This essay is my gift to Mystress Angelique Serpent, to Goddess of All That Is, and to my Divine Beloved.

Note: It's a bit long, but I felt it important to be thorough. I couldn't stop writing!

Introduction
So, where to begin?  I'm writing this essay by following my experiences through the classes starting with the first one. I started the FST classes together with my wife in the beginning of 2005. At that point I had taken the Tummo initiation about half a year earlier. The first class was rather familiar to me, as I had already been exposed to kundalini awakening since 2001, and I had gone through some clearing and guidance since.  What I embarked upon has been a journey more incredible than I could ever imagine.  And to quote Han Solo, "I can imagine quite a bit!"

I found that the course brought me onto a new path of healing, grounding and discoveries that has been unlike anything I've encountered before. Not the least your loving guidance which has helped clear so many overlays of belief, karma and only Goddess knows what!  And not only that, you have showed me how to do it myself!  That is the greatest gift that can be given to someone. A key to transformation! When the course started I was in a rather unbalanced state, especially while looking at it from a present perspective!   Despite yoga practice, my body was
tired, aching, my power chakra was quite often in a state of tension. It was an intense time. The relationship with my wife had a lot of tensions, too. The following classes brought on a continuing transformation. The classes about matriarchy and sacredness of sexuality opened up my eyes for very fresh ways of seeing things. The changes within didn't have notable effects immediately, but throughout the course they have become more and more apparent.

Grounding
Since I had experiences of awakening prior to the FST classes began, the grounding exercises in all their forms have been an ever continuous blessing to my existence. Throughout the course, I have faced many obstacles to grounding. Forcefulness, resistance, fears and various inhibitions that have come up to be surrendered.  They still do! But grounding has definitely become a permanent state of being. I spend much more time these days being grounded than not. Despite this, I perform the full grounding ritual at least twice a day. It's a wonderful sadhana, and it always clears a  bit of karma just on its own.

During last fall I was also exposed to Eckhart Tolle.  Especially his audio workshops about the emergence of "presence" and dealing with the pain body. I realized that what he talked about concerning presence, is exactly the same thing as grounding. The presence creates a centeredness, yet at the same time a connectedness. Logically it seems almost contradictory to move closer to a center of my own being, at the same time expand outwards and be in more touch with the world. Yet this is exactly the way I would describe this experience!  Moving inward and
outward at the same time. At other times there isn't even a center at all, just a floating, yet the floating is right here in this world, rooted. The center disappears and I'm everywhere and nowhere.. But the body is still there.. It's very hard to describe. It is an entirely different thing from the head-based drifting that I've experienced so much earlier in my life, that was always floating away from something. The head-based drifting still occurs, but I live at the same time with
an understanding that it's just temporary, and something happening on the surface. Even when it is a highly uncomfortable experience.

What started to happen during the fall was the emerging of this presence during situations where I had before considered it impossible. Something that brought about an incredible change inside was the experience of presence in the middle of an angry fit, in the midst of rage. It's indescribably bizarre as an experience. As I discovered after the bodytalk class, the body is incredibly intelligent, and I found that one time my body demanded me to withdraw from my wife during a session of
rage. Instead I stalked off into the woods and started kicking roots, spitting at rocks and doing all sorts of very angry things.  The small spark of presence was there throughout the whole thing with a still small voice asking "why are you doing this?"  The presence kept growing from this.. And I saw that the forest was not hitting back, it was not mad at me.. In fact it was just like that still small voice. Eternally patient, eternally loving.  It has handled the wind, the rain and the
seasons, and even the abuse of humans. For every curse and fit I felt a wave of motherly love return to me. I fell down on my knees, banging the rocks with my fists, crying in despair.  Not long after I was hugging rocks, tenderly brushing my fingers through old layers of moss..  I felt that if presence can come through even during anger and rage, it must be more powerful than anything else I've ever believed to hold sway over me.  The funny thing is that I don't remember what sparked my fit of rage! LOL.  

I had another episode of anger just recently, and had a bit of a fit, but found to my amazement that I couldn't stay angry for long. As an ego, I wanted to sulk, or find something to abuse, but it was impossible to stay like that for long.

I often tend to take this state of presence for granted, also taking it for granted that other people always feel it too. Now, writing this essay, with flashbacks I can see that it wasn't always like that. There was one instance last week where I was eating lunch with a coworker. As usual I was still for a moment to connect with/bless the food. He wondered what I was doing and I told him that I connected with the food. I got a very strange look from him.  "I reach out to it and connect with it" I said, as it's a perfectly natural thing to me. I was a bit surprised again to find that there are those who don't find it natural
to reach out and connect with their environment, without physically interacting with it. Flashbacks now show me that I didn't do it either. Well, actually, I did, I just wasn't aware of it.  Grounding is what attracted me to this course in the first place. I was crying out for it, It was tough at the time. On the other hand, I find myself surprised sometimes the other way around, finding what you describe as "Buddhas in every streetcorner"



The Chakra System
The chakra system class was a lesson for me that taught me a lot of things other than the chakras. It stirred up a lot of confusion in me because I had studied a different chakra system, where they have a bit different locations and colors.  It brought up the deep rooted issue where I always needed to have everything nailed down, settled and be by the book. It's a tendency in me that comes up in various ways to be cleared!   For some of these chakra locations I realized that you were not talking about the same chakra, or that you were looking at it from a different viewpoint. It also distracted me from something that was not
needed for me at the time. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the chakras and their meaning, where really what I needed was to loosen up, get grounded and expand my own vision on things. I had a tendency to expect the same experiences and insights as those found in the books I read.

This pushed me into a situation where I've had to find out for myself how the chakras function, and not just follow pre-digested book knowledge. For example, some people say that the power chakra is in the spine behind the navel, others say its above the navel and yet others say its behind the solar plexus.  I've found it myself to be somewhere between the navel and solar plexus, and that there is energy connecting in the front both from the navel and from the solar plexus area. The seem intimately connected, but subtly have slightly different functions. I find that when the body speaks to me about dharma/karma, free will vs divine will, it gives the signals right in the solar plexus area.
Usually a tightness when I am not surrendering something.  In and around the navel I've found the power of breath and internal "power management" And the chakra itself situated in the spine seems to be the main governor for both of these areas.

