Seeking Contributions!

 I am working on a manuscript about awakening that was being taught in early Christianity. In 1945 archeologists were able to examine and translate a large collection of documents that had been known to exist but that had not been available for study until the discovery of what would come to be known as the Nag Hammadi Library. While these books sent ripples through the Christian community, their importance has not been fully understood by believers and scholars alike. 

The project will cover Christian belief and how the movement evolved over time. The work will show how early Christians had a clear understanding of the phenomenon of awakening. It will also show how this group was sidelined in favor of a different movement we know today to be Christian Orthodoxy. 

The implications of the work are profound. One aspect of the work will be an examination of the awakening experience in a contemporary context. I am putting out a call for those who would like to take part in a chapter in the book that will cover the experience from a Western perspective, showing the full range of this phenomenon. 

To learn more, you can contact me at info@staffordartglass.com for a survey and a possible set of follow-up questions. You can be anonymous if you prefer. Interviews can also be conducted via Skype or Zoom also.

Regards,

Parker

Overcoming Resistance As A Path To Healing

 

 

Many years ago I overheard my Chi Gung teacher speaking with a person in my class between sets. He explained that we can learn how to let go of all kinds of resistance in our energy field and consciousness by paying attention to the body. He said that many unconscious feelings are held in the body and that they can be held in different parts of it. He said that sometimes when we allow ourselves to become aware of this tension in the body it can tell us something about our own feelings. By going into and letting the resistance in a part of our body relax and unwind itself, we can also let go of emotions that get stored there. He said it might just be a little feeling in the back, the hips, the shoulders, or even a toe….all of this had something to tell us and teach us about letting go.

By letting things go like this, you can unwind all sorts of unconscious emotional material. It can be surprising how much that we hold onto. I have found that the more I do this work the more aware I become of still smaller elements in my body/mind landscape. It can lead to greater and greater clarity and a state of inner peace. I can also attest that if this process happens quickly, like it did with me during kundalini, the landscape is changed so quickly that it can even be bewildering sometimes. So, I suggest that you take this kind of work slowly and be easy on yourself.

When you can see that you are the source of all of your feelings, then you are one giant leap closer to taking responsibility for how you have thus far arranged your own inner emotional landscape.

 

Everything that we feel is not the result of what others have done to us but is instead how we have reacted to events in our lives. Buddha had something to say about this, and it is sage advice. No one makes you feel a certain way. No one. When you can see that you are the source of all of your feelings then you are one giant leap closer to taking responsibility for how you have thus far arranged your own inner emotional landscape. This is not always easy to do, especially in a time when people are increasingly wanting to have the world to conform to their own feelings instead of just being an adult and understanding how we each make choices ever day about how we feel and respond to the world. Being able to develop this honesty about how we feel (and that we feel) what is happening is the second big leap in work of this kind. Be easy on yourself, but be honest and be responsible.

When you feel resistance in your body, the first step is to observe it. It can sometimes manifest as physical pain. Instead of resisting it, try going into it. It wont hurt you. Explore it with your intuitive faculties. How does it feel? Why is it that you are holding tension there? Try breathing deeply and slowly and then imagining that your own breath is filling that tense hard space in you. Depending on how tense or how resistant the area is, you might need to do this a number of times. As you breath, imagine warmth going into that location. Imagine that your breath is being sent there, that it is opening up that area. Relax. Give yourself this moment to simply explore. What things that you do help to limit or soften the tension in your body, this pain or feeling of resistance? Often you will reach a place where you realize that the tension was in fact in your mind, being fed into a part of your body in a way that sent a message to tighten. Over time, this location can begin to hurt because of how recursive this feedback loop can become. A back can develop significant pain, hips might hurt, leg muscles might remain chronically painful or fatigued. In some cases, stretching gently can help, but in others, merely recognizing the feeling that is feeding the resistance is enough to short-circuit the feedback to that location in the body. Always, bringing awareness helps to limit the problems, but this is just a first step. If you can stop your mind after you reach the problem area and let your mind go blank, you will actually be in a much better position to intuit the problem.

Albert Einstein, who learned how to cultivate this form of intuition in his life described it precisely this way. He said that as long as his mind was busy with the problem, he would not find an answer, but once he let his mind go blank, the answer would just come to him. It turns out that this is what yogi’s and yogini’s do also. It is a cornerstone state for resolving all sorts of challenges in life.

By having a few encounters with how this method works, you can apply it to a broad range of other issues in your life, including things far-afield of our topic here.

There is a hazard in going about this in too much of a rational way because if you do, you will tend to draw on previous experience, whereas this approach I am describing to you now is the opposite. It requires your mind to go blank. Imagine that you mind needs this silence in order to pick up the deeper messages which will arise through your consciousness, for surely this is how they do. By having a few encounters with how this method works, you can apply it to a broad range of other issues in your life, including things far-afield of our topic here. As a Westerner, you probably have been taught to always have a busy mind. This is one big problem many of us have, which is that we tend not to cultivate more nuanced forms of awareness as our busy monkey-minds steal the show. There is a great benefit in allowing your mind to go quiet and to slowly learn how to cultivate this state of mind. In fact, all meditation practices have this as one of their chief goals. By quieting the mind you can more readily get to the substratum of awareness, to the Essential Self which tends to lie just below the surface. When you do this, it is much easier to delve into these problem areas and see them for what they are. It always requires some degree of discipline, courage, and self honesty.

