A Note On Auras....

Not long ago I was talking to my daughter about auras.  As she grows, she is aware her father is a bit.....different.  I speak openly and frankly about my experiences when the questions come up.  There was so little information when I was a kid.  I had to dig and dig.....

I showed her some techniques for seeing energy, ways to look, what to bear in mind.  But as I reviewed this and some posts I have made in the past, I realize there is one element that I have not touched on perhaps as much as I should since it feels central to sensing energy in this way.  Its  not easy to touch on because it is so simple that it is difficult to notice or realize how important it is.

What works for me is to stop or still thought.  This does not happen totally.  We can think while we do this, but there is a part of me that simply LOOKS without anything but focus on the object.  I really don't have any better explanation than that.  It is being okay with not knowing what you are supposed to do except that somehow, some part of you knows, but it all seems beyond your control.  I think perhaps the answer lies in the fact that this is the energy body sensory realm instead of the physical sensory realm.  It is a side-step away from normal sensing.

So let's say that you can sense energy around a person but you are not picking up on color for some reason.  Rationally, you know you really ARE picking up on the energy.  This is certain.  But the color.....So simply try telling yourself that you would like to pick up on color and then cease any effort beyond that.  Ask to be shown.  Have no expectation of a result.  Let your light body show you.  Ask what it is you are not doing right to tune hat part in.  But again, remove all expectation as to what this might be.  Stop thought.  Be present.  Feel without thinking or thinking you KNOW what it is you are seeing.  Consider that what you might see is different from what you think it could or will be.  And trust.  You have this genie inside of you, so it is a matter of getting to this point.

Something else to try is to focus on your solar plexus.  Feel your own energy as you, feel your energy, feel your own sense of presence and then imagine this energy as being like a satellite dish. It is this big disc of energy that picks up on the energy around it.  Feel your energy filling the room, probing as it always does.  This is your "gut" and it tends to be very basic and clear most often.  That is why we are asked to trust it. Your gut.  Imagine your awareness moving out beyond your body and filling the room.  Now beyond this, do not expect anything else.  Be neutral.  Let it just be energy.  Try this visualization and give it some time.

This is not something that has anything to do with looking or the act of picking up on the energy, so this part is perhaps the part that people miss. If you can see auras okay, then whether you are aware of this fine point or not is beside the point, but some people may have something about their mental focus that serves to block the flow of information. It helps to stop being mental.  Stop trying to know or apprehend.  Allow yourself to be shown.  Allow your own senses to do what they do naturally.  Get out of your head and get into you BODY.  It is the physical body that has a mirror of itself in the light body.  It is the light body that is picking up on most of this information I believe, and so by being in your body you will tend to listen to the wisdom OF the body, both physical and etheric (since they are coincident with one another and play off one another....plus they are both connected!).  So get in your body.  Get out of your head.  This is the simple part.  But it can also be hard for people to maintain.  When you can get quiet and FEEL your body, you will feel your energy more.  As you feel this energy, you will be more aware of it and it will naturally be in a better position to help you with what it is good at doing.  Let your feeling of your energy fill the room and see if this works.  You are not doing anything but feeling.  You are passive because you are observing and taking in. There is no control, nothing to do. Become quiet and feel.  Your own energy body will be like a field of energy that will feel other energies and bring information back to you in order for it to be decoded into a form that will make sense to you.  This is how it works.  The energy is just energy, but in order for it to make sense, it has to be put into some order that makes sense to you, that you can relate to.  It can fall along lines of impressions, images in the mind, sensations in the body, or images that the eye seems to see. And if this continues to be a problem, it might just be a sign that you might be better at picking up on this information in a completely different way.  If this might be the case, you need only feel into this and use your intuition to figure out what this might be.  What makes sense to you?  What is your first impulse when I say this?  What does your gut say? What FEELS right?

There are some very basic "mechanical" things that you can try if you are having challenges tuning in.  Try different size rooms. Diffuse light seems best and even flourescent for whatever reason, seems to work well. Having some space around the subject being observed as well as distance from you can also help.  Gaze longer then you have in the past.  Keep your gaze there.  See if that helps.  Feel yourself just observing, feeling in a light and neutral way.  This will keep you in the role of observer and less as participant.  Ask yourself if there is something blocking the color. If there is, you don't need to know WHAT is doing it.  You can place your awareness on this for extended periods and this can also serve to remove the block.  Again, no expectations.

The same thing can be done for seeing the levels of the aura.  There are many levels.  These tend to radiate outward looking like a series of "shells" or sheaths.  My experience has shown me that most material closest to the body tends to be directly involved in what is being felt now as a matrix of both emotional, physical, and mental energy, with larger dimensional energy taking up space slightly beyond these layers.  None of it is different or less than any other layer, they simply serve different aspects of the self living in this moment in time.  The aura extends visually many feet beyond the body and my sense is that in a way, it has no end as it imprints on physical reality.  It is infinitely flexible, elastic and can go from a brilliant light close to the body to an expansive field many feet beyond. For a long time I did not see what some healers and body workers were talking about.  It was some years ago that I began to see images in the aura.  These are faint for me, shadowy in some ways, perhaps indistinct sometimes, but clear enough for me to pick up on them and gain awareness and understanding from them.

