Sexual Energy in Loving Touch and Family Intimacy

This post is inspired by my experiences with my first-born son, who is now 2 and a half years old. My wife, now pregnant with our 2nd and having a weak back, has always been uncomfortable sleeping together with our son at night, as he will toss and turn and kick and burrow all over her body, making it hard for her to sleep, and impossible to change her sleeping posture when needed, so she often wakes up with a sore back and subsequent chiropractor appointments. So I had been tasked to put him to sleep at night, and to pacify him when he wakes up in the middle of the night. I often end up sleeping with him most of the time as that is the most practical way to ensure he stays quiet and I get to sleep more. 

Even though I complain about having to sleep next to him and having my own rest disturbed, I believe I will start to miss doing that when he gets old enough to kick me off his bed. I am just filled with so much love and desire to hold him tight and smell him, all the time. Then as he drifts off to sleep, he will pull up my shirt, rub his small hands over my naked tummy, poke his finger into my belly button (at that point I will shout at him to stop as it is really painful), and he will pull up my shirt further and scratch my nipples and then pinch them (and then I will really shout at him to stop). In any case he is probably doing all that out of habit as he was breast-fed previously, and touched my wife in the same way. 

What struck me was that the desire I have to hold him tight and smell him, is not essentially very different from my desire to do the same to my wife. His rubbing my tummy and nipples were pleasurable, and physically not different from my wife doing the same. Yet in the case of my wife doing that to me, it might be labelled under "being sexualized" and part of sexual foreplay, while in the case of my son it might be labelled as "physical comforting and care". But is that distinction real? The times my wife and I touch each other may only be "physical comforting and care" in intent, without leading to sexual foreplay and penetrative sex. And of course in the case of my child touching me, it would be ridiculous to suggest that there was any sexualized intent on the part of my child, although the comforting stimulation he gave to my tummy and nipples made me wonder about the difference between his touch and a sexualized one, and how I perceived his touching. 

Can you sense my intellectual confusion at this point? The conflation of sexual energy with "being sexualized" as propagated by the modern world creates this confusion. I believe it makes more sense to regard the intimate sexual relations between a copulating couple (whatever the sexual orientation) and the intimate touching within a family, as a continuum along the spectrum of sexual energy. They share many similar energetic qualities, only differing as to the specific intent and its position along that continuum. 

The need to give and receive touch, is a fundamental human need, increasingly acknowledged as being pivotal to health and dignity. In the human touch, sexual energy flows, whether you are aware of it or not. Healthy touching enlivens the individuals giving and receiving, even conferring life and health, and as such sexual energy is entwined with it. That is also why you recoil from some people's touch, where perhaps you sense the malicious intent, or the disguised "sexualized" agenda of that person. At the same time, if you have issues with acknowledging your own sexuality, or if your sexuality was brutalized through instances of abuse before, that hurt you carry would colour your own reaction to touch and sexual energy, so that you have difficulty accepting positive expressions of touch and sexual energy, or you habitually fear them and reflexively close yourself off to them. You could also be hasty in judging instances of touch as being "sexualized", either coming from others or initiated by yourself.

A healthy expression of sexual energy through touch, is important in nourishing intimate relationships, between partners and with children. It is in the safety of the family environment and in loving relationships, that we open ourselves to giving and receiving loving touch. It is thus sad to reflect on the amount of sexual abuse and sexual repression happening all over the world, as this creates a wound that can be passed down through generations of human beings. If you have been a victim of sexual abuse and repression, it might give you a broader perspective that the perpetrators of your hurt, have almost invariably been hurt themselves before in a similar way, and that this hurt often goes back generations. At the same time, nourishing your loved ones through loving touch and sexual energy, is the best collective solution to resolving the hurt that we have inherited and carry now. That is the hope we see in our children and the future of mankind, when we express ourselves through loving touch and sexual energy.

I will end this post with my own take on Sigmund Freud, grandfather of psychoanalysis, who attributed much of normal human behaviour to the underlying sexual drive. What made me really fed up when I read his work in my teens, was how he even attributed the baby's suckling the mother for milk to an underlying sexual drive. I remember being totally exasperated at Freud for seeing sex in everything and anything. Now I am more nuanced, in that I see sexual energy at play in all dynamics of life and nature, but not in the cheap "sexualized" definition of that term.

