Hi to all, I'm new to the tea room.

Been studying the free teaching on the Kundalini teacher web site, 2 months prior to becoming, a Fire Serpent Tantra member. Ive only been a member for 2 days, and I have noticed some changes. Since I have opened the first membership page, I have had a contestant thirst for water, my mouth  and lips seem to be very dry.  The power chakra has kicked in, the first thing I noticed was my early morning coffee, the though of coffee made me feel quite nauseous, but when I picked up a tea bag I felt wholesome. At lunch I did not want the usual, instead I was searching the counter of the shop for what made me feel wholesome. I'm thinks, is this my imagination, but some feeling inside, which I have not felt this strong before, reassured me that it is a real experience. Is this normal to experience strong changes so soon? Blessings to all. Dave.

Hello, Dave.  Welcome to the tea room and to serpent fire tantra.  Yes, it's within the range of normal for some people to have sudden, unexpected reactions.  That signifies, to me, that you've done some work up to this point whether or not you realize that.  You were apparently ready for what you got.  Congratulations on picking up the messages from your body which is a good guide and infinitely wiser than what we think. 

One of the prime aspects of the shakti behind the fst course is "to each according to their need and ability to receive but not more than they can handle."   If you pace yourself as Mystress says, you'll be successful in the course and you'll avoid the traps of impatience and greed and whatever. 

Welcome to this fascinating world.

Hi Sigmund,

Thanks for the reply, interesting what you said towards the end of your message:

i.e. One of the prime aspects of the shakti behind the fst course is "to each according to their need and ability to receive but not more than they can handle."   If you pace yourself as Mystress says, you'll be successful in the course and you'll avoid the traps of impatience and greed and whatever.

Can't thank you enough, because today I have really felt, insecure, paranoid, and full of fear of the unknown, scared that I had no control of what was happening in any particular moment.  For years I have been trying to understand my control dramas regarding this massive issue I have. Because of this, I became very intense of my expectations of what the teaching would give me...I have tried to absorb the first 3 pages of the fst course in a few hours. I had to stop my head felt like it was going to explode. Your advice gave me the solution...so I laid now and ask the Goddess to lift the impatience from me, and please give me the strength to keep calm. Then my whole body moved and stretched out, as though the tension was working it way out of the body thru the crown chakra. I felt t instent relief. I have now started the course again studying Page 1, until I have the gut feel that it is right to move on. " keeping my ego in check!"

One of the prime aspects of the shakti behind the fst course is "to each according to their need and ability to receive but not more than they can handle."   If you pace yourself as Mystress says, you'll be successful in the course and you'll avoid the traps of impatience and greed and whatever.

Eheheh! Like me Goddess guided me here using some tricks.

Wellcome Dave! Read my posts if you want an example of impatience, greed, arrogance and whatever 

Hi Dave,
Just to say hi and yes it's a funny business. I went on a course a while ago which encouraged us to use a pendulum to ascertain what was a good direction at any particular moment and what was not.....i.e. pendulum swings either YES or NO - so I have been applying it wherever seems appropriate - but as you can imagine, living your life by that guidance may be in the arms of enormous trust or enormous naivety - and I still havent quite got the signals strong enough to DISCERN which yet........but I do sincerely believe that our body mind / unconscious mind / higher self / self + promptings from guardian angels - whichever mixture that is - can very surely help us toward the path of love and acceptance.

Words are so open to misinterpretation it makes me scared of saying things - particularly in mails and posts where there are no subtle body language informations to soften and recognise when you have frightened people into wrong interpretations......so I send this post with love and trust that you will be able to read it in the way it is meant.........encouragement and honesty.

I do believe we have signals from our body to help us. To recognise food that is beneficial, actions that are beneficial etc. etc. etc. etc. in Mystress Kundalini Primer there are clues to this about DISCERNMENT.....it is a subtle thing and I am hoping that the discernment will get better as I go and I will make less mistakes..........we can be always forgiven for learning so long as we are doing our best.

Impatience & greed - I've got lots of that...impatience (good God has it taken me all these years to get to the beginning, I'm in my 50s, no wonder I'm mad and impatient) and greed (I am so needy for unconditional love because my whole life so far has been to try fulfill the conditions (often double binding) of conditional love) - no small wonder......but at least I have begun to feel the love that is All that is - what a blast! I am so grateful for the opportunity to love some more and do some more before I move on.

