What Remains For Us

It is time to remember the Feminine in the spiritual.  Looking across the world you can see how she has been carefully hidden. For whatever the reasons, it is time that she be brought out into the bright day of our own awareness.  Hiding her only makes for unhealthy yearning and desire for what is native to each of our own beings. She rests within each atom along with her male counterpart.  They take up residence in everything and give force to that which creates form and all phenomenon. They are never not present. For it to BE they must also be.  They are IT. 

Below is an old illustration of Shakti and Shiva.  It shows how Shiva has this powerful aura around him, a nimbus, often seen as the presence of illumination, a powerful spirit, even divinity. We all have this inner light that shines through our own energetic field.

I took some time and worked on giving Shakti her own nimbus as well.  I thought it needed to be complimentary because these two forces work together so well.  So below is the result, an updated version of how things need to be....

My Rendition Of Shakti and Shiva, © Parker Stafford, 2012

Now tell me, is that not perfect?  Shiva's glow is radiant.  It is green, a very healing color.  Shakti is a lovely warm violet, itself very intuitive and receptive. Green in its own way is also receptive, too, and I think while different, the two now are more on par as they gaze into one anothers eyes.  You see, the music hasn't even begun....

Waking Experiencer?

The events that led up to my awakening were two issues that I felt were overhanging in my life that were big questions to me.  At the time, I thought that I could settle a nagging sense of uncertainty I had about both of them.  It was, at the time, something I considered to be a kind of house-keeping kind of move.  I had gone through life with some big questions that I felt were unanswered and I was seeking to try to reach some sense of either closure or better insight.  One of them served as the trigger point for an awakening process.  I have since read that some say you cannot know what causes awakening, but I have been a careful observer of my own process, which has come from years of my own inner search since age nine. I know that for me, the events that led to my awakening were pretty clear and actually obvious. I have searched through documents, most of them simply popping up in random searches that have pointed to the very same aspects that were present in my awakening.  Sure, I think that this is such a broad thing, often mysterious, but I think if you are honest with yourself, in 90% of the cases, there was some deeper sense of yearning, searching for something. When I awoke I thought how I had not asked for this.....and yet, as I go through my life from an early age, I was fervently seeking the great secret that lay before me.  I KNEW it lay before me.  Once it came, I felt the tension in that cord go slack.  I might not have known CONSCIOUSLY what it was I was looking for in a precise way, but even in 1984 during my days in college I observed that the point in altered states was the accumulation or awareness of greater amounts of energy.  As this energy threshold or capacity rose, I noted, all kinds of things began to happen.  Inside each of us is a dynamo that is not fully engaged in awareness, and as the clutch is engaged, it sends the wheels turning.  Once this begins, you are simply never the same again.  Two event were playing on my mind as I decided I wanted to clear up some things that had bothered me for a while.  I wasn't getting any younger, and I prided myself on an examined life, so it was time to do something about it.  The joke was on me on this examined business because awakening has taken me to levels of self examination I simply wasn't brave enough to do or did not think I had the means to do.  And it's the unexamined stuff that stands in the way of the divine.  If you do not realize or know how this is so, someday you will. 

One of these had to do with a startling experience that came into full 360° view one Saturday night in 1984 when I was sitting in the living room of some friends while away at college.  In it, I found myself sitting atop a grassy hill looking out across a sweep of majestic mountains.  Something was about to happen, I knew, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  As I looked down at myself, I realized I was no longer the me I had left in the living room of my friends in 1984 and was instead bare-chested with long black hair flowing down my shoulders.  I was sitting in the same position as I was in 1984, but instead of orange shag carpet (wince), I was sitting in a soft grassy spot looking east.  Feeling a sense of powerful presence behind me, I turned to look around to see a giant storm moving at break-neck pace towards me.  This began my initiation into sacred vision space where I was catapulted into a world no less real, perhaps far more real than anything I had experienced up until that point, which was where all who had gone on vision quests had returned from and who carried some form of insight into a challenge, question, or problem in their lives.  I had been catapulted back into the 1800's into the mountains near what is now called Yosemite National Park.  Less a recall of a past event, this singular encounter had all the makings of a warp in time, one that would have bearing on my life today in a world that the beings in that sacred vision space explained, would come to pass when the "Great Wheel has come full turn."

I was eighteen, white, somewhat aware of native American culture to some extent from some books I had read (my Mother had some books lying around while I was growing up and I took an interest in the concept of the world hoop of Black Elk and the modern medicine man Rolling Thunder).  But for as interested as I was, I was poorly prepared for being thrust into this world.  In what I would later learn was a Thunder Being vision, I was told about a day in the future when I would be reborn as a new person, that the earth would be sick and be in need of cleansing.  I was told things that would come to pass, and I was taken into the sky, merging into the body of the Thunder Bird to performt a purification act.  I say "act" because this was not a ritual.  It was a direct action involving the earth and the energies of the Thunder Beings.  After this stunning experience, I felt as though I was left to make sense of this sudden interface with this culture, its ways, and what seemed to be an important message to me about this future world and time.  I would have several other memories that filled in some gaps, such as a council lodge meeting wherein the name of the People was spoken, which did help me to find the culture that this vision belonged to.  After having read up on the Thunder Beings, I saw how in some cases, the Thunder Beings from one group was quite different from those of another group.  How was I to make sense of all of this?  What was the core message that I was being told in this vision?  What did it mean for me?  The truth was, after some twenty years, I felt as though I had reached a kind of stalemate in understanding.  I had spent years trying to track the culture down using this one word I heard spoken in the council lodge, all to no avail.  One linguist even suggested that it sounded more like Japanese than Native American!

