The Healing Way

I have been going to have reiki treatments recently to assist with some clearing in my chakras, and my energy field in general.  There is a lot of talk about chakra clearing and chakra meditation.  It is useful to know, though, that your whole body is a vast network of criss-crossing energy lines that go all the way down to the atomic level.  If you were to see your energy field, you would look like a densely packed fibrous body of light, with branches that are big, like arteries, but also with a very fine system like capillaries.  Where energy draws towards the trunk of the body, there are vortices of energy that are called chakras.  There are many many more than the seven we normally talk about, but that is mostly because people aren't as aware of them, but they are there nonetheless.

All throughout this body of light, energy flows. It seems that anything that we do not experience fully and acknowledge completely emotionally winds up getting lodged in the same way that a splinter or scar exists in the body.  When I began this process of awakening almost seven years ago, I knew next to nothing about Chinese medicine and when I hear that the light body stores old memory, I thought that was a little funny. Didn't the brain do that?  I am sorry to say that up until that time, I had been seeing auras and reading energy for years.  I had been seeing how the aura, which is in the body, would show or exhibit emotional states all over the body and I certainly learned to read this energy. It wasn't until I awoke that I became aware of the phenomenon of releasing blocks.  These blocks are merely unprocessed emotion that gets lodged in the energy body.  Once you are able to go down deep into the very block, you can release it. There are a number of methods I was shown how to use by none other than the intelligent energy that has been living in my bod all these years.

Having the reiki reminds me again how these blocks contain memory in them.  Last week I was able to go back into the first year or less of my life.  This was pretty amazing given that I have no memories of my first year of life.  Its just a haze to me.  However, whenever I dig up a block and release it, its almost like uncorking some ancient emotion that I feel again perhaps for the first time.  I was speaking to a friend today while taking a break between teaching my classes at the university how I had encountered this last block and how I had actually KNOWN that the problem that the block was existed all these years but somehow in my own physiology and energy field, I seemed to need to experience the actual  feeling directly instead of having a version of it resting in my awareness.
Isn't that kind of weird?  To me, it actually feels like the block is a living being, locked in ice and waiting to be let go like some Mastadon whose organs are preserved and all that is needed is a careful electrical jolt to get the creature up and moving again. In a real way, though, this was what this last release was all about.  I KNEW that I hadn't grieved my father's passing as an infant.  Of course.  That is obvious, right?  And yet, deep inside the block there was this very specific feeling or awareness that lived in the pit of it.  When I felt THAT, I encountered a week-long process of grieving ina powerful way.  Call it speed grieving if you wish, because that is just what it felt like. Long since dead, I had to get on with it and not stand on ceremony. I was raw for about five days and slowly began to feel more healed from the ordeal.

So I know that I am not any different from the rest of you.  I know that others who have gone through the release process have also described allowing themselves to really FEEL the blocked energy as a way to help move the energy. This works, but it assumes you know how to access the energy.  Its not always possible.  There are other ways to access these blocks, and each is about as useful as any other.

WHile feeling deep into the block is one way, another way is to remain aloof, to allow the Observer part of you to come to the fore.  This Observer is actually very detached and it may help you to allow yourself to feel the same sense of detachment that comes with the Observer,  By allowing yourself to watch everything as though it is just a play, you can watch and see, but not become emotionally enmeshed in what is happening in front of you. Being able to step back like this is useful because it allows the focus of awareness to be present in the healing process, and while it may seem crazy, I have observed that it is observation or awareness being brought into the moment that serves to heal these blocks. Interestingly, the folks doing the reiki on me were saying the same thing.  I never learned this concept in any book, I was taught it by kundalini itself. It showed me years ago that my job was to SEE the block.  Just SEE itl in time, the block will go away.  If you can imagine that just behind your eyes is an infinite consciousness using your eyes to see through you, you can actually begin to allow more of the infinite through because.....that is exactly what is happening!  The method used to dissolve blocks is not to think it but FEEL it.  Thinking it or rationalizing is a very limited activity and is good for solving small problems like how to fix the kitchen sink but is really horrible at being able to divine the core of an issue that might stretch back lifetimes for you. It is the feeling self that must be enlisted for this.  I know; curious that I was just speaking of being aloof. Think of it as using your eyesight to SEE a problem but not get enmeshed in it.