The thing about using intuition is that it feels like you are doing nothing.  You are in a way doing nothing because what you think of your normal focus is stepping aside, becoming neutral while another lesser known part of you begins to work.  It seems effortless because what you think of your focus or pinpoint of awareness is no longer working as it has on the issue at hand.  Something else is.  But it is still you.  You simply need to have the faith that it is in you to do. It is almost like handing it off to someone else to work on.  It shouldn't feel so easy, but it is.  Trust that sense. 

The most direct use of sensing the aura is in healing work. If you can sense the aura it can lead you to an understanding of energy and could be a tool in helping you to observe as you work what effects your own efforts bring.  Try these methods and let me know if they work.  

Divine Feminine Sources

A gathering of gold for you, my readers.....(send me your faves as I work on updating this resource list!)

http://www.annebaring.com/anbar06_div-fem.htm

Article on the feminine in Sufism
http://home.earthlink.net/~drmljg/id8.html

Some quotes and thoughts on the feminine on Gaiam
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/topics/feminine

The Holy Spirit as The Feminine Aspect of the Deity
http://holyspirit-shekinah.org/_/holy_spirit_the_feminine_aspect_of_the_godhead.htm

Transpersonal Musings...
http://www.transpersonal.com.au/kundalini/divine-feminine.htm

Divine Feminine Yoga
http://www.divinefeminineyoga.com/

Divine Feminine Shamanic Circle (Black Mountain N.C.)
http://sourceforwellbeing.com/divine-feminine-shamanic-healing-circle-2

Writings from the Goddess Studio
http://www.goddess-studio.com/default_files/writings.htm

More to come....

The New Wayshower

Built within the very heart of the All she resides in harmony with her consort, never another but who she is, no separation but an integrated part of her.  In the great body of this All, though, parts of the body do not realize what they are in relation to this great Mother, the divine feminine.  For reasons that are their own, they have been under the gaze of the masculine side of Her.  His feminine has receded just as she has been denied the awareness that is hers. 

We all know how this has played out here.  It has been a very hard time for the feminine.  We have been caught in a wild torrent of denial in coming to our own collective self realization.  It has been difficult to day the least for how the feminine has been treated in this world.  Property.  Powerless.  Denied.  This has been hard.  Very hard.  And certainly there have been billions who have suffered over a long time.  But the tide is changing, and we can know something different if we can just be ready to simply set aside what has been and let the past be the past. 

For the last hundred years, She has been asserting her power, her right to parity in the world. As soon as she began doing this, the days of paternalistic control were numbered.  Slowly, the pieces have been coming together.  Brave women who asked "Yes, but why is it that way?  It can be different!" have been the ones who have helped to bring change to the world.  In the United States, for all our talk of freedom and liberty, we have been marvelously one-sided.  Until we got called on it, and we had to begin examining our talk to match our walk.  Women stepped out from the shadows and into the bright light of awareness.  Her walk was her own.  She won the right to vote, the right to work, the right to question consensus reality.  the right was always hers.  She had to assert it in order for that to happen. And she did it. More voices joined in the chorus and over time, conventions have changed. 

It has pressed for understanding who She is in this new context.  Was the Women's Liberation Movement somehow robbing women of their femininity?  Were men somehow less manly when they chose to stay and care for the children at home instead of going out there and bring home the bacon?  All kinds of questions have been raised in our collective examination of what this new landscape represents to us.  We have been trying to figure it out.  It has been a bit like a set of clothes that was new and fit differently than what we were used to.  Did it look right?  Does it feel right to us where we are headed?  Some of the questions sought to take us back to the safety of convention while others sought, perhaps blindly into some new world.  And yet, even in the seeming dark, we have been feeling for an as-yet unknown that we know.  Deeper down, we know what it is we are looking for.  We are being guided along.  Carefully, gently, certainly.  Powerfully.  Irretrievably. 

What has been a movement of women will be a movement of humans.  In an interesting twist, what women are asking for will deliver to men the very thing they will need as much as the women.  As women have asserted themselves in what may have felt like a more masculine character, so too will men begin, are beginning, to feel their more sensitive natures.  It is okay for women to be more balanced in themselves.  It is okay to carry masculine traits in helping them to manifest their greatest dreams.  And men, too, are now more free to discover parts of themselves that society seemed to suggest was not desirable.   The walls are beginning to soften.  And just now, as I look at the kids I see coming up in college, I see such a mix.  I see men who are not afraid to be gentle, soft, kind and nurturing.  Women are more assertive and they are not considered less womanly.  The men are as masculine as ever.  More balanced.  Less polarized. 

This new movement will continue as our society will continue to change and even build steam.  the result? I think some of it will be hard to predict completely, but its results will be our new experiment in becoming collectively. 

Awakening offers a unique perspective in all of this.  Loosened upon the world, our perceptions become more keen and go beyond mere appearances.  We can see people as they are in their soul-selves.  The soul self is beyond time while also dipping into it.  It is multidimensional.  It is more than just what we are here.  As a result, how we appear here is only one part of a larger story than what the awakened sense or perceive.  It is true that when we pass from this life into the next phase, we tend to appear to others as we were in the prime of our powers in this life.  We associate with the very best of what we were or are in this life.  And in the same way, the soul in this life can appear differently than just what we see on the surface physically.  Someone who is of advanced age may still feel quite young and thus, that will be how they appear to others across vast distances and without benefit of the physical senses.  Or they could appear older.  Or just completely different.  Maybe someone with light hair appears in their soul self as having dark hair.  Short people are tall.  Tall people might be short and stocky.  Dealing with this difference is part of the next step in our sensory experience. It is now a norm rather than an oddity to me since all people are to some extent like this.  We are more than we appear. 

