrant with the same consciousness animating all of creation; a world of infinite possibilities. So in our own individual feelings of losss and lack, we seek to find an answer for it, and most often, we try to point the finger outside of ourselves. And this, I know, is the path to suffering. Always look to yourself for the source of all of your feelings. Yes the world is hard, but do I need to respond to hard with hard? With victim-thinking?
How silly to try and set people up for being responsible for our own self-chosen journey! And how powerless, too, we make ourselves by thinking this way. Doing this has weakened my root centers, giving me no end of trouble, and trouble to others. Something whispers that it must be strengthened with truth. Sweet brutal truth. It means turning away from the fault being any others but my own. Always making judgements that were less about the world and more about my own broken record of a story. I was, and still am, on this merry go round. But the only difference is that with all of the chaff that has blown away since all of this began in 2007-ish, I know I am getting down to the most major end of the big stuff that has held me up and had me tied in knots. No one else is responsible for how I feel except myself. I was always there defining the moment in terms of light and dark, good or bad.
How does one, so soaked in sleep know how to be as one who is awake?
But aren't I awake? Now that is the rub, my friends. It is what we each must bear in mind. When you awaken, you are given this great gift, but you get that gift based on where you are in your accumulation or loss of the inner material that does not serve you. You awaken amidst a giant garbage heap that is your self. Awake, the work is to remove this garbage. For me, the awareness of this was early when I asked this energy what it was doing. It showed me. We were to get to work on a kind of inventory and release the stuff, the baggage, the STUFF once and for all. So for a time, you have this remainder. The idea that we wake up and simply change like a snap of fingers is itself not really true. Even Buddha worked on this thing he found under that tree. the realization is one thing, the becoming is another. You have to cross over from shadow into light. We have all been dancing in the shadows without fully realizing it.
These are notions and expectations and beliefs that are simply not in alignment with what IS. Whatever we are not in alignment with is like being an adulterer to our higher nature. It is a turning away. This, I have said over and over, is the very nexus of what we think of as negative karma. If you want to have good karma, you will learn to know who you are deep down and seek your authentic being, the father and mother within, and know them intimately. They alone will save you. No church outside of you will be able to do it. So powerful is this force that it will take you apart to the degree that you just trust its mighty force.
I am praying, you see. All of this, is nothing more than my prayers. Always has been. I am saluting this great power of two-into-one....no other deity really felt....right....nowhere as exciting or interesting as these two who keep after each other inside of me, slowly remaking me with each turn and brush of their amazed love trance of the other.... Find your own prayer, feel deep within and ask yourself where your error lies. This is not something you will be able to rationally know. it is what you will feel as a simple certainty, or a dreadful sense that you are just on the wrong path. And yet? And yet, we so often stay on that path because it is.....familiar. Boom. Wow.
Could it be so easy to turn over the cart and begin an entirely new journey? How many times have you tried to change for another person in order that your very being would fit into their lives? How often has your own nature come into conflict with others in a way that it made you feel bad to be you? When one is resting in the authentic self, anyone who seeks to change you is themselves living in illusion. Didn't the Hindus say that all of this is an illusion, a dream? Well.....I prefer to see it as a creation, full of possibility, a grand chalk board of a place where we get to discover and create wildly. But within us.....is there a splinter? A pain? A hurt? A feeling of something not fulfilled? Our real selves are fulfilled already, needing precious little except to feel bliss and absorb the moment. Do this, or do that, it is your freewill. But when you come across something that feels like resistance, look within and ask yourself; is it you or them? And maybe it is them. And later, you might realize it was both....both of you mirroring in a place of "illusion" or delusional feeling and thinking. My task, at least, is to find the highest. Me, I am a bit of a glorious mess, but there is something inside of me that is perfect. I will for now seek that, for the mother will heal, the father inspire, and the two will show me that we are two-into-three-as-one.
For me, as a descendent of the world or the paternal journey, it is now my journey to open up to the softening of the feminine super consciousness. It is time to get to know the Mother.
So don't think that I am someone who has it all down. I don't. I am here praying, I am here singing to the light because I am a creature of the physical. I am creative.....in my own way, these are my prayers. So take them as that. I am not here as any proclaimer of anyone else's truth. We each find it ourselves. And maybe you might wonder what the point is. It seems that this is how it all comes down. Increasingly, as you will notice, I have become less and less verbose. I sometimes wonder, what is the point, really, when it is so clear that we each have that compass point within us. We each have to realize it. No one can do it for us. The inevitability of it was spoken to me in the first weeks of awakening as I passed over a river and felt it speak: "It is inevitable that you will return to the ocean..." I had no idea what it meant then, but something in me seemed to know. We are each like fish swimming from creeks to ocean and back again. We know the way. We do. You just need to keep it simple because the relationship of these forces in you are also simple, ubiquitous. Thank goodness.
