maya-shakti-kali

[whitewave]

One more thing--there are healers you don't have to explain everything to. They just know, and if they are fully initiated themselves, they will be able to give you the space to work through your process at your own pace. If you have never worked with a shaman I would recommend it, although I think there are probably a lot of phonies out there. Once again, it's a go with your gut proposition in finding the person right for you. Also, I believe in the old axiom, that the teacher will come when you are ready. That was the case for me. When this happens you will know in your gut that you've found the right one.

[Buzz]

Haven't read thru the whole thread but good stuff so far. Kind of good to see a reconciliation between Daniel and Manning.

A couple of decades back, when Abbey Hoffman re-emerged from hiding from his cocaine charge, he went on talk shows, or at least one. Was watching when he was asked by a host (can't recall exact show) "What have you been doing?" Abbey replied that "he had been learning to live with women." There was something extremely profound and moving in his statement.

[tana]

Daniel,

In response to the Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj quote you posted:

"Get hold of the main thing: That the world and the self are one and perfect. Only your attitude is faulty and needs readjustment.
This process of readjustment is what you call sadhana. You come to it by putting an end to indolence and using all your energy to clear the way for clarity and charity. But in reality these are signs of inevitable growth.
Don’t be afraid, don’t resist. Don’t delay. Be what you are. There is nothing to be afraid of. Trust and try. Experiment honestly. Give your real being a chance to shape your life. You will not regret."

Reading this was like getting hit in the head with a 2x4...thanks...i REALLY needed to read that.

[Thom]

Am i correct in thinking that Kali is the suppressed "human form divine" returning to conciousness? That the rational ego and kali are approaching each other, the gravitational pull of each causing transformations in the other, until eventually the climax is a unified conciousness, mater is re-spiritualized and the ego is freed from time - the doors of perception are cleansed?

I've certainly got more processing to do of my recent experience - i'm not convinced that i am sick. I do recognise that i need to change my day to day dualistic perspective, but this seems more a process of initiation than healing. That everything is as it should be...

I'm loath to post until i've sorted it out, but wanted to join in a bit here.

Whitewave, i want to let you know that i really appreciate your posts, and Manning, i agree with Daniel, your take on kali energies has been very stimulating for me.

[daniel]

Working on my book today, i realized a correspondence that was so numinous it sent long shivers up and down my spine... the story is a bit too cumbersome to fully recount, but essentially, at the beginning of this threat, I mentioned my experience at Burning Man 2003 which led to my personal realization of the kali energy and how its deviant power had deformed my whole life. That is the section I am now rewriting. That week was dominated by the presence of Mars, which had reached its closest approach to the Earth in 60,000 years. My week was some kind of "Mars initiation," seemingly, and many things happened during it. After ingesting a fungal sacrament, I received a kind of cosmic transmission that informed me that the Hindu Dravidians account of the 60,000 year cycle of the Yugas corresponded to the return of Mars, as a kind of retuning of the vibrational frequency of the Earth... one of a series of steps in which the Earth is becoming less materially dense and more psychically responsive, leading to the "dimensional shift" of 2012.

Anyway, at the end of the week - Sunday morning - I made the "mistake" of taking Provigil, a military "smart drug" with amphetamine-like properties given to troops in Iraq. This seemed to seal the martial/Martian elements of the week, putting me in a state of anger unlike anything I had experienced before - I understood that this substance must be turning our conscripts into soulless killing machines. This anger was necessary for me as it helped fuel my combative stance at that time - I felt like I ultimately managed to convert the "poison" into a "medicine," as alchemy dictates.

Later that afternoon, I met a healer at the center camp who discovered a lump on my "assemblage point" near the upper spine. She performed Reiki on me, and told me I was in physical danger and needed to get out of town right away, basically, which I did. But she was also the first person to tell me about Sedna! She was talking about the discovery of this planet in the outer solar system as reflecting some kind of change in our psychic constellation. I later realized that meeting her was prophecied in my Bwiti initiation, when I was told "Touchers teach too." She was the toucher who taught me something I needed to know, at a crucial juncture.

Three months after this, I went to Brazil and had my Quetzalcoatl experience.

Very numinous, very strange...

[silentwolf]

Keep in mind that you can see things into existence before you look with too much effort.

