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Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Working Through The Centers

acupuncture-chart


Imagine that overlaid on your body is an extremely fine webwork of energy lines, fine as spiders thread which create a vast jungle of pathways that align to organs and centers in your body that are physical that these lines help to feed the necessary nutrient of life force or prana to. You can't see or touch these lines, but you can feel them.  In fact, there are people, like myself, who can see the energy radiating off of them which can tell you all about where that person is physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  It sounds a little wild to some people, but really, its only because you have never heard of it or experienced it directly for yourself.  But when you do, it is a game changer.  But you don't have to see this energy in order to work with it.  There is a lot that you can do with it that is healthy and beneficial.  
 
These lines that make up the energy body begin so small that they are difficult to see.  They go down in scale to subatomic since the energy force literally does feed right into and out of the subatomic.  Its a very very detailed system for carrying energy.  Most systems for understanding this only show the seven chakras that go up the core of the body.  In the same way that your vascular system goes from extremely small structures that feed into organs and cells, they get bigger and bigger like the branches of a tree.  Finally they go up a central main trunk, which is where the most obvious centers of vortex energy reside.  We call these "chakras" which mean "wheel" or "disc" in the Sanskrit.
You don't need to know anything about esoteric traditions to know and understand what a chakra is or what your energy is.  I can tell you that by becoming sensitive to energy fields that are in others around you and by feeling your own energy, you can learn right away FROM the energy itself to know how it behaves and how incredibly complex but beautiful it is. By learning directly with the energy, you can allow your own natural intuitiveness to bloom.  Most people feel they have to learn this from another person, but I say that you literally have the capacity within you to decode the information for yourself because it is what you are.  But absent that, a few very basic guidelines about how to reach a place where the energy of the infinite can move through you with calm and peace.

Blocks As Solid (Ideas and Emotions)
 
We like to think of energy as something that is not solid, but I want to propose to you that at the level of energy itself, the energy body has amazing structure and a kind of "solidity" to it that makes the lines that run through it that the Chinese have charted as "meridians" as incredibly consistent from one person to the next.  Far from being just a current or amorphous flow of energy, the energy that makes up our consciousness is amazingly structured.  It is out of this "solidity" that energetic objects can get stuck in the system that is our light body.  In the same way that food can get stuck in your throat, energy can be stuck, sometimes for years, lifetimes even, in your energy body.  The result of removing the block is that perception and awareness changes and the person feels much more peaceful and happy. 

But we are a cluster of thousands of these blocks.  These blocks are always emotions that were not fully felt in one way or another. Do you fear your rage? Do you find yourself putting it away or stuffing it down?  That breakup with your boyfriend or girlfriend where you pulled yourself together and stopped crying because you were afraid you were going to just fall apart? Its possible that you were stuffing something down. Or how about that moment when you feared something that you did not understand...a feeling that just hung there like dirty laundry on the clothesline?  Afraid, we leave it alone.....and we shove it down.  By not fully processing any form of emotion, we literally create a kind of bottled knot of whatever that emotion is that gets stored in the energy body.  

The Body Thinks
 
There is a lot of evidence that I am finding that shows HOW the energy body and the physical body work together to either store or to release these blocks.  It has to do with the nervous system, the brain, as well as the current of prana and how it is polarized in the life force field itself. 
The light body is made up of two fields of energy that are joined and that replenish each other. They aren't really even "two" but two ends of a spectrum of energy that represents a kind of cosmic totality that makes it possible for you to then connect into the totality that exists beyond you.  This is the way this energy works, and is why you can feel the rush of the universe move through you in moments of nondual awareness (or as a continual awareness depending on the extent of your experience).  Two-in-one (energies) who then birth a transcendent third energy.  You see? All of this activity is felt as taking place not in the head but all through the body.  
 
What I am getting at is that there is already evidence to support that the body "thinks" and stores memory.  Now this stands in direct opposition to what we all have been taught, but what we have learned about our capacity to store memory is simply lacking.  Consider that the tissues in your body contain neurons, enough neurons in your gut for the brain of the average cat.  THAT is a lot of processing power.  What do you think our gut is doing with all of that?  What does your gut tell you? :-) So you see, the body has this capacity for dealing with memory, yes, and there is also a way to use somatics (body knowledge) to aid in releasing these memories.  Unlike the brain, the body seems to be more selective in the memories it stores.  It seems at this point in time, to be storing memories that it has had trouble with.  These can now be released once the individual is ready to release them.  And doing so is a saving grace because whatever the short coming was, or the fault or hurt or fear or rage, it all evaporates after releasing these blocks. 
 
In the work I was doing with my friend Alison who is herself awakened and a gifted intuitive, we found that even matter itself has a propensity to hold blocked energy.  I one experience that unfolded that I write about in my book, I describe how we unlocked an energy that had been blocked at a physical site that involved the murder of a man who had been drowned in a lake.  At the time, we did not know that a body had been found in the lake that we saw in our inner vision, but it had been discovered as the waters receded in what was then a dry lake bed (and his body was discovered along with some of his belongings enough to identify him).  We were able to describe a scenario that had a group of friends going out on the lake in the middle of the night with one of their friends not returning.  By simply recognizing the truth of this event, we were able to release it.  Six months after our encounter our local newspaper printed a story about the man who had died in the lake!  It was pretty amazing that events in the physical world would be so closely tied to our own encounter.  The newspaper story told the story of the four friends who took this man out onto the lake.  What we saw was that he was murdered for an elicit love affair with the wife or girlfriend of his friend. It was perhaps the reason why the blocked energy could be released....because someone was able to see what really happened on that night.  No one else would have been able to really see the events as they took place.  While we had testimony from his friends as part of the historical record, it is interesting how no one seemed to even entertain the idea of foul play at all.  Basically, it came down to four people all saying that their friend drowned. As long as everyone sticks to their story, then no one is the wiser.  
 
And of course, this lead the skeptical to suggest that I saw something that was not there, or that I was making it up or seeing a real event bu interpreting it to fit my own life where I felt as though I had been drowned. And I will concede that this is certainly a real possibility.  What suggests to me that we were seeing real events was because both Alison and I were picking up on all the same information, information that was in line with the story when it came out in the newspapers.
And this is where the second lesson in doing this kind of work comes in.  When we went up to this lake, we were simply going to see the sun setting.  But what unfolded was an event not unlike one that had taken place in my own life. There was something eerily similar to what had happened to me and to our friend who drowned in the lake.  While my life was not taken from me, my experience in my marriage was that I was being held underwater to be drowned before my own children.  It was itself a really painful experience that happened to me, something that people in the psychiatric community call 'Parental Alienation Syndrome."  One parent tries to destroy the other parent in the eyes of the children.  When it happens to you, it feels like the life is being sucked out of your body.  it feels like you are drowning.  It was appropriate that I would pick up on this eerie energy that was skulking about in those hills.  It was scary at first....sinister....but as we worked through the memory, I found that I was touching on a whole host of feelings that were in me as well.  By working with one block we were able to clear the other block. 
 
But what took place in the wake of this experience is also very telling.  In the same way that clearing a block in your body leads to a world of new possibilities, the area where this drowning took place also underwent a lot of changes in the years following our event.  Renovations were called for in the main buildings, a new arts initiative was called for with new people with progressive ideas coming onto the scene.  It was as though a new window opened for the people who lived and worked around this location.  To date, a slew of new initiatives have been undertaken on the part of the owners of the property where this lake is.  Its interesting to see how a location can be stuck for years only to see how it becomes unstuck, with a flow of new people, new ideas, and new possibilities entering the scene.  The same happens to you when you release these blocks, too!
 
Complimentary Blocks And The Law Of Attraction
 
Until a block is cleared, the block can be the basis of an attraction by others who are either similarly blocked or complimentary blocked.  What this means is that you either have someone who has had the same KIND of experience or someone who compliments the experience as in the case of someone who has a fear of being pushed, say, and you attract a person who seems to like to push you a lot!  THAT would be an example of a complimentary attraction.  A positive complimentary attraction would be somethign similar but in the positive, not negative.  In either case, however, the two people feel the similarities even if they are opposites, and these dynamics open up the flow of energy within us. They fill a role be it positive or negative.  These aspects of the other person can lay dormant for decades before expressing themselves, or they can be playing in the background all the time.  However, when you release this material, you release any possibility for this same kind of blocked material to ever be of any consequence to you in the future.  it is gone like a poof of smoke.  And this is why this kind of work is so important and life changing; you can change your whole life based on one big critical pivotal move in clearing your blocks in your body.  The result is that you NEVER feel energized by behaviors that would have effected you before.  It's as though your mind has been completely rewired when it comes to whatever hot button issue this block represented to you in the past.  There is a lot to suggest that this event does literally have the power to rewire the brain in seconds flat!  How's that for a speedy transformation?
 
It really is that fast and that easy.  When you have enough of these you realize that you can actually become a free person in ways you have never experienced before.

Ways Of Clearing Blocks
 
The best way to work through blocks is to pay attention to the ones that come up the most for you.  This is one most obvious way.  But these blocks may also be the hardest to clear away.  I am of the observed opinion that clearing smaller blocks is the way to go since it can loosen up material surrounding one block only to result in a kind of energetic avalanche with other blocks going at about the same time. 

You can identify blocks in your body by simply observing when you feel a sense of resistance or even pain in your body when you move a certain way.  Your energy body changes frequency from one end of the field to the other.  As a result, different emotions are stored at different places along this "column" in the body.  This is why some issues are stored in the root chakra than in the crown. The root chakra deals with nurture, abundance, and safety of self, for example.  When you feel a sense of resistance or even pain from tightness in a given area, you can gain a good bit of understanding about the block in general by thinking about where that block is located.  If its between two chakras, then it will contain aspects of BOTH chakras in some way.  
 