There is another method for releasing blocks and this is movement.  Movement itself can be divided into several different classes.  One is shaking. Shaking has been shown to help release trauma stored in the body. It was first observed in animals that had been attacked by large prey animals.  Turns out, humans also use this method without realizing it when releasing old trauma sometimes. The other form of movement is the kind of movement found in the eastern traditions of Chi Gung and Tai Qi.  Both methods are designed to help move energy and eliminate blocks. Both are gentle workouts for the body and have been shown to bring a variety of health benefits. For anyone dealing with a backlog of blocks or who is aware of the blocks more than the average person, I would suggest keeping with a form of movement like Qi Gung and staying with it for at least a month with one or two session per week.  This is because some clearings take time to happen as well as once clearing does happen, you can sometimes get more clearings as a result of one clearing. Everything affects everything else.

There are a lot of very good visualizations to try when releasing blocks.  One is to stare into the block and feel your gaze breaking it up.  Another is to imagine a large hand opening up instead of clenching. Another is to imagine a river that is flowing and carrying you with it.  You do not control anything, you let the river take you.  Yet another very good visualization is imagining that your body is like a conduit or straw and energy flows through you unimpeded.  You let go of trying to be in control but become more of an observer.  By doing this kind of work, you can begin to shift your focus so that you can help to facilitate the movement of energetic blocks in your system.

Image © Stafford Artglass, Parker Stafford

By studying and knowing the chakra system you can learn more about how to dissolve a block.  If energy is stuck in one center, say, the heart, you can meditate on what the heart does and how the heart might be blocked and how to release it. For example, when dealing with root issues, like I have, I have found that I have been feeling emotional energy surrounding things like survival, nurture, and even abundance and sexuality. I can begin to get a clue about why the material is blocked, but knowing the basics of the center wont always lead me to the block, I have to allow myself to just FEEL it.  Somewhere inside of you, you do know the content of every single block in your body, but we do a lot to filter all of that out from conscious awareness. That is why meditation can be so handy. It can help to bring back into focus those things more on the edge of your awareness.  It is known, for example, that the left hemisphere acts as a giant filtering agent and that by letting down our "guard" so to speak, we can begin to broaden our awareness and filter less.  When you filter less, you also feel a flow of energy.  You don't necessarily have to focus on everything that moves by, but being in a place where you can observe is very helpful as I am sure you can imagine.  Its different, but a very good kind of different and is within your own abilities to try.

The advantage of clearing is that you can better feel and hear the flow of the universe in you. If you want to know cosmic consciousness, this is a good way to do it; by reducing the noise!  It allows you to feel more clearly and it also helps to erase karma.  Being able to reduce karma in your life is huge.  By releasing blocks you are releasing also the vibration that the energy that has exerted all this time.  You will find, bit by bit, that you will attract based more on what you feel you want and need instead of constantly getting stuck on a karmic merry-go-round with different faces and names but the same behaviors popping up over and over and over.  It isn't the world that needs to change, it is merely conforming to what you are.  It is you that must change if you with to attract a different kind of world in your experience.  The really great thing is that you can!

Dealing With Blocks

Do you know what it feels like to be blocked?  I was almost two years into my awakening before I realized just how blocked I was.  Kundalini had begun its work and was loosening the material that had crowded itself around me. I thought things were getting better.  They were.  I was a changed man.  But awareness is a very relative thing. By being aware of how blocked I was, it led to still more removal of harder to get at material.

Certainly, the easiest material fell away first.  I could feel it. The more central material in my core, that was a different story.

I began the process of still-greater blockage removal by realizing it was there.  I began to attend a class that met twice weekly just a block from my home offered by a man who was an expert in his field. the classes cost me five dollars per two hour session. The teacher did this is a community service for the most part.  Lucky me and everyone else that took part.

The process that began in earnest in those classes, which utilized what is known as White Crane Qi Gung is the same Qi work that the Shaolin monks use.  There are many versions of Qi Gung, but all of it is based in movement. It means "energy work."  I can't say that any one type is better than another. My teacher, though, knew a lot about Chinese medicine and he was able to offer many different pointers to help facilitate the flow of Qi (Chi) through the body. The effect at first was that I felt awful.  I went away feeling clammy and more aware of how blocked I was.  This made it seem as though I was more blocked than I was.  I had merely become more consciously aware of these blocks.  I think it is important not to let yourself get down on yourself during these times of awareness.  The very fact that you are now aware is an important first step in removing the blocks!  Remember; where attention goes, so does energy, and if your intent is to remove something within,  the universe will conspire with you to see that this happens. Persistence is key.  So keep at it.