With the root chakra (or base chakra as some call it) I've discovered several interconnected parts, due to these studies.  First I feel a center right where the pelvic floor is, or rather, right above it, close to the spinal tip, but a bit under it. This seems to be the root chakra that the vedic tradition talks about.  I've also found something just right above it, right at the tip of the tailbone. They seem to connect with each other, almost as if the kundalini begins in the tailbone, but the other point is "helping" from underneath for it to move.  I find it easier to focus on the point above the pelvic floor when doing root chakra practices, especially since I can feel the point even more
acutely when I pull the muscles together.  But the K-rushes almost always start at the tip of the tailbone!

It seems like a never ending serious of discoveries. Sometimes something I thought was correct is altered through an experience or the other. I also had an experience when a Swami shared some chakra insights when he taught me kriya yoga.  He said that the chakras can be awakened without the kundalini, but they can only be awakened in -depth- with it.

Since then I've started to realize that the lotus petals are just
showing the first layer, they actually expand inwards and outwards. Although the petals seems to indicate a pattern to how they do this, like a dimensional blueprint. They can appear like caleidoscopes!   Some time before I started the FST classes I had a throat chakra experience, where some sort of karma in my throat was spontaneously healed in a lucid vision/dream.  I saw, and also heard the throat chakra. It was a blend of blue, purple and some cyan. It looked like perfect clockwork, where the 'petals' were more like circuits.  There was a circle inside it, and inside that, and inside that and it fell into an infinite point
somewhere. I distinctly heard the clicking and chirping, as it was working, adjusting and managing the flow of events. The more I look into it and discover, the more I realize that I know absolutely nothing about it!

Past Lives/Concurrent Lives
I had an incredible experience during the "Holy Trinity" class. I was visiting my family for easter, and one evening I decided to skip watching a movie with them because I felt a strong urge to just lay down on my back to meditate.  After going through a printed out paper of this class, I was hit with very strong visions. The first was something very similar to the "War of the Worlds" movie trailer, where a strange fire can be seen in the horizon, coming closer and closer, incinerating everything in its path. It came with a strong knowing that this was a symbology for what would happen to me in a near future. It was a bit scary but at the same time exhilirating. After the initial awakening in
2001, when I went through a very long and intense period of fear, a deep inner longing to transform, merge and dissolve has entered my life. The second vision that followed was one that came after I reflected on past lives. What are past lives really?  I was thrown into a sudden vacuum where I saw not only "my" lifetimes, but vast amounts of potential lifetimes occuring all at the same time. In a time/space context it lasted only a moment, but everything stopped, even my breath. Then a bungy-effect of ego-unease followed, bringing a lot of karmas into view.  Funny though that after that I slept like a baby the following night.



The Heartvoice and Entities
I heard about a lot of difficulties concerning the heartvoice, but I found that Goddess blessed me with a connection to the still small voice within. The biggest blockage for me was not entities, but expectations. Expectations can be a big blockage, neh?  I expected a certain kind of voice, a certain type of clarity and so on.   What I found was that the heartvoice would only speak without any of those expected things. And in my experience it's not actually a voice in and of itself.  It's just a knowing that comes from a certain state of being. I may get images, visions, even words at time, but I found that they are not actually the heartvoice themselves, they are things that the heartvoice are pointing at!  Connecting with the heartvoice also sometimes gives me the experience of not needing an answer..   This morning I was pondering about the heartvoice, and that sometimes I don't hear it but still feel perfectly at ease, centered. I realized it's because the heartvoice is not a separate entity from myself. How can it be?  Funny that I have
always treated it as a distant buddy somewhere in there..   The question arises "Who is the one who is treating it like the distant buddy in the center of my chest? Who's saying that, who is having that experience?" Sometimes I spend a lot of times not asking the heartvoice for anything at all, yet feeling it as the closest thing ever.  "Talking" to the heartvoice is often like merging with it.

The entity lessons were quite interesting too. I wasn't entirely sure at the time whether I had any entities or not, so I started doing the practices in order to find out.  What followed sometime after was what you told me is a "vibrational cold".  I didn't know this was the case at the time.  I was staying over at a friend's house at the time, in a town we were going to move to. I spent most of the day in bed, as I was completely knocked out with cold/flu symptoms.  Oddly enough I spent most of the time in meditation. First I ran into St.Germaine, the guy with the purple flame. I sent him off like I learned in the entity clearing, and he disappeared.  I tested, and checked if he would come back. He did come back. He was one of those worthwhile entities. No
predictions or dramas, he was a perfect example of total honor. He had come to help me understand the workings of entities, and also showed me two meditation techniques I have yet not seen in any books.  One of them was a kundalini meditation that works by directly sending energy into the dormant areas of the brain, rather than focusing on the energy centers. He showed me how to connect the light in the brain with the spinal cord and into the earth, just like in grounding, then send the energy up into the brain into various areas. Quite creative! However, I haven't pursued it on a regular basis, I haven't felt inclined to. The
second technique wasn't really a technique per se, but he took me on a tour through the mind, showing how the mind really isn't an entity, but more of a process, like a matrix of movements and forms, and it can be travelled and navigated inside, sped up or slowed down..  These experiences had me quite knocked out for a while afterwards, and I was sent into a long time of lucid dreaming.  In one of these lucid dreams, which was more of a half waking, half sleeping experience, I saw a long beam of light reaching up into the sky, and I experienced an exodus of
entities.. Entities that had clung and fed off of me, been given power and all sorts of stuff. Suddenly they had decided I was inhospitable and returned to where they came from.  There must have been thousands, most of them so tiny that I may not have noticed them individually...

