The Eternal Garden Of The Soul

How It Comes....

As simple as a cup of coffee in the morning
something in me opens up
I am curious
a map unfolds
a world opens
atoms in my body
dance and sing
as two energies
move through each other
in a dance that I know has been eternal.

The room begins to throb
quietly
I feel the electrons spining in my body
inducing a field around me.
It has been years now
and so much I have gone through
and it still feels the same.
Its earthy
but cosmic
it builds dimension
and leads to great longing
and desire.
I feel a field moving
rippling around me.
I know that this is what moves mountains
and awakens minds.
It all sounds so high and mighty.

I step over and slip open a book
and there is a description
of Buddha who had thousands
who awakened whilst he was here
on Gaia...
and I know
we all serve as this
in our way
a steady torsion field
of influence
of the serpent people
the dream makers
the tapestry weavers
the love makers
the magical breatheren and sisteren
that waits with heaving breath
in hope and wish
of ushering in the new way....

I look into your eyes
which are the eyes of legion
everyone
for goddess dwells in everything
everywhere
-split the stone and she is there
she is everywhere....
a calm breeze
a rush of realization
of the sacred androgyne
that this makes of us
and explodes all notions
opening us up to the new
as skin after skin is shed....
as I feel you there
in the kitchen
as the water hasn't even begun to boil
but the universe opens up
so simply and wildly.
I am reaching the goddess
reaching the goddess within
so as to heal the god
and make my world
a garden with no competing weeds

You react in the air around me
as I ride this wave
moment to moment
day to day
a great big silly silence
with nothing present
no one there
with a room full of something
entirely quiet
but screaming too...
the universe yearns this way
and bids us to
so we might create as it does
moment by micromoment
in scales measured in
milennia curled up within nanoseconds
as all time expands perfectly within its one great moment
alive in all other moments
and my inners seek the flow from one polarity to the other
to unlock my own secrets
that I am here to find
in the eternal garden of the soul....

The Myth Makers

When we think about the traditions that have preceded us in our lives, I think we tend to look up to these as established, sometimes even larger-than-life figures.  Myths, which are ancient, are like this.  They get told against a background of high-flying images that capture and engage our imaginations.  We have centaurs, gods who change forms as in Greek myths, and a vast panoply of images and beings that express all kinds of aspects of who and what we are.  In a way religions are a bit like this in how they get stuck or are installed in our sense of the collective awareness of humankind. We often think of these as always having been, and yet, each one of them has at one time or another, been entirely created out of thin air. 

Before centaurs, there were no centaurs.  Before Leda and the Swan, there was no Leda and there was no swan.  Before Jesus, there was no Christianity.  So all of these institutions and myths and legends have all been created from us.  Some would say that Jesus was a real man, and to those of you who have recognized this, I would heartily agree.  But if you look closely even at Jesus in art over the centuries, you will see a changing face.  For example, did you know that when Byzantine art was at its apex, Jesus looked very different from what he looks like in our depictions today.  Jesus actually had no beard in these images.  Only later did Jesus show up as having a beard.  Why?  The answer has to do with how we invest images with meaning, and this is just how myths are in fact made.  So one culture who sees wise people as taking the time to shave their beards and remain clean-shaven, will naturally create images of their wise people as clean-shaven.  This was certainly the case in the example of Byzantine art that I just gave.  But that image changed.  Many times, in fact.  Jesus, today, is often depicted as a white anglo-saxon looking gentleman in white robes. This version was created by the very people that he wound up looking like.  If we were honest, Jesus would have been much darker skinned.  This is an act of creation, and I say that we need to keep all of our stories and institutions fresh so we know how to relate to them.  It's just how we are. 

So at some point, everything we see in our culture was created.  It came THROUGH us.  Even magnificent books were themselves created through our hands.  Even the bible.  There is this joke that Moses wrote the bible, and while its funny, it still points to our tendency to want to invest people with the authority of having gotten the message straight from God or some other deity.  Moses probably was a good listener.  He was also likely a mystic, otherwise he never would have discovered the means to hear God speaking to him when everyone else was obviously unaware of anyone speaking.  Some want to think that God came to him as though a being outside of himself as evidenced in the burning bush experience and other instances where he heard God speak to him. But if God did this, why weren't there stories of how others heard who were in close proximity?  the truth here is we hear the divine, which has no body or means to speak to us save for through our one connection to that realm, through our souls.  In this place, we can color and create.  We put what fits us into those images.  Quite naturally, Moses was a leader, so his God would wind up being authoritarian by necessity in order to get those wandering ex-slaves to follow him to a better place.  And really, in all truth, if the God of Moses who was able to bring plagues and part the Red Sea, then this God would have been able to provide Moses and his people with a place to call their own.  And yet, even in wandering for 40 years in the desert, this side of the story has its colorful and storied explanation for why this had to be that way.  And its fantastic!  I am not kidding you here.  I am serious.  This is all a great act of creativity in motion and shows how we have all helped in our own way to support or even create myths and stories about ourselves that express aspects of who and what we are.

So knowing this, knowing that WE are the ones who create all of this, or are inspired to create it through divine inspiration, let's consider how we can be utterly creative and consider that all of our myths and stories could be remade into forms that suit us better.

For me, I'd really like to see the Garden of Eden be turned into an epic story with fewer black and white lines and more shades of gray.  I'd also like to think that the fruit was itself not forbidden, but known to be something that we all would lust after and seek since being an all-knowing God, God quite naturally KNEW that we'd probably go for the one that was forbidden.  Curious, we had to find out.  And what if the serpent was less an enemy of God and more an agent OF God?  After all, the Seraph, the angels from Judaic times, were all described as "fiery serpents" with wings.  Honestly, I think the serpent was once a symbol of wisdom and self-transformation as is evidenced in nearly every culture on the earth!  In the image below you see a serpent with wings from an Egyptian tomb, and we all know snakes do not have wings, so this was quite simply a creation in order to express an idea about what serpents were to us.  The thing, though, is that this idea, giving serpents wings was something that is native to the Hebrew, the Egyptian, the European, the Chinese and Japanese as well as the Mayan cultures.  Even in South America the serpent represents aspects of transformation, alchemy, and vital force.  In Europe, the stories of dragons depict them with wings.  Have we ever wondered why?  Clearly, there have been no known earth-bound lizards or dinosaurs of any size that had wings.  All of the dinosaurs who had wings were those that flew and were thus built for flight.  So were the dragons of our older years in Europe a remnant of the myth making of our ideas about serpents and what they represented to us way back then?  I bring this up as a way to illustrate a point, which is that its just as easy to see the serpent as beneficial.  What if there is a world where the serpent wasn't seen as the enemy?  If the Garden of Eden came to us by way of the Hebrews, then weren't these people enslaved by a people who revered the serpent? 

You certainly see the serpent in Egyptian culture as an image of vital energy and spirituality because they sprout from the heads of Pharaohs and even Moses had a little duel with the Pharaoh of his day where his staff turned into a snake and ate the Pharaohs snake. Is it possible that the early Hebrews simply demonized the snake as a result of their dislike for their enslavers?  I do think this is entirely possible and even likely.  So if we consider this, could the snake have been something entirely different?  And if so, what could that snake have been?  When you remove the elements within you that see something in a negative light, you can see it in a different light.  So what if the serpent was a friend, not a foe?  Certainly the Hebrews saw the highest angelic order next to God as being winged serpents, the Seraph. 