I found that the blocks I was now feeling felt like very real physical things. Around my heart there was this stony mote.  I could feel my heart scrape up against this hard surface every moment of the day.  This was maddening. It hurt.  It was hard. The pain was very real and I had no idea how to get it to stop.  In about a year in a fit of sadness, it all happened without any effort.  I felt the part of us that is known as the Observer step in and the rest was history.  It gave me just enough room to feel the forgiveness that was my own enough that this age old karmic thread was able to slip quietly into the ether never to return.  For as hard as the feeling was in my heart chakra, it did drive awareness in me in a 24/7 sort of way.  It wasn't until I gave up trying ot was at the end of my rope that the answer came.  It was swift, simple, and permanent. My heart center was then magnetized towards something very different. The effect that this had on my life was substantial. Events took a sudden turn in a new direction.  It was as though I was living in a different version of a world populated by people who were no longer attracted or affected by this thing that I had only a few days before.  Instead, a new story was unfolding.  Miraculous.

Movement has long been inculcated in the removal of past traumas.  There is a biological dynamic that happens where both etheric and physical are affected so that what lies in the energy body is also removed from the physical.  They work together so that the act of merely moving can loosen age old material in the energy body.  This material can be from lifetimes ago.  It has been observed, for example that nearly every culture on earth that knows ecstatic states (all of them actually) will tend to have a corresponding movement that goes along with it.  This can be expressed as twitches, jerks or "quakes" or shakes. The movement of the Holy Ghost is the same and Kriyas and mudras are an expression of this in the Hindu tradition. Aboriginal peoples will go into shaking fits as they reach communion with the spirits of gods.  Animals will shake after they have been attacked by larger animals all in an effort to "shake it off."  For more on this, search the archives using the search term "shaking it off" and you will find an article written over a year ago that addresses this very subject.

Staying physically active is helpful in removing blocks.  The Sufi tradition recognized the role that movement had in reaching higher states of being.  Sometimes it just FEELS good. But dance is another form that can also help, especially if you can dance ecstatically and get your body moving.  Will aerobics work?  That is a good question.  I do not see why not.  I have heard that pushing ones self physically can often break through energetic barriers to feel a deeper sense of self.  Runners often speak of hitting a wall that leads to a euphoria that give them the means to go further with less struggle.   Is this the same?  I can't say. I sure would be interested to know if anyone has experienced this and whether it had a liberating effect long after the event of the running took place.

Something about movement helps us to cognitively and emotionally rid ourselves of past issues that we have been holding onto for a while.  I notice that it gets me out of my thoughts and into my body, which is a peaceful place to be.  Here, with the mind silenced, you can simply be with the body as these small miracles happen drop by drop. This is not an intellectual pursuit, so keep the mind out of it.  This is much more a fundamental exercise.  Let it do its work without needing to know or understand.  It works.  That should be enough for your mind to chew on.


Part 2


There is another aspect to removing blocks that can also be very helpful.  I discovered the effectiveness of this as a result of my own work professionally in art.  I am a glassblower and my work is very physical.  It fuses grace, brawn, and skill in an act that is itself alchemical if you know how to let it work for you.  In these early sessions I found myself channeling different energetic aspects of myself.  Whenever I say "energy" I also mean consciousness. Always.  For energy is itself aware and you can feel into this when you know how to feel deeply.  A deep surrender ensues and all turns to bliss. 

But less than the movement used in my work is the power that creative energy has on us. In the same way that movement can help to remove old material, so too can the flow of creative energy.  Having said that, tantric energy also has the same effect.  All of these aspects all happen to have a lot of energy as a hallmark of their presence in your life. you can literally fuse them together in an intuitive way to make them work for you in a powerful way. 

So creative energy is very closely aligned to sexual energy.  It opens you up and allows you to feel yourself more deeply.  It leads you into that most beautiful part of you that awaits for that touch fo the divine that we are.  This can lead to a pulse of life so amazingly wonderful you will wonder how you ever lived without it. All you need to feel it is to become inspired. That is the core of all art.  But being inspired is also the same as being turned on sexually.  Both of these states have the same elements attached; we let go of the mind and begin to FEEL.  

