It's Been Nearly A Year: A Recap Of A Cosmic Initiation

As I stated in a series of posts beginning around this time last year, my sessions of "cosmic schooling" as I called them, had increased to the point where several somewhat bizarre occurrences began to reshape my "mosaic", or "reality tunnel" as the late Terence Mckenna called it - my view of the world or perspective - to rapidly change the way in which I perceived everything around me and the universe, or multiverse, at large.  Beginning about November 10th, 2009, the frequency and pace of these events reached fever pitch around December 21st, culminating in a series of experiences over the following month that I still have a hard time trying to articulate.  I had been catapulted into something that I had never experienced before, and I've had some intense spiritual or consciousness-related experiences over the years.  Every waking moment was something new, as if I had become plugged into an awareness that was electrically charged and powerful.  There were no need for plans or thoughts, just action, and I was shown how to begin living life in a brand new way.  There was a wonderful quote that I was shown during this time of cosmic schooling, and it became my mantra for the weeks of this experience that ensued:

"Once you connect with the Sacred Space of the Heart,
The winds of Existence herself will guide your every step."
-- Sentapholus

I can't remember where I found the quote, I had written it down in the many pages of notes that I attempted to take down upon many note pads here and there during this time.  I just Googled it to find reference for Sentapholus, yet the search turned up no results.  Bizarre, but ultimately not surprising, since a lot of my cosmic schooling - or event strings - appear and disappear like vapor on a vast horizon.  It's likely that it just came to me in an information stream into my consciousness like so many other things.  I'm not sure, and I ultimately don't care where the information downloads of that time came from because, like that quote, they were beautiful.

It was my hope to write in-depth about everything that happened to me during that time period, which lasted into January of this year, but despite the fact that I had taken pages and pages of hand-written notes regarding these experiences as they occurred, I couldn't bring myself to put it into this blog.  The plain truth about most of what happened to me is that it's strange.  Very strange.  I still can't find context for a lot of it, and I really don't know if it means anything to anyone but me - or if at all.  Lately, however, although it's not quite as intense as that period last year (which was a new level of woo-woo for me), I have felt drawn more and more to increase my mediation periods, and during this time, cosmic schoolings or event strings appear to be driving me once again to add to my mosaic in late 2010.

So I thought it would be a good time to go back and revisit last year's multi-month journey into a new awareness.  I apologize if the flow in this post seems to dart backward and forward, but it was very hard for me to even take notes during this time.  I was so taken with the experiences and the nature of this new connectedness that it was very hard to sit down and make sense of what was happening to me in a linear form.  A couple of people I know have had similar experiences, and were saying "Write everything down!" but I can tell you, once a conduit like this opens up, the last thing you want to do is sit and write.  You just want to bliss-out and experience every living being that you come into contact with with this awareness.  Writing seems like a boring chore.  I did manage quite a bit at the insistence of my friends, but much of it has no context (yet) and may seem a bit strangely juxtaposed in this post.

There were a few events during this time, which started in November of 2009, that I did cover at least in part in previous posts.  The first of which was spending that month as a juror in a life and death case that lasted about 30 days.  I should also note that as of August of last year, I entered a period where, in my meditations, I found it increasingly difficult to connect to what I've come to call The Field, which is an etheric place in which I have found myself in repeatedly since I began regular mediation in the mid 90s while I was studying Tibetan Buddhism.  In August of 2009, as my connection to peaceful places in my meditations was becoming increasingly difficult, I kept getting the same, singular message: Dark Night of the Soul.  I didn't understand it.  I Googled here and there and found some information on it, most notably from a sixteenth century saint, Saint John of the Cross, in which he describes a period of trials during which the soul is attempting to begin to return to Source, or First Source energy.

Upon the conclusion of the trial, I was introduced to the Lake Shrine by an old friend, which is located in Pacific Palisades, near the ocean, just north of Santa Monica.  I posted in-length on this blog some of what happened there during my subsequent visits to the Shrine, which were weekly for a period of about two months thereafter.  The Shrine was built by Paramahansa Yogananda, and serves as a sort of miniature diorama of a world in balance.  It's a truly beautiful place with very powerful energies.  A few weeks after my introduction to the Shrine, just by chance I began to study the work of a woman named Debbie Ford, who produced a film entitled, "The Shadow Effect".  I began to use her methods to connect to the deeper parts of me, and found after a very short time that I had already done much of this work within myself over the previous eight years or so.

I had an "Aha" moment within about 24 hours of beginning Debbie's shadow work, and for the next month or so, things started to get really, well... trippy.  Some of this information, at least parts of it, are available here on this blog in previous posts.  I did, however, leave out some things that I referred to earlier in this post because I found them so wild, so strange, that they were hard for me to articulate at that time.  For many months thereafter and into this summer, I began to shrug a lot of what happened off as some kind of weird, alternate reality that I had found myself in, thinking that perhaps I was going crazy.  I should also point out that it was during this time that a friend had given me a copy of the book, "Living in the Heart" by Drunvalo Melchizedek.  Within days after my Aha moment doing Debbie's shadow work, I found myself reading Drunvalo's book.  I knew who he was, and had visited one of his websites, Spirit of Ma'at several times over the past few years, but it wasn't until reading that book that I began to connect to new (to me) universal energies that opened up a host of new vistas to in terms of my perceptions of the physical world and what lies beyond our sight.

In linear terms, I went from the court experience to the Lake Shrine to Debbie Ford's shadow work to Drunvalo's work.  It was as if I was in an intense cosmic schooling period, which, upon very recently finding out about The WingMakers (also in a very recent blog post below), I look upon this time as a major "Event String", the likes of which I had never experienced.  Those events lead to my discovery of something that was described to me (from the ether) as The Compass of the Heart, which is also mentioned in a previous post.  I should also mention something that appeared to contribute or open up in a very expansive state the series of these events and what would happen to me shortly thereafter:  I began to do the meditation as described in Drunvalo's book whereby one can attempt to connect with one's heart energies and thus activate the Merkaba (or Merkabah), the soul's light vehicle (called a chariot in earlier societies many years ago) that enables ascension into higher vibrational realities.

