The Ripple

I'm now at the point where I have experienced a sustained, intense expansion of awareness that has continued for several weeks.  I'm plowing through a lot of material related to the expansion of consciousness, and it's been a bit wild in terms of the feeling of direction and the precise delivery of answers to questions.  It's a linear experience, as if one bit of information leads to another, to another.  I will have a thought to search a word or phrase online, hours will pass and I will go through a lot of reading that reflects certain things back to me with frequency, seemingly coincidental.  I feel like I'm being taught some things about myself and the nature of the universe.  The radiating point has been continuous.  For the past few days though, I realize I'm awake and the first thing I check is to see if I feel the sensation pulsating in my back.  Unlike the first morning, it doesn't wake me up now, and most times I feel it once I stand up out of bed... I check for it first thing. 

Earlier I mentioned something that I called "information echo" but now I have a better term for it: The Ripple.  The Ripple occurs when the same subject, word or situation comes up randomly three or four times or more in a day.  It serves, it seems, as a means of direction, as if the universe is saying, "Yes".  The pace at which these ripples have been coming in has increased and it's much easier now for me to spot the phenomenon as some kind of energy stream that can be tapped into.  On the surface, that kind of idea now makes more sense to me than ever, because I believe in the principle of vibration, one of the Hermetic Laws.  I have begun to focus on keeping The Ripple part of my daily life.  When I think about it, I get the sense that it could be a form of subtle communication from the universe, in a cat-like way.

The concept of ripples as they pertain to intention and communication has been part of my mosaic since I first started exploring what I called The Field in an earlier post.  The Field is a vast void, shrouded in a mist near what appears to be a bottom, yet when I have found myself there during meditation I am usually just above the mist.

The Compass Of The Heart

These past few days, since the 21st when I experienced the sensation in my back, the radiating pulsation point is still there.  This is completely uncharted territory for me.  It's as if I've keyed into some kind of energy grid inside which is a massive volume of information, like a window into something.  I perceive it to be Source Energy.  I believe I can say that confidently.  As I type even now, the radiation point pulses to varying degrees, and in doing so it has been directing my attention over the past several days.  When I have a thought, and if I hold it for a second or two, the pulse will increase in intensity with certain thoughts.  I can't help but wonder if I have activated my light body and tapped into another energy stream as a result.  So much has been happening lately that's new that it will take me some time to sift through and assess all that I've been experiencing.  I'll try and at least include the highlights here.  Although I have been and continue to write in notebooks, I could probably post ten posts in a row in order to do a play-by-play with what has been happening to me.

On Christmas Eve I was invited by a friend to participate in a feeding of the homeless on the west side.  I was taken by my friend to the home of someone I had never met.  For the past several years, this person and friends of his have spent Christmas Eve preparing meals for the homeless.  My friend didn't give any details before we arrived, so I somehow suspected that we were going to some kind of soup kitchen or organized food line to serve food, like you'd see typically on television.  It wasn't that at all.  It was a small house in Venice with four or five people.  They had a few tables in the back yard, and a couple of people were already going through stacks of food supplies and separating items to later include in bags.  I wondered just where these homeless people would be exactly.

The vibe at the house was warm and everyone quite friendly.  The house's owner was brimming with hospitality and made us some ginger tea before we started.  Shortly thereafter, my friend and I joined the other two people in the backyard and began an assembly line based on their instructions.  We loaded each bag with a hot meal, several sweets, fruit, chips and water and we finished in what seemed like minutes, despite what originally looked like a daunting task.  Everyone was motioned back into the house, as the owner had prepared us a fine Jamaican home-cooked meal that was really out of this world.  After we finished eating, again, I wondered where these homeless people were exactly who were going to receive the food stacked up in the backyard. 

The coastal west side of Los Angeles is filled with homeless people.  One of the first jobs I had when I moved here in 2002 took me to the 3rd Street Promenade, a closed street two blocks in from the beach.  For a shopping area, it's probably one of the nicest in LA sans Rodeo Drive and parts of Robertson Blvd.  There is always busking going on and occasionally you can see an act performing in the street that's pretty cool.  Against this backdrop, the homeless are all around, and you can find them en mass as you go further south into Venice and beyond.  As Harry Shearer has said in his weekly radio show "Le Show" for years when he recorded it in Santa Monica, it's the "home of the homeless."

A few more people had arrived as we finished eating, and shortly thereafter we got up to leave.  Typically I don't go into situations where I don't know exactly what we're going to be doing.  I'm all about spontaneity, but charged with a task in a new environment, I like a plan, a layout, or an outline so that I have it in my head as I go along.  This time I found myself just going with the flow.  The radiation point in my back was glowing in its pulsations from the time we had arrived at the house.  I had been in this new state of awareness that seems to be growing since my first visit to the Lake Shrine.  By this point, as we're leaving, the fact that I still had a question about just when the homeless were to begin strolling into the backyard to get the food gave the entire experience a surreal quality.  Everyone was so peaceful and happy and it was infectious.  I remember checking myself over and over thinking, "This feels like I'm dreaming.  It really does."

