A Surprising Outcome

I was working in the studio making a new type of work recently when something surprising happened. The work involved a body movement that required me to reach to a tool that was needed for the next step. I work with hot glass, and some steps involve very precise timing, and if a movement is not made correctly it can result in problems. In the case of this one step, I had to reach around a glowing red metal pipe in order to get at a tool. Since this movement was new, I was still learning it, putting it into "muscle memory" so that this movement could eventually go off without a hitch.

What happened was I wound up pressing the crook of my arm against the hot metal. And then something interesting happened, which is the reason for the post.

First, with my eyes on the tool, and not where my arm was, I realized what I had done. This had happened once before but without so much contact as was taking place at this moment. I continued to grab the tool, though, neither flinching or drawing back. This move took three seconds. I was aware of my skin on the hot metal all the way through this. I could hear and feel my skin sizzling. Then I could feel the nerve pain come barreling into my awareness. I had an odd calm through all of this...idd because for the first time ever, I just didnt react as I normally woukd have in the past.

I finished the movement, shaped the glass, turned around to get ready for the next step and found myself choosing a state of calm instead of a big reaction to the pain which was coming and which I knew would soon be so strong that I might need to stop my work because it would be too much. That's when it happened.

A thought arose in my mind that I should try to not feel the pain, but instead to try and make it just go away. Up until this time I could feel an emotional and mental tension building like "steeling" myself for the inevitable rush of pain. Instead, something in me just relaxed a little and I felt myself aware that I might be able to change the outcome. Instead of feeling inner resistance, this felt more like surrender. This eliminated the tension, and it was immediately followed by a surprising change of events.

As I turned to make the next step in my work, I felt the pain being replaced by an entirely different sensation. This sensation was not pain at all. In fact, I experienced a coolness where the burn was. My arm exposed, I faced a furnace blasting heat at me. Normally this would have been like pouring salt on a wound. It would have made the burn howl with pain. But it didnt. I felt myself in a very calm detached state and I completed the piece I started in another five minutes without a hint of any pain whatsoever. This turned out to be one of the worst burns I have ever gotten in the studio.


The burn two weeks later and after the scab came off

I realized that what I was doing was controlling my autonomous nervous system, a kind of "brain hack" that enabled me to completely change my natural response to this burn. It wasn't a moment of smugness, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was as easy as it was.

There was no pain at all until the following day when the burned skin began to dry and started to pinch and pull at my burned skin a round the edges. It oozed for several days after that. This was not a feeling of burning, but a different form of pain related to tender skin being covered in a crusty layer. After a few more days I put honey on the burn, which is known to have natural antibiotic qualities and the healing moved swiftly along.

Truth be told, I was always interested in these kinds of "feats" that seem to defy our normal understanding about how the body works. I read many years ago of Indian monks who could slow their heartrate incredibly slow, selectively lower blood flow to one arm or other extremity. And then I heard the story on the radio of the Tibetan monks who would go out on the coldest night in Winter (the full moon in February) with nothing more than a wet sheet, which they would dry with their body heat.

I always felt that there was more to ourselves than meets the eye, and I have begun to realize that at least in part, I knew this because in other lives, I had done things which were similar in nature. I was surprised at how effortless this turned out to be.

When I think about it, I began to realize that I had been practicing similar forms of deep control at the root level of my body. I had turned on and turned off all kinds of responses over the last few years. Just yesterday I found a pain in my abdomen wound up being energetic in nature, something our doctors might chalk up to as neuralgia or something similar, and as I sank into a meditative state, I reached a place where I could really feel the body response, look at it, and then just make a small effort at letting the tense energy lift away, which instantly addressed the pain. In this case, the pain was not even being induced by way of an injury or disease. My body was treating it like it was pain, or maybe it was my brain that interpreted this energy as pain and made it so. Whatever the exact case, the problem was no more.

You might be thinking, "Yeah, but pain is an important warning sign that helps alert you to trouble, Parker." I would agree. Pain let's you know something is wrong. But in the case of my burn, I knew I was being burned, could feel the pain crowding into my body like a freight train in flames. I just chose to reverse it. My stomach pain turned out not to be an injury at all, or disease, but instead a kind of persistent tension energetically that was being interpreted as pain (or as something wrong). If I hadn't gotten to the bottom of my stomach pain, I might still be feeling something that might have only gotten worse and who knows...in time it could lead to physiological and chemical changes that could lead to a very real physical dysfunction.

I am passing this along because my sense is that the more we meditate, the more we spend time deep in the subconscious digging out stored emotional debris, the easier it is to begin brushing up against not just our emotional codes, but our physiological ones as well. I think that things like this may be a natural turn of events, much like how the Tibetans who were practicing g-tummo meditation were able to gain control over their body heat in order to dry sheets in zero degree temperatures. Not a boast or a brag, but to share with others interested in our own inner workings. If I can do it, so can you!
~Parker

Marks Of My Awakening - Pt II

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

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

Continued from the previous...

---

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

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

Below, see a close-up of the mark.


The Second Mark

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






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

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

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



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

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

Marks Are Not A Given Nor A Necessity

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

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

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

In an odd twist, I also found out a year after my experience with the seraphim that visited me while reading up on Christian mystics that there was an account written about a seraph who visited one Christian mystic which was strikingly similar to my own experience.  The mystic was St Theresa of Avilla. Theresa wrote about her experiences, and the account was similar, right down to the side that the angels would come to her and how the seraphim had pulled her insides out of her while she was “on fire with a great love of God.” While Theresa offers no insight into why the angel did this to her, I suspect that this was nothing short of a kind of “operation” performed in the etheric with the matter of the meridians, prana, or chi as the substances or systems that were being worked on.  All of this sounds crazy of course, unless you have seen and felt these systems for yourself.

Ecstacy of Saint Theresa by Bernini, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome

What I am saying is that I think that we may have a predilection toward certain experiences over others depending on our own turn of mind, reincarnation background, beliefs, and our constitution.  Some of us may need this “surgery” while others may not.  Some of us may “remember” the lost or ancient gods and goddesses as they seem to make a return to us in this age.  If I could count the number of people who I know who have had some significant experience with Isis, I would have a large room full of people who all know an important aspect of this woman who once walked the earth, who taught, and who was revered above mere saint and reached goddess status.  Lying deeper within us are these memories.  We are often just too busy or unaware that they exist.  Awakening can be enough to shake them loose in us and bring us face to face with these forces in the healing and resurrection that is this experience.

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

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

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

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

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


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

Marks Of My Awakening - Pt. 1

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

A Shared Experience

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

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

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

The Marks

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


Because of the length of this post, the remainder of the work is found here along with the rest of the photos of one of the other marks that developed later.  Read the rest of the story in the second part, posted right after this entry (check back soon!).

(1) Krishnamurti U.G. Arms, Rodney, ed. The Mystique of Enlightenment.  Goa, India, Dinesh Vaghela Cemetile Corp. ©1982.

Looking Forward - New Tools For Awakening

I have been writing and, as a visual person, trying to make sense of a bewildering experience.....which is also a blessing, a challenge, a curse, a wonder, and a giant question (which is awakening).  And in the midst of it all I have recoiled from using techniques or methods.  There is a reason for this, a really big one....and the big challenge for me has been HOW to communicate a FEELING to people, which becomes the foundation of a given kind of work in awakening.  And yet, techniques continue to be touted and used....and often, sadly, without comprehension about what they are good for.  And on the other hand, I know that in some ways techniques can assist us in reaching certain places within ourselves.  And ultimately, this is what awakening does for us.  It installs, permanently, the energetic circuitry in our consciousness for bliss and ecstatic states of being.  This can lead to insight and fulfillment.

That is because the process is so simple it says. "Yes, I know.....but how do I get it across?" I wonder.

Maybe poetry it says.  "Poetry.  No one wants to really read poetry!"  Nonsense. They do.  If it is good.  Remember Rumi?  How do you show people the way to the chamber of bliss except by using your words, creating images in their heads?

So. I am working on ways to make all of this simple. I wonder if that is possible.  Today as I drove through town, this voice in my head said Maybe you should develop "the Stafford Method" of meditation and then teach it to people to see how effective it is.  A few minutes later, I though that the thought was a little silly.  Meditation has been in use for a very long time, really--- what is there that I would be able to provide that would be new?  It isn't always new. Sometimes you create combinations that work for a given time or place that are specific to those.  So I am thinking about this. I am wondering if its possible, and maybe feeling a little relief in the idea of developing a way to meditate for those who do not have it already. 

But already I have numerous articles on aspects of awakening and the bones of an emerging system that might turn into an online course.  There is a lot of content there, but I think that when it is to the point and aids the person who is interested in awakening specifically, then the value of what I am conveying in the work is fairly substantial. Ultimately I would like very much to be a part of a larger effort, a web ring of people who are all engaged in awakenings specifically.  An online ashram, or a Mystery School.

My hope is that I can get moving on this by the Fall once the remainder of the main material has been written and then a web site is set up to house it. 

Your Day Is Your Teacher

Before I went through awakening, I will admit I was not as aware of this idea as I probably could have been.  I KNEW I created my own reality.  I did. But what I didn't do was to see just HOW MUCH I was really really creating it.  All of it.  Who I was, what I was, how I was arranged, what I felt...the energy coursing through my energetic veins was determining so many things!  I just wasn't aware how deep it went.  I wasn't as observant as I could be, I don't think.  I didn't realize just how deep all of this went.

When I woke up, I got a second chance at getting a good old wake-up slap on my head.  And it sunk down into me.  Deep.  The force of awakening woke me to a level of knowing that's hard to explain....as though perceptual abilities were not just sharpened, but bloomed....the sense of Gnosis, what the Greeks called knowing, moved in me.  And what was in me was in the world.  HOW I FELT about that world was the flux field that determined what was happening with me.

So when it came time for me to backtrack in my work, which I did, I found that this stirred a world of things in me that I thought I was DONE with.  See, we can fool ourselves all the time.  Awareness is huge for us, and we do A LOT to hide things from ourselves.  What we hide, we do not see, what we do not see, we do not work on.  It remains until we realize there is SOMETHING in us that is putting off this vibration in us to cause certain things to happen because HOW we are serves to determine HOW events go.  We ARE NOT victims here.  Source granted us FREEWILL.  So HUGE was this that Source WILL NOT get in the way of that freewill.....even if it means killing or hurting others.  EVEN then!  Holy moley, right?  H-H-H-HUGE.

So as I did this, it actually showed me upclose and personal all the work I had to refine.  To work on. I had a history with people who claimed to love me actually hurting me, a very specific kind of hurt, too.  I had been married before all of this, had kids and this person who was someone I shared a life with and who I thought I knew turned her back on some very important issues she gave lip service to but didn't actually follow through on.  Thing is, I KNEW she knew these were important things.  She was going back on some pretty critical things simply to hurt me.  Now for as petty as that may seem (to me and to my lawyer, both), this was shown in the bright lights of my awakening as something I had to work on.  Afterall, I was attracting this.  I was.  And when I thought maybe I had worked through it, I met another person who I realized was going to do something very similar, something that represented the merry-go-round nature of karma and how we really can't attract anything different from what we are deep down. The saving grace is that we can change, DO change at all different places in our lives.  So this work, I was doing.  Digging digging....And I was releasing SO MUCH JUNK!  And yet, this issue remained and as a result, I attracted based on that.  This is the relentlessness of how this all works.  You just can't bullshit your way around this stuff.  You can, sure, but Buddha once said there were three things you cannot hide; the sun, the moon, and the truth.  So, it is going to come around.  Watch the tree and observe what it produces.  Watch people.  You don't even need to take their word for it, just watch.  Over months, years, if need be.  What they say and how they act and what they produce as the fruit of their lives will reveal itself.  Eventually, the truth will be revealed.  Known.

So as this all took place, I saw the Dark Goddess in all her terrible presence.  And I knew how it was going to go.  Dark goddess?  What do I mean when I say this?  Within us there is both shadow and light.  We have the power, we have the choice to decide.  Its freewill.  Quite naturally, there are not just the gods and goddesses that are all light, but are also consumed by shadow, by their dark sides.  When we, in the awakened state experience such negativity, we experience the ascended darkness or the ascended light.  Again, what does that mean? it means we have the potential for both, and it is WE who decide.  And in that moment, even as my head and heart all knew that nothing good would come of this, that all of this was following a pattern, and even when I spoke this truth, the fact that my root chakra was not yet cleared, IT vibrated at an energetic frequency that was not convinced.  Now, I tell you, there is no worse place to be.....for everything in you says this is going to be bad because it turned out bad with another person before this, and clearly with the third ey and heart I could see this....but the root would not let go, could not.  Such is the nature of the unhealed lightbody.  But even then, in partial knowing, it was read by the Goddess as rejection, as abandonment, hurt, pain, and all she knew to do was to strike back.....to seek to harm and hurt.

So for one relationship I had a child turned against me.  this child wont pseak to me because he believes what his mother has told him.  Buys it hook line and sinker.  Besides, why would his mother lies to him about such things, right?   In another instance it was said in a puvlic forum that I was sexually abusing the students I taught at the school I work at.  It was said that I used my abilities to manipulate people into doing my will.  Further, I admitted to this Dark Goddess that I did this in order to get what I wanted.  It wasn't just that I did this, I did so wantonly, with design, with malice!  But this was not all.  if soeone else was percieved as somehow coming into a circle of influence, those people, too, would be subjected to the same kind of behavior, which was an attempt to punish, to hurt, and to demonize.  So hurt, so broken from the past that the past and present cannot be seen for what they are or as they are.  So clouded the vision, so bloodied the heart.  When we do this kind of thing we grow more karma, we do more harm not just to others, but to ourselves.  It is unfortunate, but out of such things I had to stop and just look at myself and ask why I had attracted this.  I didn't make them act this way, no, they chose this, but I sure attracted it and THAT was what I had to examine and really look at, because once I did that, I was able to see more clearly the things that remained to be healed.

 My chakra centers, nearly cleared, KNEW this would not go well. I was able to predict just how it would go......how she would seek to punish me, hurt me, even though what I was doing was true and fair......not an effort to hurt or harm, but to cast truth...to speak the truth about how this all was a replay of old hurts.....that we would simply be banging our heads against the wall.  I had already had this experience with a spouse a few years before, so you would think I'd have this one all worked out.  Well, we heal when we heal, and having someone do what my spouse did was particularly hard because it involved children, but the effect was the same pattern of retaliatory behavior in the following relationship, which is the Dark Goddess in her wrath.  She is the image of Kali, the angry one, the one who vents her rage.....but as humans, when we vent our rage it means people get hurt.  The powerful energy behind rage has to be very carefully wielded. 

As a result of this experience, the humbling effect has served to bring me back into myself, back to where I need to be to place my awareness on the parts of me not yet fully healed  What is interesting is that all of this is energetic in nature.  The energy pattern is not physical, so when it heals, IT can heal immediately and completely if we let it.  Whatever lingers can then go on to create disease in the body, so it pays to clear all of this up as these unhealed places represent lifeforce that is being choked off and used for all the wrong things.  So often we wind up experiencing diseases that are all part of a series or spectrum of energy effects that transfer effects through the body wince all of this is delicaely connected (energy feeds into the body!).

Some people say forgiveness is important in healing.  It is.  But what forgiveness does, in all truth, is that is clears the way perceptually for YOU to realize that the truth is that all along all of this hurt and pain and terrible junk that has been happening TO you is actually YOU creating situations in your life where this junk that is IN you plays out in FRONT of you.  So we say we are not aware of our fractures, and yet those fractures are right there IN your life.  The women in my past were all very good at putting on a face at the beginning of their day, but this face was the ace they thought they had to wear.  I too in a way was doing the same thing. I finally grew tired of the masks and when that happened, the masks began to fall away.  The layers of hurt and propriety fell away.  the bullshit fell away.

And this is the fear that we feel when we wake up. We fear death, we fear change, we fear it being different.  Knee-jerk.  Totally.  But once we DO change, its never so bad as we thought.

So let it go. Your higher self will lead you perfectly.  Think of it as being like a cosmic parent that is there helping to mold and shape your life and wont lead you to the wrong place.  Just to the places that you need to go to learn. And you will realize that none of this is being done to you.....this is happening for a reason, no exceptions, and it has to do with who you are and HOW that "are" puts out a vibration which magically attracts certain events and things into your life.  Want to change that equation?  Change yourself.  All the way down, truly, fully and honestly.  That is the answer.  And the work is what lies in front of you since the hardest part has already been done; the realization that there is more work to do!

Good luck and all my heart-felt blessings for you in this!

A Radical Thought

When you read up on the experience of non duality there is a state of awareness that exists where you become aware of a vast endless ocean of a place, some have called the Tao.  This is known and commented about and the accounts are all pretty much the same. It is a formless kind of place, immersed in feeling and beyond all material existence.  This is a place of pure potential, a vast ocean of bliss.  In the works of the Savaists it is often referred to as an ocean of milk, so called because it resembles a field of orgasmic energy out of which all phenomenon flows.  This shows up in the iconography of the Hindu Shiva who has a small fountain coming out the top of his head which is in truth a seminal projection. This semen flows most often either onto the mountains where it flows like a river in small rivulets to the sea or is sometimes flowing over a small altar that depicts the masculine and feminine forms together as one.  This is so depicted because of how the energy of the cosmos feels. Because most people who experienced this were men, it has been quite natural for this depiction to have the associations that it does.  This is why also that there is this idea that seminal fluid is actually distilled into pure prana and allowed to rise up through the spine to the brain.  This is perhaps the most impossible of feats since medicine has established, without a doubt, that the nervous system and the vascular system do not cross.  It is described this way, though because of how it FEELS.  It FEELS like this fluid moving up in the body.  In fact, some practitioners (even today) teach the process of something called sublimation, which they believe is the transformation of seminal fluid into pure pranic energy which can then be used for healing and other work involving ascension.  While the specifics of this may be way off base, the essential sense of it is correct because while this is most certainly NOT seminal fluid (or cervical fluid for that matter) but simply an energy so potent that it FEELS like fluid moving in us that it gets described in this way. This should tell you how powerful and tangible these energies are, and when you feel it moving in your own body, you would swear that this is indeed the case.  Regardless of what you believe, even if you DO believe that you have seminal fluid running up your spine, you can work with this energy as it presents itself to you through visualizing it in just about ANY way that allows you to relate to it on a personal and visceral level, and since prana is itself intelligent, it will respond to your thoughts and feelings.  I am pointing this out because we create all kinds of images for a phenomenon that is entirely nonmaterial.  This, as you will see, is an important point to bear in mind as I move along.

This realm is one where there is no action.  The energy is like a highly distilled substance, a great inexhaustible ocean of energy from which we draw.  There are those who say there is nothing to do here other than to merge into the deity beyond the deity,  and that is that.

I am accustomed to digging into these things and feeling them out and asking new questions and seeking answers we may have missed.  I was once a heyhoka, a term used to describe someone who had had a dream or vision of the thunder beings.  What was so important about the heyhoka was how they struck to the center of things to ferret out their core essence.  Their hearts and souls were the lightening striking that cracks open reality and reveals in that sudden flash of knowing the center of how things are.  As an artist, I am always asking what is at the core of things?  Where does an idea emerge and how is it aligned in terms of its larger expression in the world?  We have the capacity to see in these ways, and for me it means reaching that place where things become startlingly simple and direct.  For me, some things really are very simple. Most of what we see in the world is a jumble of misunderstood things, covered in illusory matter or distortions.  How do we dig deep and find the gold lying deeper within? As an artist, this fits in very well with what I do, which is asking questions about tradition and why we choose to accept the forms and images and symbols that we do. Lying at the core of symbols is also consciousness. How we align to certain imagery also explains a lot about how we are aligned to the divine.

I seriously do feel that all of life is ordered on the yin and yang principle and as such, even the smallest particle is itself a twin of a larger form of consciousness which is itself twinned.  This twin is the yin and yang, the feminine and masculine currents that run straight through everything.  I say masculine and feminine, but these forces grow so broad that they could constitute forms that would not appear to us as being the feminine and masculine we are used to knowing here on the planet.  I would argue that this force is what gives rise to everything and so the deity itself is not some dude hanging out in the hills or clouds but is the very essence of the divine circuitry that requires a continuity with these two poles in order for it to work.  think of it like a magnet or a battery or an electrical circuit.  The energy cycles from one pole to the other.  At no point are these two forms really separate at all even though they give rise to phenomena that might seem distinguishable to our very dual perception and egos which are very good at the task of identifying, sifting, and drawing out one object from a vast field of objects. Conversely, this is why when the ego recedes, we are able to experience vast forms of consciousness and where we can touch the Tao or this ocean of vast potential.  So given this sense I have, I have something for you to consider and see where it takes you.

This vast realm of potential energy is much like the masculine in a way.....it is this pulse of pure energy that seeks some resolution or manifestation.  It is seeking the other side of itself, which is the feminine pole of itself.  In many stories, we often tend to think of a male deity form as existing in this place, somehow separate, off in the mountains or in the clouds.  This notion is not entirely out of place, even if it is itself something of a distortion of the facts.  But for the sake of understanding or relating to this vastness, consider that this sea of milk is indeed the bliss of the masculine.  There is nothing to be done here, certainly if you believe in the way that many have offered thus far. There is nothing that happens here, though, for the endless energy is in a sense incomplete, not yet reaching its fullest potential.....it is just endless bliss and that is good in its own way, but there is more to the story and this is where a very radical thought enters in.

Consider that the essence of all creation is to experience fulfillment by learning to create.  The act of creation is something that marks humans as special, as beings that have evolved to realize this capacity in their natures. But even on the individual level, if you understand the creative impulse, you will know that even in your own self, in your own body, you are bursting at the seams with the yin and yang energy entirely involved in the engine that is the very source of all creation.  Ying and yang energy in you, and in me; in all of us?  Yes.  Even in your brain, which is part of the massive system that helps to store, retrieve and then generate new ideas, you must first have BOTH the left and right hemispheres in your brain working in unison.  The left is very different from the right, and yet without them both we are not as effective creators. 

We know that when people are being creative they activate centers ALL OVER the two-lobed brain.  And these two lobes are VERY much mirrors of the masculine and feminine.  In fact, we tend to refer to them as the masculine left and the feminine right lobes.  If you know how the divine feminine works, there is nothing that could not be a better mirror for HER than the right brain.  And yet, without her partner, the left brain, who can take things apart and put them back together, who can see the tree instead of the forest, this VERY masculine left lobe is able to take the vastness that is the feminine and help to make some sense of it in a form-based way.  It is kind of interesting, too, that the feminine takes what the masculine provides or contributes, breaks it down in the same way that the ovum breaks down the sperm in the woman's body in order to utilize HIS contribution in the creation of new life. A very similar thing happens even in spiritual work, and as you dig into this you can feel the essence of it like a cord holding all of these very beautiful beads on a necklace.  You might be dealing with physical life which appears very different from creating an idea, but the principles are very much the same in ESSENCE. 

BOTH masculine and feminine are in on this act of creation in this magnificent engine that IS creativity.  It happens in our bodies when we make new life and it happens in our bodies when we are creating some new idea.  The effect is the same, or at least VERY similar.  What I am getting around to telling you is that the very radical thought here is that while we all can experience the Tao of endless potential, it is like admiring the feminine or masculine all by themselves.  You are gazing or marinating in only ONE side of a very vast and powerful cosmic coin.  I argue that in order to know divinity both within and "without" we have to go from potential to manifestation.  I say that when we do this we have made the full cycle from one end of the divine consciousness to the other.  Potential without manifestation is "useless" in a way.  Feel inside yourself.....it is a calm quiet place. 

I know; some want to say that this is merely ego wanting to get in on the act by creating something, but first I would say no it isn't and yes it is.  Ego is ALWAYS there, even those who believe they have squashed it like a bug. This is the error.  But beyond ego is also something more.....and it is here that we can know our creative potential in a much broader and much more empowered way.  It is also very beautiful if you can go at it like a child.  Don't worry if ego is in on it.  Ego is always there.  It always will be.  It is just one tool in your vast toolbox of parts.  It is not any more important than any other aspect of yourself and as long as you know how to use the tool without worshiping your tools like the end-all of who you are, you are in a very good place to go into this next "field" of being in a more mature and wise way.   I am going to suggest as an aside that this potential must then exits in all life, even non sentient  since it too is part of a divinity that is at its root creative.  What I am going to suggest to you is that up until you feel into this vast field of bliss, all you are feeling IS potential.  You are not feeling what the deity or Creator felt when it brought this vast field into actualization (or some part of it) You are only experiencing it in its state of rest prior to manifesting (or creating).  Because we are "it" in miniature form,  as individuals carved from the larger block of the divine, our task is also to draw off this energy in order to create. When potential energy meets intent, manifestation begins its FIRST leg of manifestation.  To reach full manifestation or creation, itmust also move through the feminine.  The feminine must be brought into this, and the feminine is so often seen as that force that births the world of things into being.  She is alone able to bear the spark of the masculine into its fullest potential.  Without her, "he" is merely up in those clouds very frustrated, very full of potential, and certainly probably more than just a little frustrated!   I say this in a joking way, but also in a very serious way because when creation is short circuited, frustration emerges as a very natural result.  When you look at epochs where one sexual characteristic predominated you also see a drift into distortion and even madness.  We NEED both sides of the coin in order to realize the fullness of divinity.  We NEED to create.  Creating is NOT just an egoic activity but can become what it was meant to be; a fulfillment of the divine presence.  How it happens depends on what is being created.  In some cases you may be creating on object, a book, a poem, art work, a business, a family, an idea, or a new way to assemble a motor or a theory on how something in the world works. All of this is creative....just as all of life is creative.  But we do not know the full scope of creation until we ourselves take this bliss field and make it into something.  We do this all the time to form events and to bring all of our existences into some new day or level of fulfillment.  Divinity, I say, is not complete until this is done.

When we create we bring intent into the great mystery of the feminine.  It is in her energy that we can imagine vast realms or possibilities.  Her body is the world of phenomenon, she is the Mother of the world.  So as we bring this abstract form of bliss into the world, we are entraining the masculine into the feminine currents and the result is an explosion of ideas and inspiration.  In the same way that your own inner inspiration follows the balancing of the left and right hemispheres of your brain as we have learned that the brain has to do in order to invent and to become inspired, and just as the two hemispheres of the brain mirror the masculine and feminine aspects of our dual natures and the seemingly dual nature of the cosmos, we are effectively dealing with powerful energies that can help us to bring new forms into being.  This same cycle of manifestation can be seen in how babies are made in the physical, but it is also rooted in our bodies, our brains, in how the positive energy moves to the negative, how the hot moves to the cold in thermal dynamics, and how events are created through the circular energy that moves from the inception to manifestation.

Our understanding of divinity is incomplete until we learn the full circuit that this energy flows or follows.  As the two dance and move one through the other in what seems a dual movement, the truth is that the entire world is supported by endless cycles of this dance happening at very small scales and very large ones.  I am of the mind that you can see the result of their presence in all things.  It is a center point of the creator that is buried in everything.  It is a point with no point but many points, a giant dizzying hologram where one piece cleaved from the whole contains the entirety of the whole in its smallest most seemingly insignificant drop or sliver.

Here is where this act can be your teacher, so follow carefully......

What you create is not necessarily ascended master material. In fact, there is a lot that we have done in creating that has brought terrible nightmares.  We have certainly created this, but you see, it is a gift that we have that we can do this.  This is just how important freewill is, and you can learn from what you create by stepping back and looking at the ramifications or results that your own creations have had.  It is true that what you create will be a snap shot of all that you are in this moment, of what you are capable of conceiving and as a result, the material that you have not yet refined in yourself will affect HOW you create.  THis is the tricky part, because in the same way that a clod of dirt in a hose will color the water coming out of it, so too does your own unexamined and more subconscious material color what you create.  Until you bring awareness of these things, you are caught in a cycle of creating with what that dirt clod offers and attracts.  You create, and that creation itself has a magnetic quality attracting all manner of things.  If an artist, what you create will naturally attract a certain type of viewer or person to it.  The life you create does the same thing. If you do not like what you see in your life, look deep within because there is something there that is effecting what you create, even if it is not intentional.  Philip in his gospel (found in 1945 in the Nag Hammadi scroll cache) said that these things in us make us do what we do not want to do and keeps us from doing what we want to do.  So true.  And thus, what you create will be a mirror of all that you are right now, examined or not.  The trick here is to develop awareness of ourselves, to see beyond the dross to what could be or at the very least that there could be something different.  When you reach this place, you are in a perfect position to begin the work that will enable your own consciousness to glimpse broader realms of your own being and of the divine cosmic order.  As we do this, it is as though we realize that it is we who are spinning the web of our lives and can better be able to heal and make the change which will bring us closer to creator which also has the benefit of highlighting the creator within us all.  So no matter where you are in all of this, you are creating the web as you go.  If you can step back and learn from your life and what you create, you can learn to create anew.  You can utilize the world and your place in it for great learning opportunities.  to do this means you have to be very honest and also humble.  If you are headstrong and feel you KNOW how things are, you will be less open to what may have ben eluding you, the blindness that sets in around each of us at each and every moment so long as the blinders stay on.

The thing for me is to realize that this circuitry is right here and right now.  It gives me pause.  WHat did I create today?  Did I help others to help themselves or did I use misplaced compassion to get them to a place I thought they needed to be based on my own set of rules or operative directives?  Did I do what each great teacher does, which is to remind others what was already within them to know and then be a source of inspiration, or did I just parrot a bunch of techniques or traditions just because someone else says that is the way things are?  No matter WHAT I do, I will always be making decisions based on who and what I am.  In this, I can be or do no other.  I am also a being both limited and limitless.  What do I choose to create?  I have a certain span of time here on the planet.  What does my own ego find important? What does my higher self say is important?  How does all this mesh?  How do I strike a healthy balance between all these parts so all of me comes along with no part discarded but healed and brought into its higher realization?

