1. Technique for clearing karmic links / hooks with other people
Tip: Use this Karmic clearing technique whilst in the emotion, your can recreate the emotion that you feel towards that person through concentrated visualisation.
1. Ground yourself. Your earth base must connect with the emotional base. Ie. Root to heart. Breath internally between the two chakras to establish the link: Breath in from root to heart, out from heart to root.
2. Visualise the person
3. How do you feel?
4. What do you want to say to them? Maybe write it down.
5. Visualise chords running between you. They represent the karmic links.
6. Cut the chords. Keep going until you feel free…
7. Affirm your and their energy. Ie. protect your energy: eg.
Inhale to base of spine, heart opens , you ask:
‘ may what is mine return to me and what is theirs be offered back to them.’
8. List what you are grateful for from that person. This is a karmic goodbye.
9. If you like, do it from the other side. Visualise yourself as them and repeat the process.
2. Technique
Here are the basic steps of the contemplation. The theatre setting is simply a way of making yourself an observer of the process, of giving you a visual image of separating the subtle body from the physical body. It makes the feeling of clearing layers from the subtle body more real.
1. Sit quietly, center yourself on the breath.
2. Imagine yourself sitting in a theatre, in front of a stage.
3. On the stage is a fire pit, with a bright fire blazing in it.
4. You imagine your subtle energy body stepping onto the stage. It is as if you are dreaming, and watch yourself moving in the dream. You, as your subtle body, stand before the fire, and offer salutations to the fire. You say to the fire, ‘O fire of my awareness, sacred flame, you are the pure flame that illuminates my experience. I love and appreciate your beauty and power. Please receive the layers of karmas and obscurations that I will offer, and transmute them into light and energy.’
5. Now, you begin to peel off layers, skins of karmas from your body. You peel each layer off like a stocking, and throw it into the fire. As you do, think what the layer is that you offer. A layer of sadness. A layer of anger. An old idea about yourself. A layer of muscular tension. A layer of old concepts about who you are. A layer of beliefs imposed by your parents. A layer of suspicion. A layer of pride. A layer of fear. (With all of these, there might be a sense that there are several layers). The grief from an old love affair. A layer of expectation. As you peel off the layers, you gently offer them into the fire, and you see the fire blazing with each new layer.
6. When you sense that you have done, for now (you can always comeback to it at another time), look into the fire, and see that fire now flowing into your body. It fills your body with light and energy.
7. Sit for a moment feeling the presence of the fire, which has consumed so many layers of your karma and now blazes inside you as the loving light of awareness and truth.
8. You might want to bring the fire into your heart, now, and breathe gently in and out through the heart, letting the inhalation feed the glowing fire in the heart, letting the exhalation expand the energy of the heart flame through your body.
Hari Om tat sat.
Thursday 30 July 2009
Saturday 31 January 2009
Spiritual Contemplations and Suggestions
Fifteen Spiritual Contemplations
• You are spirit having a human experience not a human having a spiritual experience.
• You are one with all beings that have ever lived and ever will live.
• You are one with all things in nature and intrinsically linked to all things.
• You are one with god.
• You are not your mind, your body, your concepts or your upbringing. Your highest truth is that you are pure consciousness.
• You are infinitely powerful, creative and resourceful. What you focus on is created in reality.
• You choose your reality, whether consciously or unconsciously.
• All is perfect. Your true self choses to come into this body, at this time, in these circumstances; you choose you parents, your life situation and everything in between.
• You will leave your body at exactly the moment your higher self chooses and in exactly the way that your higher self chooses. You are your higher self.
• Physical death is a grand illusion.
• Each life is an opportunity for you to play out some karma from this and previous lives.
• If you do not find peace in this life, you will create new karma and have many other opportunities to come back to try again.
• Your higher individual self is already whole. It is the alpha and the omega, the yin and the yang.
Whilst in one sense you, in human form are here to learn different lessons, in truth you are here to remember aspects of your already whole self.
• We are not born equal. We are each equipped with certain skills, resources and levels of awareness carried over from previous lives.
• Everyone is doing the best they can all the time with what they have. If a person murders, they are doing the best they can. If they bring happiness, they are doing the best they can. When we understand this truth we can truly love unconditionally.
My Ten Suggestions
• Practice metta - Love everybody / Love unconditionally.
• Have no enemies.
• Forgive everything, for there is nothing to forgive.
• Use intuition - Listen to the still small voice of your heart.
• Practice Ahimsa – non-violence.
• Practice detachment and work with shadow aspects of your ego.
• Be devotional. Know that all heart felt acts can be acts of worship.
• Know thyself - Practice stillness / awareness / presence.
• Help others. Treat all people like they are cherished family members.
• Be creative - Express you higher self, true creativity comes from beyond mind alone.
• You are spirit having a human experience not a human having a spiritual experience.
• You are one with all beings that have ever lived and ever will live.
• You are one with all things in nature and intrinsically linked to all things.
• You are one with god.
• You are not your mind, your body, your concepts or your upbringing. Your highest truth is that you are pure consciousness.
• You are infinitely powerful, creative and resourceful. What you focus on is created in reality.
• You choose your reality, whether consciously or unconsciously.
• All is perfect. Your true self choses to come into this body, at this time, in these circumstances; you choose you parents, your life situation and everything in between.
• You will leave your body at exactly the moment your higher self chooses and in exactly the way that your higher self chooses. You are your higher self.
• Physical death is a grand illusion.
• Each life is an opportunity for you to play out some karma from this and previous lives.
• If you do not find peace in this life, you will create new karma and have many other opportunities to come back to try again.
• Your higher individual self is already whole. It is the alpha and the omega, the yin and the yang.
Whilst in one sense you, in human form are here to learn different lessons, in truth you are here to remember aspects of your already whole self.
• We are not born equal. We are each equipped with certain skills, resources and levels of awareness carried over from previous lives.
• Everyone is doing the best they can all the time with what they have. If a person murders, they are doing the best they can. If they bring happiness, they are doing the best they can. When we understand this truth we can truly love unconditionally.
My Ten Suggestions
• Practice metta - Love everybody / Love unconditionally.
• Have no enemies.
• Forgive everything, for there is nothing to forgive.
• Use intuition - Listen to the still small voice of your heart.
• Practice Ahimsa – non-violence.
• Practice detachment and work with shadow aspects of your ego.
• Be devotional. Know that all heart felt acts can be acts of worship.
• Know thyself - Practice stillness / awareness / presence.
• Help others. Treat all people like they are cherished family members.
• Be creative - Express you higher self, true creativity comes from beyond mind alone.
Saturday 27 December 2008
How to re-wire your brain.
Why do we sometimes act in a way that completely contrasts the way that we feel?
Why are we so prone to self-sabotage?
What is it within us that make our conscious and subconscious desires so out of sync, so totally disconnected?