Sexual Energy in Spiritual Work

Following on from my last posts about sexual energy, I would like to expand on the role it plays in spiritual practice. Broadly speaking, I would define spiritual practice as a structured discipline of inner development, to awaken to one's true essence and potential within, and to connect to forces larger than the confines of one's little ego. Why cultivate sexual energy in spiritual practice? There are good reasons to do so. Sexual energy is life, so delving into it helps one to experience first-hand the articulation between consciousness and bodily existence.  States of lofty consciousness can be better anchored on a steady and healthy base of life, through the cultivation of sexual energy, and that need cannot be underestimated as long as we live in a physical body that is subject to the forces of life. Poor or misaligned health is itself a barrier to entering lofty states of consciousness while residing in a physical body. A common experience in meditation is that if one's body is not at ease, one cannot enter deep states of consciousness, with many examples in spiritual texts of how such a minimum amount of bodily ease is required. Cultivating sexual energy directly boosts health and bodily ease, thus aiding one's meditation practice. 

Of course sexual energy in its raw uncultivated form, is far from being enlightened or wanting the Divine. All it wants in its coarser form, is sex! And it will produce all kinds of mental and bodily distractions to keep you from being still in meditation, so it can get out there and do what it wants. Even if cultivating sexual energy is not one of your defined spiritual goals, there is value in knowing enough about it to get it to work for you, since our bodily existence is ruled by life and hence sex. Some basic cultivation of the sexual energy can go a long way towards relieving the mental and bodily restlessness generated by sexual fantasies during meditation. In fact cultivating it does not merely result in an absence of restlessness, but leads to states of intense stillness and ease, which will greatly facilitate the entry into deep states of consciousness. 

There are also certain well-defined spiritual practices that hone sexual energy to the point that it aligns to high states of consciousness, making you unstoppable in your path towards enlightenment. Aligning sexual energy to any of your goals, worldly or spiritual, can make you unstoppable. That is why the world invests so much time in dumbing down and desecrating the sexual energy, so we all remain pliant meek rabbits that do as we are told. Sexual energy is the force and motivation in observable organic nature. Look at the incessant growth and reproduction of plants, animals, microbes, from birth to death, driving everything without their conscious knowledge. Man is probably the only species on Earth with the potential to reflect on her own consciousness and cognize its underlying dynamics. Now imagine this unstoppable force of nature, present in every organism from the smallest to largest, that is present in you too, aligned to the Divine or in pursuit of it. Wow! In short, sexual energy represents the primal personal drive inherent in life, and getting it to align with your goals, spiritual or worldly, makes them happen. And it is not as difficult to get there as you might imagine. The question is, how badly do you want the Divine while living in the world?

In my involvement with Clairvision meditation, we are taught to recognize flows of sexual energy in ourselves and in others, during spiritual practices or in daily life. Experiences of sexual energy are actually more common than we think, because it often is the flow of life energy itself, and not limited to the narrow band of "sexualized" activities as defined by our modern standards. 

In my previous post, I recounted my experience of multiple etheric orgasms during a regression session. When the violent orgasms of golden semen gave way to more subtle energetic orgasms, I found myself in the space of a large cave whose walls were made of solid gold of refined golden semen. I had the realization that this cave of golden semen had always been a part of me that I had cultivated over lifetimes, but had only re-acquainted myself with in this life. That re-connection to this intimate part of myself left me in awe and in tears. I was crying softly at that point and found it very difficult to express to my connector what I was going through. 

(Quick note here, the following hyperlinks are to the "A Language to Map Consciousness", a glossary of technical terms used by the Clairvision school. To find the term being hyperlinked, simply scroll down or up in alphabetical order till you find it.)

Another fascinating experience I had was during a five-day Clairvision meditation intensive on the Thunderwand in 2014. The Thunderwand defines the central channel of energy that extends from the top of the head to the root of the body (perineum), that has been specifically cultivated with Clairvision techniques. For most Clairvision students, the Thunderwand meditation in one form or another, is the foundational daily meditation that is commonly practiced first thing in the morning upon waking. During this five day intensive we had the opportunity to take our practice of the Thunderwand deeper. Halfway through the intensive, I started to experience multiple etheric orgasms during Thunderwand meditation for the first time. It was so awesome and mind-blowing. My abdominal energetic center became a "penis" ejaculating golden semen up my central channel (corresponding roughly to my spinal column), into the "vagina" that was at the intersection between the Third Eye tunnel and the central channel, corresponding to the structure we call the "atom" that is in the head. 