Keep in mind that my Dark Night of the Soul experience was (and still is to this day) in full effect.  I have since found several excellent explanations as to what this type of experience is, most notably from author Graham Ledgerwood, who, on his previous website (now taken down, although I just checked and there is still a cached version of parts of his old site), www.themystic.org, that can be viewed online.  What I found on that site while it was still available was that while Graham was having a Dark Night experience, he also had an experience that he called a "Cosmic Initiation", thus, my reference to what I experienced as described herein.  The detail of what he had experienced sounded like what I was going through in the period from November 2009 until January 2010, so much so that I felt relieved to a degree, and it gave me a sense of peace and a different hindsight as to this strange series of event strings.  I came across his old website in March of this year, after the period of intense connectedness had begun to subside.  There's a brief mention of this on the page that I previously linked to earlier in this paragraph where Graham's name is linked.

So what did I leave out from this Cosmic Initiation that occurred last November through January?  That is the purpose of this Recap and this post, to fill-in some of what was the more intense of event strings experienced during this time.  After doing the shadow work, reading Drunvalo's book and doing the heart meditation for a period of days, I began to sense a shift in my consciousness that felt accelerated at an ever-increasing pace.  It was the day before Christmas Eve, and I had gotten up from my computer to walk into my kitchen.  Suddenly, I felt what is best described as an icy cold drop of water on my back, just above my left shoulder blade.  The sensation was so intense, so powerful that I immediately grabbed that part of my back, swinging my arms around, and without even realizing it, began to look up at the ceiling to see if there was a water leak from the apartment above mine that had hit my back.  Nothing.  Within seconds, I felt the sensation, which felt like an ice cube on my back - or better yet - an icy finger, sort of icy-hot in a way, move diagonally down my back over the course of about ten seconds or so, settling several inches below my right shoulder blade, where it stayed and began to pulsate.  This was an intense feeling of radiation with pulses moving from a central point across my body, like ripples in a pond.

Little did I know at the time, this pulsation sensation would stay with me for a little more than three weeks, during which time all of my perceptions of reality would change.  It was as if I had entered another world.  The pulsation was there 24/7, and over the ensuing days I would come to realize that it would, in a matter of resonance and vibration, increase or decrease based upon what I was thinking or what I focused my attention on.  It would also direct my attention in a way that I had never experienced before, causing me to go places at certain times, search particular words or phrases on the web, interact with complete strangers or call people with whom I hadn't spoken to in months or years.  I felt a oneness, a connectedness to every living thing... insect, animal, human, the earth itself, that was completely new to me.  Animals were drawn to me.  People walking their dogs would sometimes have to struggle to hold them back as they came toward me.  Children on the street would make eye contact with me and smile, turning there heads to watch me as I walked by.  No other experience or series thereof in my many decades in this incarnation was anywhere close to this experience.

I didn't want this experience to end.  There was an underlying peace in everything that had overcome my physical body.  For the first time in my life I thought that I understood what the yogis and many of my spiritual mentors and gurus had talked about.  Sure, I had many experiences of bliss in the past, but this was a whole other level.  I wondered if this was some kind of Kundalini experience, but everything that I had been taught said that that energy rose from the base of the spine.  During the time of reading Living In The Heart, I did notice that in the position of my Sacral Chakra, I felt a sensation that lasted for the better part of a day, as if something was turning there, in motion.

At one point I was with a friend at a stranger's home for dinner, with everyone else in the home also being a stranger to me.  There were several animals present, dogs and cats, who stayed at my feet for hours.  Every so often one of them would get up, drink some water or whatever, but then would come right back to me and sit.  During this time, I had my hand on the belly of one of the dogs, and felt a connectedness with the life force in the dog such as I had never known before.  My hand became very hot, and I was wondering about energy transfer (having done energy work in the past) and started thinking about connecting my heart energy with the dog.  A few minutes later, one of the dinner guests (a stranger to me) came in from the back yard, looked at the dog and then at me and said, "You're healing the dog, aren't you?" with a big smile.  I was astounded.  All of my interactions with living things during this time unfolded in much the same way.  It was as if I began to see and connect with my heart in a way that was new to me.

There was also a very intense, darker side to this experience.  When I say darker, I don't mean anything evil or fearful.  Some of it was imagery, as if in the near future, and some of it involved me, in a timeless sense, covering what seemed like a huge trail of accumulated karma, although I am not sure whether this karma, if it was such, had been accumulated on this planet, or even if it was mine.  It felt as though I was serving as a sort of dissolving mechanism for whatever this past energy was, and I wondered if somehow I was to clear my bloodline, if that makes any sense.  I also felt as if I had lived many times before in environments unlike those of earth, but I am still not sure where these places might have been.  One thing was clear, though, these other places, were places of peace and harmony, and not like the earth is today.  I sensed a longing deep within myself for fleeting glimpses of these places and people I had known somewhere long ago who were not incarnated physically in this lifetime.

The pulsation in my back would wake me up each morning during this time.  I felt better and the pulse would be stronger the colder that the temperature was at any time.  I slept without any heat in my apartment for the entire winter as a result.  As it continued, some mornings when I found myself waking, I would be fearful that the pulsation was gone if I couldn't feel it right away as soon as I realized I was awake.  Some of those mornings when I felt that way, I would quickly stand up from my bed, only to find the pulsation starting as soon as I was on my feet.  Other times it was there immediately if I was still lying down.  Many, many things came to me seemingly at lightning speed, some of which I may have covered in previous posts but I'll attempt now to get more of them down in one place, as I look at my handwritten notes that I had taken during that time.  What remains remarkable to me that during these three weeks of the pulsation, I lived exclusively in the present moment.  I was told not to make plans, yet each day, driven by impulses from the other side, I would leave my apartment at any designated time with no destination as directed from the other side, and I would wind up with each day being full of encounters and situations that were beautiful, magical and fulfilling.  It was as if I was experiencing life in a whole new way.

