Where We Shine

We are the ones who get in our own way, never realizing sometimes just how we sabotage ourselves.  So much of our suffering comes from looking outwardly and pointing to others, outside, for why we suffer, or why we have troubles or grudges or hurts or issues.  Year after year, layer by layer, I have watched as my life has changed right along with these changes within my own awareness…..old knots, blocks, samscaras, transmuted, replaced by the opposite the very next moment.  The very next moment.  I release a big old block from my heart and within hours the phone is ringing, resources of a different source pour in where before its shadow was all that could get through.  And it is why we feel the world is out to get us because these shadows are there IN us, and we do not realize its not the world that is set against us, but that a part of the world is its ability to mirror what we are, to follow our FEELINGS which are so often governed by our shadow or latent hurt or sense of somehow being limited…..but it isn’t the world as much as it is our impact energetically on the world.  The world, I know, is a chalkboard, a clean slate, a neutral slate, actually, upon which we write such permanent feeling things. It is only we who give them power.  But we shake our fists at this chalk dust and say how unfair the world is.  It is just chalk.  It is ours.  When we own it, we can release it. Face it, forgive it.

Every time I have ever sought to forgive another for the hurt done to me during this journey into myself has resulted in my becoming aware that it was not the Other that I needed to forgive, but that it was myself that needed to forgive itself.   Something in me seems magnetized, highly aware of the truth in this one shining moment of realization, as each time it was something I could not forgive myself, something that I held seemingly against the world that resolved all the way back to its roots into me.  Karma is never created because of another.  Never.  Karma is created by each of us on our own because of choices we each make in how we choose to respond, feel, or react. Choices that are based on how we choose to feel and react to the reality before us.  Many of these reactions aren’t even based on knowing the full story.  We assume, we let our beliefs or biases fill the gap in our understanding of what is true and then we MAKE that filling-in of that gap a reality, but all it ever was, was something based on HOW we were, not how the world was at all.  A parent, working long hours, is believed to be uncaring of his child because, after all, if he cared, he would be at home.  And yet, the bigger story is…well…much bigger than what the child sees or assumes.  We are all like this, misperceiving the world, seeing things as we are rather than how things are.  And this is how these misalignments lead us to karmic battles within us. We can spend lifetimes there running through the same cycles over and over until deep grooves are cut into our being which we carry over and over like old baggage from the 5th Century BC.  We go into it with our freewill and we get out of it through our freewill.  Clearing karma is clearing ones own soul.  I laugh when I think of some God judging us.  This sense of conscience exists in all things!  All things.  Even in the atom, even in the water that flows.  We each know what is right even though we have sought to hide the truth from ourselves.  But in pulling back the curtain with self honesty, these illusions cannot stand for very long.  Karma can be released quickly if you are ready.  Its is as easy or as hard as we make it. Being compassionate with ourselves and others is what most often provides the necessary sense of safety in exploring without fear of retribution, but in honestly and in our own way…..which often means going our own way.

And so, in this leg of the journey, I have found myself in a hard spot within myself.  I have realized that I have so many incredible resources that have emerged as a result of this journey, why would I let one old funky hard feeling trip me up?  Why?  No reason for that.  When I think of something, it comes to pass. Why not run with it?  Why not live abundantly?  The only thing holding me back is some old funky thing within….but even that has been only subject to a habit I have of reflecting on how others might see me or feel about me. Really.  What kind of crazy stuff is that? It is the last shovel-full of manure to be tossed from the stable of my soul.  And really, how I manifest has been pretty amazing……it is something we can all do.  It si what we are, what we each were born to do once we get out of our own way.

A few weeks ago as I drove out of my driveway it struck me that I really needed to contact a local news station to tell them about my efforts with my business, to help get the word out.  I knew that with what I did, they would probably be all over it, excited to do a story on a unique take on the holiday season.  But I stopped short.  I told myself that was too self-serving, too much….SOMETHING.  Maybe some misplaced voice was saying it was innapropriate somehow.  And yet, a story by them would have so helped me at a time when I needed it most! So I deferred.  In a few days, though, after announcing events at my studio through social media, I got a request from someone who wanted to come to my business to make some glass.  This person turned out to be a local news station meteorologist.  I again deferred saying anything that might seem self serving to this lady while she paid me to spend some hours making a variety of things she had always wanted to do with hot glass.  I knew she may have gotten pestered a lot in this way by the public.  She was at the studio to honor her Mother and make some glass.  I explained to her and her Mom what I say to most people; I am leveraging the resources I can to get the word out about my business locally, which means facebook and other sites.  If she wanted to say something about her experience, great.  I don’t twist arms, I want it to come in a genuine way, never forced.  When it is done in the right spirit, it just soars, you know?

So it came to pass that this lady could not get away to get her glass she had blown the week before.  For some reason my merchant account was not being agreeable about dealing with her credit card.  I was unable to collect payment for the private class she set up at the studio for that day when she came so I was eager to get her glass to her.  I was able to meet her to give her her glass and it turned out she took the glass back to the studio and showed some of the reporters what she had made (all of which was really great stuff) and I got a contact that same night from a reporter wanting to do a story on the studio.  So even though I resisted following through with my intention, my wish, my hope, the universe pretty well elbowed its way into my life and brought me what I needed.  Granted, it all came a couple of weeks late, it still came pretty swiftly for a guy who was resisting so hard!

Similar examples abound……events which were cancelled by others who withdrew support suddenly bloomed into the single most succesful weekend of the season…..a full two weeks past the Holidays!  Following in the wake of such hard changes, I dispaired over being able to garner the resources I needed in order to keep life and my business on a more even keel…..and yet….and yet….I felt within me this gathering storm of abundance that I knew could be tapped as though an endless spring moved beyond the small unassuming stop-cock that held back the ocean of energy and possibility, just waiting to happen, to flow into my life.  On top of this, people who had come out during Christmas were eager to come again. Others stepped in, bringing their friends and coworkers with joy and enthusiasm that quite literally lit up the studio.  On this visit one of the people who saved the day, pretty much singlehandedly, by being a supporter, said how he knew one of the anchors at another local station; he was close friends and suggested that I utilize this resource to help push the studio into a new level of exposure.  All of this coming all on its own, all stemming from an intention I have made, asking, “Mamma Universe, you are limitless even as I may think I am limited; bear to me your blessings and abundance so that I may bring my gift to my neighbors and community…”

It realy isn’t about money or things.  Its about feeling safe, about feeling supported by a force so large, it is all around us.  Had I not felt this abundance of soul come down around me that Summer night and heard Her voice speaking to me saying “Let go, let all of this hurt flow into me, let it go, let all of that old poison flow out from you into me; I shall transmute it by my blessings.  You do not know HOW to Forgive this and you don’t NEED to…you need only let go of it for a second so that it can be mine and then it will be gone….” I might not have fully realized the nature of this force….and like that, it was gone.  Like that, the tables turned from lack to greater abundance.  Abundance in feeling first.  The rest takes care of itself.  A clearer path for my own intention was what remained.  And really, that is all it is; getting the junk out of our own way so the magic  that is our own souls may better manifest as our hearts write new stories upon the chalkboard of the multiverse.  It sin’t the universe that judges us or decides.  It is in truth an inner authority, the divine within us, that does so.  When we can align to this, what I call Divine Alignment (it is also a blog by the same name), amazing things can happen for us, to us.