So now I was "cumming" straight into my head, talk about a mind-fuck! My abdominal "penis" was pumping golden semen gleefully up my central channel, and I felt like a man there. Then my head "vagina" was gleefully sucking every last drop of semen up, just like a female would feel and enjoy, and she goaded my man below to continue squirting, which he duly obliged. Until in my consciousness all I could see and feel was golden semen smeared all over the space, literally drowning in pleasure, and absolute rock-solid stillness, all at once. Let it be emphasized that throughout this time I was sitting cross-legged in half-lotus, meditating on my Thunderwand, with no external physical stimulation and no shifting of sitting position whatsoever. In fact I was to experience this in many subsequent meditation sittings, until the force of the experience itself faded over time, and I became acclimatized to these flows of sexual energy. 

One other learning point from that experience, was that I could be both man and woman. I am both man and woman. All of us are. We contain the blueprint inside to experience both sexes, even if physically we can only be one or the other. Subsequently I had other experiences in meditation where I felt how a woman would experience actual sexual pleasure, and how it might feel to be pregnant. Those were equally awesome experiences. The distinctions between man and woman, even sexual orientation, all began to break down, in the awesome sacred light of sexual energy, naked just as it is. Co-opting sexual energy into my spiritual practice started to become a reality. 

The difference between sexual energy and "being sexualized" - Part 2

In part 1, I attempted to show how "being sexualized" is how all things sex are mostly portrayed in the media of our modern world, and how that only forms a narrow and superficial band of the spectrum of sexual energy. 

Let me briefly describe the world I grew up in, that is Singapore, a nation of conservative mores despite our East-meets-West location, in a middle-class family of conservative mores, and embracing a (mainly Theravada) Buddhist faith with conservative mores...... enough said. I fell for it hook line sinker, this formidable loop of guilt-forbidden fruit-desire that entraps mere mortals. I was fascinated about sex as all young men (and women) would be, and conceptually drew a distinction between the dirty knowledge of sex and the biological necessity of it, which actually helped soften the guilt exploring it, since it was a biological necessity, right? So I oscillated between guilt and fascination about sex, for a long time. During that period I purchased the book the "Multi-Orgasmic Man" by Mantak Chia out of sheer curiosity, and was exposed to the idea of ejaculatory control for the first time, but I never really got the practices in that book to work for me. 

Now I will describe an early personal experience of sexual energy that blew my mind away, and started the gradual deconstruction of all the limiting and confusing things about sex I had been conditioned to believe.

In 2011, I attended a seven-day meditation intensive organized by the Clairvision school. It was essentially a week of practices involving the Inner Space Technique (IST), the school's method of regression, which is a very useful tool in finding the source of psychological traumas and psychosomatic issues. Usually this entails a paired practice, where the client (the person being regressed) is lying down, and the connector (the one facilitating and leading the session) will be seated next to the client, and placing their fingers lightly on a part of the client's body (commonly the chest or abdomen) which we call a "spot", then inviting the client to explore any sensations or emotions arising from that "spot". A typical session lasts for 45 - 90 minutes. 

During one such session on the last day of that intensive, I was exploring a "spot" in my abdominal area, and entered a space where I started to experience multiple orgasms, without any physical sex or sexual stimulation. It felt like I was ejaculating golden semen from the "spot" in my abdomen to the rest of my body over and over again, and it felt awesomely pleasurable, just like real sex, except that in real sex I only experience such orgasms in my genitals with the characteristic physical contractions of ejaculation. I was experiencing energetic or etheric orgasms without their physical counterpart, the etheric being the layer of life-force that is analogous to "chi" in Chinese Medicine and "prana" in Ayurveda. There was no preconceived agenda or "protocol" or intent to get me to experience those multiple orgasms. Neither my connector nor myself had any idea that would happen. As with all such IST sessions, the best (and only) solution was going with the flow, and expect the unexpected.