"Ism-Schism. Babble-Rabble.  
Bibble Scribble.  Hocus Pocus.

Seen?"

Phrases like, "ism-schism", "babble-rabble", "bibble-scribble" and "hocus pocus" flowed through my mind, arriving initially in the form of the quote above, as if a familiar old Rastafarian friend and teacher of mine from some other incarnation had burst into my mind to remind me of something I'd forgotten.  My thoughts turned to Robert Monroe's descriptions of what he called "The M Band" - a cacophony of mixed human thought energy that surrounds the earth as chatter in the astral world.  I got a distinct sense that this world that we know now is an unholy creation of the ego and the opposite of a world based in the heart, the latter of which is as it should be and reflects our true nature.  I felt as if we have been so conditioned, so overwhelmed with dogma and programming, that we live most of our lives within the M Band - thought noise - and have lost our way.  Here, in this state, things like this were streaming into my consciousness as if I was surrounded by many souls not present in this incarnation who were reminding me of who I really was.  I get chills all over my body as I type this.  I could feel them all around me.  Deja vu.  I also got a sense that my country was (not in the ancient historic sense obviously) the Great Babylon... meaning to babble on without meaning... endless chatter... filled with mindless, empty pursuits of the ego.  During this intense time of the pulsation, for those weeks, when I closed my eyes I could see bright white at the base of my mind's eye with my eyes closed.  Many times at night, with my eyes closed, I could see through my eyelids as if they were a thin veil over my eyes.  This was completely unlike anything I had ever experienced before and I wondered if it was my most intense Kundalini-type of experience to date.

I was told that in our true nature we don't use words or language, only visual thought at lightning speed to communicate.  I was also told that this would soon come back to humanity during coming earth changes and that those of us who lived from the heart would begin to realize our true gifts, among which is the ability to see and speak telepathically.  I also saw many earth changes coming... (this was before the Haiti earthquake)... I could see vast areas of rubble in what was once civilized society, much more vast than the terrible calamity in Haiti.  I also saw volcanic eruptions in surprising places where people hadn't expected such things.  Part of the more saddening images were those of a split between people in society.  Some people could not or would not come to terms with these changes, and it literally drove them crazy and to violence.  And I saw what could best be described as a steel cage apparatus that seemed to come from the northeastern United States and it spread out over the entire country, making it seem like a large cage that covered the continent in my mind.  Amid all of this chaos that I perceived, however, I did see that both Source and mother earth protected those who were living from their hearts.  Although I saw many of those who were heart-centered having to physically move from place to place, they remained protected.  "You will follow the birds," I was told.  Spirits also told me, "We will be your eyes in the desert."

Another fascinating series of occurrences also took place during this period.  I was directed to go to my automobile, which I've had for about twelve years, and to retrieve a cane that I had placed under the back seat about ten years prior.  At the time that I bought it, it was for use as a prop in a play that I was performing back east.  I had completely forgotten that I still had it.  It sat underneath my back seat along with two umbrellas for nearly ten years.  I hardly ever had use for the umbrellas since moving to southern California in 2002 and rarely if ever looked underneath the back seat.  I went to my auto, found the cane (to my surprise) and brought it back to my apartment, placing it near the desk where my computer was located.  My attention was then drawn to a small black rock that I have had in my possession for approximately twenty years.  I'm not exactly sure where or when I found the rock, although I believe it to be on the shore of a beach in Rhode Island, where I used to surf many years ago.  The rock is black-ish grey, mostly shiny, and fits nicely into the palm of my hand.  For some reason, I had kept the rock on my desk for the previous five or six years, after finding it one time during a move.

So many different things were happening at once during this period that it's hard for me, with one year's hindsight and pages of notes, to describe the precise sequence of how things happened.  Even as I write, I realize that this whole thing probably sounds quite strange.  However, I must point out that this connection, this oneness that I felt with everything, and the constant pulsation on my back was quite delicious in nature.  It was playful and loving, and I felt as though at times I was dancing within the palm of the wisdom that created me.  I was directed to listen to several pieces of music.  Granted, I have a long history within the music industry, owning nearly ten thousand albums at one time in the past.  My tastes vary widely internationally and I've always looked upon my experience with music as a journey.  One artist or song leads to another, and a style leads to a fusion of styles that leads to a new form, and so on.  The focal point of my music journey and subsequent collection of large amounts of recorded pieces was always the discovery of new sounds.  Like a weary traveler in the wilderness, my thirst for new sounds and new forms has always been insatiable and has driven my passion for music for as long as I can remember.

I was instructed by the other side to listen to several specific songs, starting with The Beach Boy's "Good Vibrations" and George Harrison's "Give Me Love".  As with most of what I was directed to do during this time, I thought, "This is silly.  Really?"  But any time that I had a questioning thought like that, the pulsation in my back would grow, and as these strange events continued, each delivering a sense of awe and wonder as the result, I developed a trust with these other-worldly or other-dimensional sources or sources that piqued my curiousity to the point where I would go with each suggestion.  I never really denied anything during this time, as the sense of magic surrounding my experiences was so profound that I wanted to see where each suggestion would lead me.  I lived in the moment, fascinated with this new journey.  I was directed to sit and listen to the two aforementioned songs, placing my black stone in my left hand.  "This is your weeping stone," I was told.  "Hold the cane at the top and move it in a counter-clockwise direction with its base touching the floor."  Again, this sounded quite strange to me, but I played along.