You also will find that what you think you know about what you are is limited by what your own senses provide you and what your own patterning in this life has been.  The feminine is dealing with a kind of identity challenge.  With centuries of masculine dominance the identities of women have been effects by this tide.  However, there is a pure current of the feminine that can be tapped by all of us, and this comes to us from still larger sources. You need only tune it in. You do this by looking within.  This is where women can learn about their deeper feminine identities beyond the effects of the last hundred centuries.  Digging deep through the quantum field, you can discover this part of you.  This goes for men as well as women.  But for women, I think the effect will be particularly healing.  When you become aware of this part of you, you might discover a similar disparity as I described earlier with physical versus soul identity.  I have seen this over and over; what we are on the outside and what we take for IT is often different from what is buried still deeper.  With those with the eyes to see in total innocence and soulfulness, the deeper self can be known, felt, touched upon.  It is a curious thing that another person seeing who you are helps to stir the awareness in yourself.  What this represents is a return to a zero-point, a kind of seeming "pure" state, even though I hate that word because it can be misleading.  This pure state is just your soul.  And your soul is just what it is. And every soul is beautiful.  Sometimes it is different from what you might expect.  My own soul-self was so different in some ways that it was a real challenge to relate.  And yet, I saw aspects of Him in me all along.  He had been popping up throughout my life and other lives, too.  the ego-oriented self had its own say in what it thought he should be based on convention and comparisons and lack of courage. 

I think that's just it.  We have drifted from these soul selves due to a lack of courage.  We fear what others might say if we were just who we are deep down. Maybe we might go into art instead of accounting or law.  Law pays the bills, but leads to a miserable life for a person with such dreams as that.  yet, we tell ourselves, we have to make those compromises.  We make the compromises because we do not yet fully understand that we are actually in charge of what it is we are creating.  Perhaps this is why, over their 20 year writing career, that Jane Roberts and her Husband Robert Butts helped to bring forth the words of Seth which was Jane's channeled or trance self who said over and over "You create your own reality."  It was kind of the source of every book in one way or another.  Perhaps this is because we so needed to hear it over and over until it got locked into the mass self and we began to examine what the ramifications for this might be.  So as we begin to look at this, we might realize that if things are not going so well for us, we can change it by changing our beliefs and feelings about ourselves.  the change that this leads to in how we feel also leads to change to the very events that manifest in our lives.  What was once impossible is suddenly now possible.  As more and more practice this as a kind of magic that would have been persecuted as witch craft in the past hardly leads to a raised eyebrow.  This is a very good development.  When we can be brave to pursue our dreams, we have a better chance in this type of environment or world to see things actually manifest in ways that bring us fulfillment.  We no longer need to huddle in fear within the little cave of our hidden selves. 

So as I step out into what I am, I ask that you be inspired to do the same. I cannot say what it will be like for you or how it will manifest itself.  that, really, is up to you.  It is up to what you believe is possible.  You see, there is a genie inside of you.  And no longer do you need to use this genie to strike back at the injustices done to you. As long as you wield the sword, you will also tend to die by it as well.  But if you hold the sword as a beacon of truth, then the truth will be your guide.  It is, you see, just a slight turn away from how you have been feeling and responding to it.  When you change the rules of engagement, you will change your world.  And this is the message I am bearing to you as I do the very same.  Brave.  Not fearful.  Brave to just be YOU.  that will be enough for you and the rest of the world because who you are inside is needed.  Every woman upon the earth has something so remarkable within that it NEEDS to be brought forward.  Just bring it forward.  Let others gaze into you to tell you what they see.  Let yourself get to know Her.  The same goes for men.  For them, knowing the native current of their compliment will aid in all sorts of realizations.  It will also serve to anchor a reverence for the feminine in the world that may not have been touched in quite the same way before.  And I may not have to tell you that it is time.  It is a marvelously creative time at least potentially. 

And it is in action that all potential is realized.  It is up to you.  In your own way. 

The new Wayshower is the feminine.  She is telling us, informing us, opening us in ways we have not been opened before.  Collectively.  Individually. It is She which will make a big difference in our world.  This will help balance the world, individuals, and pehraps bring about a more sane approach and attitude in the heart of all humankind.  

Bows deep....

The Ocean Of Bliss

Just as there is a kind of ocean of sorrow, there is also an ocean of bliss.  I have come upon this place and it is described by many.  the experience of it is consistent from experiencer to experiencer.  It has a vastness to it, and endless quality and it rests in a state of neutral potentiality.  It is like a vast source that has feeling or presence as bliss but it does not contain the same sense of volition that you would normally associate with sentient life.  And yet it is life.  It is just a different form, a different level.  It is more like a higher order presence that certainly is made up from the collective bliss of all.  It is possible, although I cannot say with absolute certainty, that it might be  a field of energy that has always been and is not dependent on what we do even when it is connected to us in higher awareness.