We all walked into the backyard, and someone opened the fence that was adjacent to the street.  The house was on a corner.  We walked closer to the food, which was near the fence and someone said, "Okay, how are we gonna do this?"  My first reaction was "Do what?" and my friend was told to pull her car around to the fence opening.  There was a palpable feeling of expectation, and the maxim "There is wisdom in uncertainty" flashed through my mind as I talked with the others while my friend brought her car over.  We started packing the cars.  My friend's car's trunk and inside were packed with just under two hundred meals.  We were motioned over to the house owner, where we said a prayer and he explained that the food already knows where it's going, we would just have to be open to receive the information.  My body vibrated at the notion of such a thing.  Years ago my New York attitude would have laughed that off as a joke.  Here I felt anticipation as if we were being guided, and my new awareness would lead the way.  The awareness is so blissful that it's completely easy to yield to it and the radiation point in my back, which has been constant since it started, was and continues to act as a guage.  I've never experienced anything quite like it before.

I got into my friend's car, feeling rather awed at what had just happened at the house.  It was all so random.  Here we were now with all these meals... and then a thought came to mind quickly and powerfully... "Be still and be like a balloon on your friend's finger, following a step behind."  Normally, that would not be what I would do, let alone have such a thought.  My stance would be, "Okay, here's a map.  Let's start here on the north side and canvas parallel streets going south until we get rid of the food."  My friend is normally the same way, but she was also in the same zone of awareness that I was in, or close to it, having had her own profound experiences of consciousness recently.

We were on the same wavelength.  So were the others at the house.  I could feel it.  After I had the thought, my friend asked me, "So what are we gonna do?"  She felt the same way that I probably looked in my somewhat awed state... we have a ton of food and no plan.  I shared the thought that had come to mind with her.  Immediately the next thought that came was, "Use the Compass of the Heart", which I told my friend and she agreed.  We would just pick a point to start, grab several meals and walk from the car until we found people who needed them.

The evening turned out to be one of the most compelling, sad, happy and surreal nights I have ever had.  We went through all of the meals in under three hours.  The only reason it even took that long is because we sat and talked with many of the people who wished to do so.  People just down on their luck, veterans, runaways, the mentally ill, the physically disabled.  It was intense.  Several times as we moved in the car from place to place, we would encounter something unexpected, as if you approached a stranger on the street that gave you a sad picture book, where that moment in time would be captured and put into the book.  This was a type of experience that was something new.  I wouldn't have been in the right place to connect with its fullness if I hadn't been maintaining this new awareness that I found myself in.

As we drove around, my friend and I were mostly silent in the car, with the only words spoken being, "Wait, here, stop," or "This way."  We were guided to each individual with this concept of the heart's compass.  The pace at which we would find people accelerated as the night went on.  We had no flashlights, no maps, just the food.  At one point we stopped in front of a bank.  There was a very tall, older man who looked to be in his 70s in tattered clothing speaking with someone on a bicycle.  As we passed by they were on our right.  We couldn't see the man's face as he was facing the bank talking to the cyclist.  We pulled over about a block down and I took out a meal to give to him. 

As I approached, the entire time this man's back was to me.  We hadn't made any eye contact.  I got about fifteen feet from him, before the person on the bike even looked away from him to me, and he put up his right hand and said to the bike person, "Excuse me, this gentleman has something for me."  He then turned around as he extended it toward me - to take the food - as I was still a few feet behind him.  The look on my face must have been one of shock.  As we had met people over the course of the night, each instance had a measure of some kind of synchronistic quality to it, but this one was the most intense until that point.  We exchanged words and I went back to the car... vibrating again.

We met some wonderful people that night.  I could got into a lot more detail but I'll save that for another time.  This experience felt like pure magic... each encounter.  It had a measure of deja-vu all through it, as if it had happened before or that my friend and I somehow knew all of these souls from some other incarnation... like we had ties to them directly somehow.  Sure, we as humans are all connected, just like we're connected to all of the life forms on the planet.  We come from the same place, so why shouldn't that be true?

The very last meal that we gave out that night was the most profound.  It was the longest gap between finding people of the evening.  We ended up in the Venice area near the beach, and this street was very quiet.  It was shortly after 9pm.  Over the course of the evening my friend and I had gotten adept at using this Compass of the Heart and we were really getting off on how accurate it was and how smoothly things had been going.  Thirty minutes had gone by and we were standing at the edge of a darkened parking lot right at the edge of the beach.  I kept feeling the energy point and direct me to a spot to the left of the center of the lot, but it looked as if nothing was there.  We then walked out into the parking lot, saw something which turned out to be an empty car.  So we just stood there, feeling the breezes and wondering why we were in a dark place with only one meal left and nobody else around.

Again, I could feel energy directing me in the direction beyond the car we were in front of.  We walked around it, toward the sand and we both said words to the effect that there was nothing out there.  We kept walking and I approached what I thought was a couple of trash cans.  I almost stopped and turned around when I could see that one of them wasn't.  I got closer.  Here was a woman of small physical stature in a wheel chair.  My friend was several feet behind me at that point and I motioned her over... "There's someone here."  I knelt down next to this woman and as my eyes focused on her I could see that she was either of Pacific Islander or Native American descent.  She wore a hat and a light jacket and I could see after a few moments that she probably hadn't used her legs in many years.  "What could she be doing here in the dark like this with no one anywhere around?"  I started asking if she was okay and told her that we had a meal for her as my friend approached.

"Nobody loves me!!!" she cried.  My heart broke into a thousand little pieces right there.  "I'm all alone now."  As we put the food in her lap she continued to tell us about her situation.  She had injured her legs in her teens (she was much older now) and she was telling us about when her parents had died.  My heart breaks all over again as I write this and think about that dear soul.  "I need a blanket!  I'm cold!!!" she blurted out after we had positioned the food in her lap and gave her utensils to use.  I then had a thought about my friend's favorite beach blanket, which was in her trunk.  I knew how much she loved it.  We had a picnic on the beach several weeks earlier and she brought that blanket.  As I turned to my friend to ask her if she wanted to part with the blanket, I noticed she was already running back toward the lighted street where the car was.  I stayed and talked with the woman in the wheelchair as she started to eat.