Are your shoulders tight? Is your solar plexus hard as a rock? Do your knees hurt? In some cases, you might have some issues with your physiology because of an injury or something that comes to your through your genetic line. That can sometimes be separate from what you hold in a center, like say, your knees. And yet, the knees can go on to hold tension that is more than merely how you have been gifted in your physiology. There is a lot that we do with feelings of vulnerability to further impact a part of the body. It is worth noting what part is purely physiological and what part might be exacerbated effects of emotion or tension in that area. I once had a shoulder in jury that I made worse because of my protecting it too much. The shoulder joint literally froze in place, hard as a rock from inactivity. I had to learn to open up the injured shoulder and not be afraid to move it and allow it to work as it had before the injury. In time, I found that I was able to bring more flexibility to it than it had prior to the injury itself, which was an unexpected bonus.

It sounds cointer-intuitive, but many reflexologists and energy healers have found that certain parts of the body tend to be areas where quite specific feelings can get trapped. Have had self-esteem? Your root and your sacral region might need some attention. Is your willpower off or is it too strong? That could very well be an issue in the solar plexus. Feelings of being a victim? Goodness, your heart might need some work. If you take on too much of others’ stuff, you might find your shoulders literally tightening up with shoulder and upper back issues plaguing you.

The more you do this work the more you will find yourself letting go of age-old problems.

It is helpful to have a good body worker who can help to loosen those areas up, the open the energy channels so the old stuff can go and new growth and healing can take its place. The more you do this work the more you will find yourself letting go of age-old problems. If you find yourself going back to an issue in your past over and over, this itself is a stuck emotion and it will almost always have its compliment in the body somewhere. It is actually pretty amazing how much we can become aware of this stuck material if you take the time to slow down, get quiet, and then begin to listen and pay attention in a meditative way to what your body is telling you. In some cases, you might not be able to get to the source of the problem yourself. You might know that there is something likely stuck in a certain spot, but you have no idea how to let it go. Despite everything that you try, it just hangs on. This is where an energy worker can often help. Whether that person does acupuncture, acupressure, reiki, cranio-sacral, or similar types of energy work, someone who is practiced in energy work often will have the intuitive abilities to get to the problem in order to provide you with relief. It is my experience that truly great energy workers are rare, so you will want to look around and ask people about their experience.

It is really quite a revelatory experience when you can feel the emotional energy move out of the body. It normally never comes back, which is a great relief, too. 

With practice, you can use meditation as a way to take a quick inventory of your body state and see what is coming up for you. We are human, so we are prone to holding onto things, obsessing about something that upset us or not being able to let go of something as far back as childhood. We have lost the ability that most other mammals have for “shaking off” the tension or past emotion or trauma. This is why I recommend for really sticky issues a healing modality called TRE. If you use this term to search my blog you will find a number of posts on this method. It is actually quite simple to do on your own and has been shown to relieve symptoms of PTSD, and if done more intensively, it can eliminate the trauma stored in the body for good! It is really quite a revelatory experience when you can feel the emotional energy move out of the body. It normally never comes back, which is a great relief, too.

As you replace old negative self-talk with more positive thoughts, your whole outlook can begin to change.

While mulling this post, a quote came up on my social media feed in a group that I am part of. It was a person describing how one day they realized that they were free to feel anyway that they wanted about themselves. They described this feeling as being able to become like a butterfly, free from being tied down to old thoughts and feelings. One day this person suddenly felt free to feel fantastic about themselves, and so his life changed after that, forever. He now lives his life considering that he is this marvelous creature with so much good in himself that this now fills him with joy and wonder instead of being hemmed in and feeling bad about himself. This is a really great way to treat yourself, which is a form of self love. If you don’t love yourself, how can anyone hope to do similarly? Plus, you will feel really great as a result of shifting this way. For some of you, you might need some practice, but go easy on yourself. As you replace old negative self-talk with more positive thoughts, your whole outlook can begin to change. Aren’t you worth it? My best of luck to you…

More Poetry...

This is a nice piece about the love one feels when stepping onto the innermost path....let me know what you think...

https://wakingtheinfinite.wordpress.com/2017/01/05/the-leader/

Where Awakening Leads

Having lived with this for almost seven years now, the journey has brought me over and over to the irrefutable realization that kundalini aids in releasing blocked and built up latent issues within the energy body and within the subconscious self.  Realization is itself a clarifying process much like a small creek running into a pond helps to clear the pond of the muck at the bottom when the flow of its current increases.  This is what awakening does.  It churns us.  The current is quite simply turned up, and it has an effect.  Living with this intelligent energy has changed my life and the way I see the world.  It has altered how I see us as human beings, just as it has changed how I view myself.  What I knew intellectually before, I now know and feel at a much more fundamental level.  I do not live in a world of ideas but in a life that is vibrant with concepts that themselves touch and connect vast realities that sometimes live at the edge of our awareness.  And since this energy is itself a builder of awareness, there is much that comes to the fore that had been more at our edges. 

Along with this idea that kundalini charges us and churns us and moves sunconscious material to the surface of awareness has come a more recent realization which is that the part of us that is called the subconscious is itself merely the rest of our awareness liying in a latent form, unused during our waking hours.  I am convinced of it.  And I will tell you why. 

Part of my process of realization was how awakening was tied to right brain function.  I am not going to say awakening IS right brain function, because for how much this might seem, its only a seeming based on our being largely left-brained dominant as a species.  We just are.  We are highly rational beings who think in a very linear way.  our right brained functions have been largely ignored.  You might think this is a bold statement to make, but my sense years ago that this was so (in my bones) has been born out through ma ny new studies of the brain and how certain injuries to the left brain have opened up the cpacity and potential latent in the right brain.  For example, we now know that the left brain acts as a kind of filter, keeping the vast capacity of the right brain from entering in in any deeper way.  Sure, we have right brain fucntion, yes, but we do not realize that the right brain has much much more that can be tapped.  You see, the left brain is itself a linear processor, which means it does things one item at a time and it works with language, which is itself a reductive process related to how we communicate.  It is by its nature a limited way to communicate, and it does so in a very practical way.  IN order to get words to really do the work of communicating, we have to add inflection and a host of other things in order to get our ideas across.  A picture, though, is qorth a thousand words, and so in knowing this, you can appreciate how limited language is in its own way.  But in case after case where people have had injuries to their left brains, there is a sudden release of amazing potentials and abilities.  Some people have developed savant-like ability to calculate numbers, to see and then recreate through drawings an amazing level of detail of, say, a city skyline.  THis is all brought to you by way of the right brain.  Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, whose video I have posted a number of times, who is known for her TED talk about how she had a stroke in her left hemisphere that closed down her left breain function for a time, began to experience a mystical moment of enlightenment.  All courtesy of the "veil" coming down.  That veil, friends, is the left brain. 