When I teach my students in art and when I work in the studio in glass with people taking classes, I do everything I can do to keep thinking from getting in the way.  If you are of the opinion that you have to THINK in order to create; stop. Right now, put away that idea because it has no place in all of this.  Trust me.  In the same way that you let go all thoughts and just allow yourself to surrender in an act of intimate love, so too do you do the same exact thing when you are creative.  The feeling of the energy is different, yes, but not terribly.  We get excited and feel happy in both states.  We do this because it is what we are.  the act of becoming inspired is itself the shepherd to your core self.  Let it do its great work.  As you open up you can imagine or even feel those hard shells fall away from the outer parts of your being.  You become vulnerable, perhaps the most vulnerable you have ever been.  Let it be that way.  No one is here to hurt you. Be soft and feel yourself.  It is here that you are in this ancient current of the divine.  It is your soulfulness that you are bathing in.  You are infinite, and here you get to settle down into your pure essence.  Revel in that.  

Be like a child.  Stop feeling like you hve to put the brakes on everything.  All of these things are the very things that my students show me are their biggest hurdles and they have been mind, too. When I stop thinking about WHAT to do that it all just comes down like some giant download of information.  be a channel for this energy.  You will feel enraptured, enlivened, and renewed.  It will feel so good that you wont want to stop.  And why should you?  the challenge I p9ut to you is to learn how to channel this energy all the time.  This is what you are, and what you are learning to become. 

So use your imagination. What I do to get there is consider what would I make if I had all he money in the world.  No limits.  I think of how I once had a kingdom at my command and these people, whom I loved so much and who loved me, were willing to do just about anything for me.  I had such a rich supply of resources. We built temples in the forest.  We quarried stone and we decorated it with beautiful colors. I think back on those days and it helps me to realize that when i loosen up what i think is possible inside of me that the flow of inspiration just begins.  I have no thought in these moments. I have no idea what will come.  I direct it, yes, through my interest and desire, but I also am careful to allow accidents to happen.  I do this as a signal or cue to the higher self to step in.  My accidents are always full of discovery as a result.  I know this may sound haphazard to some, but because I intend it to be an entry point for the higher self, it quite naturally does.  It works because i believe that it can.  In order for it to work for you, you have to carry the same belief or else it might not work.   These events are very good for bringing in new ideas that I hadn't considered before.  There are simply no accidents in my experience.  But you have to be able to let go enough for this kind of magic to happen. 

As you do this work, you fuse your physicality with your energetic being in creating something.  In just the same way that making love can lead to creating new life, creating art leads to the creation of new forms of "life" which are embodied as ideas. We can quite literally break down old cognitive barriers that lead to new ways of seeing and feeling. When you still thought, you give this inspired moment the room to move in you.  Most great artists know this, but it is not taught as a methodology in schools. The students that have the most problem with art are those that are worrying about how it all will turn out.  You simply have to allow yourself to play and enjoy it, like a child does.  You CAN do this. Stop being so serious for a bit!  you do not create by ploughing seriously through the process but in surrender.  Your mind opens, your body and hands take a more receptive posture.  Then it slips through you like a small boat slips through the watery waves of your awareness.  First one, then another.  Here being in the moment, being present, is important. Then, still thought so you can feel your energy.  Just feel it.  You don't have to do ANYTHING with it. Just let it be for now.  It will get you excited.  This is the coming of inspiration.  It will show you that there is nothing to fear in letting go like this.  

The body gets in the act.  The two energies of the universal current begins to move.  the yin and yang merge both in your energy field and your physical body.  The brain, a mirror of the masculine and feminine aspects of the universe begin to work together.  The linear more masculine left brain takes the wildly imaginative yet almost formless right brain material and gives it a voice or a form.  The right brain sees the big picture and the left sees the details.  It sees the leaves and cell structures, but it gets lost in the forest.  the right brain sees the scales of form in great volume. Together, when they work perfectly, it is like tantric union except this is the creative act of birthing new ideas and forms in the world. Here, you are in your element.  I can hear the protestations now: "But I am not creative!"

Of course you are.  Maybe you cannot draw a perfect nude or a still life.  But you ARE creative.  In your own way, it is what you are.  It is what we all are. It is not an "art thing" that makes for creativity.  But I have a neat trick to help with that when it comes to art making.  I have glass. 