The sad fact is that there are people who need this kind of help every day of the year.  There are so many of them and their numbers seem to be growing.  I'll never forget that woman, or that night.  This was a brand new kind of experience.  We didn't really have to "do" anything with the food distribution.  We just had to be present in the moment and listen to our hearts and the hearts of others as we were directed.  I also received a special blessing afterward.  After we were done passing out the food, we returned to the house were we assembled the meals, where more people had assembled.  We didn't get home until late.  More good food and hanging out temporarily moved the homeless people that I had met earlier from my mind. 

 

When I got home, I made it a point to meditate and say prayers for all of those whom we had met.  I was meditating for about twenty minutes when in a flash, I saw in my mind's eye what looked like Paramahansa Yogananda approach me quickly from behind, laying two blankets over my shoulder (insert goosebumps here).  The first blanket looked to be my friend's red plaid beach blanket.  The second blanked was white.  Incredible.  The radiating point continues on the right side of my back.  I wonder, based on my current mosaic, if some of those that we encountered that night had connections with us from another time.  If they were mighty spirits who were here this time around in very humble form.

Something Entirely New - Going Down The Rabbit Hole

Whoah.  I've had my share of spiritual and consciousness-related experiences over the years, and a handful of them have been extremely intense.  At some point I'll try and recount them here if they come to mind or I find context for them.  The change in awareness that I have been carrying these past couple of weeks has continued, and something happened to me yesterday that was entirely new for me.  Yesterday I was walking in a hallway of my home when I felt something, probably best described as an icy finger, touch my back above my left shoulder blade.  I stopped and immediately swung my right arm back over my shoulder to touch the area, because the sensation, although it stimulated nerves (or felt as such), it was not something I'd never felt before. 

I suppose you could say it was similar to those occasional phantom pains we can get from time to time... super-quick and gone before you can react.  But this was different and not painful, just intense.  It felt like a mixture of hot and cold.  As I swung my right arm behind my head so that my hand could touch the area, the sensation that began as a singular point began to travel down my back diagonally, moving down toward my right side and leaving a trail of sensation in its wake.  My next reaction, right arm still bent back behind my neck, was to flip my head back to look up, because my brain immediately reacted as something must be leaking from the ceiling.  There was nothing there.

What's even more strange to me is that where the sensation settled, now on my right side below my shoulder blade, a sensation remains.  It's not the same as what I described as feeling like someone's icy cold finger anymore though.  Now it feels like a constant pulsation, radiating from the point where the movement stopped.  I only slept for about three hours last night but what got me up this morning was the new radiating sensation.  I have been meditating and reading a lot during waking hours, as if driven.  The drive I feel is like that of what I called a New Spiritual Wind in a previous post - that I've experienced every so-many years or so, but this is different.  It's as if my attention is being directed.  As I move from one book or meditation to another, it's as if there is a constant information echo through which certain teachings or principles appear to me at a rate of frequency that would be most comparable to advertising.  Wow.  More as this develops.

Living In The Heart

A friend recently gave me a book by Drunvalo Melchizedek, entitled, "Living In The Heart".  I was somewhat familiar with Drunvalo and his work with indigenous tribes around the world, but had not read any of his books.  I came across his work through a website called Spirit of Ma'at that contains some interesting reading and resources and I'd visited the site over the years a few times.  I've read a fair amount over the last few years, but not since "Far Journeys" and "Journey of Souls" have I felt such a profound impact from something I've read in the field of consciousness studies.

There is a meditation in Drunvalo's book that I found to be incredibly useful and enlightening.  In addition to some fascinating stories about indigenous tribes around the world, the book largely focuses on activating the Merkaba, or human light body.  The Merkaba is our vehicle to other states of awareness and ultimately other dimensions. 

                                                  Merkaba (or Merkabah)

It starts with the premise that the heart is the (only) place of creation.  The mind helps with the construction and logistics, but anything we create has to initially come from our hearts.  The mediation starts with what's called The Unity Breath, where you being a process of deep meditative breathing focused on being in unison with your spirit guides.  The meditation then moves to an act of intention whereby you are sending thanks to first Mother Earth... female energy (I've noticed that visual thanks in the form of graphics and pictures work really well for me... flowing in streams).  The second step is to radiate thanks to the Soul Grid, the energetic life grid that all things on and around the earth are connected to.  The third step is to extend thanks then to the Universal Source... male energy.  I've found that picturing visuals spiraling out to and between all three and circulating from there works well and is really easy to do.

The Shadow Effect

A quick recap:  Since I started this blog as a sort of very occasional consciousness diary for myself in 2007.  A lot has changed since then.  Things continue to do so, and overall that's good, as change is good.  I've often had to reinvent myself as I've plotted along this path of life and I also think that is a good thing.  One who sits and just looks without moving, inevitably just sits.  I have my mosaic that I've talked about in earlier posts... my reality tunnel through which I perceive the world.  I actively deconstructed the one that I grew up with, starting in the mid 90s with a mantra of "clear the static" in the hopes of opening up and exploring my inner self. 

That process continues, albeit increasingly in terms of frequency.  Maybe that just happens if we're open to it as we age.  I have been to the aforementioned Lake Shrine several times now, and the awareness that I attained after my first trip there has stayed with me, along with a deeper sense of insight into a lot of things.  It's palpable at times.  People who have known me often use the word "deep" to describe me.  Diving, as it were, into the realms within one's self have now taken a leap that I didn't know was there, although in reality I did somehow.