Just a few days ago I spoke to my daughter about the power of intention.  She has been able to see how this has worked, magically, for her Dad over the last few years.  Its not like it is a trick that I do.  I don’t.  I am not in control of what the universe sends me, but what it does send me is most often so perfect.  When I bought her a new bed, one that was taller than most beds, she said it would be great if we could find a desk that was flush with her bed so that she could sit on it and have her computer in front of her so she didn’t have to sit in a chair at her computer.  The following weekend we found someone had placed a wonderful oak desk by the curb, one that looked curiously close to what she had asked for in height.  Could it be?  There was also a desk chair that looked brand new, which was also one of the things on her list that she wanted for her room.  We set it up in the yard as we went on our errands and upon measuring it, it was the perfect height for what my daughter had wanted.  What were the chances?  This Christmas my daughter had mentioned that she wanted a very certain type of jacket for Christmas. Because of my lack of knowledge about how sizes are done with smaller kids, I was left guessing over whether a given size would be a good fit or not.  I needed to measure her to be sure, but I was never able to do this with how our schedule worked out.  I wound up with just a few days to do my gift shopping and had to pass on the coat.  This is a Navy peacoat, and her interest in it is based on how she had nestled into one of my coats which was a genuine peacoat style which she liked the feel of very much.  So this was a very specific style, not just any coat.  Last week I said I was sorry about not being able to get her the coat and suggested that we go down to the thrift store after making a clear intention to the Universe about having this type of coat.  I ended it with, “And we will know its being given when we ask that it be ten dollars!”  This was my way of adding an extra element in order to jack the odds.  We went down to the thrift store and lo and behold we found a peacoat in her size and color for $12.00!  I looked at her and asked her what the price was and gave her a sideward glance, saying, “Well, it was ALMOST the right price!”  Coats next to it were in the 20′s and 30′s.

Sometimes when I feel down, I shut myself off from these things happening…..I despair, or get down on myself, and forget that we are all this kind of magic, this kind of vibrant intention just waiting to leap out of the gate!  For my part, I feel a sense as though its just not my job to try and MAKE things happen, they come so naturally when I just step aside and trust in the universe.  And this is what I have been doing….I feel this massive abundance now that I know is just around the corner from me….why would I feel so impoverished with such incredible resources?  Why would I feel so limited when I have this father and mother who dwell within me, this yin and yang of the entirety of the universe that I can tap into with my own intention.  The purer and most direct the intention, the faster and more perfect the result!

The universe does not respond to thought alone.  It responds to FEELING.  Feeling itself is not some irrational thing, but it can have both negative and positive poles which we bring into the moment whether we are aware of it consciously or not.  This is why being in touch with all of your feelings and motivations are so important.  Do you feel worthy?  If you don’t, you will quite literally block the universe from flowing in an abundant way.  It is YOU who write  the story, so fill the story with the right feeling and it will be returned to you.  The WAY that you sow seeds is as important as the seeds that are sown.  Seeds sown in sorrow and lack tend to never even spring up and if they do, they can be children of the hand that scattered them.  So scatter your intention with joy and hopefulness and eliminate the feelings that say, “I never get what I ask for….” or “I am not worthy….” because regardless of the truth of this in the bigger picture (which is that you most certainly ARE worthy…we ALL are!), it is the picture that you are creating here and now. The problem with thought is that it can give you the grandest visions of how your life can be, but that is all it can ever be. You have to FEEL it all the way down to the bottom of your shoes and your soul before it can be something that will reflect this mental picture that you can see and know so well ….  BE it and it will show you itself AS you are.

We might appear to be limited finite beings, and in a very limited way we are….but just as a petal may think it is its own self, it is part of a larger body of being which is connected to a still larger being.  We are each multidimensional and the way toward glimpsing this is not through the rational at all, but through our one side that allows us to grasp the infinite; our feeling sides, our right brain, our boundless imagination, our own inner divine feminine, our Shakti who is the one who takes the masculine left brained intention (thought) and takes into her being so that this spark of thought is nurtured and  transformed  into an incredible miracle that is a new creation, a new life of sorts within our own lives.  This happens individually as it happens en masse.  We have an analog of the universe in us, a small mirror.  What do you wish to see in that mirror?  What brings you fulfillment?  What is in your highest to be, to do, to become?  Sometimes its the simple things….a desk for your daughter, a weekend at the studio helping people tap their inner creative fire, helping a friend selflessly, with full blessings and joy.  Sometimes its just getting the simplest of things for our most basic of  needs.  For me, I do not need much.  I just want to help change the world in whatever way I can that will lead to the highest.  Sometimes the highest is found in the simple things, which are  also glorious.

How You Can Make a Difference

Actions speak louder than words.  It is true, they do.  Or can.  However, that is not the whole story on how things come to be or are influenced.

At a certain stage in my awakening, I was really having a hard time.  I was struggling.  I couldn't let go of something, I don't know what exactly, but it was a slew of junk.  It all dropped away piece by piece over a pretty short period of time, but as I was in the midst of throes of the EXPERIENCE, things were hard.  Just just were and I felt backed into a corner and unable to find my way out.  It was tough!  Hard.  Scared, struggling, angry, feeling like my soul was in a vice, I felt like I was walking around wincing the whole time. It was during this time that my third eye began to aid me in my experience of guides in the etheric realms.

This guy showed up.  He was Asian.  He had this funny face.  I had seen it before, many many years before.  It had come while I had been driving many hours one night and there he was.  He was trying to show me how to empty my mind.  I was dumfounded how he was able to look at me and have no thoughts.  Only his presence was there.  Amazing.  And impossible!  Then he showed up again.  He looked like a dead ringer for a guy whose book I had read whose name was Taishen Deshimuru.  He was a zen monk and was a bit of a maverick in his day.  He died in the 1980's.  Anyway, the point is, this guy who looked like Taishen was there speaking to me.  I was down on myself and he asked me why I was having so  much trouble.  He explained that a template had been ordered, formed, and prepared for all of us here.  This self transformation process need not be so hard.  He explained that it was more like taking of one pair of shoes and slipping into the next.  I just needed to take one small step and this step would be for all humankind.  I was making all of this too hard.  My needing to make this hard was itself a belief system, a construct I had created based on how I thought things would go (well, they did....)  We each would bring up the collective vibration of the race as we each woke up and stepped into the new human that had been "prepared" for all of us to be.