If you can identify the spot where the hurt or twinge keeps happening, you can point it out to a therapists who can work on that spot for you.  The types of therapists who can do this work will be people who do both energy work and body manipulations such as deep tissue massageAcupressure, acupuncture, reiki, and deep tissue are all methods that can help.  In pranayama yoga there is a lot of attention given to moving certain parts of the body, something called "locks" that help to move blocked material.  All of these involve vigorous movement of the part of the body where the chakra is located and, presumably, the blocked material.  Even placing your attention on the spot and holding it there through the day is one way that you can help loosen up a block in your body.  If it gets enough aware energy, it can trigger the release of the block sometimes. 
 
Chakra Clearing VS. Meridian Clearing
 
This is especially true for the chakras.  When a block is in a meridian line and not in a chakra, it seems to be harder to release it unless you are using acupressure or reiki, systems that actively move energy through the meridians of the energy body.  The chakras, conversely,  have a churning effect on blocks so that if you can use the chakras in meditation to swirl and move around a block, this can be very helpful because unlike clearig one small block in a meridian, a whole cluster of blocks can often be released all at once when its associated to chakra movement.  This is achieved by simply visualizing it and allowing the chakras to open fully and begin their movements, which often feel like you are moving or floating or even flying sometimes.  By placing your intent to clear the blocked material in a given chakra, the energy can begin to melt away the block.  
 
Clearing along a meridian line is more exact and may only clear one block.  It can also lead to other blocks letting go, though, and these blocks can be worked through by acupuncture, acupressure, and deep tissue most often.  The larger blocks can be "swirled" away through vigorous chakra movement and can sweep away lots of blocks at once, leaving a person feeling as though they are a changed person.  Many people who have these types of clearings describe feeling as though their body was being purged by a wave or by a force that sent a whole series of bubbles or shots of energy up along their spine and out their body.  Fundamental to all of this work is intent (willingness) and willingness to surrender at a deep level even into the body.  By reaching this deep state of vulnerability, you will also be reaching a deep state of awareness somatically about your body and your own body of feeling, too. Trust me, when the moment comes, it will be like suddenly seeing things in a very different way, the way perhaps that things really are instead of the way you have chosen to see them through the colorings of the particular block that you have.  Be ready to see things in a very different way, or to feel them very differently.  And remember; this is nothing at all to do with reason.  This is NOT about working through your emotional backlog rationally.  To try to do so is a trap.  Yes, reason can keep you OUT of the thick hot stew of your feelings and can help you to calmly identify what needs to be released.  However, you need to actually jump in the water with no fear or resistance to what you will find since this is a necessary state of mind and heart that you will need in order to clear the block. If you turn away, you are effectively saying to your body that its okay to keep the block in place.  
 
Some blocks go quickly.  Some take months, even years to dissolve.  A good rule of thumb is that if you have a strong investment in a given block, the harder it will be to rid yourself of it.  The more ego focuses on it, the harder it will be for the block to simply dissolve.

Part of prana is the energy body that expresses itself as a vortex, a kind of doughnut-shaped field of energy that is common to most anything that has an electromagnetic field around it.  It is this field that carries your consciousness and also the energy that feeds into your cells. When the energy is blocked, illness and neurosis can result. Life force is literally being squeezed out of you when it should be more abundant. 

When you remove these blocks you can realize stronger energy, a more peaceful state of mind and greater bliss that is not at the whim of whatever blocks are turning in you at the time. 
Until you are able to release a block, the block itself will be energized by prana in your body and it will remain active.  It can cause any number of problems, all of which will revolve around some kind of meme that is less than who you really are as a divine creature in earthly robes.  These blocks can cause no end of trouble for you.  There is little else work that is as important as this is. 
There are numerous ways to clear away blocks in the body.  One method is through energy work like White Crane Chi Gung.  This method of blending movement with energy work will aid in the removal of blocks throughout the body.  In order for it to work, it requires patience and persistence.  By working at it for weeks and months at a time, you can begin to see results.  Deep tissue massage by a practitioner who knows or understands about blocks is helpful.  Also, body movement is key.  The very act of shaking or massaging or moving the part of the body that is blocked can aid in removing material from it.  
 
Until you have cleared one chakra region, you will be dealing with what blocks remain in that region.  You will likely find that less obvious blocks come to the fore in your awareness now after having one bigger more obvious block removed.  Your attention can become much more highly tuned in this way to detect blocks in your system.  As this happens, you can also become much more sensitive to the presence in blocks in yourself and others if you are interested in learning a healing art.  I have dug so deep into myself that I have had some practitioners unable to detect the blocks.  One actually scolded me, saying I should not try to CREATE problems when there were were not problems there.  This practitioner was not able to pick up on this material, and I went on to have a number of clearings surrounding this region, so yes, there was more there, but not all of us will be as good about picking up on it.  While I have done the bulk of the clearing on my own, I have used a variety of methods to assist in clearing my system, and these have all worked well for me when they came along in my awakening journey (almost as if they were perfectly suited for the blocks kundalini was churning away on at the time!).  In many ways, I have been very gifted to have found a certain modality at a given time, as though the timing was perfect.  I was talking with my latest therapist about doing more work in the Fall recently as she expressed some surprise with the level of release I was experiencing with her work. I had to explain that while my being able to release blocks was different from her experience, it wasn't from my experience.  For many people, it seems they get a deep tissue massage and maybe loosen up some material a bit.  For me, I am headed into the final stage of releasing material, a process that has taken years of steady daily attention and work, and I am having flashes of past lives, of deeply held traumas from my ancient past. It seems the deeper I go into it, the harder it is, the deeper the shadows. New things come up, things that had not come up before.  Because I am dealing with the root chakra last, I am encountering a landscape inwardly that shows me all of the feelings that have arisen in me ever since I was a baby.  These are very old things, lifetimes in the making, and yet even so, I am here to deal them a kind of wonderful kind of death, which is in truth a redemption.  I let them free, no longer prisoner.  As this happens, I find that I experience emotions that I have long since pent up.  It isn't easy!  I am afraid I will offend someone, that I will get caught in the vortex of its energy while I am actively trying to clear it out!  But regardless, I go forward.  I go forward relatively alone because I would not want my anger and rage which was so-long suppressed in the root to be bubbling up with people near me.  How would I respond?  What would I say? In moments like these I feel like someone with terrets syndrome, afraid of walking into public places and calling the nice old lady at the counter something I shouldn't.

I know.  I hear that voice in my head, too.  "Oh really, fellah? You mean you might call an innocent old lady who did no harm to you an ugly old hag or a bitch or something?  Is that what you are saying?  Doesn't sound very spiritual to me, fellah....not very spiritual at all!"  This is of course where I give the voice in my head the virtual finger and turn back to what I am focused on.  You see, all of this is spiritual.  The sooner we get that, the better.  Some people will point out that calling someone names is not really spiritual, and I will say you missed the point.  This isn't about pretending to be something we aren't.  But the path to becoming what we know we can be is one that is involved in removing the error (shadow) that gets in the way of that perfection.  So its all about being real.  Its like being the Velveteen Rabbit. 

So don't be afraid of the shadow, I say.  That you get down into such shadows is cause for celebration.  Who on the planet has managed to get this deeply into themselves....to overcome the world?  That is pretty special and pretty damned spiritual.  :-)

This is why clearing blocks is so important; it is all about overcoming the world.  Would you like to see with new eyes?  With clear bodies, we can build a clear world.  And that is why I am writing to you today.  Pass it along!
~P.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Kundalini and Flu-Like Symptoms

I have been away for a bit and have not had time to work much up on the topic of awakening, so my apologies.  I had a wonderful trip to the West coast to celebrate my 50'th year here, and it was a marvelous gift from a wonderful friend who is one of a kind.  I like to travel because I have found that the very location, the particular flow of energy from the earth itself can trigger a different turn of mind or some new realization.  It is true that the electromagnetic field that protects us from plasma from the sun has a different feel or flavor that really has little to do with the surface appearance of the location. Its just....different.  And out there on the Island of San Catalina, it was an energy I was so ready to feel into.  So what a wonderful gift, right?

I have noticed that there are a lot of search inquiries on my blog about flu symptoms connected to kundalini.  I don't look at my stats enough, apparently, because this is a topic that I may have touched on from time to time, but never directly. So given the interest, I am going to hopefully give you some insight into these symptoms that might make the going a little easier.

As many of you know, I feel that we have everything we need inside of us to discern the manner of our condition and how to heal ourselves. This is especially true in the midst of awakening.  Even so, the sheer volume of symptoms and the fast-paced change can be a lot to take in and try to make sense of! 


The Reaction To Solar Energy

The Hindus describe the qualities of energy (prana)  in our bodies as solar and lunar.  It isn't that your energy is tied to these solar and lunar qualities, but rather it seeks to describe the character of the energy.  It is no different from the Chinese yin and yang. Simply, we have and are aware we have two complimentary energies that we often ascribe a character like male and female, hot and cold, solar and lunar, etc. Sometimes different qualities of energy are needed to help dissolve the blocked material that awakening brings.  A very male-leaning energy (yang) might need the compliment of the cooler feminine to help move it along (yin).  Solar energy most often can cause stomach upset.   The answer is to find ways to unblock and let ourselves FLOW in a more balanced way.

Solar energy, or yang, can be very healing.  It can be the "fire" that burns away blocks.  But because of the nature of this energy (which is not always experienced as heat, but this is how many traditions describe it), you can also experience varying degrees of over-stimulation from it.  Good, yes, but if you have too much of it, it can lead to discomfort.  For what it is worth, in my own experience, I experienced a lot of yang energy in my body that helped to move a lot of blocks very quickly.  I also suspect that it also led to my body protecting itself by producing extra fluid to insulate it from the energy that was so strong. What this means is that the body creates mucus, and mucus can lead to feeling of nausea.  It is kind of a double-edges sword.  Hair of the dog: you sometimes need that strong energy to clear you out, but it can also make you feel....bad.  The light at the end of the tunnel is that as the body is cleared of stored emotional material called "blocks" or "knots," you experience a much calmer and peaceful state with the energy. This has been my experience, and I have noted that others who I know have expressed similar observations. But this is all intuitive.  What do other sources have to say about this?