So it was during the Summer of 2006 that I began writing a letter to an elder of the Lakota who I thought might be able to provide me with some sense of perspective.  I wrote five drafts of that letter and found myself with a great sense of hesitancy about it, but could not pinpoint why.  As I stood there getting ready to finish up my work in the studio for the day, I looked at the fifth draft sitting on my workshop stool.  I went to the computer to check email before closing everything out and closing up the shop.  As I did, I found myself doing another search for the Thunder Beings before leaving for the day.  On the front page there were the words of a different Lakota elder that had caught my eye.  All of my hesitancy evaporated.  I felt a sense of certainty about this man, and I felt something close to kinship somehow, and if not kinship, then the awareness of a person whose heart was generous, and a mind that was open.  This was not a rational thing, but a feeling thing. He felt familiar somehow, or if not familiar, I felt comfortable enough to contact him.  Curiously, he had his phone number and urged anyone who wanted or needed to, to contact him.  Perhaps it was because he was telling about a vision he himself had had and was conveying that in a speech before a council, perhaps it was his warmth, or my perceived sense of receptivity.  I had gone for years wondering who on earth would even listen to my unusual story of a memory from a past life speaking of the future in a time when I would be reborn as a white man instead of what I was in the past.  In the life as the Native man, I had gone up into those mountains because of the impact that the Whites were having on my culture.  The vision spoke of the death of my people, and no doubt, this was very hard to take.  I could feel the pain that this man felt over everything that had taken place. I knew the anger, the frustration, the deep sense of hurt and betrayal.  I understood the stereotypical terms often used in westerns where the Indians would mutter something about "speaking with forked tongue." Now, or then, it was real. I knew the anger that those in the Native community might harbor or still harbor towards whites. This was what tangled me up so much in the past; would I have believed some white man coming to me telling of a vision from the past after what so much of his own kind had done to my people?   It was in speaking to this man that a great weight left me, quite unexpectedly.  It was a weight I had been carrying for years, one which had grown heavy and one which I had gotten used to carrying.  I just didn't realize just how lighter letting it go would feel. I also did not realize it was enough weight to leave me feeling as though I was suddenly floating.  It was a healing of a division in me that sparked the fire of kundalini or awakening, a process that unfolded over six months and did not reach "full blown" status until early February of the following year.  Those six months, though, were marked by a whole range of phenomenon that are all classic awakening symptoms, something I would only piece together later.

I later found an article written by the elder who I had originally wrote the letter to, and it helped to explain my hesitancy, or so I have come to believe.  This man spoke openly about the need to keep Whites out of their ceremonies, to keep their culture as pure as they could, to preserve what it was they had left in order to continue to build their sense of community and spiritual roots.  This was completely understandable, it wasn't as though I harbored any ill feelings in this regard. I realized, though, that he might have wound up being more guarded with me and this might have censored him in ways that I did not find with Sydney Has No Horses, the man I finally spoke to. In the end, though, it turned out that I really didn't need anyone to tell me the meaning of what this was all about.  That wasn't what took place at all.  What I needed was something else.  I seemed to need someone who would listen to me, to hear me, to let out all those years of frustration, a kind of confessional of some kind.  I just wasn't aware of how badly I needed this.  Before I could belong to myself, I felt like I needed someone who would not think I was some weirdo, but someone who does belong even if the particulars were a little unorthodox.  It wasn't like I was wanting to become Native American again.  I just wanted to untangle a little bit of this so I could find a greater measure of peace or to understand any purpose that it might have.  Several years after this event, however, my awakening would take an unusual turn and the vision of the Thunder Beings would come back into sharp focus in a way I could not have imagined, in a way that was entirely beyond my current willingness to consider.  This took me into the very source of who the Thunder Beings are and why they are here as archetypal images in our visions and dreams.  That, however, is another story, best saved for another day.  

I was also seeking to clear up an issue concerning a dream I had had about being on board an extra terrestrial craft as a young teen. This was experienced as a dream, and it was also in the wake of some sightings of craft in our area. In the dream,  I was being taken on a tour, I was told, and was with a bunch of other people who all looked like they had been taken out of their living rooms for a sudden look around.  Children, adults, nothing stood out except the striped red and blue shirt on a boy slightly younger than me.  As we were being taken through a door into another part of the craft, I noticed that there was a hole in the floor where there was a giant set if turbines that moved.  I stepped out of line and took a look at this device.  I noticed how it worked and thinking in terms of ordinary jet technology I thought that it could never work.  A being which was standing next to me explained simply that that was not how the device worked.  The key lay in an entirely different method which struck me as exotic technologically.  The dream, though, was incredibly vivid, and after having stepped out of line, I went back into the line as we went into another part of the craft and thus ended any recall that I had about the rest of the dream.