Within seconds, my found myself rubbing the stone, stroking it with the thumb on my left hand, and moving the cane in circles on my right.  I was immediately overcome with tears and they streamed down my face.  My mouth opened wider than I thought I could open it, and my body lurched forward as my head leaned upward.  If someone were to look at me, it would look as if I was screaming, yet no sound came from me, just tears rolling down my face.  I stayed in this position for the duration of each of the songs.  Over the next several days, Source, or the spirits guiding me, would show me that these songs were a simple starting point, and that though connecting to art, particularly music for me, would have this same effect.  I was shown that all art, all music, all painting, etc. comes from a place within other dimensions, and that a lot of it, but not all, has been or is now reflecting the nature of how our physical planet, mother earth, is dying, whether the artists creating the pieces realize this or not.  Many such works, created from the heart, contain within them a wisdom that helps those who connect with the art connect with their heart energies. 

Messages were within virtually every piece that I was directed to listen to, including many contemporary pieces from new and emerging artists.  Love was the central message that I was shown within many of these songs.  Certain tracks contain a vibration of love that can help anyone connect to the heart at any time.  I laughed, because I had gotten joy from so many of the tracks that had been created in the recent past and thought, "Wow... they're really that great - beyond just what we had thought."  Upon describing these experiences with a friend, I was directed to a woman named Sharry Edwards, who is expert in sound healing.  She operates several websites, Nutrisounds, South Health Research and Sound Health Inc.

Sharry does voice analysis for people in this pioneering field.  Her work, and knowing that there was someone out there doing this type of research, resonated heavily with me, as we are all vibratory energy beings and this new awareness opened up an understanding of the nature of sound that I had never known, even though I was a deejay for fifteen-plus years and had played music for nearly one million people during that time, referring to myself as a sound shaman.  I asked her something that had come from the other side:  Is there such a thing as the Institute for Vibrational Therapy?  She said no, that she wasn't aware of such a place, although it sounded like a good idea.  To this day I wonder about that.  I would create such a place if directed to do so, but have not received any further information on a direction in which to pursue such an idea. One thing that became clear to me from the other side during these times with the weeping stone and the cane was that people could be healed through vibrations in music.

Christmas Eve had been my discovery of The Compass of the Heart, and was also the day that I was at a stranger's home preparing to serve meals to homeless people on the west side of Los Angeles.  I have written about that other-worldly experience in a previous post.  It was one incredible evening.  And I wasn't alone.  The people I was with were feeling the same thing, as were the many people that we would come in contact with over the course of the evening.  On the next day, Christmas (all coincidental I'm sure as I have no emotional stake in any of the modern holidays anymore whatsoever), I entered a four and a half day period of what I was told was Atonement.  During 96-plus hours, I only got a handful of hours of sleep.  The pulsation was so large during this time that it covered most of my back from the radiating point below my right shoulder blade.  So much information came to me, and it was so varied and bizarre that although I was writing notes, I could not bring myself to write about most of it until now. 

My perception of light and time changed during this period.  I was given what was called, "A Lifted Gaze" and I began to notice that the focal point on my vision was now usually focused on the horizon rather that on what was in front of me.  I was astounded by the detail I could perceive in distance.  During the daylight hours, I could perceive a veil over the earth, and I sensed that to a degree, there is a darkness present in a cosmic sense even in the daylight.  Again, none of this was fearful in the least, it was just there and I could see it.  Strange things began to happen.  I was still quite active in my virtual reality worlds, and during the Atonement period several people appeared out of nowhere in virtual reality echoing what I was experiencing.  It must be understood that this type of thing had never, ever occurred before or has since that time.  When I'm in virtual reality simulators, I'm usually just creating or building in there, occasionally meeting a stranger or hanging out with friends, but this was very different.  They would ask me questions that directly related to what I was experiencing, including atonement for previous lives and reincarnation in the future.  I was blown away.

During this period that I refer to as the Atonement time, I was in various states of meditation nearly 24 hours a day.  Unlike previous years, where I would maybe do 2 to 3 hours of mediation max, either sitting, lying down or walking in nature, a lot of this was done standing, or pacing gently in circles in my kitchen, which, for some reason, felt like the highest spiritual energy point in my apartment.  The electricity was constantly going out in my building during these four days.  Not the neighborhood or surrounding homes, just my building.  At one point I was taken by a stranger in the virtual world to a place known as the Mystic Academy, that I had never visited before.  It was there that I met another person who referred to what sounded like the same type of experience that I was having, and asked me, "This is really strange.  How did you get here?  Is the electricity in your building going out all the time, too?"  This was some off-the-hook, way out of the norm stuff for me.  I felt like I had tapped into something so profound, so grand, so completely strange, that I thought I was going to vibrate into a whole other reality.  Many times during this period I thought just that - and felt a sense of relief about it, that I had left the broken world behind.

At one point a couple of days after Christmas, with this whole new reality in full bloom, I experienced an extended period of karmic recollections so intense and so vivid, that it was hard to put into words.  I suddenly saw this massive timeline of my soul's existence that seemed to stretch back to the very beginning of human habitation on the earth.  I felt that there was a time, very long ago, when I had blue skin, among other experiences.  I also saw connections to some of my family members, mostly now deceased, in previous incarnations many thousands of years ago, during which time we were wizards of some kind, and that we had potentially dabbled in some areas of mysticism that were considered off limits.  I wondered if this was why, for so many years, I had thought of myself as a shaman of some kind.  As this cosmic experience continued and I moved into a period of Atonement, which I will describe in greater detail later on, I felt as though this wasn't necessarily my personal karma as much as it was that of my current bloodline.  It was as if I was to rectify past lives and /or karma of people within my bloodline that had lived long before me.  Very strange.  I saw this in terms of crystals and most notably spiders, with a spider over one eye as an indication of having done work in this field.  Shortly after this, late one night, a voice came into my mind saying, "There's a spider the size of a Buick in your bathroom," which made me chuckle, because I remembered it's a Woody Allen line from one of his films.