 This template is being fashioned by the collective awareness of humans all the time and it is in a state of evolving all the time! We are, though, at a crossroads and change is taking place fast on the planet as some things get adjusted. 

So what you think, what you feel, it all makes a difference.  Don't feel bad if you aren't doing all that you think you should; your own thoughts and prayers are not ever lost.  They all have their effect. They do.  So when you wonder about where it all goes, why, it all goes into the whole.  Nothing is ever wasted or lost.  Our thoughts do have the power to change things and you just never know when a thought will be the thing that tip the scales!

Manifest

Do you sometimes wonder if you can really make your dreams come true with nothing more than just wishing it?  Sometimes we might want to believe that the world is this place where you have to get out there and MAKE things happen, and certainly we are here with hands to shape and feet that move us in the day to day.  It seems like magic that we might be able to do something as simple as just wishing to bring about our greatest dreams.  Maybe you have heard the tone in someone's voice who showed some sense of skepticism about magic, that maybe its all a bunch of silly thinking.

And if you followed this way of thinking, it just might be that way for you.  Belief is itself an interesting thing.  We blind ourselves to the possibilities through belief just as much as we open ourselves up to what could be.  It really just depends on what it is we believe is possible.  It is interesting, though, what happens when we begin to remove the bias we might have about the possibility of something taking place in our lives.  What it does is it leave little room in the magic that is your own energy, for it to happen.  Tip the balance far enough and the world will conspire to make it happen.

I will give you an example of something that I discovered recently while looking back at some old notebooks of mine that I keep in my business practice.

In 2004 while working in a rented studio that was all of 750 square feet, I sat down and drew out what I would do if I could be given the ideal studio space.  The small space I had worked, but it was not optimal.  In that small of a space there was just enough room to breathe and get it all done.  Back then, I had no idea what the future might be, but I dreamed big and considered what would be the best for me.

In this notebook along with firing schedules and construction notes for equipment and furnace rebuilds, I had this drawing of my ideal studio.  I thought it all out and gave myself the space that I felt like I needed.  There was enough space for all equipment and a gallery to boot.

Then, in 2006, I was presented with an opportunity to buy new property.  They way this happened, I only had 45 days to find some property that would serve my uses.  Otherwise, I would have to consider the sale of land that was taking place and pay taxes on that sale.  This opportunity allowed me to defer those taxes for the time being but the catch was I had to act fast and in a limited time frame.  When I began to look at the market, I had no idea what I would find.  At first, I was looking at houses, apartment buildings, something that would allow me to sell one piece of land and buy another that would be more suitable. The catch was I had to buy what was available on the market THEN.  As I looked at countless houses and other buildings, I noticed that there were two properties that looked like they might be suitable for my business.  One would up not being suitable and the other was the only one in the region that was up for sale.  I considered this like you might consider a larger puzzle being put together and it was decided that I would go ahead and buy this building.

The building wound up being only 150 square feet different from that drawing I had made.  The universe had managed to bring me a building that was about as close to that old forgotten sketch from 2004. I marveled at how close everything just happened to coincide with one idle wish made a couple years earlier.  Now maybe you could say that this sketch was somewhere in the back of my mind informing me of my choices, and certainly that is a consideration to bear in mind.  That there was nothing but this one building on the market within the area that had been chosen as the new home for me and my family, the subliminal or subconscious becomes less a factor as how the events two years later would seem to form themselves around the choices that I would wind up making.

When you do wish for something and it comes to pass, take a moment to think about how you made that wish.  THink about how you felt when you made that wish, and examine your beliefs about how you felt about what it might be like to have that wish come true.  Do some wishes sneak past some of our competing beliefs of "Oh I wish I could land that job, but I am sure there will be better candidates than I!" or "I sure would love to win the lottery, but I don't ever win anything."????  Is it possible that your wish is stronger than your belief that you won't win the lottery or land that job?  Is it strong enough to overcome any competing belief that is to the contrary?  My heart tells me that when the balance of the scales is tipped in the right direction, it is only a matter of time.  The less resistance, the faster the energy can form as events.  Sometimes, the results are difficult at first to believe. But in believing, you open the door.

I once had a friend who was a gifted psychologist who wanted to work with the local football team to help them go from losing games to winning games.  he explained what he would do would be to begin by teaching the team how to visualize their goals as if they had already happened. he explained that when people open themselves up to the possibility of something happen, it makes it that much easier for the goal to be realized.  If you just can't see it, then most likely you won't even if you give it your best.  Somewhere, slipped between the pages of our awareness is a world of energy.  Physicists all say that everything is energy operating at different vibrations.  if your own thought and feelings are vibratory, then it seems we are just that much closer to a realization that our own thoughts may well have a very real impact on the physical.  it seems to the skeptical mind that it is impossible that something could come along in such an effortless and perfect way, but perhaps that is itself a bias or belief that this aspect of our lives here just isn't possible.  And perhaps in believing it is so, it never is for that person, so long as the energy of that belief is sending out such differing pulses of creative energy (a yes and a no are both equally creative, just in different directions!).  Perhaps that belief is so strong that even when they hear of someone getting a building that was so close to a drawing or wish made a few years prior, they still resist the possibility of it beginning to gnaw away at the edifice of their belief.  Perhaps they discount it, or in some way turn a blind eye to it and say, "that was just very lucky" or, "what an interesting coincidence!"  But nothing more than that.

I was talking this weekend with my daughter about how we often turn a blind eye to things in our lives, that we do not see the world as it is, but as we are.  It was a tricky thing, I explained, because we are always doing this.  We ALL do this, and it makes it hard to know what IS.  In Buddhism, for example, this is one of the central tenets for reaching an enlightened state.  We move from what we are to what is, and by removing the things that sabotage us, we also remove what causes suffering and returns us to a place where we are better able to just feel the flow of the universe.  And yet, so often, we are always interpreting what someone has said to us with our own level of understanding and awareness.  I can say something to five people, and we can wind up with five very different interpretations of what is said.  IN the same way there is this exercise where people sit in a circle and you start off with one person whispering in the ear of the person next tot hem something like "His pants are blue" and once each person has repeated what they have heard to each person in turn, the last person then says out loud what s/he was told, and often they come up with something like "They sky is blue!"

Reaching a place of clarity is not so simple. I don't see evidence that we reach it all in one big leap but in layers, in degrees.  All along, I do think we have the capacity to reach it in one go, but I don't see that this happens all that much with people.  The loss of all that they knew as familiar seems too much for our tender egos which seems to need something to hold onto, a kind of piece of the wreckage that winds up at the bottom of the sea in the process of becoming clear in ourselves (which is both our new boat fashioned for these new waters as much as it is the waters themselves!)  It seems we reach it in stages, in pieces as like a puzzle, it slowly gets put into place the way it really is instead of our seeking to shoe-horn things into place that we think are right but may just be slightly out of whack.  Have you ever had a puzzle piece that LOOKED like it was a perfect fit and almost did and all you wanted to do was to just push that piece into place just a little harder and tell yourself maybe the fault was in the puzzle maker? Sometimes, its just our wish and belief that makes it seem as though something is a fit when it is not.  In this way we can come up with all kinds of theories or ideas about how we think the world is or how our lives are.

