You Have A Body, You Are Not Your Body: Meditations With Kuan Yin Blog Series

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By Jelelle Awen

Note: This is a series of blog entries sharing experiences and conversations I have while meditating and opening myself to the frequencies of Kuan Yin, a female form of a Bodhisattva or enlightened, ascended teacher and face of the Divine Mother. To read the first in this series, please go here. 

I have taken a certain pride in being embodied and ‘grounded’ in my body. My weight has been at a healthy place for a few years now and regular physical activity is just part of my lifestyle living off-grid Shovelling, weeding, watering, cob building…it all lends itself to being in the body. I also experience great pleasure from making love with my mate Raphael, which is grounded in our bodies, connected in our hearts, and expanding more and more into our souls.

So, I haven’t been interested in being ‘out of the body’….until recently I have been. Well, what I am more interested in is a balance where I can be healthfully and vibrantly be in my body and also deepen my experience of out of body realities such as astral travel, Samadhi and other enlightened states, kundalini energies, etc. I do believe a balance can be made and that’s what it feels like some people are seeking through the Hatha yoga path.

Physical ailments usually accompany my major spiritual or emotional movements as toxicity moves out, as Kathleen also talks about in her blog. I take note when this happens because I rarely get sick and have never broken a bone or had any kind of major injury or illness. So, the physical issues I do have are small and move quickly, but they can often be connected to my process.

As I am meditating with Kuan Yin today, I am feeling a particular ailment in my body that is minor but still irritating me. As I start with the “Ma Om” mantra (described here), Kuan Yin can feel my attention and focus moving to my body.

“I’m sorry,” I quickly apologize. “I’m getting distracted by discomfort in my body.”

“You have a body. You are not your body,” is Her immediate response.

Ok, I take that in and let it be a kind of repeated mantra.

I have a body. I am not my body.

Eventually, I have to ask her to clarify what She means.

“Your mind thinks that you are your body. It thinks you are a body shell and it fuses to that reality. This is very limiting. You are not your body. And, you are not your mind either.”

“Then, what am I?”

She seems to light up then. “Now THAT is an interesting question. Also, interesting is the question: Who am I?”

“Yes, what and who am I, then?”

The image of a lotus flower blooms in front of me. I can feel immediately that She has sent it to me. I take its beauty in.

“This flower knows more of its essence than you do because it doesn’t know anything. It just is,” She replies.

I meditate on this and feel how right she is. I have spent over ten years in a pretty radical and intense self healing path that has led to the diving into the depths of my previously subconscious emotional and soul wounding. I have been asking the question, “Which part of me is feeling this?” in a dedicated way over the last decade. I have been through a series of subpersonalities over the years and through this incredibly effective process which allows for separation and objectivity from reactions through feeling them deeply, I have had more and more experience of the authentic expression of my being. What you can experience of your authentic being that is since it is very difficult to pinpoint as it isn’t related to a role or self image. But, I can feel how even what I have attached to as my ‘authentic self’ or ‘higher self’ still has a dualistic filter around it.

“I just am,” I respond, trying it on to see how it feels.

“It’s ok you do so much defining and sorting of yourself, J bird. You’ve needed to do it and it was good. You are in a new phase now where you want to dissolve the “I” more so you can experience reality without separation.”

I feel a slight wave of panic come over me at the thought of ‘dissolving’ myself, especially as I have spent so much work and energy to uncover my seemingly most authentic expression! My previous spiritual teacher used to say about the ego maturation process that happens through parts work and then the ego obliteration process that happens in sagehood practice is like having a Maserati sports car that you work very hard to get and then proceed to drive it off a cliff!

Kuan Yin feels this hesitation in me and a wave of compassion from her washes over me.

“Your mind resists this. Your body resists it too. Even your ‘authentic self’, as you say, resists it. But that’s OK because you still are what you are and aren’t what you aren’t,” She says, smiling.

“Buddha taught that it is our sense of ‘I’ and our sense of separation that causes suffering. I have healed a lot of my suffering through the path I’ve been on but I am still curious about deepening what I have experienced beyond the mind and beyond the body. And, I guess, even beyond the ‘I’.”

“Who is saying that?”

I reflect for a moment. I immediately want to go to my usual mode of scanning for a part of myself that might be speaking but I know that isn’t what she is looking for. Finally I settle for, “I don’t know.”

She nods and smiles at me. That feeling of not knowing who I am because I just am is a strange one and vibrates through me, loosening my mind and I can feel, jarring a little bit of my attachment to my body. A surge of energy moves from my crown chakra at the top of my head and down to the base of my spine and eventually out my root chakra.

Another lotus flower appears before me.

This time all I can do is laugh out loud, although I couldn’t have told you why.

And Kuan Yin laughs with me and says, “That’s better!”

Jelelle Awen is co-creator and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit SoulFullHeart Way Of Life for more information about staying at the Sanctuary and virtual sessions. You can read her tweets here and become her friend on facebook.

