This One…

This one…

So engrossed in identities made of fluff and stories.

This one…

Mistaken, the repetition of emotional loop tapes, playing out the same pattern – a sad song portrayed as a person.

This one…

Attempting to bear the weight of the world, holding accountability before an imaginary courtroom.

This one…

Mystery cloaked in mundane concerns, beaten by non-existent standards and pummeled by inhumane systems.

This one…

Feeling the illusory part, when actually the substantive whole with no possibility of ever really suffering from separation.

This one…

The benevolent sun warming this face the kind smile of this one in self-reflection.

This one…

Ancient and young, the never born, never dying is not threatened by concepts of beginning and end, hot or cold, life or death.

This one…

The limitless pulsing of benevolent life force, the root pattern of all experience.

This one…

Perceived best in liminal spaces, between inhale and exhale, the moments of birth and death.

This one…

Never seen, ever been, whole pristine, in between, unexplained, uncontained, never bound by dualities chain.

This one and only, absolute.

Could this one be truly you?

Kundalini is not a pasta dish!

My Kundalini experience emerged from a change in how I relate to my brain. I had just been accepted into a Masters program, although I struggled with adult ADD and had an awful time focusing my attention when attempting to read. While looking for ways to help myself in this dilemma I stumbled upon binaural recordings, specifically a low beta recording designed to increase focus. I immediately found myself able to keep my mind stayed on the words in front of me without drifting off to other thoughts. Prior to this experience I was so identified as my mind that never considered that it was an instrument that I held the power to direct. This led me to explore other recordings that could enhance my life experience. I came across one called “Awakening the Kundalini” by Kelly Howell and dove right in. Little did I know that the outcome was about to change the entire course of my life. I did the meditation and breathing exercises and found myself caught up in an expansive sense of orgasmic pleasure and oneness with all that is.  My world broke open to an inner expanse I had only tasted in the past through much prayer and silence.

This experience did not simply fade away but the next year was filled with a sense of awe, bliss and at times terror as the source energies collided with the fears of my rigid religious background.  I had spent most of my adult life as a devoted Evangelical/Pentecostal. I had been a street preacher, intercessor and missionary to Central Asian Muslims.  This experience was the exact thing I had warned others about. I had considered it to be a satanic deception and I was now immersed in its power. I felt this energy in my groin almost continually for the first year as if a small electric motor had been implanted there. I would often awaken in the morning with a sense of bliss, as if I was seeing the beauty around me for the first time.  At other times I would be gripped by an existential fear of damnation from my religious training and what I now know, was my ego’s terror of being found a fraud. The genuineness of the bliss and the taste of liberation drove me to cooperate with this energy rather than fight it.

This cooperation eventually led to a more stable relationship with this divine energy in my life. I studied the roots of my experience in Hinduism and mystical traditions from all religions and was particularly drawn to Advaita/Vedanta. I have explored many practices that enhanced my life and let them go when it was time to move on. These have included traditional chakra mediation, ecstatic dance, sacred sound mediations and tantric practices focused on the divine feminine. I will be forever grateful for this divine power that put me on the path of self-inquiry.

Falling for your...Self.

So I’m thinking… “I am not my thoughts” and realize that this is true but it is still a thought and nothing more.  So I try not to think, which means I am thinking about not thinking. Dang! After a while I again have a sense of knowing I am not my thoughts and feel slightly impressed that I may be in touch with my Self but soon realize it’s still my mind simply thinking in a quieter voice.  I get a little disgusted at my feeble attempts to escape my chatter when I sense something like a smile, a pure feeling separate from my pitiful mental gymnastics, but completely in love with them. I feel compassion, the real me I feel is compassion completely enamored with this chattering brain and insecure creature I experience. Perhaps a good indication of the Self is the incredible judgment free, compassion it has for the temporal self. The feeling hangs with me for a time flavoring my perceptions and interactions with others. I feel rather impressed with this real me. I really fall for this person hidden behind all my chatter.  It is no small task to learn to love your “self” warts and all with such a difficult tool as the human mind.  How much more would it be to come to know and love the true “Self” who can never view your human experience with anything but perfect compassion and love.

Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.

The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.

Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,

The heart that is not in love will fail the test.

Rumi

Transcending Practice.

Beyond the thin veil that masquerades as impenetrable density lies that unspeakable, eternal, ecstatic union of the One; from which all being emerges and remembers its true essence.

A spiritual practice is like the solid rocket boosters for the space shuttle, they are tools of departure designed to take you to the next stage of the journey. If we are so devoted to a practice that we refuse to divert or depart from it, that practice can become a hindrance to our development. Practice doesn’t make perfect it takes us to the place where we can realize we already were perfect even without the practice.  Loosen up and play with your discipline.  Go with you intuition.  Stop and focus on an area you sense has need.  Let your practice take you to a state where your imagination is ripe and explore what it is to be connected and free from limitation. 