I had learned in school about the Shadow Self, and have had the occasional conversation with others about it, but for some reason it was never anything that I took the time to explore actively within myself.  The whole concept was this sort of nebulous blob that I associated with my id in the Freudian sense, the deepest part of my being, that I viewed as my dreamscape alone for some reason, despite traveling to the same place via meditation.  I am rather eccentric in a savant-like way sometimes.  Perhaps I had put a wall up and remained, for the most part, oblivious to the idea that my shadow self contained individual, identifiable components.  Or maybe... I didn't really place too much emphasis on direct exploration earlier within myself because I was already doing it in other ways... unguided journeys brought on by various stimuli in my younger years and through character exploration later in acting, which I explored for about six years.

The lid really blew off for me this week when I discovered Debbie Ford and her film, "The Shadow Effect".  There had been a noticeable shift in awareness since my first visit to the Shrine.  Whether the Shrine had anything to do with it or not is questionable, however, the convergence of several other things mentioned in previous posts, Dark Night of the Soul among them, certainly played a role in the timing of this event for me.  I've never ordered any material from Debbie, nor have I seen the film until this point, despite wanting to.  I have mixed reactions to commoditized  self-help items.  Sometimes I indulge, but if if someone is pushing merchandise as my ticket to some new awareness, they can forget it.  I left studying Kabbalah at the local center for that reason.  Thankfully, this time I didn't have to (buy anything).  After watching the trailer I took the process of identifying my shadow components into active meditation with intent.  It's not difficult as long as you're honest with yourself.  These are parts the Self that we are all-too familiar with, yet refrain for the most part from sharing in public.  If and when we do, if we're not balanced with a shadow component, it can have disastrous effects, as the movie trailer shows.

This is rare for me... on my first attempt, many things fell into place.  First, I realized that I had already identified a few shadow components almost immediately.  I had already brought some of these larger components, albeit craftily in some areas but usually with some effort, and in the settings in which they had manifested at their times, with love.  The largest component took the longest and was the hardest.  In hindsight it has also been the most worthwhile.  These components have to do with part of my personality.  Some came out within my acting experiences, others in other places.  I've played characters my whole life, so in that respect it's nothing new.  But Debbie's process involves seeking out those parts of yourself, inviting them to come to you one by one, to acknowledge them as part of yourself and thank them for their assistance when they've helped you.  

For example, an angry component of your shadow self has probably protected you when others have hurt you.  The point is acknowledgment, thanks and then sending love to that part of yourself.  I have since reflected that if these components are a key to expanding one's awareness and growing as a being.  I spent one long evening sifting through all kinds of stuff in my mind, trying to identify as many components as I could find.  Ultimately, I could only find three main ones, although each had less powerful personalities.  At one point after pondering the three primaries for some time, an image of four triangles appeared in my mind.  It no sooner appeared than the outer triangles all shifted counter-clockwise, rotating on their sides until the one on the left had moved to become the top of the larger triangle.  I had an epiphany and it felt as though I had crossed some kind of line in terms of self realization.

What I saw was an equilateral triangle.  The center triangle, I felt, was a representation of my essence on a soul-like level.  Once I had seen the triangle and subsequent shifting of the outer parts, and I thought about how I had been engaging my shadows for the most part openly for some time, I felt more whole as a being than I have in some time.  I wondered if this was part of the "remembering" that I have been chasing after all of these years.  Certainly in terms of providing context in served a similar person.  

I walked away from the meditation with what seemed like a quantum leap of awareness, as if I had found a discarded schematic for an electronic device that I was trying to understand.  Things have really been moving swiftly lately.  I feel like for a time I have been making some progress in terms of raising my vibration and understanding my true nature as a conscious being.  This experience is a breakthrough for me; huge... and it was right in front of my face all along.  Connecting the dots illuminated what is a different world view, an enhanced mosaic.

The Lake Shrine

My awareness has continued to change over the past year, and it seems as though as time goes on, my awareness continues to change and shift at a faster rate, as if it's getting to be more expansive and accelerating while doing so.  A friend recently invited me to go to the Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, California, which is the community that neighbors Santa Monica to the north, on LA's west side along the coast.  She gave no reference about the facility other than to say that she and other friends (some of whom I have met recently) often go to the Shrine to walk, meditate and enjoy the energy.  "It's beautiful.  You'll love it," said my friend.

After agreeing to go, I Googled the Shrine and was amazed to find out that it was started by Paramhansa Yogananda, who's "How To Be Happy All The Time" was a book that I had been using as a daily inspirational text for the previous two months.  I had purchased the book a few years prior, and it resurfaced after my move back in September and had been on the table next to my bed.  I had been reading it daily.  "A pleasant seeming coincidence," I first thought, which was followed by a "must-go" energy just because of the measure of same.  I had no idea that since my first two trips, days apart, that my awareness would change again, once during my first visit and again during the second, which is an awareness that is strong and I've managed to hold it since.