By removing competing belief and clearing the way in our feelings, we make the path clearer for the energy that is the universe to move all around us and support us in whatever it is that we need.  And maybe we don't have a perfectly clear path, but just enough for the way to be for the thing most needed or desired to emerge into our lives.  Sometimes, it means not even lifting a finger.  That is just how powerful all of this is.  There is a genie inside of you, I say, and we do so much to keep it bottled up.  We are so concerned about how we get int he way of ourselves that we forget that the world isn't conspiring against us, but that we conspire in sheer disbelief that anything could be just that incredible. Like blind spiders, we weave the web without realizing we are doing it all along and then looking back upon what we sense is an imperfect web, we shake our fists at it and complain how it never seems to conform to what it is we think it should be.  Perhaps it can really be anything....

Fear & Kundalini

From time to time I notice the search terms that are used to find the site.  All of it is an anonymous, just so you know, and from time to time I notice some things that show up from time to time.

I have written about fear before, and how this affects our experience of awakening, also known as the force that we call kundalini.  It is very easy to see this as some outside force coming into us, and I know how this can create fear.  There are many accounts about this experience of fear.  I don't know that I am so good at explaining how to eleviate your fear, except to use myself as an example as well as to mention how others have dealt with it.

Fear is a funny curious thing.  It is like a creature that stalks us at the edge of the wood, and the more we give in to it, the more it has us.  The more it has us, the more we are IT.  The way out of fear is by simply letting it go and doing what we can to see things differently.  Sometimes, this is achieved through a simple act of acceptance.  Other times, it might mean facing fear, and other times, it is by way of some other method.  But whatever the means, it is all very useful and productive for you because fear fragments while its opposite, love, unifies. Our purpose I believe is to seek love and know ourselves in our highest possible light.

For me, in the end, dealing with fear was a simple letting go.  This letting go led to still more surrender, and surrender pretty well became the path.  Whenever I was most succesful in reaching the divine within was when I surrendered the most.  It is very much is like falling back into someone else's arms whom you are not completely sure is even there to catch you.  It isn't that trusting in the universe is a noble trait, it is more that when you DO trust the universe to catch you and support you, it has a way of wrapping itself around that need or hope or belief or want.  If you can be clear about this, like a crystal clear stream whose depths can be seen in the most certain of ways, you can be assured that it will do as you need.  Let nothing intervene between your hope and its manifestation, and it will cohere to your intent as you had hoped for it.  It has to do with what you believe and how you feel, which also includes the material that is shoved off to the side for the time being.  All of this creates an energetic snap shot and all of that material is used to create the picture, the projhection or manifestation.  I have likened manifesting to being like channeling the energy of the divine through you like water through a garden hose....except we have bits of dirt, our karmas that cling to the insides of this hoese.  We get upset when that water comes out muddy, but its just the karma mixing in with the divine, and HOW you ask and pray for is also the sum total of all that you are in your energy body and being.  If you do not like how things are turning out, you need only begin to get curious about what is inside of you.  I promise that it can be a wonderfully liberating experience and is THE work we have set before us.  Once we can refine ourselves in this way then we will see what we want and what is manifest as being much closer to one another.  Time to let those old issues fall away.  They were hitchhikers to your happiness, ultimately derailing your trip and sending you into uncertain places where you asked yourself each time "Why on earth do I always wind up in the swamp lowlands of my being like that?  Why do I always respond the same way to that stuff???".  This is the language of the cosmos and of every realm you will enter into in countless lives and realities, so being able to catch the little slurs in your cosmic speech will help you greatly in helping to bring you what you want, need, and ardently wish for (and I for one can attest that once the barriers are removed it can happen INSTANTANEOUSLY).  Knowing this and using this in the simplest childlike way will mean that good things become automatic.  There is no need to fear unless you have a need for fear.  And only then does it have you.  Like a dog who senses fear, it only reacts when you yourself allow yourself to feel into this place.

Kundalini is a powerful force that wells up within your awareness.  So big and strong it is, it can seem as though it is crashing into your life.  Certainly this appears to be so.  And perhaps there is some truth to this perception, but it does not change the fact that if you see it as part of you, the going gets much easier.  Consider for a moment that you are way more than you have up to this moment realized.  Larger parts of you might well seem as though a force as moving from the outside of you to crash into your life like some powerful rhino seeking to charge you.  But this is only because of how you choose to perceive.  If you let go of the fear and stand before it as it seeks to charge you, watch what happens.....or what doesn't happen.  You are an immortal child of the universe, so nothing can truly hurt you.  The unknown has a way of changing, too, depending on how you relate to it.  As long as you see it as a force form the outside, it will remain this way. There are certainly plenty of outside voices that seek to place fear and uncertainty in the path simply because they themselves are uncertain.  Do you wish to mirror that uncertainty, or do you wish to mirror something more productive?  In the end, it is a choice that you alone make.  If you are honest with yourself and keep your eyes open you will find that awakening is not some strange spirit, but is native to each culture that exists on the planet.  It has filled the pages of books written by Christian mystics as well as Hindu adepts.  It spans the globe and is not the property of one religious path or faith.  In the end, like surrender, following your own instincts will serve you best.  When you are ready, you will be ready.

The path becomes easier and also miraculous once fear is lain aside.  Your experience can broaden and your depth of feeling can also emerge in degrees.  Your own capacity for inner knowing will also be unleashed as your own intuitive capabilities are naturally allowed fuller rein.  Love unifies the self.  Fear fragments.

So you might want to ask yourself the nature of your fear.  You have this genie inside of you that can guide you to the deeper parts of your feeling and if you allow yourself to be led and sink down into it with the curiosity of a child, you might just wind up feeling the root of your fear.  It is in the root that we are most successful in resolving old issues that have remained troublesome for us.  This is the great work that we do for ourselves, an essential honoring of the divinity within all things.  We pull back the layers of fear, which I tend to feel is the illusion some teachers speak of in order to reveal our more fundamental natures.  If it helps, think about what it was like to be a child.  It is in that simple curiosity that the mind is not swayed one way or the other, but is so full of curiosity and wanting to know how the world works.  If you rely on your old biases, you can color your awareness so that it makes it hard to know the truth.  The truth is in feeling your own sparkling possibility.  We know that when we have people imagine being like children that our brains actually change as we become naturally more creative and open to things. So much of being a child is about being open, but as we grew we also took on the fear and bias that was the world.

