[QUOTE]Originally posted by Avlokita:
This is the return of the Prodigal Son. Yet, i don't think we ever left God's grace and will. I think that is the illusion. once the illusion is broken, you realized you never left home. God has always held you in his loving hands....


I agree that we never leave God's grace, but I do think we can leave God's will, and often do. But I like what you say.

Isn't there an old Jewish story...? A young man is very unhappy with his home and his village, but has heard that there is a wonderful village just two days journey away. So he journeys a days walk away from home, and when he lies down to sleep he points his shoes in the direction he was going so he doesn't get disoriented and can resume the journey in the morning. But in the night a spirit comes and turns his shoes around, so that the next day he walks right back to his old village. But believing it to be the wonderful village he has heard about, he sees it with new eyes. How friendly the people! How beautiful the view! And look -- here is a house that seems exactly right for him, and no one is living there. So he moves back into his home and lives happily every after.
I guess the spirit "turned around" more than his shoes!

One more post from me this morning:
Is there a thread somewhere on this board that relates to intercessory prayer? If so, I haven't found it yet. I am so often asked to pray for people, but with my newly emerging, more contemplative kind of prayer, and new understandings of God, the way I used to pray for people seems superficial and almost silly ("O God, please heal so-and so" ...as if God didn't want to do that already!)

So - how do you pray for others? Do you use visualization? Just hold them in your consciousness somehow? Pray with words? I know that it means a great deal to me when people hold me in prayer, and as part of the Body I want to be faithful in praying for others, but it just seems like there ought to be a better way.

If there is no thread for this maybe we could start one? (Not sure how)

Hi everyone,

I must say this dialogue is absolutely great, and do hope I also can contribute a bit.

We know that we are made for God's joy and pleasure. The Fall threw all of us into darkness, thereby, leaving us devoid of the knowledge, love and oneness we have with our Creator. The crown which should be our connection and guide with God and shine like a beacon has been dimmed and shrouded by ignorance as everyone walks after their own desires and lusts of the eyes and flesh being captured by our lower mind and faculties.

The kundalini process is a gift by our heavenly Parents that purifies our spiritual body allowing the merger of our feminine and masculine energies back into wholeness once again. The light of God's Holy Spirit gives us a renewed birth as we are lifted above as the son of man. As Moses lifted his staff in the wilderness, so must we lift the son of man above so he can once again be connected with the crown on our heads. The crown represents our higher whereby we submit our will to God's Will. Jesus tells us: "Don't worry about the one what he can do to your body, but worry about the one what he can do to your soul." Let no one steal your crown.". When we have been lifted above and merged with our crown our soul spreads her wings in freedom, back into knowing that she was made for God's joy and God's pleasure. Earth is a school for all of us, and we have been given the opportunity to learn and to submit ourselves to God depending upon His graces and gifts in our return journey back home for the kingdom of God is within and amongst us as we celebrate same with our ascension upwards having the crown placed upon our heads. It is our lower nature that has lost its way and must be healed and made whole again by the love and graces of God's Holy Spirit in the merger of the feminine and masculine being granted the new promised birth, our internal body of light spirit/body connected at all times within the body of Christ.

In my kundalini integration and transformation God has taken me out of the world into a place of solitude and silence. "Be still, and know God". It is within this stillness and silence and having God as my teacher I have also been embraced with the knowledge and truth in knowing that all is oneness and that we are all the offspring of God. To return to the crown we all must go through the same death to the lower nature, merger of our feminine and masculine energies, receive the gift of regeneration of God's Holy Spirit and be lifted above as the son of man. Like Avlokita, I also see the face of Christ in everyone. We all come from the same blood and have the breath of God in us, and although different names are given for religions and spiritual paths, there is only one birth of regeneration as I have described above.

I am learning much about the American Indian spirituality which helps me to understand the dualities and opposing energies here with us on earth. As they understand it, it is for balance. How would we ever know the goodness and love of our heavenly parents would it not be for the appearances of opposition. All works together for good for those who love God. God for the Indians is represented as the eagle and an eagle feather shows the polarities. At the shaft of the feather is white for purity, further toward the tip of the feather is black and running across the feather is a red ribbon for the lifeforce. For them Mother earth, nature, is represented as a tortoise.