[Thom]

Manning that's great. I read Jung's interpretation of alchemy a few years ago and adopted his language for a while. I might take it up again - thanks.

I think that's part of my difficulty with this material; finding the language to think about it with.

[Thom]

Manning: "Ultimately, you're talking about a couple of different processes -- ego death, sacred union, and the birth of the new consciousness. Ideally, these events are a gradual process of spiritual emergence that take place over a period of months, even years. But if it's very rapid, it can become a crisis of spiritual emergency."

Yes, i understand this on an intellectual level, but emotionally it's not translating. Information has not yet become wisdom, perhaps. Something stops me fully integrating my more unusual experience.

When i was about 18 i think i came very close to a psychic split - for reasons alluded to earlier - but that i managed to hold things together, just about, so i didn't completely "break" in two. Perhaps i needed to, but i didn't. I did go through some visionary states that were not brought on by drugs though, and they were frightening. I'm 25 now and feel a lot less fragile, but i suspect that there is more to deal with from that area.

and recently, in the last 2 years, i have been experiencing occasional "spontaneous visionary states" but they don't feel hugely threatening. They are transformative, and could well be interpreted as "kali" but i sort of enjoy them. They are hard to describe, but similar perhaps to what people report of small doses of 5-meo-dmt, and always happen when i am alone and away from society.

So, basically you've given me a lot to think about with the John Weir Parry link, thanks again.

[ March 11, 2005, 11:53 PM: Message edited by: Thom ]

[daniel]

manning,

what happened to your shorter, odder post - something about slitting the throat?

[Isaiah Mpski]

Daniel what do you think of my proposal that we landbase this community on my farm in Oklahoma.
You can see a picture of it on Yahoo groups-PickOverFlow.Mine is the undeveloped 1/4.
It could become a clinic for raising consciousness.

[daniel]

which "character" of yours responded to silentwolf with a comment about slitting the throat? And which "character" deleted the comment?

just curious...

[Thom]

Manning, thanks for the links.

Just to be clear, when i said i was close to psychic split i didn't mean "psychotic break." I meant i was suffering from extreme alienation from my own emotions. I was like a robot for a while, in a state of shock perhaps, and had several hallucinations at that time, one of which, incidentally was an androgynous harlequin, who i later identified as "hermes." PTSD maybe, but not, i think, psychosis.

Anyway, i've done a lot of work with Jungian models since then. I have a feeling the "kali" trips i've had lately are a bit different. I could be wrong though.

PS i had a fight with a stray dog today, and now have a broken left hand. Talk about the reality of the psyche....

[ March 12, 2005, 09:15 AM: Message edited by: Thom ]

[Thom]

No, i didn't. I've just saved it to my computer and will respond tomorrow, when my hand is less swollen!

Many thanks,
thom.

[ March 12, 2005, 09:31 AM: Message edited by: Thom ]

[Thom]

Daniel: "Yes, we do have to leave society, most likely. We have to leave it in order to return to it, bringing with it a different level of knowledge and understanding that can help to transform it. That is the natural path of those who would like to be shamans or truth-tellers for their community - separation and then reintegration, bringing back the wisdom that is needed but rejected, in a form that it can be integrated."

Apologies daniel, i overlooked this. Thanks for the response. The tricky thing is, how to maintain memory of strong experiences...because personally, when i allow myself to get swept away, i find it hard to remember the experience. Its intensely meaningful at the time, but in retrospect it seems to disappear. Like fairy gold, it turns to autumn leaves when we return/wake up/come down etc.

In the particular trip i described, i had to fight it, because of the weather conditions - sitting down and closing my eyes would have been dangerous.

Anyway, you hit the mark, i do see myself as a truth teller - i don't heal anyone with my stories though, not yet at least, so i don't buy into the shaman idea...although i do think that various social pressures on my community have manifested intensely in my personal life and circumstances, so therefore by working them out i also fulfill a cultural obligation...

Thats probably obvious from my posts anyway.

Thanks,
thom.

[Thom]

Manning, can you please repair the link to: PTSD, Psychosis and Story as a Vehicle of Healing

I seem to have lost the piece on my computer.

[Thom]

"Link repaired, Thom"

Great Manning, got it. Sincere thanks for your input. More tomorrow.