The result of fear is that it draws more of itself to you, which is what I'd like to say the fear in others.  Then, what you have is a landscape or a portrait of all the people in your life that are assembled in your life due to, in part, with this fear. This also attracts lower level entities as well, the dark-eye dogs of the spirit world.  These are not dragons to slay even though some would say that this is what we are to do.  We simply forgive ourselves for not understanding, for not remembering that we are limitless and thus, shoould have NOTHING to fear.  I don't even mean a boasting belicose kind of bravado, but a very simple quiet certainty about where your roots lie in the garden of the divine.  Once you do this and allow yourself to sink deep into yourself and felin into that place where these things lie, you can begin to get to its roots.  I promise you have to open yourself way up and allow yourself to let go completely of its roots.  When you accomplish this, it will change you in an instant.  It also never comes back.  Whatever was spent in fear is now turned to bliss.  It is like having the hard drive of your soul getting riddled with viruses that slow its functioning down.  Once the energy flow is restored, you could not believe why you spent so much time on fear or hurt or pain.

You have to believe in yourself.  Again, not egoistically, but certainly.  You have to know that you are beautiful, not in spite of someone else who does not share your view but because you can feel the part of you that touches lips with the divine within.  Search for that and take great joy and pleasure in that place.  It is where all authentic healing springs.  I cannot underestimate that enough.  Feel into your bliss ever deeper and ask what it is that you need to assist in removing.  This is a strip down to the last, and you mustn't feel funny about standing naked before the great sea of bliss which is your primordial home.  Jesus, in a lesser known text (gnostic) said to followers who asked how they were to reach the kingdom, he explained that they were to trample their shame like children trampling a cloak on the ground, naked and without shame.  Then, when you do this, you will know the kingdom.  It is certain that the kingdom, as expressed through the lesser known "heretical" documents of the early Christians also called Gnostics, that the kingdom was awakening itself.  You can perhaps appreciate how far we veered from the original teachings, and how we each can wind up in the lesser places of ourselves.

We all need forgiveness.  We need to not be judged.  Wouldn't that be so nice to have in life all the time?  People who only want us to improve instead of wanting to play whack-a-mole?  It's the fear of being judged that can keep some people in their holes hiding out and flying under the radar.  But this was not something that was meant to hide for any reason but to arch its great heart to the sky.  Step into the light and feel the wonder that is you and that is the universe!

All my greatest wishes for you, to you, in your journey on this marvelous planet.

Another Example Of Manifesting

Very recently, the glass studio has been reopened after four months of it being shuttered.I have been involved in glassblowing now for the last fifteen years professionally and very recently between an injury, some economic upset and a divorce and a full blown awakening, this has made running the studio difficult at best.  As I have begun to get it back online and operational, this has corresponded with a class that I recently offered to some people interested in learning how to blow glass.  In the run up to this I thought how nice it would be if i could have music in the studio. I thought that it might be nice to have some weekends at the studio where we have musicians offering a few special events where people could gather.  Since the studio is a large 3200 square foot space, this seemed like it could be a good fit....I just didn't know how it might take place.  I also thought how nice it would be just to have some music to help clear the cobwebs in the space.  Good vibrations and all that.

So it was so very interesting to find that on the evening of the first class that I would get a call from an old friend who had been in the studio a couple of years ago who was on his way up from Florida to do a gig at a local music house in a nearby county. He was calling to ask if his friends could crash at the studio.  They showed up a few hours later and after getting situated, they began whipping out their instruments and played for a few hours.  It was great!  Perfect, I thought.  My wish manifest.  In perfect timing.  Then, without any prodding from me some of the guys from the band looked around and remarked "You know, this is a perfect space for doing a private party....."  and thus the idea of having a music event in the studio emerged quite innocently all on its own as I sat back and smiled at how all of this was taking place so perfectly.  How it all turns out will be up to the universe.  If it is to be, it will be.

So to share  a little of the magic of manifestation, here is a little of their music on that night.  The band is called The Funky Seeds....Enjoy!

Manifest

When I first had my awakening experience, one of the things I was keenly aware of was this new energy moving through me.  It was conscious, I knew, yet I could not explain how I knew this for the fact that this was something that I sensed within.  We are notoriously distrustful of our insides, and if we are not busy feeling that way, we can also be uncertain about HOW we feel.  The truth, I think, is that most of us wind up being like a basket where we carry all sots of notions and feelings, good and bad.  Some serve us, some don't.  But sensing what you are is so very important for it leads to feeling more solid about who you are and what you are.  When you do that, I think that you reach a place of peace and in that peace you can feel things that might have escaped your notice previously. This was so for me in awakening.  It was as though some new channel opened up inside of me...like I had this great piece of stereo equipment but never touched this one dial.....and that dial seemed a big mystery.  One day, for whatever reason, that dial responds to touch and suddenly the volume moves up.  The sound is suddenly richer as this knob adds a whole new dimension to this marvelous piece of equipment.  The big a-ha has just happened.

I soon realized that the energy moving through me was a negative and positive energy.....one cooler or more receptive while the other was dynamic, directing and "warmer" in a way.  One moved into the other and both seemed to hold one another in an energetic embrace. This was the universe, this was cosmic consciousness. Using language to describe all of this or to relate to it can be tricky because this energy is without form even though it gives rise to form.  I have long believed that we have to be careful about the words we use because they create a nonspecific picture in people's minds that can be interpreted many different ways.  When I discuss art projects with my students in the sculpture class that I teach at a local university, I require them to provide a drawing.  I do this because my experience has shown just how poor words are at conveying information.  A picture is incredibly efficient, and it brings to mind the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words."   It was Philip in his newly discovered gospel in the desert of Egypt in the Nag Hammadi scrolls where he said the same thing, which is that we need to be careful about the words we use, for words create images and we then can become prisoners to these images.  So while it may sound terribly pedantic to you that I say all of this, it is important for reasons you may not even realize.  Words can govern how you think.  Words can free just as they can imprison.  I want you to consider that when I say masculine and feminine, I am being very specific but I am also being very broad.  I know that what we see here now in this place has ever higher expressions in other realities.  Our own awareness is capable of glimpsing these realities.  Thales, the Presocratic philosopher once said that "All things are full of gods" and I firmly feel that he was referring to what I glimpsed in the process of my awakening, which is that all of existence is multidimensional in nature and that what exists in us here exists in still "larger" scales of consciousness. Everything is connected, and it is this connection that allows for every part to communicate to all other parts.  It is what happens when you are able to manifest something in your life, too.  Imagine this quantum ripple that spreads out at light speed through all of matter, like some giant search engine of the soul to find the perfect thing to match your wish, to help you to manifest it.  I am jumping ahead of myself though because there is more to fill you in on first.