I went into my bathroom, turned the lights off and sat there for what ended up being several hours in complete darkness.  What transpired was similar to being in some kind of courtroom.  Strange looking globs of light and orbs passed along the walls and through the air, and I felt as if I was on trial somewhere, and could faintly hear whispering as different incarnations of myself were presented to me over a vast period of time.  It was this night that I began to see this physical life as something far more greater than I had ever imagined.  What came to me from the ether was that we prepare for our lives here, and volunteer to come in order to experience certain emotions and /or learn life lessons.  I was told that each life into which we incarnate involves a sacred contract, which cannot be broken (i.e., suicide), lest we come back to experience all of a particular life's challenges again, only to be more difficult if we were to take our own life at any point.  When these many hours in darkness were over, I felt as though I had purged my bloodline somehow of karma from previous lives.  Exhausted by then and relieved, I fell asleep for about three hours.

When I awoke the next day, with the pulsation still going strong on my back, I entered into more meditation, where I was told that there was someone in my building who was, or would serve as an Oracle and that I should seek this person out.  I should state for the record here that during this time I questioned a lot of things, nearly constantly... "Really?"  But the resonance from the pulsation on my back had begun to give me confidence based on what had already happened, many synchronistic event strings.  That said, even though I was amazed at where I found myself, I still did question virtually everything.  I kind of couldn't help myself, even with this bizarre series of occurrences.  At the same time, I didn't want it to end.  Shortly thereafter, the electricity went out again.  During this period and this period only, when the electricity went out, the fire doors in the building would release themselves from their magnetic holding positions, close, and the battery operated emergency fire lights would turn on.  It was midday.  "Now, go," came into my mind, quickly followed by, "And don't be afraid of the man who comes to the door.  He doesn't understand what's happening and will be afraid."  "What???" I thought, "This is unreal."  Yet my life at that point had become completely unreal, and everything that I had followed through on that was coming to me had led to some amazing experiences, so I went, although very carefully.

I hesitantly opened my door and went into the hallway.  Nobody was really around during this time.  Most people had gone home or to visit with people during the holidays, which I could not afford to do at the time.  I rounded the corner and went down the hall toward the apartment that's behind mine.  The apartment door was open and there was smoke rising from the floor in little streams.  I became fixated but didn't completely approach the door.  "Come in," said a voice from within the apartment.  I should state for the record that I had never met this neighbor before and although I have seen here once or twice since, I haven't spoken to her, nor has this phenomenon with the closing doors and smoke occurred since this time.  As I walked in front of the doorway, I was astonished to see a large tree in the center of the room.  Massive, as if it was growing from the floor, reaching up to the ceiling.  On the far wall were paintings, and there was a large rectangular table with many tubes of paint, brushes and samplings of different paints on a palette as if the woman had just been painting.

"Sit down," she said, followed by "Oh, don't worry, that happens sometimes," as she waved her hand through the rising smoke coming from the base of the open doorway.  She obviously saw the look on my face, which was one of complete amazement.  I didn't know what I was doing there - at all.  As I entered the apartment, marveling at the huge tree in the center of the room and the paintings, I noticed on the far left wall four LCD screens with a lot of electronic equipment.  I paint also, and haven't really done much in the past few years.  I also own a large amount of electronic equipment myself, but I couldn't get over the fact that this just didn't fit somehow.  This woman appeared to be in her seventies.  "They call me Jonesy," she said, "Would you like a cigarette?"  I had quit smoking over five years prior to that, but somehow, perhaps because I was dumbfounded, said yes, took a seat and started to smoke the cigarette, an American Spirit.

She went on to ask me various questions about my life, talking in generalities about the nature of existence and how everything and everyone is tied together.  I was still in a state of amazement.  What the heck was I doing here, how could this woman have all of this stuff in her apartment and where was all of this leading?  All I kept telling myself was to go with the flow.  Even with all of the amazement, I felt totally at peace.  It was as if my left brain was constantly trying to quantify and label each of these experiences.  In a sense, I was shown that when this happens, one needs to become a Ninja with the ego, and slay it when these questions arise, so as to stay fully within the moment.

At one point about ten minutes later, her apartment door still open and the two of us sitting and talking in her living room, there was a sound of someone coming down the hall.  "Here he comes," she said, "Make sure he can sit down if he wants," and I scooted over on the small couch upon which I sat.  I had a direct view of the hallway through the open door from my seat along the back wall in front of the paint and the paintings.  She sat to my left, a bit closer to the door facing the far left wall with all of the video screens, upon which there were all of these moving images.  One had an old movie on it from the forties or thereabouts, and the others almost resembled surveillance cameras, although as I watched occasionally from my peripheral vision (not wanting to seem distracted or take my eyes off of her), they were not any kind of surveillance of the building we were in.  Someone then appeared in the doorway for a second, stopped, and then turned around and walked away.  I barely got a glimpse of him when she said, "Oh, that's too bad.  He's scared."  I immediately thought about what was told to me before I had left my apartment.

She then began to ask me if I painted, to which I said yes, but that I really hadn't had the time for many years now.  "Do you still have materials in your apartment?"  "Yeah," I said, somewhere there's a box or two.  I had moved several months prior, and most of my things were still packed up.  I really had no idea how much in terms of supplies I had or where they were.  "You should paint when you get back," she said.  I told her that I didn't have any fresh canvases and she said, "It doesn't matter, just take one and paint over it.  You've been through a lot over the past few days and you need to release what you've experienced."  The hair on the back of my neck began to stand up and I was covered in goosebumps.  "How could she know any of what I had been going through?"  I turned briefly around to look at the palette between me and the far wall of her apartment, reached out and touched some of the paint globs on the palette.  "No, no... that's my paint," she quipped, "Go and find your paint.  You need to do this now.  Don't think about it - just do it.  Don't even use a brush.  It feels good sometimes to just feel the paint between your fingers.  Use your hands."  Still somewhat off balance and awestruck as to what I had just experienced, I told her I would, thanked her, said goodbye and went back to my apartment.