[ March 12, 2005, 12:43 PM: Message edited by: Thom ]

[Manning]

[Source: Eclectic Honey]</font>

• I will write you letters that
  Explain the way I'm thinking now
  I, I will return to you
  What I have taken long before
  I, I will return again
  When it gets dark and day is done
  
  And lay me down
  In the hallowed ground
  Down by your side I will stay
  So lay me down
  
  And if you wanna stay with me
  Then let me know before it's light
  I, I will recoil myself
  Into the black and darkest night
  
  And lay me down
  In the hallowed ground
  Where my father waits I will stay
  So lay me down
  
  And lay me down
  In the hallowed ground
  Down by your side I will stay
  So lay me down
  
  The Frames
  
  [Purchase Here]</font>

[ March 16, 2005, 07:52 PM: Message edited by: Manning ]

[whitewave]

manning,

what happened to your shorter, odder post - something about slitting the throat?

Give Me Liberty

It began on a Saturday night
when I took what I wanted.
I was a drunk, so I had no problem saying
hi, you wanna come home with me?
I kept meaning to be a vegetarian,
but the food at the bar was free.
Barbecue ribs and buffalo chicken wings,
licking the preservatives off my fingers
by instinct. I've heard pigs will eat anything
that lies still on the ground
showing no signs of life.
It wasn't his fault.
I was just bored with everything.
I pushed him off and faced the wall.
It was finally ready to speak.
Or maybe I was just ready to hear
what the wall had to say.
Yo, ho, ho, it laughed at me.
You brandish your drink like a buccaneer
from the seventeenth century,
when you've really been waiting for the
highwayman to sweep you off your feet.
You don't care where you're going
as long as it's at a gallop.
You think you are Cathy sobbing on the moors
of Wuthering Heights.
My sister Emily loved the moors.
Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed
in the blackest heath for her;
out of a sullen hollow in the livid hillside
her mind could make an Eden.
She found in the bleakest solitude
many and dear delights;
and not the least was--liberty.
I have wandered the moors of this island,
stripped bare and bleeding--
(really I was drunk and lost in the bushes
on my way home from a late night.)
How did I end up an outlaw,
hand cocked on hip,
brandishing a cutlass at all
who dared to look at me?
What did I seek in the shadows,
drawing violence toward me as if
there were no limits to how many
challengers I could repel?
For years I hid behind a can of beer,
wearing a coat of smoke I refused to shed,
even when it was hot enough to melt the ice
in my stoli raz & cranberry.
I laughed too loud. I thought my teeth
flashed brazenly.
In the mirror that's behind every bar
I finally saw the truth.
It was galloping toward me.
The truth swept me into the eye of a hurricane,
and when I reached this calm center
at the heart of every blaze,
I cut my own throat so I could finally speak.

The lines in italics are by Charlotte Bronte.

[ March 13, 2005, 07:49 AM: Message edited by: whitewave ]

[Buzz]

Have you folks heard of the Toltec Recapitulation?

[Thom]

Toltec recapitulation has been mentioned here before, i read it recently in the archives - in relation to iboga as i recall. Can't find it through the search function though...Can anyone post a link?

[tana]

That's a beautiful song, Whitewave!

[Buzz]

Hi Manning,

In a nutshell, Recapitualation is the retrieval of energy lost due to emotional engagement. It sounds all in the world like Soul Retrieval.

All through our lives we get involved in emotional interchanges with other individuals. As we generally exchange particles with everything else in the known universe all the time, I suppose one could see these emotional scenes as being like heated air or water, molecules get displaced at a higher rate than usual. Just a guess, but maybe it illustrates the problem. Anyhow, due to these emotionally charged events we lose a bit of ourselves, or maybe the energy gets bound up into a knot. Recapitulation is probably best described in Taisha Abelar's book, The Sorcerer's Crossing but Castenada refers to it in several of his books. Recapitulation is a method whereby one basically meditates on past encounters, relives them, and balances the energy lost or tied up in the exchange. One starts with their head erect, but turned to the right side, inhaling and turning the head to face the other direction (look at it as shoulder to shoulder) as you focus on a particular emotional injury (in other words an emotional encounter with another person). Then the head is turned while holding the breathe to look straight ahead, then back to the side you'd just turned from and then exhaling as you turn all the way back to the right shoulder. Then, again without breathing, turn to face the middle and back to the right shoulder. One repeats this until the memory becomes so vivid it is like being there again or to when one feels restored. Castenada's mentor supposedly had Carlos make a list of every single person and every single interaction that he had ever had with someone and had to recapitulate the entire group, one at a time. I think DJ even had him repeat the entire sequence a second and third time. It supposedly took him years to do. Whereas CC was left to his own devices to performing this Taisha was nailed into a wooden crate. Pretty outrageous stuff. Whatever, I think the principle here is to learn to focus ones mind, see something for what it is in a detached state, which allows the energy to restore itself. I feel pretty confident in saying that recapitulation also opens the door to lives we lived before this one.