What I knew in the process of awakening was that the energy was a teacher living inside of me, showing me the one thing that as it would turn out, would be reflected in nearly every aspect, every nook, every cranny of existence.  It took a while to understand how this could be so.....and while the knowing came in a flash, it took some time to see how it applied itself throughout life. It showed me that it was like a two-stranded energy that wove itself through the center of all life, much like a necklace of beads is held by a cord.  It is this cord, you see, that is the essence of all life, is the soul of the cosmos, the bearer of life and light to everything that is.  And when I say "life" I am not speaking only of sentient life.  No. The universe is a living thing since its body is filled from top to bottom with this energy.  The difference is that most people simply are not aware of it.  The language of the cosmos is feeling, and this is one thing that you will come face to face with when you go through an awakening which is that you now have added sensing ability or awareness.  You don't just SEE the universe, you FEEL it.  This is what all the monks and sages and gurus have been talking about in relation to this seemingly elusive state that leads to samadhi.  When this energy filled me, it showed me how it was present in everything.  It was a yin and yang principle.  Just as in thermodynamic hot moves to cool, as positive moves to negative, so too does this energy in all things.  I very much feel that this principle can be seen reflected throughout the cosmos.

So take manifestation.  You wish for something, you let it go, and it eventually comes back to you as a fulfilled wish. Consider for a moment that as the universe is itself neutral, a kind of living canvas upon which you create your life, that the energy of manifestation is the result of two seeming opposites working together to help make your wishes happen......two energies that follow the content of your own energy to a "T."  This means that if part of you believes, for example, that you can manifest abundance, but that you may also have a competing belief that deep down you aren't worthy of it somehow, you send that out with each wish and you wind up with abundance  with strings or little glitches attached to it.  Maybe its a great money deal that winds up having some problem that emerges somewhere in the process.  Its that feeling like "I know I deserve good things, but it seems things always go to !*%# in the end!"  This is the result of some competing issue that is in the way that helps to form events, and the universe, being neutral, takes the energy as it comes and fashions you this event or opportunity in order to aid your fulfillment.  In dropping away the competing beliefs and resolving those things, suddenly your own being becomes a clearer transmitter of information to the universe.  The glitch is gone.  The "yeah but" is edited out of the situation.

But about this yin and yang, though.....

Consider that just as your own body has two currents of masculine and feminine that rise right up into the brain and crown, the hemispheres of your brain are themselves also formed and informed by this same energy.  The two energies cross in the head where the bliss of union is experienced by the awakened  yogi's and yogini's.  The left hemisphere is masculine, the right is feminine.  The masculine is linear, rational, and is most often good at language. It can pick out the tree in the forest, but his eyes glaze over when you look at the forest.  The feminine, which is the right brain, is holistic, intuitive, irrational, and sees the forest and can be bored looking at just one tree. Brought together, however, and there is a spark and a flame of inspiration kindled. Here great ideas are born. No, the right brain is not the artistic side because in order to make art you need a way to express it.  The right brain very much needs the left brain to help give it form.  The feminine turns to her consort and says "Oh I am feeling something so deep.....but its so deep that I just can't quite put it to word....." and the left brain is able to put it to word because that is what it does.  It is great at being able to hone in on one thing and identify it. Left alone, though, the left brain can chop and dice the universe until its so may little pieces....and it will only be able to see each piece, not how all the pieces go together.  I needs the right brain for this, the one who can magically conceive the implicate order in all things.  How she does this is not rational in the least.  Its almost like magic.  But together, they do a wonderful job of helping to create.  They are the very engine of creation. And when it comes to manifesting, I am seeing the same circular loop of the masculine and feminine energies working together.

When you wish for something, it most often comes about as a result of the left brain being able to give form and order to what it is that you want.  Here, there is a brilliant spark that is made, but this is all that it is for now.  This spark must be released entirely and allowed to go out into the "world" into the receptive realm of the feminine.  It is interesting because the Hindus often refer to the feminine as being the world.  Jesus, in the Gnostics texts speaks of the world as being the Great Mother. The native Americans call earth "Mother" also.  But what I am talking about is the energetic principle IN the world.....in all things......and as the spark of intention is released, it moves through the inner world and is nourished into existence, into full being by the body of the feminine force.  This can emerge as an object, event, or idea. The more that the spark can be utterly released, the better able it is to move freely through the universe to find its moment of conception in the feminine force.  Then, in perfect timing, the feminine brings forth this new thing that is the result of your wish, your hope, your intention. Because the feminine force is so broad, so infinite, she can give birth to anything in the same way that a woman will conceive and then give birth to a child.  This child might be short or tall, dark or light headed.  She might bring forth twins.  Part of what she will give birth to will be how the spark was sent, the content of that spark.  She is capable of bringing forth such a profusion of things, you see, and just as a woman can do this, so too does the mother of the world do this.  Her presence is in everything, and when you touch her with your intention, your intention winds up touching everything.  Instantly.  Holographically.  Events can take months to come to fruition and they can also happen in a flicker of an eye.  What makes the difference?  When you are able to release a block in you that is keeping something from taking place in the world around you, you may find just as I did that this is when the phone starts ringing with someone asking you if you would like to take part in an opportunity that you had been wishing you could be involved in for years.....and in that moment, the world didn't just align with you, but merely was able to receive the right message devoid of any competing material.  Maybe it was that you felt that you would love to try some new kind of work but that you might not be good enough at it......who knows really, for the reasons can be legion, and all I can do is pluck examples for why this might be so in order for you to begin to understand how this all works.  But when you remove the blocks, the energy flows.  And it flows from one pole to the other pole, from intention to manifestation, from masculine to feminine.  This, then, is the very engine of creation and manifestation.  When you can bring more energy through your system, this speeds up the process of manifestation as everyone who has had an awakening speaks of or experiences.  In fact, the lag time between through and manifestation can be measured in seconds or minutes, not days, months, or years.  If you can allow yourself to FEEL it as deeply as possible, as vividly as you can, you are literally magnetizing your own energy field so that the universe conforms to that image.  The more energy you move through you, the faster this happens for the simple fact that energy is magnetic.  Electricity creates magnetic fields, for example, and part of your own biological functioning does involve weak electrical fields. Your own iron rich blood helps to build and propagate an electromagnetic field around your body which we all refer to as the human aura.  For those who can see them, you can read all kinds of material present in thought, feeling, and even in the biological functioning of the body.  I know this because I began seeing auras when I was 18 and was a careful observer of all that I saw.