When we talk about surrendering and feeling bliss, we do so because we are letting down the controlling agent that is the left brain.  I sense deeply that a very limited aspect of the ego is contained or is at least powerfully informed by our left brains.  And this makes a lot of sense when you know what the left brain does.  It identifies with individual elements, aspect, and then is able to create a cognitive ordering that makes sense to us.  Ego is right in line with these qualities as ego identifies with "me" and "thee" which is to say that it can see individual objects as separate.  Ego is separate.  Withing the vast space of the right brain awareness, there is also a sense of ego, but one that is quite different.  It is far more nuanced.  It still exists, but it is an ego that is in context with still larger things such as the higher self. 

The right brain function is also not rational in the way that the right brain is rational.  It is connected more to feeling, and thus in feeling, there is no rationality.  We feel how we feel, and it does not always have to make sense.  In fact, the harder things for us are those things that seem beyond our own rational senses.  When it comes to these feelings, we tend to shove them down into the subconscious where we think we don't have to deal with them.  They do not go away but instead age and become an engine for dysfunctional feelings and behavior.  Repressed behavior has been long recognized as having been the agent for many problematic emotions in our lives. The subconscious, which is where we shove most of this material down into has become a vast dumping ground where a LOT of material gets left.  Upon awakening, at least for me, the power of kundalini began to churn this graveyard within and began the process of releasing these old ghosts from my past. This took years to clear, but it has continued day in day out and finally after some years, a vast backlog of material that once looked like a vast warehouse, is emptying out.  In this empty space I have come to see that what we call the subconscious is merely a place we all have simply not felt at home for some reason.  Perhaps because of all our baggage stored there, the subconscious has seemed a strange and foreboding place.

The subconscious is NOT just a dumping ground.  It is in fact a gateway to the higher self.  It is a gateway that has gotten cluttered with baggage, skeletons, and other scary things, but just like a closet or wardrobe, just beyond the coats all lining the front is something just beyond them, which is another world. In fact, I suspect that C.S. Lewis was picking up on this simple truth in writing about Narnia in his books.  Beyond the obvious is an amazing realm that is a mirror of who we are in a larger context.  By learning to navigate the subconscious, you can learn to feel more at home within the larger scope of all that you are.  And you are way more than what you currently think you are.  Period. 

To do this, you have to learn a new way of relating to yourself.  Being more accepting and more aware of your feelings is a very important part of tapping the subconscious.  When you can understand what motivates you and moves you in a seemingly irrational way, you can know yourself and develop a better sense of continuity within yourself.  Knowing why on earth you experience knee jerk reactions helps to point out the unresolved issues within yourself.  Knowing how you tick trational and irrationally is an important step in being able to accept who you are and where you are.  In doing this, you can also then learn to release or forgive the old ghosts from the past, curiously.  Only in being able to relate to ourselves and why we are the way we are regardless of how little sense it seems to make to us is the actual hand upon the veil that pulls everything back for you to see and understand better.  Within this, though, is the act of surrender, which is the right brain simply mirroring something larger within your soul-self.  Surrender is huge because this one act brings us closer to ourselves, to the divine,as well as to our loved ones and the world.   Surrender accepts, and in this acceptance, there is great discoveries to be had that you never knew you could tap or touch.

It is no surprise, then, that there is so much talk about the coming of the divine feminine in this age.  Indeed, it is something that is afoot, has been afoot for many many decades.  Life has mirrored it in its usual gradual fashion, and in our current time it is gaining speed and steam.  This feminine is also mirrored in the left brain, even though the left and right are not themselves masculine or feminine but contain traits we identify with these two poles of our being.  This is not a sexual identification, but a psychic one.  But in relating to this side of ourselves, we also are able to discover this vastness of self  that has been expressed as the divine feminine.  All of this falls in line with this unused portion of our own neuro-physiology that is gradually coming on line for us.  As more touch it, more will come to it.  And more are.  But to know it is to know how to be nonrational.  This is not to say that there is no order or design to the experience.  Indeed, there is a subtle and nuanced sense of order and awe connected with such an experience.  It is simply DIFFERENT from the left brain and from the egoistic level of our own awareness.  The most important thing is not to fear it for its being different.  Learning to respect differences and to appreciate how these differences make us whole and vital is one important key to unlocking vast potential. 

Being able to surrender, to let go,  to see non-linearly and more holistically are important skills in this effort.  Seeing a bigger picture and never deciding that you know all there is to know.  You in fact know far less than what you don't yet know.  As you come to know more you are struck by how little you did know previously, and in reaching that, it can be a little embarrassing how little you knew.  But to realize this, we all have to have something that shows us this in a practical way.  Sometimes this can take years in order to develop this perspective.  Awakening, which accelerates this growth process, can supply it in much shorter order most often.  We are all specks on a planet that when viewed from space is itself a speck in a vast field of specks.  Our own knowledge is itself viewable in the same way.  By being open to this reality, we also become available to the experience of reality expanding before our very eyes. 