I've found on psychedelics that i naturally focus on these things. It's a healing experience, restoring. What is interesting is that we usually only consciously see the hurt that others have done to us. Be prepared to find out the harm you have done to others. It is a humbling experience.

[ March 13, 2005, 01:54 PM: Message edited by: Buzz ]

[Buzz]

Toltecs call our binary energy system Tonal & Nagual. What we might think of as Spirit (nagual) and Soul (tonal). Or conscious and unconscious.

Recapitulation is about union maybe in a less dualistic mode. More a patching up the missing or untying blocked pieces of the energy field. Some shamen can and will untie the knots, others make you do the work. We've all hurt other people. Don't be too hard on yourself.

[tana]

i'm interested in discussing Toltec recapitulation...i'm wondering if a new thread should be started, or if this topic applies to Kali/Maya in the vein of ego death? i underwent a therapeutic technique that mimics toltec recapitualation, and have not yet had the chance to discuss the experience with anyone else who was familiar with it.

hope i'm not interfering here...just interested in the concept of recapitulation, and its contemporary adaptations.

[jezebelle]

I think there is alot of truth to wanting to get off the emotional rollercoaster. One tends to gloss over very powerful feelings and things get stuck without realizing it.
For instance, I just started doing some taoist massaging techniques and before I knew it all this crying/sad stuff came up. I realized that some of it comes from my mother dying when I was 7 and certain abandonment issues still color my present. Recognition is the biggest step.

Another good book is Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self by Sandra Ingerman
Love to all, jez

[daniel]

thom wrote: "i do see myself as a truth teller - i don't heal anyone with my stories though, not yet at least, so i don't buy into the shaman idea...although i do think that various social pressures on my community have manifested intensely in my personal life and circumstances, so therefore by working them out i also fulfill a cultural obligation..."

If I were you, I would think about it this way: In tribal societies, perhaps one out of twenty or thirty people is a shaman. I believe this is a universal proportion, so that in our Western societies, the proportion would be the same. Anyone who is participating in these experiences and the ideas of this forum as deeply as you obviously are, would be, without doubt, among the local shamans if such figures still had their natural place in our reality. The shaman is the healer, the truth-teller, the intellectual, and the visionary for his "tribe."

Manning,

I find a weird dissonance in your endless spewings of Jungian material from others, and then your strange little excised post, which you refuse to comment upon or acknowledge. Perhaps your involvement with Kali energies is much closer than you are willing to acknowledge at this point in time?

[silentwolf]

Originally posted by Buzz:
Some shamen can and will untie the knots, others make you do the work.

A Shaman can balance out another person's energy system and put it where it should be, but unless the person changes the things that originally jammed up the system it will return to its previous state. For this reason, whenever I work with another person's energy system, the first thing I do is instruct them on how to remain in the moment and how to perform Five Gates Breath. If you won't work to keep your energy system balanced, there's no point in having someone put it back into order for you.