After this I started to adopt a different attitude towards many of the channelings and other New Age material I had been reading..   Not discrediting everything just because it's channeled, but not giving all my power away to something just because it happens to be without a body...   I probably took a bit to the extreme and spent some time with new age and channeling-bashing on forums and with people.  It was a phase however, and it passed after a few months. Maybe the pendelum had to swing the other way for a while and just find out what it was like, maybe clear things in the process I hadn't been aware of at the time.

Waking the Serpents
The Waking the Serpents was quite a strong lesson for me, and it was the time where I had to truly learn to listen to and trust the heartvoice. It was also a time of intense clearing. I wrote a very long story about my awakening in the tearoom; all my fears, concerns and experiences and laid myself open on the board. In a sense I was looking for some sort of acknowledgment, inside or without. I was doubting myself quite a bit, often thinking that I was deluding myself, even after going through such profound experiences and events.  Writing that post was a major relief
for me. I also during last summer went to the last big retreat for my yoga teacher training where the theme was Kundalini & Tantra. I faced very strong fears of being discredited or ridiculed if I told anyone what I had experienced and gone through.  Funny enough, one of the other students approached me and asked me if I was awakened, even though I hadn't said anything, and was curious of what it was like.  Swami told
me I should celebrate with champagne and make sure to let go of any further fears I have of the process because they become blockages if I don't.

It was a rather incredible summer, another major thing lifted from me during that retreat, which was the endless fumbling to push myself into enlightenment.  The experience is quite delicious. I walk along a dusty summer road, feeling the wind, watching the dragonflies dance back and forth (It's a lake area)  I had to take a lot of walks that summer because I had so many things to process, and the walks helped.  I would walk, and I would talk out loud to Goddess. (It's a wonderful technique, I still do it when the need arises)

Suddenly I stopped and found myself laughing and having gigglefits. If I was searching for Spirit, and Spirit is already within me, who is then doing this endless search?  I found it incredibly humorous, and it was so simple that I kept getting pulling back into disbelief.  Spirit having the experience of searching for itself!   What else could it be? In that moment I lost all desire to search for anything. Since then I've fallen back into various beliefs of course, but it was a turning point,
a realization that set the tone and gave my life a completely new
direction.



Bubble Spell & Rituals
A short note about the bubble spell is that it really works.  I have been notorious for crashing every computer in sight (But also sometimes for fixing them without even touching them)  My computer runs much more smoothly after I've grounded it and surrendered it to Goddess to manage.

Sometimes my computer crashes or goes down just so I can get pushed to not spend too much time in front of it, or to surrender some sort of expectation or attachment. It's very easy to get addicted to computers and the internet.  Maybe it is so that we can get used to get energy from certain machines, as well as control dramas?

The Third Eye, Expectations and Manifestations
The Third Eye opening class is another example where I have had to release expectations of how things should or should not manifest. Expectations are really just a form of ego control isn't it?  Something occurred to me recently; that in order to even visualize what the third eye looks like and see it, the third eye is needed to do it.  Later on Wife and I attended a third eye opening chat workshop. It definitely feels like it was given a higher initiation.  During the hours I slept before the workshop I had a very strong lucid dream of you poking my
forehead with electrical energy.  A very nice experience too!  When I logged on to the chat workshop I didn't receive an initiation, because I was told it was already done.  The third eye definitely seems to work outside of space and time. Often I have visions of things before or after they actually occur.  

But expectations definitely seem to have been the biggest blockage for me to clear. And I still get them of course, but nothing seems to block off intuition and a new, fresh reality more than a determined idea of how it should be like. On a second note, sometimes holding a vision is exactly what is needed. Something I found very interesting about the Celestine Prophecy was the idea of once I have a vision I wish to pursue, that the most important thing is to hold this vision, and be attentive for all the syncronicities and other things Goddess proveds to realize it.  Like in "What you focus on, grows"   Swami Satyananda said that when the heart chakra becomes awakened it is very important to be very attentive to what you think, because thoughts are at this point starting to carry real power.  He said that in the two lower chakra dimension, man is completely subject to fate, in Manipura the power of will comes in existance, and in Anahata and above we start to fully create our own realities.   So it's probably a good idea to focus on joy, health and infinity rather than misery, sickness and limitations.

The same day as I'm writing this, I discovered a new thing that can be surrendered. I've learned to surrender thoughts, emotions, outcomes and etheric images, aka "where the light is not"  I spent some of my morning trainride and had a nice half-an-hour surrender session.   A new phrase appeared to me. "Goddess, please take my current perceptions, they are a gift to you... etc"  It allows me to be relieved of the perceptions of
reality and myself, so they can be peeled off, or be replaced by
something better..  If I don't find anything in particular to surrender at the moment, there's always the perceptions!

Witnessing Consciousness
I find it interesting how surrendering and witnessing consciousness complement one another. It's another discovery I've had while writing this essay. If I'm in the state being capable of surrendering something, I'm already in a state of witnessing, not identifying with whatever that is being surrendered. In my understanding, it would be impossible to surrender something without being able to witness it!  "Goddess, take -this-"  I am already watching it..   Yet, it can be a state of witnessing while at the same time being fully present in the body, in
what is about to be surrendered. It's difficult to describe in words! It's incredibly liberating, because it means I don't have to reject or deny something in order to witness it. There's no fighting, just a disconnection of ego, of thinking that "it's me, and separate from everything else". In a sense it is me, yet at the same time it is not. Depending on how I look at it. Experiencing something just melting back to where it came from is indescribable. Everything is lighter and clearer.