These initial orgasms were quite violent, where the bursts of golden semen in my consciousness felt similar to my usual physical orgasm. Then the more I allowed myself to embrace these violent pleasures and open to them, the violence abated, and the ejaculations of golden semen became more subtle and soft. Yet the space felt deeper and more still, and I was aware of deeper and deeper layers of sex opening, with an increasing brilliance of golden light and preciousness of energy the deeper it went. There was seemingly no end to the depth of pleasure and stillness through such sex, and no fatigue and no refractory phase. And I increasingly felt the waves of orgasm flooding my whole body, instead of being limited to the genitals in typical physical orgasm. The deeper the orgasms went, the more even my physical body and such whole-body-orgasm-waves receded, until what emerged was a space of precious golden stillness replacing my body. It was a state of such pleasure and well-being and stillness, all the more amazing because it emerged from sexual energy and is sexual energy, yet had none of the grasping and fatigue associated with sexual activity. 

Another amazing thing was the lack of an objective sexual target throughout the experience. In common everyday experience, sexual desire is aroused when targeted at a specific object, like a person you fantasize about, the smell of perfume, the sound of that person's voice, or a pair of heels clicking as they pass by...... the list is never-ending, but you get the point. In this experience, the target if any, was the sexual energy within myself. The sexual energy involuted or turned onto itself, going into ever deeper layers within one's consciousness and etheric (or life-force). Any external objects that surfaced as part of the imagination of my discursive mind were quickly seen as distractions and not the real deal, even if they appeared sexual, and were quickly abandoned in lieu of the sexual energy itself. That these fantasies of the mind were distractions was pretty obvious, because the flow of experience and pleasure went flat when these thoughts caught my mind, like a last ditch attempt to stop me going deeper by sending me superficial sexual fantasies to occupy me. But the momentum of the sexual energy itself was powerful enough to stop my usual discursive and fantasizing mind shortly after they arose, so that I plummeted ever deeper into stillness and light. The age-old adage of "going with the flow" in meditation would be given a new spin - "go with the ecstasy!" The ecstasy turning onto itself was the pathway in. This was a key experience in my spiritual journey as a healer, in years to follow helping to deconstruct the societal limits placed upon sex, opening new doors to understanding the symbiosis between sex and life, and how sexual energy heals at the deepest levels.

The difference between sexual energy and "being sexualized" - Part 1

The difference between sexual energy and "being sexualized" is a significant one, and one that I am still very much a student about. This distinction is important, because the former defines the role sexual energy can have in the cultivation of health and spirituality, while the latter highlights how sexual energy can be twisted detrimentally through "being sexualized". 

It is easier to define "being sexualized", because that is our common perception of sex in the modern world. From the mildest sexual innuendos in speech to sophisticated (or plainly blatant) ones in advertisements, the pornographic industry in print or film, race car queens, handsome salesmen etc, sex sells because sex just works. The taboos and moral codes that have developed around sex have only added to the confusion and mystique surrounding it. The closed loop of guilt-forbidden fruit-desire inflames the human mind to seemingly no end. These societal structures keep us trapped in a superficial understanding (and experience) of sexual energy, and bind us to the self-enclosed loop of desire, framing it in an unsatisfactory choice between simply perpetuating the desire, or fully stamping it out (which is often simply repression and does not actually resolve the underlying dynamics). "Being sexualized" is a very narrow band of expression of sexual energy in our modern world, rooted in our fears and confusion surrounding the nature of sexual energy.

Sexual energy creates life. Sexual energy is life. The refinement of nutrition through digestion in Ayurveda (traditional Indian medicine), takes place in stages throughout various tissues, till it ends in the precious Ojas (reproductive fluid, semen), which can be further refined into Tejas, the most precious of all bodily energies, supposedly stored in the heart. Tejas and Ojas are the fundamental energies that keep us alive, their depletion certainly resulting in ill health and eventual death. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the jing is quintessential sexual energy (and is also the literal Chinese term for semen), stored in the kidney and the heart. Again its depletion means certain ill health and death. There are examples in many other traditional cultures that puts sexual energy at a fundamental and sacred level, for its ability to create and preserve life. The prolific sexual reproduction seen in nature, in particular the plant and microbial kingdoms, is a testament to the raw power of sexual energy. 

Reading ancient texts of medicine about sexual energy and the sacred awe it invokes, is a far cry from the base levels that sex has seemingly sunk to today. I believe that societal/political/religious control has resulted in the "dumbed-down" sex we see expressed in the media of our modern world, reduced to mere physical pleasure, or at best a necessary evil for the propagation of our species (with a three second reward of an orgasm that quickly fades to mere fatigue, at least for the male half of our species). 