Ornaments, Parker Stafford

Glass is a material that, in its molten state, glows with a life of its own.  It is an amazing material.  it is also difficult to control, which for our use today is perfect. I use the molten plasticity of glass to keep people anchored in the moment.  This works!  Your focus with the glass is so total that your mind has the opportunity to go quiet.  People have told me that they like doing glass because it forces them to think of nothing else but the glass.  This is a lot like zazen or other meditative states. You can FEEL your energy in moments like these.  The other side to glass is that when you flow with it, it looks beautiful.  In fact, you can dribble glass onto the floor and it will look fantastic.  How can you go wrong with a material like this?  The simpler you are, the more its essence comes through.  Just let it do what it does naturally.  Colors are brilliant, and the glass sparkles and shines. Everyone who has tried glass for the first time have all been surprised with the beautiful results of the glass they have made at the studio.  This serves as a way to trim away all of those thoughts of their not being creative.  With glass anyone can make beautiful things.  It also doesn't need to be anything other than it is.  Sometimes an ornament winds up looking like a planet or world from some other realm.  It is interesting to look at.  Sometimes I just gaze at the ornaments on my own Christmas tree and see all of the wild details I had missed just a year ago.  The funkier and wilder, the better.  You see, glass can show you what is possible when creating blown forms.  

Nautilus bowl detail, Parker Stafford

In no other instance does it feel like Christmas then when we open the kilns where the glass we blew the day before we placed so they could cool slowly.  It has been over fifteen years and each time there is an excitement to see what is going to come out.  You'd think after hundreds of tons of glass made in my studio so far that I might get jaded.  But it doesn't ever seem to grow old.  Every day that has something waiting in the annealing ovens is a day where there is something new to discover. 

My work in the studio is designed now, when it comes to teaching others, to help set their wild horses free.  One moment we are doing a large sun catcher and moments later it becomes a ribbed tendril that get placed in a flower garden or hung with others as a light fixture or placed on a stake near a door to greet all who enter with its crystalline beauty. 

Nested Yin Form, Parker Stafford

My work in the studio discipline is not hard. It is deceptively easy.  It is about feeling into it.  The power of this is realized in how you feel as a result. It sounds like it is too simple, but it is in the simplicity of it that the effects are achieved.  It is in letting it happen to you that is the key.  When the mind gets out of it, something else gets into it.  Sure, you have to keep molten glass balanced on the end of a four foot metal rod, but in my work I am there telling the person what to do next. I don't map it out first in order to keep their mind out of it and simply engaged as it watches what happens as it all unfolds.  It is an approach that works very well. It is not always best for seasoned blowers who need to understand a complicated series of movements, but it is very effective for ferrying beginners through the process without building anxiety over the many steps or things they will be doing. In this way people tend to maintain a form of engagement that is very good for what I am seeking to help them achieve.  Just feeling good about making something beautiful itself has a very positive effect on a person. Fear goes away.  Creativity does not do every well in the presence of fear.  Like love, creativity and fear do not mix.  One closes you down, the other opens you up. 

Absent having glass as a moving modality for healing, you can do anything that lights your creative fire.  It can literally be anything.  Writing, drawing, dreaming, singing, dancing, writing music, or rearranging the house.  Working on the car.  Any act can be one of creation if you know where to look.  Then, cultivating a life that is passionate and engaged will keep your energy moving in you.  You can also observe those times when you feel suddenly bereft of creative fire and consider what it was that happened inside of you in those times that caused that to happen and learn to avoid that kind of thinking in the future.  I can tell you that my experience is that anything that causes me to pull back from life in anything less than a full embrace is what kills my creative fire.  Sometimes it is just a stray thought that turns in me that my ego get to work on and then after a while a very small thing turns into something big.  There I go again! I remind myself. I then just get myself worked back into a state of energetic excitation and suddenly the world glows with a new life.  This is a moment by moment cultivation of the very force of life in the day to day.  This is learning to bring heaven to earth. It is, after all, a worthy cause. 

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….

Waking Lucid Dreaming

I have discovered that a method I have used in the past for inner work which as it turns out is one that has been practiced by Tibetan monks.  They use it apparently to enter into a lucid state where they can direct dreaming.  While I am sure that this will work and will work for a range of things,  I'd like to tell you about how I came across it as well as to relay its use to you perhaps so that it might be of some use to you in your own inner work.

I find that in the afternoon, around three, I tend to get very tired.  Not just tired, I sometimes get sleepy. Not always does this happen, but enough for me to have taken what I thought of as a power nap.  These power naps had some interesting side effects or features....

What I found was that I could trick my brain into thinking it was falling asleep.  My brain would literally shut down if I sat quietly long enough.  This always helped when I was tired and just a tad sleepy. For some reason, this has only worked during the day for me, not at night. The Tibetan technique involves waking up after five hours of sleep and then going back to sleep without actually falling asleep.  Perhaps my method will work better for you if you find yourself feeling sleepy during the day.