Lots of love....Hollyberry

Hi again Dave - I just re read my last post and realised it said bugger all about what you originally talked about (although I thought it did when I posted!!???) - but what I meant to say was yes, I recognise what you're saying - bodymind is really knowing - mine does things when I am going into or coming out of sleep - it twitches and punches and untwists and stretches and I just let it get on with it.......I think I must try and find someone who knows about 'Rolfing' and can maybe untie some of the deep muscle armouring that I have learned over the years, that holds in the hurts. I have a friend who is a psychiatric nurse and she says, when you end up on the ward with long term patients, they often have strong twistings and limpings and stuff because of unresolved issues - sounds right to me - I was on my way there but I'm happy when I'm waking to do plenty of stretchings and howlings and stuff (so long as no'one can hear me) it's all good stuff in the mending and making better........I have also the idea that eating some things is bad and other things is good - following my feelings, they're probably quite accurate...... lol Hollyberry

Thanks for the reply,

I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to work through this course, I have been fortunate to have a wife with a similar lineage to the Mystress. My wife is from a Druid line and her grandmother was apparently a High Priestess. I have known my wife for about 13 years now, and I have had an ego battering from the very start...she just cuts through my crap and shows me who I really am at that moment, and what control drama I was using, she is extremely sensative to energies. But for the last 4 years I have cut the umbilical cord, because it was not healthy for the relationship...I was loosing my own strength and giving it to her to look after...not cool!!

  I've studied Tai Chi and Tibetan Buddism for the past 15 years which has offered me alot of personal growth, bliss and pain. I have at times had pure bliss but not stable.  At the moment I am truly honoured to be here, the Mystress's teachings have touched me deeply, and I know "somehow" that the Kundalini Path is where I must be.

  My first recall of pain was when I tried to wake my father one morning, he was found that he died in his sleep.  My mother said that it really had a devastating effect on me, as you can imagine, and I fell into a very deep hole. About 4 years ago I had counselling to help me with the lost of my father, after having sudden bursts of crying and calling out Dad I miss you. The counselling also helped me with my mother's death 5/6 years ago.  She needed 24 hour care. Along with my 6 sisters and 3 brothers I did this for about 3 years...really got close to my mum in this time.

  On the whole I had a challenging childhood, always though I was somehow different, I was very much a loner, had plenty of opportunities to mix with others but mostly took a back seat.

  My wife says that my core energy is of depression and anger, I suppose I mask this with trying to control things around me, have too much expectations of others.  I am really frustrated and so much want to be just 'love' and enjoy life to the fullest... so I must keep chipping away at my suit of armour until I reveal the real me.

take care Dave.

Hi again Dave,

Sounds like you have had a lot of very powerful females in your life which is great, because you will have learned a lot of respectfulness for the Goddess or Yin side of energies. I have to say though I often wonder and feel very sad for the men around my life who have had so little by way of supporting materials from the male side.......fathers that were absent, or who died far too young or who were ill or were full on in their work and career and away from the family because the domestic was womens territory and it made them incomfortable and not able to have the language and emotional expression in their toolbox to get involved, so they'd go to the gym or the football pitch or the golf course.

I remember hearing about a book called 'Iron John' by someone called Bly - about how difficult it is for blokes to get past the machismo part of masculine into the being a really big man, where you can be strong and a warrior and also embrace your feminine side, so you can be those things and also gentle and feel through your whole skin, not just through the relationship with a single female partner. Feminism has been so important for the development of women, but I think men also need nurturing of themselves.

Possibly not men in still developing countries where the same cruel machismo prevails and women and children are treated with a cowardly viciousness - but in the so called developed world where men have been going through the battering from feminism (and some of the young women now can be very cruel themselves as they forget their gentleness as if it were something to be ashamed of).

What your partner says is insightful. I see depression as a layer of fear - holding back rage,,,,,that's how I have interpreted it for myself anyway.....the rage at all the ways in ones life in which one is bashed into a shape that is alien by everyone elses expectations and demands, from being a tiny child to where one is now. I believe the idea is though, that underneath that layer of tears and grief, through the layer of pure fury and rage there lies our original self.

As a woman I have not had to deal with the testosterone and physical things a man has first, I am coming from the other side, learning how to pick up the power things......maybe in his layers a man has opposite things to be afraid of - I don't know.......I have not moved in circles where these things are talked about - but as I said before, I think a lot of men (at least ones I know) keep a lot of those things very close to their chest because it is too dangerous to open up to other men and show you are vulnerable - they might get straight in and damage you.....tricky stuff.....

Anyway - all the very best of wishes to you and I am sure you are finding ways like you said of chipping away at the things that are holding you from where you need to be - one thing I am feeling from this course is that we are all loved so much I sure all is fine.

hollyberry says:
one thing I am feeling from this course is that we are all loved so much I sure all is fine.

A stunning thing i'm becoming aware of, is that from a perspective of humbleness and surrender, life becomes transformed into a more and more responsible, active and positive way to access things and issues.
Based on faith and confidence that all is fine, we can take the next step to experience it. I believe that 'longing' for the experience is of great motivation.