Worse still, such twisted perceptions that keep human beings from the depths of their sexuality, often contributes to all kinds of sexual repression and sexual abuse. I argue that a human being really in touch with their sexuality, is much more likely to be a happy and healthy person, and less likely to be a perpetrator of sexual abuse.

Sex has been forced to wear the garment of guilty dirty pleasure for far too long, when really we should be stripping these superficial and twisted perceptions away, to reveal the beautiful naked nature of human sexual energy just as it is, which is a natural accessible right to all of us as human beings. 

In Part 2, I will be relating some of my personal experiences of sexual energy, that helped me differentiate it from "being sexualized".

On metaphors, living forces, and clouds

A lot has been said on the transformative power of stories and metaphors, in many places by many people, with so many examples. They are powerful tools of healing and connection, interwoven with human civilization as far back as is recorded, and likely even longer before. In recent times I had been inspired by such examples in Singapore as Playback Theatre, and Psychodrama. I took part in an introductory workshop to Playback Theatre a few years ago, and it was such an absorbing fun eye-opener!

In this post I am giving brief examples on how so-called spiritual or occult tools, actually use the power of metaphors to convey their punch. Metaphors carry living forces that connect humanity to its essential truth, and are an indispensable tool in facilitating the direct experience of these living forces. This is especially important in an era where it is far more common to dismiss metaphor as mere imagery or superficial imagination, compared to the concrete practical thinking of the conventional scientific paradigm, or to be made use of in influencing consumer habits for commercial purposes. 

Myths and legends of the past in all human cultures, existing or extinct, are metaphors that convey timeless truths, shared experiences that define the particular culture, and provide valuable inspiration that keep the individual moving on despite the difficulties faced. In modern times, Carl Jung put metaphors back on people's radar, with the concept of the collective unconscious, often depicted as the unseen bulk of the (metaphorical) mental iceberg that lies underwater, with the use of metaphor and imagery to access that. I had a taste of this doing MindScape, a system to access the subconscious potential of your mind, from the Bodytalk system of healing. Mindscape works primarily with Jungian archetypes, and a whole world of potential opens through that. The use of astrology in the Clairvision school of meditation, whose methods I have been practicing for the past six years, uses the language of planetary forces as a metaphor to describe consciousness. I would even contend that all forms of oracular reading, whether looking at the clouds above or leaves below, employ the power of metaphors one way or another. 

Let me recount a recent experience that happened about 2 weeks ago. My Filipino domestic helper showed me the above picture one evening. It was taken from her cousin's Facebook post, where he saw the cloud formation as he walked out of his house, and he was so awed by its beauty that he took its picture with his mobile and posted it. My helper sort of knew that I meditated and looked at the stars and had an interest in astrology, so she thought I could interpret what the cloud formation meant.

My first reaction was a mental facepalm. "It's just clouds, you know, water vapour condenses, then falls as rain, the natural rain cycle, nothing mysterious or occult there." On hindsight it was interesting to note how I labelled her question negatively as having an "occult" implication. I was going to brush her off and dismiss her question as coming from someone who understandably sees all things she cannot explain as having a supernatural dimension since she was raised in just such a rural area in the Philippines. 

But something in me told me (or my logical discursive "left" brain) to shut up, and listen. Perhaps it was my recent Mindscape course, or my meditation experiences, that helped. I looked at the picture, more closely and with a far more open heart, felt what it meant to me in silence as I peripherally summed up the situation and what she had said. I then replied, "It's beautiful. There is a lot of hope. Whatever major project or undertaking he wanted to do, now is the time to start. This is a sign to bravely forge on despite the difficulties. New beginnings." The message obviously resonated with her, and she was satisfied. But I am not sure I was. And that part of me went WTF-where-did-that-come-from.

Today morning I recalled that incident, and asked her more about it, in which more details emerged that I was not previously aware of. Actually the picture of that cloud formation took place in the morning when her cousin walked out of his office building, awestruck by what he saw. When he posted it on FB, many people commented that it was a sign of good luck. My helper posted to him saying that her employer (me) said it was a good sign and boded well for beginning something new. He did not reply her after that, so she does not know what he thought of that. 