Perhaps because of this dream, which took place on the forward edge of what would become known as a U.F.O. wave so large in our area that it would later be noted on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, that I began to have a lingering curiosity or wondering about what it all meant.  During this same time I had two sightings, one with a sibling of things in our night sky that defied normal explanation, and another several months later with a craft that was so close its outline could be seen against the night sky and looked like it was strung up with Christmas lights.  When I read about UFO sightings where they use "Christmas lights" I smile; I saw the same thing on that night.  In the first encounter or sighting, we watched as two very brilliant balls of light merged in the sky.  Some have offered that this was ball lightening.  The only thing about this explanation is that what we observed was a very slow process that took over half an hour to complete whereby two large brilliant objects very slowly moved across the ridge of the next row of hills until they merged.  The two objects also pulsed in a rhythmic and coordinated way.  That is, they both were pulsing in the same repetitive series many many times over.  One brilliant pulse followed by three smaller pulses, with one much dimmer pulse and a slightly larger pulse, all repeating over and over perfectly for the twenty minute encounter.  The two objects moved slowly across the sky and emitted not total silence but what I can only describe as the sound similar to a rocket without the Doppler effect.  This light was brighter than the full moon.  You could read a newspaper by it.  Once the objects merged and grew brighter, I walked into the house.  My sibling who had remained outside came into the house explaining that soon after I had left that the light went entirely silent and then shot across the sky at a very high rate of speed.

Years after the incident, I would read about close encounters and the very odd world of the people who see things in the night sky.  It quite frankly raised more questions than it answered.  It was a kind of cosmic rabbit hole of sorts that led me to read such books as Communion by Whitley Strieber among others.  Instead of answering questions, it raised others, and they were of the kind that I did not like.  All of this actually made me feel spooked.  I had met a man who had had an encounter where he had details of a device "downloaded" into his mind for possible use later.  His and my notes were curious in how they matched.  I would read about devices that many abductees would feel urged to build that operated on the same set of principles I saw at work in my dream.  The thing that bothered me was that abductees most often learned of their past "missing time" as the result of dreams that were described as being "screen memories" for more involved encounters with nonhuman beings.

I held strong to my sense that I had simply not had any physical encounters, but I was a little freaked out to be honest.  I was freaked out because these encounters were not enjoyable.  People described feeling like they were like lab rats, or were held against their will.  So during this same period of time, I went to an online community to read up on other peoples' experiences to see if there was anything that could help me to settle this nagging uncertainty once and for all.  Once I mentioned my own experience, I didn't get curious looks but people who stepped forward and described similar things.  It left me more in the dark for a bit.  What was the nature of all of this? Something was telling me that all of this was within the realm of dream.  I had no memories of being taken.  None of what I had seen was the least bit troubling to me.  As the first pieces of awakening began to trickle in, I began to sense something about a large part of this group of people; they were all experiencing a realm of energetic experience that verged on awakening.  There were instances of time slips, odd anomalies concerning time.  Other had a stronger than usual sense of precognition and intuitive abilities. This was a group of people I sensed were all in some way on the verge of something, and as awakening slowly trickled in, I began to sense this more clearly and began to understand that this phenomenon of the visitors may well be one that is not entirely physical, but which occupies a different class of space or reality.  This would explain why not a single person has had a single physical artifact taken from their many encounters aboard ships.  This could explain why so many of the encounters happen at night (although not always).  this might explain why so many encounters mirrored vivid out of body experiences wherein people were floated out of bed on blue beams of light into what seemed to be ships in the air with beings that seemed to be from another planet or world.  Experiencers, as they are called, often described how they would see ghostly apparitions, or step into future events through unknown means.  Some of the encounters were more like astral projection than anything physical.  Some sported scars or marks made during their abductions.  Some described marks that would appear.  I had a couple of these marks appear on my own body during awakening and it got me to thinking.  Isn't it just as possible that all of this is powerful psychic phenomenon being translated into very specific terms, i.e. extraterrestrial encounters?  I am not here to somehow seek to downplay any one's feelings in regards to their own experiences, and I am not one who plays the hysteria card (which is to say I do not think this is all just hysteria).  But my own intuition tells me that many people that were part of this community were on the verge of awakening.  Is it possible that their experience was in some way co opted or interpreted in a way that focused the phenomenon in a given manner much like how a dream can change in relation to how we feel about the imagery that it contains?  When we overcome certain fears, for example, in dream, the images that most often emerge as emblems of that fear, or symbols of those fears often change forever as a result of this emotional and cognitive shift.