To illustrate to you how you can know intuitively what kind of energy you need to help bring a fix of healing, I just typed in the paragraph above my feeling that yang energy was tied to the stomach/colon, and is responsible for problems we see there.  But the truth is, I had no outside source telling me this.  I just wrote it and then figured I could find out if this was right.....and if I was wrong, I would correct it.  Want to know what I found?  Look here to read this very interesting article on the type of energy in the stomach and intestines (you will need to skip down several paragraphs....I will excerpt the information for you but the link could prove helpful so that is included also)

http://www.steppingstoneacu.com/blog/2012/08/08/The-Large-Intestine-Transformation-Change-and-Letting-Go.aspx

Traditional Chinese Medicine is all about relationships. The Large Intestine energy also has a special relationship with the Stomach energy, in that they are both designated as “Yang Ming” or “Yang Brightness”. Yang, as we have mentioned, is the active, hot, fiery, expansive parts of our being. (As opposed to Yin, which is the passive, watery, cool, inward parts.) Yang Brightness, as the name implies, are strong Yang energy systems. This means that they are easily affected by heat. This heat may be generated by long-term patterns of stagnant energy, a poor diet, or physically or emotionally toxic environments. The Yang Ming designation also means that we can effectively use these systems to clear pathological heat from the body. Some of the best acupuncture points in the body to clear excess heat are on the Large Intestine meridian.  One of the ways to clear excessive heat (such as a high fever) with herbal medicine is to use herbs that stimulate the Large Intestine to promote a bowel movement and bring the fever rapidly down.

In the excerpt above, the tradition comes from Chinese medicine.  As with all healing modalities, there is always, or tends to be, a leaning in one direction or another towards certain ways of seeing and treating a given issue.  The gist in this article, though, as you may well find, is that yang energy is tied into the digestive track and is probably often responsible for problems when this energy becomes stagnated (which can also mean it is moving too strongly, the other side of the coin!).  If this is the case, how then do you correct for this?  You move that energy!

These energies become much more intense during awakening.  They can be so intense that they can have very real physical effects.  The question in people's minds is if these effects are bad for us?  What is important to bear in mind is that when the self resists the flow of this energy, there is always pain, anxiety, etc.  Whenever the self surrenders, the energy flow goes from hard to blissful.  This is the important lesson of this new world of energy. It is simple: don't fight it.  I guarantee you that at any point at any time when someone is feeling difficulty in the midst of awakening, it is ALWAYS attributed or has its root in some resistance in the individual.  But when you awaken, you don't just magically enter into it perfectly formed for letting this energy flow through you.  Yes, the INITIAL awakening might have involved a blast of white light up your spine that sent you into a transcendent state for a few minutes or even a few days, but everyone, and I mean everyone, returns to their lives to work at the level of the personality to work to clear and purify all levels of the self into a finer form.  This takes time.  As a result, you can be dealing with the effects from the dross or old material as it exists side by side with this other energy.
Flu symptoms are not unusual.  I had them.  I had them but without the accompanying high temperatures that might tell me this was a real flu.  Instead, I had stomach upset, nausea that would come and go, and even diarrhea which would itself also come and go with no rhyme or reason.  My appetite was effected, and my stomach often would feel on edge at certain stages of the cleansing process.  The observations I made were that just prior to and just after a big release of blocked material, I would get these digestive anomalies.  They would come based in large part to how big the block was.  I found that breath work (I was shown that I should pant like a wild cat....a type of panting that is not unlike the breathing that yogi's teach to their students when dealing with kundalini), as well as physical exercise, mild foods, and proper hydration were all aspects to my working through these symptoms.

The unique problem when talking about kundalini is that we have what I would call "referred" symptoms that happen a LOT.  I define "referred" symptoms as energetic symptoms that aren't even physical that get picked up by the brain and then are interpreted to BE a real physical symptom.  The way to tell the difference between real and referred is that when you go to the doctor, they can find nothing behind the symptoms.  In time you will be able to discern for yourself what is real and what is referred.  Many people do go to the doctor in the beginning of their awakenings because they think there is something wrong, only to find nothing is to be found. The real danger in this situation is the doctor who feels he or she must prescribe SOMETHING to make the patient feel better.  The accompanying sense of relief that you get when they give you that piece of paper called a prescription begins to bring relief right away, long before you even buy the prescription.  However, as you may know, the placebo effect is not improved upon by taking drugs that we really do not need, so patient beware.

When I awoke I was having this nagging stomach problem that would come and go with no seemingly good explanation for it.  Of course, I worried about what it might mean since it was unlike any stomach problems I have ever had, so I thought it was something new.  Well, the short story was that it was something new, just not what I thought or feared it might be.  Luckily my doctor did not give me medication, but suggested it was some kind of re-balancing of my system and to just give it some time, watch what I was eating, etc.

In my case, I was having bouts of diarrhea for no known cause.  I would feel a little sick during these bouts, but not as if I had a flu or some bug.  In my mind I thought this could be some unknown effect from something I might need to be careful about.  The clue for me was that each time that I took pepto bismal, the symptoms went away, only to come back about a month later.  This happened a number of times in the six months between my first initial epiphany encounter with nonduality and the sudden rising of the force that came up my spine in serpentine fashion. I simply had not connected the dots yet.

So some strategies for dealing with this

Treat Yourself Right
  • You might want to see a doctor first to rule out anything that might be the root of something physical first.
  • Take simple remedies that will help settle your stomach(pepto worked well for me)
  • Lighten your food intake to include bland softer foods (barley, oats, wheat, etc., for morning)
  • Certain foods will be easier on your stomach than others such as eggs, eggs, high fiber grains

Help Yourself Move Energy

This is what is causing the flu symptoms if it's not due to a bug.  Learning to move energy and help with blocks is an important long-term strategy

Breathwork - See Pranayama and Hatha Yoga. Using a panting type of breath while concentrating awareness on the solar plexus and imagining the energy rising out of the stomach into the heart, is a good way to encourage energy flow through your body.

Physical disciplines that help to dissolve energetic blocks in your system.  Consider Qi Gung (also called Chi Gong), Thai Chi, as well as yoga all can be helpful in dissolving blockages.  Acupuncture/pressure and deep tissue work can aid in energy movement. Deep tissue massage with a therapist who is good at energy work can also be extremely helpful.  You will have to do your homework here.  I have found two extremely good practitioners who know how to listen to my energy and then help to move what they can feel is causing me problems. One therapist was trained in Kahuna massage and turned out was only a few blocks from my home. The other is a dear friend who approaches this type of work in a big picture way, integrating a broad range of methods all used when the moment requires it.  Sometimes she will make things up based on what her inner guidance is telling her at the time.  As a result, she is one of the most sought after masseuse in her area. 

I often will simply ask myself why I am having trouble.  As I do, I observe myself carefully, and I zoom in on my feelings as I ask myself this.  It is really amazing what you can find out about yourself when you are no longer invested in hiding things the way you used to.  Access to the subconscious is much clearer now in awakening.  You might want to sit quietly and ask your stomach or gut why its feeling this way.  FEEL into it, don't think into it.  Is this feeling reminding you of a feeling you have had before?  As  child?  Or in a certain circumstance?  What do these instances all have in common? You would be surprised just how quickly you can do this type of inner inquiry in order to get to the root of the cause or issue.  This type of work can be very healing and very helpful for you in all other forms of healing work (releasing blocks).  Don't be shy, give it a try.  :-)

Alternative Methods
  • Diet
Try changing your diet.  You might need a higher fiber diet.  Very high fiber has helped me to deal with some of the fallout from energetic block movement.  In fact, I often use "All bran" as a kind of tonic in the morning and make sure that I eat food high in fiber. Cut down on sugar intake and eat foods that are high in beneficial bacteria.  This aids digestion and also gives the immune system a boost.

Often "cooling" foods will help with these symptoms.  Try melon.  Melon also has the effect of calming symptoms of kundalini, something I discovered early in my awakening process (I was told about this by a guide in the middle of the night-he showed me an image of a cut piece of cantaloupe or all things, I only later read about how melon can be helpful) Try cucumber and light vegetables.  Fruits have also been helpful.  Things that never caused you upset may now be upsetting.  Foods that you didn't like you might find that you like because of how they can help you feel in the throes of awakening. 

Bland foods often work.  Fiber could also make it worse in some cases, before it gets better.  Your body will tell you what feels the best.  Consider trying different methods for more than just a few days since it takes time for your digestive system to re-balance itself. 

During the early stage of awakening, I used Pepto-Bismal to calm my stomach.  It worked for several weeks until the next round came back around.  
  • Fasting
Fasting may help tone your gut.  How you choose to do this depends on you and your health.  There are many ways to fast, some that involve still consuming food.  Some fasts involve colon cleansing.  While you will want to check with your doctor whether fasting is right for you (if you have health issues that could be affected by a fast), there are a lot of resources on the web today about the many ways to fast.  When I fasted, I found that it really helped with my energetic flow.  It helped the energy to flow less hindered.  My fast was a draw-down of food so that I ate half the amount the second day of the fast, then I ate nothing the third day and then did not eat anything for the next three days.  I made sure that I always had water on hand.  I was physically active the third day of my fast, but not excessively so.  I drove on a four hour trip one way and had no problem with being light headed. I found this type of fast to have been very beneficial to me.  Everyone is different, so the results I have may be different for you.  My experience has been that fasting tones my body as well as my mind and seems to help open channels of energy.  Fasting was long considered a way to open ones self to the world of the spirit. You can read up on the history of fasting from a number of different cultural and religious perspectives.