The Hindus have described this as a sea of milk which Shiva froths into ghee, which is refined butter.  The imagery here is just that, a material way to relate what is not material.  We mustn’t take the imagery as strict since the energy itself is without normal physical form.  It is just a way to relate to it.  As such, the milk is connected to the imagery developed to describe the bliss of awakening.  If you read into this and tease out the details you will see that this sea of milk is in truth seminal fluid. Out of Shiva’s head you will notice that his hair swirls into a kind of funnel shape where a white discharge of liquid is always seen flowing.  This flow is shown to flow from him and into the mountains and out into the ocean. It is seen as the bliss which he bestows upon all life.  Shakti is often shown with her hands caressing this fluid in her hands as it flows out along its way to this ocean. This is at least a nod to how these two forces are related.

These are images and they tell the tale like poetry gives voice to the ineffable.  But these images were created, and since the culture from whence it came was paternalistic, the bliss is seen from the vantage point of men who had experienced this bliss themselves.  Certainly, for them, the bliss is very similar to orgasm except it is now loosened throughout their bodies so that the flow of this bliss moves up their whole being and out the top of their head.  Thus the seminal discharge from the top of his head.

I point this out because these higher order experiences can be described in your own way.  If you are a woman, how might you relate to this sea of bliss? What images might you prefer to connect to it?  For a male there is an awareness of opening a door, entering into a vessel of great possibility and fertile power.  This is related to our own sexual union and much of it is felt and seen in similar terms.  A man opens a woman, a woman engulfs the man.  they each draw and contribute in this singular act of creativity.  And yet each will feel and respond differently to the same thing, just along different energetic polarities.  One pulls in, the other plants or tills the soil. One sparks life, the other nurtures it.  These qualities are very different, yet beautifully cooperative. One cannot exist creatively without the other.  This is so in our physical world but also in our spiritual world, too.  As above, so below. 
It has been the journey of art to create new ways to see and relate to inner material and this journey has been about changing how we see and relate to all of this.  So you have this great power for shifting your perceptions.  Perhaps an old image is limiting what you are able to perceive.  It is your choice to develop your own ways, your own images, for relating to this vast realm of non-material reality.  This can give birth to new and vibrant forms, to new discourse, to new ways of relating.  Awareness of the divine feminine as an equal partner in spirituality is coming to the fore in a way that has not happened in a long time.  Old institutions are having to grapple with past efforts to repress feminine spiritual experience on its own terms and either stay current or risk becoming irrelevant.

The paradigm is changing, and slowly but surely the voice of the feminine is rising to a powerful chorus. More are speaking about her ways, her awareness, and as this happens both women AND men are learning to touch this awareness within themselves and it will help heal us individually an en masse.  Period.  So I encourage you to find out how you relate to the feminine in the spiritual and physical cosmos. Nature is littered with the keys to how this all works, all you need to do is observe.

As the feminine begins to express itself more and more in ALL of ourselves, it will help to balance the terms of engagement in the most wonderful of ways. The march of paternalism hasn’t worked as well as maybe we had thought it would,  but has brought us separation, division, and endless war.  We now need the feminine to step forward in each of us, even if its a small step, to soften the blows, to have the perspective to step back and see the forest and not just the tree, to see the long-term effects of our very manly actions.

The old way isn’t working and if we are to survive as a species, we need her breath filling every body on the planet.  She will help to bring a humanizing effect.  It is true that all renaissance periods have been marked by an ability to embrace both sides of human nature so these two elements can bring the best the two have to offer TOGETHER.  But we need more voices, more dreamers, more thinkers and artists and goddesses and priestesses to be brave enough to speak their voice, convey their vision, and help to inspire others along the path.  We do this through art, but we do it also in every creative effort which includes science and everything else that brings new ideas to the fore.  This means ALL of life.  You don’t have to be an artist to be creative  You merely have to be human. A dancer, a musician, a physicist, an auto mechanic, a farmer, lawyer, florist, accountant, or caregiver, nurse, doctor, or book keeper. The more balanced you are with these two aspects of the universe, the more sanity arises and the more creative things can get inside of you.  These two characters, presences, essences of our being are magic in what they do when brought together close.  Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, tantricaly, and in every other way we can dream or think of!

I encourage everyone to seek deeply your own inner essence and learn to relate to it on your own terms.  No one can tell you what you choose is not correct or worthy, for it is the most immediate thing that you have given birth to. Come up with new forms and ways to see things.  Who is to say they are right or wrong?  We are curious in our adherence to tradition.  We think that just because its been tried on by so many that it MUST be worthy.  And yet, look at our world!  Do you really think that tradition has served us that well?  I ask you, what do we need to heal and shift and toss out and adopt anew what is based on the ancient within us?  How do we express this very ancient essence that IS us?  We don’t need tradition, we need courage to dream up ways that match what we are NOW. Do you really feel like Eve got a bum wrap?  Well let’s rewrite the story!  Maybe it was Shiva who had to refine himself in order to be on par with Shakti, spending months and months alone refining himself in order to be worthy of her instead of the other way around.  Or, we simply create NEW stories and forget the old forms.  We can do this.  It is in you and my power to do so.  We need only to do so.  This is the power and gift of creativity.