There is another reason for my wondering this, but it is one that did not come until I was digging into awakening trying to find some explanation for the phenomenon.  I had not yet hit upon kundalini as the explanation and was instead reading the Gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi when I came across a couple of books that dealt with a curious constellation of phenomenon that were identical to the modern abduction phenomenon.  This phenomenon was being described by Jesus to one of his disciples and it outlined how a certain type of being called an Archon normally appears to humans.  The Archons come in threes.  They appear and strike terror into their human subjects due to their countenance being like a lion (they are actually described as looking like an "aborted fetus").  Once they strike terror in their subjects, the humans become paralyzed and are unable to move.  It is then that they are "taken by theft."   These beings, it is explained, try to appear as though they are like gods, but are not.  They utilize a form of synthetic reality that was called "HAL" that seems to create the appearance of events that are not entirely real.  These same beings have tried to interbreed with female humans in creating a hybrid race of the two.  All of this, by the way, is in the Nag Hammadi, particularly the Hypostasis of the Archons and the Apocryphon of John.  If you are the least bit familiar with how the abduction scenario, you know by now that all of these phenomenon are entirely coincident with the Archons of Jesus' day.  In fact, there is an interesting article written about how all of these phenomenon mesh together by the Gnostic scholar John Lash HERE.

What I have inferred since then is that the experience of the bridal chamber, which is awakening, is itself a powerful protective force that keeps such intrusions at bay.  It seems that as one awakens, ones susceptibility to beings such as the Archons goes away or fades.  I do note that within a years time of my own awakening, I knew of four other people who were going through awakenings who were visitors to this online community.  All of them I suspect were having phenomenon taking place over years that may have seemed like "visitations" but had all the hallmarks of etheric, rather than physical encounters.  Is it possible that before awakening we might move through a territory where our own growing field of energy is in some way co-opted by others in some way, but that upon awakening serves as a kind of protective field from additional intrusions?  Is it that we are like children with new perceptual powers, but just don't know how to deal with them, do not know how to break out of the old conceptual barriers and thus remain in a kind of hinterland half way between awake and asleep?  is it possible that these transition points are ideal locations for anything that feeds off human energy? 

I used to be a little freaked out by all of this, to be quite honest. However, over time, it has become clear to me that all of this adheres perfectly to the Law of Attraction.  Whatever we have not resolved in ourselves, persists energetically and like attracts like.  Something begins to happen, though, once awakening reaches a certain level.  I am not of the mind that there is a clear point of awakening, even though there are all points where we all feel the movement that feels serpentine up the spine, I simply do not buy that this is IT.  I exhibited all manner of symptoms directly tied to awakening that presaged the more obvious awakening.  It is why, I insist that our understanding of awakening is not as complete as we would like to think.  We approach awakening in the same way that we spiral through our lives.  Life is not a point A to point B experience but a series of cycles within cycles within still larger cycles.  We exist in eternity wound within the appearance of time.  As such, there is not one point where awakening is, but rather, I suspect, we approach it and certain symptoms occur when the necessary thresholds are met that will incur other phenomenon such as rising of one force or another, or hearing things, feeling flushes of intense heat, tingling on the skin, in the energy centers, vivid dreams, loss of appetite, increase in appetite, change in the production of bodily fluids, hormonal changes, and a long list of other symptoms anyone can read about on a site dealing with the symptoms of kundalini.

My earlier sense was that these folks were all preawakeend, or in a place where with the right threshold or experience, awakening could dawn quite easily.  It is a sense that you can pick up on quite easily and there are plenty of symptoms to support such an intuition.  But until that time comes, it seems that people are caught in a middle land of sorts.  Lash explains how the Gnostics were themselves involved in awakening kundalini in this quote from his site:

The lion-headed serpent of the Gnostics is called by magical names such as Ophis, Knuphis, and Abrasax. In the occult anatomy of Asian mysticism and Yoga, this reptile is known as Kundalini, the serpent power. Gnostics who practiced Kundalini yoga were called Ophites, from the Greek ophis, "snake." This cult was condemned by early Christians as pagan "snake-worshippers." To the mundane and uninitiated mind, the Kundalini serpent can only be conceived by crude literalization. To Gnostics, the lion-headed serpent crowned with solar rays was not only the image of the Lord Archon, but also of the source of spiritual power that allows human beings to resist that entity.

Until one comes into full embodiment of the kundalini force, one can be susceptible to forces that may approach such forces in a similar manner.  In my own experience I noted that an entity had been associated with someone I was aware of and had a connection to.  through the awareness brought on by the force of kundalini, super normal vision made it possible to be aware of just what was going on.  All of this defied normal reason, and I often thought I was going crazy, even though I KNEW without a doubt on one side of the equation that everything I was seeing and experiencing inwardly was in fact the case.  What is worthwhile noting was how the being or entity that had been associated with this person was not able to approach me or come close in anyway due to a field of protective energy that I seemed to be endowed with.  Within this energy, there was simply no fear.  Even as the creature attempted to menace me, I was unaffected.  I felt a powerful field of energy propagate outward from my body that gently pushed this being away as I prayed to this being that it needed to learn to create its own energy, to know its place in the universe, and its connection to the Source.  As a result of that experience I learned that while we may have something on our side that aids in creating protective effects, we can also wind up side stepping the necessary inner work that is also necessary to fully embody awakening.  Yes, it is present, yes it has its effects, but like anything, we still remain subject to those aspects of ourselves that remain unhealed and which leave openings to other intrusions into our own inner etheric sheaths, which I suspect is the entry point for these beings.  they do so through those openings where fear resides, or some past hurt or some other trauma that serves to tear our own inner fabric and keep us divided within ourselves.  When we heal these divisions, nothing matching the energy of that division may enter.  Period.