Pacing
The "Pacing Yourself" lesson was a very important milestone for my growth.  I often lived with a tendency to learn everything as quickly as possible, get to the advance "endgame" parts of stuff as early as possible.  Early on, years ago, it served me a purpose.  When I had my first spark of realization that I could do something about my life by changing myself, that's when I discovered yoga and meditation.  The practices I did weren't so advance as in themselves, but it was the absolute devotion and frenzy with which I dove into them that caused the spark only half a year later. I didn't worry about consequences at all,
or having my perceptions changed completely, I welcomed it! I dove into it with my whole being. When things really started happening to me, I became very hesitant for a period of time, because it was so different than I had imagined, that I'd lose myself completely.  So I guess that when you move very very quickly, sometimes you have to hit the breaks and have a time of recovery.  It's a difference between me and Wife.  I tend to move in bursts, while she goes very slow and steady, almost imperceptible at times.

When I later on got back on track with yoga practices, it was different, oh so different. Pushing myself suddenly didn't work any more.. Pushing would only cause pain and anxiety. It was difficult for a while to let go of the tendencies to push and will myself ahead. I guess it's something that works while moving through the lower chakras, but then it seems to just not work any more. Instead I've started to have a different type of intensity in my life, the intensity of diving right into something, but without trying to make it happen. There's a beauty in diving right into unknown, not knowing what's going to be there on
the other side.

I remember how you told me that I probably had a bit of an adrenaline addiction, addiction to intensity. No doubt!   I still get a rush out of various experiences, but it only comes when I am not trying to force them into being... Because it's always something new, always something unexpected and fresh.

When I sat down with Wife to go through the Pacing lesson, the first thing she did was to look sideways at me and raise an eyebrow slightly. She was very amused. But what else was I to expect after she had lived for a few years with a yorkshire terrier in human form?  The pacing has definitely helped me to start to appreciate things that happen in my life on a daily basis.  In a sense, learning pacing helps me find the
true rythm of my own inner drummer.  Sometimes the beat is intense and wild, and at other times its endless, almost rythmless, gentle, slow. And finding pacing also helps me to be grounded in the NOW moment. It's not really about moving fast or moving slow, it's about moving just at the right pace at that particular moment, the right pace for me.

The Divine Beloved!
The lessons surrounding the Divine Beloved lead to a variety of
experiences.  She had before arrived in various forms.  Once she
replaced all the forms of people in a train with a gorgeous hindu
princess/goddess. I looked down at my lap, and found that I was wearing the same dress, too. Often I also found a Goddess dancing within me when I was chanting mantras and kirtans..  Did I mention that my DB absolutely loves mantras?  Especially my personal mantra.  I had a hard time seeing this myself in the beginning, but Wife shared with me a vision she had as I was struggling with whether a mantra was good for me any more or not.. The thing is that every time I surrendered the mantra,
it came back, stronger and more powerful (Goddess gives it a nice shiny tuneup each time I surrender it. Surrendering it every time I repeat it is even more neat, then it's constantly being tuned up!).  She shared with me a vision that every time I chanted my mantra, the DB would adorn herself with it as the most precious gift, as bead necklaces or flowers, anything, and dance with delight.  Sometimes she is almost like a gypsy woman, carrying all those gifts in colorful variety.   The anklets she
wears with little bells on them has attracted my attention to her feet, so I can bend down in submission and awe before her and kiss them. Although she often asks me to play with them!

In another experience well before I did these classes (maybe even before the FST all together)   I watched a dragon grow up.  In the first dream, I saw a small baby dragon in a room, a play pen of sorts. There were many children there. Including Swami Satyananda in childform for some reason.  Back then he often visited me in dreams.  Probably not for nothing. He has always been a very big admirer of the divine feminine, and a tantric at heart.  He has shared very similar ideas that those you
share in the classes about male and female differences. He said that females have a bigger potential than most men, and that the world really needs more female gurus.  Now, I know you don't consider yourself to be a guru, but I'm certain that he means any teacher, master or guide in feminine form.  And it is definitely a very different experience to be initiated by and receive spiritual guidance from a woman.   Anyway, in this dream, these children were looking down from an alcove at this little green baby dragon.  "Little" would be a better way to describe
it.  At least 8 feet tall, much bigger than me. But small for being a dragon.  I was supposed to play "catch the ball" with this dragon baby who had teeth the size of knives.

In another dream I travelled over a big lava landscape. Totally an earth element dimension.  A huge dragon rose over me. I knew that she was female. She was long and slender, shaped like a serpent, with wide wings. Her scales were like glowing embers, red and golden, and she appeared to almost be glowing. She looked down at me with curiousity (And was rather imposing too I might add) and then flew off..  I felt the inner pull to follow, so I did.  She led me to her lair, and asked me to dig in the dirt there.  She showed me the hidden treasure of all my collected memories and experiences. First they looked like trash, then like toys, little boardgames, pictures, images.  Maybe she was asking me to sort out my karmas. I felt an incredible sense of both
trust and love from this huge dragon. I knew without a doubt that she wouldn't harm me.

The most intense experience of the DB so far was when I was doing the Divine Beloved class.  While reading one of the off-links I was also listening to one of my own songs that she had inspired me to do. I am putting a link to this synth-dance song at the end of the document so you can listen to it if you wish.  For me, many of my experiences, perceptions and memories are best shared through music!  While listening to the song, and reading about the discussion of seeing oneself through the DB's eyes, it happened to me. My perceptions were completely altered, and I saw the "little me" from perspective of absolutely unconditional love. That little me looked very sad and lonely, like he
hid himself from the world in a small, dark space. It was overwhelming, and I can still bring back the residue of it, which sometimes serves as a reminder when life looks particularily difficult and bleak.  I made a post in the tearoom about it that you responded to several times. If I bring myself back to it, I often find tears coming, and warm, fuzzy sensations through my entire body.

Later on she took the form of an inner guru, and started guiding me through various clearings, healing processes and discovers. Now that I am writing this, I realized I had forgotten about those times. She would guide me through various meditations, but the most funny thing is how she likes to surprise me.  Especially when I am expecting some sort of peaceful meditation and she wants to have sex!  She seems to be often guiding me into the direction of not being embarrassed by sudden spontaneous sexuality.