In a story about Pythagoras who was seeking entry into the Mystery Schools of Egypt, he was told that to "be different" he needed to fast, do breath work, and focus on different places in his body (such as the third eye).  Fasting was done for extended periods back then.  When Pythagoras had done as they instructed, he returned a changed man. Did he have an awakening?  Its certainly possible that this was exactly what took place.

This link is ALL about fasting.  Really. An entire site dedicated to it. :-)

http://www.allaboutfasting.com/types-of-fasting.html

~As in all practice, extremes are to be avoided.  Good luck in your work!

UPDATE: 7/2016

I have been doing a lot of research on the dopamine connection and Kundalini experiences. Without going to deeply into this let me just say that there is I believe a very real connection between the experience of Awakening and the production of dopamine in the body. The effect of an opiate like opening is almost always something that produces a certain degree of knowledge. I am not a researcher and I do not have studies to back up my contention, but I do think that this is an area that warrants more attention. I think that it is possible that the increased level of dopamine in the body can contribute to feelings of nausea and loss of appetite. I began by looking at what compounds similar to dopamine did to people and their appetites.  Opium, for example, kills appetite, and often creates nausea.  While opium is not exactly like dopamine, it is a natural analog to it, and I think it is very likely that there is a connection with the effect in one being expressed in the bodily produced one. What I have found in my own experience is there is little to ameliorate the effects of nausea other than altering my diet so I take in foods that are more bland and soothing to my stomach. Everyone may be different but my experience has shown that protein sources like Greek yoghurt and eggs have helped me to get the nutrients necessary to remain healthy. Also a vegetarian diet has helped in many instances.

Not directly related to this have been several foods that have helped to smooth out the more difficult sides to intense energy. These are cantaloupe (try any melon that you like) when energy is running high. Also Indian curry has helped at early stages. Later on hot spicy foods have seemed to provide a smooth bliss during times of intense energy. This was only beneficial during a stage in the process, but it gave me a couple of hours of relief, which was a welcome change at the time. 

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Breath and Prana

I have explained many times how it has been that I have found the idea that so many yoga practitioners put forward which is that breath and Prana are one and the same to be off base.  I have sought to explain the incidental alignment of these two issues through my own experience with awakening and never having done a single moment of yoga in my life. For me, I was given an inside view I suppose, but it was a clear one.  I have sought to explain what Prana is and how it is excited in the body in an effort to give people the tools they need to really understand this force in a more thorough and genuine manner. My sense is that if you really understand something that seems mysterious to you, your depth of understanding will be manifold when you start with the foundation of what it is you are seeking to understand.  Unfortunately, there has been a lot of parroting of information.  This is just what the Veda's explain is the trap of reading books or seeking to absorb teachings from someone without the requisite work to really "get it."  "Getting it" requires feeling instead of thought, and this is what trips so many up.  Its a hard shift to make for us Westerners.  "Feel? What do you mean feel?" What I mean is that you slow or cease thought and allow feeling flow.  You become more sensitive to what is around you.  You begint o sense through your whole being.  You realize that sensory perception is much more than just your physical senses.  You just need to be able to stay with the feeling side of yourself long enough to begin to get the flow of information that is coming through.

Prana is moved by your willingness to surrender, to open, to become quiet, and to just feel. Feeling Prana is very much like entering into the inspired moment.  Being an artist, I am very familiar with how this state feels, and just as there are levels of intensity to it, Pranic movement is also very similar.  Using breath DOES help move Prana, but breath is not Prana. It isn't.  And now, finally, after reading the first few pages of my first book on Pranayama, there is a guru who is backing me up. 

So read the following quote from Sri Swami Sivananda, author of The Science Of Pranayama ©1937, 1997.


Svasa’ means inspiratory breath and ‘Prasvasa’ is expiratory breath. Breath is external
manifestation of Prana, the vital force. Breath like electricity, is gross Prana. Breath is Sthula, gross. Prana is Sukshma, subtle. By exercising control over this breathing you can control the subtle Prana inside. Control of Prana means control of mind. Mind cannot operate without the help of Prana. The vibrations of Prana only produce thoughts in the mind. It is Prana that moves the mind. It is Prana that sets the mind in motion. It is the Sukshma Prana or Psychic Prana that is intimately connected with the mind. This breath represents the important fly-wheel of an engine. Just as the other wheels stop when the driver stops the fly-wheel, so also other organs cease working, when the Yogi stops
  the breath. If you can control the fly-wheel, you can easily control the other wheels. 
Likewise, if you can control the external breath, you can easily control the inner vital force, Prana. The process by which the Prana is controlled by regulation of external breath, is termed Pranayama.
What he explains in a similar vein is that breath is just the way by which to stimulate the flow of Prana, but don't mistake breath AS Prana.  So I ask you, if this is front and center in a foundational book on Pranayama, which is the Way of Prana, why is it that so many people focus so deeply on breath work and speak of Prana as BEING breath? Perhaps it is because it sounds good to them and it makes all of this simple to understand or to relate to.  This can only be so when someone has not felt a Pranic movement or "rush" of the energy enough to be able to observe the energy in its fullest scope and learn from it and to understand how it moves and effects the mind and body.

It is time that we develop a means to stimulate prana without breath in order to help illustrate to students of yoga just what prana is.  It is time to show how prana can be induced in order to better understand this force which interpenetrates all things. This is the key to regulation of kundalini and in discovering ones own energetic constitution so as to keep from wrecking the mind and the body, which is easy to do when the kundalini moves. 

THAT will have to be the next installment, a series of exercises to help illustrate how prana moves independent of breath.  I will give you a sneak peek.  It involves focus, engagement, surrender and inspiration ("in-spire").

Nemasté

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Trimorphic Protennoia

This is an early Christian initiatory rite developed by the Savior, whom we know to be Jesus, discovered in the cache of documents now known as the Nag Hammadi codices.  These scrolls, some predating the gospels By Mark, Luke and Mathew, have brought back into sharp focus that which the early church dismissed out of hand and represent a powerful understanding of the route to the divine that lies within each of us.  These documents were discovered in the mid-40's outside of a town in Egypt at a time when we were more ready to see them for what they are, which is a sacred path to awakening the divine that is within each of us. 