Recently I watched a very interesting movie called 'The Secret' which has achieved quite a high level of commercial success. At its essence is a concept that has been rediscovered and re-examined by spiritual leaders and great thinkers throughout history: the law of attraction - A natural law that attracts those things that we wish for into existence.
The movie sights, among others, people who have attained great material wealth by using this law. Yet the teaching of 'the secret' seems to fall short, as it does not address the issue of what governs our true desires. You can dream of a nice new sports car, a dream house, a great partner and so on, yet unless our subconscious mind is in line with these material desires we may not get what we bargained for.
If subconsciously we feel unworthy (of love, of abundance, of health…) we will simply not get it, no matter how hard we try.
The techniques for attracting things into our lives employ 'creative visualization' (as termed by Shakti Gawain in her novel of the same name). Its techniques are similar to mantra and meditation and its purpose is to single pointedly focus one's attention on that which they desire to have in their lives. For example, one may repeat a positive affirmation on a daily basis or use visualisation exercises that put themselves in the position of already having that thing that they chose to attract.
Let's take another example from the movie. A gentleman who seriously injured his spine in an airplane crash heals himself against all the odds and makes a remarkable recovery that doctors said was impossible given the level of damage to his spinal chord. In the interview he tells us how he did it; by believing he could do it. He gave himself a time-scale and he achieved his goal: he walked out of the hospital 'by Christmas'.
The reason that the man in the movie recovered is far more than simply by repeating a mantra or visualising himself in a recovered state. He believed he was worthy of making a recovery at a very deep level. His core belief was that he could make himself well; he just knew it with every atom of his body and more than that, he knew that he deserved to be well. This is the true secret of attraction, the true secret of creating our own realities the way we want them.
In truth, we create our own reality one hundred percent of the time not just those times we employ special techniques. We are doing it without knowing it and this is sometimes called karma or the law of causality. It is not concerned with ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, simply cause and effect. That is to say, cause and effect of thoughts, words, deeds and every other action in the realm of the material world. For those of us who believe in reincarnation karma also takes into account the actions of previous lifetimes where the actions carried out previously have an effect on consequent lives.
It may be for this reason that most of the time we are just playing the unconscious victim of circumstances that we have created without seeming to have chosen them at all. For instance, we fall ill, then ask 'why has this happened to me?' and by playing the victim and placing the blame outside of our own creation we feed the illness and create more karma or dramas that we do not understand.
We are unbalanced. We live reacting to events rather than consciously creating our lives the way we choose them. The law of causality dictates that what we think, we are. So it is of the utmost importance that we dig down and get to this root in our mind where it is written how we truly view ourselves and the world around. All karma can be undone. This does not mean delving into our past or dissecting every part of our lives, it just means we need to live in a state of perpetual awareness / presence and non-judgmental observance.
So how do we align our conscious and unconscious minds? How can we create abundance in our lives and at the same time believe we are worthy of it without sabotaging our attempts at achieving our goals?
The answer is simple: 'Know thyself.'
Watch your mind, your emotions and your actions. Listen to the small voice that so often contradicts the intentions of our conscious mind. What does it say? Does it limit you or does it empower you? Limiting beliefs can be turned into empowering truths. It may take time as this involves changing your thought patterns by literally rewiring the neuron-network of your brain but it can be done and should be done.
The first step is to be a witness to you mind.
Nothing can stop someone from realising their goal once a strong resolution has been made and once they then make sincere efforts to realising that goal. The key is that you must want to change.
It is not a mystical or unattainable goal; it is for the most part physical. It helps to understand how the brain works.
There is a remarkable little pharmacy within the human brain, which is constantly creating peptides that correspond to electrical messages that the brain is transmitting. Peptides are basically short chains of amino acids. There are combinations that correspond to every emotion and thought pattern imaginable and they are being pumped into our bloodstream constantly. Once in the bloodstream they attach to the cells within our body and set off a series of reactions. We are hooked on them, so we create circumstances in our lives that correspond to the needs of those messages.
Imagine you have a job interview. The law of associative memory means that your concept of an interview is created through memories, ideas, feelings, emotions or thoughts; specific to each person’s life experiences and conditioning.
Maybe an individual associates interviews with failure, which is closely related to unworthiness, which stems from childhood trauma. All these memories and emotions have their own tiny nerve cells called neurons that link to one another, like branches, to form an individual’s concept of what an interview is and what it represents.
Our hypothalamus creates peptides that correspond to the individuals’ concept and circulates them into our blood stream in order to feed the addiction our cells have for these peptides.
We then create a platform by which we can experience the message, in this case unworthiness - so we will fail at the interview.
The peptides our hypothalamus produces match the emotions that we experience on a daily basis. Emotions are designed so that they reinforces chemically something in the long-term memory
So the message is held as truth before the event transpires. When the occurrence takes place, it reinforces the pre-existing beliefs we held about the occurrence and we become even more prone to repeat that behavior. The more we buy into these belief patterns 'I am always ill.' 'I always fail.’ ‘It’s sod’s law.’ And so on…the stronger and stronger the relationships developed in the brain between the neurons.
Also the cells within our bodies mutate so that they are more susceptible to the specific peptides they receive on a daily basis. Certain receptors correspond to certain peptides so if one specific peptide increases disproportionately in relation to other peptides the cell will adapt likewise.
The cell no longer has use for receptors that are not receiving the correct peptides. So in this case, when the cells divide, they do so with a greater number of receptors that meet the needs of the specific emotional neuro-peptides, those liked to failure or unworthiness.
As a result the new cells will have less receptors for all the other peptides needed for our health. Receptors for the absorption of vitamins and so on are fewer per cell; they are discarded in place of receptors that match the peptides most frequently produced by the hypothalamus.
This is how sickness is created as a result of psychological imbalance. This is why we don’t always get what we want.
We create situations in our lives that meet our cells chemical needs; even if that means making ourselves sick to the point where our bodies can no longer fight off disease and eventually die.
The Solution
Anyone who has circumstances in their life that they deem disagreeable, even in the tiniest way, have the ability to rewire their brains, wash away beliefs that do not serve them and stop reinforcing repeated behavioral patterns. It is simply a matter of observing the mind. By interrupting and observing the thought patterns we have, we are no longer responding automatically to stimulus but rather we are able to respond in a balanced, more objective way. The brain breaks long-term neuron relationships and no longer produces those peptides. In turn, when the cells multiply, gradually the receptors for those peptides will decrease allowing more room for other receptors to take their place.
The key is to learn to observe the emotion without becoming the emotion, do not let it take hold of you, just observe. This does not mean you resist it or that you do not allow yourself to feel it but just that you allow it to occur and watch it with the knowing perspective that, ‘ this is anger arising in me’ or this is self-hatred arising in me’ rather than, ‘I am angry’ or ‘ I hate myself’.