The truth is, we already have two stories of the Garden of Eden, if you can dare to believe it.  In one, the woman chose to leave of her own volition.  Her name was Lilith, not Eve, and in that story, the details are quite different!  So knowing this, seeing this for what it is, we see different currents of identification existing that tell another side of ourselves in these myths, these ancient stories that speak of who and what we are as a race and a people.   With Lilith, not much is known after she departs, but what if the creators had a longer story about her after she left the Garden?  What would that story say?  And instead of the version we have today of a woman who has been scorned for bringing so much trouble upon the race, was Lilith instead a pioneer, a free thinker, a powerful woman in her own right?  What IS the story of Lilith, then?   If we create these myths, then how might we have gone on to tell her story?  What if we were to do that today, right now? 

I am illustrating myth-making in the making, you see.  Right here, right now, we create something new.  In doing so, what you will find is that engaging in this kind of creative act, you allow yourself sometimes to see things from a fresh perspective.  You embody your creations with something that is inside of you.  So given this, what could you create?  What could you weave and breath life into that speaks of your own soulfulness?  Do your myths represent an uncertain world full of gods and goddesses playing tit for tat or is your world filled with often misunderstood beings that in the end seek the best for you even if you aren't always aware that this is even so?  I know; the old myth of God saying not to eat the fruit was itself an example of that, but you see, I am not clinging to any belief system here.  I am not knocking any one's belief system, I am using some examples to show how we come up with things and give them a life of their own.  Our myths, you see, reflect values that we ourselves hold and in looking at those myths, you can learn things about yourself that you might not have even realized existed.  Otherwise, you might put no stock in such myths as they reside as mere fancifulness. 

As for me, I think its time we got busy and made a few new myths of our own!  For certainly we are the makers of such things, so why not?

The Great Tuning Fork

When I was younger and I began seeing auras, it made me realize in a very tangible way that we are all energy; our bodies, composed of this seemingly coarse matter was energy vibrating at a  certain frequency.  Different types of matter has different densities.  Different things have a different vibration, such as light and sound; all vibration.  We live in a sea of All Energy. All kinds of energy moving at different frequencies, and yet, there is this sense that I have and that many others seem to have, too, which is that "behind" all of this or resting "within" all of this energy is a core energy source or force.  We have all kinds of names, and for years and years every name I heard seemed to fall short of really explaining it.  What I realize is that any name IS going to fall short of the grandeur of this living presence in all things.  So anything will seem mundane or silly almost.  Bearded man up in the clouds?  Silly!  Buxom Lady, Mother to all living in the springs and oceans?  Silly!  And yet, even as we say that we can dream such images into being and experience them as virtually as any vivid dream or vision.  This is so because everything is a creation, everything IS creative energy.  It isn't nothing means anything, it means that anything can mean anything you need or want.  Understand how this deeper level creativity works and you can find yourself living a much less effortful life.  (yes-I just made that word up...)

The Gods and Goddesses are reflections of what we are able to realize or know. Its a little funny that for some a God has meant a beaded guy up in the clouds.  It shows that we have pretty well excluded the feminine in ourselves and in our deity.  Well, all of that is changing. A delicate vibration of bliss is coming back to us as we reach the End Times.  Set your hair on fire chillens, cause the seals are about to be undone.  Seven of them; right along with the seven chakras making up the pranamayakosha or light body.  The End Times means that we are coming to the end of the old way and we are now seeing the New Way.  And I am here to tell you that.  Didn't you know?   That, and the fact that by being energy we all have our effect on the world around us....and that the core of all things can have its own effect on YOU?  Well  sit back and let me tell you a story......

This great presence in all things I will boldly say is like a tuning fork.  Its vibration is so pure, so incredibly refined.....it is like observing a master at work.  I understand how those who can pause to see the incredible masterwork that exists all through creation would feel awed and become worshipful of this presence.  I will tell you though that there is nothing about this presence that has ever once demanded that I go down on one knee.  I think this has to do with our own limited conception of what a deity is, and what a deity was for us thousands of years ago may have been more like observing a Lord or ruler of some kind. I can tell you that this being seems to observe and flow through all things lovingly more than in any egoistic way.  It wants us to be happy and to find our own freedom in expression and in fulfillment....and just as it has created so much, it is itself curious to see what WE will create.  And what WILL we create?

Within this Presence lies a central vibration that is pure love.  I can't even begin to tell you how incredible this thing is.  I don't even know why I am using all this time telling you about it when I could be focused on the bliss that it confers.  But here I am, explaining that there is something truly remarkable inside of you.  It is a piece of the divine and that slip of divine has the capacity to vibrate at the same vibration as the central force in all things.  This vibration is love.  This love, however, may be unlike anything you have thus far experienced.  It is not something that you feel FOR something, it is a force that IS everything.  It is kind of awesome that way.  Truly.  But in order to embody it, you need to become aware of it. Can I help you to recall this? 

When the sages speak of "self realization" they aren't talking about decades worth of work and yoga postures, they are talking about a simple act of recalling who we are deeper down. We are like amnesiacs who have been shipwrecked on this planet and we wake up one day to realize we are travellers from a distant land who are all artists of one kind or another.  As our memories unfold and sharpen, we realize we have all of these remarkable abilities.  Some amongst us say we are here to be punished.  These people, those are the ones who have not fully remembered, because were they to remember fully, they would become speechless and just stand gape-mouthed at the realization of just what we are.  How do I jog your memory?  All you have to do is to look inside very quietly and begin to FEEL your energy.  When you FEEL your energy, you feel it from one central place within the core of your awareness.  In this place, in this stillness, stop taking your own energy for granted.  Ask yourself what IS this energy that is you?  FEEL that energy and center on it with your attention. You do not need anything more than this except that.  The quieter you can become, the more still you can be, the better.  This is not easy, so by gently bringing your busy mind back into a center of focus each time with becoming quiet and centered on feeling your own core of energy, you can slowly begin to learn to develop a practice of developing a capacity to rest within this energy in a way that can lead to a revolution in memory.  Breathing has in the past been connected to this process since breathing inward also helps to move energy in your body.  If it helps, breathing in a deep and steady way, much like how you breathe just before you fall asleep, is the perfect way to breathe for recalling your soul self.  You can also bring great relaxation by pressing one nostril closed and breathing in and out four times each and then changing to the other nostril. You can do this as many times as you need in order to drift into a deeply relaxed state.  You can also press your hands together as in prayer and then focus on the place where the hands meet.  The reason why this method is so powerful is because the hands when brought together in prayer actually complete a circuit in the body that helps build and accumulate energy.  By placing your attention on the place where the hands meet, you are activating the quantum potential within the energy to vault yourself into a new form of awareness.  This form of awareness is one that moves you from object-based awareness to what I would call field-based awareness.  It is the basis for a method I call Divine Energetics which uses the power of the brain and body to accumulate the type of energy that can lead to awakening and to greater awareness.  It is actually as simple as learning how to shift from an "I" object-based form of awareness and reasoning to one that is not based in objects but fields, waves, of awareness.  It is in the wave or field (the forest instead of the trees) that the awakening experience awaits you.  Having said that, being ready by working through the more thorny issues of your life can be a big help to you because once awakening comes small things are greatly magnified.  It is my sense, though, that sometimes the only real way to work through our small things and big things is by having them magnified by the presence of awakening or kundalini.  It is what it does; it helps us to see even the most minute grain of sand in order that we can cast it aside from the great turning of the wheels within us so that it does not scratch or harm or hurt our very delicate inner workings.

Our energy can serve as a tuning fork.  Just as the central sun or light or presence serves as a tuning fork for us, we too also attune others whether we know it or not.  The more receptive or open we are to this attunement, the more likely it is to happen.