The Nag Hammadi Library

Trimorphic Protennoia


Translated by John D. Turner

I am Protennoia, the Thought that dwells in the Light. I am the movement that dwells in the All, she in whom the All takes its stand, the first-born among those who came to be, she who exists before the All. She (Protennoia) is called by three names, although she dwells alone, since she is perfect. I am invisible within the Thought of the Invisible One. I am revealed in the immeasurable, ineffable (things). I am incomprehensible, dwelling in the incomprehensible. I move in every creature.
I am the life of my Epinoia that dwells within every Power and every eternal movement, and (in) invisible Lights and within the Archons and Angels and Demons, and every soul dwelling in Tartaros, and (in) every material soul. I dwell in those who came to be. I move in everyone and I delve into them all. I walk uprightly, and those who sleep, I awaken. And I am the sight of those who dwell in sleep.
I am the Invisible One within the All. It is I who counsel those who are hidden, since I know the All that exists in it. I am numberless beyond everyone. I am immeasurable, ineffable, yet whenever I wish, I shall reveal myself of my own accord. I am the head of the All. I exist before the All, and I am the All, since I exist in everyone.
I am a Voice speaking softly. I exist from the first. I dwell within the Silence that surrounds every one of them. And it is the hidden Voice that dwells within my, within the incomprehensible, immeasurable Thought, within the immeasurable Silence.
I descended to the midst of the underworld, and I shone down upon the darkness. It is I who poured forth the water. It is I who am hidden within radiant waters. I am the one who gradually put forth the All by my Thought. It is I who am laden with the Voice. It is through me that Gnosis comes forth. I dwell in the ineffable and unknowable ones. I am perception and knowledge, uttering a Voice by means of thought. I am the real Voice. I cry out in everyone, and they recognize it (the voice), since a seed indwells them. I am the Thought of the Father, and through me proceeded the Voice, that is, the knowledge of the everlasting things. I exist as Thought for the All -- being joined to the unknowable and incomprehensible Thought -- I revealed myself -- yes, I -- among all those who recognize me. For it is I who am joined with everyone by virtue of the hidden Thought and an exalted , even a Voice from the invisible Thought. And it is immeasurable, since it dwells in the Immeasurable One. It is a mystery; it is unrestrainable by the Incomprehensible One. It is invisible to all those who are visible in the All. It is a Light dwelling in Light.
It is we also who alone have separated from the visible world, since we are saved by the hidden wisdom, by means of the ineffable, immeasurable Voice. And he who is hidden within us pays the tributes of his fruit to the Water of Life.
Then the Son who is perfect in every respect -- that is, the Word who originated through that Voice; who proceeded from the height; who has within him the Name; who is a Light -- he revealed the everlasting things, and all the unknowns were known. And those things difficult to interpet and secret, he revealed. And as for those who dwell in Silence with the First Thought, he preached to them. And he revealed himself to those who dwell in darkness, and he showed himself to those who dwell in the abyss, and to those who dwell in the hidden treasuries, he told ineffable mysteries, and he taught unrepeatable doctrines to all those who became Sons of the Light.
Now the Voice that originated from my Thought exists as three permanences: the Father, the Mother, the Son. Existing perceptibly as Speech, it (Voice) has within it a Word endowed with every , and it has three masculinities, three powers, and three names. They exist in the manner of Three ... -- which are quadrangels -- secretly within a silence of the Ineffable One.
It is he alone who came to be, that is, the Christ. And, as for me, I anointed him as the glory of the Invisible Spirit, with goodness. Now the Three, I established alone in eternal glory over the Aeons in the Living Water, that is, the glory that surrounds him who first came forth to the Light of those exalted Aeons, and it is in glorious Light that he firmly perseveres. And he stood in his own Light that surrounds him, that is, the Eye of the Light that gloriously shines on me. He perpetuated the Father of all Aeons, who am I, the Thought of the Father, Protennoia, that is, Barbelo, the perfect Glory, and the immeasurable Invisible One who is hidden. I am the Image of the Invisible Spirit, and it is through me that the All took shape, and (I am) the Mother (as well as) the Light which she appointed as Virgin, she who is called 'Meirothea', the incomprehensible Womb, the unrestrainable and immeasurable Voice.
Then the Perfect Son revealed himself to his Aeons, who originated through him, and he revealed them and glorified them, and gave them thrones, and stood in the glory with which he glorified himself. They blessed the Perfect Son, the Christ, the only-begotten God. And they gave glory, saying, "He is! He is! The Son of God! The Son of God! It is he who is! The Aeon of Aeons, beholding the Aeons which he begot. For thou hast begotten by thine own desire! Therefore we glorify thee: ma mo o o o eia ei on ei! The Aeon of Aeons! The Aeon which he gave!"
Then, moreover, the God who was begotten gave them (the Aeons) a power of life on which they might rely, and he established them. The first Aeon he established over the first: Armedon, Nousanios, Armozel; the second he established over the second Aeon: Phaionios, Ainios, Oroiael; the third over the third Aeon: Mellephaneus, Loios, Daveithai; the fourth over the fourth: Mousanios, Amethes, Eleleth. Now those Aeons were begotten by the God who was begotten - the Christ - and these Aeons received as well as gave glory. They were the first to appear, exalted in their thought, and each Aeon gave myriads of glories within great untraceable lights, and they all together blessed the perfect Son, the God who was begotten.
Then there came forth a word from the great Light Eleleth, and said, "I am king! Who belongs to Chaos and who belongs to the underworld?" And at that instant, his Light appeared, radiant, endowed with the Epinoia. The Powers of the Powers did not entreat him, and likewise immediately there appeared the great Demon who rules over the lowest part of the underworld and Chaos. He has neither form nor perfection, but, on the contrary, possesses the form of the glory of those begotten in the darkness. Now he is called 'Saklas', that is, 'Samael', 'Yaltabaoth', he who had taken power; who had snatched it away from the innocent one (Sophia); who had earlier overpowered her who is the Light`s Epinoia who had descended, her from whom he had come forth from originally.
Now when the Epinoia of the Light realized that he (Yaltabaoth) had begged him (the Light) for another order, even though he was lower than she, she said, "Give me another order, so that you may become for me a dwelling place, lest I dwell in disorder forever." And the order of the entire house of glory was agreed upon her word. A blessing was brought for her and the higher order released it to her.
And the great Demon began to produce aeons in the likeness of the real Aeons, except that he produced them out of his own power.
Then I too revealed my Voice secretly, saying, "Cease! Desist, (you) who tread on matter; for behold, I am coming down to the world of mortals for the sake of my portion that was in that place from the time when the innocent Sophia was conquered, she who descended, so that I might thwart their aim which the one revealed by her appoints." And all were disturbed, each one who dwells in the house of the ignorant light, and the abyss trembled. And the Archigenetor of ignorance reigned over Chaos and the underworld, and produced a man in my likeness. But he neither knew that that one would become for him a sentence of dissolution, nor does he recognize the power in him.
But now I have come down and reached down to Chaos. And I was with my own who were in that place. I am hidden within them, empowering them, giving them shape. And from the first day until the day when I will grant mighty glory to those who are mine, I will reveal myself to those who have heard my mysteries, that is, the Sons of the Light.
I am their Father, and I shall tell you a mystery, ineffable and indivulgeable by any mouth: Every bond I loosed from you, and the chains of the demons of the underworld I broke, these things which are bound on my members, restraining them. And the high walls of darkness I overthrew, and the secure gates of those pitiless ones I broke, and I smashed their bars. And the evil force, and the one who beats you, and the one who hinders you, and the tyrant, and the adversary, and the one who is King, and the present enemy, indeed all these I explained to those who are mine, who are the Sons of the Light, in order that they might nullify them all, and be saved from all those bonds, and enter into the place where they were at first.
I am the first one who descended on account of my portion which remains, that is, the Spirit that dwells in the soul, which originated from the Water of Life, and out of the immersion of the mysteries. And I spoke, I, together with the Archons and Authorities. For I had gone down below their language, and I spoke my mysteries to my own - a hidden mystery - and the bonds and eternal oblivion were nullified. And I bore fruit in them, that is, the Thought of the unchanging Aeon, and my house, and their Father. And I went down to those who were mine from the first, and I reached them and broke the first strands that enslaved them. Then everyone of those within me shone, and I prepared a pattern for those ineffable Lights that are within me. Amen.
The Discourse of Protennoia: One
I am the Voice that appeared through my Thought, for I am 'He who is syzygetic' since I am called 'the Thought of the Invisible One'. Since I am called 'the unchanging Speech', I am called 'She who is syzygetic'.
I am a single one, since I am undefiled. I am the Mother of the Voice, speaking in many ways, completing the All. It is in me that knowledge dwells, the knowledge of everlasting. It is I who speak within every creature, and I was known by the All. It is I who lift up the Speech of the Voice to the ears of those who have known me, that is, the Sons of the Light.
Now I have come the second time in the likeness of a female, and have spoken with them. And I shall tell them of the coming end of the Aeon and teach them of the beginning of the Aeon to come, the one without change, the one in which our appearance will be changed. We shall be purified within those Aeons from which I revealed myself in the Thought of the likeness of my masculinity. I settled among those who are worthy in the Thought of my changeless Aeon.
For I shall tell you a mystery of this particular Aeon, and tell you about the forces that are in it. The birth beckons; hour begets hour, day begets day. The months made known the month.Time has gone round succeeding time. This particular Aeon was completed in this fashion, and it was estimated, and it (was) short, for it was a finger that released a finger, and a joint that was separated from a joint. Then, when the great Authorities knew that the time of fulfillment had appeared - just as in the pangs of the parturient it (the time) has drawn near, so also had the destruction approached - all together the elements trembled, and the foundations of the underworld and the ceilings of Chaos shook, and a great fire shone within their midst, and the rocks and the earth were shaken like a reed shaken by the wind. And the lots of Fate and those who apportion the domiciles were greatly disturbed over a great thunder. And the thrones of the Powers were disturbed, since they were overturned, and their King was afraid. And those who pursue Fate paid their allotment of visits to the path, and they said to the Powers, "What is this disturbance and this shaking that has come upon us through a Voice to the exalted Speech? And our entire habitation has been shaken, and the entire circuit of the path of ascent has met with destruction, and the path upon which we go, which takes us up to the Archgenitor of our birth, has ceased to be established for us."
Then the Powers answered, saying, "We too are at loss about it, since we did not know what was responsible for it. But arise, let us go up to the Archgenitor and ask him." And the powers all gathered and went up to the Archgenitor. They said to him, "Where is your boasting in which you boast? Did we not hear you say, "I am God, and I am your Father, and it is I who begot you. and there is none beside me"? Now behold, there has appeared a Voice belonging to that invisible Speech of the Aeon which we know not. And we ourselves did not recognize to whom we belong, for that Voice which we listened to is foreign to us, and we did not recognize it; we did not know whence it was. It came and put fear in our midst and weakening in the members of our arms. So now let us weep and mourn most bitterly! As for the future, let us make our entire flight before we are imprisoned perforce, and taken down to the bosom of the underworld. For already the slackening of our bondage has approached, and the times are cut short, and the days have shortened, and our time has been fulfilled, and the weeping of our destruction has approached us, so that we may be taken to the place we recognize. For as for our tree from which we grew, a fruit of ignorance is what it has; and also its leaves, it is death that dwells in them, and darkness dwells under the shadow of its boughs. And it was in deceit and lust that we harvested it, this (tree) through which ignorant Chaos became for us a dwelling place. For behold, even he, the Archgenitor of our birth, about whom we boast, even he did not know this Speech."
So now, O sons of the Thought, listen to me, to the Speech of the Mother of your mercy, for you have become worthy of the mystery hidden from the Aeons, so that you might receive it. And the consummation of this particular Aeon and of the evil life has approached, and there dawns the beginning of the Aeon to come, which has no change forever.
I am androgynous. I am Mother (and) I am Father, since I copulate with myself. I copulated with myself and with those who love me, and it is through me alone that the All stands firm. I am the Womb that gives shape to the All by giving birth to the Light that shines in splendor. I am the Aeon to come. I am the fulfillment of the All, that is, Meirothea, the glory of the Mother. I cast voiced Speech into the ears of those who know me.
And I am inviting you into the exalted, perfect Light. Moreover, (as for) this (Light), when you enter it, you will be glorified by those who give glory, and those who enthrone will enthrone you. You will accept robes from those who give robes, and the baptizers will baptize you, and you will become gloriously glorious, the way you first were when you were .
And I hid myself in everyone and revealed myself within them, and every mind seeking me longed for me, for it is I who gave shape to the All when it had no form. And I transformed their forms into (other) forms, until the time when a form will be given to the All. It is through me that the Voice originated, and it is I who put the breath within my own. And I cast into them the eternally Holy Spirit, and I ascended and entered my Light. I went up upon my branch and sat there among the Sons of the holy Light. And I withdrew to their dwelling place which [...] become glorious [...]. Amen.
On Fate: Two
I am the Word who dwells in the ineffable Voice. I dwell in undefiled Light and a Thought revealed itself perceptibly through the great Speech of the Mother, although it is a male offspring that supports me as my foundation. And it (the Speech) exists from the beginning in the foundations of the All.
But there is a Light that dwells hidden in Silence, and it was first to come forth. Whereas she (the Mother) alone exists as Silence, I alone am the Word, ineffable, unpolluted, immeasurable, inconceivable. It (the Word) is a hidden Light, bearing a fruit of life, pouring forth a living water from the invisible, unpolluted, immeasurable spring, that is, the unreproducible Voice of the glory of the Mother, the glory of the offspring of God; a male virgin by virtue of a hidden Intellect, that is, the Silence hidden from the All, being unreproducible, an immeasurable Light, the source of the All, the root of the entire Aeon. It is the foundation that supports every movement of the Aeons that belong to the mighty glory. It is the foundation of every foundation. It is the breath of the powers. It is the eye of the three permanences, which exist as Voice by virtue of Thought. And it is a Word by virtue of Speech; it was sent to illumine those who dwell in the darkness.
Now behold! I will reveal to you my mysteries, since you are my fellow brethren, and you shall know them all.
(5 lines missing)
I told all of them about my mysteries that exist in the incomprehensible, inexpressible Aeons. I taught them the mysteries through the Voice that exists within a perfect Intellect, and I became a foundation for the All, and I empowered them.
The Second time I came in the Speech of my Voice. I gave shape to those who took shape, until their consummation.
The Third time I revealed myself to them in their tents as Word, and I revealed myself in the likeness of their shape. And I wore everyone's garment, and I hid myself within them, and they did not know the one who empowers me. For I dwell within all the Sovereignties and Powers, and within the angels, and in every movement that exists in all matter. And I hid myself within them until I revealed myself to my brethren. And none of them (the Powers) knew me, although it is I who work in them. Rather, they thought that the All was created by them, since they are ignorant, not knowing their root, the place in which they grew.
I am the Light that illumines the All. I am the Light that rejoices in my brethren, for I came down to the world of mortals on account of the Spirit that remains in that which descended (and) came forth from the innocent Sophia. I came, and I delivered [...], and I went to ...
(5 lines missing)
... which he had formerly, and I gave to him from the Water of Life, which strips him of the chaos that is in the uttermost darkness that exists inside the entire abyss, that is, the thought of the corporeal and the psychic. All these I put on. And I stripped him of it, and I put upon him a shining Light, that is, the knowledge of the Thought of the Fatherhood.
And I delivered him to those who give robes - Yammon, Elasso, Amenai - and they covered him with a robe from the robes of the Light; and I delivered him to the baptizers, and they baptized him - Micheus, Michar, Mnesinous - and they immersed him in the spring of the Water of Life. And I delivered him to those who enthrone - Bariel, Nouthan, Sabenai - and they enthroned him from the Throne of Glory. And I delivered him to those who glorify - Ariom, Elien, Phariel - and they glorified him with the glory of the Fatherhood. And those who snatch away snatched away - Kamaliel, [...]anen, Samblo, and the servants of great holy luminaries - and they took him into the light-place of his Fatherhood. And he received the Five seals from the Light of the Mother, Protennoia, and it was granted him to partake of the mystery of knowledge, and he became a Light in Light.
So now ...
(5 lines missing)
... I was dwelling in them in the form of each one. The Archons thought that I was their Christ. Indeed, I dwell in everyone. Indeed, within those in whom I revealed myself as Light, I eluded the Archons. I am their beloved, for in that place I clothed myself as the son of the Archgenitor, and I was like him until the end of his decree, which is the ignorance of Chaos. And among the angels I revealed myself in their likeness, and among the Powers, as if I were one of them; but among the Sons of Man, as if I were a Son of Man, even though I am Father of everyone.
I hid myself within them all until I revealed myself among my members, which are mine, and I taught them about the ineffable ordinances, and (about) the brethren. But they are inexpressible to every Sovereignty and every ruling Power, except the Sons of the Light alone, that is, the ordinances of the Father. These are the glories that are higher than every glory, that is, the Five Seals, complete by virtue of Intellect. He who possesses the Five Seals of these particular names has stripped off garments of ignorance and put on a shining Light. And nothing will appear to him that belongs to the Powers of the Archons. Within those of this sort, darkness will dissolve and ignorance will die. And the thought of the creature, which is scattered, will present a single appearance and dark Chaos will dissolve and ...
(6 lines fragmentary)
... until I reveal myself to all my fellow brethren, and until I gather together all my fellow brethren within my eternal kingdom. And I proclaimed to them the ineffable Five Seals in order that I might abide in them and they also might abide in me.