It is like how paper money is made.  At some point it [money] does not exist and then someone comes along and PRINTS it.  Then we all agree that it is real.  Or some authority SAYS its real and everyone follows lock step and they lend their belief in these pieces of paper actually MEANING something.  It is the SAME thing.  It is an idea.  YOU are the voice.  YOU are the authority.  YOU are the captain of your soul and YOU are the divine sovereignty within.  No institution, church, club, monarchy, government, bureaucracy,  or worldly authority, has any say so over that unless you cede this power TO them.  Time to take it back.  Not in anger or retribution, but in the simple affirmation that we ARE THAT.  And let the past slip away as we face a new NOW and new tomorrow.  It is after all a creative act at its core.

We are printing our own spiritual currency. 

We actually can heal ourselves of past issues through this kind of work and it was Carl Jung who realized this early on.  Images so often tap the subconscious self and help to stir up old latent material.  New images and new ways of seeing help to lead to broader perception.  This is the march of evolution.

How we choose to describe it will also be a force for helping us to understand things in new ways.  Just as an image can liberate it can also limit, so how we fashion these makes a difference. Drawing our intuition and both left and right sided thinking will result in a more complete fusion of possibilities.  You are the crafter of reality!  Take hold of your power!

One flows into the other, and the other returns to the first a new energy.  This builds on itself as the masculine and feminine blend and merge in energetic union.  One is not above the other but both are equal partners. The seeming opposites of the universe merge and unite.  Unity, not fragmentation, is what we seek to become and be.  The left brain connects and cooperates with the right brain.  The masculine linear helps to give voice to the miraculous right brain, yet without the linearity, she would have a limited voice.  Without her, he would only be a pinpoint of linear awareness.  They need both within the body.  What is within you is within the universe.  It all fits together like this giant holographic puzzle that will become increasingly amazing, miraculous and fulfilling.  It is like watching some new creation unfold.  There is nothing else quite like it in anything I have experienced in this or any other life.  It has been my journey, and perhaps it is also yours.  We all yearn to know this, to feel this, to express and create and learn and work through what is ours to clear so we can see ever more clearly the marvel of creation shining within us and in all of life.

Out of my conception of this ocean as something new, I cast aside the milk for a moment and saw it less as an image as a force.  Masculine and feminine, were in truth existing like drops in an ocean completely merged.  This created the very explosion that gave birth to worlds.  Above the sea of milk is  the explosive reality of what these two universal forces do when merged in this way.  Pour the waters of yin into the waters of yang and there is this frothing that occurs, a moment of silence and stillness and in a hyperdimensional level, an explosion spreads out of unimaginable force.  Like a big bang.  Except this effect is not time based. Somehow, at every point in its unfolding, this explosion is taking place outside of time.  Every single nanosecond can be felt.  In duality, perhaps it is a star exploding or the universe exploding.  In other realms, it could be something similar yet different, but built upon the same explosive quality as seen in its primal state.  This primal state is reflected down through countless worlds, lives, experiences.  It is like an explosion frozen yet not frozen. Pure potential force which is itself not expressed in the terms we usually understand it here and yet, it feeds into our world its infinite potential.  It is an explosion that is not spending itself but constantly recreating itself.  In a sense, it is beyond any normal way to describe it or explain it except that it does manifest in myriad ways in our world and our own beings. When you feel it inside of you, it is like a gentle understated rippling of energy that fuels a constant flow of bliss that has limitless potential.  Just like the ocean.  Mix one with the other and it explodes into worlds of new possibilities that would surprise even the most adept creator.

This is how I have been relating to it, and while it may seem a bit abstract, the feeling is entirely present and powerful, vivid and real.  It just seems to have needed to go beyond mere seminal fluid to include a more balanced sense of energetic ( consciousness) engagement.

Even the sea of bliss is itself a kind of trap, though.  Becoming too enthralled in it has lead to being strung out.  It is not in our nature to just drink from its waters only, but for me at least, it always feels best when using its inspiring force to lead to new creations, new ideas, new things.  Some, having drunk from it, do not wish to leave, and so feel that to do anything WITH it beside abiding with it, is maya or illusion.  The thing, though, is that we ARE here to create our lives.  And when we leave this world, we will go on to create in other ways.  We will always be creating, expressing, and bringing new things forward.  This expresses the primal urge that the Prime Creator initiated in bringing all worlds into  being.  So yes, we will continue to have maya clinging to what we create, but so too will our creations refine as we refine.  As we do, what we create will mirror the changes within and what we create will be ever clearer and more potent because they will simply be less encumbered by the dross of what came before.  We will go from making objects to kill each other with to making objects to liberate the heart and mind in soulful healing and celebration.  At the foundation of all of this is choice.  And we each have it.

What shall you choose today?

Beyond The Sea of Sorrow

At a certain point in my awakening process I came upon what I called the sea of sorrow.  It felt at first like a bunch of unresolved issues that I needed to feel into and cry out.  So I did.  A tough and defensive get it done kind of guy was reduced to a blubbering mess.  A good mess, I thought.  Finally the walls are coming down.  I was having a struggle with the energetics of ego and how it was effecting me in a myriad of ways.  This new development seemed like a good change even if it was very very sad.

This went on for months.  I finally reconsidered that what I was experiencing wasn’t just my own past but something else.  It felt like I was seeking to drain an ocean one tear at a time.  This was looking impossible.  So I looked into it without my self-accepted bias that this was all mine.  For a time I figured if I had lived several hundred lifetimes or more there could be THAT much sadness locked up somewhere. But this.  This was a horse of a different color.