Here is a simple practice using breath and mindfulness to work with anger:
Trigger: Something happens to you and anger arises.
• You catch it before it goes any further.
• You observe it.
• Do not judge the emotion as being good or bad, just observe.
• How does it make your body feel?
• Go inside your body. Where in your body can you feel it?
• What do you feel? Are you relaxed or tense?
• How is your heart rate?
• Relax your body.
• How is your breathing? Regulate your breath, breathing deeply.
• Use you breath as your point of focus and return to it if your mind wanders.
• With each out breath, allow the anger to leave your mind / body.
• Does your heart rate change as you allow the anger to pass?
• Now just be in the body; do not let your mind wander to the past or the future.
• Be in the now moment, focused and acutely aware of your entire body whilst simply breathing.
The key to this is to be the observer, to observe the anger without embodying it. It is like taking a step back, out of your mind and just observing it from a safe, neutral distance. To do this you must be in the now moment, it is not possible to do if your mind is writhing around.
Feel the body, disengage from the mind, stop anaylsing, be the witness.
When your thoughts are fluttering here and there, your consciousness is dragged back into the mind, away from your safe distance of ‘no mind’. Simply return to the body, to the now. If you need to, observe closely some deep breaths then return to breathing normally. The anger will pass and over time you will learn to catch it earlier and earlier as the longer-term relationships in the brain start to loose their hold and become more distant relatives.
Later, you may rationalize the experience by making a conscious decision on whether this particular emotion serves you or not.
Do you deem it as positive or negative?
What memories and experiences do you have associated with this thing, what emotions do you attach to those memories? Invariably, if it is anger you are working with, it is not worth holding on to as it will eventually manifest as physical illness. So learn to let go sooner and sooner, deeper and deeper.
Now make a choice, do you wish to be angry, worried, anxious and ill? Or would you rather be calm, relaxed, forgiving and healthy. It is simply a choice and you now have the tools and the information to change your core beliefs and attract whatever you choose into being.
Om shanti.
Why are we so prone to self-sabotage?
What is it within us that make our conscious and subconscious desires so out of sync, so totally disconnected?
Recently I watched a very interesting movie called 'The Secret' which has achieved quite a high level of commercial success. At its essence is a concept that has been rediscovered and re-examined by spiritual leaders and great thinkers throughout history: the law of attraction - A natural law that attracts those things that we wish for into existence.
The movie sights, among others, people who have attained great material wealth by using this law. Yet the teaching of 'the secret' seems to fall short, as it does not address the issue of what governs our true desires. You can dream of a nice new sports car, a dream house, a great partner and so on, yet unless our subconscious mind is in line with these material desires we may not get what we bargained for.
If subconsciously we feel unworthy (of love, of abundance, of health…) we will simply not get it, no matter how hard we try.
The techniques for attracting things into our lives employ 'creative visualization' (as termed by Shakti Gawain in her novel of the same name). Its techniques are similar to mantra and meditation and its purpose is to single pointedly focus one's attention on that which they desire to have in their lives. For example, one may repeat a positive affirmation on a daily basis or use visualisation exercises that put themselves in the position of already having that thing that they chose to attract.
Let's take another example from the movie. A gentleman who seriously injured his spine in an airplane crash heals himself against all the odds and makes a remarkable recovery that doctors said was impossible given the level of damage to his spinal chord. In the interview he tells us how he did it; by believing he could do it. He gave himself a time-scale and he achieved his goal: he walked out of the hospital 'by Christmas'.
The reason that the man in the movie recovered is far more than simply by repeating a mantra or visualising himself in a recovered state. He believed he was worthy of making a recovery at a very deep level. His core belief was that he could make himself well; he just knew it with every atom of his body and more than that, he knew that he deserved to be well. This is the true secret of attraction, the true secret of creating our own realities the way we want them.
In truth, we create our own reality one hundred percent of the time not just those times we employ special techniques. We are doing it without knowing it and this is sometimes called karma or the law of causality. It is not concerned with ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, simply cause and effect. That is to say, cause and effect of thoughts, words, deeds and every other action in the realm of the material world. For those of us who believe in reincarnation karma also takes into account the actions of previous lifetimes where the actions carried out previously have an effect on consequent lives.
It may be for this reason that most of the time we are just playing the unconscious victim of circumstances that we have created without seeming to have chosen them at all. For instance, we fall ill, then ask 'why has this happened to me?' and by playing the victim and placing the blame outside of our own creation we feed the illness and create more karma or dramas that we do not understand.
We are unbalanced. We live reacting to events rather than consciously creating our lives the way we choose them. The law of causality dictates that what we think, we are. So it is of the utmost importance that we dig down and get to this root in our mind where it is written how we truly view ourselves and the world around. All karma can be undone. This does not mean delving into our past or dissecting every part of our lives, it just means we need to live in a state of perpetual awareness / presence and non-judgmental observance.
So how do we align our conscious and unconscious minds? How can we create abundance in our lives and at the same time believe we are worthy of it without sabotaging our attempts at achieving our goals?
The answer is simple: 'Know thyself.'
Watch your mind, your emotions and your actions. Listen to the small voice that so often contradicts the intentions of our conscious mind. What does it say? Does it limit you or does it empower you? Limiting beliefs can be turned into empowering truths. It may take time as this involves changing your thought patterns by literally rewiring the neuron-network of your brain but it can be done and should be done.
The first step is to be a witness to you mind.
Nothing can stop someone from realising their goal once a strong resolution has been made and once they then make sincere efforts to realising that goal. The key is that you must want to change.
It is not a mystical or unattainable goal; it is for the most part physical. It helps to understand how the brain works.
There is a remarkable little pharmacy within the human brain, which is constantly creating peptides that correspond to electrical messages that the brain is transmitting. Peptides are basically short chains of amino acids. There are combinations that correspond to every emotion and thought pattern imaginable and they are being pumped into our bloodstream constantly. Once in the bloodstream they attach to the cells within our body and set off a series of reactions. We are hooked on them, so we create circumstances in our lives that correspond to the needs of those messages.
Imagine you have a job interview. The law of associative memory means that your concept of an interview is created through memories, ideas, feelings, emotions or thoughts; specific to each person’s life experiences and conditioning.
Maybe an individual associates interviews with failure, which is closely related to unworthiness, which stems from childhood trauma. All these memories and emotions have their own tiny nerve cells called neurons that link to one another, like branches, to form an individual’s concept of what an interview is and what it represents.
Our hypothalamus creates peptides that correspond to the individuals’ concept and circulates them into our blood stream in order to feed the addiction our cells have for these peptides.
We then create a platform by which we can experience the message, in this case unworthiness - so we will fail at the interview.