The Shrine is a fascinating place.  It's part of the Self-Realization Fellowship, which was founded by Yogananda.  There is a spiritual wishing well and a area that serves as a monument to the world's religions.  On the higher end of the grounds (it's spread up over a hill), there is a temple that holds weekly services and times of teaching. Territorially, it's not that large, but it contains both a beauty and an energy that is uncommon, at least to my experience.  I've spent a fair amount of time in nature, and I am easily awed with beauty.  That much has been true my whole life.  As a rebellious teenage punk in Greenwich Village around '81 or '82, I was taken by a friend to a shop for the first time that was then on 8th Street called Poster Mat.  As we walked around in the store, one particular laminated word collage poster caught my eye.  At the center of the word collage was the phrase, "Never lose your sense of wonder."  The rest of the poster had compelling words in different colors.

"That works for me," I thought, and I bought the poster.  It really resonated with me.  Many years later I was searching for something completely unrelated online and came across the author who was said to have originally coined the phrase that had become one of my mantras.  I don't recall his name at the moment.  I was going to say Dalton Trumbo (one of the original Hollywod Ten and an ultimately blacklisted author during the McCarthy era) but I don't think that's correct.  Perhaps it was a quote from Shel Silverstein, author of "The Giving Tree" and a man with many, many memorable quotes.  I know there's a band from England called Yeti who released a song by that name, but the saying is much older than that.  Words to live by wherever they came from.

Back to the Shrine.  This place is like a living diorama of the world in balance, at least that's what I was perceiving in terms of the energy that I felt there.  It's very powerful.  The Yogananda's teachings had already become a part of my daily practice by this point, and I considered it a real blessing when speaking with one of the staff members there who was kind enough to give us some of the history of the site.  Yogananda had a saying during his time here, "Whenever you think of me, there I will be," or words to that effect.  I couldn't help thinking about the seeming measure of coincidence after going through a few months of consulting "How To Be Happy..." on a daily basis.

When you look into who this being was, the people whom he affected and the nature of the Shrine and how it came to be, it's astounding.  The Beatles, in particular George Harrison, played a role in the development of the site, which was in its previous incarnation, according to the staff, a gravel pit.  The Yogananda had then been living in the LA area for some time and had the desire to construct such a place.  Without any physical effort, though only meditation, Yogananda placed himself within the mind of the gravel pit owner, repeatedly, over time.  Eventually the owner came to him in person, to which Yogananda replied, "What took you so long?"  and plans ensued for him to to secure the space for the Shrine from the then-current owner, whom I believe gave him the land or did so at a special price.  For me, this was a huge spiritual lesson.  If only I could do such things... if we all could... and if we could... surely the world would become a much more interesting place where unity could grow, instead of division.

I have since returned to the Shrine and taken some photos, which maybe at some point I'll put into a slideshow of some kind.  As I said, the energies there are very powerful.  I'm so glad my friend turned me on to the place and I hope to go there regularly.  I have since found that listening to George Harrison's "Dark Horse" album and its lyrics have taken on a whole other level of meaning, especially the song, "Give Me Love," which is a masterpiece.  My respect for George, which was already high, has hit all new heights as a result.  What an amazing individual.  It was also he (George) who financed Monty Python's "Life of Brian".  What fascinating person and bringer of good great things to the rest of us.  Without Python, my life would have been different.  They rewrote the concept of comedy on so many levels.  Harrison's insights into the human condition, which is found in the music he left behind, are profound and have such a delicate, true-feeling resonance to me, as if the universe itself was singing through him.  I'm so thankful that I haven't lost my sense of wonder.

Strange Odyssey

Recently I spent a month as a juror in a very serious case involving life and death.  I had been called many times in the past in various states of residence, but had never been picked and never wound up serving on a jury.  I was the last thing that I wanted to do.  Fortunately, the judge in the case was an interesting, seemingly well grounded individual, which helped to lessen the overall alternate reality feeling of such a venue.  During the entire complex time over many weeks, I managed to remain as grounded as I could, spending break periods and other times in as meditative a state as I could manage to create.

The whole ordeal was rather surreal.  Deja-vu moments for me are often somewhat infrequent; at least not that frequent, yet this experience seemed like I had stepped into another reality and at the same time the cast of players in this drama all seemed very familiar to me, almost in a creepy way.  Not negative in that sense, but creepy in that there seemed to be familiarity there that resonated with me on some levels but I couldn't find any substantiating reasons why I was having these particular feelings.  Suffice it to say that my inner being has been left with a nebulous sort of "this means something" feeling that I can't find any context for.  It could be anything I suppose, but walking into a deja-vu that lasts for weeks is an odd thing to comprehend. 

Weird

I recently relocated and was sitting alone on my bed in my new apartment, thinking about something.  It was not a windy day, and there wasn't a fan blowing any air.  It was just peaceful and quiet.  Suddenly I heard (with my physical ears) "Yooouuuuuuuu."  As this word was spoken, by who or what I have no idea, the word came in a rush of air, as if the source blew the word into my ear in the way a fan could if it could speak when turned on in a high speed setting.  It blew into my ear just like that, and I could feel rush of air hit my ear and the left side of my head.  My first reaction wasn't fear though, as odd as that might sound after such an occurrence.  In my younger years, something like that would have flat-out scared the crap out of me.  What I felt was more a curiosity than anything else, followed by a vague sense of guilt for nothing in particular, if only because of the insistent, powerful tone of the voice.  I rarely hear anything such as that audibly, if ever, in the course of daily life.  As such, it remains a curiosity at this point.

Something Random Written

There are elements of stability present in my life at this point but things are certainly not as they were.  I miss my former partner, companion and partner in crime very much.  I wish her all the best.  Life for the past year or so has been getting tougher, and my two jobs - making money by creating and selling virtual reality landscapes to customers internationally has taken a beating due to effects from the overall economy (as well as the host company's foibles) and my other job at a local friend's dot com seems like it will be ending soon, which will leave me in a place that I haven't been in quite some time.  I'm trying to remain as positive as I can and take to heart the fact that this existence is a learning process that breeds spiritual growth.