Maybe I had tuned in and caught the flavours of hope and well-wishes from the many that replied his FB post. Maybe it was just my inner aesthetic that responded with that encouraging message to him. Maybe I was reading my helper's own expectations and resonating with that. Whatever. It felt good, and totally sincere, to have said what I had without the usual filtering of my discursive mind. 

Does this prove anything? Did this change anything? These are questions the discursive logical mind would ask, and its role (and right) to be sceptical has its use. What was important to me in that experience, was to trust my feelings and connect to the picture, thereby hopefully connecting to the person (or people) who are meant to hear what I had to say. And I believe that itself already makes the world a better place to be in.

Metaphor of the Connected Twins

The Connected Twins is a metaphor to describe the inherent connection between two polarities. 

It originated during my participation in the recent Advanced Mindscape Workshop conducted by Mr Andy Spencer in May 2016. Each of us relaxed ourselves into an Alpha-state mind, or more commonly understood as "being in the zone". From the "zone" we then accessed our Mindscape Workshop, which is a mental tool for accessing and utilising the subconscious mind. These tools include a pair of male and female guides, representative of the masculine and feminine aspects of ourselves. When I "called in" my male and female guides, they came in the form of an intensely brooding brainy precocious 10 year old boy, and an equally intense 10 year old girl in a perpetual dance. They both appeared in white, and held hands together. While sensing clearly their opposite polarity, I also sensed they were totally at ease with each other and were constantly in mutual communication, as symbolized by their holding hands.

In that same session, each of us "called in" our left and right brains. My left brain came in the form of a constantly spinning and transforming tetrahedron fractal, each transformation marked by a precise mathematical formula. My right brain came in as a symphonic sea of sound, permeating every part of space, similar to the "Harmony of the Spheres". And when they came together, voila, there was a merging that strengthened them synergistically. After all music and geometry are intimately related, just ask Pythagoras!

It dawned on me that much of my personal struggle came from trying to reconcile two parts of myself, the thinking part and the feeling part. And it does not help when humanity in this era face the same struggle generally. In recent times I framed my choices as such, do I choose between conventional Western medicine and energetic medicine, Buddhism and Clairvision, to name just two examples. 

But that was not the experience in the depths of my soul, such as the connected twins and brains during Mindscape, or during deep meditation when I experienced a harmonious whole of my being. Finally the outer and inner worlds met, and it dawned on me somewhat belatedly, that it was time to drop the self-created drama of having to make a choice between this and that, or that I had to survive in and "convert" a disconnected world to my own connected (and conceitedly superior) point of view. 

I create the outer reality that is inside me. If I believe in the disconnected world, of an inherent divide between science and spirituality, thinking and feeling etc, then that is the world that I will experience. However if I listen to the truth that is deep in my heart, then it is the inherently connected and harmonious world that comes forth, and shapes the world I experience. Whose story is it? My own inner truth, or the myth of disconnect held in a layer of humanity's collective consciousness?

So really the choice gets reframed at its root. Do I choose my inner truth, or what others tell me (mostly subconsciously of course)? While I will need occasional reminders and refinement of what constitutes my inner truth, just framing the situation as such made me drop a whole load of negative emotional loops that had kept me running like the proverbial mouse on a wheel.

Now this obviously does not change the external reality that some things do need fixing in the world, that the collective belief in the "disconnected world" drives humanity subconsciously towards more pain and grief. Yet we as change agents only make things worse if we do not realise how much we ourselves are subconsciously part of this belief network, as that will drive us toward making unintended decisions that foster just such a disconnected world, despite our supposedly noble intentions. The shadow that we do not see will use us and consume us. 

This drives home the importance of working on oneself, or self-knowledge, and in fact all spiritual work is essentially just that, to know thyself. Whether using traditional religion, modern spiritual techniques, psychotherapy, or whatever modality, it is important never to lose sight of the goal "to know thyself". And I would add on, "to know thyself that thou art Divine". 

I have hope, and I know, that one of my missions this lifetime is to bridge such divides, to illuminate our world by whatever little contribution I can give. I will always be a student of the Divine that lies within, learning more with each passing moment, and growing with each passing day. I am privileged to face the trials that await those who sincerely approach the Divine with humility. I am grateful for the manifold blessings in my life so far, for the pleasurable rewards that make living in this world bearable, and the trials that chisel and define the Divine within. 

Hence this blog. To articulate the Divine.