It took me a good half an hour before I even began looking for my painting materials.  I was stunned.  The pulsation in my back was going full force, and I paced in the kitchen.  This whole series of events had been getting more and more strange as the days and hours went on.  How did she know these things about me?  Who was the man who came to the door briefly and then left because he was afraid?  Why was the electricity going out and the fire doors shutting and why was here doorway base emitting smoke?  This was way too weird for me, yet as the time went on I felt compelled to go through boxes until I found my paint.  I came across a box that was mostly materials... brushes, sponges, spackle tools and a few tubes of paint, which, at the time I thought was all I had.  Only some red, orange, cerulian blue and yellow tubes were in the box.  It didn't matter, as I felt this rising urge to paint come over me.  I pulled out an old canvas that was precious to me.  It was one of my earliest paintings from about fifteen years ago.  I loved it because of it's simple beauty.  Just a series of dots, swirls and squiggles that with hindsight, I felt portended a magical period in my life that occurred about seven years hence, and seven years past the present day at that time.

As I pulled out these few tubes of acrylic paint with the canvas on the floor of my apartment, her words came back to me, "Don't think about it.... Use your hands..."  I immediately began to engage myself, hands-only, smearing paint over my once-treasured simple painting, and for the next five or six minutes, began this messy, improvised exploration of expressing something that I didn't understand.  "This is atonement," came into my mind.  I had stopped for a brief period, sitting on my knees in front of this mess on my floor.  I would never do anything like this without laying sheets down, etc. if this was any kind of normal session.  As I began to study what emerged out of this brownish mess on the canvas, I heard a voice behind me.  It was Jonesy.  For some reason I hadn't closed my door all the way.  She had pushed it open and began speaking.  My hands covered with paint, I turned around to see her standing in the doorway.  "Good, good.  I see you're painting."  "Yes," I replied, and she walked away.  I still have no explanation of what this was or what it meant, other than having some kind of tie to the karmic experience that I had the night before for hours in the dark and the sense that my soul was much older than I had ever thought.

I don't judge any of the art I create, as doing so leads to a suppression of the creative instinct an therefore can't be judged, although sometimes that's hard to do.  Suffice it to say, it's no masterpiece (pictured above), nor is it like anything I've ever created before.  What's hard to see from this picture is that it looks like, in person, a being of some kind in the center with it's arms stretched out, along with beings around the sides, some of which look tribal in nature, with drums, and others like birds or some kind of flying beings.  This was made in a matter of minutes without any forethought and only three or four colors.  What amazed me later on is that turned upside down, it looks like a different representation of the same thing.  I felt as if the star was me, and the blue going upwards represented the life force, with the being in the center having control of the entire picture.

I felt as if it said to me on some level, that my soul was always cradled within this force, and that whatever happened to me, everything would be okay.  Later that night I was told through the pulsation in my back that this was my atonement painting, and that it represented having gone through a dark period of karmic clearing.  I have identified as a shaman since my early teen years.  That connection took on a greater meaning during this time of initiation, especially after this painting.  It was as if I had connected to those feelings in a brand new way, bringing a new meaning to subtle thoughts and impressions that I had carried for years.  Within 24 hours after the painting, I would find myself on a street that I had never visited before on the west side of LA, drawn (by the vibration in the pulse on my back) to what ended up being an art gallery.  This happened out of the blue like everything else at this time.  It was there that I discovered the work of Pablo Amaringo, which filled this gallery.  I spent nearly two hours looking at his work, which is absolutely stunning.  Sadly, he had passed away the month prior, in November.  Pablo had been a shaman in his early years.  The measure of coincidence was too high for me to ignore.  What a great gift to have left my apartment on a journey to no place in particular, only to find myself in this gallery surrounded by his work after this series of events.  I attempted to connect with his energy while I was there, thanking him for the beauty he had brought into the world.

I should also mention that later that night there was more in terms of what related to this four day atonement exploration.  I was directed, during mediation, to cut open a melon and place the seeds inside of a cup, place it on my countertop, light a white candle and place it in an abalone shell in front of the cup, along with a small cast of a human skull that I had on my desk from many years earlier.  I was then told to place the carving knife inside of the cup and let the candle burn while I looked for a pair of sunglasses.  I had just bought a new pair coincidentally several days earlier.  This guiding force then told me to hold the sunglasses over the candle so that one "eye" burned.  I followed the directions and burned one of the eyes out of the new pair of sunglasses.  "It is done," came into my mind, and I left the candle burning there for the rest of the night.  I was told that this represented dying to the left half of my brain, clearing my karma and demonstrating that I would now be more attuned to following my heart without thinking.  I have never experienced anything close to that in my life before and I certainly couldn't make anything like this up.  It was beyond me in so many ways.

Another particularly strange thing that happened during this time was that I kept seeing spirals everywhere, and I mean everywhere.  It was as if this energy that I was communicating with during this time, which I believed to be Source energy, was showing me the essential meaning of spirals in everything, as if the shape was somewhat signatory of Source itself.  This concept wasn't anything new to me, as I had very similar experiences during my studies of Buddhism in the mid 90s which culminated in what I called The Ten Principles or words to that effect, that had come to me over the course of about eighteen months from the ether at a time when I was writing almost daily in a journal and almost daily conversing for the first time with a spirit guide, Tama.  The story of how I came to know Tama is briefly described here in the same post with The Ten Principles.  During that time I was shown how the spiral shape is everywhere, from stirring liquid to storm systems to galaxies to snail shells to fractals.  Around 1996 or so I was referred / shown the spiral shape through discovery in mediation, and also the Fibonacci Sequence as a fundamental universal mathematical building component.  This was shown to me in meditation those many years ago and then delivered to me in a series of direct observations, such as finding a giant swirling seashell, cut in half to reveal the inside, in the grass near my home the day after this information was shown to me... in a place that was forty miles inland from the ocean.  With the universe's ripple effect, it then began to appear everywhere in my experience for several months.

