Kundalini & Kriya: What Are They and Why Do They Matter?

Kundalini is the spiritual energy that begins as energy coiled up at the base of the spine. As we grow and evolve spiritually through each lifetime, the kundalini gradually rises up through the six lower chakras to reach the crown chakra. The kundalini travels upwards and ultimately fully opens the crown chakra and when one has attained union with Divine Transcendent Consciousness (or God/Goddess), then the kundalini stays up.

In Hindu traditions that celebrate god as Shiva, and/or goddess as Shakti, such as Kashmir Shaivism and Kashmir Shaktism, this rising of the kundalini to the crown chakra is understood as Shakti seeking to reunite with Shiva, and the union is a form of divine marriage, both between Shiva and Shakti, and between the individual soul and the Divine.

Shiva is understood to be the fundamental consciousness of the Divine as Sat-Cit-Ananda, or Being-Consciousness-Bliss, and Shakti is the energy that leads to bliss in this union. Another way of understanding Shakti is as the “light of consciousness,” or the energy that creates the Platonic Ideas or Platonic Forms and which brings them into reality.

How does the energy rise up our spine? Slowly, most generally, through thousands of lifetimes. The term “kundalini rising” refers to a sudden rising of the energy up the spine which can be felt, often as sudden rushing, which can include a jerking of the body.

What causes kundalini rising? Ideally, our kundalini rises through devotion and deep spiritual practices including meditation and a devotional spiritual life style. (For more on that, please contact me through my website below for Raja Yoga Meditation and Lightworker Training classes).

However, kundalini rising can occur through overuse of certain psychedelic drugs, in which case one may have vastly increased intuitive or psychic awareness, without the purity of loving and devotional intentions that generally accompanies a healthy kundalini rising.

Indeed, love is what enables kundalini to rise. So, when the song beautifully expresses, “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love,” (lyrics by Hal David and composition by Burt Bacharach) that one statement is absolutely correct in many ways, includingthe empowering of humanity’s spiritual growth.

Interestingly, the kundalini energies rise up (and down) both a central sushumna channel, or etheric spine, and the two nadis, which are often drawn to appear like snakes, and this kundalini in the nadis is thus split into masculine sacred energies and feminine sacred energies. The two genderized sacred energies convey virtues, that is, they energize different virtues at each chakra level. So, the feminine energy-virtues consist of traditionally-conceived feminine virtues such as empathizing and compassion. The masculine energy-virtues consist of traditionally-conceived masculine values such as self-discipline and courage. (For more on this, please see my book, Truth and Illusion: The Politics of Spirituality and How One Person’s Lie Is Another One’s Truth.)

Here we see the Western medical symbol of the Caduceus, but what most people do not realize is that it represents the kundalini energy of the body. Indeed, if our spiritual energies are healthy, the health of the physical body is facilitated. Again, what is important is love.

Kriya yoga is a method that facilitates the rising of kundalini, but it is important to note that our intention is the one essential ingredient with any and every spiritual practice. Our intentions must be of devotion to Higher Consciousness, which intends the highest good for all life; simultaneously, our intentions must be of pure service to love and light, wisdom and peace.

Kriya comes from the root word meaning “to do,” so it’s broad meaning is to do religious rites. However, it’s deeper more esoteric meaning is this pure process of energizing the kundalini. By focusing on energizing the kundalini, we also purify our own energies, so that we clear out harmful intentions along the way. One cannot achieve true Union with the Divine via harmful intentions, although one can at least partically raise the kundalini and become partially energized by demonic forces which prioritize power rather than purity. That sort of experience is called a “spiritual bypass,” when we do not purify our own inner ways of being, and our motives reflect self-interest rather than pure service.

The deepest realization I have had recently is that, when we can feel the kundalini rise in our own bodies, we know it is unlike any physical energy that we have ever experienced in our bodies, even though it may manifest in part as physical straightening and jerking of the spine. Thus, experiencing kundalini within ourselves is positive proof that the presence of the Divine is always in all of us all the time.

Love and Light,

Carol (Anandi) https://www.highestharmony.guru/

What Happens when Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day Coincide?

Valentine’s Day is so well-known in American culture as a day for romance, and a day to share special gifts with romantic partners and other family members. Hearts abound, along with chocolates, flowers, and sentimental cards.