As for me, I put on Jesus. I bore him from the cursed wood, and established him in the dwelling places of his Father. And those who watch over their dwelling places did not recognize me. For I, I am unrestrainable, together with my seed; and my seed, which is mine, I shall place into the holy Light within an incomprehensible Silence. Amen.

The Discourse of the Appearance: Three
Trimorphic Protennoia, in Three Parts
A Sacred Scripture written by the Father with perfect Knowledge
Original translation of this text was prepared by members of the
Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont Graduate School.
The Coptic Gnostic Library Project was funded by UNESCO, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other Institutions.
E. J. Brill has asserted copyright on texts published by the Coptic Gnostic Library Project.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Pain - Matt Kahn

Sent to me by a friend by Matt Kahn about pain. Really good perspective!


Kahuna Healing

Surrender

Sometime last year I spoke with some local healers about whether they knew someone in my area who did a combination of body work (massage) with energy work.  I knew what I needed, I just didn’t know if there was anyone who did the kind of work I was feeling like I needed.  One of the people turned to the other and they both said almost at once the name of a local practitioner in my area.  It took a while to get on her schedule, but the work she does is based on the Polynesian method of balance of the feminine and masculine as yin and yang in the body.  It embodies awareness of the meridians and points throughout the body just as the Chinese methods of acupuncture do.  It is, for me, proving to be a very useful modality at the stage I am at right now.

My first appointment went well, and some blocks were removed.  It was helpful.  I have been working on some of the last blocks in my system, a process that has taken about eight years or so since kundalini rose and began clearing me out.  As I have gotten down to the end of this, it has gotten harder to remove the most stubborn of blocks!  But unlike the beginning when I felt defeated by the hardness of each block, then victorious as the block was magically moved by the stirring energy of awakening, I now have a level of confidence born out of perspective or experience. The second appointment, though, was something else.

We began the second session by going over where some of the blocks were and what they were doing to my physiology.  This provided her some clues, and she got to work.  I am able to identify very specific locations along certain meridians which helps her to know where some of the blocks are happening. She went all over the body, pressing here and there, both massaging, getting me to breathe a certain way, and then placing her fingers at certain points.  Once she had gotten through a certain portion of the work, she then placed her finger in one spot.  As she did so, she asked me what I saw.  It was funny, because I had begun to see something rise up in my inner vision just before she asked this. This was bringing up stored memories that existed on the other side of the blocks I have been dealing with for so long. My healer was already beginning to assist in the release of this stored material.

I found myself going back, back, back, further through time and deeper into the blocks in the root chakra.  Having to do with survival, abundance, nurture, care, and love, I felt like a toothpaste tube being squeezed out.  I saw my feet on wet sand as a child, an experience from early childhood in my home in Florida.  But then as I moved through these old blocks, I found myself looking down at feet that were not my own.  Different feet were running through a rainforest.  This was on a Pacific island.  A very old story unfolded that explained so much about the trials I experience in life.

Letting it go was the single most important thing I could do.  Somehow, in perfect timing, I was given this gift of a Kahuna healer to reach into a place in my past that was Polynesian.  This was not something I was experiencing that was by way of suggestion (that I was Polynesian), but rather through a complete and perfect form of serendipity. I needed something from that old world in the new to help bring it all up.  And there she was, my massage therapist, an amazing person for her insight into a system that seems to wed a range of sensibilities into one practice. Furthermore, this person lived right around the corner from my home, which has been how my most important finds have taken place, such as my Qi Gong teacher who helped me so much in releasing blocks, who lived the same distance from my home as my Kahuna healer does (almost exactly the same physical distance).  This, instead, points to the amazing nature of what lies ahead of us in a journey of this type.  Some want to call it miraculous, but instead of miraculous, consider that it is pointing to the potential for the universe to bring you exactly what you need when you need it (even if it means having a Polynesian who just happens to do healing work right around the corner from you with a healing modality that is perfectly suited to your own healing).  Rather than the universe working against you, it can also work FOR you in remarkable ways….

For anyone who feels stuck with clearing out old material, I suggest body work by a person who is intuitive and sensitive.  This Kahuna healing work was perfect for me, since it brings into the moment all of the things that help to move these blocks. What I have struggled with for over a year was released in that two hour session. As it sure seems that I have saved the hardest blocks for last, getting this kind of compassionate care has been so important. My healer looked at me afterwards and asked inquisitively, “Have you had releases like you just had in your process in the past?”  I had to explain that I had a couple that were as dramatic as the one she witnessed, but most of them were almost non-events since I was not experiencing the trauma that made up the block.  It seems that for these last bits, I almost NEED to feel the highly charged energy, to bring it into awareness in order to understand where the fault has lied within me (how I bypass the feelings that are so foundational and thus are root-related and that get stored as a result of this)

Its been two days now and I still feel tender, and I feel new.