The past few months or so, she has not been manifesting much in obvious forms, especially not since the Shadow lesson. Supposedly she is also the Shadow, so that is probably why. Showing up as all the ugly, fearful, angry and rejected forms for some time. The idea of that right now gives me warm blissful shivers and goosebumps throughout my body.

Funny, I had an experience this morning about cells..  As you know I've been going through this phase of skin eruptions lately.  Something else that has been manifesting in my body are seemingly very random sensations. Tingles, pressure, heat, cold, itches, all sorts of things. It appears in a spot, anywhere for anything from a few seconds to a minute or two, then fades away. Then something completely different appears somewhere else. Now I have had a history of being a bit of a hypocondriac. Combined with K-awakening symptoms, that has resulted in quite a few things to surrender. Wife told me last night that these
fleeting sensations are the readjusting of my cells to match a higher vibration.  I have no idea where she got that from.  I sat on the train this morning, basking in the sunlight that filled the car, moving my awareness into the cells, that never sleep, always do the best they can. I felt inspired to tell the cells "We're doing a good job aren't we? We're all the same family. " Now that I got into the office and have taken one of my daily quick breaks to do some writing, I also saw my Divine Beloved inside each and every one of those cells, including those
that are struggling with boils and such.   She takes one of her
favourite forms, a brown skinned woman with long, dark hair, with
sensuous, colorful and flowing clothes.  She has deep, dark eyes and often wears noserings, bracelets and anklets with little bells.  First I see the full vision of her, then she multiplies and moves into each and every one of the cells in my body and dances in them!   Are the cells in the body the dance of the divine?  What else could they be?  

Is there a difference between the Divine Beloved, and Goddess?  I like to call her Shakti, it makes it more intimate, like a lover.  Or maybe it was her who told me her name is Shakti.  It's hard to tell the difference sometimes.. Maybe that's the idea.

She also appears in the ever emerging presence within me, the presence which doesn't only emerge within me, but in the whole world at the same time. It seems intimately connected.  If presence grows from within, it also embraces from without, and there's not really a "when" it started happening either.

Now it is happening again. As an answer to the question if there is any difference.. She holds out her hands to me. I take them, I see us both as if from outside. Her eyes hold nothing but absolute reverence, as if I was the highest, most divine conceivable.  And this despite that I am completely naked to her.  She sees it all.  The sadness, the fears, the uncertainties, the weaknesses.   When I shed a tear, she sheds a tear too.  How long have we existed? We are young, we are old.  Two young lovers, like budding flowers, yet ancient, timeless spirits.  

She then tells me that she was never gone for even a moment when things were darkest and most despairful. Every tear, every cry of anger, she was doing it to. And in every moment of joy there was a dance.

Her bottomless eyes widen, and then her form splits open into a cosmos. A velvety darkness of peace, with stars sprinkled through it. Sometimes little galaxies. And she whispers "Come back home, come back with me" Gently she invites me inside her, and we are light, and we are nothing. Haha!  Now I am back sitting in the office again, wearing her clothes. I can shake my feet a little and the bells give off a tingle. I can stretch like a lazy cat in the chair.  Imagine being a Goddess!    

Ego voice says its inappropriate, and that it's ridiculous. Bah!  We're just laughing and dancing about. Ego voice is duly noted and given a big kiss.

It seems contradictory at first. Being the Divine Beloved gives me not only the chance to be a Goddess, but it also shows me so much clearer what it is really like to be a -man-. I can be a bold, troublemaking rogue and she will love it. I can be the perfect submissive gentleman and she will love it. Or why not a bit of both?

The further I get into this writing, the further off I get from any chronological order of the classes.  Maybe it is all happening at the same time anyway!  Then syncronicity follows!  A friend sends me a link to an online radio station with a search string, I put it in and songs starts playing.  A song called "Kissing" by Bliss. While remaining in the vision with Shakti, I feel her singing the words about how we can be together, fly in the clouds, kissing!

Bodytalk
Briefly about body-talk:  I spent a bit longer than usual with this class, as I felt intuitively that it needed some extra attention, since I had neglected my body for most of my life, trying to escape into the "higher" realms.  To be honest, the body-talk class doesn't seem like something that can be finished learning in one or two weeks. But it has started an ongoing process where I'm becomming better and better at listening to the body and its needs!  All the twitches, pains, tingles and other things are telling me something!

This is one of the most prevalent aspects of my daily life that changed completely after 2001.  I remember that I didn't actually feel so many things in the body back then. No subtle vibrations, not the constant movement of life in the body.  At first I thought it was something that was wrong with me, but it's nothing but an ever increase of both energy and sensitivity, isn't it?  Learning more about body-talk has become a good tool in first of all giving the various signals attention.  So often they are ignored.  Of course, it often happens I feel things and I
have no idea what they mean. As much as possible, I surrender them to see what comes back.

When I am typing this particular paragraph, I'm on the last day of writing the essay. We had a long karma clearing session last night, clearing out some of my fears with MD's and other things related to health.  I had some difficulties seeing everything clearly, so Wife played karma vampire on me and also channeled some insights. Having certain symptoms in the body and dealing with various experiences in life can be like a placeholder to bring syncronicities in place. They are put there for the simple purpose of showing me where my fears are, so I can move through them, surrender.  

When I was about to fall asleep at night, I had a rather interesting revelation about my skin eruptions. Just like you say, it is a process of detoxing.  The last puzzle piece fell to place when I realized exactly when it stopped when I had the outbreak during the fall.  It stopped after I performed Shankaprakshalana, which is a yogic technique of cleansing the whole inner system with salt water. It's very powerful and should be practiced maximum once per year. After I have started doing the sweating and increased excercise as you suggested, symptoms
have gradually started to recede. So I will have to see what happens. But many syncronicities have definitely come into my life this past month.  More than ever before.