LINKS:
Sufen: Bodytalk practitioner and Mindscape organizer
Mindscape
Clairvision school of meditation
Thank you Becky Hill for those beautiful pictures of twins!

Sharing in Buddhist Fellowship during the New Moon!

What better way to start a new blog, than at the start of the New Moon, which is a beautiful time to clear out the old and begin the new!

I had a wonderful morning meditation, in which I experienced very tangible solar qualities, such as a liquid gold light, a sense of stillness and order. It was also the day that I shared my personal journey on regression and my early days with the Clairvision school of meditation, to Buddhist Fellowship (BF), an English-speaking Buddhist group based in Singapore. I had initial reservations about sharing, as I had done so before to BF a few years ago, but at that time I had experienced difficulties with the moderator for that session, who made some below the belt comments and made me feel unwelcome. What hurt more was that I considered her a good friend, and did not expect such a reaction from her. While she never did apologize to me (and neither did I told her how hurt I was so she did not have a chance to apologize anyway), she did tell me later on that such a topic was not suitable at BF's Sunday Service (which is their main weekly platform talk), and if she had known beforehand what my talk content was she would have prevented me from starting. She then invited me to give the same talk in a different setting (Brahm Center, the educational and social outreach arm of BF), where there were presumably less religious implications and my talk would be better received. I declined by staying silent, as the rest of that later conversation with her showed me that she was really not interested in what I had to say about my spiritual experiences if she could not use it to promote the brand of Buddhism she believed in.  

So it was not without some trepidation that I gave my sharing in BF on 5th June 2016, titled "Regression - A Personal Journey". However, the space and the audience felt different. Things had changed, people had moved on. I too had changed significantly over the intervening years. She was no longer active in BF, and was in Hua Hin helping out in Ajahn Brahm's meditation retreat. (By the way we are still friends and I am currently helping her out in her project to start a Buddhist hospice, which I respect as a noble endeavour. But I have learnt to be less naive and more circumspect towards people, being more selective to whom I bare my soul to.)  

I went off-the-cuff without any prepped notes, structuring my talk by starting with certain key experiences in the years of my Buddhist practice, in particular my inspiring experiences in the Buddhist pilgrimage trip to India in 2006, where I visited some sites considered holy to Buddhists. I connected that to my reasons for starting to learn Clairvision meditation, and my early experiences in the Clairvision school's style of regression, called Inner Space Techniques (IST). I shared about experiences that shattered my preconceived mental conceptions of "being spiritual", and how that led me increasingly to carve out my own authentic path, away from merely regurgitating spiritual texts or believing in them without the force of direct experience. 

Questions and answers session at the end was fun. For myself I have always enjoyed the Q&A part of all my talks more than any prepared script of mine. Their questions mainly relate to trying to draw connections from my experiences to their Buddhist worldview, which I tried my best to do with as much integrity as my articulation allowed, bridging between two worlds that I am familiar with. My younger sister shared her own experiences in Buddhism and Clairvision, which drew applause from people who were obviously moved by her heartfelt rendering of how regression had helped her shift positively. That sharing of hers was important for her own healing too. 

What was most surprising was the private small group chats I had after the talk proper, where various people approached me to express interest in giving Clairvision meditation and regression a try, and one related a deep experience of deja vu in the Louvre that I encouraged her to keep exploring, without pigeon-holing it as a past-life experience or not. I was touched once again by the sincere warmth of this group, and old friends that I had not connected with in a long time. I had after all spent some fruitful years with this group before. That drove home the point again to me, that I indeed create the world I experience from inside. 

So it was a fantastic New Moon. For those interested in astrology, I share with you my chart with transits at 8am my local time on 5 Jun 2016. Do note the transiting Sun-Venus-Moon conjunct, square my natal Venus-Moon opposition, and loosely square to my natal Nodes and opposing natal Neptune. And of course my Nodal return. Looking forward to beautiful weeks ahead!

LINKS:

Buddhist Fellowship

Clairvision School of Meditation

About this blog

What is this blog about? It's about my reflections on the connected world, to put into writing whenever I see something that reflects the inherent harmony in the depths of my soul, and that of the world outside. I believe that we create the world outside, by what we are inside. So this is my humble but sincere attempt, to change myself and the world, through writing. 

I am indebted to the gorgeous Julie Braden, who encouraged me to put my thoughts to writing. You can check out her website here: http://www.astraljules.com/