This is how your own brain works, two hemispheres in consort together to bring the light of inspiration. They are themselves manifestations of the yin and yang principle in your own body, in the giant filing cabinet and control center that helps organize information in your physical organism.  It is how you fall in love.  It is how new life is formed, and it is how the universe is threaded with these seeming opposites which in truth are aspects of one another.  In the particle/wave duality, we know that while these two states are different, they are one. I write about this in my book Waking The Infinite in terms of the particle/wave duality, and consciousness itself also exhibits traits that fit very well into the notion of the finite particle and the infinite wave.  We are both. When these two forces are in harmony manifestation can happen much quicker.  What happens when your brain works together?  Inspiration happens.  What happens when a man and woman are in harmony together?  Pure bliss.  When the two are in harmony within you, this union of yourself brings their union as energetic forces.  Quite naturally, this union creates ecstasy or bliss, and this is just what all the yogis seek and describe as the ultimate in self realization.  This bliss is orgasmic in nature, the very moment which is conception in the physical body, and which is inspiration in the energy body.  Normally, in the physical, this orgasmic energy is expressed or experienced as a release.  In the energy body, however, it is not limited and can build in potential in awareness so that it becomes a standing wave whose crest does not break.  As long as these two remain in your awareness in union, their energy remains as their very essence which is bliss. When this standing wave is present, all who awaken find that synchronicities and unusual events take place in rapid succession.  The world suddenly begins to be much more responsive in a moment by moment way.  Manifestation is now no longer just a spark, but is now an ongoing flow of events.  You are now living a life that is a discovery of what is possible in this new terrain. This is the engine of creation, and just as the creator's own continuous union within supports the universe, so too does your own continuous union within support creation at the level of your life.  It is true, then, that you are learning the basics of creation.  For creation to continue as a river flows without drying up it requires this same continuous attention.  The fulfillment is the result of your own creation. Again, Creation 101.

This same aspect can be seen as operating on so many levels.  Perhaps it may seem that all of this is just a convenient way to see things.  If you feel into it, perhaps you too can begin to experience this directly.  Everything resolves into the dance of the yin and yang.....all threaded through creation, all present at every level.  All is love, all is focused in this dance of gazing one into the other in the greatest secret that will ever be revealed to you.  It is, in truth, THE secret, for they are mother and father of them all.  if you know them at the smallest level, you know them at the largest.  Their presence as the mechanism for manifestation.  From the subatomic to the cosmic.  So when you are wondering why things happen as they do, consider the content of the masculine pulse and what it contains, which is the light of your intention.  It is both divine as well as karmic.  Upon its wave your awareness and intention rides.  Then, just as importantly, consider the content of the feminine within you.  The more free you
are from hitches and issues, the more at peace you are and the more peace will come to you.  As more peace comes to you, this becomes a naturally self reinforcing condition. Trust it, lean on it, devote yourself to it and always seek its grace, it unending capacity to forgive and allow you a path towards ascension, which is assured if you are willing to take it.

The energy is circular. It builds as long as the union remains  As awareness remains balanced on the quantum wave, you will see the presence of it in your life. This is the greatest love, the love that someone once told me "is you and the universe."  We are all connected by this. We are all this.

Nemasté

There Is Nothing To Do

That is what they say; there is noting to do when enlightenment comes.  No searching, no doing.  Just being.  

But do you now that the reality is that most people I have known who have had these awakenings (they are happening in large numbers now so I know a cart full of them by now….no, not a cart, more lie a small wagonload….the kind they used to haul settlers across the prairie before getting shot with arrows by angry Indians whose treaties were being trampled on….)….most of those people ALL were seekers.  All of us, we felt like there was something MORE. 

And I think this is a very human feeling. 

And how on earth is anyone supposed to know what this thing is?  I mean, really?  How can anyone be prepared for it?  I suppose you could be….but we do not yet fully understand what drives the awakenings.  It certainly isn’t stuff like kundalini yoga or meditation.  Its more like this yearning turns in the self, like the days that turn around an apple until one day, that apple ripens.  And no one apple on that tree ripens at the same time.  But they all do, eventually.  Some ripen young, some old. It just depends.  And its incalculable.  Mysterious.  When will you be ripe for this? It will be like an apple.  When it happens, someone will turn and point “There, when the wind blew like that she dropped from that tree!”  And yet, we will still not understand the structure that lays beneath that which determines such things.  Its so beautiful, though, that the subject of how to determine it seems unimportant.  The vibration is changing, folks.  There is a lot to do.  A world to recreate.  Anyone notice there is plenty fucked that needs to be unfucked in this world?  Yes, its pretty obvious, I think. 

I will tell you that its 100% guaranteed that you will be a seeker of some kind.  I think it has to do with a deeper awareness that there is something more….and while we ALL feel this way….there is something about coming to be ripe…So seeking is an important part….its like you are reminding yourself of what it is that gets your wheels moving. Someone will look at Sacred Geometry and will see some hidden meaning…..some curious strains of the inner awareness of the universe expressing itself…..or someone else might find something in coincidence, accidents and synchronicity.  Here, she hears the angels singing softly.  And another will find holding stones offer up a great ineffable mystery that simply cannot be put to words.  For someone else, its the sign of the cross….the triad….and how this figures in the energy of awakening. All these things triggering some deeper thing…..and we go after it only to find it was just the tail of the tiger…..but by golly, it was the tail of the tiger!

So go and seek.  Feel deep into yourself what the source is of that itch, that need, that yearning.  Part of it might be to want to know the ultimate source of all life…..another part might be caught up in some aspect of it…..which literally means this could be ANYTHING.  Poetry.  Fixing cars.  Weaving cane baskets.  Studying salamanders under rocks.  Making love.  Burning books.  Cutting your hair.  Breathing.  Its all part of the source of all life, and if done passionately enough, I suppose, it could gather enough energy to pierce the veil.  All of it. In it is all of that and more….like a distilled essence of an amazingly fabulous thing….a being yes…..but Jeez….how can you explain it? It is what it is.  No bearded guys or Human forms have come from it for me thus far. I say I want to be like it…..and it says “Oh, devotee…..I see…..” and so it says nothing and knows I am just going to keep my eyes on it and that is all.  My capacity to channel it each day increases as my realization grows and the old stuff falls away. 

I am intentionally NOT like the sagacious gurus and yoginis.  Just trying to explode that expectation.  But the storm that you are, the xplosions of your inspiration are also me and thus are born out of the All.  There is not accepted way to be, no suit of clothes you put on, or posture you take on.  it blooms in you and you can be a tobaccoo chewing and whiskey drinking guy who lives in the back hills of Tennessee just as likely as this could happen to some wholesale buyer for an importer in New Jersey who is from Indonesia.  So forget the stereotypes.  There are none.  

In that one soul splitting moment when everything is changed, you remember who you are.  Its like….so subtle…..a settling of frost on the tips of the peach trees, a mist in the air….it comes so quiet and it is cracking the sky and while you don’t know it, it comes as a friend to completely undo you.  For a time, its hell.  HELL. Everything you thought you knew, undone. There, lying in your life, it has undone every single lace and catch that you had tried to latch your life to in order to give it consistency and meaning. It offers a new type of clothing to you.  In the dark night as you seek to gain entry into its bliss-filled halls it whispers to you that the cloak you must wear is called nakedness.  

There is plenty to do. Plenty to feel. Feel deeply and be ready.  If you want to prepare, a practice might work.  I have none. I make it up as I go.  No teacher, no guru. Just a burning force in the center of me that is this thing.  Plenty to do, to redo, remake.  And only then, once the storm has passed and you have let go, is there nothing left to do.  Just to be.  Controlling breath can help ease things a lot while the storm is moving over and through, though. 