The answer is not in some magic technique.  The answer is in learning how to be different.  Consider there is a different way and while that might seem mysterious, your inner self actually KNOWS the way.  It does.  This vast storehouse of ability is like a superman or superwoman.  It is beyond what you think about here and now.  It is like some interstellar visitor.  You are more than you know and you are only tapping a small part.  Bid it into your life if you think you are ready.  When you are ready, it will come.  This is how this has always happened.  Those who seek are always surprised that they find what they are looking for even when they are surprised that they didn't fully know what it was they were seeking.  Well, yeah.  How CAN you know this?  You can't very well know what this interstellar visitor might be like, right?  You have to experience it directly.  Awakening leads to this. 

Remember

You are here to remember what you are deeper down.  All enlightenment is that simple, that integral, to where you are right now. 

Enlightenment

Awakened Energy is Creative Energy!  Creative Energy is Love.

Whatever Enlightenment is, one thing is for sure;  at the crossroads of the infinite "I Am" or what I call the "Waveform Awareness, and the younger “earthbound” personality, lies creativity.  I think the sages miss something when they say there is nothing to do; the universe is inherently creative…..and even the sages who say there is nothing to do, themselves DO things (which I will bet is creative!)!

The most liberating practice, the best mudra, the best mantra, is to simply be creative.  That sensual energy cracks open more dry husks of your perception than a million postures and positions! Frees you!  Awakens you more!  Greater and greater sensual bliss!  This is the Universe!  Waking up to this is waking up to the powerful potential resting in the universe; we are here to burn this potential in the fires of our souls here on earth!

Creativity is Grace.

The Role Of Creativity

 

Detail, blown glass, ©Parker Stafford

One very big coping mechanism available to you in the midst of an awakening is creativity.  I cannot tell you how big this one is.  In fact, I feel its the very essence of this experience.  It was learning how to use creativity as way of tapping a clearer state of being that helped clear a channel within for this energy to flow in a way where it did not cause me to feel discomfort.  At the time, ego was very much installed front and center in the self.  What creativity allowed me to do was to channel the energy of transformation.

I have been an artisan for years.  I knew for years before that that many ideas had a way of showing up, as part of what inspiration was all about. This was an elusive creature, and artists often speak of chasing it, trying to find it as the one thing that brings their work new breakthroughs, new connections made within the self that allows for  interesting things to happen.  Musicians, for example, often speak of allowing the music to flow through them.  Mozart spoke of it in terms of something being channeled.  When everything is just right, the mind fires up, with the left and right hemispheres working together in a cooperative way that makes this experience possible.  Indeed, it is a kind of partnership of the self.  The whole self.  The left, the right, the masculine and feminine.  In an awakening something happens where both sides of the self merge into a greater unity.  The power of this union is echoed in the writings of early Christian mystics, of eastern gurus and those of us touched by it in the modern day. 

We very much associate creativity as being aligned with the feminine.  I think there is a reason for that.  Masculine is very aligned with action.  When alive in equal measure, the masculine can deliver the spark that results in the feminine bringing forth new forms, new ideas, things entirely beyond imagination only moments before. Its as though the masculine gives a sense of direction, of volition, intent, while the other side of it brings nothingness into somethingness as a result of the catalytic contribution of the masculine.  Its not one of the other, but both sides of our being working together in partnership.  This is a healing of the rift within, a movement towards wholeness of the left hemisphere/ male, right side/feminine.

 

Closeup detail, blown glass form, ©Parker Stafford

I feel that the fabric of the universe is predicated on creative energy.  Its how we show up here.  Its how dreams form, how new ideas emerge. Its the result of the polarity present in all things, pulling even the smallest of particles into a kind of relationship.  When enough of this happens, we can have life emerging, for example. We have creation myths that are...well....based in creative energy.  Something from nothing, something out of the consciousness of something still larger, given a new life, a life of its own.  And certainly our own creations are this.  A new idea can spread across the globe, filtering into the awareness of many people.  A song does this, a painting, and even the moment when someone does something new and different, through inspiration, that brings  a new way to do things that make life better or different.  It can lead to seeing and feeling in new ways, and it can literally shift our world individually and en mass.  Its a very civilizing effect.  It is the natural state of grace within us.  It is the grace that need not be tied to any belief or dogma, but to your own nature, your own feeling being.

Creativity once broke free the logjam within the Creator spirit.  Within it there rested countless, nearly infinite, forms, but they had not been given their own voice, their own volition.  When Creator surrendered to freedom, worlds emerged in totally unexpected ways. Creator lost control, learned surrender, and through a creative act, everything known came into being and thus also began co-creation where through the Law of Attraction, we interact with the divine universe through some very simple principles which all go back to energy...which is consciousness.  Layer upon layer of consciousness got into the act.  Our world, I suspect, was formed from the dream of those ancient beings that we are connected to, our own creators, who are also our larger selves.  Connected, children of the dawn of being, we have emerged in a world sparkling of possibility.  Creativity makes the conception of this possible.  It washes away hardness, rigidity, and fear.  It can. Some will create while worried, afraid, still chasing that elusive state of being, the creative, and may wind up finding it once the find that elusive place within where everything just clicks.  Its often a mysterious process because its not rational, not entirely.  The more you are able to slip into its flow, the more it can fill you, shift you, and blow away the cobwebs.  It is an exciting state where the air becomes rarefied.  The body responds with endorphins and even adrenaline.  In the right mix, a state of peace and excitement prevail.  We enter the garden once again.