Remember that all practice serves our weakness and need for simple constructs to help us explore the Self that is beyond all constructs and language.  Hold it loosely or it will obstruct the view of that which is inexpressible.  Be grateful for the practice, which in its proper application serves to trick our minds into perceiving beyond the illusory into the eternal. It is not an easy thing to trick the trickster and we long for that experience where the state of awareness remains.  Until then we devote ourselves to the journey and the cycle of doing the practice and transcending the practice.

Divine Feedback…(when the vibration coming from within connects to the source)

Divine Feedback…(when the vibration coming from within connects to the source)

I usually think of feedback as the irritating high pitched sound produced when the sound waves from the speakers make their way into the microphone and collide with themselves producing an exponential shift in wavelength and volume.

I have always been an aurally responsive person.  As a young child I used to rock myself to sleep every night as my radio played the pop/r&b hits of the early to mid-sixties.  The Jackson Five and Aretha, didn’t disturb my sleep at all; their music was my path to rest.  It would wrap me in its rhythmic tones and provide a safe place to surrender into the trance of sleep.

In pursuing a less dogmatic and more mystical journey of faith I have found immense help through the use of binaural recordings that stimulate the brain to produce wavelengths that are conducive to experiencing meditative, reflective and creative states of mind.  Other wavelengths aid my attention deficient mind to focus, read and study.  This is not a new phenomenon at all but simply an ancient one making use of new technologies.  Spiritual practice based on sound and music is found in every religion and particularly in the mystical traditions. There are Gregorian chants, the Hindu mantras, Sikh hymns, Tibetan Buddhist chanting and Hebrew Psalms. King David’s intimacy with God seems to have been strongly connected to both his connection with creation as a shepherd living in the fields and under the stars as well as the music that gave voice to His communion with creator.

Perhaps due to my Pentecostal roots I prefer my meditation to take a noisy path to solitude.  I use entrainment recordings, and am also learning to produce my own chants and intonations while being attentive to the effect of particular vibrations on my consciousness, my sense of well being and my emotional state.  At times this practice has produced profound experiences of connection and liberation that I would liken to “feedback” (when the vibration coming from within connects to the source) producing a transformation and magnification of the vibration that is beyond the self.  It is not I finding God, nor is it God coming to me from out there.  It is rather the source encountering the source in the creation and for a moment we have “divine feedback”. 

When feedback hits the auditorium all activity momentarily ceases and everyone gives full attention to the phenomenon.  Conversations stop, heads turn, people cover their ears and squeeze their eyes shut. When inner feedback is experienced the ceaseless chatter of thought is silenced and we are immersed in the great silence. For a moment the myth of separation is consumed by the critical mass of the vibration that has encountered itself in an amplified environment. The trumpet shall sound….and we shall be changed.  The mountains shall tremble at His voice and the feedback of Her almighty Marshall stacks! Rock On Great Spirit

Choose your battles well

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Choose your battles well, since battle on you must

There are battles built on strife and battles built on trust

Will you battle to conform to social expectations

To find significance in ideas and systems that promise validation

To carefully behave in ways that you think will protect you from

the wounds and judgments that remain buried in your subconscious

Will you fight to conceal the parts of your humanity that invite scorn and disapproval from yourself, if not others?

Will you struggle to be nice, offering your silent smile as a poor excuse for compassion

Putting away truth and honesty as if they were sharp knives too dangerous to be handled

Assuming we know what others can handle. Reinforcing the paternalism around us keeping us bound and restrained like infants in a playpen who need to be protected for our own sakes.

Is this, is this what you will fight for.

Or…

Will you battle to find your center, your true self

Will you courageously embrace your humanity and divinity

Will you cease stuffing and hiding, blame shifting and escaping

Will you boldly go where no one has gone before into the terrifying silence of your unprotected self

Will you be a player in someone else’s game or a co-creator of a better reality in a real living, breathing universe

Will you defy empire and champion community, measuring success by the least and the weakest

Will you battle from the ground up rather than the top down, toes planted in moist rich earth, soiled hand joined to soiled hand, cheered on, energized by all our relatives of creation seen and unseen

Choose your battles well, since battle on you must

There are battles built on strife and battles built on trust

My garden...

My garden this year may be small in size but it is pregnant with meaning. 

It is political in it's stance against against systems of dependence that sustain poison products.

It is Spiritual connecting me with the land I am made of that sustains every molecule of my being.

It is economic a living protest against chemistry set foods and products of addictive enslavement.

It is artistic a living aesthetic sensory delight to see, smell, feel and taste in reflective bliss.

As my garden reaches to the sun, screaming it's fruitfulness in ecstatic bliss my soul joins in divine celebration.