This time around though, the symbolic spiral that I saw was very simplified and much like the Choku Rey symbol in Reiki, minus the cane shape that runs across its center, the meaning of which is "place the power of the universe here."  I started to see the symbol everywhere, well, including three days after the atonement, while walking to have breakfast with my ex girlfriend in Silverlake... I was at an intersection waiting for the light to change, still in this other-wordly zone and waiting to tell her all that I had been experiencing, when I looked to my left and noticed a very tall man next to me, walking two white dogs.  He had the spiral tattoo on the side of his neck facing me, inches from my face.  Just as I noticed it, completely amazed, the light changed and we started crossing the street.  I had never been to this particular restaurant that I was supposed to meet my ex at before, so I decided to follow the man, and he ended up going to the restaurant, only to stop outside with his dogs long enough to realize that my ex girlfriend was standing inside.

It was only after about a week of seeing this spiral over and over again in various places that I noticed that the building in which I had lived for four months is in fact covered with them, gold swirls, just like I had been seeing all over the place, right down to bread packages in Trader Joe's.  The measure of coincidence was far higher than anything I'd ever seen before.  And that wasn't the only symbol that I kept seeing.  The other symbol was that of a single eye, and unlike the physical manifestations of the spiral shape, I would see the single eye in my mind's eye constantly, as if some sort of portal had opened and it was a recognition of Source energy.  I felt that somehow these things represented Source, although I understand, believing in the teachings of the Kybalion and The Seven Hermetic Principles, that since The All Is Mind, we cannot conceive of Source or God in the traditional sense because we exist within it, within Mind, and therefore that which is All That Is cannot exist outside of itself, so any type of conceptualization of God as something "out there" is impossible (unlike what organized religions teach, which in my opinion is wrong).  The Kingdom of Heaven is within, as taught by Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, in the Gnostic Gospels.  This image of an eye was nearly constantly in my mind's eye during my cosmic initiation.  I could close my eyes at virtually any point and see an eye appearing as if to look at me.  It looked very much like The Eye of Horus, but it wasn't a symbol like the picture below, just a single eye.

There was a lot of information that came to me during this time, and as I stated earlier, including the importance of bloodlines, ancestry and a fundamental tribal nature to all of existence.  As strange as this was, I didn't want it to end.  I wasn't sure if if was going to end, either.  I just hoped that I had somehow vibrated into a new level of awareness that would continue.  On New Year's Eve, at the suggestion of friends, I attended a local church that they go to called The Agape Fellowship, home of Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith.  Still in the middle of this cosmic initiation, I made it in time for the evening's service.  I had never been there before.  It's an interesting church.  Not much about any kind of dogma as much as the individual's connection to Source energy or what people call God.  No fire and brimstone, just joyful expressions of people in a worship setting.  What really blew my lid off though was seeing a display of an artist's work that was adorning the far right wall of the worship center: a series of paintings that were conceptions of Source... each with one single eye peaking through a beautiful mass of colors (much different than the picture above, which contains the Horus symbol itself).  I was speechless.  This was the same impression that I had been getting during this entire period of cosmic initiation.  The woman conducting the worship service walked us through a breathing exercise that entailed saying the word, "Yeshua" as we breathed in and out.  She said that it was important to do this when we returned home as a method of cleansing us and preparing for ascension.

Although the pulsation in my back would continue for a couple of weeks after this, along with seeing the eye and spiral symbols, there was a point after my atonement where Source unveiled information that showed the universe as both a cosmic dance and a play, and that as we evolve into higher vibratory forms of consciousness and free ourselves from karma, we can experience life in more varied forms much like the actors coming and going in a play... unlike the natural birth and long process of growing up in this physical reality, and much more fun.  I should state that this Source energy had an awesome sense of humor, and I likened its nature to the playfulness of a kitten.  At the end of the atonement period, after the painting was done and everything else that I had been directed to do was completed, I was told that there was one more thing that I had to do, which pretty much boiled down to presenting myself as a living sacrifice.  This was upon returning home after my trip to the Agape Fellowship.  I wasn't scared at all, and I really didn't know what to expect, but decided to go along with it anyway.  Years earlier, such an experience would have terrified me beyond belief.

The next evening, New Years night, I was on my computer again late at night, in a virtual world of my creation, when, as had been happening, another stranger began to communicate with me.  I was told that before I went to sleep, coincidentally, I was to breathe controlled, deep breaths (I've also done breath work in the past, most notably some of the methods of Dr. Andrew Weil, which I really enjoy - breath work is great), and as I was immersed in this type of breathing, to say the word "Selassie" as I was breathing, and to lie naked on my bed.  Although I knew what the word meant in earthly terms (my great uncle was an oil man who spent time in the Emperor's castle in Ethiopia), I got the distinct impression that the use of the word in this sense referenced the Cosmic Serpent, or Serpent of Life, which has been all but demonized in most of today's organized religion (I had read about the Cosmic Serpent many years ago in Jeremy Narby's book, but other than the writing there, I had no tangible connection or greater context for this until the Cosmic Initiation).  This new awareness and the knowledge didn't surprise me much, as most of the information that was revealed to me during this period showed that almost everything we have been taught in terms of religions, memes and ways to perceive the universe is almost always completely backwards in terms of the modern societies.  Everything has been twisted around in our cultures.  The aboriginal cultures and their shaman, on the other hand, have kept things in their proper places.  It was clear to me during this time that our modern cultural indoctrinations are all almost totally upside down and in reverse of the truth.