The trick in all of this is to not direct it too much.  Support it, yes, relax, and enjoy it.  That is how this very gentle being will emerge in you.  This is the feminine side of creation.  She will fill you with inspiration when the masculine is there, supportive and feeding into her.  She will fill you with a very different sense of understanding....she is a feeling, a whole body experience whereas the masculine is more....definite in being pinpointed within.  Imagine at the top of your head are two wires that were once separate.  Now they are connected and there is this building of energy within you.  Kundalinietherically and physically.  You can use this energy.  In fact, sages yogins and priests in the past who have taught about kundalini have this idea called "sublimation."  Now, I have issues with this as my past writing has certainly pointed to. The energy is so strong, it feels like a force, a material or fluid flowing up inside of you.  Very real in this way, yes, but you are not doing what the ancients have suggested, which is transmuting bodily fluid, which is their conception of sublimation.  But the description certainly helps to explain how powerful and vivid all of this is. And so the idea is that when you take this potent energy which is so sexual and alive in you, you can use it for still larger widenings or openings of your awareness.  Certainly this is so.  By utilizing creativity, you are drawing that creative energy which is also the sexual (one powerful expression or facet of creative energy and bliss filled, too), and you can bring this energy upwards into ever higher circles of awareness within you.  As you do this, the energy which is itself conscious and aware will confer upon you awareness too.  Its an awareness that doesn't need to do anything, a feeling.  But this vast field of energy is like standing before the ocean and drawing off small amounts of it to turn it into things.  I think that this is one very big thing that teaches us directly how creation works.  We have the free will to create whatever we want.  We can create horrors or we can create amazing worlds of possibility.  We are all drawing off the same giant wellspring of being within and around us.

What creativity can do is to allow you to play, to loosen up, to stop being so rigid, afraid, and frozen.  Creativity, though, is predicated on letting go.  So is awakening. They go hand in hand in this respect.  Its an entirely non dogmatic method for reaching the place within that can help you to move, to flow, to be more whole.  It can give your rational mind the activity it needs while the larger self flows out all around you and feels more whole, more expansive.  Artists spend their whole lives chasing this often elusive state.  I think that by understanding how it all works could be a useful too in reminding yourself how you need to be.....which is a feeling after all, a simple way to relax. The other very important part of doing well in the creative state is to be present.  By being present, you do not worry how your creation is going to turn out.  You give yourself the room to get out of your own way by doing this, you release anxiety and fear, no matter how small or insignificant.  When you stop anticipating what will happen next, you are free to do what must be done in the present.  You stop living in the future and start living in the NOW.  This is very important.  The energy of awakening, while unbounded and free, seems to express itself best in the moment where your body is, where your awareness is most powerful.  Its a simple thing, really, but is sometimes elusive for all the mind chatter and habitual movement into the future.  When a child is lost in creativity, s/he isn't thinking about anything else except how nice everything is in the moment, a part of them willing to suspend expectation for a bit in order to see what emerges.  This is where he larger self can begin to slip through.  It isn't that the larger self is some voice in the clouds or some being in a fiery bush.  Its within you in the simplest of ways, but it has a kind of expansiveness about it and can bring a supreme peace to you. Peace is a very good thing. 

If you have trouble being present and not feeling some edge of anxiety, I suggest that you do a simple breathing exercise that will bring you to the present moment and get you back into your body.  By breathing through each nostril four times with the other nostril closed, making sure to breathe out of your mouth all the while and breathing out in a long slow sigh (don't breathe fast---think about how you might breathe while asleep and you will get the rhythm about right for this to work the best).  Once you have done this, you may find that whatever you were doing or thinking that led you to a nervous or agitated state has entirely gone out the window. How do you feel different than a moment before. What is different?  Are you much more present? Calmer? This can be a very powerful way to help yourself to settle into the present.  The while point is to create in a way that is more balanced.   You can always create in a very rational way, yes, and while it will offer some rewards, you can go much deeper into it if you let yourself. You will discover you have a great capacity to go ever deeper into this, much deeper than you thought was possible. it will lead to spontaneity,

The advantage that creativity can bring you is that it will blow away the blocks in your awareness and your emotions.  It will help you feel better.  It will make you feel more unified.  Trying to use this energy in an awakening can be amazing.  What new things might you create?  Imagine what might be possible while creating under the influence of this marvelous thing!
                                                                      
You don't have to feel "artistic."  Creativity flows all through your life. Its how you clean, its how you change a tire, or how you problem solve.  Its how you arrange flowers, wash the clothes, go about your day.  Your life can be a work of art, most certainly, but this thing is present in your day to day even though you do not feel like you are being creative.  When you engage both sides of your awareness and being, you are essentially tapping this creative font of being. We are all artists of one kind of another when we wake up to the fact that creativity is in every nook and cranny of our lives.  Henry Ford made cars three a day, then using his creativity, he was able to make one every thirty minutes.  This same thing has transformed our lives in innumerable ways.  Einstein used it as he rode that trolley car, imagining he was a beam of light when relativity struck into his entire being.  So powerful was the effect that he had to get off the trolley car.  The effect was so powerful that he felt it all through him. When a woman conceives, it is said she nurtures a miracle.  And so it is. An amazing miracle of our being here.  It civilizes us as our world is made more colorful, more appetizing with new menu items, new choices for experience. Its everywhere.  Your clothing was designed, the car you drive was designed, as was your tableware, the cups you drink from and the web sites you visit.  Its all made out of this creative fire that someone had, whether designing a tumbler or making up a business plan, painting, or child.

You just have to let it flow.  You have to be taken by it, seduced by its energy, willing to not know where it will take you.  If you are to intent on knowing where it will lead you, your own ego will get in the way and try to control things too much.  Mind and heart work together, even if they don't know exactly how its done, only that when merged, bliss is the result.  Yes, you DO direct it.  Yes.  You are co-creator in all of this.  You can, though, bring more material in on its wings if you will allow yourself to not always know why you are doing something or where you are going with it.

