Part 2: Degrees of separation, the Tootsie Pop's center, and Kevin Bacon

Remember the Kevin Bacon game? It was a game about degrees of separation, a guessing game of movies and actors that always ended with Kevin Bacon being an actor in a film. Understanding consciousness is very much like this game. You have positive, negative, and neutral and eventually end up with an authentic you. Let me explain…
Just to reiterate, when I am referring to Mother and Father (Yin and Yang); I am actually referring to the ways in which energies flow on the material plane which is subject to dualities. Feminine energy has the quality of being receptive. Masculine energy is active. We all are constantly trying to balance these forces whether we are aware of it or not. As the mother and the father unite a whole you are birthed once again. The beginning of finding this balance is to learn and use the internal controls in the body, and refining ones ability to access a neutral perspective. As a contrast, and an explanation why exercise alone is not enough, most forms of gym training are duplicated from the world of sports which are used to create a proficient athlete and are relatively superficial in terms of where the efforts are targeted. We push against weights in the weight room; we use balls, bikes, machines all in order to obtain fitness. Again the focus of the training deals with acting against some resistance. An external form of resistance is no different than how most of us already live our lives. We are active people who push our way through life. We work hard, we worry hard, and we don’t know how to relax. Relaxation is not watching TV, or reading a book; those are activities and still fall into the category of masculine/cognitive energy. The implications of our way of life and our typical health routines point to an inability to receive, recognize our internal authenticity, and ultimately truly relax. When we train for internal Martial Arts or a Yoga system, which emphasizes the internal mechanisms of control, we are able recognize the resistances within, learn to center, and learn how to relax and heal. Much blame gets spread around when trying to find the source of our struggles in life. The truth is we control much of our fate. Our fate has been written by past actions and future fixations; hence the need to witness and exist in the present. We should want to write our own story consciously.  Motivational speakers know this, they use psychology in a pointed way to create sudden bursts of enthusiasm, which unfortunately seem to fizzle out after a short time; because the goals which we are trying to obtain are external or fantasy notions of what we want in life without regard for why we want those things or are those things in line with our higher selves. Our present was conceived in the past and our future is now!
Using the mind to conquer the mind’s perceived insecurities is no different than a power lifter trying to hoist 300lbs over his head. Energy is Energy, we choose how to direct it and we choose just how much we have access to. The shortage most people experience is often due to the conflicted state of the relationship with ourselves, we are not whole. A relationship is just time spent. We must have a non conflicted relationship to sex, to food, to physical activity, to our efforts. As we resolve conflicts thru witnessing and willpower we find we have more energy, because we are operating more efficiently. We have brilliant built in mechanisms for venturing towards wholeness, but I must reiterate, the first thing that must happen is to commit to having a relationship with you.
We can reach within ourselves not only by closing our eyes to peer within, but also by utilizing the internal voluntary muscles of the body. Most of us have heard about the Kegel muscles, these are the muscles which line the pelvic floor from anus to genitals and which also harmonize with the navel point. To contract these muscles is to reach into the body and give it as assurance you are going to bring your separate aspects together. Our bodies are designed to hold prana, or life force; and the way we do this is thru the breath. The amount of life force we have access too is directly related to our relationship with ourselves and our practices. Most of us are far too stiff and rigid to inhale completely, and others of us just don't want to bother because it represents a deviation from our program. We have to develop strength with the breath, control of the breath, and create the internal environment to accept the breath. The ability too breath deeply is a journey which begins at the base, our foundation, the pelvic floor. Every contraction is a signal, a nerve impulse, and a stretch of the facial (the connective tissue surrounding the muscle fibers). This is significant because the pain we experience in the lower back, hips and pelvic floor, as well as many of the associated dis-comforts are due to us not making the journey back to the mother, not communicating in a precise physical manner with the body that it is not in the way of harm. The mother is what’s solid beneath us. A simple contraction and hold is the needed communication. The lower Chakras are related to feelings of security feeling at home, feeling taken care of, etc; and when we do not heed theses signals, which are communicated to the mind thru the nervous system (as emotion or energy in motion), then we begin to perceive ourselves as insecure or we feel we don't belong or we lack confidence. Fear and the less desirable emotions are necessary because they are protective. However, they can become very tiresome. The body again, just wants to be assured that it is secure, and then it will release the pattern or stuck emotion which is causing the undesirable results. This is where we must cultivate awareness, as these emotions show up we simply must witness them and center ourselves, we don't need to entertain them forever, wine and dine them, or show them around our house; only a hello and farewell is needed. The emotions will trigger thoughts, these thoughts are the stories they like to tell about their origins; these stories are the lessons which are to learning order to stop the harmful pattern and make the necessary changes so  we can head down the path led by those options and choices which are attractive and beneficial, and cause no harm. The thoughts are only relevant to a point, because they are just words which are used to define the emotion so that we can interpret what we are experiencing.  Again, don’t dwell in the thoughts, please keep this as only an aspect of your practice, because any speculation or fixation in excess beyond what is necessary in order to not duplicate the circumstance again is simply not being present; learn and center. For example, lets say you are conflicted about your career or business and how to raise the necessary funds in order to keep it all together. This entity, the business, requires energy, in the form of time spent and effort; this energy has to come from somewhere so it’s likely there will be some form of energetic sacrifice in order to produce the desired results. This is common and not insignificant; the energy used to create a productive business may leave you feeling at a loss in some way in terms of your personal life. The sacrifices most often are the relationships with those around us, or us physically. The obesity epidemic and many lifestyle related diseases are choices, we are not victims, but willing participants in the disease process; we choose where we put our energies!
Father (active) conquers, mind over matter, the heart may get cut off and we don’t feel as much, it’s a cognitive bias; mother (receptive) gets swept up in emotional waves that can cripple initiative. Many of us end up choosing what we are going to neglect; if we neglect the Father then we may not be able to use reason to direct action towards our goals, and if we are to heavily influenced by emotions then we become reactionary and slaves to impulse. So what we must due is develop a practice of witnessing, of not neglecting, of balancing the polarities- between the head and the feet, heaven and hell, low and high, the third eye and the lower charkas, action and true relaxation, feeling and thinking, etc… None of this is possible without spending time with you and cultivating a neutral perspective which allows you to rise above it all- this is the Taoist middle path. Really there are no degrees of separation between you and your authentic self, Kevin Bacon; you just have to perceive it that way.