I recently came across a paragraph that I had written several years ago, although I'm not sure quite when since it was on a page pulled from another notebook and placed into the back of a notebook that I happened to open.  It must have been from early 2004, as near as I can tell.  Ironically, it's also an example of me being at odds with my writing.  As I believe I stated somewhere earlier, I keep a lot of notebooks and also have a tendency to just throw some of them away after a few years.  I'd almost rather not write anything, much less read it back to myself.  The thing is, I have no recollection of writing this at all, which is strange.  I can usually picture where I was when I wrote something or heard a particular song for the first time.  Who am I talking to in this paragraph?  I have no idea.  I don't even know where the words came from or why.  Either way, in my present situation I find some sort of comfort in them...

"My words are like water, my thoughts like cheap wine.  Turn again Wind of Ways and bring to me Time.  Open your doors once again and begin to share with me the secrets hidden within your halls.  Open to me and pour yourself on to my body ~ Run through my entire being ~ Cover me with your flood and rush of all the universe's knowledge.  Speak to me like your spoke to me before - Like you spoke to the billions of stars as they formed so many billions of times.  I am a vessel, your vessel.  I do indeed know you and you me.  Let the circle once again remain unbroken and let us share in the grand infinite knowledge of all things.  Here I am.  Whenever always."

There were other ramblings at the bottom of the page...

"Spool.  Spools of time.  Wheels.  A Wheel.  The Wheel, turning."

"Here again.  For what purpose?  Again.  Always.  Nevermind."

"Is there any need to remember when I was asleep?  Is there?  Is there?"

"Like a familiar theme song of someone coming home."

"If someone should sing, is it... joyful?"

It's all just something random written, but sometimes coming across notes like that can help add some perspective to one's current state of affairs.  I don't claim to know much about anything, and as I said early on, I am only the sum-total of my experiences.  I take everything with a grain of salt, working on the mosaic, trying to make some sense out of what seems just as random as events in daily life can appear to be.  I don't believe anything happens by chance anymore.  Hermetically speaking, there is no such thing, as hard as that can be for my physical mind to sustain sometimes, especially when I feel things aren't going my way, so to speak.  There is just infinite possibility and situations are created by cause and effect.  This I must remember and take to heart.

Dark Night Of The Soul

Just when I thought I felt like writing more often, haha.  My personal life has taken a bit of a spin.  I am losing my partner of the past six years and that in itself makes me said.  She was a great teacher for me, from whom I have learned many things.  I will take them with me wherever the road leads from here.  I hurt myself pretty badly about a month ago and have had a lot of trouble with mobility, which has been something new to me.  I am now under some excellent wellness care and hope that my condition can improve.

When life starts to come at you from all sides, it's hard to stay focused on what's important.  Daily routines alone, including work and personal concerns, can be enough for one to lose focus, but toss in a few black swans and things can get rough.  I'm in a time now of upheaval.  I have been trying to meditate steadily, but it's been hard.  It happens.  Everything is cyclical in nature.  I try to remember the words of one of my early "gurus", Wayne Dyer, who is fond of saying that the answer is always to "go within."  All I have been getting back for weeks now in meditation is "Dark night of the soul."  I don't know what it means for me.  Wikipedia has an explanation, but as of right now I don't have context other than the general upheaval, frustration and an ominous unknown component in my life at this time.

I forget where I heard the phrase first, but I have kept it close in my being for over a decade now, "There is wisdom in uncertainty."  I will try and keep that in the forefront of my mind.

As Above, So Below

When I was younger, I was quite the rebel.  I still am in many respects.  I don't buy society as it is.  Something - many things - are not right.  Sure, that's obvious to most of us, but when I say it, I mean it in the most expansive way possible.  One of my mentors, who is a brilliant individual, used to have a saying, "Says who?"  It used to go quite well with one of my favorite tee shirts at the time, which read "Question Authority."  We always have to question everything.  Take time to reflect and put things into larger contexts.  Otherwise, we're just sheep in this physical world, led by the beliefs, fears and often limited imagination of a select few or the collective at large.  It's my observation that if we let ourselves, our daily lives and our perceptions be governed by the media, the physical hive mind and earthly institutions, those entities tend to put our overall awareness into an ever-shrinking box.  I most often find nearly all of those institutions operate in a limited, contracting fashion, instead of being expansive.  It's so obvious when you stop and think about it.

You can see a brilliant version of the confluence of these hive mind memes in the 1976 Sydney Lumet film, "Network", where Peter Finch amazingly portrays Howard Beale, a fictional network newscaster who reaches the tipping point and takes his rage to the airwaves, setting off a harsh reaction to this type of mental contraction and conditioning.  It's always been one of my favorite films since first seeing it as a child.  Of course now it has a lot more perspective and seems somewhat prolific, if not prophetic.

Having now spent three years working in virtual reality simulators for 70+ hours per week, creating landscapes, trees, plants, buildings, and interacting with different environments, my world view has changed immensely.  Headphones for the virtual world experience are a must.  Listening to the ambient sounds, a breeze or wind, insects, water, etc. adds to the immersive element of the experience.  Maintaining your being in the air, floating and especially sailing across a vast landscape in the air while listening to music is insanely stimulating, as if there is a part of me that awakens and says, yeah... this is how it's supposed to be, because it always has been...  I remember.  I believe in the Seven Hermetic Principles, the second of which is Correspondence - As above, so below; so below, as above.  

If you are familiar with these universal laws or you are just reading them for the first time, consider the words of John Lennon in his masterpiece, "Imagine".  Then take a moment and subtract all of the world's religions, all belief systems, and consider that we exist truly within only a field of limitless possibility, of potentiality, and that we are only bound by the constructs, individually and collectively, of our minds.  My aforementioned mosaic (my post-inherited, liquid construct of the world) has been increasingly conveying such an overall concept to me, at least at this point, which brings me back to how this physical planet isn't right - far from it.  I increasingly get the feeling that we've been fleeced, robbed, and are somehow being herded as a race toward annihilation by a complicity of memes that are increasingly isolating us from nature and the planet herself, which I believe is a living consciousness along with everything we see, including the planets, sun and stars... as above, so below.

So I have spent this huge amount of time in virtual reality, and I have been awed at the feeling of deja vu and what comes as almost second nature to me.  This is evident especially as I said when flying within the world, and also when "teleporting", which is the fastest means of moving from one place on the grid (which is massive) to another.  There is an aspect of a failed teleport, where you can get "stuck" in between two points and have to retry the attempt.  I have found that this mimics a certain state I've found myself in stirring myself from sleep while a dream is still in progress.  I can awaken in the physical world in such a state where if I haven't moved my sleep position or opened up my eyes yet, I feel as though my consciousness is stretched across as vast distance - part in my body in bed while the other part is still actively connected to the dream state and I can sense great distance between the two points.  

It's happened a fair amount of times since I started with virtual reality, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it because of the experience with failed teleports, which has given my brain some sort of reference point to stop and consider what that might mean.  When I am in that split state of lying in bed, awakening and feeling stretched across a great distance, the first thing that came to mind was, "Wow.  My consciousness must be far more expansive that I think it is."  I do know this:  it does move.  By that I mean that I noted some time ago that when I'm about to sleep, particularly when I'm physically tired and the environment is noisy, just before I drift off, the last thought I'll have is one of projecting my consciousness on to, most often, one of the walls of the room I'm in.  When I have that thought, I can see the process taking place and that's the last thought I have before falling asleep. 

Another wonder element in virtual reality is in the ability to see in a 360 degree fashion, knowing (within a mini-map popup window that's sizable within the larger viewer/client) window... all of the nearby lifeforms, their relative distance to me and a two-tone view of the surrounding landscape that can aid in further navigation of the territory or region you are exploring.  It seems to me that I've done all of this before, probably many times.  The resonance is off-the-charts for me in so many areas.  I can't help but think, in a Hermetic sense, if we as humans create virtual worlds, why wouldn't those virtual worlds reflect back to us the larger universe and potential order of things?  It stands to reason.  Certainly there is something to the virtual world experience.  It's all about ideas, creation and interaction.  One conceptualizes and creates physical form by manifesting basic geometric shapes through one's avatar that are ultimately conceived by the mind of the person controlling said avatar from this physical world. 

The virtual world experience contains something, some secrets that can be realized as hidden from view in daily life on this planet.  Are such virtual creations simply reflections of the holographic universe in which we live?  I would say it's highly likely from a Hermetic point of view.  And if I listen to "Imagine", and thus conceive of such a world without divisions, I am left with just the reflection, which tells me a lot about the universe.

Write It Down Anyway

I've learned to always keep a notepad nearby when mediating, just in case I feel the need to remember anything.  I can't over-emphasize the importance of writing things down.  Our society today tends to herd our minds like so much cattle, repeating memes and so much (what Robert Monroe would call M-Band Noise - a cacophony of uncontrolled human thought energy that surrounds this planet) that it can be hard to tune into, let alone spend time in, stillness.  Monroe makes note in his books where during times of astral travel or OBEs, one's consciousness needs to pass through this "ring" as he calls it, to ascend into calmer, more peaceful states of awareness.  Meditation is simply calming your mind, slowing the thought process almost completely, to the point where you are embracing stillness in an expansive way.  Once you've done that for a time, you'll notice that certain things may come to mind during or after said meditation.  I suggest to always write them down, as random as they might be.  

Shortly after reading "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron back in the mid-90's, I began a regular period of journaling.  I followed her advice and forced myself to write almost every day for several years.  I generally have a love/hate relationship with writing.  It has served me well professionally on a few occasions and I can enjoy it, but I am easily tempted to judge it and/or turn off the flow at any given point.  It's been somewhat of a struggle to even maintain this blog, which I don't promote at all.  This has been more of an outlet for me at least to this point.  I used to have a more extensive blog on another site that I maintained for years, which was a mix of comedic musings, observational humor and computer tips.  I started this blog about a year after entering into virtual reality, and initially was going to write about that, but the VR experiences were so profound, so endlessly joyful and time consuming that I thought I'd rather experience things than write about them, so this blog turned into sort of a non-frequent consciousness diary more than anything else.

Recently I meditating in the evening, room darkened, the last fleeting image that I had was of a vast expanse of green trees in a hilly landscape.  During the mediation, a word keep appearing in my mind, Coquica.  Then, as I was coming out of the meditation, another word, "Esayi" was repeated even more than Coquica.  I had a notebook nearby, and wrote both words down for searching online at a later time.  I don't particularly get words like those very often.  My prior "Mihika" experience being the only other time in the past year or so than word messages came through such as this.  I was fascinated to find that Cocquica is a small village in what is now Mozambique, on the southeastern portion of the African continent.  To my further dismay, the word Esayi, which is also a first and last name in the middle east (Armenian and Persian cultures), means Amen... May it come to pass... in the language of a native tribe with roots located in that area, the Maasai.

