non-duality magazine
Home Contents About                   Contribute Subscribe Contact
   

PARKER STAFFORD
 

Saturday, March 19, 2011

 

  

Artist, educator, and writer, Parker Stafford experienced a powerful awakening of kundalini in 1996.   After beginning to question what others were taking for granted about their Awakenings, Parker met someone who helped fuel a new direction in his life. Parker writes in his nearly completed book about how we can tap the knowing of the soul, effectively bypassing centuries of tradition which have been steeped in the fracture of separation and paternalistic control.  What is needed in Awakenings today, he contends, is nothing short of a new beginning, a fresh start in conceptualizing our spirituality.  He is developing a way of understanding the energetics of an Awakening in a  non-dogmatic way that he calls Divine Energetics and draws from commonly understood principles such as the role of creativity and the masculine and feminine aspects of the psyche in helping to catalyze healing and growth through drawing on the resources of the higher self.  Parker currently writes poetry and prose centered on divine union and awakenings at his blog  www.divinealignment.blogspot.com
 

 

New Birth

 

As we die to what we once were to what we are becoming, can we look cogently and clearly at our process to understand what is happening to us in the midst of kundalini or some other form of awakening? While we seek to kill off the ego as some suggest, are we simply birthing some new arrangement of the self?

In Awakenings there is talk of ego death as an important part of the process. I think the term is confusing because ego does not die. Nothing created does. Everything, born of energy, remains. What does happen, however, is the self is rearranged through this process. The ego itself does not die but is taken from its front and center role as controlling agent to a participant in the process of comprehending duality......but just not running the show. This rearranging of the self is important because the boundlessness of the soul which begins to press a kind of inner crisis in many when faced with collective consciousness involves a very different kind of consciousness. Ego is itself very much bound up within limit whereas the larger self simply is not. It can quite easily flow into the great All in the moment. There have been many a struggles that have involved the ego and the self unable to surrender to the higher self, the god and goddess within us.

People talk about it, though, like its dead and gone. I think this is a mistake because the ego self is not a pat little part like an alternator in a car that can simply be taken out or replaced. Its part of a complex dynamic system that is built more like poetry than cars. To understand the ego I think you have to step back a little and observe. To me the ego is not merely a surface detail but is instead integrated into the personality and helps us to differentiate between me and thee. This part of us was developed here on the dual plane for this very purpose. It has, though, gotten entirely out of hand. There was a time when we had a far great mobility to our consciousness and this was due in part to an ego that was not so front and center dominant. It does, however, go from surface self to deep essential self. Even the soul knows itself as its own identity, so this becomes a higher plane form of ego. Once created, individuality cannot be unmade. The individual is not some illusory thing, or something that will become subsumed into some larger self but goes on in its own way, capable of operating both as particle and wave, as individual and riding in unity consciousness. The problem as I see it is that we very much think that we have to kill the ego. I suspect this may have to do with some eastern traditions that have promulgated this view. Like any discipline or dogma or religion, there are any number of views about what we should or should not do. Thing is, we can do and become whatever we so choose. We are free to do this. Feeling into your very core you will find this freedom to be a kind of birthright. At the core of this lies a creative energy that is constantly shifting and changing. Just as we can shift and change, so can the shape of our consciousness.

Ego goes from surface to deeper self and is part of a continuity of being that flows from one aspect to another. Use whatever paradigm or method for reflecting or trying to understand it, ultimately I think that if you are reflective and honest yourself you can see and feel into what the ego is and how interconnected it is in your being. The lesson is in not letting the ego gain control of the ship. Its great as a spotter of other ships, but when it comes to it seeking to navigate the ship, forget it. The ego will find and attach meanings to phenomenon in an awakening that can be entirely blown out of perspective as well as being distorted. The ego, like the mind, simply cannot make sense of an awakening the way the feeling self can. Ironically many of our institutions of thought tend to relegate the feeling self to that part of our being that is more primitive. It is in truth the most developed part of us for "understanding" these awakenings. When the ego and mind get into the act small things become big things and all of our foibles come to the fore. This is good if you want to deal with them but the ego is not interested in dealing with anything except running the show. The ego will tend to bring in associations that may or may not have bearing on the matter at hand. This is because the ego and mind are themselves not very intuitive. Your feeling self, however, is very intuitive.