The peptides our hypothalamus produces match the emotions that we experience on a daily basis. Emotions are designed so that they reinforces chemically something in the long-term memory
So the message is held as truth before the event transpires. When the occurrence takes place, it reinforces the pre-existing beliefs we held about the occurrence and we become even more prone to repeat that behavior. The more we buy into these belief patterns 'I am always ill.' 'I always fail.’ ‘It’s sod’s law.’ And so on…the stronger and stronger the relationships developed in the brain between the neurons.
Also the cells within our bodies mutate so that they are more susceptible to the specific peptides they receive on a daily basis. Certain receptors correspond to certain peptides so if one specific peptide increases disproportionately in relation to other peptides the cell will adapt likewise.
The cell no longer has use for receptors that are not receiving the correct peptides. So in this case, when the cells divide, they do so with a greater number of receptors that meet the needs of the specific emotional neuro-peptides, those liked to failure or unworthiness.
As a result the new cells will have less receptors for all the other peptides needed for our health. Receptors for the absorption of vitamins and so on are fewer per cell; they are discarded in place of receptors that match the peptides most frequently produced by the hypothalamus.
This is how sickness is created as a result of psychological imbalance. This is why we don’t always get what we want.
We create situations in our lives that meet our cells chemical needs; even if that means making ourselves sick to the point where our bodies can no longer fight off disease and eventually die.
The Solution
Anyone who has circumstances in their life that they deem disagreeable, even in the tiniest way, have the ability to rewire their brains, wash away beliefs that do not serve them and stop reinforcing repeated behavioral patterns. It is simply a matter of observing the mind. By interrupting and observing the thought patterns we have, we are no longer responding automatically to stimulus but rather we are able to respond in a balanced, more objective way. The brain breaks long-term neuron relationships and no longer produces those peptides. In turn, when the cells multiply, gradually the receptors for those peptides will decrease allowing more room for other receptors to take their place.
The key is to learn to observe the emotion without becoming the emotion, do not let it take hold of you, just observe. This does not mean you resist it or that you do not allow yourself to feel it but just that you allow it to occur and watch it with the knowing perspective that, ‘ this is anger arising in me’ or this is self-hatred arising in me’ rather than, ‘I am angry’ or ‘ I hate myself’.
Here is a simple practice using breath and mindfulness to work with anger:
Trigger: Something happens to you and anger arises.
• You catch it before it goes any further.
• You observe it.
• Do not judge the emotion as being good or bad, just observe.
• How does it make your body feel?
• Go inside your body. Where in your body can you feel it?
• What do you feel? Are you relaxed or tense?
• How is your heart rate?
• Relax your body.
• How is your breathing? Regulate your breath, breathing deeply.
• Use you breath as your point of focus and return to it if your mind wanders.
• With each out breath, allow the anger to leave your mind / body.
• Does your heart rate change as you allow the anger to pass?
• Now just be in the body; do not let your mind wander to the past or the future.
• Be in the now moment, focused and acutely aware of your entire body whilst simply breathing.
The key to this is to be the observer, to observe the anger without embodying it. It is like taking a step back, out of your mind and just observing it from a safe, neutral distance. To do this you must be in the now moment, it is not possible to do if your mind is writhing around.
Feel the body, disengage from the mind, stop anaylsing, be the witness.
When your thoughts are fluttering here and there, your consciousness is dragged back into the mind, away from your safe distance of ‘no mind’. Simply return to the body, to the now. If you need to, observe closely some deep breaths then return to breathing normally. The anger will pass and over time you will learn to catch it earlier and earlier as the longer-term relationships in the brain start to loose their hold and become more distant relatives.
Later, you may rationalize the experience by making a conscious decision on whether this particular emotion serves you or not.
Do you deem it as positive or negative?
What memories and experiences do you have associated with this thing, what emotions do you attach to those memories? Invariably, if it is anger you are working with, it is not worth holding on to as it will eventually manifest as physical illness. So learn to let go sooner and sooner, deeper and deeper.
Now make a choice, do you wish to be angry, worried, anxious and ill? Or would you rather be calm, relaxed, forgiving and healthy. It is simply a choice and you now have the tools and the information to change your core beliefs and attract whatever you choose into being.
Om shanti.
Sunday 7 December 2008
Be the Change
Have you noticed the subtle shift that is happening? There is an increasing number of people trying to make a change in the world. They are concerned about the agenda for a 'New World Order’, which many believe, is being pushed for by the leaders of commerce, politics, industry and higher still. The ultimate goal of this N.W.O. is said to be the centralisation of control and the implantation of an R.F.I.D. chip into all living humans on this planet in order that we live in a cashless society where the elite few can control the masses.
I think we all agree that over the years, we have been lied to, the question is: to what extent are we being mislead?
Whether you agree with this disturbing Orwellian vision is of little concern. However, I think one thing that we can all agree on is the fact that we are living in a fairly primitive and uncivilised time on earth right now. It may well be the most civilised times we can recall historically but that does not mean it is civilised or indeed fully evolved. Anyone who considers the times in which we are now living as being civilized should strongly question the rule by which they measure that opinion.
For years, we lived in the body as cave men; satisfied to fulfill our instinctual bodily needs just as animals do. We then moved on to incorporate our minds; for centuries questioning how things work and some asking important philosophical questions such as: why are we here? Some moved on to the next level; to live in their spirit, to contact that higher part of themselves that point towards the infinite.
So we have body, mind and spirit. Where are we now? In which realm do we most commonly dwell? What is the main drive in most peoples lives? Clearly we are living in our bodies and our minds. We eat, we exercise, we watch T.V. but what do we do for our spirits?
Even many of those practicing religion, going through their daily prostrations, prayers, pujas or chants are simply going through the motions without any thought of transcendence. We occasionally get glances of transcendence during emotionally charged moments in our lives or during intensely calm or still moments, but the moment invariably passed and we revert back to dwelling in our busy minds and our demanding bodies.
Is this as far as we have evolved, one small step above the animals we farm and use to satisfy our bodily wants? We cannot call ourselves evolved until we are whole. We are unbalanced and unstable whilst we deny our souls.
We are born of the flesh but must become reborn of the spirit. Whilst we live this illusion of separateness, whilst we judge and kill others or leave others to die whilst we turn the other way, we are no more evolved than the innocent beasts that have no conscience.
A change is happening. People are waking up, becoming reborn of the spirit. Realising truths that lie at the core of each of us if we just have the courage and the patience to look for them. More people are seeing through the thin veil of illusion and more people are talking about change...
For any real change to come about, there has to be far more than just a material shift in power. Providing people with information or rallying them up to demonstrate definitely has a place in the struggle but it is rather like treating the symptom instead of the cause. People need to be empowered before they can have the firm conviction to make a change in the material world.
Aid work is fantastic, so is providing people with a platform to discuss these world issues. Something else that I think is even more important though is spiritual practice. This has everything to do with the state of the world right now. If more people knew the true nature of who they are and the limitless power they have within them, treating people as if they were separate from us would simply end.