What is hopeful to me is what Lash has dug up about the Gnostics, which include Jesus, in terms of the protective nature of awakening:

Gnostics taught that nous, the spiritual intelligence endowed in humanity, could be blocked by the Archons. This occurs through Archontic intrusion affected by a kind of subliminal invasion at the level of thought and language (i.e., mental syntax). But nous could be reinforced through accessing the power of Kundalini, an ecstatic current that normally rests dormant in the human body. In his monograph on the Archons, I. S. Gilhus notes that "the erotic strategy is the most important means used by the pneumatics to save the lost light." (p. 51) Pneumatics is the Gnostic terms for humans who pursue the path of psychosomatic illumination, the key method of Gnostic religion. Pneuma, "spiritual force," is developed by cultvation of nous, "higher intelligence." But the Archons present a blind field of resistance to this process: in short, they rely on humans remaining ignorant of their inherent spiritual potential.
When Kundalini is raised from its dormant state, higher intelligence blossoms, and there are other effects as well. Gnostic sects such as the Ophites practiced the communal raising of Kundalini to produce an protective envelope against Archontic intrusion. In effect, they held Kundalini, the sexual-spiritual energy locked in the body structure, to be the main instrument of defense against the Archons. The Dialogue of the Savior, NHC III, 5 (85), contains this exchange:

Judas said, "Behold, The authorities (Archons) dwell above us, so it is they who will rule over us."
The savior said, "It is you who will rule over them. But only when you rid yourselves of jealousy, and take on the protection of the Light, and enter the nymphion (bridal chamber)."

The savior-teacher is emphatic that we have power over the Archons, but he also makes it clear that some human failings impede the use of our power. The Greek word phthonos may be translated as "jealousy" or "envy." Gnostics considered envy to be the signature of the Archons, as well as the key human failing that makes us vulnerable to their intrusion. "The protection of the Light" comes through activated Kundalini, often described as a lightning-like tide of electrified light that pours through the body. "Nymphion" is a code word for the ambient cell of psychophysical protection generated by high levels of Kundalini. Sir John Woodruffe, the great transmitter of Hindu Tantric wisdom to the West, directly identified the practice of Kundalini yoga (raising the serpent power through the channels of the spine) with Gnostic rites of "serpent worship." (Shakti and Shakta, p. 191 ff.) Buddhist scholars such as E. A. Evans-Wentz, J. M. Reynolds, and H. V. Guenther have made similar observations, but Gnostic scholars have not reciprocated because they do not look outside their genre to understand the theory and practice of Gnosis.

We are all on the spiraling path, all each in our own way in our own timing.  We are all approaching our own greater becoming each and every moment, and yet in each moment there lies the potential for it all along, which means that choice is there, rather than some destiny; we move moment by moment by virtue of freewill just as our own soul essence whispers what we surely have known all along but have kept at the periphery of our waking awareness.  What happens today bears on tomorrow, and as we reach those clusters of events that help us to reflect in just the right way and to resolve the old barriers to held us divided (which the Gnostics write about!) then the door is increasingly opened to the channels opening in our awareness that allow us to realize who and what we are in still broader dimension; we awaken.  

I don't have a fascination of these Archonic beings, though.  I have a fascination with what brings us closer to our divine natures, what breaks the bonds of our limitations, and old awareness.  Do we do this through a perfunctory understanding of what awakening is and its protective nature?  No.  I don't feel that awakening can in any way be brought about as a result of a rational process at all.  Just as emotion is often perceived as irrational, so too does the awakening force transcend our habituated tendency towards resting in our left brains and sparks both hemispheres into action in awakening.  Latent portions of the brain begin to mirror the phenomenon now taking place as it happens.  We would like to think its all JUST energy, but everything I have experienced so far has shown that everything happens together; body and soul are married and thus one is experienced because the other is capable of experiencing it also.  It isn't that we are JUST spiritual beings, but that we are here wedded to duality for  a PURPOSE which is to bring heaven and earth together.  Married.  Just as we marry soul to body, we marry heaven and earth together.  Father Sky, Mother Earth.  Shakti is often seen as the world of the physical, the manifesting of creation, the great womb of creation.  She is filled to the brim with her consort, the initiating force, and they cycle one into the other in a harmonious circuit of creation that is the very essence of bliss.  This is the bridal chamber, the nymphion as the Gnostics term it.  All of these things are themselves images that seek to put to word and into analogous form what exists in a more primordial manner, a pre-existent state, which just so happens to be where both the "father" and the "mother" exist.  They are not begotten, but are the unbegotten begetters, which is to say they are before form and manifestation, the deities if there ever were any. 

My interest in our reaching a place as a race where we can get beyond the veils of our own ignorance to see and know what is.  As the dross is removed, as the force of awakening clears and cleanses, we have the opportunity to live a life unlike anything we may have known previously.  We emerge as if out of dream, an old dream with many nightmares, ones which we began to question. Is this all there is?  Is this as good as it gets?  Is there something I am somehow missing?  How do I resolve this nagging sense of uncertainty about these events in my life?  How is it that I can reach a state of greater peace within?  Do I just accept how things have gone, or is there a better way?  What IS that way?  These are the fateful words of a seeker turning within and setting free the chains that hold her and him to what was illusory. 

Perhaps there is something more waiting for you on the other side of all of this.  We will each find it in our own time, in the moment when the choice is made, when the turning of the soul shines brighter than our rational mind and our limiting beliefs do.  I remain hopeful for our clan of humans here.  We ache too much for a better world for it to be anything except that. 

Beyond Belief

Everything that you are in your psyche is a collection of values that are based in belief.  The curious thing about belief is how little we actually bother to learn the root of any belief.  Everything about my experience with kundalini is about shedding those beliefs which have limited my experience.  The beliefs I held were also a mirror of my own karmic entanglements. Subtly and overtly, my beliefs moved and turned in me, effecting my thinking and informing my reactions and feelings.

Karma is a curious thing. Its like belief in how blind it is. It shares a lot with belief in that it is often accepted without conscious awareness and is carried without being aware of it, and yet it has governed so much of what we say, do or feel.

It's also curious that sometimes you can shed a karma by being willing to look at how it has blinded you.  The effect karma has is that it makes you see only what the karma is about.  So lets say that you feel like someone doesn't love you.  You believe this is true, and the source of this karma has to do with self esteem, which goes back to self love.  As Alison Neville, a great teacher and writer in her own right once said, all karma goes back to self love.  No matter how far afield it gets, the trail always leads back to self love.  So in this inability to love yourself and know yourself to be perfect and lovable, you then see how someone has a deficiency in their behavior. You SEE it as deficient, and you see this as reflecting on you.  This deficiency in another reflects on you, so this must mean that they do not love you.  And so off you go believing this is true while all along you have not looked more deeply at why this is so.

I was one such person. I had some bad experiences as a very small child.  A baby, actually.  This affected me so that I didn't bond properly with my mother. I grew up angry at her because of something I didn't get.  I was wounded. When I was able in the midst of my awakening to step back far enough, I saw a very different picture.  Instead of merely trying to connect the dots to make my own weird picture of life, I began to understand that life was hard back then and my mother was doing her level best with a very bad situation.  It did affect how she felt to me, it did affect how attentive she was with me.  Yes, yes, yes, to all of it.  Yes.  But it did not mean she did not love me.  In truth, she cherished me.  I was her youngest, the one who was perhaps having the hardest time making sense of all of this that was happening. So I grew up with this feeling of separation, of having been treated different, the whole nine yards.  In truth, I was not able to simply love myself and know I was okay.  If I had, I might have been a bit happier.  I might feel less wounded.  In truth, I saw what I wanted to see.

Belief is the same thing.  It is taken on almost automatically without regard to questioning it or giving it any kind of road test.  We don't stop for one moment and consider why it is that we have religions and countries full of people who believe that we are dirty or fallen, sinful, or that certain aspects of our own creative beings are bad.  Like sex.  Its dirty.  Its only to be used for procreation.  Anyone want to hazard a guess as to why this notion was promulgated in the first place?  Is it any surprise that there was a demonizing of the old religions which were based on seeing the god and goddess within each person?  Here, the highest sacrament was Heiros Gamos.  All of that went away when Christianity came along. There are similar strains in the HIndu tradition as well.  There is this attitude that sex is bad.  The man who translated the Bhagavad Gita As It Is has expressed this view quite clearly when the book was published  in the early 70's.

An awakening will challenge you top to bottom, tip to toe.  Nothing is left alone.  It keeps pushing.....returning you to a more natural state. But as long as we fear any aspect of sexuality or any aspect of our selves at all, we just wont "go there."  You have to be willing to examine your beliefs from the most subtle to the most overt.

Writing in my book, I explain how we have a triadic being.  While we have a dual energy system of what could be called masculine and feminine currents, we also have a processing system for that energy that is based on the fact that we have three brains in one brain. Yes.  Three.  We have a part of our brain that is identical to a reptilian brain.  If you look at this part of the brain it is no different from any other reptile in shape and proportion.  This is the part that is capable of processing a certain range of experience.  These are what we would consider our base instincts. This is the fire of pure sexual energy.  On top of that brain is a mammalian brain that is identical to most mammals across the earth.  This part of our brain deals with higher order expression and experience and allows us to feel kinship, togetherness, and compassion.  It is in this part of the brain that we bring up the energy from the reptile and refine it.  But concurrent with it is still this very pure energy that is streaming in from the cosmos, so unless you either deal with it or ignore it, it remains a challenge if your beliefs tell you that pleasure is bad or wrong, or even sinful.  But in the latest unfolding, we have what is called the primate brain, and this is the part of us that makes us, so we are told, so different from all the other mammals.  We not only thing about the clan or family group, we are able to reflect on the inherent good of something for the whole.  So instead of small groups, we can contemplate how something might affect a nation or world.  This is the most abstract part of the brain's processing capability (at least this is what we suspect thus far), and it is here supposedly that we are able to realize the higher range of experience of the cosmos in our crown, in our forebrains.  Here, we have a mirror of the higher forms of bliss. Its a step up in this three step ladder I am talking about.