Peace

to schedule a private Yoga Therapy session contatct Akal at somaarts1@gmail.com

Degrees of separation, the Tootsie Pop's Center, and Kevin Bacon, part1

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

So many of us have a poor relationship to gravity. This is a shame because with this poor relationship we have lost our connection to our true mother Earth. I am not trying to sound like a Hippy here, nor is this an essay about Earth worship, but instead its about addressing an imbalance which occurs due to Modern society's (that's you and me) bias towards cognitive functions. This is also not an essay about turning your back on what it is to be alive today. Superficially, we are composed of the same stuff which comprises all matter; which in and of itself is significant in spiritual terms. As we progress in the sciences we begin to see that matter is composed of an even more finite material, in fact this material actually no longer seems solid, but more resembles energy. As we continue our reductionist path we will see eventually matter is broken down to the point of no longer being detectable. What's baffling is that somehow we are solid and very much part of this world but what we are composed of is actually little more than a vibration. That's it a vibration! Its very simple, but the implications are huge; this is an opportunity for our scientific minds to cross over into areas of spirit, this is our connection to all creation. As we allow this perception to take hold soon we find out that we are not actually separate from all that is. G.O.D. (Generating, Organizing, Destroying- is how the known universe is expressed). If you turn inward you find endlessness, if you turn your attention outward you find endlessness. So what makes us think just because we occupy this space (material) and that's the end of it? Energies interact, you can take a basic physics class or chemistry course and figure this out. If we choose to be stranded on Earth by our fixations then we are boxed in by some cliche mental construct and confused by the seeming complexity. Only a shift in perception is necessary, a simplification which allows us to see everything more clearly; exist primarily as energy and know your energies are interacting with others. Once we welcome this perceptual shift, change can occur more fluidly, we can let our imaginations navigate well beyond the mundane, and we can truly perceive that all is one. That's one lick to get to the center of the Tootsie Pop, thank you very much!

The Gnostics (http://gnosticteachings.org/) have stated that as our understanding becomes more infinite and focused on our relationship with that which unifies, then we achieve a levity, simplicity, and the grace of existing on a less dense plane of understanding. It is urgent that we try not to define whats infinite, because it can only be experienced. I do not mean a specific experience, but as the culmination of all feelings and thoughts, a continuous sense of well being or that you are being taken care of, and that's as far as I will go in trying to define. Every other explanation is only meant to create desire, bhakti, and egg you on into looking at the malleability of your perceptions and how the altering of those perceptions actually creates a new way of experiencing the infinite.

So back to mother Earth. Put all your judgments about what Mother means aside. We are subject to gravity, its gravity which holds us down to earth. This is not our burden, our burden is not knowing how to work with gravity. To begin with, try to view gravity as the Mother's arms embracing you, pulling you closer to the womb from which your body was ultimately birthed. We constantly resist this embrace in preference for acting as the Father or modeling the creative, active, organizing source that orders all creation. You have aches and pains in the knees, lower back, shoulders, etc... because of this bias and the choice of not creating a relationship with whats solid beneath you. We become compressed in the front half of our body because we feel heavy, we lack levity, we have not enough physical and mental strength to defy gravity. The spinal erectors that run the distance from tail bone to the base of the skull are meant to help us defy gravity, we are constructed in such a way that we can actually feel lighter and brighter; it is our native state. Our ability to experience outside the mundane depends on our relationship to our body and mind. As we strengthen our spines and cores we begin to lift, we defy gravity, and when we work our navel points we fire up the engines of our perceptions; this fire will purify, it will show you your emotions, it will show you your mind; and because you have been shown, you will know "I am not my body, I am not my mind, I am a Spirit having a human experience" - Yogi Bhajan

Peace

to request a private Yoga Therapy session, contact Akal at somaarts1@gmail.com