I have explained how, in other posts, that the force of kundalini stirs and clears you.  In doing this, the material that you have been dealing from lifetime to lifetime that has remained persistent and repetitive, is seen for what it is in a new context. This might mean you have memories from past lives, but not necessarily.  What seems most central is to simply deal with this material, no matter how it is done. If a memory helps to trigger a release, then it comes into your awareness.  I had had numerous incidents with guides and beings who would awaken me from a dead sleep at four in the morning and bid me to go out into the freezing night to observe something, to show me that moment when my life and the life of the cosmos, which are linked, slipped into an unfathomable synchrony as I watched the stars turn in the predawn sky click into some position with the earth and as my past came alive and like a sack, had its contents emptied like so much chaff.  Like leaves blown in an autumn wind, this had become my life.  I was familiar with this, knew it was the substance of my experience at least for the time being.  I had assumed that the great sorrow that I felt was part of this.  A catharsis.  For a time, it helped to open me up like a sardine can, but after a while I found myself in the same place over and over with an endless sense of volume to this great ocean.  I could feel it, sense it, see it.  I was in this place without the same old limits to perception.  I had the universe as an extension to my sensing.  It felt into me and I felt into it.  Assuming the old ways will work can tangle you up. This is where some discernment is needed. So in asking the question, I sought of it an answer.

So I asked what this was.  What was returned to me was the image of a boat on the ocean.  It was an ocean of sorrow.  I asked if it was mine.  No answer.  But I need to know whose this is.  It returned to me “It does not matter whose it is or its origin. Focusing on that only keeps you soaked in it.  What matters is that you get through it!”

In time I realized that this was the Collective sorrow of the race which existed straddling time.  It was nonlinear and borrowed not just from the past but the future also.  It was not time based.  This made it larger than most things in our 3-D experience, which often has a sense of limit or linearity.  Not this.  I also understood that the lack of answer was that an answer would not have served me and would only have led to questions which would have kept me in “it” instead of learning to move on.  Yes, it was mine.  As each tear drop dissolved into that great ocean, all of it was mine, some of it was mine, none of it was mine. It is ours.  But we also choose to stay i sorrow in our day to day lives or we choose to get up and move on.  I was still early in my awakening, and so much was falling away that I was tempted to focus on the sense of loss.  This was itself an illusory form of loss because all that kundalini was stripping from me was nonessential.  With ego still in play, all I could do was to focus on appearances even if I was being gifted with this sensing in the quantum world. I was in a sense like the caterpillar with one foot in one world and one foot in another.  This is certainly how it all happens as I grow out of the old and into the old/ancient/forever newness of our soul self.

I realized that what I had been doing was trying to get into this ocean and somehow working through it.  Doing this began to look ridiculous, like someone taking a shovel to Everest and expecting to move it by next month. So what was the answer?  If it was an ocean, I needed to navigate through it, over it, and out of it. So I did.  My visualizations of a boat and an oar provided the catalyst for no longer focusing on being IN the water and instead I settled on myself moving across its waters.  Within a matter of a month or two, I was no encountering this sadness.  I spoke to someone who had awakened about this and asked if she knew anything about this or not.  She offered some suggestions, which was that it was her own sadness.  the scale of it just seemed beyond any one person even in their lifetimes here.  This had to be the collective ocean of sorrows.

I thought about this and wondered if anyone else had any experience with it.  In perfect form, I stumbled across a book that described an ocean of sorrow in the Hindu tradition. Okay, I got it. Others wrote or spoke of this place.

The more my mind settled on it, the more was offered up.  Awakening is all about alignment to energy.  No one is telling you which way to go, and you are exiting out of your old way of life.  I realized that for me, this was one area of the journey that was about vibrating at a different frequency.  Yes I felt bliss, but there were periods of trouble.  I was not there yet.  More material from the etheric sheaths were falling away very fast at this stage, and I realized that this was part of it.
Some part of me was magnetized to this sadness.  The crying had helped, but it had gotten out of hand.  I thought somehow like I was supposed to purge it all until it became clear that this was just too much.  I could see it in my third eye. It was vast.  I had to navigate out of it as soon as possible.  Just go.  No considering what this was, no solutions sought to fix it. Just go.  I’d be wrapped in knots if I stayed.

Day by day I anchored this in my awareness and performed visualizations where I would get out of the water and rest atop it in this boat which I had been using in my work to learn surrender. I had to surrender my attachment to this sadness and dip my oar in and move forward.

This part of the journey took a lot out of me. It aged me.  Up until that time my system had been energized and aging effects had been slowed and healing had increased.  It was time to move on.  And I did. The less I looked back, the more I moved forward, the better my progress.  It was after this that ego collapsed and my life was reordered and the old life was shed like the skin on a snake.  My temple was torn down and the rubble was used to rebuild a new one in its place using a new paradigm.  I began building a new life and getting used to what the new one offered.  Bit by bit, I emerged out of those doldrums.

My advice to you is to certainly allow yourself to feel.  Don’t be afraid of tears or any excess for a time.  Afterall, we have lived excessively in the wrong direction for so long that the scales may swing some before balance is gained.  But know when to say enough is enough and move on.  You can.  You are not a prisoner to the fores of awakening but a conscious participant.  Let its force guide you but also know when to use your own will as well.  Don’t tarry in the sea of sorrows.  Its just not worth it and nothing is gained by it.  The route to healing and change seems to lie along a different path.