Diet
The diet aspect of this path has gone through some changes!   Much earlier in the process, before I was initiated, I had a bit of a rollercoaster..  First when I started getting intensively into yoga, I cut out any form of meat from my diet. I was rather fanatic about it too!  Then when I had the spark and the process started kicking off, I went back to eating meat again.  Back then I thought I was doing it out of fear of getting pulled away too far or something. I wanted to be "earthly", but I thought it was due to the fear.  Only now I can see that there was a very intuitive reason for this, following my lifepath. In the beginning in order to kick things off, it seems that the very
light diet assisted me greatly.  Then when K kicked in, I needed some sort of grounding, and I allowed my diet to get heavier again.  

Then gradually after that it has taken on a more balanced form. When I started omitting most meat from my diet again it wasn't with the same fanatic frenzy as earlier, (Although Wife might beg to differ!) but I simply started cutting things out that made me feel heavy and tired or gave me digestive problems, and so on.  It was a bit tough on the relationship with Wife, because we were eating and cooking together, and she was rather upset with that whole thing for quite some time. Can't blame her!   Nowadays I have a mostly, but not entirely vegetarian diet. I eat milk, eggs,  and stuff like that, and also fish. My body often
craves fish, especially sushi.  I'm open to the prospect of eventually eating other meats again, but not until I find a place where it's grown organically/ecologically and with honor to the animals. Most meat I find in the stores turns my powerchakra into knots.  Although I am still a bit biased of course. I'm sure that it will become obvious to me as the communication with my body improves more!



Feminine/Masculine & Cross Dressing
The lessons about male and female differences disturbed me less than I thought they would at first. I found that many things you've said and written in them resonates with me. One of the most important aspects of this, personally, is the impact this prospect could have on our society. Many women seem to have a inherent sense of empathy, compassion and feeling that many men are missing. I noticed it very clearly at work,
where the reactions to something said or seen can be vastly different. But I've also found wonderful exceptions of it in men, even though it is not in everyone.   I consider the development of compassion to be evolution, rather than the often common view that it is a sign of weakness.

Then again I have developed a rather positive view of both myself and the world. Where I used to see lack of goodness, I tend to see simply a lack of understanding, or the harboring of fear and confusion. It's very cool that when you talked about the gene that you say women have activated by birth, but men in general don't. Recently I've had a growing sense that social graces, honor and communication are not things that need to be forcefully trained from without, but qualities that every one of us have inherent within us!  The only difference is that many have not tapped into it yet, especially among men, in where it is often dormant due to various instincts like hunting and providing that
has taken the leading role.

I'm going through a little slideshow inside me with various enlightened men and women, and often it appears that many of the women become bold in comparison to what they were, and men become submissive. I feel a sense of karma clearing, because the idea of submissiveness brings up images of giving up my power to tyrants and others that would abuse it. But underneath the gunk I can see that it is not about letting people steamroll me. Rather, it is an exquisite state of being where I let myself to be filled.  Like the tantric description of Shiva as pure consciousness, the empty vessel for Shakti.

On a note of syncronicity.  During the male and female difference
classes, I took an online psychology test about male and female
thinking, in which various types of thinking and cognition are tested... To my surprise I found that I scored exactly 50/50 in male and female cognition. A possible effect of K?

Here would be good to tie in the cross-dressing class. This is a jump in time to something much more recent. The biggest discovery I came to here was that even though I have a balance in male and female thinking, I've been carrying around an inhibition to really let the male be male, and the female really be female, and missing out on a great bit of fun in life. (And thus to see where my limits really are)  My Divine Beloved has started to put herself into my body certain times, and sometimes I let her take over my body. I tell ya, it is a rather weird experience when it happens during a work meeting!  But rather fun!   And besides,
at a place filled with artists, I doubt anyone would even raise an eyebrow if they knew.

The cross-dressing class brought up an issue that has been buried for a long time.  I never really allowed myself to be a man, with all the musky masculinity that comes with it.  I was romancing a lot of girls during my teens and looked like a young Fabio, but I was more like a handsome boy than really feeling like a man (I was rather inhibited too). I loved playing the part of the handsome boy. I probably ended up being a bit attached to it.   So now I am going to explore the venue of manhood a bit to allow it to be fully expressed.  I'm currently growing a beard.  A fellow yoga teacher told me I look like one of the
musketeers.. Was thinking about trying some nice fitting jeans, haven't done that in years, and maybe a tight shirt and some leather boots. Now that summer is coming, a nice tan will top it off!   I'm starting Karate training pretty soon, which is going to be pretty fun!

Ego is a rather silly mechanism.   At the same time it looks for things to identify with, and at the same time it can be afraid of identifying with things, with some sort of idea that it would get stuck into it. Male or Female nonwithstanding, the ego mind seems to be the dumbest of it all, with its constantly contradicting dramas with itself.  But Goddess loves ego just as much, so what is there really left to fight with, and who is there to do the fighting?

Mirror Games
The mirror, mirror game and k-psychosis created a phase where I met more clearly the prospect of being faceless. If everything around me is a reflection of my beliefs, what does my face truly look like?   Is there even a face at all?  I spent 2 weeks every morning experimenting with the mirror game. I expected to see various weird faces, my experiences began with shifting of facial features, like a constant morph with nothing being still.  Then, it would always result in a blank face. Once my entire head disappeared for a moment!   But most of the time, a smoothed out, faceless face was there like a man who had lost his face..
I had a tendency to struggle a lot with it. It was not what I wanted to or expected to see. I was more interested in some fantastic journey with aliens and gods and devils and stuff like that.

But after some time, I started coming to terms with being faceless, as the symbology started to be revealed. A disappearing of ego. Being without a face, being not. Now while writing this, my Divine Beloved pops up in the third eye and shows me her face and says "This is also your face"  "You are all the faces, and you are none of the faces" LOL! She is sometimes like that little Microsoft Office helper who pops into view to help out with something.  Although she way smarter and a lot prettier too.  The Office helper tends to pop up when I'm -not- looking for it.

