VISIONARY TEACHINGS
by Gill Schwartz

REALM OF THE SHIMMERING

After some hours driving the Interstate due North between tall embankments of clean snow through till sunset, I am hypnotically lulled. I get to Mark's, and its now late Friday night. The full moon's bright edge is just peeking up over the pine woods' jagged horizon. Mark is bundled up and snow-blowing his driveway through a few feet of fresh, fluffy snow.

After some hugs and happy to be here humor with him, I go leave my stuff in the basement spare bedroom I use. Then, at last, as if some part of me is letting go of a long held breath, I go into the sanctum of Mark's meditation room next to the bedroom. With near desperate gratitude, I lay out my shamanic Mesa altar and prayer rug and give myself to the longing that drew me here.

Devotion quickly floods my heart. I know throughout my being, with a jubilant, soul freeing cry, that here I need cling to nothing but the Presence that calls me. I open and offer myself to It completely. Healing kriyas tremble, shaking through my body. As usual recently, I find sharp pain sits in my Hara, my Belly Chakra, Center of nurturing and belonging. Focusing on it galvanizes sharp, strong contractions. They double me up, chin to bent knees, every muscle in my body screamingly taut. And I give myself to that too with full certainty, though even my eyelids seem to bruisingly clench.

Then, mercifully, it releases in a trembling, body flinging discharge. With that, my deepest tensions and defenses of mind and body ecstatically dissolve and dissipate. Cleared of any other distraction, my Hara's anguish is fully exposed, as if it were a dagger plunged into my gut.

From recent teachings in my life, I'm reminded to be present to my pain, not to shield off from it as usual but to hold in my Heart. Prayerfully, hesitantly, I open my Heart's defensive grip and extend its aura down to embrace that agony in my Belly. Though touchy, the resonance between them holds, and soon I come to some sense of stability between my Heart and Hara Centers.

Although I'm in altered, visionary consciousness, I remember the need I hold for balanced attention to experience the three main Chakra Centers, Third Eye, Heart and Hara. I bring my focus to include my Third Eye for deeper conscious awareness of this interaction between my Heart and Hara. This gives me an extremely lucid sense of what it is to "embody" this experience rather than disembody from it, as I usually do with visioning. This makes it personal as well as transpersonal.

This level of realization completes an important integration for me and opens the way for another transformative process to begin. I'm guided to my Mesa altar and to put on the two ceremonial rings that are part of it. These rings are distinctly energized through much use in devotion and ceremony. One is Zuni, made of obsidian, turquoise and shell in an eye-like design. The other ring is made of three parallel bands of dark lapis lazuli. Both are in silver settings. I ceremonially place them on my ring fingers, the eye-like one on my right hand --which has a tattoo of an eye on it-- and the other on my left hand. Surges of potency immediately flow from them. This opens my awareness to deeper sensing and guides me to use my breath, movement and gesture to clear my aura of energetic clutter and bring my shushumna, the spine's central energy channel, into alignment.

Kundalini, the exalted life-force that sources from the Root Chakra opens and gushes. Its circulation electrifies up my shushumna through the other six Chakras along my spine, blazing each of them awake, and up to the 8th Chakra that rests several feet above my head, the Center of my transpersonal domain.

In its plenitude, it crescendos over my head and back down my shushumna, quaking each vertebra, down to the Root Chakra, the Earth Center at my tailbone. All the levels of my being are thus linked and miraculously merged through this radiant flow. In sacred celebration of my wholeness of being, I'm moved to raise my right hand, thumb and first finger encircled, in a praising ceremonial gesture skyward towards the Heavens. My left hand reaches downward with the same mudra gesture, my imaging it connecting with mid-Earth. With the rings and gestures as amplifying conduits, these two energies grow very real to me, tangible, expanding their totally disparate polarities out from the rings, up through my hands and out to fill each side of my body, my right side with the Heavenly potency, my left side with the Earth's.

As I'm gripped in this pose, I sense how these two primal forces also correspond with my two selves, spiritual and human. Now both of these, incredibly, are both side by side within my same perception. In this pose, I recognize with shock that there is no accord, no resonance between them at all. Alien. Suspicious. Guarded.