I also found a link to a page online saying that Esayi meant "first generation" in Sanskrit, yet I have misplaced that link and subsequent checks of various online Sanskrit dictionaries do not show the word appearing as such.  I'd love to find that link again though.  Does it mean anything?  Who knows.  It could be anything.  I do have to wonder though, in a larger sense... do I have ties to that region of the world from a past incarnation?  It's funny, but fifteen years ago I wouldn't have even entertained such a thought, but from a more expansive place, sitting in stillness and listening, it's interesting what emerges from the void of stillness, which is one of the reasons that I try and write it down anyway.

Mihika - You Are Mist

I was working with a shaman journey CD recently, and spent a couple of weeks developing a routine for guided meditative exploration using spirit animals and then indigenous tribal members somewhere in South America.  Like anything else, I approach each type of exploration with a heavy sense of skepticism.  If my skepticism is too heavy, and as a result I can't calm my mind enough to enter an exploration state, I just try another time.  Daily stresses can damper such experiences from reaching any level interest and I bore super-easily.

The trick is to relax to the point where you have stopped your mind.  This takes practice, and I'm convinced that in today's world it is something that is and will continue to be difficult to do, almost in a sadly ironic way.  Once you have calmed the mind though, and can enter into a meditative state where you start to not-think, when you can slow the thought process almost to a complete hault, the gate is near.  You get to a point where the thoughts that pop up are much less frequent, and as such are easier to just observe without judging or becoming engaged in a circle of thoughts. 

I didn't like the CD itself very much, but I'm hard to please in that area.  I decided to use it anyway, since it was the first disc of that type - a shamanic journey - that I had bought.  Sometimes I chuckle when I read or hear some people talk about the worlds the shaman move in.  I wonder if they really know.  I wondered if the guy who was guiding me on the CD really knew.  I have known several people who have journeyed using Ayahuasca and other intense methods.  Part of my background includes some extensive unguided journey work in my younger years with similarly potent chemical assistance.  Those experiences are now etched in my mind as some of the most profound feelings, sounds and images that I have ever been exposed to.  From the total of my past intense experiences with such journeys, coupled with those of friends, what can frighten you most is ultimately yourself.  Maybe in a future post I'll talk about that further.
 

Most of the nights that I worked with the disc were fruitful, I guess a bit to my surprise.  I had an intense astral experience several weeks earlier, feeling the presence of energies that I hadn't felt since I was a child.  My "them" were back.  That was part of the reason I bought the CD to begin with.  Robert Monroe and/or Michael Newton talks about a similar concept in his books, among which is a Council of Three... energetic beings assigned to us in higher dimensions to guide us on the path of spiritual development.  The premise there being that we have all agreed to spiritual contracts, are here to fulfill a purpose and will go on to further development work in our next vibrational level, wherever that is.

On the second night of the second week with the disc, after flying, albeit guided, to the Amazon to meet my tribal guides, my consciousness had settled back in my living room and I remained in meditation in the dark for about an hour.  I thought it had been fruitful.  I met two guides named Puht and Muh.  I distinctly took note of their painted faces in the hopes that I could find a match somewhere online.  White paint overall with mostly blue and a little red.  Thick blue lines came out from their eyes.  I have seen a few documentaries about tribes in the Amazon such as the Kayapo, yet these facial markings didn't trigger anything in terms of something I'd seen in daily life.  As I started to come out of what was a very deep meditation, within my mind's eye all I could see were transparent bubbles much like champagne or soda.  I felt a very slight vibration in my body, a slight buzz.  The bubbles covered my mind's eye and I could see them for a second or two after I opened my eyes in the dark room.  "That's new," was my first thought.

"Mihika - You are mist," squelched that thought immediately thereafter.  As I heard that in my mind, I felt as if it was the last thing that my tribal guides were telling me, although during the meditation we didn't speak, but rather exchanged thoughts.  I immediately grabbed my notepad, that I keep near me while meditating, and jotted it down in lieu of Googling the word to see if it had a meaning.  I sat for some time after meditation thinking about the experience.  Although I had a physical image of my guides, we traveled during the meditation over some distance.  I realized that perhaps they were saying that we are all like mist in our essences and certainly within the realm where I experienced them.  It turns out that Mihika is Sanskrit for fog, mist, snow or dew drop.  What are the odds?  Not such a bad disc after all.

Seeing Blue Lights

I have been seeing flecks, sparkles and flashes of light for the past few years.  The intensity has increased a bit over time, but they are mostly small and last for a fraction of a second.  They are often blue, sometimes white.  Sometimes they appear almost as tiny orbs, but mostly like sparkling sand.  I remember when I first started to notice them.  They mostly appeared to my left at first, and at a distance.  Now I see them from time to time on both sides.

They're not what's known as eye floaters - those spots you may sometimes see moving across the surface of your eye that appear within your field of vision.  I've seen those from time to time and they're quite different, being dark grey or black in tone and have a symmetry of movement that can be observed for several minutes and is easily predictable.  These light flashes are different.  They are intense enough that they get my attention every time, forcing me to look at them before I realize that I'm looking, and by then they're gone.  Several friends have told me that they see these kinds of lights occasionally as well.  There's an interesting forum page in Pavlina where people share some possible explanations.

Update: June 2010 - See update in post "More Blue Lights" as these appearances have started to increase for me once again.