Long before I ever had my awakening but a few months into seeing auras, I was sitting with one of my room mates as we spoke.  I was talking about something, I forget what exactly, but I noticed that I was feeling what I know now to be my own core energy.  This energy is strong.....its not a flowing kind of energy....it certainly wasn't at the time.  It is like I am most often; animated, intense and with a brilliant kind of flash to it.  That same year I had a memory from a past life where I was a native American man who had a vision that had Thunder Beings in it.  Like a bolt of lightening; that was what it was like. I had felt this emerge over  the years.  It was in some ways what I thought to be a very masculine kind of energy.  As it turned out that the Sky was most often polarized towards the masculine in native imagery and belief while the earth was considered the feminine polarity.  Certainly in the vision I was being shown an archetypal image that served to merge the sky with earth in a cleansing that I was told would happen when I was reborn as a new person.  The vision from that past life was a prophecy about the life I am leading now.  "You will bear a power to the earth that will be cleansing...."  How could I have known that kundalini would do this?  Certainly kundalini was a cleansing force, yes, and perhaps, then I was here to help in the cleansing of the earth....which is within us just as we are within it. By learning to cleanse ourselves, would be manage to cleanse the earth?  It turned out that there were all kinds of prophecies about this Day of Cleansing from the Navajo, Hopi, Lakota, Ojibwe, and more.  All agree that we are in the Day of Cleansing period and those who teach about it tend to do so in a way that is dynamic; we are not separate from the effects that are happening before us.  The junk on the face of the earth is the junk in our own minds. CLean the mind and heart and the world can itself also begin to heal.  When my vibration changes, it becomes easier for you to change.  It is possible to change the world this way, you see.  We just need enough people here to effect this change.  From all accounts, I'd say that it is happening.  But on this day, I was talking to my room mate and feeling this energy.  As I spoke to him, I explained what I saw in his aura.  I could feel myself feeling this vibration of energy very strong.  I would later think of it as my tuning fork effect.  As I spoke to him, he began to look at me funny.  I asked him what was up and he explained that he saw a light all around me.  To test to make sure my room mate wasn't pulling my leg I asked him to do something that I knew meant nothing to him but that would help me to gauge if he was actually seeing auras. I asked him to take off his glasses.  Now to understand this, you need to realize that John wore these coke bottle glasses.  The poor soul had such poor eyesight that his eyes looked like big fish eyes staring back at you through those thick panes of plastic.  When John took off his glasses, he was blind.  But instead of going blurry, John's face grew even more amazed.  He said "the light!  It is so bright!"  It was then that I knew that John was indeed "seeing" auras.

Over the years I would find that when I was feeling my own inner core energy and reading energy that people had a habit of beginning, right then and there, to see auras.  My intuitive sense has been that all that has ever really happened is that by feeling my own energy in the way that I do, the people who were receptive enough, were able to tune into the same frequency I was on and it opened the sense up within them as well.  This phenomenon has happened about five times and I often can feel when someone else around me is about ready to activate this sense in themselves.  I can sense a similar vibrational frequency.

It turns out that Reiki is a healing modality that does something similar.  At least this is the read I get from it.  Last week I had my first attunement and what I experienced was how practicioners could help conduct universal and soul energy through my system in a way that was beneficial for my own healing.  By shifting my vibration it helped to move old energy blocks in my body that had been there for a very long time.  By doing this I was better able to feel my "own" energy which is itself like being a fountain for a source of energy that is the universe.  The more I do this, the closer I get, I achieve a divine alignment and it is in this divine alignment that I feel peace and joy and bliss while working on what remains for me to heal in my own energy body.  That we manage to hold so hard onto these old hurts and blockages is testament to how our own individuality becomes accustomed to a less than marvelous way of being and feeling.

Its weird.  It really is.  And yet, we all do this.  All of us.  Slowly and sometimes quickly, we are moved to the center of some great wheel.....to an axial point in our awareness where so much just falls away.  It is like a cosmic seduction.  I feel my soul grow naked under the great vibratory force that is this divine love.  I find I just don't care anymore.....and in not caring, I lose my fear over what I am afraid might lie in the center of my soul.  Some dark pit or some glitch or something less than perfect, less than lovable, less than beautiful.  And yet, this seductive force teased me out of my shadows, out of the old feeling of not being good enough or strong enough or bold or smart enough or handsome or any of the rest.  It floods me with such incredible love that I just melt.

I am returned to a baseline vibration.....to a primordial state.....and its not harps and angels.  Its fiery flowers bursting open with passion and stars exploding into new worlds in the night.  It is the grinding force of gravity hending space and the passionate love that bears a moon to its planet.  It is the force that brings blood to churn in the heart, the nutrients to flow from root to leaf, of a boundless frequency that pervades all and makes all as it changes from one thing to another and is all things all at once.  It is a dance around the maypole, it is a passionate kiss by the fire.  It is a love of great art and science and devotion to all things great and hopeful.  It is the incredible reach and trembling grasp of our kind as we seek to break the bonds of one cradle to recognize the bonds of a still larger one ahead of us.  All of this could be some remarkable miracle or a mundane blurp of accident and for those where it is all mere accident, there is a kind of pall of death that comes over the soul.
So what do you want?  Do you want to follow rules laid out ahead of you or are you willing to realize that its all in your to know the infinite realm that spreads out before all of us?  In touching this wonder of wonders, doesn't it just seem such a waste that humans would spend time making war and enriching themselves when there is more than enough for everyone here and that we could be doing such incredible things instead of merely seeking advantage.  Isn't it time for the Goddess within each of us, the part that sees the larger good for all, to awaken collectively so that we might all be softened by this part of us that we shoved under the rug so long ago?  Isn't it time for love to reign in heaven, the kind of love where God must close the door so he might be with his Beloved Goddess?  And isn't it time that we allowed ourselves to see our Gods and Goddesses as loving and affectionate instead of angry and vengeful?  Aren't the Gods and Goddesses our own projections anyway?  And in so being, might we not ourselves be able to remake our world in a finer sort of vibration where we become not the lost children of an angry father-god but the children of a happy and loving family of father/mother?  Because, I have to point out, that  it is in this vibration that their bliss is known.  Isn't the bliss of this experience equal to the touch of the higher forces reaching one into the other for completion.....and isn't this the same thing that happens to us as we ourselves awaken, which is that we merge that which is lacking in us, most often our opposites, in order to know bliss and love and joy and all the rest?  Isn't this what we seek the beloved for?  Isn't this really  just the way to clothe and describe a great mystery where there is no father, there is no mother, but there is a wondrous reality that is entirely beyond words even though we do seek to put it all to words?  Touch the universal force and you shall know the product of their love, their union, their hearts as vast forces that dream worlds into being.  I know that this may all sound like utter madness to you, but in the realm of the spirit, things are not always anchored to objects the way they are in the physical and this experience is very much bringing the heaven to earth. It is.  It is the Kingdom.  Here. So if that sounds crazy, what can I say?

All of this may all sound grandiose to you.  It is.  I admit it.  But so is the force that turns at the core of all things.  In fact, it is just beyond all description.  We, so little, like ants really, we are just feeling the far edge of its wonder.  What will happen when we learn to bite fully into it and know it rich flavor and juiciness?  And when, really, are you going to stop your inner struggle and just let go of that river bank and trust that the river shall take you to a still greater sea?  There is a tuning fork inside of you and you need only find it.  Then let yourself feel it.  In feeling your energy, you can know the wonder that is the universe.  People seek this for lifetimes.  I ti s here now on the planet in a way it has not been in many many generations.  By saying yes to it in your heart, you will say yes to a great love that is what you are and that is the universe.