I have a holistic view of the global situation. I truly believe that the people get the leaders they create. The dishonest, corrupt, toxic governments and leading world forces are a direct reflection of the global community that are governed by them, more than that, they are manifestations of them. I am not talking about individual nations; I am talking about the combined communal consciousness of the whole globe. The faults of the governments are the manifestations of the faults within our own selves. We need to deserve something more and I think we almost do already: now is the time for the shift.
We need to 'be the change' and this is not an external thing, it is internal. Until we ourselves have raised our own vibrations, detoxified our own minds and bodies and found peace within our selves, how can lasting change come about? I feel that political activism is a fantastic push in the right direction but it is important not to attack the 'powers that be' without first observing the hypocritical nature of such a struggle. We call a system corrupt, yet we are corrupt ourselves; we call them liars, yet we lie ourselves. We also act in anger, we have jealousy, hatred, fear and so on; toxic emotions which are all traits that those in power act from in equal measure.
'We are only human' people say and therein they disempower themselves and allow such fear based emotions to govern their lives, all the while bemoaning and blaming those they falsely deem more powerful than themselves. These negative beliefs must be turned around into empowering truths. Everyone must work on himself or herself. They must practice self-awareness, observe their thoughts, the emotions that rise, the words they speak, their actions, the junk they put into their bodies and most importantly people must take responsibility for their seemingly imperfect lives and rise above all these illusions which they falsely call reality purely due to their conditioning.
I believe that we have been controlled and conditioned over the years but now that that some of us are starting to see through this veil it is important to no longer point the finger of blame solely at the 'powers that be' but take back our power on an individual level in order to raise the vibration of the planet.
By raising our own vibration we raise the vibration of countless others around us, the margin in exponential; one enlightened soul bridges the gap for hundreds of thousands of others.
Spiritual practice coupled with activism is the way forward, be it Yogic, Taoist, Buddhist, Shamanic, new age or other practices, the work has to be done. The more people, the better. It is nothing like half of the world population that needs to reach a high vibration in order to bridge the gap, let's remember 'the hundredth monkey' experiment and others like it.
Evolution does not stop with us being simply vertical and coherent. If this were true we are nothing but intelligent animals operating from our lowest energy centre, which we share with the animals as their highest one! Our potential is limitless and once we tap into this en masse, problems such as global dictatorship will be solved in the blink of an eye.
A great shift is coming and it is now that we need to do the work. We need to get out of our minds, out of our limiting beliefs about who we are and step into the infinite to be leaders in this spiritual revolution. Then change will come. All that is needed for change is for enough people and ultimately enough leaders to experience the truth of whom they really are and all conflict, poverty and environmental ignorance will end - in an instant.
Right now we are at the tipping point with two distinct paths before us. One leads to heaven and the other to hell. The choice is ours and the tools for our survival are already here. We just need to use them and have a determination of steel. First by recognising all things that are evil (that is to say born of ignorance), even in the subtlest way, and throwing them aside in place of a way that leads towards light, towards truth, towards the source. For there, everything is written and all truths can be known. A new world order is exactly what we need. We need nations to live harmoniously with one another by realising the universal truth that we are all one, not just symbolically but at the highest level of truth. This can only be known in the heart space, in the place where our true nature resides and shines. When this unity is achieved the idea that one nation can starve whilst another one bloats will seem as inconceivable as cutting off ones own limbs to feed ones belly.
Yes, this sounds idealistic but this is what we are striving for and it can be done. Countless teachers have foretold it as our destiny but it will take a lot of work and patience. We cannot fight those who are pushing for a new world order by playing by their rules, by fighting fire with fire. It will not work. The only way is through a spiritual shift in consciousness.
Right now we are operating from our lowest, most animalistic, instinctual energy centre. Some are born into a higher level of vibration and manifest their genius as mystics, artists, leaders, and so on. The truth is: we all have the potential in this life to raise our vibration to a higher level. Once again, the tools are here already, they have been for time immemorial. It is time to dust them off and set aside the backward and destructive bonds of dogma that have held us back in the past and set aside also the body and mind toys that we have played with in our evolutionary infancy and reach for the adult tools of self-discovery. We must seek truth that we may evolve to adulthood and beyond.
with pranams.
I think we all agree that over the years, we have been lied to, the question is: to what extent are we being mislead?
Whether you agree with this disturbing Orwellian vision is of little concern. However, I think one thing that we can all agree on is the fact that we are living in a fairly primitive and uncivilised time on earth right now. It may well be the most civilised times we can recall historically but that does not mean it is civilised or indeed fully evolved. Anyone who considers the times in which we are now living as being civilized should strongly question the rule by which they measure that opinion.
For years, we lived in the body as cave men; satisfied to fulfill our instinctual bodily needs just as animals do. We then moved on to incorporate our minds; for centuries questioning how things work and some asking important philosophical questions such as: why are we here? Some moved on to the next level; to live in their spirit, to contact that higher part of themselves that point towards the infinite.
So we have body, mind and spirit. Where are we now? In which realm do we most commonly dwell? What is the main drive in most peoples lives? Clearly we are living in our bodies and our minds. We eat, we exercise, we watch T.V. but what do we do for our spirits?
Even many of those practicing religion, going through their daily prostrations, prayers, pujas or chants are simply going through the motions without any thought of transcendence. We occasionally get glances of transcendence during emotionally charged moments in our lives or during intensely calm or still moments, but the moment invariably passed and we revert back to dwelling in our busy minds and our demanding bodies.
Is this as far as we have evolved, one small step above the animals we farm and use to satisfy our bodily wants? We cannot call ourselves evolved until we are whole. We are unbalanced and unstable whilst we deny our souls.
We are born of the flesh but must become reborn of the spirit. Whilst we live this illusion of separateness, whilst we judge and kill others or leave others to die whilst we turn the other way, we are no more evolved than the innocent beasts that have no conscience.
A change is happening. People are waking up, becoming reborn of the spirit. Realising truths that lie at the core of each of us if we just have the courage and the patience to look for them. More people are seeing through the thin veil of illusion and more people are talking about change...
For any real change to come about, there has to be far more than just a material shift in power. Providing people with information or rallying them up to demonstrate definitely has a place in the struggle but it is rather like treating the symptom instead of the cause. People need to be empowered before they can have the firm conviction to make a change in the material world.
Aid work is fantastic, so is providing people with a platform to discuss these world issues. Something else that I think is even more important though is spiritual practice. This has everything to do with the state of the world right now. If more people knew the true nature of who they are and the limitless power they have within them, treating people as if they were separate from us would simply end.
I have a holistic view of the global situation. I truly believe that the people get the leaders they create. The dishonest, corrupt, toxic governments and leading world forces are a direct reflection of the global community that are governed by them, more than that, they are manifestations of them. I am not talking about individual nations; I am talking about the combined communal consciousness of the whole globe. The faults of the governments are the manifestations of the faults within our own selves. We need to deserve something more and I think we almost do already: now is the time for the shift.