What I do is I feel myself getting sleepy.  I will sit down most often.  I do not lie down because for me this will signal I am ready to fall completely asleep.  I think I need something to keep me ever so slightly aware so I do not drift off completely and then start to snore (really asleep).  Sitting up does the trick. I will let my head go forward and I will kind of slump down all comfy in the chair.  I have found I need about forty-five minutes worth of time before the curtain drops.  I need enough time to allow myself to get very relaxed.  During this time I let myself drift and I am very still through all of this.  After a certain amount of time something happens. I feel the curtain drop. What this is, I always felt, was my brain going into another brain wave pattern.  Being awake I can observe its effects and for me its quite clear.  I get a buzzing feeling in my body somewhere around my head. It feels like some part of me is literally shutting off or tuning into a different frequency much like how you tune a radio from a station into static. If I can simply let this curtain drop, this heavy wall of static buzz, I will feel myself shift into something else. this something else feels wide open.  It feels as though my consciousness has shifted gears.

The result of this is that if I wake myself up, I will feel as though I have had a couple hours of sleep.  I feel completely refreshed and I no longer feel sleepy in the least. The brain has decided it can check out, turn off a certain channel of waking consciousness. I used to use this method for doing a power nap.  I never really fell asleep and this was better than having to lie down for a bit. The trick was I had to feel tired during the day.  This got me feeling like I was falling sleep except falling asleep during the day is hard for me actually.  However, if I can couple sleepiness with some degree of alertness while being very still, this normally happens for me most times than not.

So a power nap.

Fast forward a few years and I am in the midst of an awakening.  I am having a hard time.  I am smack dab in the middle of a dark night of the soul. I was having some real egoistic problems what I call a contraction of consciousness into the individual awareness. This is actually very hard. It feels as though your energy is being frozen or solidified after having been flowing like water. It creates tension in the subtle body that gets translated to the body as physical pain and a certain degree of anxiety and dread.  Not the greatest feeling as you might imagine.   It was afternoon and I was struggling.  I sat down in a chair and let myself drop off the edge of the ocean.  As I did this I noted that I was doing that sleep trick of mine.  I though maybe this might make me feel better. So I let it go.

As I let go and drifted and interesting thing happened.  I suddenly felt as though I was out of my body. I was near my body, slightly above it looking down.  As I did, I saw my body being suffused in a yellowish honey-like substance that was like a halo or aura. It had a thickness, a substance to it as I felt its energy all around me. I was aware of this happening and felt as though the energy field that was surrounding my body was of a character that something was clearing blockages in me.  Then, in the usual way that these things tend to happen, I stumbled across some article somewhere while not looking for it that described how this higher order energy will present itself and that this golden glow is often connected to bodhi's or enlightened beings, something that they carry. I don't think I am a bodhi of any kind, and I think in truth that whatever this energy was it is a natural result of where one is in awakening.  We tend to want to attribute certain significance to these things sometimes, but my sense is that as we all move into these realms of our larger self, everyone will begin to experience similar things.

When I exited the experience I no longer felt harried like I had before.  I had really been having a hard time with this contracting energy that was making me feel horrible. I felt bad for feeling it.  I felt a kind of shame, like I should not be feeling this way.  I learned that this is just a step along the process of becoming, and there should be no shame in that.  We are all realizing what we are deeper down and any efforts towards that is laudable.

This technique apparently can be used to enter into lucid dreaming while awake. You simply stretch your arm out of your body or roll out of your body and you are now in the dream body and can direct your experience.  I suspect that this would wind up being something akin to an out of body experience, but I also suspect that the dream world and astral travel are one and the same.  The difference is that the dream body is creating imagery which is naturally symbolic and helps to relate deeper information to the waking consciousness in the form of dream imagery. If "awake" I also suspect that one may experience a combination of dream and waking imagery, or one may also have no imagery at all.

When I cam across the article discussing this technique which the Tibetan monks had used for centuries, their suggestion was to do this after having slept for about five hours in order to keep from falling too deeply asleep.  This might work for some people.  For me, I think my tendency has been to simply fall back asleep.  I will say, though, that the bulk of the experiences that I have had during awakening involving beings who have come to aid me have all come very early in the morning around 4:00 or so.  I suspect that it is during this time that I am exiting an active stage of dreaming and entering into a more silent state of rest.  It may be that if your sleep patterns are the same, this kind of timing may work for you.  You may want to give both a try, especially if you can take an hour "nap" in the afternoon when you are feeling sleepy or tired, in order to see how both work.