Why Tantra Is So Important

When you awaken, you awaken to a world where nothing much is the same as it was.  Clearly, there is a channel within that is opened.  Thought energy is more than just your own private thoughts.  You come to realize that thoughts really DO have power.  And here we are on the planet, chattering away inside of ourselves, and its possible to hear all of this.  Your own thoughts aren't as private as you may have previously realized.  It isn't that people are snooping on you, no, because once you awaken, there just isn't the desire to such things.  It was like when I began seeing auras.  For a while it was interesting, novel even, but then I realized I was SEEING people....their private things being expressed in their aura. So when that happens, you have a new responsibility and you take it seriously.  But thought energy isn't just nothing.  From thought new creations come. The quality of thought counts.

So thought is itself energy.  We ourselves are made up of all kinds of sheaths or facets within us that all process energy in a different way.  We have maybe five basic bodies that bend the energy in certain ways the way that a prism bends light and breaks it into different colors (if you are into dividing us into such neat categories)....physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, etc., and so each of these will experience the same energy differently.  Each will be a facet or expression of what you are. At one place it will feel as exquisite sexual energy while in another place it will feel more sensual, less sexual.  In another place, it will feel so powerful as though you can do anything.  In another place within you, this energy might be like divine love, in another place it might illuminate and clarify your inner sight....there are so many ways that energy from the cosmos can be experienced!

One aspect of your energetic being is sexual energy.  Now we have a lot of weirdness surrounding this part of ourselves.  There is a huge amount of shame as a race on this count.  This shame that has remained unresolved has made us prisoners to old hurts and old karmic threads that have kept us on the merry-go-round of karma for lifetimes.  LIFETIMES. But sexual energy is one aspect of who you are, and it is easier to deal with the more you allow yourself to be healed. Once you are able to clear each vehicle (as the Hindus call it), as you clear each center that channels energy through you, you can begin to have a clearer and more peaceful existence.  You can also use each center for life in a way that brings you fulfillment instead of snags or problems.

What makes Tantra so important isn't that its about sex, its that it deals with sexual energy as a way to reach union with the divine.  See, the divine does not have the shame you have.  The universe has no problem meeting you and merging with you in any way you are willing to merge with it.  The vast consciousness that IT is simply has moved beyond shame a long time ago.  As a result of this, it seems perfectly capable of experiencing bliss and wonder no matter how we approach it.  the only thing missing is how WE react to the same thing.  Learning how to be without shame is important.  By this I do not mean to say that you are shameless and thus unstudied in your morality, no.  What I mean is that you are more like a child.  You return to a purer place within before all of the guilt and shame about your body, about who you are or how you are was put into place by you. When you do that, you experience whatever it is more directly, less encumbered.  When you do this sexually, you are dealing with a very powerful form of energy.  This energy can speed yourself along, but it is not for the feint of heart.  Using all of you is a beautiful thing in spiritual work.  It reaches into religion but without the dogma. Sexual energy, then, moves fast and is felt by others.  You need to be careful about how you direct it and use it.  As a result, your own mind and your own issues need to be healed and worked on so that the quality of your experience will continue to be more and more refined.

It is hard for some folks to know what remains.  What remains in you is what gets in the way with a direct experience of yourself and the divine.  What remains to be surrendered?  What is not in your highest?  It is hard to know what isn't in your highest always.....because sometimes your highest is a few steps ahead of where you are.....so this means that you have to be willing to accept what your higher self sends to you as signs, as directives, or as outcomes or events that can lead you to the next step in your path.   In time, with enough attention, the answers will come.  I know this may sound laissez- faire, but I promise you that this is an aspect of co-creation that will work if you allow it.  the secret is that you can make ANY technique work IF you believe in it enough.  If doing a series of incantations allows you to believe that something will come to pass, then by golly, it will!  That is the nature of belief!  Ask that you be shown.  And be patient. 

Keep at it. 

Sometimes you need to be ready to see before you can see. Let the universe pave the way for you.  You think you are this limited being in this small body when in truth you are one life looking out through this one body but you have many many many more bodies, lives, experiences beyond comprehension.  With time being an illusion, ALL of you is available NOW.  Your future selves, your God or Goddess self in its advanced state is available to you.....and its at your fingertips.  Accelerate yourself....and you will see.

So tantra isn't really about sex, but it is about sexual energy.  There is a very big difference, there.  Some feel the need to respond in a more typical way with tantric energy and release the energy.  However, it can also be used to elevate ones self.  You can use it to do things, create things, or to live a life that is devoted to love in a more subtle way.  There are countless ways to utilize the energy, and no one way better than another. But its not always about sexual union only.  Feeling sexual energy is not the same as being engaged sexually, and this energy when felt powerfully enough actually has the power to transform you.  This has been the aim of many followers, many monks, many priests and priestesses down through the ages.  It isn't the only one, of course, but it is one very valid way toward self transformation. 

I have found how love and sexual energy go hand in hand....for love is NOT sexual energy, but sexual energy is an expression of love, or CAN be if love is holding its hand.  Do you see?  Sexual energy is like a raw fire.  Now we can use that fire to burn down the house and barn or we can control it and manage that fire within the bounds of discipline and love and devotion.  By allowing yourself to be open to the All, you can experience something here on the planet with the divine that is simply not here with other humans yet.  Being able to FEEL something HERE on the planet is huge.  It is what I call Anchoring The Vibration.  Being able to anchor a vibration here is HUGE.  Really.  So by doing this kind of work, you aren't JUST doing it for yourself, you are also laying down a path that makes it easier for others to reach it.  You are setting up a frequency that will be easier for others to match or follow or find.

And I am just here reminding you that this is so.

So with tantra, you can find God-dess or the divine.  It is right in front of you.  Now breathe deep and just let it in.  Let it be.  realize and remember who you are.  You are more than just your life.  You re so much more.....now breathe it in and let the divine cradle and love you....

The Tantrics

What is often not understood is how sexuality can itself lead to salvation.  For lifetimes, for centuries, we have felt such shame surrounding this part of ourselves. And yet, like a great secret buried in what seem to be the most shameful parts of ourselves, lies an answer to what we are, who we are, and what we can become.  Here, sexuality in awakening can begin to clear a path quickly within the self and Pranamayakosha, the Light body so that lifetimes of old shame is sloughed off.  Karma slips away. It is like an epiphany when just one karmic knot slips away.  As the knots lessen the flow increases and what was once strong flow becomes a clearer flow.  What is an incredible desire and yearning grows into an incandescent fire that is both hot and cold at once.  The body is lit up for hours and hours, days, weeks, months at a time.  Slowly the self learns that its natural state is in bliss not in the seemingly grounding sense of being separate and singular.  With awakening to this great power residing within, one knows oneself as connected into all other things, a nodule on one rung of the great cosmic dna of the cosmos.  The flow of this energy within is also the flow of this energy in all things.  It is the force that connects and binds all things.  And it is orgasmic.  Beyond orgasmic.  To be able to allow its energy to flow within we learn surrender so deep there's nothing there to catch the current, nothing to limit it or impede it.  Anything that catches the current causes a great deal of turbulence and trouble.  This would be something brought about by maya. 

A spark of the divine is lit and burns, tended by the one who moves with it.  So hypnotic, so beautiful, so incredible, what was once sexual becomes the basis of worship.  A man's love, then, for a woman, moves from being mere interest or attraction to something so all pervading and consuming that it illuminates the opposites all through nature in brilliant relief.  These opposites become forces within the psyche that churn and move the old latent material of the self, spitting out old splinters, coughing up stones and bile and clarifying the body and soul even more.  The self becomes a channel, a pathway for the divine spark....the fuel comes from the universe and is without end.

For those who awaken to this depth of illumination something changes in them forever. Instead of sexual energy making them obsessed, they become saintly.  Holding this incandescence within in grace and silence is the greatest of grace, the most sublime of pursuits.  And for as incredible as all of this sounds, every single one who has been touched by this is as human and as down to earth as anyone else you might meet. Perhaps because of this, these can appreciate the need for getting hands dirty, for making food, for building fences, for mending paths and growing gardens.  Acceptance, surrender, and love, resides in the moment, as each moment serves a purpose.  A tantric is never bored.