In the energy body there are these same corresponding octaves as well as seen in the root, heart and crown.  These are perhaps some of the most central of the seven in many respects.  They all ultimately go together as a unity in order to draw all energies upwards into a higher realization. We say the lower energies are less somehow, but this is only due to bias and belief.  Its also karmic.  Without the root, we do not feel the power found in the crown.  Without the crown, we cannot know the power of the root.  But in denying any of it, we turn a blind eye to its importance.  Its in bringing the entire energetic self into a unity that we realize the fullest potential of our beings.  This is based in bliss.  If you have beliefs that feeling this kind of bliss is bad, then there are naturally some hurdles that will befall you.  Even the seeming lower base energies are all important in the overall unity. Without them, the bliss of kundalini simply would not be. It would instead be something of a corpse, a being with a half life. When we seek to sideline one aspect, we create more problems for ourselves. We limit our fuller experience. While the power of awakening will fuel a great flame in our spirits, it will only reach but so high or only so broadly.  By not bringing fear into it, you are free to experience it in its fullest dimension.  You are free, then, to return to what we were before all this demonizing began and the sacrament of heiros gamos was experienced in its fullest.

From the moment kundalini touches you, you experience the very essence of union.  Shakti does not have to travel upwards to meet Shiva in the crown. They are already connected from the very start.  Their union IS the bliss as it travels upward both literally and figuratively. Its only in pulling them apart that kundalini stops. But once begun, no human WANTS it to stop.  This is the Divine Marriage and it begins within the self. The self is healed and brought to a place of unity first.  Not after something else happens outside the self.  The universe must be known for what it is first within you, and then from you, it will unfold. From this seed, the universe is planted and grows anew. This is how the world is healed, one person at a time. It is not through conquest, or through manipulation.  It is not by having a crutch of any kind, be it a religion or family or any of the rest. You are like the orphan spoken of in the gospel of Philip that inherits the world.  And indeed you do.  But first, within you this great mystery must unfold or else what you have is a corpse.  Seek the kingdom first. It is within you. And it is first by making the left the right, the right the left, making the female into the male and the male into the female (Gospel of Thomas).  It is here, in this unity of the self that the true healing takes place. 

Kundalini

It is time to cast aside the conceptual veils that have served to frame what we think kundalini is.
For ages we have relied on what others in the past have had to say, never once asking ourselves if this is true in our own experience.  Because we have not, our experience has been informed, blinded even, by those old concepts.

Kundalini is said to rise....separate currents of feminine and masculine seen as two serpents moving up the spine.  Some have said kundalini is the feminine Shakti as she moves upward to meet the masculine Shiva in the crown.  I ask you, how have we arrived at this when it is so clear what is happening?

The moment you feel kundalini moving in you you are experiencing the Truth of the divine. The bliss you feel is their union from the moment they dive into your body.  They are not struggling to merge into one, they already are.  They are an extra temporal gift to your awareness in duality.  How have we taken what is one and made it two?  Because that is how we think. It must be man and woman, woman and man. Isn't that how it is in the physical?  How can man and woman be one?  How can yin and yang be one?  In much the same way that the Hindu tradition described Shakti AS kundalini force, raw and unrefined, she, according to the story, must move upwards through the body to reach her counterpart Shiva in the crown.  He resides there in perfected splendor. Now here is a perfect way to understand how your belief and your thinking can blind you and alter your experience.  Here are millions of Hindus who believe this is so, and others follow because surely they must know.  And yet, if the power of kundalini comes about from their union, then why must Shakti rise and perfect herself? Why is Shiva already perfect yet waiting for her?  Why would one be refined while the other is not?  The answer is cultural.  It is a patriarchal society and women do not hold the same place as men. Its just as reasonable to make an argument that its men who are the unrefined ones, for aren't they the ones who have done the raping and pillaging and warring to the tune of billions killed over the centuries?  Isn't it the women who most often have the civilizing effects on their families and culture? Don't they take the dull and drab and seek to make something beautiful of it?  The only reason why Shakti must rise is because of cultural bias, and this is very simple. When you look at the culture and ask a few reflecting questions for why something is so, your eyes begin to be opened. And why would people ignore the feeling of the union in their bodies and seek to reach so far to seek to fit a bias to a phenomenon that is perfectly clear before them?  Karma.  Karma blinds us to what is true. We wind up seeing what we want to see, what the karma itself has been telling us. It keeps us from finding the truth, for we are not being true to ourselves.  As long as we are not true to the divine, our eyes will be clouded and the experience of kundalini will be limited.  It will move through you, yes, and great things will come, but there will be limits.  Even the same gurus and sages know that karma limits.  When we are willing to take the step to see things differently, remarkable things can happen. An explosion of realization can occur, and awakening can broaden.  The engine of kundalini is the realization of their union in you. They ARE bliss.  They are nothing less.