Last semester I had a student who is a perfectionist who was driven to tears as she stood by her work, barely started, unable to conceive how on earth she was going to be able to make something out of mere clay.  She was thinking it to death.  And she got scared.  What ifs filled her mind.  These grew from the little things they ought to be into dragons.  I said she was standing shivering on the edge of the river bank and all she needed to do was jump in.  Who knows if the water is cold.  Maybe it is, but all her friends were in there, beckoning her to just jump in.  And when she did, it was hardly anything worth worrying like she had over it.  She just jumped in.  No thinking, just merely intent.  And once in, she was at peace and relieved.  Turns out she had had a teacher many years ago who had not recognized her own innate creative self.  She thought of herself as an artist, and a bad experience resulted in her feeling fear.  Fear is the death of love, and of creativity.  All my students who are shut down are also fearful.  I simply let them know that for this time, they wont be whacked over the head.  Go play, I say. Make something that you will enjoy.  This is your chance.  And loosening up, they do. Uncertain at first, shivering by the edge of that vast river, they jump in and the room changes over a period of two days. Everyone relaxes and gets into their groove.  And just like swimming, you just DO it.  You don't have to think it to death.  You just move through it and enjoy how it feels to be part of this creative medium, your ocean of creation. Its less a plan as an experience.  You can plan and design, but this current must flow in order for it to be inspired.  Sometimes, just gazing out a window can be the perfect time for this lightening to strike you.  I have a student who gets ideas when she is taking a shower.  Its sometimes when aren't TRYING, but relaxing into a calm state. 

Let it flow. Allow yourself to direct, yes, but allow for the possibility for irrational decisions to be made in the moment.  You don't need to know.  And don't worry if they don't work out. Its a mystery, an experiment, and there will always be another opportunity to try again if for some reason things don't work out as you had anticipated.  Maybe next time, you will anticipate less and participate more. 

I blow glass. I make objects of sparkling beauty out of this alchemical material.  Made from earth, air and fire, water is used to cool and shape it.  The material is so fluid, I most often  let the material to flow into the shapes that it seems to most easily want to be.  That is how it seems.  Turning round and round, the forms are rounded, sumptuous, sensual and brilliant.  While its a lot like ballet where many moves are not as easy as they look when performed, when you reach a place where you can move the work without thinking about it, I am freed up to allow this current to flow through me and I find some part of me emerge that is without thought but presence. Interesting things happen when all of this goes on. Sometimes I don't even remember how something new was done.  New things come forward and I am part participant and part director.  Finding something that you are comfortable and enjoy doing is a big step I think.  Here, in the joy of doing, the flow can be felt.  When I have people in the studio working for the first time, everything goes so fast there isn't time to get too scared or tied up. Then people realize that with a little help, they are making sheer beauty!  And this feeling is huge, because its unifying and very encouraging.  The material captivates.  And its a good one because you can pour it onto the floor and pick it up after it has cooled and the drizzles will themselves catch the light and dazzle the eye.  Knowing that, its hard to make something that isn't marvelous.  And when you can feel THIS way, it opens a place of grace within you.  And through this grace-filled moment, the universe of you flows. There is a universe hiding inside, just waiting to be discovered!

 

Gold Andromeda Geode, ©Parker Stafford

www.hypersmash.com

I Don't Care....?

I do not care for what the experts have to say.  They are worn and weathered by ego and hurt.  They spin systems and methods.  Advaita, nonduality.....oh my goodness.  They are touching upon the nerve, but never seem to plumb the world behind the nerve.  Always touching it, happy that they are (me too...at least it is that) but it saddens me when someone writes a book about how to find a guru in an awakening, how to spot someone who has not quite "climbed the mountain."  Even those who have been soul connected, those who have swum in the deeper waters of the Collective Consciousness, know that just by feeling another who we mirror, we can catalyze change and healing, and there is nothing done but simply connecting through the Wave of the All, something that isn't talked about very much, but is I think what a guru will do (think darshan--often called "blessing" a word I learned about recently which I understand to be riding the waveform through connection and other aspects of energetic transfer) You see, when you awaken, and even before, you find things based on what you mirror.  It becomes so crystal clear, so obvious....its an elephant in the room....and its inescapable.  If you have some victim issue, your guru will mirror that and you will come into some kind of tussle or tangle with that...and either you will learn from it or you will deepen the waters of your victimhood.  The world will have proven that its out to get you while you slumber, not realizing that its YOU who are creating this.  You have ultimate responsibility.  Perhaps, in a way, this is the silly illusion they talk about.  Its silly because the illusion is real.  I mean, think about it; what is this energy made up of?  Its CREATIVE.  Even the sexual energy felt in an awakening, its just the bliss of creation flowing through us.  And we are here to create our lives....to create and learn from those creations.  Karma has been our ultimate creation in the past.  We are learning, though, the responsibility inherent in creating.  This is being done via free will.   We are free to create heavens or nightmares.  We can choose peace, or strife. Our lives are a reflection of this.  There is no destiny in this, its all subject to an infinity of choices.  Create.....watch that creation unfold. The creation is the product of the sum total of your vibration in that moment......your beliefs, your fears, your hopes....all of it.  And through this, we learn.....sadly, though, the level of discourse on this transformative topic has not risen to a level where I feel good about what's going on.  We can do more, we can do better, and a little discussion and sharing of perspective will help add to this stone soup until what we have is something greater than the sum total of its parts.

I prefer simple because the energy is simple.  It can get incredibly complex, but by understanding that you  rest astride a larger consciousness, you can sit back and watch this higher self do incredible work in your life. Like a savant, people do not see you for what you really are.....because they do not realize their own capacities.  Unawakened, they fear for people getting the "wrong" guru or teacher, or they want to point to what is and is not enlightenment, and having ridden the cosmic wave I can say that even the word enlightenment is a troubling thing to even say.  How do you mark the arrival or destination for something that is never ending.....Its like saying you graduated from college....its arbitrary in all truth because now all you have is a little piece of truth and an infinity of learning yet to do.  Its another phase, which is both an ending and a beginning.  You graduate from school and realize you have only just begun to understand.

