Cracking Seeds

Radish seeds

The seed of the heart yearns to be cracked open, receive water, sprout and grow roots.  Each of us will find our own path or paths to cracking open the heart. When it happens it can feel scary, ebullient, joyous, crazy, difficult, and strange.  If we are lucky, it is a slow process which pries the tissues of the self with gentle nudges until a nice open space seems to emerge from nowhere.
  
Sometimes, it is sudden.  This is truly a year for sudden openings, and I have witnessed several in the past few weeks.  

One of my friends was actually sectioned after going out in public following intensive meditation.  Filled to the brim with a happiness he could neither contain nor describe he did indeed appear crazy, wandering around offering smiles and hugs and good wishes to all he met.  Because he wasn't aware of the dis-congruency of his state with modern confinements to the human condition, he perhaps made choices that led to a bizarre hospitalisation. Known as a serious meditator to all his friends, he reached out, and they responded in droves to help him.  He has now been released and is actively working to tell his story and inform people of the difference between so called 'spiritual emergencies' and actual mental disorders. 

Prior to being released Raaz was asked to participate in an exhibition at the Tate Modern involving visual monitoring of meditative states. Monitors hooked up to persons in deep states of meditation displayed graphs of nueronal activity: the information was processed in such a way as to trigger different sound and visual images upon the walls.  Shadows of visitors projected themselves onto the same walls and an incredible installation of livetime neuronal activity and empathic nervous system mapping 'happened'. :D  

Here is a link to Raaz's awareness and support group. To contact Raaz regarding his experience please email him here.  

Yucca seeds

As mentioned previously, this friend is not the only one with such an experience in the past few weeks.  If you, or anyone you know, is experiencing an opening in the heart or any level of the self, here are some tips for you.

How do you know if what you are experiencing is real?  
       If you are experiencing it then it is real to you.  Managing the experience is key as this will assist you to keep a foot in both worlds as you learn to navigate your new landscapes.  

What does cracking open feel like?

      I experience opening shifts as large waves of shaking energies moving down my spine.  They cause me to jerk, as when you are first falling asleep, or to tremble.  Sometimes I get waves of hot or cold sensations throughout my body, my eyes begin to perceive different shades of sharpness/contrast/colour/pattern in the world around me, or I drift off into mild trance states.  Tingling sensations are common among my students, as are sensations of aching or rolling through the muscle tissues.  Some people experience vivid wakefulness while others feel the need to eat or sleep a great deal more.  Depending on the history of your body and the schemata within your mind your experience will shape itself accordingly.  

Is it wise or recommended to try to induce openings in self-perception-sensation?
     Opening cannot be forced.  Nothing will open until it is good and ready to do so.  If you are desirous of such an experience then just relax and appreciate yourself and your life, knowing that the paths which suit your journey will present themselves when you are ready for them.  

When I am in the midst of a big opening what skills help me to manage it over the ebb and flow of its duration?

1. Track your nervous system as you experience, by following sensations of hot, cold, tingling, ache, itchiness, pulsing, rushing, etc.  Don’t direct or respond to it but let it rise, climax and move through in its own timing.  Sensation happens in the sensory-motor and parasympathetic-sympathetic feedback loops of the nervous system: when we allow them space to complete their cycles, natural integration can happen.    
2. Be absolutely totally still as often as you need during or between opening sessions.  Wrap yourself in a blanket and focus on your stillness, observe it and hang out with it as a good friend, allow yourself to be recuperated.
3. Surround yourself with community, people who know and trust you and vice versa.  Place being with them as a priority.  Share your experiences when appropriate and ask for help when needed.  
4. Choose a path with a history.  Get to know its teachers and its past, and allow that sense of continuity to ground you. Keep that continuity going in your own body through a regular practice connected to your path.          *If* your path appears to be one of modern invention, search it out a little deeper.  People have been opening since we began, and much of our journeys are traceable at least back to the first cave paintings if not longer. You are not alone.  

dandelion 'gone to seed'

Eckhart Toole writes "Although body-identification is one of the most basic forms of ego, the good news is that it is also the one that you can most easily go beyond.  This is not done by trying to convince yourself that you are not your body, but by shifting your attention from the external form of your body and from thoughts about your body-beautiful, ugly, strong, weak, too fat, too thin-to the feeling of aliveness inside it. No matter what your body's appearance is on the outer level, beyond the outer form it is an intensely alive energy field." and also "Body awareness anchors you in the present moment, it is a doorway out of the prison that is the ego." A New Earth 2005 pages 52-53

sunflowers Luddesdown UK

Always check your inner state

with the lord of your heart.

Copper doesn't know it's copper,

until it's changing into gold.

Your loving doesn't know majesty,

until it knows its helplessness.  

-Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi-