The Big Adjustment - Coping With Kundalini

Awakening can be a sudden and bewildering change that pushes a relentless process of clearing stored emotional material, ultimately with the light at the tunnel being a better more peaceful life with bliss as the centerpiece of this new level of attainment.

Right?

While the "rise" of awakening can be a very quick event, it instigates a transformative process that can be years in the making.  One of the big challenges among the many that come with awakening is how to BE in the world.  Most specifically, after awakening, how do you go on doing what you have always done?  So much is irrevocably changed within you; how you see, how you respond, how you interact with the world around you. Its a big shift that brings with it a lot of self examination about what it was you have been up to for all these years. Often you can be left feeling at odd ends about your work, your relationships, and how to move forward with awakening as the "new normal."
Most importantly to bear in mind is that everything has changed. Trying to go back to the old way tends to repeat old patterns and methods.  This is a wonderful opportunity to be brave and leap into the breach, into the void of the future in a new way. I know as well as you do, that if you are going through awakening there is a new aspect being brought to bear.  This new "element" within the self is discovered while awakening.  It is itself the nonlinear, more feminine aspect within consciousness.  It is what I think of as a missing link in our own awareness and consciousness that sparks great change. You can see just how big a change it is because this unfolding of this part of you results in events happening differently. You are interfacing with reality in a different way, or perhaps I should say, in a much more efficient way than ever before.  Like what you think has a way of coming to pass very quickly.  We refer to this as synchronicity.  It is in fact a kind of "upgrade" to our own native ability to co-create with reality.  You create your reality. Now, though, its just a touch more seemingly magical because of this added and once missing element.

So the trick, I find, is to not try to go back to the old ways. You have been changed.  Period. Let the new filter into you and as a result of it, even though you are different from the masses, you will feel a flow and freedom as well as wonder joy and awe about this new life. And the more that you are able to anchor this sense of being within, the more it surrounds you in your life.  Slowly, or even quickly, your energy body is released, cleansed, of the hundreds of hitches that has gotten caught up in the co-creative cycling that is your karma. Letting it go clears the decks and makes thing easier in direct proportion to the mass of inner material released.  You are now better able to NOT know what the future holds, willing to ride the wave of bliss and maybe even find how perfect things happen when you are in this zone.  Trusting.  Happy.  A little breathless, intense sometimes, hard at other times, too, yes, but getting better and better.

But.  Sometimes you want to take what you may still love to do and adapt it to your new life. I can tell you that in my own experience, so much changes.  If you are a business owner like I have been, being able to steer the ship in a way that supports you in basic ways as well as all of the new ways can be a daunting task.  This is where listening to the force within will guide.  I was an artist in production. Nothing got done that I did not myself do. I worked 80 hour weeks and loved it, and yet I brought to the work a lot of issues that disapeared once awakening came along. I was left lost for about a year, bereft of creative juices, new ideas, or even the drive, the old fire in the belly.  Intuitively, I knew that the fire in the belly could be supplanted by a different kind of fire.  It would attract a different kind of client just as it would support my new life. Before I went in a very linear fashion, a rather rational approach to all of this. But post awakening, I saw a world of new opportunities for collaboration and leveraging my brand as well as my own creativity by working with others with similar interests as mine.  I found that instead of being so aggressive, I simply did what I had always done; let the work speak for itself and let the chips fall where they may.  If I needed someone to help market the work, someone would come along in perfect timing.  It has always happened this way.  I don't go looking for resources, I am now attracting them magnetically. Less about money and more about having fun and enjoying life, I have opened the door to a world of possibility.  I simply say, "bring me the highest" and for the time and the place I am in, it almost always has. All of this requires me to step back and let the universe work its magic. This involves faith I think.

Along with this change is also what I experienced as my mind entering into a persistent state of stillness and quietude.  To get there, I had to ride some pretty serious waves of bliss for extended periods. This took place over about a two to three year period that culminated not in ego death, but in what I call ego rearrangement. Its important to understand that there is no such thing as ego death. Those who use it are trying to explain what feels like might be a death, but is in truth a gentle but tragic-feeling change that asks us to allow ego to drift into the background.  Once that is done enough, the self will feel immense relief as well as a number of new benefits to consciousness and how you feel on a day to day basis.  But for a time, there is also a kind of "spacey" quality to your mind.  I forgot things very quickly.  On the one hand, the chemistry behind this was important for letting go, but try getting through a day with a long list of things that need to be done.  I have found that I make written lists so that my bliss state remains without any feelings of tension or anxiety about missing something.  I can say, though, that there were many times when I was in that "daze" of the quiet mind that I would end up being in all the right places, a little embarrassed to realize that I had forgotten an appointment even though I was there at just the right time.  I found that the more I let go, the more flawless this worked. But it didn't work every time.  I was not always in the perfect flow, so being able to set up a note system has been a nice way to remind me when I am soaring through the day.

I was pleased to find that this state of mind was described by Zen monks as the goal of reaching samadhi.  It was a necessary precursor, they said.  This is often referred to in Buddhism and the Vedic tradition as the "empty head" or "no-head," suggesting that the normal operations of the mind as a linear thinking rationalizing organ have been disrupted. In my own experience where I have carefully observed the chemistry at work in my body, I identified the chief compound involved in this surrender state as being primarily dopamine.  I arrived at this as a result of a lot of careful research and study into the effects of dopamine as well as opiates on the body, and all opiates have had an analogous enough effect as dopamine since the signature of bliss in the body is far more complex than any one compound- this includes hormones as well as oxytocin, and even small amounts of adrenaline in order to modify the spacey quality inherent in dopamine).J. Krishnamurti described that he went into a "declutched state" where his mind simply refused to work.  He would often forget names, would look at himself in the mirror and simply not recognize who it was that was there (this happened to me several times).  This state persisted for some time, and while it moderated later, he retained an aspect of it throughout his life. And I think that its a necessary state to have in order to deal with cosmic consciousness.  You simply cannot rationalize your way through your day and expect to get through in one piece.  Linear thought becomes the short-order cook in your life, very good for specific short-termed tasks, but terrible for the bigger stuff.  The Zen master Taisen Deshimuro explains that people who are rational and "mental" have a lot of trouble with awakening.  They have trouble just being a monk, too, but its because they  use the mind in a way that is no longer compatible with awakening. You just need to be much bigger than the narrow linear mind. You have to be bigger-hearted, more soulful, to navigate the energy in greater peace.

For as much as I like to be my own boss, awakening sparked in me an interest in working with others, so I have.  I have been able to bring to my work in teaching something that few teachers do.  School is still very much a mechanistic process.  Some of it is necessary in order to teach technique in art, for example.  You simply have to learn how to lay down paint well, or to know just how to move a tool across a surface in order to get a smooth surface in clay.  This is what dancers study for years, what ballerinas will repeat endlessly in order to train themselves to be the best they can be. Its important, but its only one side to the coin.  Along with this is the human soul that is part of our creative expression, and how we access creativity.  Instead of teaching through pressure and the fear of deadlines, I create an environment of freedom that includes personal responsibility to ones own work.  To be an artist, you cannot hope to succeed if you don't have discipline within you as a choice instead of imposed from outside.  So doing this work, while very different from how I was trained, I have used and I have hoped that it will yield results for the hundreds of students whose lives that have transited my own through my work. As more and more students "come back" after graduation by asking to be 'friended' through Facebook or through other forms of social media, I see how what I do has been catching on.

Creativity goes crazy when it is stripped of fear and is instead infused with joy and wonder.  Something very special happens.  And I have been dedicated to supporting this way of teaching because I know how great it is to experience creativity in this more expansive way.  Each of us has genius inside of us.  I know you might not agree, but I have seen it when someone pokes their heads out of their own fear and desire to play it safe.

Another aspect of my teaching work has been to do group projects so that my students can realize a much broader range or scope to a finished work.  The result has been that we have made hundreds of pieces for an installation, larger-scale work that has grabbed a lot of attention by other students and faculty as well as the world at large.  By learning how to collaborate my students also learn how to work with each other in an interesting dynamic that involves give and take, as well as making choices and going with them.  They do less overthinking their choices while in the process and learn how to follow their instincts, an important non-rational aspect to creative work.  Ultimately, my hope is to empower my students so that they might develop greater confidence in themselves and use their experience with me as an example for something they want to do later in life.

Collaboration means inclusiveness.  If you find yourself hungry for working with groups of people as so many who awaken do, you might serve as an inspiring presence that suggests that while the way forward may not always be known, things have a way of working themselves out perfectly when we let go of expectation and just throw ourselves in projects with joy and enthusiasm.  It might be that your work sustains you but you find that it is not terribly rewarding.  I think you have two choices, either you find a way to work so that its more interesting, or you find something beyond your work that fills the bill for you.  Between my creative work and the five sites that I manage for it, my spiritual work and the three blogs I manage for those writings, along with my work teaching and being a father, I find that life is just packed. I am constantly tuning and fine tuning my inner work in order to harmonize with a life that continues to change and clarify.  Things change as they need to, and the timing always seems to be just right.  I know that when I say I go with the flow that it sounds like I am somehow inactive, it is less that I am inactive as I am at a deeper level very engaged in the river of my life in a way that does not involve the same level of physical manipulation needed.  I am simply not pushing the river as much, but finding ways to be "like water" (thank-you Bruce Lee) and to use the flow of my life in as harmonious a way as I can.  I'm human, so its not perfect, but in the imperfection lies an opportunity to know more about myself as long as I am willing to be honest with myself.

The answer to coping may not be in trying to do things the old way, but to navigate life in a new way.  This new way may require you to have faith, to not always know what the future holds but to find that the more you are able to suspect that a"bad" outcome one day is just setting you up for something not yet in your present. I recently had a pretty significant equipment failure, but instead of letting it get to me, I saw that there had been a series of these odd little glitches happening that made me feel like I wasn't supposed to be doing the work I was doing.  For reasons I do not know yet, the work that I would have done had the failure not happened, probably wont be needed.  Thus, this has given me two additional days away from my production work in order to get ready for an open studio event.  I have learned that when I go with this flow, there is always something that comes along that shows me that had it gone differently, it would not have been "right" or that the flow of events were perfectly arranged in the way they were for certain other events to happen as they did.  Without the equipment failure, I would have missed something, or something important would likely not take place.  I don't know what that is, but I have faith that everything is unfolding as it should.  In the old days, I would be banging my head against the wall.  The flow of events have been sufficient to put me where I need most to be.  And sometimes the right place is not something that I might even want or recognize as important at the time, but often winds up being significant in some important way.  So the job that you lose, which is seen as a tragedy, also means that you wind up taking off time and find yourself swimming in a pool with someone who is to be a major player in the next chapter in your life.  Had you not lost your job you would not be swimming in the pool at just that moment meeting your new contact in perfect timing. These things happen with great frequency the more we can open ourselves up to being available to them.

What you might lose, you also win.  There are compensations in this new life.  Limits tend to go out the door as you ask yourself, "What can't I do?"  And that is just the spirit, right?

Energy Symptoms

eause of where I am I often pick up on these mass movements of energy which are more the result of the Collective moving than anything else. We want to attribute the sun, planetary movements, but its more the result of a collective interaction going on that isat once very complex and also very simple. Taken at the right dimension, its just a twitch, but taken closer in, its an intense wave.  

And I have been feeling it. 

Nausea is not uncommon when there is a large amount of energy coming through. Most often when kundalini is getting ready to rev up, I get sick to my stomach.  The next day, it hits.  So what do I do to deal with it?

I breathe.  I breathe deep and I allow myself to move into a sense of expansiveness.  I imagine or visualize channels that are wide open.  Nothing is constricted.  I have found over the last couple of days that I am often unconsciously tight or slightly tense without realizing it. When I relax, I then find I relax even deeper, and I keep going into it until all is flow. Its surprising just how deep you can take it or how deep you can go into it.  And its very very good.  So try to breathe while holding one nostril closed for four or five breaths and then reverse and do the same for the other; if you were feeling a little uptight before, chances are you will be much more relaxed once you are done.  If you are not relaxed, you either need to get quieter in your mind or/and do another set of the alternating nostril breathing.  

For me, because of kundalini, bliss has been going off the chart.  This is tantric energy and it can get challenging to deal with it in a way that is constructive.  Again, the same operative applies;  I bring the energy upwards and feel myself doing these panting breaths that I was shown one night while in meditation. Its maybe funny, but I was shown the image of a large cat; a jaguar.  In it, the cat breathed in a panting sort of way.  I found much to my surprise that I could move vast amounts of energy this way.  Imagining the cat also helped somehow.  For me. You might be different. Being Native American before, this animal stuff comes naturally to me.  To each ones own. Its all blessed if it bears you to where you need to be.  

I find that I am visualizing a means for releasing the energy.  I feel it flowing out of my hands and into a goddess form.  In truth, the image is not very clear for me because I am in truth feeling an essence more than a form, something so broad and expansive that its seems to ripple out beyond comprehension, which is what all consciousness does.  For me, the essence does it.  I am touching the collective feminine and this takes the energy the easiest and most gracefully. I am grounding and flowing a current from the sky, which I am, into the earth, which is the feminine. For someone else, it could be any number of other images.  Perhaps seeing energy as a water stream flowing out to the sea.  

For me, this tends to increase energetic potential, and none of it is negative.  It can be challenging when the tantric flow is upped three or four fold. Imagining the energy moving strongly helps to eliminate the harder feelings and helps to clear up nausea as well as fuzzy head, inability to concentrate, etc.  

Bests to you….

The Dark Night

There is this phenomenon in awakening called the Dark Night Of The Soul.  Lots of talk about it, but I don’t know if people understand just why it comes on.  

Its ego that drives this. See, in awakening, there is this huge thing pushing into you….its now inevitable.  Its the universe.  Its your higher being coming to call and you chose this even if you don’t remember.  Its yours, and now this larger energy is filling you and in order for the pain and hurt and strain to go away, you have to submit.  You have to surrender.  You have to let go.  The night goes on for as long as you make it.  Ego, which identifies with all of the things that serve to limit and narrow the channels of the bliss that is about to fill you, creates an unbelievable level of strain and this translates into pain and hurt.  Its not physical, but many who go through this often go to doctors.  Its energetic and its just that strong.  But its identification with ego that causes the dark night.  Attached to ego is the identification with emotional attachments that are karmic in nature.  All of this weighs you down and is NOT the vibe of the universe filling you.  You have to let it all go in order to feel this energy flow through you unencumbered.  Until you do this, it will hurt.  And you will feel fear and worry.  Thats ego telling you that you are small and this thing is BIG.  Well, in truth, its just YOU and YOU are unbelivably big. And beautiful.  And when you realize its just a shift in consciousness that this energy is pushing for, you just let go.  This is just how ingrained ego is.  And as goes ego, so goes your karmic attachments.  And all these attachments are largely unexamined things that you have shoved down not just in your life but for lifetimes.  And kundalini is the wakeup call.  

Do yourself a favor; trust this.  It might feel like something is invading you, but its because you have so blocked it out that you didn’t realize it WAS you.  This can suggest just how revolutionary awakening can be.  It shows you just how you you have not been.  All along.  You singk into authentic self and as you limp off thinking about how you have ben spending your life with things that you thought were important, it dawns on you. 

This process also teaches you the physical alchemy you need to develop in order to mirror the bliss that is on its way.  You can do this by surrendering.  You DO NOT need to know.  It will show you.  Like the perfect lover, it will gently and lovingly show you THE way.  And you simply have to understand there really IS only one way:  ITS WAY.  Align align align.  FEEL.  When you do that, and just that, you will be led to this new place and out of the dark night.  COnsider that St Teresa of Avilla spent decades bed ridden.  She was an early christian mystic who most certainly had an awakening, as did St. John The Cross.  It isn’t that there isn’t anything to do….its that you have to realize just how deeply you must surrender and trust that this is all divine and that whatever shadow you see exists with the ego and its overidentification with problems and issues.  Its like surrendering to love, to a lover.  You might be scared shitless at first, but in the end you just have to let go and let love. And that is how it works.  Ego is never destroyed, though, its just moved to the back of the bus.  And there, it works very well.  Then, just on the other side of this struggle is a broad expanse.  I suspect the dark night comes when the ego suddenly realizes just how close it is to what it thinks is obliteration.  Its not, but its not so sure.  But if you can trust what I say, it can be easier.  In another post I will tell you some things that helped me cope with a dark night.  I didn’t even know WHAT it was I was going through (I later learned the term after the fact), but some things help ease it until you get the whole ego thing down. 

Happy Motoring!

Coping With The "Fallout"

Awakening.  Look, its an adjustment. It reorders you.  You spend your life a certain way and you wake up and realize you have been living this life that was….well….a cynic would say it was a lie.  I think its a little more innocent than that….but no less “devastating” when you find ego slipping away and everything you worked so hard for dissolving.  And then it starts to get better.  Wow.  Did that even make any sense?  Reborn.  Resurrected. 

I am an artist.  I am what I make.  I AM the product as much as what I produce.  People buy into my work, but they also buy into me.  That’s a kind of appreciation that sometimes leads to adulation.  Its not always bad necessarily.  Its only hard when the ego gets into the game and revs everything up.  THEN you begin to start to believe things that just aren’t there or that are real.  There are people who love what you do, and they buy into it.  Appreciation.  Innocent. I always reigned myself in.  I was self effacing.  In truth, I didn’t value myself….and thus in a weird way I didn’t value the work by extension….and YET I was able to sell the work.  It was my life. Make the art, sell the art.  Make it, sell more….and seek to make a living as an artist and thrive.  Somewhere deep down I knew I was pushing myself out into a limelight that I didn’t completely agree with because I was doing it for all the wrong reasons.  I was doing it for approval in a place where I was not approving of myself (self love).   But it wasn’t quite right.  And when kundalini came along, boy things got difficult.  So much stopped making any sense.  

Suddenly its as though things aren’t so important.  Spirit was the thing.  HOW I lived my life as sheer art was THE thing.  Being better, seeking, digging deeper, and KNOWING that I had so much untapped potential that I was barely using left me in a state of…..feeling like what is the use?  This wasn’t hugely egoistic, though.  I recognized the creative potential had been unleashed just as the bliss had been unleashed. They were connected at deep levels.  I floated.  I grappled with all I had created and built and found myself tearing it all down in a sense, conceptually, spiritually.  I had built a house on a foundation that no longer served me.  At first, this was very hard. As ego dropped away, though, I found a new way.  I began to use creativity in a way I had not before.  I had touched upon it at certain points in my work, but because of how long it takes to develop a body of work, that afternoon flash of inspiration often meant working to develop a new body of work that could take two to five years to develop, flesh out, market, improve upon, and all the rest.  I was now waking up with not a flash but a continual abiding flame.  I used the creative as a way of dissolving blocks.  I began to channel the energies of my awakening to create in a new way, and it was all very healing.  New work began to emerge, and there was an explosion of creativity.  I had more ideas than I knew what to do with.  I could barely keep up.  Then I reached a point where I asked what’s the use?  How can I keep up with this?  I was having trouble being organized. I was encountering the empty headed state that so often happens, and is so vital in this reordering of the self and of finding authentic peace. I was still trying to work my way through all of this. I wound up feeling like I needed someone who was very practical who could supply this very no-nonsense approach so I could be free to just dream….and do what I do best, which is to birth these new ideas, forms.  I had been wearing about five different hats prior to this.  I was the maker, the studio manager, the publicist, the salesperson, the accountant.  I packed the work and made sure it got to its destination.  I taught classes.  I gave tours. I did outreach.  Good lord, how could I keep up with all of this?  I found I really like the solitary act of creating.  I am good at it.  When I can remain in that zone, all is flow. I realized I had used art as my practice….I always said I never bought into systems, but I had used the utter freedom of the creative to create this space for me to be free from ANY notion or rule about how its supposed to be done. I jealously guarded this, and my studio became like a temple where I left all worries at the door.  So in a sense, yes, this art was my inner work in a sense, combined with very real physical work and a different kind of meditative practice (I am realizing this as I type this out….) This creative work also helped to create a sense of unity within myself, one which was not dependent upon a dogma or belief system.  It helped with my awakening….and yet, I felt lost in a sea of stuff and my mind which had been idled somewhat was getting used to being more of an observer to everything as I created in a whole new way. 

I continue to grapple with this.  Its not easy.  Its not easy to sell the work or myself, but for very different reasons than before.  I esteem the work in a way I hadn’t before.  I esteem it in a more objective way.  I see its value, I see how others of a given taste are attracted and how this is all related.  And yet, somehow, it remains a bit of a challenge when what Id like to do is look out the window and hold onto this bliss and think how I can be of service to my fellow humans and to the earth in this wonderful time so full of promise, teetering on the edge of so much.  

I think that by learning how to adjust and to move forward in a new way without too much inner arguments and chaos is very positive.  Being brave in taking new steps, making new work, and not being afraid to abandon those things that sold well but that no longer serve the highest, all are part of an evolving….”formula” that is less written in stone as it is the result of constant adjustments and flexibilities that lead to a more fluid approach to a changing landscape.  

If you are going through similar kinds of things, all I can say is that the old work may no longer work.  You might be like me and feel like you just want to go live on an emerald island with fish and waves and sun and art and a simpler kind of life. I think with all that I am aware of I am wasting my gift of being an energy worker, a therapist in body work.  Its a road that remains not taken…..and perhaps its because I know that most modalities are based on someone’s take and I have little patience for systems and methods even though I know I would merely adapt any system to my own use.   I seem to crave simplicity now.  It all seems so complicated when I look  back sometimes.  I like simple.  Direct.  Authentic.  Alive.  Sometimes I feel like I am still being rewired and am constantly in a state of flux.  Whatever it is I am becoming, I like it. 24/7 bliss was hard at first….the ego could not believe such a thing was even possible….but it is.  I feel like some newer creature so full of passion and love for life, so much rich and brilliant potential as the cocoon of the past life drops away and I remind myself to not let ego make me feel sad for how much utter change has taken place.  Look forward.  Always forward.  After all, there aint no going back to Kansas.  And as I sit and feel into the enormity that lives inside of me I wonder how to make of it a life that reflects this.  Somewhere I live simply yet also live large….

I know its been a bit of a ramble, but knowing how to let go of something you have spent so much effort in developing (running a business has been an extraordinary effort….I have a friend who is a contractor and he has to make a million dollars a year before he makes his first dollar….which tells you the kind of overhead he has in his business…its almost unbelievable how much you have to do just to keep the lights on sometimes….).  Anyway.  Perhaps it will be of some help….

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.

Working the Painbody

The energy body along with the body, thinks.  The ancients knew this and modern psychologists are coming to this conclusion.  We aren't just a mind....and we shove material down into the energy body, the matrix of awareness that can cause these repressed feelings and memories to reemerge as disease in the body many years later.  IN Chinee medicine we know that movement helps us to release old hardened knots...old issues that have just rested there and were allowed to fossilize. Disciplines like Qi Gung (also "gong") are known for how they keep the field clear.  And when you awaken, you become much more aware of how your energy body does think and feel.  It was, for me, as though I was aware of these old issues much like they were organs in my body....except not something good....something that had been allowed to "live" there but did me no good. These little bits of broken cosmic code only served to confuse the matrix of my body with material that never seemed to do it any good.

Painbody is the result of these hurts, their collective voice all screaming inside of us.  Again, when I awoke, I gradually became more aware of this hurt in my body.  At a certain point when someone actually took my hurt off me energetically (this is another story) through an act of surrogacy, I was allowed a few moments to feel what it was like without the pain.  Then the pain came back after this healer put the energy back on.  What had happened was my system was allowed to "reset" so that I could be more aware of this pain my awareness.  It had been so constant and so present, I simply didn't feel it anymore.  Imagine putting your head in a vice for 30 years.  After a while, you would simply stop feeling that the vice was even there. I had a great aunt who lived by the railroad tracks.  Trains were coming by all the time.  During the War, they would be spaced a mile apart as they made their way to the shipping lanes of Newport News as tanks and jeeps were shipped overseas.  One day, without looking, she stepped out in front of a train.  People though she had committed suicide.  The truth was, she simply no longer heard the trains.  As loud as they were, her consciousness had managed to filter them entirely out.  Pretty amazing.  But we do this.

From that moment on, though, I felt my painbody in an excruciating way.  It would make me feel clammy, my head would hurt, I would feel like I might throw up.  How was it that I had managed to deal with all of this for so long?  How was I ging to deal with this intense pain throbbing inside of me 24/7?   I learned that dealing with the painbody was a matter of focus.  By allowing the bliss of the kundalini to flow I did not feel painbody for that period of time.  I found that I continued to resolve knots and blocks in my field.  I could feel them fall away.  I never really knew what they were at the time.  Sometimes I would feel a very old emotion, something from my childhood, and it was followed by a feeling of suddenly being set free somehow.  I felt lighter.  The energy flowed without being impeded.  I found that meditation would work, but meditation that helped me to shift my energy, a process where I could actually feel how my brain wave state would change.  I could feel a shift happen in my head that spread all through my body.  It was like tuning in a new station.  Once I did this, I not only was able to release pain, I was also able to feel as though I had just taken a long nap.  I was able to do this while awake, but it often meant pretending I was falling asleep.  I learned that my brain would THINK I was asleep if I was motionless for long enough periods and was tired enough. This worked best when in the early afternoon and I was very tired.  I could feel a buzzing veil fall down all around me.  It felt as though I was falling asleep in one world and waking up in another.  I often would see an aura of dark golden light around my body that was coincident with this shift.  I believe that we can all experience this shift while awake but you need to feel really tired or sleepy. Three in the afternoon seemed the perfect time for me to encounter this.  It also meant that I had to sit perfectly still for about 45 minutes and allow myself to drift.  My eyes were always closed.  I was most often awake.  Once the buzzing veil fel down around me, I could get up.  I would feel entirely refreshed and the pain would have lifted.  For longer and longer periods, I was able to relieve myself of this pain.  I later found that the pain was merely an association that i was making with a given type of energy.  I too was tuning in the pain.  I began to tune it out.  And it went away.

One of the biggest releases I had with the pain was a pain I felt in my heart.  This one was very hard.  When I began feeling it, it felt as though my physical heart was somehow encased in a rough stone coffin. The soft heart muscle would scrape against the rough insides of this stoney exterior.  It felt exactly like this. One day I managed to drop this material away at a point when I felt like I was at the end of my rope emotionally.  I was shown a memory from a past life where I had wound up blaming myself for a lot of people in my village who had gotten hurt.  While I was not directly involved, I blamed myself.  I also suspect other people also sought to blame me.  It was a peculiar kind of pain to feel.  But its had been with me since about the 1400's and in that moment, wen the material was allowed to drop, my insides felt relief from this hurt for the first time in centuries.  The heart center was liberated, and was beaming with something I can only describe as joy. It almost hurt from all this joy flowing through it.  It was as though a golden sun was shining inside of me.  This intense feeling persisted for about three days and even now I can focus on my heart and it will begin to shine in this same exact way.

Releasing pain and lessening painbody is merely removing yourself from thinking or identifying with the pain to begin with.  It isn't that you ignore what happened, its more that you realize there isn't anything you can do about it now. Its in the past.  We need to focus on now, not on something that happened so long ago.  And yet, for obvious reasons, we do.  Intent is the single most powerful tool that you can use to begin this process.  By using intent you don't even need to know HOW you are going to release it, only that you want to.  By being disciplined, you can choose the positive over the negative.  Depending on how ingrained this hurt has been, you can slowly replace hurt with joy.  This is not an overnight remedy, but its possible to have successes in the exact same way I did; these healings can happen in a glimmering, so be ready for the possibility.

Sometimes having a practice can help.  If this helps you, you can use breathwork as well as a meditative state to help bring you to the place within where change can take place.  You can imagine your painbody shrinking in size.  You can also simply feel into the calm centered bliss of the energy that flows through you.  Breath work will help to silence the mind. It can also help your own energy to flow more freely and in a less tight and chaotic way.  There is no secret to this breathwork except that long breaths in and out seem to be the most profundly relaxing since they seem to remind us that we are relaxed.  Afterall, slow and deep breathing mimics how we breath when we are asleep and at our most relaxed.  The body tends to follow how we feel and we can trick the mind into thinking its relaxed through this type of breathing.  Its simple but effective.  By simply feeling the good vibes that come from relaxation, you will be doing exactly what you need to cultivate the kinds of feelings that will help distance you from this pain.

When you do breath work, you can also imagine that your energy is going out with your breath and that you are taking in new energy, gradually replacing the old energy with good clean energy.  I often imagine pretending I am the sand along the beach and the water will come up and wash away all the junk in the sand....over and over the waves will flow into me and then out of me, and I feel cleared  I do this many times over a period of weeks, even months.  The effects are all very positive.  These can become the first cracks in a fascade that has needed some attention for a good while.  You owe it to yourself to feel better.

Letting Go

I have written on my other blog about the nature of how consciousness works, or at least one aspect. I think its an important one because it can lead to powerful change in one’s life.  The concept here is that consciousness has a duality of sorts, and it mirrors the particle/wave duality seen in physics.  Imagine that all you have known in your life has been the result of your individual or particalized awareness.  Within this well defined soap bubble, or particle of being, are all your memories, all your experiences, and all of your feelings about how everything has gone down. In this soap bubble, others’ awareness does not enter in, nor does the universe impinge upon your awareness.  Further, your beliefs about how things are based on your experience tells you that you are a nice soap bubble and nothing more.  The world happens to you.  You are the result of random chemical reactions in the physical universe.  At a certain point, though, something happens.  You reach a place where your individual bubble looks for more, aware subconsciously that there IS more, and the thin wall that separates you from the universe wears thin.  At a point this wall breaks down and you become aware of the universe rushing in. Perhaps more truthfully, your own bubble merges with a larger aspect of itself, with other bubbles, other particles, and this results in forming a wave.  Up to this point, your focus on your individuality, so persistent, has excluded anything like this from happening but now you can feel beyond your bubble to a much larger aspect of your being which seems or feels very different.

You are suddenly a drop in a vast ocean, a giant wave of awareness. You are able to become more than you were before. This is not some ego trip, but a simple aspect of your being that simply was never experienced.  As you do this, as you align to the universe, all of the issues within your individual self that are not in harmony or alignment with this larger universal consciousness, are stirred up, made more obvious.  Your awareness grows about these “problems” within the individual self.  They can be translated as pain or tension.  Its like walking into a room and hearing two people singing. One person has perfect pitch, will always have perfect pitch, and this other self, which is your individual self, is off key.  When you hear this happening, it becomes incredibly obvious.  Prior to this, though, you were happily singing off key and not realizing that you were “off” by a little. The presence of this universal self who has perfect pitch makes you more aware of where you are of on the perfect harmony with the higher awareness.  This is what an awakening does.  It points these things out, and if you are brave and willing, you can release these disharmonious elements in order to learn to become something more than when all of this started.

Doing this requires an act of inner alchemy.  How do you do this?  Many know its releasing old patterns, but its not always widely understood.  Its possible, I think, that much of it is not something you work through but that you simply do. Its not a thinking thing, not something you parse like so much data.  It not mental. Its reaching into your more emotional feeling self for those things that have hung you up time and time again but that you were powerless or unaware of how to change.  When you release these notions and feelings about how the world is or how YOU are, something magical happens. Like layers of clothing, these things you thought defined you and made you what you were, slip away in the night.  Ego has a real problem with this, but as you let it slip into the background, it becomes easier to let it all go. When this does, something that had been with you forever is now gone.  Maybe its a recurring theme in your relationships that keeps you in a state of dissatisfaction over how the people wind up being.  Or it might be something related to abundance in your life.  It could be any number of things.  Ultimately, it all resolves back to self love. When you can love yourself, you can love more perfectly because being the universe as well as your individual self, you can begin to mirror this love in the universe in which you find yourself.  It might seem magic, but its a simple law of the universe that the universe will mirror back to you what you presently have within you.  When you let go of something for good, the universe is now reflecting based on fewer problems in the self and more of what the universe is, or can be for you as your universal self steps forward.

This is an important aspect that I am dealing with in the book I am writing Waking The Infinite.  How do we help ourselves to reach this place of perfect pitch?  How do we learn how to feel differently so we can release what we have for so long been attached to?  By letting go, we are able to finally find what is the best for us, and as we do, the world resolves from a world of hurt, to a world of love.  This is not a love that is predicated on anything, but is the very fabric of the universe.  Its about growing up in a real sense, to see what its like to take on the “adult” self which is this universe that is full of this love and that fills you with such bliss upon awakening.  This energy becomes unzipped, releasing orgasmic energy throughout the whole body.  It changes the physiology, and it offers a new way to be.  Its less that its just sexual as sexuality is but one aspect of this energy, which is at its root creative, and creativity has always been something that was meant to be pleasurable.  It is this because it is in perfect alignment with the universe.  Certainly you can create horrors, but you have the freewill to create based on something more in alignment with the light that shines in us all.  Shadow causes us problems, light brings us to fulfillment and peace.  The task is letting go of the things, the shadow, which always results in still more shadow (the law of attraction at work).  By bringing in more light, more light is attracted.  And so this builds to the degree that the individual self is able to let go and surrender to this vast realm of being. When we do, a new world emerges.  The world literally begins to look and act differently.  Aren’t we all seeing the same world?  I don’t think so.  And I don’t think its JUST how we feel that makes the difference, but how we change frequency and thus are freed up to see still larger dimensions of being right in front of us.  This, I suspect, is the essence of all of this 2012 stuff.  Its reaching a point of critical mass where human kind has on offer a new world within and without….realizing all along that there was no difference between the world and us.  We ARE the world and the world is us.  As a result, when you change yourself, you change the world.

Magic!

The Point

Waking up and moving beyond old hurts is about building awareness.  There comes a time when you either are or are not aware that the pain and tightness felt is the result of your own misalignment with your divine flow.  Its not that you are bad.  Its that you have allowed material that is inconsequential to your infinite or Essential Self to come between you and it.

People who awaken often have all kinds of symptoms of pain which isn't anything that medicine can diagnose.  Many go home with some prescription or other, but it never solves the problem.  These issues often clear up in time, but only once kundalini helps to identify and bring awareness that its not your BODY that is feeling this, but its your energy body.  In chinese medicine, pain and trauma gets lodged in the energy field.  The idea that we push stuff down is true.  it isn't just in the brain or head.  Its all through us.  Things of a sexual and nurturing nature get lodged in the root.  Issues related to our sensuality are in the sacral.  Issues concerning our individuality are in our gut.  The heart is about our ability to sense in an instinctive way what truth is, divine truth...as well as the pulse of love.  Our throat chakra is involved with being heard and speaking our truth.  And on and on it goes.  These chakras are aligned to feelings because of vibratory frequencies involved in each center.  Taken together, these centers form a complete octave, a kind of range of colors in vibration that make a rainbow.  Its energy and like attracts like.  So naturally, as you become aware, you can feel how your stomach is tight, or how your root is unsettled and tight.  When this happens, it can help you to identify what you are doing with your thoughts and feelings.  It can make you more self aware.  It can help you to learn to get beyond those feelings, and fill that space with a better feeling. FEELING.  Not emotions, though.  We have emotions, and they can often be just as unsettled as our karmas....are often inculcated right alongside our karmas, our attachments to hurts and old old trauma.  This can go back for lifetimes, often resulting in a repeating pattern that is a bit of a rut.  The great thing is this rut can be healed in just one lifetime.  Sometimes in moments.  If you are aware and ready to let go of that old investment.  Problem is, our pains often define us.  It seems kind of crazy, but we are all this way.  And in so being, the way to healing is with a healthy does of compassion and understanding.  For all of us. 