Aw, hmm, for some misunderstanding the cause of which must dwell in the depths of my oblivion(maybe for a subconscious affinity of 'Hollyberry with 'Huckleberry.. ..Finn'), i thought in my last post you were probably male, and gave You at one point swiftly 3  , which was meant in a hearty way from 'bro to bro'; but now i don't feel well to have passed all 3 of them to a female .
So if You would subtract in Your mind 2 of them? Under circumstances 1 feels perfectly hearty right

good travelling!

juergen

Thanks for the reply, info really useful.

No problem with being in touch with my feminine side, after all thats what its all about, getting the balance to become a whole. Lost the use of labels years ago.

Hi Hollyberry,

You mentioned that alot of anger is masking the fear.

My wife has helped me with this issue I had. she explained that I was angry with my Dad..."how can I been angry with him for dying!!" I hastened. She explained that I had to view it from a child's mind at 4 years old. 'I' was angry that he left me and I loved him.

I did a little research, asking my sister's what I was like at that time and my relationship with my father....they said that "he used to favour me from the rest of us, and he took me everwhere"....so I was angry for the loss.

Found out that my control drama was "poor me", or I'm a good boy". This was because I was left with competing for my Mother's love and I had 6 sisters and 3 brothers around her, all doing the same. So my strategy was to use 'poor me'.

I researched further, asking again my sisters what I was like within the family. They said I was always singing, with a smile on my face, everyone loved me...so I 'used' the death of my father to get what I wanted...how sick is that you may wonder?....but I have forgiven myself and my father and let go the need to do this anymore, because the 'poor me' and good boy' followed me right into Adulthood.

Doing this research also brought up some very unpleasant information...apparently, my father was a drunk and a gambler, and beat my Mum regular. My older sister recalls grouping..."sorry, I seem to be having a hyper ventalating attack, can't stop crying, just brought loads of stuff back up"....I'll try again.  My older sister recalls grouping the little ones in a corner, shielding us from seeing my father kicking and punching my mother for not having any money and he needed a drink...."what a fucking BASTARD!!!!!"

Still trying to come to terms with this one, as I loved my Mum dearly. I was told that she would go without food herself.....sorry need a moment....making sure we all was fed. Tall order for her to be left with my fathers debts and to look after 10 of us. She remains the most powerful women that I have ever known...how could my father hurt her so?!!

Getting back to my original issue..."anger and depression" Well, I suppose I was drenched in it.

I have come to the conclusion recently, if Goddess is all that is, and Goddess is in everything...how can I not forgive him. Are we not capable of doing anything that other might do?...so I must, somehow forgive him and let all my pain go.

Hi Dave,
Your post is really deep with feelings so forgive me if I say anything that you might interpret with hurt - it wouldn't be meant that way.

I recognise some of your position (I am trying to make sense of my own father after he died in a quick way from Prostate Cancer, it took him away in a month, so there wasn't time and he had been away for 30 years when he remarried and new wife didn't want us near HER new house).

I wonder if it might be possible to get back a bit further and see your father as being so much less capable than your mum, so much less strong in so many terms, that he felt so inadequate and had so little vocabulary that he felt like shit - and that can lead us all to addictions and lashing out destructively in a self defeating attempt to obliterate the very things that we see as being so much better than us - if we have no clues as to where we can find the bigger parts of ourselves...........just so bloody sad............the saying 'you always hurt the ones you love' has a deeper meaning...like I hate you all so much for being so good when I am so so bad, but if people are really really good they find a way to throw you a lifeline even when you are in the deepest pit and everyone else has fucked off.

I wonder if your dad had been taught how to be his own big person and then allowed to be as needed and wanted by the family as your mum, he would have gone without food for you all too and your mum might have been the one with the drinking and wasting money - it's strange how if there is no movement, we get stuck in roles which get harder and harder to get out of.......the shape gets us trapped. Sad thing is it's then only when there is catastrophic movement like illness or death that the movement happens.....like we are so bloody stupid we have to wait all that time to go looking for a new way of being.

Did you find out where your dad came from - sometimes looking a generation or even 2 before can give clues as to why a person was or had been made so inadequate or lop sided - it can take a few twists and turns, but eventually you may find a way of understanding and in that new understanding, find enough space to forgive.....it will make you cry, but it might allow you to accept more bits of yourself too.

Even our blackest bits inside, where the most taboos about human behaviour are sitting in judgement - can be unravelled when enough light is shone on them to pull out the little pieces.

I'm in the process myself so please don't think I am trying to be a 'clever dick/know it all' and being patronising.......it is always a risk with writing posts isn't it - that there is a big opportunity for misinterpretation.

Lots of love to you and all your family.