I love mother kundalini for helping me birth the son of man. I can often feel her gentle carresses upon my spine as she is lifting the precious baby son above.

God is love. We come from love and in and through love we are lifted into the miracle of eternal life back into the Garden of Eden dancing naked with the bliss and joy, without a fig leaf, finally back home

revkah, go ahead and start a new topic on intercessory prayer in the Christian Spirituality Issues forum if you'd like. I don't recall us having had a discussion on just this topic.

Ryan: "Your point of view above speaks to me at a point of my need in a particular situation at work. I read your back posts. This day I am thankful to have met you. I will give what you say a try. I was leaning in that direction anyway. You have given me words to express my leaning. Fear not."
Thank you for that post and i apologize for not responding to it earlier...i had skipped over it on accident. If i can name the number one thing that has kept me from knowing God all of these years it would be my own fear. I used to lay in bed chasing after my mind as different fears would arise. During the early stages of kundalini, i would feel this fear arise and it was terrifying. What a freedom it is to be disentangled from such a dark prison!

Freebird - I enjoyed reading your post. I always love to hear people's interpretation of mysticisms contained in the bible and in other religions.

In love and thankfulness,
Avlokita

[QUOTE]Originally posted by revkah:
[QB] Dear Ryan,
"Thank you for letting me see my own words in a new way. Many of my tears are indeed grateful awe, many more are sorrow at being separated from God when I long for oneness."

Thanks, Revka, I'm honored.

You wrote that you came across something I wrote over a year ago about using your awareness of kundalini energy as your symbol of receptivity in centering prayer. I'm glad you found that. The archive on this forum is quite a help at times. You said: "I really like that idea... could you say more about it? Are you still doing it?"

Yes, I do. I'd be glad to discuss it. I have said a bit more at a thread on apophatic meditation. See:

http://shalomplace.com/cgi-bin..._topic&f=14&t=000010


You then wrote: "I have read in many different places that when the kundalini energies are troublesome, one should cool down or slow down or simplify ones prayer/meditation. But how can I do that when everything in me wants to stretch out toward God and embrace God?"

What a wonderful observation/ question. I will not attempt to "answer" that question. Instead, I will simply remember it for a while if I may.

Revka:


I've learned so many methods over the years for gaining a sense of this frontal area of the body, and then eventually noticed how such approaches are actually harsh, impersonal treatments, little different than basing a relationship with another person on a manual or set of ideas to which he or she must conform.

And so this frontal area of the body (along with the back) has its own intelligence, personality, and responsiveness to whatever the qualities of our conscious attention happen to be. If we try to fix or improve or evoke some experience, then the rich personal capacities latent in these areas are likely constrained and unable to impart what they already know.

Often the problems with kundalini seem to arise from not having respect for the interpersonal, relational nature of this body awareness that seeks to nourish us through natural grace.

it is the storie of a blind men who are meeting another blind man:
- hi, you see how blue is the sky today?
- fantastic!

quote:

Originally posted by w.c.:
[qb] Revka:

"I've learned so many methods over the years for gaining a sense of this frontal area of the body"
.....Often the problems with kundalini seem to arise from not having respect for the interpersonal, relational nature of this body awareness that seeks to nourish us through natural grace. [/qb]

Dear w.c.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, or how it relates to what I've been saying. Could you say some more?
Revkah

Revka:

It's just my experience that the false self system, seeking to perpetuate itself, tends to want to objectify persons, as in addictions, and this plays itself out in the way the FS treats the relational nature of the frontal area of the body.

Your original reponse to mine was about the opportunities to allow emotional drama to dissolve or melt, and this, for me, is mainly experienced along the front of the body where contractions relax when I let go of judgementalness, etc, or simply allow the frontal area to resume its own kind of relational responsiveness to events and contacts with people.

And so this tendency to turn intimate persons, or intimate internal presence, into an object in order to control it, extends to kundalini, perhaps out of fear as we try to control that process. But since so much of what is conceptualized about kundalini comes from the East, where meditation techniques are emphasized, this energy often gets treated, and reinforced, as merely a force of nature.