I prefer the simple things.  This is the kingdom. It was a mustard seed.  Most do not realize what he was talking about, but it all sounded nice, even if it was a mystery to most  He knew what this was about, and it was largely swept under the rug along with the divine feminine.  It is in the book.  But the best way is to be simple, like children.  You know you are in trouble when people start saying what this is and is not....kinda silly when awakening is LIFE.  Who is to say what it is and is not?  Something DOES happen, though, and its profound and powerful; it changes you forever. Fire burns and courses in your veins 24/7 and you ride atop a wave of collective consciousness and this is not easy when you are not refined.  It hurts, its painful, dreadfully so sometimes, until the ego learns to step back some so the feeling self can grab the reins.  Forget intellect and mind.  They cannot nor will EVER grasp this.  All they can do is identify, classify, and make a complicated mess of something that is more like poetry than anything else. So when Ken Wilbur says "a schmuck before awakening, a schmuck after awakening" I cringe.  First, schmuck is what gets tossed after a circumcision, a Yiddish term that has entered our language in a pretty crass sort of way.  And the problem here is that what Wilbur has missed is the extraordinary promise an awakening can have for each and every one of us, the potential for transformation. Not just this, but people are transformed from what they were ( a Wilber "schmuck") to something greater and beautiful; what they were deep down, what they have always been perhaps.  I am not criticizing Wilbur as much as I am trying to bring a new kind of discourse into this; we know very little based on what is being said and written in our current time it seems, and when these folks open their mouths it just brings the bright light of focus.....and I wonder.....what is gained by me putting another light on this of my own?

It makes me want to pull away from it all, to simply let it all go....why do I need to write a book?  Why do I need to help anyone?  Why?  I know why, or I knew why, and this why feels like a boat that once carried a full crew full of concerned souls, and now is just a floating vessel emptied of everything as I abandoned it for slipping into the ocean alone and naked.  It could not be simpler.  I pray to this ocean to take me....and my trust resolves into a deeper and deeper appreciation for its great and wonderous mystery and beauty.

We are this ocean.  This ocean is us.  Everything is connected.  Not just simple platitudes, but deep certain reality.  Everything sings with this marvelous voice, even the pained ones who cry out in their own self imposed dark cells of pity and victimization.  Each so hungry for love, so desirious for it, yet so punishing and hard.  And I ask why I even need to say anything about what IS and is not enlightenment.  Lets forget that and remember what it is to love.  For this, dear reader, is the one thing we need so badly that its enough that you run from the moment in order to discover its presence inside of you, a dark pulsation so utterly remarkable....so simple....

Maybe it was never meant to be talked about, but experienced.  Maybe we have everything we need.  Maybe we CAN bring awareness to others through the power of the Waveform Awareness, which is Collective Consciousness.  This is how we connect to that endless ocean.  We, a particle like a photon, discovers how it is entangled with the All and can feel the All inside of its seemingly finite body...knowing itself to be infinite and able to feel everyone around it....and feel the pulse of all life rising up within it....and so through others sometimes we learn something that eluded us, and so we can learn directly...and maybe if we are to learn from the other perhaps it is through this direct cognition that is the Waveform Awareness, the infinite, the universe inside of us. Perhaps this is how we need to learn, silently and with a prayerful purpose.  The man who spoke of the kingdom also said in a gospel that was hidden and then buried in NAg Hammadi Egypt that he bore a fire and was himself fanning its flames until the whole world would catch its fire.  This fire is the fire of awakening, of kundalini.  Sadly, we have lost a lot of what was taught from the man, because what the scrolls have given us and what some insightful scholars have been able to tease out from his Aramaic (not Greek as the documents accepted were written in) that there was probably a good deal of mistranslation. Maybe they weren't ready then and maybe they aren't ready now?   But maybe we do not need the teaching since people are waking up without benefit of ANY meditation or diet or nadi cleansing or any of that.  Perhaps only because the wave of the collective is growing, building in potential, like the flame Jesus was talking about.....

Its a fire, its an ocean, its a mystery.

So with the innocence of children, the freshness of their hearts and minds, let us forgive and let go what has come before.  Let us in this moment just let it all go within us.  None of it matters.  There is an infinity waiting.  Its more than we could ever dare dream.  Here, we can play and watch as we create and realize what the ramifications are of those creations.....

Goodnight, and heal well, Wilbur.

Everpresent Nondual Awareness

This, they say, is enlightenment.  I don't know what enlightenment is probably because it sounds so much like a destination, and nothing about any of this feels like a destination.  Without a real understanding of what enlightenment might be, I tend to feel like the word simply confuses rather than enlightens.  I know illumination, and I think many people are this.  But enlightenment.....if this is an everpresent nondual awareness, then I am enlightened.  And I have to ask; and so?

We are humans in this world of the walking wounded.  We have karma to untangle, and the world to love.  Moving out of the tangled barbs of our own making, or all the finger pointing and all of the recrimination, everything resolves into one simple truth; somewhere along the line we had some rift in our souls or selves and we brought it into the physical in order to heal it, fix it, or to accept it as it is and then learn to move on in a more wonderfilled way.  Awakening, this experience of nonduality, is part of the process I think.  It is a form of liberation from the shackles of what went before.  The thing  though is that we can still have other less binding or obvious issues within us.....as this process is ever-continual, ever changing, and growing in dimension.  In one simple moment the universe can open up wide and in that moment you may wonder why, what for, what to do.  And I say that it isn't that you do nothing. I say its showing you your dual nature as particle self to wave self.  Particle is the bubble that defined your awareness wince you were born.  Finite, bounded within the bubble of you, you could not hear others' thoughts or feel their feelings.  You were neatly contained within your body. Individual. But the wave connected you to the rest of the cosmos, wedded you to a special aspect of yourself that allowed you to also blend into the Allness of creation and quite suddenly you DO feel others' feelings, or hear their thoughts.  Suddenly a trap door opens within you and some new things ruse to the surface of the waters beneath that trap door.  But its not a trap.  Its a way to freedom. Wave Awareness.  And you move from partical and wave with ease when you become safe within this experience.