The more one touches the divine, the greater the bliss.  The less one is able to know or observe a division between the worshiper and the worshipped. When in tantric practice a tantric is not just reading the Other's mind, s/he IS the others' mind.  Over vast distances, one may feel and know even more intimately than when in conjugal union with the other.  One's gaze becomes powerful as it can be as strong as ones desire to be near.  The beam of attention can be known as traveling as light travels into the body through the eye.  Currents of awareness become like extended sensory organisms, nerve endings that extend one's reach and knowing. A touch is an earthquake, a smile a summer breeze, a whisper the rolling of thunder. One becomes more than merely human and touches upon the capacities within the self to know and to become, to evolve, to embody this.  Tantra reveals the capacity of the self to know and to become.  One may be spellbound for days, resting in this union of two souls separated by miles or continents.  Some can be separated by death and still connect on the deepest of levels. When one soul looks into another, when both are aware of no duality existing between them and the infinite, the souls who touch in this way realize a point of sacredness, of worship, of deep devotional practice that abides moment by moment like a prayer upon ones lips.  Beyond obsession, it is  bhakti. 

The yoke is easy, the labor rewarding.  This path dissolves shame and returns one to the origin; the fabled garden of Eden.  No longer cast out, the way back is realized.  The division we have long felt is erased, god and goddess reside here in all things.  The love within is total.

I raise my hand and I feel Shiva raising his hand before Shakti; his presence moves all through her and a current of white energy flows through them both.  This, the sea of milk is churned by their mutual affection into a more refined material, the sacred ghee.  All of this, stories, clothing to drape over that which is not but that is known and felt and which fills the gap of each moment and glues everything together.  It is a great nothingness that is something, everything, a potential waiting to be. 
The sword of the soul shall in its own time shear from itself that which does not belong and call to itself all that serves the highest.  Until then, bliss turns and sways within us in countless nights and days as we each learn to anchor heaven to earth. 

What Is Kundalini?

There are many resources on the internet and in books that will give you perspectives on what kundalini is.  It is NOT a spirit, not a religion, not even a thing distinct from you.  It is instead, more verb than noun.  It is what we each are in potential.  This I have learned from direct experience with this incredible experience.

It has been described by some as a serpent power, two energies that move up an invisible set of channels along the trunk of the body where they meet in the crown or brain.  It is said that this force is latent and "stored" in the base of the spine until it is awakened. 

The reality, as I have found, is that this force has been described in most traditions by different names, in different ways and with different images.  When describing something that touches on the nonmaterial, it gets very hard to explain something that impinges or affects us here in a way that becomes physical.  

Activating this force is a powerful way to move a person into a greater understanding of their soul.  It is also something that should be approached with caution and care.  I like it to the roller coaster ride that does not ever stop.  You must be so ready within that once you get locked into your seat, you are ready to roll with what comes the rest of your life.  If you are this dedicated to this lightening path, then you may have what it takes.  It is a humbling experience.

In essence what awakening is involves the merging of opposites within the self.  This is done at first broadly and continues through a process that involves a continual purging or cleansing process.  Be you Native American or Eurpoean, Hindu or Muslim, it will not matter since this is a human experience.  It is true that once the process gets underway, you have achieved what many seek their whole lives.  the reason for using yoga has been realized.  You do not need yoga.  Nor do you necessarily need a teacher if you know how to be honest with yourself and look within yourself to see clearly what remains to be cleansed.  I have found that teachers wind up being more of a hindrance than a help during parts of this process.  If you feel you need a teacher, then by all means, seek one, but know also that you will almost always find a teacher who is nearly at your own level.  You need to be willing to entertain radically new ideas or possibilities in order to manifest an experience that will push you well beyond your familiar known bounds. 

Many traditions want to place their own stamp of approval on all of this.  The Hindu tradition has many beliefs about how things should be done. Theirs is a tradition.  I can say quite clearly that you do not need to go find a guru.  The reason why you are here having an awakening is because you are finding yourself.....in a way that you have have never known yourself before.  This moment is laden with a power of possibility so great that you cannot help but manifest your highest.  So why not shoot for the stars?  Why allow yourself to be laden by the weight of ancient tradition when we are now waking up without the help of gurus or postures or methods? 

As someone who has been going through this process of awakening with kundalini, I can offer my perspective, my experience as a primary source to you.  Awakening predates all religion.  It returns you to yourself.  It returns you to the universe and to your higher self. It is  as simple a thing as turning up the volume on feeling.  As this happens, the small things that you did not notice come into view, and what once was a modest life force current now pours through you in powerful surges that had simply never been known to you before.  This can be scary at first because its effect or feeling is so different, perhaps so unexpected.  However, if you know how to ride the wave with grace, what once felt turbulent will refine and become a joy, a blessing.  This energy also churns your dormant or hidden subconscious material in what can only be described as a process of inner cleansing of all old accounts.  It changes your life because the simple self you thought you were is suddenly littered with material there was no way you could have accumulated in one lifetime.  This leads to the realization that you have been at this a long time and you are just now waking up to the wreckage within that you have been carrying around, nearly unaware of.....and which this increase in volume and light that is kundalini is now conferring to your awareness.  It is here that you feel as though a giant work crew has been mobilized in your awareness and is beginning to clean up the mess starting over in the far left hand corner and working methodically, constantly, lovingly within you.  Sometimes the light has to be shone brighter in order just to see through the mists, and as this happens, sometimes the self feels like it will collapse under the scrutiny, under the sudden awareness of the weight of this hulking accumulation of what now is know to be lifetimes of working at this thing called life.  The old way of doing business has finally come to an end......and the degree of success is determined by your willingness to surrender to a process.  You effectively learn to get out of your own way. You surrender to it, you reach into an ancient emotion or state of being called grace.

The curious thing is that as this happens, what was hard becomes soft.  What was difficult becomes increasingly easier.  What once was veiled is not seen more clearly. The unknown becomes known as the self reaches into its karmic accumulation and plucks yet another barb from its side and learns that something beautiful is happening.  Some may want to ascribe methods and ways of going about this process, and some of them may work very well, but most who awaken find that there is a guru within.  As one keeps ones eyes on the prize and learns the devotion necessary to keep up with this tirelessly for years at a stretch, something changes, matures, refines, bit by bit.  Healing the separation that happened in our Garden of Eden, we begin to undo the centuries of wrong-thought or hard feeling, what some call karma, some call illusion, until things get better and better.  Because we each came to this in our own way, we each move out of it in our own way.  Compare if you want, take notes if you want, use any and every tool at your command if need be, but listen to what your insides are saying to you and do not be afraid to follow it at all costs. Even if it means that you lose something cherished.  If it was meant for you in the highest way, then it will remain.  If not, then it does not align with the divine that awaits you.

This is not a race.  There is no expiration date.  You have infinity spreading out before you like a vast sea.  You are here to do two big things: know that you are divine and to find fulfillment in wherever you find yourself.  There is a lot of talk about 2012 nowadays, and I find this to be largely unproductive because underlying it is a current of fear.  Fear of missing the cosmic bus.  But there is no here but a construction of ideas and energy.  And who creates this? Certainly it was created for us, but clearly also is the emerging fact that we are in a co-creative role as we were made in the image of the deity.  We come from that and to it we will return.  This will not be a going but a simple realization, wherever you are, that you are connected into a cosmos that is divine.  Surely there is great change afoot, and if all 2012 is is a marker for this period of shift, then great.  But don't fall for the fear because fear limits you, suggesting some final end.  the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end, no?

 You are infinite in scope and you are eternal. You are meant to, wherever you happen to be, to begin recognizing who you are deeper down.  If this is not a race, then you are free to drop the old awareness you have lived with for so long and consider there is another realm within you that you have up until this time simply not tapped. But this is not a place or a time or anything outside of you. It isn't a date or philosophy or edict.  It is simply what you are.  Be still and know.  If it tells you that you need to live simply, ten do that.  If it tells you to live in the world as it is in order to accomplish what your soul seeks and craves, then do that.  Some say that you have to give up things in order to be spiritual, but stronger is the person who can use the wealth of the world like the toys of a comsic child without fear, without attachment to greed and jealousy, but instead to help move mountains in service to his or her brothers and sisters.  The spiritual is not found just in someone resting and meditating in a cave in India, but also in boardrooms and hostels and restaurants and factories.  We can take what was less than perfect and bring the inspiration to be more perfect and beautiful, and in our own way help bring what is ours to bring.  The teachers say you have to give it all up because of the temptations that money and wealth and fame offer, but this does not mean that you cannot use these as tools to achieve great things.  Invariably the spiritual leader does not need things as s/he is provided them.  But there is always something providing them, and in providing them, they can be used.  With billions on the planet, it is not possible always to bring a message to the masses in the old way.  So we use what our world offers us in joy, in wonder, in awe. 

It is so simple that we miss it. It is a secret buried in plain sight.  There is an old Hindu story that tells of how the gods decided that the best place to put the key to the universe was in the soul of humankind because that was a place where they were least apt to see or to look.  This is a journey to realization, and it really is just that simple.  The realization brings you an almost overwhelming sense of bliss, joy, and good feeling over what you are deeper down.  But we are like beings who have drilled down 100 feet into the crust of our beings and never found water and thus decide there is simply no water there. But a torrent runs just beneath those 100 feet, and so this requires that you dig just a little deeper.  What you are digging into is feeling.  What you do to awaken is you dissolve the things that have kept you divided. It really is just that simple.

Kundalini is a word and the same phenomenon has emerged in numerous cultures across the world.  This is not something you get into a posture and induce.  If that were the case anyone doing kundalini yoga would have awakened by now.  It is not sought, but you may feel as though you are a seeker, but awakening comes at that place where you stop seeking and begin learning how to feel and be different. Perhaps it is pursued until the day you find it.  It is not outside of you but is in the spirit of the world and runs like blood in every vein.  When it "rises" in you, all that is happening is your own awareness of what has always been rises. If you can understand this one simple precept, you will begin to see that the world is brimming with this energy all around you and the universe changes in a significant way.

There are even rules some have made for kundalini, but the curious thing is that as soon as you do that, make rules, someone comes along and explains how that old idea just isn't true.  Perhaps this is merely the march of human understanding down through time as we fine tune all of it, and I suppose in the end keeping ourselves like a solid island that can float on the sea and go where it must is the way the human mind needs to be.  Solid, but able to flow with the tides and currents of those things larger than itself.  Take the good, but always discern.  Buddha spoke of the middle path and what he meant was that the efforts of the Hindus in starving themselves or mortifying the flesh did not bring about enlightenment, nor did other practices. As he sat under a tree, he found it.  No guru, mo method, no teacher.  Just like the Van Morrison song from the album of the same name entitled "In the Garden."  And this is often how it happens.  You awaken to what you are. 

There are many practicioners who believe or who will say that you MUST have a teacher and you MUST do morning prayer and meditation a certain way if you are ever to perfect yourself.  Well, we here in the West don't have time for that.  Having spent many many lives in the east, I am giving the West one final chance.  And I woke up this life.  And I can tell you, no, there is NOTHING that you MUST do when you awaken......although some things are much more helpful if you do them, such as learning the art of surrender.  But the moment someone say you must do something is the moment when someone comes along and shows the world that this is just not so.  In fact, I fully expect someone to make a comment on this very post.  We will see how it goes, shall we?

Awakening is much more like falling in love.  It is like coming alive.  It is found in the spark of inspiration and leads to a constant state of inspiration as if some on switch has been flipped and then left on.  They called it the "resurrection" at one time but very few understood what it meant. They speak of people being as though they were dead living as "normal" people but upon the stirring of the spirit, they are as though awakened into a new life.  This reveals a very different take on some fundamental Christian precepts that may well have been misunderstood from the very beginning, and got related to a man being crucified instead of dealing with a still deeper teaching that some of his disciples sought to explain but whose gospels were hidden in those desert sands of Egypt for so long (the Nag Hammadi).  This is just how much contrast there is between the life before kundalini and the life after kundalini. And it changes your physiology too.  It pushes for change so that you may enter into a holy life, a life where the spirit of all moves around you and through you.  It is not the holy life of the church fathers or of anyone from any religion.  Religion is human made and this is the pure distillation of the divine being conferred upon your own spirit.  It has no one voice or one brand.  It is all life, all things, and no simple part is devoid of it and cannot be expunged or kept out entirely.

Awakening is passion, love, awareness, connectivity, awakening to a new sensory world within you, and a brilliant light that shines its presence upon you in such a way that you cannot hide anymore from the things that keep you separated from the divine flow that is in all things.  It is also one of the most challenging experiences of your life for how unrelenting that it can be.  Talking about it prior to knowing it is often like speaking about life on another planet.  How do you even do that?  Your eyes will be opened, your ears will hear. It is so simple you will wonder how you missed it.  And you will be ready when you are ready.  If you are seeking this, leaning into it, consider that you are seeking to ripen yourself like a fruit in the sun.  Let this ripening happen and when it is time, when it is perfect for you, it will happen.  You might be meditating, or someone might tap you on the shoulder.  You might be driving (this happened to me) or you might be standing  outside just watching the world happen (this happened to me also).  It will happen when you are ready.  And to make things go more smoothly, my recommendation is to take stock of your life and all the things that BUG you and consider that what BUGS you is connected to your karma.  THAT.  Then, work on softening those feelings.  If you need to forgive someone, do so.  But above all, live your life and be ready.  Just BE perfectly here and now and FEEL all that you are.  the most important thing to do is not some posture, but loving yourself, learning to care for yourself as the fountain of life force that you will become.  Instead of being empty and seeking to be filled, seek to first be full so others may be filled by the inspirational sight that you offer as another blissful soul on the planet. 

So, for you, what is kundalini?  How does it help you strike to the center of all that is your soul's worth and wonder in the world?  Does it crown you or bring you low?  Does it chasten while revealing a new kind of truth?  Did it change how you saw the world?  Yourself?  Your pride, your joy, the very contents of your life?  Did it bring a new yearning into your life so that nothing else mattered like it did, setting your heart afire for all that is of the spirit?  Did it leave you dumbfounded and lost?  Did it move you a nudge enough to realize you knew the truth all along?  Was it a whip like force of passion making its way through your body, and did it take you as its own, or were you promised to another?  Did your very world get changed by it?  Does the air now breathe your great secret?  Does your soul now yearn for things you never knew existed?  Do you find yourself revisiting the golden days of childhood and reflecting back into your heart what you seemed to have missed?  Is all of this returning something essential and entirely beautiful to you?  These are my questions for you because I think we need the world that is waking up to say "we are waking up" as those who are themselves in the predawn hours of the big wake-up for the world.  Wouldn't it be great if that was just how it happened?

So a little Van for your day.  Its a shaky video, I know, but its the best live recording of the song I have heard to date.  It details an experience he had in a garden in Ojai California.  Note that the woman he was with "was a violet color as you sat beside your mother and your father."  She glowed with the radiance of intuition as her spiritual mother and father were present upon that awakening....
 