This is about stripping down to nothing.  Then, when you have all the dross of this world removed, you can build based on what your higher self offers.  Your higher self is the parent, is the father and mother that Jesus spoke of (the mother got swept under the rug, but in recently discovered texts he DOES say mother/Holy ghost, which was known as the feminine aspect of the divinity).  Others speak of the same thing.  Your insides are dying to feel into this broad range of being that will flow instead of feel stopped up.  Learning to listen to your inner parentage, your higher self which is both masculine and feminine, is an important tool in developing freedom.  Sadly, the Christian tradition could not allow the feminine her place…..but when you heal the rift between your masculine and feminine, you will FEEL your masculine and feminine in your higher self much more clearly.  There is a lot of work to do, so do not be fooled you have it licked.  You don’t.  You are just a very young being compared to your higher self.  Your higher self has this licked.  Learning to listen to it will never lead you astray.  But most people are clueless about how to do this.  Or how the role of the creative can get them out of the log-jam of their pain and suffering.

Learning to cast awareness is the first step.  Understanding that all that comes between you and the infinite is karmic.  Much of this is so close to you that its hard to see.  There is no work; this is a misunderstood illusory thing.  The only work there is is in letting it all go.  And how do you do that?  Grace.  There is another way to understand it, but I have said it over and over until I am blue.  I am now feeling other colors would be nicer for me.  You do not need a teacher.  The teacher is in you.  What you need is someone who will remind you of your vast storehouse of potential.  What trips you up?  Kundalini?  Nonsense.  You know better than that.  That’s victim talk.  What trips you up is you.  And if you realize that this is true, then what is it in your that is causing all the tripping?  Are you the least bit curious?  If you are, then getting to understand that everything that remains for you in your “process” is entirely inside you.  It is also reflected outside of you in the world, but don’t be fooled into thinking that this reflection IS the reality.  It isn’t.

The Law of Attraction means you will attract the same based on where you are, what you are.  the people in your life reflect all of this.  If you are looking for a teacher and you cannot find awareness, your teacher will also have problems with awareness.  So where will this get you?  The true authority is within you.  You must learn how to grab the can opener and open your own cans.  Otherwise, you give your power over to someone who will rob you of your wealth inwardly.  We have ALL been doing this for centuries.  That is another story.

Learn to feel, learn about grace, and remember what you are.  You are infinite.  Let go.  The universe is calling.

Coping With Kundalini II

With kundalini, you soon see how everything is connected.  You feel it.  You might even feel yourself becoming it.  The physical body is caught up in this trans-formative process, and there are some very physical things you can do to make its presence in your body easier to deal with.
I think that it depends on where you are in your process.  I lived with kundalini for about four years before things began to get difficult.  I certainly had some difficulty before then, but nothing compared to when I began to question my experience, which led to a deepening of the energy within me and this highlighted the issues within that had lain more dormant as the energy seemed to have a place to reside, but was, I think, coming up against strong internal resistance on my part, albeit subconscious in many ways, against its going deeper.  When I began to work on loosening blocks in a much more conscious way, life became very difficult because the inrush of kundalini through all these knots made things very painful.  I think its possible to live with kundalini but have its energy only go so far.  Its as though it wont go where it is not welcomed, and while some would see the coming of kundalini as nothing they ever asked for, it is my feeling that on a deeper level it was most certainly bidden.  I know that when I ask the energy to come on stronger in order to do some work, it does.  Sometimes it feels like it is kicking my behind, but I know that this pain or difficulty is merely lack of alignment to its perfect energy. I know that I did not have the trouble with adrenaline until I began working to remove blocks.  Only then did adrenaline rev up like nobodies business.  The effect that this has on the adrenals and kidneys is very real.  Some can suffer adrenal burn-out, and having adrenaline pumping through you in this way can be very wearing on the body.  This can be part of the trial by “fire” that many talk about.
 
To this end, there are things you can do to help support your body during this time.  One of these is simple, but very useful.  Its exercise.  During some of the hardest times with this, I had a bicycle that I would ride.  My bike is a mountain bike, so I took it off-road and rode up and down grassy hills around parks and in natural locations.  Instead of feeling totally jazzed, I felt a measure of peace after these rides.

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

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

So exercise.  In my case, I tried to really get my heart rate up.  It felt good to do this.  It has a way of washing away all of my concerns and plants me in the moment. Its also very good for you!
Movement is something I am dealing with in my book that has the same title as this blog, and in it I have observed through numerous traditions that movement, even ecstatic movement, serves an important function in the physiological connection to the effects that trauma has on the body.  As you awaken, I am sure you have discovered a whole new sense of sensing energy.  Things are much more apparent in this way, and you feel through the energy body to the point where you can feel others around you energetically.  You feel patterns of past trauma in others as energetic patterns that can be translated into etheric pain that gets referred to the body as well.  This is where extreme stomach tightness can occur, headaches, and pain in the heart or just about any other part of the body.  As a result, you can become more acutely aware of those issues you have in your own etheric body and which have become lodged also in your physical body since the etheric and physical feed perfectly into one another.  When I say “etheric” I mean energetic….and not simply the physical mirrors of this energy that express as our physical chemistry which I believe are themselves mirror of how we feel and are inside. But since all of this is connected, the body follows in lock step with the rest of the systems that its a part of.  Emotions certainly are lodged in certain energetic crossroads or funnels for cosmic energy.  We call these chakras. In each of these there is a slightly different expression of energy, much like how a rainbow is the result of all colors in visible light scattered through the use of a prism.

When I first began to do more conscious energy work, I was told that there was someone in my community who was an expert in his field that would be able to help me with my energetic blocks.  This was suggested to me by the gifted intuitive Alison Neville whose ability to “cold read” is amazing for how accurate she is in her work.  She told me as she read all of this that there was someone I needed to look for, she could read his energy but she explained it could be either male or female.  I would be looking for someone who had, as she explained “old man” energy.  This could have been a woman who had this kind of energy, but it could also be a man.  Whoever it was, this person was close and would be of help.

The very next day I was talking to a client who was having me make a hanging device for a piece of glass I had made that she bought out of a show I had had the year previous.  As we talked about this, she mentioned how she was doing energy work.  My ears pricked up, but knowing this lady, there wasn’t much about her that seemed masculine.  She had had a life changing event in her life that moved her towards doing body work, massage, and even hypnosis.  I would come to find much later that this event was a kundalini awakening.   At the time, though, she said nothing about this and then went on to mention as a final note to our conversation that she was attending a local Qi Gung (also spelled Qi Gong) class that was held just a block or two from my home.  She explained it was being taught by a fabulous guy who was a Naturopath, who had written one of the most complete and authoritative text books on the subject, and as part of his knowledge, had also gone to China to study Qi Gung as well.  As I listened, more and more, this “little man” who was middle aged but still fairly young, was sounding more and more like a possibility.