We need to 'be the change' and this is not an external thing, it is internal. Until we ourselves have raised our own vibrations, detoxified our own minds and bodies and found peace within our selves, how can lasting change come about? I feel that political activism is a fantastic push in the right direction but it is important not to attack the 'powers that be' without first observing the hypocritical nature of such a struggle. We call a system corrupt, yet we are corrupt ourselves; we call them liars, yet we lie ourselves. We also act in anger, we have jealousy, hatred, fear and so on; toxic emotions which are all traits that those in power act from in equal measure.
'We are only human' people say and therein they disempower themselves and allow such fear based emotions to govern their lives, all the while bemoaning and blaming those they falsely deem more powerful than themselves. These negative beliefs must be turned around into empowering truths. Everyone must work on himself or herself. They must practice self-awareness, observe their thoughts, the emotions that rise, the words they speak, their actions, the junk they put into their bodies and most importantly people must take responsibility for their seemingly imperfect lives and rise above all these illusions which they falsely call reality purely due to their conditioning.
I believe that we have been controlled and conditioned over the years but now that that some of us are starting to see through this veil it is important to no longer point the finger of blame solely at the 'powers that be' but take back our power on an individual level in order to raise the vibration of the planet.
By raising our own vibration we raise the vibration of countless others around us, the margin in exponential; one enlightened soul bridges the gap for hundreds of thousands of others.
Spiritual practice coupled with activism is the way forward, be it Yogic, Taoist, Buddhist, Shamanic, new age or other practices, the work has to be done. The more people, the better. It is nothing like half of the world population that needs to reach a high vibration in order to bridge the gap, let's remember 'the hundredth monkey' experiment and others like it.
Evolution does not stop with us being simply vertical and coherent. If this were true we are nothing but intelligent animals operating from our lowest energy centre, which we share with the animals as their highest one! Our potential is limitless and once we tap into this en masse, problems such as global dictatorship will be solved in the blink of an eye.
A great shift is coming and it is now that we need to do the work. We need to get out of our minds, out of our limiting beliefs about who we are and step into the infinite to be leaders in this spiritual revolution. Then change will come. All that is needed for change is for enough people and ultimately enough leaders to experience the truth of whom they really are and all conflict, poverty and environmental ignorance will end - in an instant.
Right now we are at the tipping point with two distinct paths before us. One leads to heaven and the other to hell. The choice is ours and the tools for our survival are already here. We just need to use them and have a determination of steel. First by recognising all things that are evil (that is to say born of ignorance), even in the subtlest way, and throwing them aside in place of a way that leads towards light, towards truth, towards the source. For there, everything is written and all truths can be known. A new world order is exactly what we need. We need nations to live harmoniously with one another by realising the universal truth that we are all one, not just symbolically but at the highest level of truth. This can only be known in the heart space, in the place where our true nature resides and shines. When this unity is achieved the idea that one nation can starve whilst another one bloats will seem as inconceivable as cutting off ones own limbs to feed ones belly.
Yes, this sounds idealistic but this is what we are striving for and it can be done. Countless teachers have foretold it as our destiny but it will take a lot of work and patience. We cannot fight those who are pushing for a new world order by playing by their rules, by fighting fire with fire. It will not work. The only way is through a spiritual shift in consciousness.
Right now we are operating from our lowest, most animalistic, instinctual energy centre. Some are born into a higher level of vibration and manifest their genius as mystics, artists, leaders, and so on. The truth is: we all have the potential in this life to raise our vibration to a higher level. Once again, the tools are here already, they have been for time immemorial. It is time to dust them off and set aside the backward and destructive bonds of dogma that have held us back in the past and set aside also the body and mind toys that we have played with in our evolutionary infancy and reach for the adult tools of self-discovery. We must seek truth that we may evolve to adulthood and beyond.
with pranams.
Sahaja Yoga
I noticed a small, calm group of people sitting upright in chairs with their shoes off and their hands opened towards a makeshift shrine. Behind each seated figure were people whom appeared to be waving their hands around in a rather methodic and deliberate way. As i gazed across the vast circus that was the recent Yoga Show at Kensington Olympia, wandering towards the scene, I caught the eye of one of the practitioners and as I approached the area, I was kindly invited by a friendly looking lady to take a seat. 'Would you like to try?' she asked me. 'Try what?' I though to myself. As i looked around the partition walls of the workshop area I assumed that this was some kind of energy channeling system like reiki which I am already a practicioner of. I saw familiar images of yogic symbols, chakra points and lots of channels and arrows presumably indicating energy channels within the subtle body.
I was invited by the man who was to be treating me to take off my shoes and sit with my hands open towards a photograph that held pride of place on shrine that was to the front of the workshop area.
I closed my eyes, trying to place the face from the picture. I had seen it many times before, presumable during my time in India where she is a well know and much loved guru. Her teaching is Sahaja Yoga. A meditation practice which involves the raising of the Kundalini to the crown chakra thereby attaining self-realisation. Her name is Sri Mataji Nirmala Devi.
So I sat with my eyes closed whilst the man treating me moved his hands around, above and beside me. I could often sense where his hands were and other times i felt a gentle stroke as his hands brushed lightly over the crown of my head or side of my arm. I sank into a deeply relaxed state and concentrated on the energies flying around inside my body. I had a strong vibration at the base of my spine and i could feel that I had a cold swirling energy trapped in the lowest section of my back. I knew it was pushing to move up my spine but it was blocked, trapped there. I performed Moolabandha a few times by tensing one of the muscles in the pelvic floor area and visualised the kundalini snaking its way up my spine. The sensation was sublime. The cool tingle enveloped my spinal column and sent shivers over my skin and up the back of my neck and head to my crown. After some time he asked me to place my hand above my crown chakra and to my amazement I could feel a gentle flow of cold air being release which he later told me was my kundalini freely flowing through my subtle body. Most treatments lasted around fifteen minutes by all accounts. I was there around forty minutes, basking in the energy that flowed so freely through me.
Since that time i have read a little about Sahaja Yoga and have been struggling with it's concepts. At first i felt that it went against the teachings i had taken regarding the kundalini. The awakening of kundalini as i understand from books i have read from Satyananda Yoga involves clearing the subtle body by detoxifying the physical body and the mind through hatha yoga, then awakening the Sushumna Nadi through fairly in depth kundalini tantra. Then it is necessary to awaken each chakra individually starting with the third eye chakra then working up from the root chakra to the crown chakra. By all accounts, this can take years, if not lifetimes so when i am told in one day that i have my kundalini flowing out the top of my head I really felt i had to do some reserch on this. For one thing the blissful experiences described by saints and yogis over the years far exceeds the sensations i experienced during my treatment though there was definitely something pleasant flowing within me.