[whitewave]

Daniel,
I got chills too, from listening to your story about Burning Man 2003. Who gave you the military smart drug? A friend of mine became very violent at Burning Man last year after taking an unknown substance and ended up in jail. Like, you, I don't think this was a "mistake," but part of his process of exploration. Could someone elucidate the assemblage point for me? I've heard it mentioned, but can't remember what it means. I have recurring pain in a spot on the right side of my spine between my two shoulderblades. I am wondering if it is connected to this assemblage point. Also, do you know why the scientists named the newly discovered planet Sedna? I read in the link you posted that it is in the coldest part of the solar system, so that makes sense since Sedna is an Inuit goddess, but I would like to know if anyone else knows more of the backstory. I have read two interesting books by Barbara Hand Clow on Pluto and Chiron, in which she discusses how the "discovery" of these bodies correlates with historical development. According to her, Pluto was what dug up the deep shadow energy that manifested as Nazism, and Chiron, discovered in the 60s, I think, brings the archetype of the healer into the collective unconscious of the earth. I am feeling that my next direction as a writer is to figure out how the discovery of Sedna is going to effect earth on an archetypal level. Since I read that story, I can't get her out of my mind. I recommend those books by Clow. Astrology is not some predictive tool for her, but a means of deep analysis that has enabled me to make sense of events on a worldwide scale, and to enable me to better understand myself and my generation.

This connects me to the point I wanted to make about Thom's post about not thinking he was a shaman, which Daniel already stated. I agree that shamans are truth-tellers, and that in our time, telling the truth is an act of healing. It is easy to confuse our image of a shaman from anthropology with what a shaman now may actually be.

This brings me back to Tana's deleting of her post about the mushroom trip where she wrote about perceiving an orgy in her garden. Tana, I'm glad you put it back! Once again, our idea of what an orgy is has been warped by our debased sexual culture. Orgies were originally ecstatic religious rites in praise of the god Dionysus, whose followers, the Maenads, tore Orpheus to pieces, some say because they were threatened by him because he had the power to sing the world into being--his head floated downriver and landed on the island of Lesbos, whose residents buried it, giving them the gift of song which comes down to us through Sappho, one of the first lyric poets whose written work has survived in western culture. There's a lot to ponder in this myth and I have not sorted it all out yet, but I am thinking about it and will post my reflections when I do.

I have never been to Burning Man, but when I read about it, I realized that I had been to the plaza the year before the first burning man took place. I drove to the Black Rock Desert with my friend who was getting her MFA in photography. We spent a couple of days there. She took photographs of me and shot video of me walking across the white empty space. When you look at the video you can't see the mountains in the distance, just me and white space. I remember being fascinated and absorbed by the cracked patterns on the ground, which stretched on infinitely when I sank into them. One night when we were driving around I looked up and saw Halle's Comet, the one time I saw it during the last passs. Anyone know what Halle's comet is supposed to signify? I believe that photographs capture energy in a way that I can't explain, which makes me feel connected to Burning Man even though I haven't been there. Maybe this summer. My permaculture friends want to put together a permie camp.

Which brings me to a point Buzz made, perhaps in the Love, sex, atomic death thread, but I am going to address it here since I am on a roll. Buzz, I think you don't have to "join" society in order to transform it. Even if you retreat into the woods and contemplate the still pool of water. By transforming your energy, you will affect everything around you. You will give hope to the plants and the trees and the water around you if you choose to live in balance with them, and it sounds like from your description of wanting to get off the grid, that this is what you plan to do. This is a form of activism too. A good way of reclaiming the word for peaceful people who don't feel called to take back the streets, I think.

Manning, I didn't get a chance to read your post about cutting your throat before you deleted it. I put up that poem as a response to it, nonetheless. I find a lot of value in the interplay we have here, and I would encourage you to try to look at the way we interact with each other from a Jungian perspective, instead of using Jung to distance yourself from us. In my opinion, the board is a way that we can help ourselves transform individually, with the intent of transforming collectively. When Daniel pushes you to reveal yourself, he is giving you the opportunity to let go of something that is stopping you from realizing your, and our, wholeness. Getting angry is a good sign, I think. This means you are not numb. I know it is hard to trust people you don't know, but you must have for a moment when you hit the "post reply" button. I encourage you not to delete your posts. Working through your fear, if that's what it is, will enable you to reach a transparent state, where anger can flow through you, where there is peace, or at least resolution.