I'm not assuming this is so much a problem for you, but it does seem a common treatment of kundalini among those I've met over the years in Buddhist and even Hindu circles, where the self is viewed as the unrealized Divine. You'd think this would make kundalini an even more personal presence, but it seems to frame it as a goal to subtly manipulate on the way to enlightement. IOW . . . we become englightenment junkies, which merely feeds the false self.

"it is the storie of a blind men who are meeting another blind man:
- hi, you see how blue is the sky today?
- fantastic!"


What's up, Vincent?

......we become enlightenment junkies, which merely feeds the false self.
-----------------------------

W.C., I really had a good laugh with your quote since last night I ardently prayed: "Dear Lord I do not want to be another Ken Wilber, I pray you give me more of your love in your service for others and increase the wisdom within me with the intelligence to realize your gifts. For me the kundalini path is not to be enlightened, but to become whole within myself and soar in the freedom of love in and through God".

Yes, it would seem we'd become less involved with kundalini as a project the more open or loving we become. There is quite a resistance to this, and, for me, it relates to the untreated distortions created in early development, which make the relational nature of the front of the body an important, if risky, opening; otherwise the "project" of kundalini can be quite self-perpetuating if we're mainly trying to preserve an image of ourselves so it isn't threatened in an intimate relationship.

W.C.,
This is a new idea to me, that there is special significance to the frontal area of the body. Is there a link or previous post where I could learn more about it, before pestering you with questions? Maybe I should pay more attention to how this part of my body feels, especially when I'm caught up in trying to get people and reality to conform to my wishes?

I appreciate what you say about the kundalini becoming a "project" and us becoming enlightenment junkies. Since this all began for me, I can think of no other topic more interesting than my own little kundalini experience, and am constantly tempted to think that it makes me special in some way. I'm also very tempted to try to control it, especially through "studying" it (objectifying it?) and this is most certainly out of fear. At times, it has truly distracted me from God and from loving other people, and has made my own intimate relationships much more difficult. I can only hope that this is just a sign of my newness to the process and my own spiritual immaturity.

Somewhere I read about people going through a "spiritual adolescence" and its parallels to chronological adolescence, with all its confusion and self-absorbtion. And, there is the element of experiencing my body in completely new and sometimes scary ways, not unlike the awakening of sexuality in a teen. Maybe one reason that my relationship with my teenaged daughter is so difficult right now is that it's basically an adolescent relating to an adolescent! Or maybe where I am in more like infancy...who knows? I remember my own infants discovering their own toes and regarding them as the most fascinating objects in all creation. What an adjustment to find out that everybody has toes, and that you're supposed to use them for a purpose!

"Maybe one reason that my relationship with my teenaged daughter is so difficult right now is that it's basically an adolescent relating to an adolescent! Or maybe where I am in more like infancy...who knows? I remember my own infants discovering their own toes and regarding them as the most fascinating objects in all creation. What an adjustment to find out that everybody has toes, and that you're supposed to use them for a purpose!"


Revkah:


You sound like a devoted mother, and your description is touching, as you seem to be saying you have some regrets and sadness as a parent. But how good you're aware of these tendencies and see them as your own responsibility.


So those are good insights you're sharing, and my impression would be that since you notice this about yourself, and it troubles you, that your conscience is functioning well. The infatuation with kundalini does wear off, but not completely, as the false self is always working to pull us away from the vulnerability of relationships that expose us to the truth. And so we always remain "immature" as we realize the difference in grace between ourselves and God, our yearning for Him, and our resistance to giving and receiving love with each other.

Kundalini awakens all the old wounds, and if we bring those wounds into a nurturing relationship, such as with a therapist or spiritual director, then there really can be an easier sense of purpose as we again go through these developmental sequences, rather than simply hanging out in the privacy of our own meditative stupor. And so you point to an important aspect of kundalini: developmental maturity as it emerges and helps re-order our nervous systems.

You might take a look at the thread "Healing the false self" under the Christian Spirituality forum, and ask Phil to connect you with other related links and resources. As for the front of the body being a relational intelligence, I'd say, mainly: trust your own intuition. Maybe see what it feels like to let a trusted person "in," or into this area, just receiving them. It might take a therapist, and one that understands kundalini, to have this experience enough that some trust is restored within these openings to the intimate other who reveals the intimate self.