When I went to the next class that was held, I saw a little man who had a calmness and quiet to his demeanor. If there was a guy who fit the bill, this was it!  I followed along as we went through a whole series of moves in that first class.  For those unfamiliar with the discipline, Qi Gung is a form of movement that is a little like Thai Chi, but is a little more physical.  It means “energy work” and while very low impact, it does work the body but does so in order to not expend too much energy, but to help move and tone the energy body.  When in that first class, Robin, the teacher, explained how this type of work could be used to remove old knots and blocks. A light went off in my head.

Following the class something unexpected happened.  I thought maybe I might feel lighter, or some hitherto as yet known state of being might emerge.  I actually began to feel a greater sense of anxiety, a blanket of dis-ease came on, and I felt myself getting clammy.  I could feel a pressure in my head.  I didn’t feel all here.  I wondered if what I was doing was even good for me.  Alison would later explain that this is not to be unexpected.  This only meant that the movement was working, but I had a backlog of material that was being moved and this was creating some anxiety. This only meant it was working in a powerful way. 

I continued dutifully going to Qi Gong class.  I felt like all kinds of muck was being stirred up.  Adrenaline began to move very powerfully at a later stage in all of this, and I felt a little out of kilter sometimes.  My sense was that it WAS working, and it was during this time that I had some of the greatest changes in the way I felt.  I felt that this was the cure that would stir a feeling of sickness before the troubled energy would loosen within me.  Over time I found myself feeling much better, and through a series of events that took place that involved inner guidance, I had even greater movements of junk out of me.  One of these involved what I know to be an ancient angelic being who told me his name and explained he was a “seraphim” which I later learned through research, was a type of old Judaic angel.  Reaching into my heart center, he pulled something out of me that resulted in my feeling completely different.  in an odd turn of events, I would stumble across a nearly identical account by an early Christian saint from Europe.  All of this is described in the book and helps to underline the nature of energy as seemingly not solid but containing a very real, almost “concrete” identity.  Some of these patterns can remain in our bodies long past their due date.  Having them removed seems to be something that we are not adept at doing ourselves, but that through such methods as Qi Gung and ecstatic movement, can help stir the pot and allow these things to fall away naturally.
The now long lost Shakers who were a branch of the Quakers, learned to reach ecstatic states through a particular type of movement.  Animals utilize movement in response to trauma, and there are cases where before someone is healed of an old trauma, they go into a shaking fit.  I have been very lucky to have literally stumbled across incidents in books I was drawn to but didn’t know why.  In them, in an isolated paragraph not having anything to do with the role of movement in healing would be an account that the author felt he needed to share about how someone was healed of some past trauma from childhood.  Even the author himself didn’t make the connection, but the universe certainly made sure I saw the connection by bringing the very page I needed to see one night as I flipped through the book and opened it to the very page which I am relating to you now.  Interesting, too, since I was going to take the book back to the library because it hadn’t contained the information that I thought it might have, another “oops” in the life of someone lifting books from shelves in a somewhat random way.    While it all seems accidental, I have had so many of these accidents that I know that it has been an extremely effective way for me to do research, albeit one where I do not have to pour through books in order to find a given passage.  I just flip through, not realizing what is about to come.
And this, for as anecdotal as it might seem, helps to underscore a phenomenon many who are having awakenings will experience, and its something that you can utilize in your own life if you are willing to be open to the possibility, which is that the universe will bring you what you need.  A gifted intuitive might tell you about someone you have to find in your community in order to begin doing this important work only to have a friend call about something not even related and wind up talking about the very person who was mentioned just the day before.  You might begin to wonder how YOU can move through some aspect of this experience that might be causing your trouble only to chance upon a blog, or book, or a random conversation that leads to a friend giving you the phone number of someone who is suppose to be putting you in touch with a business resource, say, but who, in talking to them, happens to mention something that puts you in touch with a resource you might not have otherwise found that helps you with kundalini.  Or even some other aspect of your life…..

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

I hope you find the magic that is your own soul peering back at you through these marvelous events that are great gifts!

Coping With Kundalini - 1

One of the things I do is teach art to college students.  I am also a glass artist with his own studio, and in the midst of my own awakening I discovered just how useful creativity was in helping to remove blockages, knots, and all manner of problems that can crop up in the midst of these experiences.
I found that when I let myself go and become more fluid in my conception of new work, I felt better.  Looking back on it, I was helping to balance the yin and yang energy within me, and helping to build a more cooperative sense of self.  As I began to work in this way, I found that I ceased trying to figure it all out and simply felt as though I was being guided.  Sometimes when I just let the accidents happen, amazing things emerged.  Its easy for me to say an accident is just that, but I now know that this is one way for the universe to come rushing in.  We can set up all kinds of cognitive barriers around us without even realizing it.  Since my medium is so fast and fluid, this was perfect for having very sudden changes take place in the moment that might otherwise have to be planned out.  When I stopped trying to control things, something interesting began to emerge.

I began this by working with the concept of embodying the masculine and feminine in my work, to find a way to let those essences flow into being.  I began with focusing on the goddess.  I didn’t make figures out of glass, but I took what I already knew and began doing things I had always wanted to try but never told myself I had time for.  My vessels turned into the body of woman.  Lips, layers, deeper recesses where the great mystery lay.  I graduated the sizes and nested these one into the other.  They had an eroticism, a reference to the female body that expressed, I felt, the sensual flowing nature of that essential part of our experience.  I made them rich in color, mostly all were warm gold-based colors.  When I say gold, I actually mean the metal gold.  All colors in the glass palette are made from metals such as copper, cobalt, manganese, silver, iron, and gold.  Gold in this case creates what we call “rubies” which vary from reddish pinks to purples.  These are rich and warm, wine-like and powerful.  They are not bland colors but can reach incredible depth and sensuality.  These were perfect to begin working in this new way.  Expensive, yes, now that gold is rising in price, but very inviting and fabulous.  I was able to get my vessels to stretch into diamond shapes, no longer mere bowls, they became sculpture.  I didn’t plan too much, but made very simple choices of color and let chance take the lead.  Most was intuitive, and my own skill had to be present in order to make sure each piece was moved into the ballpark of where it needed to be.

About a month after I began working with this idea and seeking to embody it in the moment through feeling, I was approached out of the blue by a local artist to help collaborate on a piece she was making that was a bench….that was actually a sculpture.  In it, she had designed three pillars of wood that was like an upside down funnel, spreading outward from the top, a very masculine form.  Atop this would rest three glass elements that would reach into the sky to bring down cosmic energy, the grace of the All.  These, it was clear, were the feminine portions of the piece.  Womb-like, leaf-like, these served to bring down the universal force so that it might be anchored her on earth.  As I looked at the model for the piece and as we discussed all of this I was amazed at how aligned this artist was with the very same principles I had just a month before begun to work on.  More than this, I probably could not have been able to advertise for this job and have hoped for such an on the mark collaboration.
This, and work like it has hinted at the vast potential surrounding us when we begin to align with our larger purpose.  the Law of Attraction begins to work its magic to bring the most perfect things in with perfect timing.