Abruptly, I'm aware that this is the primal distress in my being: the grievous confrontation between my eternal, spiritual self and my time and matter encased "me". I sense only the bitterest mutual rejection between them as my awareness is drawn along between my body's sides, skull top to groin. Overawed and terrified, this center plane is where I imagine these totally disparate parts of me must meet, like mountains in collision. But a wise knowing in my Heart assures me, the quality of my awareness and intention will somehow affect how this meeting will happen.

To affirm this, a gifting recollection comes of a poem I'd written:

 

"My joy is in the Shimmering.

Not the one World nor the other.

but the in-between,

where neither and both are.

The Shimmering..."

 

Recalling it reawakens that revelation for me. I fathom, with great relief, that there is place enough in the Shimmering for This and That -my human and my god-self. The poem portrays the divine way to hold this innermost encounter of what seem to be irreconcilables. Perhaps it is even a means beyond that paradox.

Sitting in the lotus pose on the floor in Mark's meditation room, I prayerfully ask for the Shimmering to enter my being. From far beyond and above my 8th Chakra and from far, far beneath my Root Chakra, new energy from yet another realm arises from both directions. But as if from beyond all realms. I "see" It as a very fine, immensely high vibration, a yellow-gold smoke that appears along the center plane of my body. It holds the a Presence which is neither and both. Although It is still a bewildering mystery for me, I am certain It can withstand whatever forces come at it.

It will protect me from any impending annihilation.

Though there's enormous relief for me in this miraculous resolution, the layer of Shimmering between my selves offers a space barely a micron wide. I still feel mashed between them, even though no longer so threatened by their discord.

Now another verse of that poem comes to mind:

 

The Shimmering,

Where neither world and both are,

Can be a Portal,

A means to go beyond that Paradox that persists.

Through it you can open to Eternity

And still be in the body.

You can own your known self

And your unknown self too,

In the Unity beyond the Paradox.

 

Recalling this verse is unbinding for me. It brings me into reconnection with that Knowing the poem birthed from. I hear it at levels I'd not known before. It opens my perspective to recognize this Shimmering as truly a doorway, regardless of its meager size. Through this awakening, I'm empowered to prayerfully use invocation and gesture to open and expand the thin film of Shimmering now permeating through the center of my being.

I begin this Work at my Heart Chakra and broaden the haze of Shimmering within to fill it. Here my two selves can now encounter and interact, without need of fear or conflict, I pray. My Heart is relieved of a great constraint and hopefully welcomes their meeting. As I continue the Work up from there, each Chakra reveals a great new range of possibilities in this broader band of Shimmering.

At my Third Eye Chakra, I happily watch the Shimmering cleanse my mind's processing of its compulsive either/or reflex. This liberates my mind from that dualistic realm to ascend to my Crown, the 7th Chakra. Here, in the Golden Lotus on top of my head, mind opens to my cosmic reality, unbounded by narrow dimensions of space and time.

In a rush of elation, the Shimmering becomes a gushing of Light out from my limited domain of personal self into my limitless transpersonal self. This transcendent self emanates through my 8th Chakra, the nexus point of my High Self, and its activation now expands my consciousness, my being out to the Cosmic. Its awakening -a sun birthing in my own selfhood- extends my body to its utmost, absolves my mind and floods me with bliss. Every cell in my being quenches in this outpouring.

Although my outward form is transposed from the solid details and characteristics of the space/time realm to this essential, more evolved and amorphous guise, this is still very much me. Maybe even more so. This level of perception blossoms and illumines my whole reality with Highest Consciousness and Love, revealing why it is called "Christ Consciousness".

Now I'm lead to channel that divine Self energy down from my 8th through each Chakra to my Root Center. As this streams through me, it expands the path of the Shimmering to the width of my shoulders and hips, but leaves my arms and legs still in their full, uncompromised polarization -Heavenly on my right and Earthly on my left.

There's a healing sense of relief in my Hara Chakra, too, as Its field widens. The sharp pain and grieving fear have subsided. It feels like a reassurance that opening to my "Paradox that persists" need not involve the fearful risk of annihilation. In this expanded path of the Shimmering, there is illumination enough to hold awareness of my wholeness of being through all my Chakra Centers, all my levels of being, synchronously.

I am "somebody" having this miraculous experience, and embodying my wholeness of self, my true "I", is blessedly redemptive.

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Copyright Gill Schwartz 2003   www.WisdomVisions.com