Blessings To You!

The Essence of Forgiveness

When we are confronted with the brutality of the world, with an unjust act made upon another, we often act with outrage, anger, and will often want to visit the same or worse injustice upon the person who has done such a horrible deed.

And its sometimes, often, a knee jerk reaction.  I know that I do it, have done it, in the past.  I still do.  And yet, concurrent with this is also something that has been with me since I was young, which is a very different reaction or impulse....which is that for as long as we simply react with an eye for an eye, we never really ever get to the root of the problem that caused such terrible things to take place to begin with.

Today while coming across the story of the Goddess, I also was confronted with a terrible image of pure brutality of a child that had been beaten and raped by her father.  The sheer rawness of this image was used as a way to drive home the point of something happening with one rather misled politician who has suggested that a woman's body has the power to fight of getting pregnant.  I know little more than this because, quite simply, I do not watch the news or most of popular information out there.  But it does filter in from time to time and I am aware of this flap that has occurred.  The point here is that instead of feeling outrage as I have in the past, I only felt very very sad.  I felt sad for the girl that this happened to.  But I also felt sad for the man who did this to her.  In our anger and sheer rage, we lose sight of the deeper issue that is true that will not get addressed as long as we seek an eye for an eye.

We have to get to the core of suffering and pain.

Now I know, its very hard to have compassion for a human being that so willfully seeks to do harm.  But what I know without any equivocation is that this man suffers from something that is not native to his soul.  I KNOW what the soul is made of and I KNOW the soul is love.  I have always believed that people were good underneath all of this bad.  But absent any good answers, we are left with just wanting to raise pitch forks into the air and join a lynch mob.  Our own hurt and suffering drives us to strike back.  But what we do in that moment is to record upon the heart of the world one more heinous act regardless of the reason for why we feel we are justified in doing so. Even if it is bad, or even evil. It still does not change what we ourselves have written upon the breast of the earth and which has now been burned into our souls.

No one in their soul self would do such a terrible thing.  They wouldn't. So the answer is in becoming aware of that soul self so the love can shine to heal all our cracked, fractured, and even broken parts.  We need a force that can such out the poison that has leached into our bones and that has turned us from divine into destitute and wounded amnesic angels.  I ask you, which is better: to strike back at a person who had done harm so that it no longer lives in our world or seek to heal that soul so that no more hurt like that person?  The answer inevitably is that we have tried to rehabilitate people and it just does not work. Just now I realized that my grandfather actually believed, I think, similarly.  He was called upon to help fashion the parole system in the state of Virginia. As a result of this work he did, he was given the job of supervising a series of boys homes that were being created in order to address the problem of minors who were considered delinquents who had gotten into repeated trouble but who could not, because of the law, be tried as adults. My grandfather had the power to say what he wanted to see in terms of how these schools or homes were set up.  He said he wanted each school to have land that could be farmed.  He wanted these boys to farm the land and learn where the food came from. He wanted to give them a very structured life because he knew they had gone wrong through a lack of structure.  He also wanted to have a system in place that provided a positive feedback for behaving, thus certain privileges were provided and boys would receive promotions within the system. What resulted was the lowest rate of recidivism of any correctional facility in the state.  While it did not have a perfect record, it did show that there are ways to retrieve the souls of our youth and help them become the people that wont wind up in trouble again.

The problem that we have is that we say once a child has gotten to a certain age, 18, that its nobodies responsibility to try and raise them. Some people want this to fall upon some agency.  Most often, though, people just get housed because the resources required are seen as taking away from other more important needs like education, roads, or health care.  Besides, why would we spend any more than we have to on a lot of people who are the worst of the worst?  The answer is that until we do, the cancer of this will continue to spread.  Fathers will beat their children senseless because they were likewise beaten senseless and thus have no check on their anger.  I grew up in a family where I lived in fear of an angry stepfather, and I know the rage and hurt that can live inside when these kinds of things happen, but long after that person is gone the hurt festers and remains. So who is hurting whom in such a situation?  We do.  We hold onto that hurt, that sense of justification in something that belongs to the past.  I ask; what good does this serve?  What good is served in erecting an altar to such pain and misery?  And what does it solve?  We tell ourselves that in memorializing the hurt, we remind ourselves never to have such hurt in the world.  And yet, it never works this way. This is a false belief in how we think things will go.  Instead, we keep the echo active and it bounces inside of us until we excise it from our hearts and souls. We do not cut it out, we do not even beat it out of ourselves.  We do not do push ups or run marathons or become president to prove how much better we are.  We merely use the rage to fuel other activities that never get us beyond the rage burning inside.  We can use the rage to bring awareness, but at some point the rage has to stop and the real work begins.  And this has only ever happened in my experience when we do one simple thing; we forgive.  We let it go. This is nothing short of miracle work because it means that we let that person off the hook.  We let them off the hook because as long as they are on the hook, so are we. Its true.  It will always be like this.  Always.  So you get to the end of your rope with the rage and hurt and then what is left?  There is nowhere to go.  You have to let that rope slip from your fingers and you let yourself forget about it.  Completely.

When this happens, a most amazing thing takes place.  You feel utter relief.  In that moment you suddenly see things differently.  its like you have been holding something inside for so long that you forgot how badly it hurt. You feel so much better as a result.  In this place, all of the old concerns and positions simply fade away as this thing in you becomes a distant memory.  And this happens very fast.  You pull a stick out of the mud and the water rushes in around it and in a few moments, it is as if it had never even been there.

But how do we address the suffering of others?  Again, this is tricky because as long as we are on a crusade, we aren't really interested in reforming others.  Reforming others is more a moment of inspiration.  It is in fact, a gift from the Goddess that resides in each of us.  She calls to each of us to listen if we will but allow ourselves. She takes us into her heart and it is her presence that will suck out all the poison in our lives.  Just her mere presence will do this. But to feel it, you have to reach a place where you are ready.  Its not even an idea or an imagining.  It is very real and powerful.  We don't know how real it can be because we have quite simply banished her from our lives.  But she is returning, and she returns not on some cloud from heaven but within each of us, from the inside out.  What she brings is grace and in that grace there is forgiveness.  What you will discover in that moment when you are inspired by her great and nurturing presence is not that you need to forgive someone else, but that you needed to forgive yourself. Here, in this place, comes the recognition, the absolutely undeniable reality that everything that has ever happened, we have had a hand in.  But we cannot and will not know or feel or see it for ourselves until we reach that place where we can feel HER.  Her grace.  Her nurturing and forgiving presence.  IN her arms, we relax and utterly let go.  And that is what she is about; letting go.  She alone is capable of embracing the mystery.  It isn't our masculine that does this.  Its true.  He is something very different, and yet each of these two forces were designed to be one.  To work together.  He can illuminate, but she can allow you to be comfortable with not knowing.  Sometimes knowing only keeps the awareness active of what has been before. Let her drop down around you like a vast landscape full of stars and a slip of moon rising.  She will quietly pull all the pain and poison from you as you slump into her arms, utterly incapable of knowing how to hold onto that old rope.  Her presence will soften your grip as you fall....

