All shall be well

30 Days and 2 Nights

As mentioned in my recent posts, on September 8th, 2014, I found myself having a lucid dream that included a shaktipat kundalini awakening.

After that first awakening, I spent an entire month with Kundalini energy raging through me and around me. I was in a constant altered state, or rather a variety of altered states, giving me insight after insight, inspiration after inspiration, and the utmost joy, love, bliss and peace.

It wasn’t all fun and games, however. As another experiencer of sudden Kundalini awakening has written:

No one gets a free ride.  The opening may be brilliant, transcendent even.  But there will be times of balancing and integration, periods of pain and despair, as one attempts to deal with these unfamiliar energies now infusing ones system, one day mounting into bliss, the next plunging into some kind of pain.

Dorothy Walters PhD,  

Several times an hour I would find myself doing or saying something and would then feel compelled stop to figure which aspect of me had made it happen — the new flow of energy into super-consciousness, or my old personality? Any lack of clarity would impede the flow.

At times the energy was so intense that I was hyperactive and manic. I was having profound insights and revelations faster than I could say them, though that didn’t stop me from trying, blurting out random gems of wisdom to strangers in the street. And I was exploding with wild enthusiasm, delight and laughter, seemingly over every little thing in every moment.

For my family, at times it was just a bit too much of “me” all at once.

And then: at around 4 AM on October 8th, 2014, I found myself having a second lucid dream.

It was exactly 30 days since that first lucid dreaming / awakening experience.

This time, I found myself being drawn or ushered to the very centre of the universe, the eye of the cosmos, the throbbing Source of creation, the Tao itself, the heart and soul of all-that-is. And then I experienced ecstatic communion with it.

In this state of communion, not only did I receive the answers to every question I have ever wondered about the nature of self, the meaning of life, the origins of the universe, the purpose of our existence, etc … I also became one with the Source, repeatedly.

Or to put it more precisely, I knew myself to be both creator and created at the same time, and I was able to switch between both perspectives at will.

I also realised how creation works, and why it is so.

Frankly, it was almost too much.

Meanwhile …

Tea and Toast

As far as my mystified family were concerned, I was sleepwalking for the first (and hopefully) last time in my life. Apparently, while having this lucid dream of communion with the Source, I had got out of bed naked, left the bedroom, opened the linen closet, shouted a few things, and then tried to go downstairs.

My son recognised that I was sleepwalking (having seen it in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle!). My wife Emma then managed to guide me back to a bedroom where I lay down on the floor. Ever cautious, Emma considered the possibility that I might be having a psychotic breakdown of some sort. However, I was (apparently) able to respond to her questions with reassuring statements like, “Don’t worry, it’s OK. It’s all good. Just let it happen.”

I have no memory of any of this.  My first back-in-the-body conscious experience following Communion with Source was of lying on the bedroom floor, naked, and being fed tea and toast by Emma.

I was pretty disorientated at first, not quite sure which universe I was in. But at the same time I was in a state of utter peace and happiness. I had received the answer to every question I had ever asked, and I had understood the perfect meaning of each and moment of every life, including my own.

Coming out of the altered state and returning to normality, I felt — and still feel — utter contentment at the prospect of living out the rest of my little, human life. All I want to do is be happy and share that happiness with others.

Since that second lucid dream, just two weeks ago, the volcanic explosion of Kundalini has paused. It’s more like a slow lava flow. I still have a super-normal amount of energy and my body, mind and personality are still feeling fresh, clear and brand new, as though I had, quite literally, been born again. But the crazy, manic tendency has largely subsided.

As Julian of Norwich, the 14th Century English mystic, wrote of her revelations:

It seemed to me that if there were no such things as sin, we would all be as pure as our Lord created us, reflecting his likeness … But in this showing Jesus gave me all that I needed: “Sin is inevitable,” he said. “Yet all will be well, and all shall be well, and every kind of thing shall be well.”

A dream, awakening, and healing

barry-2014

Me + M.E.

(July 2014)

Ok, this is pretty phenomenal. And I don’t often say that when it’s just about me.

Some of you will know my recent history. I have been badly troubled with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / M.E. since 2008. It’s a massive depletion of energy, which I’ve described as feeling like a frail 90-year-old with a bad dose of ‘flu.*

* If you want to know more, see my About page.

I had really feared that this was a permanent condition from which I would never recover. It has had a dramatic effect on my life, my work, my family, my income. Also my ability to run this website. It has severely dented my sense of worth as a person, an employee, a man, a father, and a husband.

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My first Enlightenment Intensive – by Isis the psychic

Isis2

I just came across this wonderful article, “Isis Speaks”, by Isis Coble (above).

Isis, also known as Meerkat or TarotMama, is an inuitive/psychic counsellor who does online tarot readings via her tarotmama.com website.

The article was published in Sojourn magazine (Vol 2, Issue 2), in 1998. Sojourn was a magazine for spiritually-minded women writers and artists based in Northern California. In the article—described as an “interview” although there are no questions—Isis tells her life story. The bit I want to relay is about Isis’s first encounter with an Enlightenment Intensive in the ealy 1970s.

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10 things everyone should know about reincarnation

Around the world, many people—perhaps the majority overall—accept a belief in reincarnation as part of their religion.

Not many people in the West believe in it, though. In fact, many scoff at the very idea and regard it as nonsense.

This is largely because in the West we are enamored with the benefits of scientific knowledge and increasingly sceptical of the old religions—rightly so, in my view. The knowledge science provides can be systematically checked to ensure that it is valid and reliable. This is why it is of such great value.

But it is not necessarily the only source of knowledge that is valid and reliable.

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My first enlightenment experience

Eyes

When I first saw an ad for an Enlightenment Intensive back in 1991, I was pretty sceptical. “An opportunity to experience the change in state of consciousness traditionally known as enlightenment” it said—and in just three days? There had to be a catch! I thought it was supposed to take decades, lifetimes even, to reach such a state.

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Self and no-self: the personality crisis of a Zen master

- New York Times Mag article 26.04.09 -
- New York Times Mag article 26.04.09 -

Someone pointed me to this fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine (23 April). It’s about a 63-year old academic who has spent much of his life as a dedicated Zen practitioner – now a Zen master – but who has in recent years undergone a personality crisis. He went into therapy with Jeffrey Rubin, author of Psychotherapy and Buddhism: Toward an Integration, and had a breakthrough.

Basically, he realised that he had used the Buddhist concept of no-self to evade his inner process and unconscious traumas. All his ‘stuff’ came back to him, and with his owning it came a joyful rediscovery of self.

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