The work of mirroring continued on strong throughout the christmas holidays, when my father and sister visited us.  I became once more cutely aware of all the control dramas, and everything I see in them that I think I'm not, yet that bother me so much, because they are within me!  Lately, I've read the Celestine Prophecies, which was an absolutely delightful and inspiring work of art. I feel inclined to share my insights with this since I've worked on the control dramas as an effect of grounding. The Celestine Prophecy is also coming out as a
movie this spring. That'll be fun and will end up in the DVD-collection for sure.

My father is an Aloof, my sister is also Aloof, with a bit of Poor Me and Intimidator.  I definitely learned how to be Aloof myself, but I quickly grew restless in my family environment because no one would listen or communicate. It was a lot like a place of cold walls, emotionally. So I grew a bit of anger in the process, and became quite a good interrogator. My dramas almost always surrounded the game of finding faults in people and in the world, and be very insistent to point them out. I was a bit of a clown in school, and often drew my attention with inappropriate jokes at inappropriate times, usually by commenting on what someone said or did. This has definitely defined many of my karmas of resentment towards the world.  

Learning grounding and the emerging of presence has made it somewhat easy to spot my control dramas. The techniques they use in the book to raise their vibration by connecting with the environment gives me just the same feeling as grounding does. Sometimes I can ground myself by simply reaching out into the world with my heart and just let the connection fall into place.  I also realized that an experience of feeding from our own divinity instead of each other brought me back to the Thymus chakra.  I did some research on this chakra, as well as the
thymus gland and had some rather amazing discoveries.  How this gland affects our aging and our immune system for example. I instantly made the connection to the importance of letting this chakra be open and to drink and drink the cosmic vibrations!  It is a vital part for my well being here on earth, very vital!

I had a long session where I saw bright bright light outside my body from all directions, pouring into until it was all full. Then I discovered something absolutely remarkable. All that was left was a wafer thin shell at the outline of my physical body. I got a clear message from inside saying. "This is your ego"  A wafer thin boundary! A wafer thin boundary built on the idea that the light inside is different from the light outside!  But it's not.  When it fills me it's the same light. Just the same.  Then I had the experience of this thin shell slowly fading away, dissolving, and there was only the light, nothing else...   And now I have been sitting here for ten minutes trying to find something to say about that! LOL! But that's the thing, isn't it? At that point there's nothing to say about it..  What would there be to say about it? I have a vision that if more of us, on a bigger scale, would start getting our energy this way, right from the cosmos instead of scarcity battles, society would start changing on its own, without new laws being enforced! In fact, I think that many control systems would become obsolete. In particular those based on scarcity.  But it can't be projected on anybody else, we can only do it ourselves and watch our
relationships change.  

The Shadow
Now to the Shadow lesson...  You are probably familiar with my "Emerging Shadow" posts in the tearoom.  Now that I am looking back at the experiences I had around that time in January it's like I was deep, deep buried in something.  Some of the impulses and desires were bizarre!   A lot of karma was cleared during this time. When I started feeling balanced again, my skin eruptions started. Dry skin, boils, intense episodes of heat and cold. The heat and cold was sometimes so intense that I thought I was litterally burning. But there was no fever, no hot temperature!  There was no sweat either, just these intense rushes up my body.  Sometimes I long for them, because there's something incredibly exhilirating about them!  Interesting.. The heat and cold rushes are much less frequent right now, just as other symptoms have started to subside, too. Maybe heat and cold rushes of energy are sometimes part of a detox in the body, too.    I failed to make the connection before it took a few weeks before my body started to have the reactions. But I've started to realize that the body is a bit slower. It needs some time to
get started and also needs some more time than the etheric to get it finished too.. I guess that physical matter vibrates slower, so the more gross the matter the more time it needs with transformations?  I am not judging it as higher or lower or better or worse, just an observation of vibrations.  After all, a cell has physical matter, but is must also be composed of the same energy, the same mind, the same everything in all
dimensions? But then again, if I surrendered the very idea that physical matter is slower, what would happen?

But the most important insight is that I have started to learn how the Shadow works.  Especially the ego and its relationship with the Shadow.. The pendulum swings back and forth. First I feel the strong pull to indulge into something I have forbidden, denied or judged negatively about myself.  If I indulge in it, afterwards there's guilt, and I stop it, saying "No more!"  Or, if I reject it, it may disappear for a while, but it comes back in greater force, usually much more unexpected!

I remember Osho talking about indulging, rejection and presence. Those are not his exact words, I think, they are mine.  But basically what he was saying is that if we indulge, try to satisfy the impulse, we create feedback of karma.  If we suppress it, it comes back more forcefully.. From that angle it looks pretty hopeless.  But then there's the possibility of presence..  To not do anything in particular about it, but be there with it, experience it fully, understand it fully, and it becomes a transformation.

From my own experience though, the pendulum must sometimes be allowed to swing a bit...  First indulge a bit, but with awareness!   Then reject/suppress a bit, with awareness!  See what happens, feel even that process.  I did this for a month with various things and came to incredible realizations of my own inner mechanisms.  Then the pendulum starts to swing less dramatically and goes more and more towards the middle...   What the Shadow was trying to express wasn't always so bad.

Since 2004 I have also been involved in a New Age group called the Crimson Circle, which has monthly channelings. I don't know if you've heard about them.  Anyhow, in one of the Shouds (Channeling sessions) This entity Tobias was talking about our inner darkness, and said that this darkness inside us is made entirely out of unconditional love, and what happened through lifetime after lifetime was that this darkness lovingly took on everything we rejected, everything we didn't want to be, to see or know. Like a mother who unconditionally loves her child
and takes away all the bad stuff.

This reminds me deeply of the Shadow/DB synergy.  The Shadow is not our evil and depraved side.  It is simply everything we didn't want to see, or couldn't bear to see at the time. The Shadow has taken on everything I hated, denied and didn't want to have anything to do with. In that sense, the Shadow is a deep, deep place of unconditional love.  I'm getting a replay of the vision of my Divine Beloved holding my hands, facing me.  She was the one who took all this onto herself, so I could have the experiences I wanted at the time.   She took it all, selflessly, without a moment of hesitation.  And I know that in order to
reunite with her again completely, I must face it all, see it all again. It is like the grandest of angels taking on all the dirt, wounds and pains, just so I wouldn't have to hold it myself. It's the ultimate sacrifice.  And she wants me to see it all again, so it doesn't have to be carried at all, because in her holding it for so long, I have endured more suffering as well!   It's like I have been in a deep, dark well that doesn't actually exist. It is actually a place of total freedom. How long have I hypnotized myself?