We only will help others when we can inspire them to do the work necessary, I am afraid.  We cannot simply right a wrong at the end of some pitchfork.  We may continue doing it, but this does not mean that the condition of the world gets any better.  At some point, we have to bring love into the equation because it was because of a lack of love all the way around that things have gotten the way they have. There is always a reason for why people do bad things, and it will always go straight back to love.  A robber robs because he or she does not feel like they have enough nor do they feel like they have the means to get it on their own.  Otherwise, they would. Somehow, they feel like they have to make a shortcut.  Some steal out of desperation because they have not good answers to a very bad situation.  It is a lack of love that will blind someone selling methamphetamine about the consequences of such an activity, for love will most certainly open you to the ramifications of such things.  Acting out of our own unresolved rage, we hurt others never stopping to think what the result of acting on that rage will have on them. There is a better way; let the rage out but don't let the rage out on others.  It does not belong to others, it belongs to you. let your anger and hurt out of you.  Yell into the darkness, take a hammer and beat an old wooden stump to powder.  Allow the echo of that hurt, all that nervous energy out of you. It is widely known now that such actions does have a result on our neurophysiology and can allow us to lessen and release those old blocks.  And if it does not seem to help, keep on doing it. Do it each day if you have to.  Pray before that old dead stump and explain that you are seeking to let all this junk ooze down into the earth where the grace of our Mother can transmute it for us. She can.  And she will.  But you have to be focused on wanting it gone.

I am not going to pretend that the world's problems will go away tomorrow if you do this.  This is not going to be something that is healed in a twinkling. it will be healed person to person.  But as each person does heal, it inspires others bit by bit.  It changes the signal in the matrix of our collective human soul on the planet. And when the time comes, we will also learn how to cleanse the earth and rid ourselves of this old energy once and for all.  But until then, the change must happen with you.  Then, as each person does this, the energy changes.  its a big hill we have to climb, but just as Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the hill his people had to climb to reach the promised land, his efforts did not go wanting. Things DID change, and it changed because people took it upon themselves to do so. Person by person. Person by person they locked arms as they took that now-famous walk from Selma to Montgomery Alabama.

We have a long walk, but each journey begins with the first step.  We don't even need know the way, but trust that we will get there.  What we need is someone who can inspire us, someone who has already seen the Promised Land. I know what that land looks like.  I know its touch, its taste, and feel. Its the only place we need go or know in order to heal the wounds of the world.  It is not a specific answer, but a broad pronouncement that there is nothing that hurts you that cannot be healed. If you come to HER you will be healed.  Just get to the end of your rope and cry out for HER.  That is about all you need to do.  The world will conspire with you to get you to the end of your rope and it will also conspire to see to it that you also succeed in letting go.  

The Goddess Lives

 A most remarkable and amazing thing is taking place in the United States.  In Minnesota a group is paying to design and put up billboards that celebrate the Goddess.  These billboards are also meant to raise awareness about the importance of religious tolerance, that freedom of religion means ALL religion.  I applaud their efforts, and I am thrilled to see that someone has taken the bull by the horns and taken on such an effort like this!

What I find so wonderful is the message that the Goddess is within us all.  One of the difficulties that some people have been having is this long-standing notion or effort to somehow objectify the deity....which quite naturally puts it outside of our awareness.  This is a tricky perceptual trick that redirects our awareness outward to a certain extent, enough to keep one wondering where is God....and where is Goddess?  For those who have experienced the great mystery of the divine, nearly all speak in terms of this awareness occurring from within. There is a tradition of seeing signs in the world, true, and this is something that I have written about here and which is explained in greater depth in the book I am nearly finished writing whose working title is Waking The Infinite. Understanding how these signs come about leads to understanding the nature of the divine in the day to day world and also about how we each work at an energetic level as co-creators of our existence.  I put it quite clearly that if we can understand this linkage that we have in our lives both with the divine and our creative capacities, we are faced with the very tools that will lead to a more potent and meaningful and less mysterious process of self transformation and healing.

But enough of my yammering!  How about those billboards!  Here is a picture of one of them for you to see, and I encourage you to click on the link below to learn more about this fascinating story!

The billboard images and more about this story can be found by going HERE.  (link opens in a separate window)

Blessed Be.....


Update 9/26/2012:  I am so pleased to find as many views of this post as there are.  It warms me body and soul!  Please pass on these links to your friends, it really can help make a difference. Shifting sands and butterfly wings....

The Key To Knowing God

Two currents run through two meridians up your body.  One is yin charged, one is yang charged.  This is how all life is ordered.  Even plants. Even atoms.  Each has both because this is what gives order and form to this place.  It is an alternating current, and an energy that can be experienced in states of enlightenment. The key to unlocking this in you is to know that these two currents need to be felt more deeply and brought into a unity.

The two currents move up your body and when they grow in strength, they do something between the two meridians…..they are in this dance….like two power cords lying next to each other and there is this glow between them.  This happens in the light body. These two opposite currents creates a feeling of bliss between the meridians.  Its a miracle, it is transcendent energy.  It connects you to the divine. It unfolds in you.  It unfolds you.  It makes you like its lover….but a very different one where the energy of desire is unleashed and refined into something so distilled…..its beautiful and very cool.  Gotta say cool because nobody else is and the truth is, it is.  So let’s just say it and get it out of the way.  But not cool in an ego way, you know?  Not in a showy way.  

The twin currents move upwards and they create bliss between them, the sacred third, the secret to the indwelling Christ consciousness or Krishna or whatever else people want to call it. When this is awakened, you don’t need a teacher, you just need to ask the universe to bring you the things you need to move forward.  And it does. 

These two currents go up into the brain.  The brain itself is ordered by this energy, too  Yin and yang.  When you bring both hemispheres into unity, inspiration happens, the blast of divine energy.  Do you know what it feels like to be inspired? Imagine tripling that and then keeping the valve on ALL the time.  Then you will get the idea what this thing is like. But you bring the two brains that are generally masculine and feminine and bring them into a unity. You also bring all of your other parts of yourself into a unity.  Bring everything, including the lowest parts of you all together. When you do, you will begin to start the machinery that will lead to awakening.  its not some fancy process, its a realization. Its a remembering.  Its in the moment profoundly.  Its visit changes you forever. Thank goodness. 

But it can make a mess of your life if you let it.  Let it just take it all down and surrender.  If you can, then it will be less like fighting a giant 800 lb gorilla and more like being a dam that opens and lets all the waters of spirit flow. 

Two currents.  The male current does not make you less feminine if you are female.  Nor does the feminine current make you less masculine.  With the holy union happening inside of you, you see and understand why both are so necessary and that it is this union that is driving all of this.  It is as the deity wanted, what being seems to require.  When you give yourself to this you do not lose yourself, you just lose what was never necessary to begin with and which always served to bring you sorrow and pain.  As this gets shaked out of you, things get better and better.  

Dual currents on each side.  They go up.  As they do, there is a weak field produced between them.  As this grows in strength, you will feel it more as a feeling of bliss. Allow the linear mind and holistic mind to merge.  Its only when both sides work together that we get the explosion of inspiration that is an aspect of awakening, but whose potential has not become a self sustaining flame. 

Two currents.

You will know God-dess within when you feel this. 

Return of the Goddess

Today I came across a lovely image from the Hindu tradition....

Very nice. But there is a little problem. Why isn't the woman who is sharing in this moment have a halo, too?  It doesn't seem fair. Why wouldn't she be just as inspired as he?  Or as vibrant?  We think of halos as something that confers divinity, but I am here to tell you that this is not correct.  This is a belief.  The belief has no founding in any real truth.  Everyone puts out energy.  Everyone.  And everyone has an aura.  Everyone.  Some are stronger than others, and perhaps an enlightened being's very presence could get you seeing them because of the presence of their spiritual truth.....but its no reason why a woman ought not have on either.  Its no reason why gods and goddesses can't be on the same footing. Its a lovely image, this man getting ready to play beautiful music to his beloved.

So I took the halo and reworked it in photoshop.  I thought, this is what this image needs.  I recreated it in a more realistic light.  So the male has this lovely green aura.....a very healing energy, no?  And I gave the goddess a violet aura, very intuitive color, very spiritual too. Perfect.  So here they are, as they should be....Enjoy!