Bows deep….

Dealing With Blocks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Part 2


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ornaments, Parker Stafford

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

Nautilus bowl detail, Parker Stafford

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

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

Nested Yin Form, Parker Stafford

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

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

20 Seconds

Manifesto

Live with passion and without regret.  There is nothing worse than a life lived weighed down with regret.  It causes you to look back incessantly and keeps you from the warm embrace of the present, which is your power.

Do not fear power or abundance, but embrace it, child-like with the desire to always seek the highest.  We are all here learning how to manifest and manipulate energy which happens to come in yriad forms including power and abundance. Only then will you channel the power of the true divine within for the good of all.  Everything in life is a transferal of energy and this includes money.  it can bless you or curse you.  How you go about it determines which it becomes. 

You are not powerless.  Inside of you rests all the resources you could ever need to heal your most troubled parts, but it is also up to you to allow yourself to dare to be bold enough to consider ti is there and be on the lookout for it.  There is a genie in you, but you may have bought into the idea that you are limited.  You aren't. You are one petal on a much larger flower and by going beyond your own sense of self, you can merge with your larger self for great fulfillment, self knowing, and wonder.  True power does not need to prove anything.  It is easy and content in what it is and does not seek or need approval from anyone; it is its own reward.

You are worthy of love. But you will only be worthy of love in the world when you feel that you are worthy.  If you have a past littered with lack of acceptance or awareness about how incredibly great you are, do not take it seriously; it is only because you yourself have had some difficulty in seeing it yourself.  It is true that you ARE love incarnate.  The atoms and the life force and all of what you are are supported by a force that is itself a distilled form of love so powerful it will simply make you turn red-faced as you excuse yourself because the force of the realization is just so strong that you can't stand to be feeling so incredibly intimate and powerful in such a public place.  Until we ARE what we seek, what we seek will not mirror what we hope the most for. 

Your karma will make you do what you do not want to do and keep you from doing what you want to do.  This is an excellent opportunity to begin dissolving karma.  The path to this is forgiveness.  Not of those who have wronged you, but for what you yourself, in your genie-like way have attracted into your life.  For as hard as this may be to do, it is the only authentic means to sloughing off the negative karmas that have haunted you for so long.  Doing so is the greatest of freedoms.  It returns you to yourself.  Forgiveness is not a word you use but an essence within you that is felt to your very core  To heal a negative karma, you must be able to feel so deeply, completely, that the weed of karma is loosened by its roots, not merely trimmed.  How someone behaves is their karma.  How you respond is yours. 

There is nothing that you do not already know that isn't hidden within you waiting to be discovered.  Whatever path you take to find it, the clue that you are on it is that you do not buy into anything but compare one idea with what lies within you.  Buddha cautioned never to buy into any idea until you have examined it fully.  Even if what you accept into your being winds up being somehow distorted or off the mark, you had to go through the process of realizing it before the lesson could be learned.  You are unique in this way and trusting yourself is the best way to go forward.  Second guessing makes the path hard. 

You are immortal. You will live many times and your awareness is scattered throughout time. Only in this one life do you seem bounded.  Being aware of just how unbound you are in a larger context can give you the courage to live life without fear or regret.  Live it like its the only life you wil have, for in a way, it is THE life you are leading now  When you are ready, you will begin to know what else has happened beyond your current physical awareness. 

Ram Dass said "Be Here Now" just as did Buddha and others.  This is important. Be present.  Be mindful.  Only in the present can you tap the power of the universe.  Once you know how this is achieved, you can begin to heal the past as well as the future simply by going there in meditation or in dream.  These excursions can have very real effects on you in your present.  You may not believe that the future has not yet happened, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it is indeed happening and is more like a bend in the river you have not yet gotten to yet.  The power of awakening is itself a highly refined form of your own consciousness looping back to you from a "future" self, and it is this effort that you may be experiencing now that will enrich that future self immeasurably.  It is not cheating, it is how things can work for you when you learn how.  As you do this healing, things tend to grow exponentially.  This has an effect on all life on the planet and all consciousness. Healing the past time lines and future ones can be important work for how it has the power to change you and the planet.  Stop each day just to feel your energy.  Energy goes where attention goes.

Do not limit yourself in what you think you are capable of or what the universe is capable of. What you think and feel is what you become.  When you wish for something, wish big. Better; ask the universe to exceed your expectations. Events will have a way of surprising you in the best of ways. 

Examine your beliefs and your feelings. They are both tied to one another and feeling is the language of the universe.  If you wish for something that you do not believe you are worthy of, it is likely it wont manifest.  You have to feel it clearly and with belief.  Be careful of the deities that you choose; you will reinforce one another.

Don't shrink back from life just because you fear what other will think; come out boldly and with courage; it will inspire others to follow their own most desired star.  If there is something you have been putting off doing, do it today.  You will be surprised how it changes your outlook and the content of your life for the time being.  You never know what act will snap the twig that opens the universe to you, or some still larger awareness that now can come flooding in.

The Oracle of Delphi commanded "Man know thyself!" It explained that in this way we also know the gods and goddesses because they reside in our higher natures. 

Don't take life too seriously; it is just a ride that will be over all too soon.  Try to enjoy it for all it's worth!