But she keeps holding my hands, smiles and says "But there is nothing to fear my love. I ask you to trust me.  We are in this together. We always have, and we always will. We are beyond all time."

Is it true that she has created all the experiences I asked for
throughout life after life?

We have a satanist in the animation department at work. I haven't talked to him in a long time, but had a very cool experience of recognition recently. I did not expect a satanist to start talking about empathy and wholeness. I talked to him a bit about my own perceptions about the Shadow and about integrating our own darkness and so forth.  He is a very gentle person (Despite that he walks around in black clothes, leather boots and wears a large pentagram necklace!)  He seems to understand the need to accept our shadow and dark side.  He of course already knew that Daemon means "Inner self" and all that stuff. A surprise, but very beautiful one, that some of the most gentle and
compassionate people can be found among satanists.  They have a lot of bad rep due to devil-worshippers who are into human sacrifices and black magic and stuff like that.  His philosophy is very much like that the whole world is contained within him. He had also learned how to go into a witness mode because often having difficulties with his empathy.  I guess it's something many of us learn spontaneously.  

Most others I know at work aren't very interested in talking about compassion, intuition or using the third eye.  He has activated all of those faculties.  Surprises huh? Buddhas in every streetcorner.

Various meditation and dream experiences.
Once in a lucid dream I went further inside to what seems to be the veil of forgetfulness.  I stood in a dark grey, murky pool surrounded by mist. A strong, feminine voice spoke to me, and told me I was to sink into this pool and "pop the membrane"  When I did, I was suddenly embraced by a misty sort of darkness, and in every given moment, thousands of archetypical images, symbols, sounds and memories were flashing before me. Like in many other intense lucid dreams I had at the time, I started hearing a distant scream, very faint, very distant. Who is that?   This time, it rose in intensity once I was pulled back into the body, and it must have sounded like the perfect description of
hellish torment. The body was screaming, yet while I was deep inside seeing the archetypes flash by, I felt no distress, I was a total witness.

In another lucid dreams I was standing in a room watching a small metal statue device.  It had two buttons on each side of a small pedestal in the middle.  The buttons were yellow and blue (Just like the diagrams of ida and pingala emerging from the root chakra)  I pressed the buttons, and in the middle an exact copy of me rose, but much smaller. He was covered in blood and slime, as if he was a newborn baby. I heard the distant scream in the dream, and I started to run out the room, trying to close the doors behind me.  But this creation was far stronger, and could easily follow anywhere I went.  Now I understand that he wanted to unite with me. But in order to do so, in a sense, I have to die.

For some reason, my dreams lately have been rather undramatic.



Conclusions
"Not for nothing will this be the hardest thing you've ever done"
Yet, Goddess has not one moment given me more than I can handle.
Although it doesn't always feel like I'm handling it at the time, it ends up being so in the end!  I have grown from being afraid and resenting of the world, to more and more dissolve right into it, like a drop falling into the ocean, or turning into mist and blending into the sky. At the same time, I feel more human, more physical than ever before. One of the most unexpected gifts have been to come face to face with and embrace my humanity.

When I ask if I am ready to move forward, the Divine Beloved tells me I am perfect just the way I am.  The heartvoice responds with that there are always things that can be worked on.  How much is left?  I don't know.  In more ways than I can count I feel like a completely different person from when I embarked on this journey. It's been the absolutely greatest loss of my life!  I can't recall ever spending so much time losing things!  Beliefs, fears, joys, perceptions. Often I stop typing
for minutes together, and all I can feel is my breath, or the emerging presence. The presence that has no words, no form, and no description. I can't even say where it is or where it is not. But I know without the shadow of a doubt that you feel it too, because you are in it!

Is there anything missing?  I would still like to experience the time right around and after my birth!  I can only remember back to when I was like 3 years of age.  Osho has said that the reason we usually don't remember beyond that is because we hadn't developed language yet, so the experience is going to be a lot different.  Maybe that is something that will come after the ritual.

When I started this class, I had so much hesitation! So much confusion. About this there is no confusion at all. My heartvoice is sending bliss throughout my being. It's never spoken more clearly to me. Everything so far in my life has culminated to this. If I disappear, I'm ready.   If I cease to be, I'm ready.  If absolutely nothing happens, I will be ready too. As ready as I can be for something like that!

If you ask me to work more on the lessons, to go more deeply in
surrender with something, I will do so with joy, and with every fibre of my being. I can't even conceive of what will happen to me, there is no way for me to know until I take the steps.  I am completely and totally ready.



Music
I would like to share some of the music that has been created during the time I went through the FST classes. It's optional of course, but if you listen to it, you will find that it carries a lot of energy, that may tell you a lot about the process.

NOTE: I am uploading these songs to Mystress, but if she feels inclined to post them to the tea-room she is free to. But only to the tea room!


Music: "Astral Travel" , for The Divine Beloved
This was written during the time I did the Divine Beloved lesson, and was also the song that was playing when I saw myself through her eyes.  

Music: "Relaxation"  Available on Dropload (Not released!)
This music was written for my beloved Wife so she could have something to listen to while taking a bath. It ended up being a full album with relaxation music.  It had a deep, transforming effect on while it was being created.

Music: "Memories of Atlantis"
This was written early during the FST class.  Someone from the Crimson Circle asked if I remember the times of Atlantis.  I told her I didn't, at least not in words or images. But I channeled this music!  People who listen to it claim that it brings up a lot of very ancient memories!

Namaste!
Gustaf

Love it.