Hollyberry

Quote from: DaveP on Mar 20, 2008, 10:39:38 PM
Hi Hollyberry,
My wife has helped me with this issue I had. she explained that I was angry with my Dad...

Hi Dave.  Something came to mind as I read through this thread and I thought it might be worth a post. 

Though it might have a large 'ripple' effect on your life (no doubt it will), learning to develop an internal frame of reference for yourself will surely bust you free from some of that anger and the patterns that have followed you. 

Learning to trust your own inner voice:  being willing to trust that inner direction even if mistakes are made at first...cultivates self-respect/love and personal power.   Learning to listen to our own inner guru is freedom. 

There are people who may not appreciate that we no longer need them to tell us who and what and why we are or what is best for us, but when it comes down to it - if they need us to be dependent on them, they are better off going their own direction....and so are we.

Blessings!
Eileen

Depression is anger turned inward. Under anger lies hurt, and under hurt lies a part of you that does not feel worthy of being loved. Some rejected bit, out in the cold.. no wonder it is angry.

  Tiny children tend to take responsibility for anything that happens around them, like if their parents divorce, they think it is their fault.  Nowadays we have counselling- the 5 stages of grief, but likely the child you were did not get that. Were you allowed to attend the funeral?

  Anger is the second stage of grief and people do get stuck there.

   I suggest. you have a funeral. There is your real dad, and then there is the idea of Dad in your head, and it is our idea people that cause us the most grief.

   Write an extended eulogy, everything you can remember, feel or think about him, in longhand with pen and paper.  Be really honest with yourself: nobody has to see it.  You may find yourself moved to draw pictures, as 4 year olds cannot write.  Flow with it.  Get out the wax crayons. 
Then the idea of Dad will be out of you and on the paper, so you can bury or cremate him.  Follow your instincts when shaping the ritual, whether you want others to witness and become involved... your sisters might like to write their own eulogy... or for it to be a private thing, perhaps with your wife witnessing.  Don't take too long at it, because what you focus on can grow.  Within weeks.

   I like to keep a decorative brass planter around for spontaneous karma cremations. The kind that has no drainage, it is to hide the plastic or ceramic pot set inside. It makes a very discreet little cauldron. Lift out the plant, do the ritual paper burning, staying out of the smoke downwind. Scatter the ashes downwind into a garden and put the plant back in. Whatever little dust is left will fertilize the plant, that is nature's healing. 

Goddess changes everything She touches, and everything She touches, changes. 
http://www.soulrebels.com/beth/shechanges.html.

   Blessings...


   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model stages of grief.

DaveP says:
I have come to the conclusion recently, if Goddess is all that is, and Goddess is in everything...how can I not forgive him. Are we not capable of doing anything that other might do?...so I must, somehow forgive him and let all my pain go.

there is so much pro-dysfunctional Karma cycling around, that it is no wonder when people become drunkards or what ever "dysfunctional"; one might ask: Why me, why my family etc. , but Goddess might counter: Why not?

We might also with the same right judge those who "function properly" despite all circumstances; i mean it's a bit like psychological "eye war" of boxing-champs before a fight: someone has to yield.

You can also see it this way: with all energy of All That Is You have contributed systematically to Your Dad's excesses, and so have i(for example); no cause to trample on that man.

Like Hollyberry said a bit above here: "...all is fine", and so is Your Dad!
Or Mystress somewhere in K-primer, very radically, i'm citing out of the mind: "if you think, that something is not light, this is a limited ego-belief".

Thank you all, for all your support...

Mystess advised:

Write an extended eulogy, everything you can remember, feel or think about him, in longhand with pen and paper.  Be really honest with yourself: nobody has to see it.  You may find yourself moved to draw pictures, as 4 year olds cannot write.  Flow with it.  Get out the wax crayons. 
Then the idea of Dad will be out of you and on the paper, so you can bury or cremate him.  Follow your instincts when shaping the ritual, whether you want others to witness and become involved... your sisters might like to write their own eulogy... or for it to be a private thing, perhaps with your wife witnessing.  Don't take too long at it, because what you focus on can grow.  Within weeks.

Got grounded, and sketched the idea of Dad, all my memories seem to flow into the drawings, asked the Goddess to guide my hand and to transfer all my emotions into the images, also wrote on the paper, "all is fine and so are you Dad"...( thanks for that, hollyberry/juergen). When I had finished, the paper seemed to be alive, had a sort of aura to it.

Uprooted a plant in the garden and had a very personal cremation. Did what you said and when indoors...the surreal thing is when I try to recall those same images, all I get is a Calm peaceful stillness.

Truly grateful,

Dave.

That is really beautiful, Dave. 

The power of surrender, eh? Goddess really will handle it, if we can only find a way to let go. 

  Blessings...