Everpresent nondual awareness.  An awakening brings this, and in you, it will work with you in dealing with your inner material but your ego self will have control if you let it.  By letting go more and more, the authentic self moves forward and there is less to do as this self knows that instead of moving the universe ourselves as little beings we can use our awareness in the waveform to move mountains. When we are one with the wave of the universe, this is how it can be done.  The universe is suddenly behind you.  Belief determines whether you succeed or not.  Belief is required.  It opens the door.  Feel it in totality, and then the universe will align to you.  Its already aligning to your beliefs.  If you change them, so does your experience.

Practice Element

Healing the Root

One powerful way of healing the root chakra is to place one hand on your heart and the other on your root, or near your genitals.  You might feel one hand will flow into the root from the heart better than another, and if this is so, follow your instinct.  My right hand is the sending hand while my left hand is the receiver, so when I do this simple exercise, I place my left hand on my heart chakra and my right on the root.  Imagine your chakra breathing in the energy from your heart.  Feel into this and do this for at least 15 minutes.  You need not have a thunder clap experience since most of this is a gentle feeling of healing. You may also feel as though something is moving around.  If so, ask what is moving to leave.  Imagine it being rooted out and slipping away from your field.  It no longer has a place in your field. By breathing deep and exhaling deep and fast while focused on the root, you can help to bring new energy into that place.  You can also shake or move while doing this, and movement can help dislodge old material in the energy field.  The secret is to FEEL the movement as coming from your core, not from the outside inward.

Practice Element

Healing the Root #2

Another good way to heal a chakra is to draw that chakra into the heart chakra.  Concentrate on the chakra that you wish to heal and as you breathe in, imagine the energy drawing up or down into the heart. Imagine that chakra energy as like a thread or line of fluid in a tube that you draw upwards (or down depending on what chakra) through just the force of your breath.  As you draw this energy into the heart, you create a cohesion, a balance and grounding as well as healing of that center.  The root and heart have an interesting energetic dynamic.  They are each oppositely charged, so your energy will tend to flow upwards into the heart if you let it. The more you are able to release, the more broad the healing effect is for you.  Imagine the energy from root moving into the heart and then flowing into the root again.  This creates a renewed energy balanced by the divine heart field. This is the core of love and compassion, and even if you don't know what you are doing or wanting to do, with simple intention, you can still achieve results.

By doing this, you effect a change in your field by intentionally drawing upward the sexual energy into the heart.  When you can balance the root with the heart, there is a more balanced effect, a more balance alchemy.  From there, the third tier of awareness can be brought into it, which is the crown, but by keeping the focus on the root via the heart, you can keep the energy simple and straight forward.  Your heart can transmute the energy from the root and feed back into it a very good divine energy. It can also begin the process of bringing greater awareness into the root, the foundation of our experience, the base from which kundalini springs.  By drawing this up into our heart, a powerful form of bliss can be experienced, and a subtle but powerful inner alchemy can be catalyzed.  Performing this daily over a period of a few weeks can help move or shift your awareness in a significant way.  It can also bring you closer to a more healed place.

What is behind most meditation practices is a simple calming of the mind.  When you do this, you can begin to allow the Waveform to come forward more.  All methods help you to feel differently.  If you can achieve this, then it doesn't matter what method you use, even one that is fashioned on your own.  When you realize that all any yogi ever did was to crete something that worked for them and then handed it down as it was continually changed and improved upon, the result has always been the same; creating something that helps you to feel differently.   This truly is all that you need.  There is nothing special in the half lotus or full lotus except that many people have used it.  It CAN connect you to the field of broader awareness that others have touched, but this is just the beginning.  The broad field is within you, so all you do is to use this posture as a catalyst.  You have within you the means to awaken, and when you do, you will not need a spcial posture or even breath. You will learn that breath, true breath, is the respiration of the soul, and this is a moment by moment taking in of cosmic energy.  While your own breathing physically can help to bring in more energy, you can in fact bring in huge amounts of high level energy in a powerful way through a simple act of intentional letting go and opening within.  Oddly, for me, I have found that I can bring in large amounts of energy by washing or immersing my hands in water.  Warm seems best. The thing is that just about anything can help you to feel differently.  For you, it might be something different than me.  I can also open energy in all parts of my body by a type of flexing and rubbing of my hands, which will bring chills all through my body, all through my meridians sometimes.  I can also do this through intent, which is seeking to feel differently.  Seeking to flow instead of getting trapped in a mental state that is both rigid and linear.  By flowing nonlinearly, I don't know what to do next but everything that happens always makes sense and works out in the end.  By trusting, intention can bring me to a new place.  I suspect it can work this way for you.

If you need a system, make one that works for you, or fashion one from others based on how ti makes you feel.  Release expectation and open to feeling as you feel into how the technique makes you feel.  if you feel good, stick wtih the good.  If you feel tight or hard, move away from that.  What will make you flow? Your own inner sensuality will help.  It knows.  It is nonlinear and it is not rigid.  Tapping this is uncommon for many who have grown up in certain faiths because inner sensuality is often tantamount to physical pleasure that is seen as of the flesh and thus bad.  Because flesh is built from this same sensual consciousness, it too is miraculous and wonderful.  There is nothing sinful or bad about it.  the only thing bad about it is that we have been taught to feel badly about it.  Through it, we can enter into our higher consciousness, regardless of what some might say.  Release your idea that the body is somehow bad.  It isn't.  And neither is your desire.  It will lead you in tantric fashion to your divine nature.