What is different is your awareness. You feel kundalini rise.  You feel it ebb and grow. And yet who asks why this is so?  Even the most seasoned seem to feel its a great mystery.  It is no mystery at all. Feeling kundalini is like sitting in a garden and seeing the splendor of it all.  the sun beats down on you, warming your body, the water flows, the grass sparkles with dew and the flowers are arching into the sun.  Its wonderful. You feel a thrill just to be there.  You allow yourself to be inspired.  You are seduced by the moment.  This is kundalini.  You let it into your awareness more.  As you do, you feel it more.  The garden has always been there, its all in how you have chosen to be seduced by it. How you have chosen to be inspired by it.  A month ago, sitting on the same spot, the garden looked broken down.  You bore loathing and anger in you.  The sky looked dim, the water did not sing.  Everything took on a bleached look.  Was it the place that was doing this, or was it just you being disconnected from the thrill and wonder of it all? How you allow yourself to feel WILL have an effect on kundalini. It is IN you. YOU choose how to feel. You can turn on or you can turn away.  You can say yes or you can say no.  What you believe is possible governs your experience.  How you feel governs it to.  You can literally kill of kundalini by feeling so cut off and alone.  It happens to people all the time.

In each moment, the union of the two as one builds incredible energy when you give yourself to it.  When you do, their energy seems to move upwards through the energy centers, sweeping away all the junk from the past as you turn ever closer to the divine reality.  For an energy that moves at light speed, it seems silly to suggest it moves like a snake. It feels like this, yes, but its moving that slow IN your awareness only.  If given the chance, it would shoot right up through you.....and sometimes it does at light speed, for this is in truth the nature of its energy.  It is faster than fast, you see.  Its great truth visits each center in your body as you are ready for it, and as your awareness opens, slowly, it moves slowly into it.  The thing that is slow is your awareness, not the energy.  It burrows down into every cell. It bears its simple truth of unity of all things being connected through them.  They are the entirety of the universe.....all of it.  But to accept this truth, you must turn away from the karma and to the truth.  It is this action that begins to loosen the karma within you from the moment you do this. The more you allow yourself to turn from your notions of what you thought to something seemingly new, your experience can change.  Which would you prefer, a method for being that is aligned divinely, or one that is based on a myth with distortions and inaccuracies? Which do you think will get you to your own inner truth?

As you are better able to bear them into larger portions of your awareness, you become aware of them as present in that place within you in direct proportion to your ability to let them into that place within you, while they help you to realize what you are in the simplest of ways.  It is elegant, it is silent, it is gentle, and it is empowered. Its glance fertilizes worlds and gives birth to great possibilities.  It is here to guide and remind you of your simple divine nature by simply being in union.  As you learn to come into the same union within the arrangement of your awareness and being here, you fall into divine alignment with the universe. You realize yourself as IT. These are the cosmic parents modeling the one lesson, the one commandment that has ever existed.  So for some it is seen as a sexual union, for some that is how it is experienced, the heiros gamos.  But I say to you; they ARE this.  Already.  Always. Learn from them what their mere presence will show you.  Then ask how you can be like them and your life will lead you when you allow yourself to be led. Let what you think you know go by the wayside.  The more I was able to see these "two" as one, the deeper the experience.  Their bliss comes about from their touch, their eternal kiss.  This higher union that is serves as my one religion, my one sacrament, the one example for helping the earthly self to unfold into their great truth.  This truth is reflected dimensionally into other realms of experience and echoes through all things.   My own "higher" soul resides in the same way in perfect and continual union with its feminine.  He gazes into her as she envelopes him in a great soul kiss that is her entire essence taking him into herself, loving him and cherishing him in her utterly perfect way.  Their gazes are measured in centuries, their smiles in decades, their words are worlds tumbling out of them. This is the one thing I know to be true and real at the very core of what I am.  It is the place where all seeking stops and being begins.  It is also where kundalini can begin if you cast aside those old veils and be willing to see it as it has always been.  This is available to all if you can take it.

It has never been two.  It has always been one. it is time to feel this reality in order that each are known for what they are; equals and cherished.  A universe in one.

UPDATE (1/30/2013) :  My how time changes things.  I was having a conversation with someone about kundalini and how it was perceived in her awareness. I said it was so clearly a twin force in me, and she said "That is not how I felt it at all.  It felt like the GODDESS in me!  No doubt, absolutely, goddess energy!"  I did a double-take "Really?"  I asked, incredulously.  I couldn't believe it, but here she was saying this was so certain in her experience that there was not even a way to mistake it.  So I sat there, my old notions getting a subtle reformation.  the moment we experience something and KNOW how ti feels, someone comes along and changes that completely.  I think because I feel so certainly that this is universal energy that I think it must naturally be the same for each of us.  And I can't even say that I can figure out why it would seem like the Goddess for one and something different for another.  Anything I might assume might well bear the blinders that I myself am responsible for.  I could say to myself "Well, she must have some sort of filter or is blind to the masculine side of the force, then" and congratulate myself in finding the truth and put it out of my head.  And yet, people's experience MUST be important, MUST be heeded and used as the measuring stick until something else comes along to change that view.  If we rely on experience, then we must also honor it.  Even if it presents a mystery, or paradox.