The releases were so deep that they have left me feeling….at odd ends….which is something that I am used to by now. I just don’t sweat it as much now. I feel a stronger or renewed sense of my own energetic integrity and how important it is to no longer allow people into my field who mirror the pain that I have now released.  Up until that time, however, I continued to be vulnerable to this intrusion of sorts simply because that was just where I was, sharing the same “samscara” or soul scar. In a very real way, I was like a heroin addict hanging out with other addicts.  We kept each other going on this merry-go-round of dysfunction.  While I may have known all along that it was not healthy at all for me to be connected to these people energetically, I was also powerless to do much about it deep down.  To gain back the power of my own will, I had to cure the fault or hurt I had stored in the first place.  This naturally moved me out and into the new. Unlike a sudden arrival, though, this is one step of many steps, a kind of continuous spiral of evolving, healing, and becoming. It continues to be a process.  There is still more material to release, but I am now better equipped to feel a sense of quiet within myself without someone banging on my inner doors or sneaking in through the back way.  This is critical to do if I am to continue to heal, which is to remove all of the negative influences that serve to keep the new at bay and the old constantly reinforcing itself.
After these kinds of clearings, I just kind of observe, feel, and wait for my system to reach its new balance.  I have been living with this junk for so long, it might take a few days or weeks to reach stasis again.  But its good. Since you might be curious to find out more, here is a link to one of many Kahuna sites…I highly recommend this modality for anyone who is dealing with hard to remove material.
http://fionahouse.com.au/therapies/kahuna-bodywork/

Beyond Belief II

Once I caught on to what had happened to me had a name (kundalini/awakening), I came across some work by U.G. Krishnamurti.  A friend lent a book to me of some central thinking from his life.  I remember feeling how spare his view was about all of this.  A pathless path. As humans, we like to fill our lives with the things that serve to decorate our lives.  We are all about the mental jewelry, right? Inner and outer kinds.  So it felt kind of bereft of a certain human feel to what he was saying.  But the thing is, the wonderful thing about all of this, of awakening, is the less you believe in something, the more open you are to what is true….potentially at least. You now have a new channel into this world that is all around you.  It is like a umbilicus that nourishes you, and it is the universe that is sustaining you.  Instead of letting belief get there first to muddy the water with centuries of error and opinions and half-glances and incomplete comprehensions, you can get it directly.  And perhaps, too, you might also have your own half glances about it, but it will be yours, and it will grow organically like a flower bud opening.

You look out from the eyes of your body here and feel the rush of the universe inside of you….and you know that as the soul of the world moves through you as light forms, you are feeling the goings-on that is all around you at incomprehensible distances.  This is part of the overwhelm that many feel when they “rise”(the rise of kundalini…)  or resurrect into this new life.  It is an inward inner-net of life.  It would not be stretching it to say that you have unlimited information at your fingertips. This is where the siddhis come from in the Hindu tradition as they describe one facet of awakening, which are abilities.  Now on the one hand, they are just this, and should not be given too much weight, but only the same weight you might give them as you give eyesight, hearing, or anything else: they are there now to help bring more information into your life.

In the early days of awakening, I used my desire to know to penetrate deep into this “inner” world.  By allowing consciousness to accelerate, you can do what I have done.  We all can.  When I read the words of Edgar Cayce, who did thousands of readings for clients using a method of going into trance (code for an acceleration of consciousness!), he was able to access what he described as an unlimited library of information. I can’t say that I have seen it as a library, but the image is useful to point you to the place where you and the universe meet.  I discovered remote viewing before I even knew what it was.  Seeing objects from a distance, describing the interiors of people’s homes who I knew, or feeling into the marrow of the multiverse, I was most interested in knowing directly, personally, what the stuff of the universe was.  I didn’t want an article of faith.  I didn’t trust that people always got it right.  I wanted to enter into a personal and intimate relationship with the soul of the world.

The universe is thus inside of you.

You do not need belief in order to experience the divine reality.  This reality, in truth, is merely an expansion of your narrow focus.  It has simply unfolded in important ways.  In many ways, the right brain, in its capacity to glimpse the big picture, is adept at processing the information that is streaming into you in a moment by moment basis.  Why one person picks up on it and another does not is not because of ability, or due to divine favor.  It is simply due to less things being in the way of this stream of energy, life, and information.  You can let it flow like a river and just watch the surface of this water sparkle or you can dip your awareness deep into it and “grasp” the stream and examine it.  In doing this, I have found worlds in a drop of this energy, this water of life.  A world explodes into view and is so powerful you have to let your imagination take center stage in order to help to construct what it is that it is trying to tell you.  Imagination is incredibly important, central, in fact, if you want to let this world teach you, speaking to you to reveal its secrets.

You don’t have to believe in anything to inherit the universal truths.  You do not even need to believe in a deity. You don’t.  You just need this connection, this umbilicus that nourishes you and fills you.  The trick is in waking up and shifting focus. The energy will itself accelerate your consciousness.  Some call this an “altered state” but accelerated is much more accurate, so I use that.  It is literally like being swept off your feet by a wind and finding yourself flying where before you had to walk. And really, you can know just about anything that you are clear enough to have come through. As long as you remain totally open without your blinders in the way, you have so much to learn.  You can learn about grace, about how this energy has animated worlds, vast universes, and how it has seeded all of matter with sentience. It can show you the relationship between how this energy filters down into matter and turns itself inside out, transforming itself into countless things.  When you see things like this you see just how free-wheeling creation is. Suddenly the world stopped being dead matter and became this thing that was alive with a vitality that was incredible.  At the atomic level, this creation is taking place constantly and at time scales that are astounding.

If you take a second and then divide that second into 300,000 even increments and then slow that one increment into an hour, what you would be able to glimpse would simply amaze you. You might see just what I saw, which is that matter is not solid at all, but is being supported by way of a stream of quasi-particles that move from energy to matter at ridiculously fast speeds, Speeds so fast, I don’t know that we have yet detected them. And someday we might have a way to glimpse this so science can know it, too, but for right now, consciousness as it exists in your body is perfectly suited for being able to move into these time scales and see the world that explodes into view.  With no mass, your consciousness can become small, large, slow in time, or fast.  It can also move through time as it does this, too, which is helpful when you are examining the “insides” of all that is. It might seem impossible, or like some drug trip, but I assure you that it is not.  This is the potential we have in our hands.  We can use it to heal the planet, to change how people see their world from one of dead matter to more than sheer miracle, but zillions of miracles happening on each needle-point stretch of space that is wrapping itself around your flesh.

I know it sounds a little out there.  I know.  And yet, my experience along these lines was described perfectly in a thousands of years old document found within the Vedas where our ancestors used their newfound awareness in awakening to glimpse vast cities inside of their bodies, where cells exploded into view and revealed to the onlooker that the cells were themselves made up of still smaller particles.These folks were all over it. Old school.  And they might not have the technical vocabulary like atoms or compounds to explain it all, but they did very well with what they had.  And you have it. We all do.  This is the good news.

So yes, I read from time to time of others’ experience….not to know some truth, but to gauge where I am, and to try to pick up new awareness.  It usually comes when I am not even looking.  I’m just thinking about it and then someone comes around the corner, smiles, and hands me a book saying, “I was wanting to give you this because it has something pretty cool that I thought you might like.”  And there it is, a cosmic friend who has arrived in perfect timing to answer a feeling or question in a way that feels like a gift from that universe which winks back at me, urging me on to open even more so it can reveal more of itself.  And of course, I am giving something to the universe that is highly personified.  But there is an intelligence there that is beyond anything I could even grasp in ordinary consciousness.

This that I am explaining is itself the means by which you can know instead of using belief to prop up for what is a shortcoming now in awareness for you.  You do not need belief though, since all of the things that were expressed in the past and written down will come into view to be seen for what they are. And just like I am doing, using words to describe the ineffable, we achieve varying degrees of lucidity of this “formless” presence that gives form to all things.  Emptying your mind of what you think you know, you can be open to what is.  Like a data stream of bliss, it will move through you.  Its grandness is enough to reveal just how wonderful the universe is.  It can fill you with grace, awe and wonder, softening you and shifting your awareness.

When we talk about our advancements in technology, this consciousness is light years ahead of using THOUGHT and the force behind all things (its love people!) in its ability to animate, create, play, and discover. We could learn a lot from something like this. “It” is ever present, yet what “it” is will escape you because, I think, it is just so vast.  And yet, if you allow yourself to be true inside, you can glimpse the whole in every single of its parts.  Like a cell inside a vast body, this is akin to glimpsing the dna or some universal holographic form that has all of itself in everything else.  Yep, it will boggle the mind and of course, discussing this in mixed company would get you some funny looks, but the world needs it.

No belief is required.  I know that the hymns and the rituals all help make us feel warm and safe, but there is a greater safety inside every moment that will also strip you down of all your faults, errors, and blindness.  Seems you have to just let it work as it burrows down into your core.  And it can be hard letting go of something you reflexively have held onto but don’t even know what it is.  This feeling inside, a broken feeling that you have taken as being who you are when in truth it was simply a story inside of you that you grafted onto your personality.  Its brokenness just feels……familiar…..and when this force digs deep it is like a death….but when you open to this cosmic invader, the light illuminates the roots of this and will show you what is true and what is error.  And really, this is what sin is about, which is doing that which damages us. Doing this work often means slipping past the subconscious self in order to dig out the roots that you thought were you.  It was the devil that you knew.  And its simple.  Jesus said you needed to be like a child.  True.  And trusting of “it” in the same way that a child might trust a parent.  You put yourself in the hands of this thing….and it can be hard for the most ardent believer…..especially for the believer….because they already have their own ideas preformed about what they think this will be like.  And it is different from what most people have thought, so it unsettles them.  It is so deep a place of communion, of union with the universal force of all life….and of course many of us shrink back because we feel like we have a reason to feel shame for our sin, for all the roots we let grow inside of us.  But this light….it does not care….it does not CARE what you have done.  It knows that in this moment, you could unwind centuries of wrong as it dips down into you and pulls out those roots wrapped aroud your energy body that form your negative karma.  This is the error of all of us.  The reward is simply so grand, why would you want to live another day in prison? Well, that is the illness of humans.  We just don’t know how bad we have got it.  If you open to this light, it will show you.  But to do this means that you get really honest and really open to it.  You do not need a priest or priestess.  You do not need to believe in a matrix or a 5d world or commandments or any of that.  The light will naturally guide you.

Will you fall?  Oh, probably. At least a couple thousand times.  Get used to it.   Just accept this as the price of admission to the next level of existence.  If you think that you awaken and suddenly are completely enlightened, you miss the human part, and this is the part missing when we think of those who are “enlightened” because I can tell you from experience that there is no great completely free person full of enlightenment sitting on a louts.  It does not exist.  And why should it?  It just isn’t what is real. Our humanness is.  We do not leave our humanness.  We renovate and perfect it by clearing it of the junk we put there so we can honor the Presence who made all of this for us here. It is then that you can glimpse how amazing this world is by how your own vessel, your soul made flesh is. But fall, yes.  Learn from it….not just how what you did made you fall….but about how compassion can make you better.  Awakening give you this rocket boost way ahead of anything you might have known, and yet, you still are little you.  It takes a while to catch up.  It may be true that it takes lifetimes before you can refine what you capture in awakening. But we have all the time in the world. We do.  Existing as soul independent of time, you can glimpse how time is not some kind of race.  The grace and compassion built into the creative force that is prana is that we have all of it and more than we need.

This work is like putting a big puzzle together….the puzzle is you…your self cleared of all the pieces that did not fit.  Errors, assumptions, beliefs that all sounded good at the time, but wound up not being quite right.  And each of these are like blocks for the true light.  So piece by piece, you feel this light shine into those cramped places inside of you…..and as each piece goes and is replaced by its more perfect piece, you can begin to feel all the other places where other puzzle pieces don’t fit.  Like tight shoes.  You wear them for a while and you one day realize, “You know, these shoes aren’t that comfortable!”  This is the beginning of the change.  Just awareness.  So simple.  Your own personal awareness has flowing through it the light of the All, and this force has the power to melt and erase and save you from all of these pieces that were installed incorrectly, or were less than joy.  You don’t even need to know HOW it works.  You just  let it in.  It is the single most intimate act you will ever do, letting that thing in.  No mantras are needed.  No prayers, no postures, no methods or techniques.  It is what U.G. described as the pathless path.  But that path, I will tell you, is simply amazing.
To awaken, you will do so when you are able to remove that which divides you.  The more of this you remove, the more this flow will move into you.  It is this simple. Some might call this removing blocks from the body, others will caution that you MUST breathe a certain way or else the kundalini will flow the wrong way….and I am here to tell you that this is all the result of the past error in perception because we really don’t have a lot of time left to get this right.  The Collective is pushing forward the energy of awakening now in what can only be described as a watershed moment in history. People who have not spent decades in a practice are waking up spontaneously.  This ought to tell you something.  This is not for the elite, the chosen.  It is WHAT everything is, and when you awaken it is just this very thing that you find stringing all of this together into something at once vast and also incredibly simple (like how a galaxy can be resolved into a speck in the night sky).
Sometimes a simple meditation is enough to bring you to enough unity within that “it” revs up and turns into full blown awakening.  Maybe being around someone who is awake will remind you of what it is “this” is.  I stirred awakening in myself, I know, by resolving a long-standing sense of guilt that I had with the universe about not doing enough in my inner life.  When I made peace with that (quite unexpectedly), the waters flowed from then on. My days as the old self were numbered….even as my essence has remained.  Two days later I turned and felt this thing…..like a far off song playing on the breeze….and I wondered….how could something be so beautiful?  “It” told me that I was part of a family of consciousness, that I belonged, that the story of this family would be what “it” would be revealing to me for the rest of my days here on the planet.  Its funny, because this “family” is actually everything that is.  That is the family.  Every leaf, every atom, every star and galaxy.  Every baby, every smile, every action, event, thought, all of it. Nothing is excluded.  And if that don’t shake your world, I don’t know what will.

You don’t NEED belief.  When you move from imagining what the Kingdom might be like to feeling it surging in your veins and traversing at light speed via prana in your energy system like so many invisible fiber optics, there will no longer BE a need for belief.  You now have EXPERIENCE.  As this experience accumulates, belief naturally can go by the wayside.  And this?  This is what Yogi Bajan (I am told—I don’t read his writings) is what makes you the most dangerous person in the world.  I am sure he used this for dramatic effect, but its good because in a way it is true.  It makes you this person who cannot be lied to. If you see the world of the 10,000 things as the Taoists describe it, but also feel the soul of the world, then you see the outer and feel the inner.  You don’t need belief to prop any of that up. You walk by someone and you feel their world of life moving all through them.  Loss, gain, love, hate, joy, frustration, and that incessant chattering thought.  We have all been this.  We are this. But we are potentially more.  So beyond belief, yes.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Sin, Karma, and the Beloved Disciple

I have been digging through some drafts of things that were half written in my blog, things that were not published.  I am working to get these out.  This entry is the easiest for a mid-week effort. 



The great wonder of our inquisitive spirit is that our need to discover overcomes our impulse to stay rooted in the past.  After fifteen hundred years of a solidified canon within the Christian church, we are getting a breathe of new air as discovered in the codices found that emerged in the 18th century and did not come into a broader light until the latter half of the 19th century.  These codices include the Gospel of Mary Magdeline, The Apocryphon of John, and the Sophia of Jesus Christ.  These, along with the Nag Hammadi codices represent a new voice that has emerged about the teachings of Christ that reveal an expanded view of the teachings of Jesus.  Perhaps because of their deeper mystical bent, they may have been dismissed out of hand due to either ignorance or a desire to keep these teachings out of the view of the masses.  And who really knows, except that many "scrolls" were ordered destroyed at the time of Constantine.  He had bishops in the newly formed church to go out and find some of these after the first big round of purges took place in the wake of the Councils that formally pronounced what the canonical books would become for the followers of Jesus. 

These "new" books help to shed important light on the depth of the teachings that this man and his followers were about.  Perhaps for their depth, they were not understood.  It is easy to see why they did not appeal to the burgeoning church of the day.  As was the tradition of the day, women were often called men, a term that is not too different from our use of "mankind" when we really mean both men and women.  In books such as the Nag Hammadi, you can actually see how those who were educated in the mysteries of his inner teachings would be called "male" even though they are female.  It was certainly something born of a sexist society, but it also suggested a certain level of worthiness to hear and discuss such lofty ideas and realities.  And so it is that Mary is referred to as "Him" in her own gospel.  She was an equal to the men. 

What I find so congruent with my own inner discovery about the nature of karma is how sin is discussed.  From chapter 8, which is the beginning of a fragmentary gospel it says:

. . . Will matter then be destroyed or not?
22) The Savior said, All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots.
23) For the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its own nature alone.
24) He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
25) Peter said to him, Since you have explained everything to us, tell us this also: What is the sin of the world?
26) The Savior said There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called sin.
What can often escape some of us is an important point being driven home here in this passage, which is that of the Essential Self, the "root" from which all things emerge out of.  Peter, in what is a very common line of questioning about our fallen nature in the world, he asks about the world and sin.  But.  Sin does not exist as such.  We are the ones who make this sin.  It is not on the shoulders of some craven world, but rather is the result of our adulterous nature. It is easy to think that Mary is saying that sin includes adultery (for instance), but the drift is subtle, powerful, and points to our delimna; just as in adultery we turn from another, we turn from that which can heal us which is what is IN us and is resolved back into the root of our nature not as fallen beings but as beings who, if we were able to, could heal ourselves.  In fact, the passage continues on to explain that this thing in us, our divine nature, is what can heal us and make us well.

This shifts our understanding quite radically, and is entirely in keeping with what I have learned is the nature of negative karma.  If you go through my writing back through the years, you will see as I have mused that karma is like pulling away from a magnetic compass bearing.  Doing this causes pain and trouble for us.  It is against our true nature, and yet because of where we are, we pull from that magnetic pole even as it causes us trouble.It is a fundamental turning away from our authentic nature, which we all seem to be afflicted with this turning away.

So instead of karma being some kind of punishment, or sin as being something real in the world, sin is not as we think it is.  But we have made in spiritual circles, karma into an image of ourselves.  Needing punishment for those who have harmed or hurt us, we prefer to keep the cycle of hurt going in a never-ending cycle of pain for pain.  We call this "justice" which is the old eye for an eye concept of how to handle our affairs.  We have been at this quite a while and we have prisons full of these offenders and we aren't any closer to fixing the problem.  That is because, on balance, we just aren't interested because to do so would be to crack the old paradigm wide open and reveal something entirely different underneath.  We continue to die by the sword because we live by it.  But this does not mean that karma is a punishment.  Its the idea that everyone is going to "get theirs" in good time that is what is amiss.  The world is all aflame, like a house on fire and some stay in to be consumed by the drama and thus the ongoing karma or we flee that building, never looking back.

I say it is time we begin to flee and not look back.

I will be the first to admit that I have at turns sought to flee my old life.  I say flee in the same way one withdraws their hand from a hot griddle.  Some, though, think that there is some honor in frying their hand to the marrow.  But there isn't.  The only advantage to feeling pain is that it teaches you to no longer desire it.  Yes.  Desire.  We have this lust for pain sometimes, even as we run from it.  It is this odd thing we tell ourselves.  We say we don't want it yet put ourselves right back where it can capture us.  Why?  It is a perennial question.  It just is.  And it may be that this thing will serve as our greatest teacher when the time comes to undo that next seal within us.  It might wind up being perfect.  But until that time, we keep it at arms length but without ever really letting it go.  it is the devil that we know, right?  We chose that devil.  When we can own up to it, something pretty powerful can happen.  We stop this yo-yo action with that which destroys us and we face it directly so that its appearance completely changes. 

The world is not a broken place, but perfectly made for an amazing level of realization to take place.  You will see what I mean when you can stare into the core of things and realize that the world placed within our world supercedes all of our current dreams about it.  It is this......vehicle for something remarkable.  Our bodies, made up of all the same matter, is also this. We are all of this coming to a level of awareness and realization.  The trick is to know how important it is to stop running from our demons and begin to face them.  And we can each liberate souls that are caught in these traps by no longer holding on to the old paradigm of an eye for an eye or of karma as a kind of cosmic punishment where no one is really involved except you, as though the divine has somehow checked out of the whole affair.  No, it is right there, supportive as always.  In a world as ours, there is never a moment when we have been abandoned.  Rather, we have taken leave of our inner divine.  It is there, though, marvelous and majestic.