Going Beyond The Mind Not Against It: Meditations With Kuan Yin Blog Series

By Jelelle Awen

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I start these processes without knowing where they will go or lead me; not knowing how they will unfold to offer consciousness expansion for myself; not knowing how they might serve spiritual and emotional consciousness awakening and expansion in others. I follow a desire and from there the form unfolds.

I was led recently by a desire to deepen experiences I have had (even though they aren’t ‘experiences’ in another way) of altered states of consciousness over the years but particularly in the last 18 months since moving to a remote, off-grid sanctuary in rural Mexico. I call these experiences a ‘dripline’ because while they are strong in the moment of happening, they move on eventually. They feel like a drip rather than a gush, so far. I trust this drip is what I and parts of me can let in right now.

As I describe in the first entry in this series, I have a relationship with Kuan Yin (a female form of a Bodhisattva or enlightened, ascended teacher) that goes back several years to when I was awakened to Divine Feminine consciousness after becoming attuned in Reiki energy healing. The shamanistic healer and Reiki Master who attuned me also offered that I turn to Kuan Yin as my personal spirit guide and teacher. My immediate response to her suggestion was to burst into tears. Just the mention of Kuan Yin (who I wasn’t really familiar with at the time) brought up a huge surge of heart and soul longing.

Kuan Yin is both (at times) stern sounding but affectionate mother and penetrating spiritual teacher. I feel both comfort and discomfort around Her energy. She is both familiar and foreign; nurturing and, at the same time, without a form to wrap around. All these contradictions seem to work for Her though and my heart trusts and loves her deeply even if my mind can’t quite grasp Her. But, that’s the point actually.

This morning, during our meditation time together, She inspired me to share regularly about my experiences with Her during this time of surrogacy together and offer whatever message She would like to express through me. I have long ago embraced my soul purpose as Divine messenger and scribe; it is at times a very blessed thing to be and at times can draw misunderstanding and strong resistive projections from others (just as the Divine Mother Herself can.) I feel that we all have the capacity to connect with various forms and energies of the Divine Mother and receive Her messages. Billions of people already do in the form of what the world’s religions offer, such as worshipping Mother Mary, even if their religion can tend to filter the purity of Her heart and message. I describe the mantra and process I use to connect with Her in this blog entry.

So, I will share regularly. I wanted to say ‘daily’ but that doesn’t have much meaning in the moment as what is a day (or any measurement of time) but an illusion created by the mind? Kuan Yin would say so anyway.

As I repeated my “Ma Om” mantra while touching my body and feeling my love for Kuan Yin this morning, I noticed the crazy activity of my mind. How the thoughts and mental digestions seemed to ‘interrupt’ the process every few seconds! My mind wanted to process and package the whole experience before I’d even really had it. I would move my attention back to the mantra and, again, after a few seconds, would discover I had drifted again.

Kuan Yin was with me in this, seemed to feel my growing concern, and we began to dialogue about it.

“Busy mind, yes,” She said to me in her penetrating way.

“It is so busy! I try to still it with these mantras and it gets bored. It seems to rebel and want to gallop away like a wild horse,” I responded.

I do believe She chuckled then…laughing with me, not at me.

“Yes, like wild horse. But, why you go against it? What does it want?”

I felt and thought about this for a moment. “My mind says that mantras are too boring. It likes dialogue and conversation. Or to go on creative visualization and etheric journeys like we used to. When it is occupied in ‘helping’ with these things, then it can let in energies such as Kundalini or the Non-Dual.”

“So, why you not let it?”

“I didn’t think that was Ok?” I admit, feeling very much like a beginner in that moment.

“Who say it not OK? Who know what is right for you other than you? You’ve got a very imaginative mind, Jilly Bird. It is beautiful. Let it help you move beyond it.”

I contemplated this for a moment (and so did my mind) and we both felt this sense of goodness about that. Rather than trying to ‘tame’ my mind, I could flow with it. All of my most altered states had come through letting my mind help take me on an imaginative journey, as Kuan Yin said.

“And,” She continued, “Just what do you suppose is helping you talk with me right now?”

I could feel my mind get a bit puffed up, but that felt better than putting it down. “For the last ten years, my process has been about forming relationship with and creating negotiation…whether it was with parts of me or with the Divine or with my body. Forming relationship is a dualistic approach though…”

She cut me off with, “Calling something ‘a dualistic approach.’ These are just words. Other people’s words. You follow your own heart, as you have always done. As you teach others to do.”

“I offer a path that has worked for me and then, yes, support them to find their own heart and soul way along it.”

“So, same for you, J-Bird. Same for you.”

I was left with a primary message today that it isn’t about going against the mind but rather beyond it. Taking it with you as a helper, but journeying beyond it….where life can then fully take flight.

Jelelle Awen is a facilitator and co-creator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit SoulFullHeart Way Of Life  for more information.