As the evening progressed, I was then told from the ether that "someone" would come for me later that night / morning, but, most notably, he would knock for me to let him into my apartment.  By this point everything that had been happening was so surreal that although most of it didn't make any sense, I again went along with it because everything that had happened hence was enlightening and magical to me, really beyond belief.  "No thought. Action," repeatedly echoed in my mind.  Before I left the virtual world that night, again stunned by the interaction with a complete stranger than mirrored my real life experience, he appeared again and said, "Remember.  I will knock first.  It's your choice to let me in, but know this - I'm radioactive, baby!"  This source energy referred to me as "baby" several times during this period in my waking and walking meditations.  It was very playful, very happy and with a sense of humor, as I said, like an old friend who introduces you to cool stuff that blows your mind.

Nobody every knocks on my apartment door, except for our maintenance man, who knocked one time during normal business hours since my arrival in this building to say they were turning the water off while the pipes were worked on.  Hours went by, and I was in my kitchen doing another standing meditation among lit candles.  It was about 3am, when three loud, distinct knocks came from my front door, which is visible from my kitchen.  I was startled, but slowly made my way to the front door, hesitated for a few seconds, and turned the doorknob.  For the hours after the virtual world encounter and hearing that someone was going to "come for me", all I could think of was maybe I was going somewhere, like in a car, to a plane, leaving my current life behind.  I really believed this.  It was that powerful.  "Finally, I thought, I'm getting out of here."  Maybe I was to be taken somewhere to be with others experiencing the same type of awakening, or maybe it was someone with a message. I thought it could be death itself, but again I wasn't scared at all.  Calculated and careful, yes, but not scared or fearful.  This vibe was so overwhelming that a trust had developed.  I would have literally jumped off of the roof of the building if it told me to do so.  That thought occurred to me at one point as well... "Could I literally leap into another dimension?"

I slowly opened the door to see that the hallway was empty.  As I stood there for a few seconds trying to figure out who or what knocked on the door, a stiff, cold woosh of air passed through my doorway and around my legs as it went into my apartment.  It was palpable.  There was a notable delay here before the cold air came through the doorway, not a woosh as I opened the door, and there wasn't any wind in the hallway.  I went out into the hallway and walked around.  Nobody, anywhere.  I returned to my apartment, locked the door and decided to get some sleep.  As I lay on the bed, I was directed to do the controlled breathing again that I learned at Agape, this time saying "Selassie" as I slowly breathed in and out, and fell asleep, with the image of the eye in my mind's eye, purplish-blue and moving to and fro.  When I woke up several hours later (this was the most sleep I had gotten at once in several days, about four and a half hours), I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, the pulsation still vibrating away on my back.  As I looked in the mirror, I noticed that my tongue was jet-black.  It took nearly two days of trying to brush off the blackness.  I kept thinking about the "I'm radioactive" statement, the "I'll knock first" and the woosh of cold air that entered my apartment after some time of having the door open.  Was I cleansed of something after all of this ritualistic stuff that had been happening?  That was the only conclusion I could come up with.  I was reminded of Jeremy Narby's book.  Was this some kind of essence or spirit representing this cosmic serpent?  When you say the word, Selassie in a certain way while breathing, it sounds snake-ish.

A sense of a grand plan and a universe far larger than any of us have ever imagined began to emerge during this time.  A universe filled with sentient beings much more advanced than we are on earth.  At the same time, a feeling that this knowledge was about to come forth to the human race such as not been known in many years, certainly not within our "fear: buy: consume" so-called modern world that most of us know.  I got a distinct sense from this place of knowing that had exploded into my life that great changes were on the way for the earth and its inhabitants.  Changes that were forecast many years ago by the Mayans, the Hopi and are echoed today by the Kogi, or Elder Brother, whom I also was directed to discover during this time in my days-long meditations.  The Kogi dwell in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains of northern Columbia.  The BBC did a documentary on them over twenty years ago, "Message From The Elder Brother", which I watched during this time.  I have since found out, later this year, that another documentary is in the works.  The Kogi regard themselves as the Keepers of the Earth.  They warn that our society, The Little Brother, is about to bring the earth to the point where she can't recover from the massive destruction and pillaging that has been taking place since the Industrial Revolution.

There is much talk now all over the world about earth changes, the Mayan Calendar and other dimensional and / or extraterrestrial beings waiting to communicate with us.  Although my mosaic has been in a constant state of flux since my teen years, it was only during this time that a number of tangents came together, as directed by this Source energy that had now been pulsating on my back for many days, directing me here and there and showing me things beyond my wildest dreams, that I began to get a larger sense of how this all ties together.  "They're going for the Seeds, and that is Enough," was what started to come to me vividly.  This, at least to me, is what this all boils down to in one sense.  Once the natural seeds of the earth are corrupted, despite our useful scientific technologies and beyond the level of exploitation and destruction of the earth itself, is the appointed time for humanity to make a choice to either evolve, or ascend, to a higher understanding of life or perish.  Our place in the universe and a much larger picture of the universe than we have been taught had enfolded before my eyes, and the level to which mankind has corrupted the natural world is why this is all happening at this appointed time.  It has to do with the seeds and companies like Monsanto.  On a larger level, the seeds are how life is transferred from generation to generation, so that made a lot of sense to me.  Hopefully we, as a race, will wake up to this in time to save ourselves, our planet and all of the forms of life therein.

My intense period of event strings that comprised my cosmic initiation began to wane in mid-January of this year.  The pulsation in my back ceased and I was given much to think about over the many months that have followed.  Although I continue to have lucid periods of meditation, the strength and intensity of what I experienced has not returned as yet to the level that it had built and sustained for many weeks.  I continue to take notes here and there, and follow various event strings that lead me to new knowledge and understanding as time moves forward, much of which I attempt to at least cover lightly on this blog on a more regular basis.  I realize now that there was even more that I was shown and experienced during that time, but this post is already much longer than I had intended, so I will stop here for now.

Below is the BBC film, "Message From The Elder Brother".  It was done over twenty years ago, and the Kogi are presently working on a sequel.

Namaste.