The trick in all of this is how to arrange the self in such a way that the ego does not cause a lot of problems. Awakenings that involve kundalini will tend to push this arrangement upon you at some point or another. In truth, we are born and die micro second to microsecond. Our bodies mirror this truth as every six to seven years our bodily material is completely replaced. Consciousness flickers in this way, but "you" do not seem to disappear but if you feel into your being you will find that your energy will always tend to be a very rapid pulsing or vibration of energy that belies this "flicker" effect that is part and parcel of consciousness and all energy as wave form. All energy, including consciousness, moves from zero point to its full potential. The ego, then, can continue to be a challenge until the self adopts a new stance, a more permanent posture that feels better to it. Instead of having the ego at the front door, its now more content to watch at the world around it from a side or back window. And that works very well.

At higher levels of consciousness it is this same ego that makes connections with others in divine union. This is the essence of kundalini. For some it is union with a deity or energy. For others, its in soul unions with people here on earth in something we call soul connections. Others have called them twin flames and there is a lot of ideas surrounding what these unions are but they are simply the result of a mirroring process and can, if successful, drive change in a catalytic way. Sometimes people can become stuck and not go through healing or change. We tend to draw to us what we currently believe we need. If the higher self speaks loudly enough then a new wrinkle can be brought into the process. This could involve, among a vast array of things, something that involves "death" of the ego.

I think that we will each find our way through this. The great opportunity that an awakening brings is what seems to be a more conscious and faster form of manifesting what we feel we deserve or what we want to co-create here on the planet. If this means that the Way is easier by subsuming a part of the self into the self, or by rearranging the ego, then it may make things easier. But there are many paths, and we all need to learn what we need to learn in our own way. Kundalini will see to that if you are open to it and willing to let it bring learning to you.

The self is highly malleable and can be arranged and rearranged. How do you think moving into a more feeling mode of being will serve you in your path? Do you think that a more intellectual approach will work for now? Would it be easier if the ego just stepped out of the way for a bit? 

 

Home Field

 

Within us,
and within nature
lie secrets....
about the boundlessness of creation
about forms delivered, emerged, teased from the force
by those larger than itself but smaller, too.
Divinity revealed
within the twisted strands of our evolutionary coding
and buried in every particle since the beginning
with the innate propensity to become.
We have emerged as through dream.
What worlds do we birth as we dream?

I wont argue over the course it has taken
the masterwork seen at so close a vantage point
and will instead center upon my purpose.
We each contribute to a resonant field
which is changing how we will be.
Everything in me cries out that
the secret become manifest in the mundane
in each moment
whether grand or common
its all made grace filled and divine
by how we anchor it in this world.
Its not enough for me to lift off into
worlds ethereal.
Lets bring down heaven and tie it to earth
so she may know her lover,
so their union becomes our union
and we know ourselves in our larger forms.

The world will still be what it was
yet shall be utterly transformed...
for we will be changed
this revolution of soul
contained in a drop
spreading outward like light upon the grass.

Let us, like children
enter into that kingdom
here on earth
buried within us...
we need not see duality ever the same again
when masculine and feminine stand side by side
enthroned within their larger purposes
easy in their natures
ready to simply be in such simplicity
that they inherit the infinite.

Thousands of years of alchemy
the slow adjustments made
each turning around destinies scattered
through countless lifetimes
it has wound its way to this
as Thunder speaks,
"The Great Wheel has come full turn."

I think we each do our part and see what we can see
and do what we can do...
knowing there is no end to what we can see and do
and always seek the divine grace filled moment
so that our larger selves transmit themselves
to our smaller selves
and divine inspiration becomes a flow
not just waves crashing against our shores.
You have revealed to me what it can become
so it begins right here with you and I
as we open ourselves to our core being
and allow the infinite bliss flow into this moment
as lips caress lips and breath feeds breath
as the world wakes up to itself bit by bit
from the inside out.
The world lies like some caress seeking itself
unfolding with an ache to be known;
come hold my hand as we run with the enthusiasm of children
discovering new worlds.
Oh please; I can think of none other I'd want to discover it with
than you.

 

For more info visit  www.divinealignment.blogspot.com