Thales the Presocratic philosopher said that all things are full of gods.  I very much feel that he was expressing a deep truth to the workings of consciousness and the world which is that even in the tiniest thing, there is a larger expression throughout many boundless realms and realities.  If it is true that time is largely illusory, and if what I feel is true, then time spreads out like a vast blanket and we can only touch one point in the physical at one time (at this time).....and yet by looking left or right I can see what other portions of this blanket offers. Perhaps an atom has endless manifestations just as do we, that EVERYTHING that IS is bound up in this fulfillment cycle that is the very basis of creation.  I know that might be a bit much to take in especially if you are used to thinking about humans being the only ones with self determination, a soul, or the ability to reincarnate.  But what I see in the universe is that everything is of a piece.  It is all connected and it is the essence of this connection, of what lies within it that serves to connect it to everything else that is a consistency within all of creation.  THere are no exceptions.  Of course this is what I perceive, what I sense in the Tao and beyond. For as crazy as it may seem, I cannot discount it, and I rather think Thales was right and that he was not taken to idle speculation when he had so few things to say, which makes what he did say all the more important to at least consider.  And once you open your mind to this vast realm of possibility you are standing at the headwaters of a very powerful river which itself leads to an even more vast sea which in turn opens into an ocean which is touched upon by the boundless realm of space.  So as I create, those creations must then have their larger expression through the conical nature of consciousness.....creation which expands outward, or spirals outward and upward.

Buddha was fond of stating how what we do in life matters, what we create in each day is important.  I think he is right.  I think that the act of joining the field of potential to meaningful and conscious creation is the very model for knowing the divine.  For as much as we might want to discount one aspect in favor of another, they are all connected and move evenly together. When we do this, when we bring awareness to what it is we are doing here, we also shed some light on our own actions and thinking that go to make up the divine circuit that moves from intent or potential to manifestation or realization.  I don't think they are complete without each other and just as the particle and wave in physics expresses an aspect of the same thing, so too does potential and realization suggest the completion of the universe in one seemingly insignificant drop.  So the world unfolds like this wonderful canvas and we get to create upon it!  What do I get to create? What juiciness awaits?

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

Cellular

Inside each atom there resides what SEEMS to be two energetic polarities.  These are expressed as particle and wave, as the light and dark, the cool and hot….they are the entirety of everything.  Inside your atoms, what is mostly empty space, are atoms which are moving at the speed of light.  They are caught up in a field of energy, which is the particle expression.  Within them is a wave.  Within all of this is sheer bliss.  Every single atom in your delicious body is simply bursting with this bliss.  Riding atop all of this swarm of nearly infinite activity is your awareness.  You think you are singular….and you are.  But inside of you is this wave and its spinning at the speed of light. Stationary.  And its helping to organize your body moment by moment.  DNA, weak and strong forces, quantum effects, all kinds of amazing things are happening inside the world that is you…a literal universe.  Underlying all of this is a passion, a bliss so complete you would turn red faced if I were to tell you about how deep all of this goes.  

So the whole universe is doing this.  Its a world of energy that is in bliss.  Its waiting for you.  Its not beating down your door.  Its not standing outside like a couple of eager visitors from the local church wanting to hand you bible tracts.  Its perfectly in tune with its own bliss and knows in perfect timing that you will get there and begin to facilitate the flow through the energy center that you are, this glorious orb, sun, of light. Or an ocean of wonder-filled movement.  Particle seeking wave, wave folding into particle…yin and yang continually embracing and being embraced by…..perfectly cooperative, not experiencing any strife of trouble.  So simple, they resolve into their most basic essence.  They become much more elemental.  And beautiful.  And in this perfect kind of love, they wait for you, for that day when it hits you and you wonder how you kept it out of your awareness so long.

And on that day, every particle of you will burst in a sea of bliss inside of you.  The universe will make love to you and you will be amazed.  And pleased.  And glad.  And this, you see, is the dangerous energy some call kundalini.  Its not the energy that is dangerous.  Its your own knots and beliefs that are, for when you surrender to its perfect bliss, is when the path becomes effortless.

Beyond Ego

Looking back some, the process of awakening has been a blessing.  There were some very difficult periods, times when I thought I was going mad, but I stuck with it, had to….there was no going back to Kansas.  So much of my own coming to a greater place of peace was learning how to find a new arrangement of self.  Ego slipped to the back of the bus, stopped driving and was happier in its lesser role within the larger me.  Kundalini itself has not been what has been described as some as being dangerous.  Ro my own experience, kundalini is our evolutionary spiral, a kind of destiny in a way….since its encoded into our very cells and waits for the time that it can bloom from within.  

Every struggle I have ever had always resolved back to ego, and K. was only involved in a coincidental way (it was the bearer of truth until I learned to align to its truth—-the pain and trouble I felt was a lack of alignment to IT—which is merely the higher frequency asserting itself).  This success, if I am to call it that, has been possible as a result of an unconditional act of surrender, of finding my place in my larger being, which is that I am really quite small but like a cell in a still larger body.  When I can stop pretending I know who and what I am, I am suddenly free to BE it. No effort required. No thought, no method.  I used to love listening to that song by Van Morrison entitled In The Garden.  In it, he reaches a state of samadhi along with a friend or lover.  They were sitting out in a garden without a guru or teacher “just you and me and nature…”  In the process of letting go, all old hurts rose also.  I bid them farewell, kissed them and wrapped them up and freed them to the universe.  Born again, like small children with a new future.  Their freedom was my freedom, and the cords that were cut went back to my first year of life and as each was loosened I could feel, energetically, how my past was loosened from them and I suspected that all probably pasts, alternate pasts of my own paths not taken were themselves transformed by this quite sudden healing and loosening of those karmic ties.  Increasingly, freedom became something that resolved into a vibrant and rich delicacy that was finer than any morsel you could imagine.  I wanted this for everyone, but I also knew the path isn’t easy…..but is getting easier….and different….as we each in our turn awaken.  

During a hard period in my process, I had a guide enter my field of awareness, someone whom I would call my “zen guy” who appeared and sat looking at me before he explained that the process I thought I was engaged in wasn’t such a difficult one.  I was just making it difficult as a result of my lack of awareness (there is that word again).  He explained that there was this vibrant template that was continually changing, evolving, that was the result of thousands and thousands of years worth of seeking and earnest prayer and meditation.   “For you, the problem is so simple it does not appear as a problem at all; you need only take one small step into this blueprint in order to know it.  The new human is you, waiting for you to animate it….”  There wasn’t anything for me to do except accept it.  It was just that simple.  I had made all of this self improvement to be like ploughing a field or splitting wood; it was hard arduous work.  I was ploughing a field, blind, not realizing it had already been prepared for me.  It wasn’t my job to do that….but ego had taken it upon itself in its own sense of needing to control and be in on the deal, to make it feel as though it was doing what was important to do.  When I let go, all of that perception began to change as I learned that some things are simply beyond my pay grade.  And that is okay.  It is as it should be.  My zen guy explained it was much simpler than I had even thought.  With the light of awareness, I was able to step out of my old conceptions and into something new and different.  What if it really IS simpler than we had thought?  All of this changed when I could simply change how I felt, how I reacted, how I let go the need to be so engaged in the way I had been in the past.  I was beginning to get the memo….

All trouble I have had has been the result of ego, a plant whose roots are deep within the self. Through it I have seen shadow when I could have also seen light.  It has been utterly invested in all the harm and hurt done to it and it has been a driving force in developing emotional attachments to hurt and trauma which we call negative karma.  As long as these patterns remain embedded in us, we are prisoners to what this energy attracts as well as how it makes us feel and which Kundalini can highlight in the most perfect of ways (which it does by its simply setting up the perfect divine vibration until all the other dissonant parts are dropped so that the whole self can ring like it rings, vibrates like IT vibrates….which is what I call Divine Alignment….and its then that authentic peace is known)  

Ego can be transplanted, thankfully, and this seems to work wonders. Fear, anxiety, pain….all of this is not the result of kundalini, but the resistance to it, to a very natural flow of energy coming in. It is a shift in awareness that goes from the smallest cell to the largest form within.  No part of you is spared, and the only way is through unconditional surrender.  Keeping it simple within has allowed me to slip through many doorways that would have been shut.  And through each one, love has emerged.  This is a complex love full of sensuality, peace, passion, and a desire that would make most run red-faced from the room.  And yet, we are this.  Sometimes overpowering and difficult to balance, we grow used to 24/7 bliss, and learn to anchor this on the planet.  For you, for us, for all of it, because all of these awakenings are setting up a resonant frequency.  More will awaken in their own time.  And when that happens, there will be so many of us we will have festivals and bands that are getting the vibe…and we wont feel like such strange off-planet creatures but a wonderful emergent group leading the way in our own simple fashion.  

One of the simplest ways of getting quiet and feeling into that part where there seems to be nothing is to breath.  Breath, some say, is prana, but prana is prana, regardless of breath.  What breath does, in all truth, is it quiets your mind.  It helps you to settle.  And if you breath gently and fully, you will reach a place where thought slows and even stops.  If you breath through each nostril with a finger holding each nostril for four breaths per nostril, you will very likely see what I mean just how calming this can be.  I had a student who was anxious and I had her do this and she asked me what I wad doing to her; she said it felt like opium.  When we return to this centered place, we can feel those currents of energy in us that were a moment before crowded out through endless thought, worry, and uncertainty. All of this is quite simple, but we make of it a complexity that it need not be.  We are gloriously beautiful beings, shimmering and pulsing with the universe.  We are both individual and universal, and this is the wonderful thing.  While I do not agree that this world is an illusion, I have always held that this world is a CREATION and what we are making is a reflection of where we are karmically.  We are on the forward edge of something remarkable. 

Rumi, the great illuminated poet, once said there is a field…..I will meet you there.