Lastly, a year ago I had a soul retrieval done. It was done by two women, my spiritual teacher and another shaman named Tomma who specializes in soul retrieval. Tomma went into a trance and contacted soul parts of mine that had not been able to complete their journey and who were now affecting mine. In the trance, she was able to transform these parts by shifting what happened so that they could fulfill their soul's purpose, thus freeing me from their bitterness and anger. They each gave her a totem plant and animal to take back with her to give me so I could meditate on them. She reintegrated these transformed parts back into me by blowing them into my heart. Afterwards she told me their stories. Maria worked in concordance with her, doing cellular transformation as she tapped into a soul part of mine that had been damaged that was affecting me physically and emotionally in this life. This was definitely one of the most profound experienes on my journey so far---again, these women live in the Chatham, NY area if anyone is interested in working with them. From hearing the stories these soul pars told Tomma and Maria, I was able to make sense of many of the unexplainable things in my life. I've had a lot more compassion for myself since I reached this understanding.

[whitewave]

To quote Manning: "Meantime, I don't really view this place as a place to bare my heart and soul. To be sure, there's some crossover -- I have shared that my psychotic break was a result of trauma, but it's not necessary [I don't think] to share the specifics of the trauma. I think it would disturb others, and although there was a time I needed that kind of support I'm no longer in need of it."

To quote the poet Adrienne Rich, "When one woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her."

Hello Manning, while I respect the position you take about revealing yourself, I would ask you to consider your decision from the viewpoint of what is best for the collective good--of society and soul. I appreciate the links you give us. I have found a lot of useful and enlightening information in them, but I think they do promote the viewpoint of the rationalist materialist capitalist behemoth that claims science as the absolute possessor of truth. If we are constantly referring to authorities outside ourselves we will never earn the right to claim the authority within each one of us. We are our own measure of truth.

As for disturbing us, I think that is what exactly what we need. And since many of us can't seem to see this, I encourage you to disturb everyone you feel moved to, as long as you are able to keep yourself in a grounded place while doing it. Maybe we are just not the ones you should disturb. I respect your desire for privacy and believe as you do, that all must unfold at the right pace. Having said that, I think that disturbing may be one of the best ways to wake people up. Did you see the movie Boys Don't Cry? I remember being upset that I went to see it because it was so disturbing, but afterwards recognizing the value that this story could have on a mass cultural scale, especially since it was a true story, meaning one that had been documented in this dimension--a story that had carried the socially respected stamp of empirical truth.

I read an interview with Yann Martel, the author of Life of Pi, this weekend. He said that for him, a story had to work on an emotional level, otherwise it was a failed story, a useless one. I agree with this viewpoint. Nothing is as effective as emotional engagement in affecting transformation. Of course, if you are not interested in transformation, then this is not really relevant for you, but I think you are. My intent is not to get you to spill your guts here in this forum. I am just trying to offer you a way to understand how sharing your story could help others on many levels of reality.

In reading the intro written by Hannah Arendt to Walter Benjamin's Illuminations today,I came across a passage that I think powerfully applies here. According to Arendt, Benjamin was fascinated by the particular, by the very small. He loved to look at three grains of wheat in a museum that supposedly had an entire ancient Jewish text inscribed on them. My point is, that our stories are the particular that contain the whole. By not telling them, we deny the whole the illumination they could bring,forcing them underground, which as you know, creates a very heavy shadow for us to carry around.

[daniel]

hi whitewave,

to find out more about the "assemblage point," you should probably read a few of the castaneda books - easily available at any used bookstore, and consumable in a few short hours. The spot you describe sounds similar to the spot of the assemblage point.

i was sitting outside my cafe just now smoking a cigarette (my new bad habit - hopefully just until i finish the book), thinking about the nagual and the tonal, when i saw a small boy walking across the street with his father, carrying a shoulder bag that had a logo spelling "TONAL" on it.

Manning,
Do whatever you want with this board - as I have told you several times, I appreciate your contributions and clearly many others do as well. I learn from your advertant as well as inadvertant admissions, as I hope you do from mine as well.

If you would like, we could create a forum for you where you post all of the links that are of interest, and then you could simply refer to them via a quick link, rather than having to repost them at length each time in the discussions. You would then be liberated in the discussions to speak more consistently in your own voice.

It is perhaps my Beat connection that makes me open to revealing so much - and it was interesting to me that your inadvertant and deleted comment came after my post about the personal dimensions of the Burning Man experience. Your post did have a strange effect on me - something like a rat suddenly peeping out of a hole and then quickly disappearing again. For me, it was confirmation of my own understanding, on several levels.