It seems from my reading that the awakened kundalini that is spoken of in yoga is something that once experienced in its full force leaves no doubt in ones mind. It is a powerful and life changing experience that few yogis attain. One explanation is that the sensation i felt is the release of kundalini yet because i have not yet completed the cleaning of my mind and body, the sensations are less intense and very short lived in comparison to full awakenings reached by those whom awaken kundalini through this and other forms of sadhana having first fully cleansed themselves. So for me, i think the kundalini raised with a weak intensity and then lay dormant again and looking back through my life, i have had other experiences similar to this where i have felt energy moving up my spine then seeming to disappear.
Since this experience i have been attending weekly Sahaja Yoga classes in my home town of Bristol. The classes are given freely and are held in many major cities around the world. I may start to practice this alongside my hatha yoga routine as i feel they are absolutely complementary and are working towards the same awakening.
with pranams.
I was invited by the man who was to be treating me to take off my shoes and sit with my hands open towards a photograph that held pride of place on shrine that was to the front of the workshop area.
I closed my eyes, trying to place the face from the picture. I had seen it many times before, presumable during my time in India where she is a well know and much loved guru. Her teaching is Sahaja Yoga. A meditation practice which involves the raising of the Kundalini to the crown chakra thereby attaining self-realisation. Her name is Sri Mataji Nirmala Devi.
So I sat with my eyes closed whilst the man treating me moved his hands around, above and beside me. I could often sense where his hands were and other times i felt a gentle stroke as his hands brushed lightly over the crown of my head or side of my arm. I sank into a deeply relaxed state and concentrated on the energies flying around inside my body. I had a strong vibration at the base of my spine and i could feel that I had a cold swirling energy trapped in the lowest section of my back. I knew it was pushing to move up my spine but it was blocked, trapped there. I performed Moolabandha a few times by tensing one of the muscles in the pelvic floor area and visualised the kundalini snaking its way up my spine. The sensation was sublime. The cool tingle enveloped my spinal column and sent shivers over my skin and up the back of my neck and head to my crown. After some time he asked me to place my hand above my crown chakra and to my amazement I could feel a gentle flow of cold air being release which he later told me was my kundalini freely flowing through my subtle body. Most treatments lasted around fifteen minutes by all accounts. I was there around forty minutes, basking in the energy that flowed so freely through me.
Since that time i have read a little about Sahaja Yoga and have been struggling with it's concepts. At first i felt that it went against the teachings i had taken regarding the kundalini. The awakening of kundalini as i understand from books i have read from Satyananda Yoga involves clearing the subtle body by detoxifying the physical body and the mind through hatha yoga, then awakening the Sushumna Nadi through fairly in depth kundalini tantra. Then it is necessary to awaken each chakra individually starting with the third eye chakra then working up from the root chakra to the crown chakra. By all accounts, this can take years, if not lifetimes so when i am told in one day that i have my kundalini flowing out the top of my head I really felt i had to do some reserch on this. For one thing the blissful experiences described by saints and yogis over the years far exceeds the sensations i experienced during my treatment though there was definitely something pleasant flowing within me.
It seems from my reading that the awakened kundalini that is spoken of in yoga is something that once experienced in its full force leaves no doubt in ones mind. It is a powerful and life changing experience that few yogis attain. One explanation is that the sensation i felt is the release of kundalini yet because i have not yet completed the cleaning of my mind and body, the sensations are less intense and very short lived in comparison to full awakenings reached by those whom awaken kundalini through this and other forms of sadhana having first fully cleansed themselves. So for me, i think the kundalini raised with a weak intensity and then lay dormant again and looking back through my life, i have had other experiences similar to this where i have felt energy moving up my spine then seeming to disappear.
Since this experience i have been attending weekly Sahaja Yoga classes in my home town of Bristol. The classes are given freely and are held in many major cities around the world. I may start to practice this alongside my hatha yoga routine as i feel they are absolutely complementary and are working towards the same awakening.
with pranams.
Account of an Ayahuasca Ceremony
Recently I attended a workshop in London led by a Shaman named Juan who is from Peru. He currently lives in the central hills of Mexico and frequently travels around the globe teaching about the Shamanic traditions and the way in which they honor and worship mother earth and the ‘father’ which is the personification of the spirit world. We were to be given a psychoactive medicine previously reserved only for the priests and high practitioners of the Shamanic traditions. In a small room, eight of us sat wide-eyed and apprehensive listening to him talk.
After a few hours of teachings from Juan we were given a dose of Ayahuaska; a powerful root that grows wild in central and South America, which is concentrated into an infusion liquid form so that it can be drunk as a medicine. The Ayahuaska is said to have properties that allow the user to enter into the spirit realm, thereby leaving behind the material world of the senses, the body and the mind.
We took the medicine at 2.50 PM and after an hour of patient quiet we took another dose. As I lay back once again and waited for the effect of the drug to take hold of me I breathed deeply and tried to clear my mind of any expectations or pre-conceived ideas of what the forthcoming experience might entail. Having heard and read a number of accounts over the years it was difficult to enter the experience without expectation, which can so often lead to disappointment or disillusionment.
About twenty minutes later the effect of the Ayahuaska took hold of me in such an explosion of sensation that it was like stepping off a cliff when one expects to find solid ground. It was truly exhilarating and my whole body rushed intensely with the psychedelic effect of the drug, enhanced and guided by the fantastically sonorous music that pulsated through my being. My eyes were closed lightly as the kaleidoscope of technicoloured patterns and images danced and swirled in my visual cortex: a psychedelic disco of vibrant, morphing images. My face and body felt as if they were being pushed and twisted into new dimensions. Then I was flipping and flipping backwards through the ether whilst vivid mandalas evolved and transformed before my eyes. I lay back and enjoyed the experience, observing, surrendering and not resisting in the least, the experience was euphoric and I walked a fine line between exhilaration and an overwhelming onslaught of sensations.
As the initial rush of the drug peaked and leveled off, the psychedelic quality wore off slightly and I was able to think more lucidly of the teachings we had had that morning with Juan. He had told us to seek the heart of the heart, the spirit, that which transcends the ego. So I breathed deeply into my heart and affirmed my focus clearly on the heart. My memory of this part of the experience is blurry and I do not remember how long or to what extent I achieved that intention but I do remember being in a blissful state for some time.
I then remember becoming more aware of my body’s sensations and functions. I could feel that my body was part of me where before I had felt as if completely running free in either the spirit world or in my mind – I am not practiced enough to know which. I could feel that my feet were cold, although my mind reminded me that I was in a well heated room that I had in fact thought may have been too warm just before lying down to start the work. The blanket covering me felt thin and I couldn’t even be sure that it was even on me and had to check by moving my fingers slightly. I was sure I was cold and even if I wasn’t, I wanted to be in my sleeping bag, cocooned and unexposed.
I opened my eyes for the first time since starting the work and as I did so I felt a rush of anxiety. That I was in any way concerned with the external world felt to me at that time as some kind of failure but damn it, I was cold I told myself. As I opened my eyes to the Victorian cornice above me, it twisted and churned in a blurry haze and my eyes hurt, offended that they we forced to look outward into this material world of ceilings and sleeping bags. I sat up, unsure of myself, suddenly feeling very self-conscious, my head swimming and my body swaying as if it contained an active and powerful ocean. With some effort I craned my head to the left to see my sleeping bag stretched out alongside my mat on the floor. Any other time I would have easily and automatically unzipped it and climbed in without effort or concentration but that day, in that state, I looked at the shiny green length of material beside me and my heart sank as I realized there was no way on God’s fine earth that I would manage to navigate myself into the comfort of it. I saw my hoody next to me and in despair I threw it over my feet in one movement, covering my feet and my shins creating a body length covering that stretched from my yak wool blanket that covered my upper torso down to my shins. I noticed the water bottle beside me and felt the dry sticky interior of my mouth. I drank in huge gulps unaware and insensitive to the huge amount of water I was taking in. I had drunk about a pint and I lay back down in the hope of regaining the bliss state that I had experienced previously. But everything had changed, the seed of fear had been planted and now the battle was to commence on driving that seed from my mind, even as it sprouted, began to shoot, and the roots grew deeper and deeper, holding fast...
It was soon after this that it became clear to me that an Ayahuaska ceremony is a lot like daily life. We are constantly accosted by the ego; through our relationships, our emotions, our senses, our expectations and our fears. The difference with life and an Ayahuaska ceremony is that the later is an unnerving compression of the former. During the trip I found myself confronted with utter bliss and joy, followed very soon after by abject terror or intense sadness. We all fight these demons in our own ways in daily life, but in fact we usually avoid confronting them, instead reliving the experiences that they draw forth again and again.
During this part of my experience at the ceremony I knew there was no way to avoid these demons of ego. They had truly taken hold and with bitter vehemence were attempting to block me from re-entering the blissful realm of spirit that I had previously luxuriated in, instead pulling me back down to the realm of the mind and of the darkness it threw at me. The music had changed and the deep and throbbing auming and toning that filled the room and my psyche now felt menacing and deeply sinister. The visuals were as intense as before except now they were weird and unbeautiful. There were still patterns and mandalas but they were now made up of pink hunks of flesh or the twisted faces of unimaginably ugly monsters that I intuitively knew were unnamed aspects of my negative ego. Monsters so dark and destructive that they ruthlessly morphed and renewed themselves in a constant deluge that they should never be discovered, analysed or destroyed. This lasted a long time, though time was a truly inapplicable concept whilst in that state, minutes might have passed or hours, it mattered not.
The images that appeared to me, whilst shocking, did not frightening me and I understood that my ego was simply throwing all it had at me in a barrage of illusion. I was not buying into it and inside I was laughing to myself as the dark patterns, ghouls and monsters attempted to torment me. Once I returned to my body I realized that there were tears running from the corners of my eyes over my temples and I became sad. In fact I have never felt so alone and disconnected from the outer world. I was sad that there were so many demons within me, and that they persisted so vehemently. Again my ego was trying to hold onto the self-image that it held. It felt disappointed that I had so much work to do, so much further to go. After a long period of this torment I felt like giving up, I felt angry that I had been given the drug. The guy who handed me the medicine had said ‘have a good trip.’ I felt that I had failed, that I was having a ‘bad trip’ and I blamed myself.
Looking back, I felt sadness because I felt as if my heart had been broken. I had been shown love and had experienced the elation of it and then it was gone. Like a door had been shut and was now guarded by the most foul and hateful parts of my ego.
As I lay there, I realized there was no escape. Opening my eyes was painful, nauseating and all round unrewarding. The idea of leaving the room was not an option, not least because of the lack of mobility and the paranoia that gripped me when I interacted with the outer world. Also, I didn’t want to give up on the experience, the stubborn idealistic ego in me would stick it out to the grim death and try to regain that feeling of love I now knew was accessible. I thought to myself only I can heal myself, nothing external and certainly nobody else can do this for me. There was no way to ‘take my mind off it’ as it were. I wasn’t even sure if my mind had anything to do with the experience, was I in my mind or out of it? I am still not sure.
Thinking came in waves of clarity then complete confusion and it took all my concentration to complete a lucid thought. I realized that I still had this sense of duality, of good and bad and I desired so much to return to the sense of unity. I thought tactically, I thought of my other teaching, of what weapons I had to defeat this beast within me. I remembered the phrase we were advised to heed ‘let go, let go, let go.’ And almost as soon as I visualized these words the torment began to cease, the winds of my psyche changed and I was on the path to freedom. I breathed deeply into my lower dandien then into my heart. I placed my hands on my heart and allowed reiki to flow into it, painstakingly visualizing the symbols that usually came to me so naturally. I used all the tools I could muster to fight back the relentless onslaught and I remember the words of my friend and teacher ‘find a balance between effort and surrender.’ Was I resisting as were warned not to do? Or was I letting go as we were advised to do? I really didn’t know. I surrendered completely; I let go and the dark invasion ceased. Before long I was once again weeping, this time with joy, laughing at myself and my unstable mind.
I felt that the shadow had lifted and maybe that the effect of the drug may be wearing off. I listened to the music and it guided me to a place of absolute surrender and devotion. The energy of the bhanjans rang through my very being with exquisite clarity and awakened a well of love and compassion within my heart. The feeling of metta, of unconditional love, reconnected me with the hearts of the others in the room and I no longer felt isolated or self-conscious in fact I had images of such exquisite beauty that I felt my heart swelling and bursting forth with enough love to embrace the entire universe. I was singing and dancing within and part of me wanted to express it externally but there was no need as the inner world was far more real and for me at that time. I felt somehow disconnected from my body, my senses, and the people around me and yet at the same time I felt intrinsically connected to all things in the universe. I had images of my family and had a profound experience with my father as an infant. I knew that these were more than imaginings and that I had met with these souls in another realm, another level of existence. I felt such exquisite love for them. The level of love that I experienced once I had transcended the demons and terror of the ego was so profound and so empowering that I know I am changed forever. That feeling stayed with me a long while until the effects of the vine wore off and I came round.
Once lucid again I knew, I had been shown to the heart of the heart, the heart of love, the heart of truth, of god and I am now able to love my life and all things truly and completely. Once the illusions and the demons had been transcended, the space in which I was left to dwell was one of purity, of euphoria and though I know intuitively that I have been there many times before, I know I will always hold that joy in my heart for eternity.
We shared our experiences in the group and I observed that many of the others had had similar journeys to my own. We bid Juan and his helpers goodnight and we chatted and laughed together for a long time before leaving the space where we had shared such a profound experience.
with pranams.
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