What We Create

I was talking to one of my children today about an incident that involved someone putting a rather negative spin on events that could have been seen or reacted to in a completely different way.  It was an excellent opportunity to illustrate how it is that we create our lives and our world by what and how we feel and how we choose (yes choose) to see it.  It led to a rather nifty saying that is, I suppose, a derivation on other older sayings....

"You can either make the best of what you have or the worst of what you've got."

I think that sums it up, don't you?  Interestingly I had come across a zen saying that is essentially very similar that states that when we lay aside all of our opinions about the things we see in life, we are left with what is and can then see that event or thing without the blinders or biases that we think are real when in truth they are not. Even then, with all that veneer or gloss stripped away, what we see is even more miraculous a thing because it is still so incredibly amazing. 

How we choose to feel governs how we see and react to the events going on all around us. Be happy that you are here experiencing this life. No one is perfect, and yet, we are all doing the best that we can with all the blinders we happen to have.  When ready, we can let all of that stuff slip away when our souls are ready and hungry for what lies beneath.

Live life to its fullest, and I shall talk to you soon....

Destined

Destiny is created
breath by breath.

It is not made of stone
but fire
water
wind
and sky.

What was so permanent and certain
yesterday
is given a whole new meaning in the now
of time.

An infinity of timelines
and possibilities
surround you
in each waking and sleeping moment
as the maker and the made
swing gently one around the other
in a mystery greater than we could believe
but which we percieve
moment by moment
as it all unfolds,
gathered and garnered
pushed and molded
by intent
wish
dream.

The only destiny
is the one you create
and re-create. 
No fatalists need rest
within these arms
or seek comfort
in some time-worn
idea
that we are all all born for something greater
even though we are.  

Speaking To The Flow

What is this that is happening?
Unbounded, beyond word
why seek to contain it
by limiting it.
Just set it free
let it be
what it can be
and it just might show you
that very thing
taking your hand
as the wind lifts you
beyond your old conceptions
old skins
drop away
as everything you thought
was perfect for the time
but now you are growing
going beyond
the cavalry left far behind
flowers and stars
nothing but light
and the power to become
your friend.

Shattered windows
lost lives
and revolutionary thoughts
beckon
what was lost is now found
what made you poor is now making you rich
again
I say
why limit it
by seeking to define it.

By the fire
at night
fireflies but a memory
by a babbling brook
or a thousand possible places where we sat
and dreamed
we each look one into the other
and nothing could come between
this something more
that has the power to always open us
as life ends and begins
and new conceptions are born
and die
a million times
as turning we laugh
and smile
all of this just keeps going on and on....

Reaching Out From The Inside

We have been convinced that what exists through our physical senses is all that there is and to not trust our feelings because they are the result of some chemical soup that evolved out of some odd propensity for matter to chance upon making life. This is the body of the world, and without its soul, it is a corpse.  Just as we look out onto the world of appearances, the body of the world, we can reach into ourselves and feel the soul of the world.  It is there in just the same way that the body is, except instead of sensing is or apprehending it in the way we do with the body of the world, we do so through our inner senses.

It is so valuable a thing to trust your feelings, to trust how you feel and to trust the part of you where the universe will come streaming into you in a whole new way. Certainly there are some hard feelings, some crinkled edges, and some skeletons rattling around in the midst of who you are, but those things are dwarfed by the remarkable world that seems to wake up within you, that comes streaming into your awareness once you realize you can feel not just the body of the world, but its soul, too. It is here that you do just what Peter Gabriel wrote about in his song In Your Eyes when he says "I reach out from the inside."  He is certainly a modern Gnostic in his own right.

It is here within you, in your ability to feel that you will tap the soul of the world.  This is the collective consciousness of the race, but it is also all of nature, all of what we know and do not yet know that is part of the body of the All.  When you realize that this portal exists in you, the world will live in you in a new way.  When I say that, realize that you already feel it, you just haven't sensed it in its most obvious of ways so that it grabs your attention as being something more than just your own feelings.  Once you experience this, you will be on a road toward trusting what you feel and it will naturally have a way of guiding you forward.  This is why all awakened teachers most often explain that what you seek is not outside of you, but is within.  All of it.  Awakening will bring this as the two currents held at arms length for so long are finally brought into union and what some call kundalini activates within your awareness.  The two loose ends of the universe have now been connected and a current begins to flow within you that leads you to feel the shimmering presence, the very essence of All That Is alive, awake and aware in this very moment.  This will be a blooming within you as something inside of you gives way like hardened soil softened by the rain of your intention, your ardent question "Is this all there is?"  And the landslide inside of you can begin at anytime that you are ready to lessen the divisions within you that have kept this awareness at bay. 

Trust your feelings even if they give you trouble or seem to betray you.  This wont happen forever, these betrayals.  They are a temporary condition, and soon enough the land will slide away as the soft soil of your soul unfolds.  It is like you are a book with pages that themselves have pages.  Your mind unfolds like this book as a seemingly hidden character or quality of yourself and the universe appears seemingly for the first time in a great moment of terrible revelation.  The terrible part will simply be there as the scum rests on the surface of a pond, but which will very soon be churned and refined as the waters of your being grow crystal clear and resolves brilliant.  The garden hose carries some dirt within and you must allow the energy to flow.  The universe has a way of clearing you out so the water of its soul can run bright and clear.  In just this way, you will learn to trust your feelings because they are the entryway to the infinite.