As I observe the movement of kundalini within me, I know that what facilitates its movement is being more fluid, what I know to be a dynamic balance between masculine and feminine.  We are built, designed, to recognize the counterpart of us, to reach for completion and connectivity.  This is the essence of the experience.  As we can begin to merge these aspects within our own bodies, the light of awakening burns brighter.  We feel more unified, and we are happier.  We are taking the potential that these two energies have and bring them into a creative unity.  This is, I suspect, what some call “sublimation” which is essentially learning how to draw the energy of the bliss upwards through ones awareness ever higher.  I have some real problems with how this “sublimation” is described (partly that its seminal fluid that is pushed up the spine—-sorry—-but no, it just doesn’t work that way!), but I do think that by utilizing the vast potential, we can bring this limitless energy into the moment and create with it.  By keeping the energy moving and strong, the effect is that it works through the knots and hard places within us.  The more we let it flow, the more things will drop away.  Yes, its a kind of therapy I suppose you could say. But instead of meditation or prayers or postures, you are returning to a very fundamental state that is devoid of rules, regulations and even taboos.  The great thing about art is that there ARE no rules.  Perfect!  Since the energy can be so restless, this is perfect for bringing into a creative act.

I used to study what happens when we are creative.  Most people described it as a point where the left and right hemispheres both light up and begin talking to one another.  I think this is perfect because even our own brains seem to mirror the yin/yang of the universe.  One side is rational, another more feeling.  One is more solid and concrete while the other is holistic.  When we can bring both together, there is a flash of inspiration.  Isn’t this the same as the merging of the masculine and feminine energetically?  I think so.  And when I observe this in my students I find some interesting correlations.  When my students seek inspiration, they like to be alone.  This act is a very intimate one, one where they can’t be watched or bothered.  They have to have the freedom to play, to dream, to let that subtle dance within take place.  They don’t know HOW they do it, only that its IN them to do this.  And when they are inspired, it brings with it a bliss and a sense of connectedness.  This is one aspect of union, and it begins with the self.  The act of creativity is an act of union.  It happens when we make great art, or come up with new ideas in science, and it also happens physically when we make babies.
By being willing to carve out some time for yourself to be creative, I think that you will be able to find a way to cope with kundalini.  Being able to stretch yourself outward more, to flow, or perhaps to feel the masculine move more within you if you are very feminine, is a very good way to learn to deal intuitively with this process.  It is an act that is ultimately unifying, an act that helps heal separation of the self and help you to feel more at One.

Music can help change your brain chemistry and electrical output.  For the work I do I have discovered that I like very rhythmic music because it mirrors the rhythm of the turning of the pipe.  It somehow seems to help me get in the groove, lose myself, and find something else flowing into the moment.  It helps me to FEEL more clearly sometimes, more powerfully.  Most, though, it helps me to let go and Be. There is plenty of research that shows that certain rhythms are more conducive to alternate states of consciousness.  You will note that many shamanic traditions use certain cycles of sound that actually help in people moving into dissociated states, or trance states.  These states aren’t where you are no longer present, but where you can be powerfully present but not as engaged in ego and mind as you were before.  Some walls come down as you let yourself become seduced by how wonderful everything feels and the universe can’t help but peek through the edges as you give yourself permission to melt into it.  Knowing what works best for you will be a choice based on simple experience. I find that repetitive music can help, but the music has to change or else it feels….”blaaah” to me.  There has to be some variety in the piece.  It might be that something by Brian Eno, with his solid and nearly unchanging tones can go well with work that takes a long time to produce but also helps to frame a certain state of mind and keep you rooted in the place and state that you desire.  I think it has a lot to do with being able to mirror the music with the piece and what it embodies.  I knew a grad student whose studio was above mine who would listen to the same song literally over and over for hours….months.  He did his entire MFA show to the sounds of Prince’s one song….”I Would Die For You.”  I got why he used the song.  For him, it had all the right energy for helping him to reach the place he needed for his work.  I tended to try to keep a different schedule than him since I had heard enough of that one song.  Luckily he also would use headphones.

I have found that I no longer like to work alone.  I like what can happen in the midst of collaboration.  Each person inspiring the other, each coming up with things that might never have been tried, or considered. One person’s own strengths being augmented by and influenced by the strengths of another.  Its interesting how in the past I could not have done this since I had such a singular way of working.  Now, I find myself so untethered in some ways that I am ready to work in a more collaborative way with the right folks1  In one case, the universe brought me someone who said “create it….I have given you my thoughts, but take it and run with it!”  and so I did.  What marvelous freedom.  Having the right chemistry makes all the difference, which is why letting the universe bring you those people purely by “chance” and serendipity can be so perfect.

It doesn’t need to be art, though.  It can be ANYTHING that you find creative.  People who are system engineers find great creative fulfillment in finding ways to make a plant operate more efficiently, for example.  A mechanic might build a dune buggy, or an electric bicycle, for instance.  It could be that cooking becomes a whole new passion as you discover new flavors and ways of cooking you have never tried before.  Being able to make food that feels good to your evolving palette can be incredibly rewarding.  Might be that you become more sensitive to food additives, or allergic to foods you never were allergic to (both has happened to me since K began to move), and being able to choose the right things that make you feel better when you eat might be perfect all the way around.  Just being able to feed your friends could be the same as making a beautiful painting.  It might be that its more enjoyable when you can cook with others, working towards a common goal. you obviously need to be able to work in a kitchen with the right person who can anticipate what you might need or know when to stat chopping and let you get at the stove!

Whatever path you choose, learning how to bring the creative into your day to day will help to crunch some of those more crusty parts, and begin to allow a more rewarding flow into your day to day.
Its interesting that like how the creative moves in the studio and in me, so does the act of removing those hard parts of myself.  I don’t always know what I am letting go of, but the act of letting go feels about the same when I create as when I let go of some ancient karmic thread or other.  Its not NEEDING to know I think that seems to do it.  Sometimes I AM curious to know the source of a given issues that is falling away, and in those cases, I have been shown.  By that time, it was already being released and was gone, never to return.

I once was highly skeptical about art being a therapeutic device.  Now I am sure of it!
One final note, and an important one….  I think that its important that you work so that you do not feel funny or self conscious if you can’t draw perfectly, if visual art is what you decide to do. Its real good if you can adopt an attitude where you are less invested in an outcome and more invested in enjoying the activity.  If you can do that, it can be very helpful. Building a sense of expectation into the moment can sometimes make us feel limited, or freeze up some.  This is supposed to be fun!  Learning advanced techniques takes a long time to master, so be easy on yourself.   This is all difficult, and can take years to master.  It might be that you do work that doesn’t rely on your lack of skill with a given type of art.  What about making rich colorful fields of color, designs, or other ways of expressing? If you watch children making art, you realize that the guts of the operation is in how much fun you can have just MAKING the stuff!  Its only when kids start worrying about how they are able to draw hands or faces or people that they draw into their shell.  If you can create with wild abandon, you have a much better chance at creating something that you will feel good about and be more likely to return to.  Be loose, but be intense!

On Awakening

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

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

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

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

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

How do we release karma?

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

What is the solution?

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

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

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

Do I need a Teacher?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nemasté