But whether you eat a lousy NYC hotdog or prepare kale drizzled with organic honey and walnuts, its going to course through you just the same.  And somehow you will find yourself trying to find yourself in its midst as the gurus words echo in your head that there is nothing to….

Nemasté

Finding It

ne of the most difficult things in doing the healing work that a Kundalini awakening demands is being able to find a “new” path to a way of being that you may not have had…..for lifetimes.  Its an opportunity to do things differently for a change.  A change. 

This is what I think of as the broken road….we lose a parent when young and never get the natural nurture we so seem to need.  Or we have an early childhood experience or environment that is somehow lacking.  To compound this, most of the more troubling issues in everyone’s lives are most often the very things that repeat from one life to another.  For me, it has meant connection to the Goddess.  That is what it ultimately has to do with deeper down, but it has manifested in other lives as being an orphan, or losing a mother in childbirth, or simply having an emotionally unavailable mother for whatever reason. We grow sticky with this karma and we attract and are attracted to those things that are not fully resolved.  And you will never be more painfully aware of these issues than when kundalini churns the depths and makes what was shoved down and out of the way rise into conscious awareness where they can’t be ignored. 

So how do we, orphans to a broken past, find the great unbroken road of the divine?

I have found a method that I suspect all wise people use when doing impossible work. The current of the divine is in each of us.  Its in each atom, every tiny little bit to the biggest bits. Threaded through the entirety of reality is this common thread….like beads held onto a necklace, we all are.  When we wake up to the presence of it, it begins to move and do its work. We are used to looking for either goddess or god outside of ourselves.  Most often, this means parents, then later our lovers, spouses and friends. But these people, all part of the broken road, wind up reflecting the same stuff as has been all along in our lives.  The Law of Attraction sees to that.  We create our reality as we go through our feelings and beliefs and then get upset at life for the seeming injustices.  It really is in all of us, and I suppose this is the only illusion I can think of that makes us believe the world is different than it is.  As you heal and change, so does the world.  the character of events, the people, and opportunities change.  I think we tend to change slowly, over years, so that we most often do not notice change.  Its a gentle and gradual progression. But when change comes fast, turbocharged through the power of an awakening, its easier I think to observe the change as it happens.  Over and over…..I will give you a material example from not so long ago…..

I had a land deal going once where I had an offer from someone that was ridiculous for how low it was.  it was easily $250,000.00 below anything approaching market value.  And you might think it was just a mistake.  It wasn’t. In the week that followed, this and other things caused me to examine why the world thought it could treat me with such lack of reverence or consideration.  It was in me.  I was attracting it.  I had to heal that glitch in me.  And sure enough, in a moment, I was shown the origin of this feeling I had carried.  it went all the way back to the 1400’s Europe. It resulted in my feeling that I was not worthy.  And so, quite obviously, if I felt that way, I would attract others who would embody that.  Moths to a particularly colored flame.  Soul searching, I asked what I had to do.  Then the release came, a moment of grace so mysterious to me, but so freeing.  The following day I received a new offer on this property that was more in line with what was fair.  I also had an issue with someone I worked with who treated me like I was less than equal.  Normally he sought to shut me down and would disregard anything that I brought to our exchanges.  After that, his actions softened noticeably.  What was also different was that I stood up for myself more.  It all served to change events in my life.  And this same principle will work in every life. 

So absent good role models….if we learn to look within, there is a world within you, a virtual universe of archetypes that all embody the broad energies of the universe.  SO name it; Shakti, Shiva, Romeo, Juliet, Quetzalcoatle, Pan, Goddess; they are all there.  Within you, within the current of the yin and yang, there is your compliment.  Two years ago I was quite surprised by the emergence of a feminine presence in my awareness.  She arose out of my nearly silent interior that is the feminine current of the kundalini force. She was the sum total of all the traits I have carried in all lives that was feminine.  And she began speaking to me.  Thing was, instead of this encounter being odd or strange, it was actually the most exquisite thing. This part of me had been buried….perhaps because I am a guy and have some issues with a woman running around inside of me.  But on that day when she spoke, all issues concerning my masculine identity in relationship to this feminine force evaporated.  Further, she served to complete the circle of my consciousness.  Everything that made me intuitive, creative, and sensitive was hers.  It wasn’t that any of these traits were divided out like how the sheep and goats are divided.  My being feels delicately interwoven like a continuous tapestry all made of pieces but existing and experienced as ONE piece.  

It wasn’t that this experience resulted in some kind of spiritualized narcissism.  This presence was  part of many lifetimes as we are ourselves carriers of the sums of our beings within each projection or lifetime.  Hard to imagine that this is true, and yet the experience with nonduality will reveal this limitlessness that is in each of us. We just filter it all out.  it has a tendency to come forward when those filters start to soften and shift.  

By reaching within, these parts of ourselves can link us to resources that can help to model new behavior. It has changed me from a defensive and withdrawn person to someone who flows with an easy sensuality and confidence. I have my days, and I am not pretending some kind of lofty perch.  In fact, I think its our insistence on people being perfect who are involved in spiritual work that is a real pitfall.  We are all human, and we need to move through life not hoping for an outcome but keeping our eyes open to what is.  Me, I simply didn’t experience these forces in me the way I did once the awakening got underway.  Some part of me got unglued from the middle part of the radio dial and got shifted into something else.  Maybe a multiband broadcast. Perhaps it was the flow of the two currents that made it more obvious….but I do know that in terms of my overall essence, nothing changed substantively.  The windows were opened, the drapes drawn back, the cobwebs swept away.  Oh, and a river ran through it. 

it is curious, though, that I found a nearly identical explanation of what happens to me when I use imagination with the awakening juice from an early christian saint whose written accounts were a dead ringer for awakening.  She even described the seven chakras as seven crystaline rooms within the self….which all got cleansed by the divine energy.  In awakening, there is so much energy, you can begin to use your imagination and intuition together in a way that will lead you to larger truths….the imagination begins to take on a character that feels as though its like a dream almost….its now being propelled by the force of the energy now and goes in certain directions over others.  Through this interesting almost waking dream work, you can watch as things unfold and knowing comes. Voices come in the night……and before you might think you were going crazy, but now the voices offer insights you might have missed. Or, in my case, offered an essence that served to heal that rift inside that was lifetimes in the making. 

This is what Krishnamurti described as “when the saints go marching OUT” which is the release of lifetimes of stuff…..Krishnamurti felt how his ancient past was emptied of all the junk so that there was a quieter and less cluttered self could exist within.  Clearing the decks, we go back to the beginning, like the first Adam and Eve.  A path back to something better and it is in us.  

After that, what we attract or mirror changes…..What would you do if you mirrored a Paradise found?  Welcome to the world of finding it.