This year, Valentine’s Day coincided with Ash Wednesday, a holy day in the Christian calendar, as it begins the season of Lent. During Lent, Christians follow the journey of Jesus Christ toward Jerusalem and the Crucifixion. Lent thus represents a spiritual journey towards our ultimate spiritual calling in life. Many Christians give up something for Lent, such as chocolates or meat or other habits that may seem less than desirable.

What happens when Valentine’s Day happens on Ash Wednesday? It is so rare that I cannot remember it happening in my lifetime. The coincidence of the two days in one represents a significant spiritual synchronicity.

As I reflected on the coincidence of the two days, I became aware that one possible way to understand this significant crossover is to focus on the one most important relationship of our life. Now, many people might think that our relationship with ourself is the most important relationship of our entire life, and in a way this is true. The truth is that our ‘self,’ as our Higher Self, is One with the Divine, so our relationship with the Divine is our most important relationship.

On Valentine’s Day that coincides with Ash Wednesday, the priority became choosing to make our relationship with the Divine, as God, Allah, Shakti, Shiva, or Love, or whatever name you choose, the most important relationship inside ourselves and in relation to every aspect of our lives.

It’s not too late, even though the posting of this blog was a little delayed: right now, you can choose to make your relationship with the Divine the most important relationship of your life. Right now, you can choose to seek to find the Divine within you. Right now, you can choose to see how the Divine is showing up in your life. Right now, you can choose to see everything and everyone in your life as a gift to point you towards finding and cultivating the Divine within yourself.

Right now, you can choose to serve the Divine, not with gifts like chocolate hearts and flowers, but with acts of compassion, words of kindness, virtues such as perseverance, generosity, and wisdom.

In the afterglow of the coincidence of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, especially for those who observe Lent, I pray that you will find the peace, love, and bliss of Divine Presence within you all the days of your life.

Love and Light,

Carol (Anandi)

What Is Hell? Is Hell Real or Is Hell a State of Mind?

As an energy healer and spiritual life coach, I have served as a channel/medium for my clients’ deceased loved ones many times. A few times, I have found myself “on the other side” with the deceased person with whom I was speaking, usually in a sort of three-way conversation with the client as well. Some of the “places” I have been to in the astral world have been places in which most of us would not want to spend any time.

Although I have not seen anything like the ‘hell’ of fire and brimstone, I have been in a dark space that reminded me of what Jesus may have referred to as ‘the outer darkness.’ I have also been in a sort of gray space. One client’s loved one also got stuck in a small apartment-like setting that they were not allowed to leave until they decided that they wanted to learn and grow. Fortunately, he and the client and I were able to help him find some healing that enabled him to move on to a classroom setting where he would learn what he needed to know.

So, in some sense, I believe a temporary ‘hell’ is in a way ‘real.’ But is hell only something that happens after we die?

As important as it is to know that there may be reasons that we might find ourselves in some sort of limbo, or other perhaps undesirable ‘place’ in the astral world in-between lifetimes on Earth, it is as important to know that most of us sometimes experience hellish situations here in this lifetime on planet Earth. Suffering varies widely, but right now, there is a ton of misery and suffering in the world. All of us experience some kind of suffering, however briefly, because it is part of life.

Sometimes, though, we might truly feel as though we have gotten stuck in a hellish situation, or hellish levels of pain, or that our ‘worst nightmare’ came true. Why does this happen? Please see my previous blog post for more insight into why ‘bad’ things happen and understanding our karma.

When it comes to the idea of hell, an old saying teaches us: “Religion is for people who are afraid of hell, and spirituality is for people who have already been there.”

This saying expresses an important insight. To that wisely insightful statement, I will add that religious people generally expect an external savior to rescue them from going to hell, while spiritual people seek to find out what they can do to avoid getting into hell in the first place.

Indeed, personal responsibility and the willingness to change are not only the keys to forward progress on any spiritual path, but they are also the two necessities for staying out of or getting out of ‘hell.’ It does not matter whether the ‘hell’ is here in this lifetime/Earth plane, or in an astral plane of existence. Taking responsibility for ourselves and transforming ourselves is the only way to experience a better reality.

This spiritual work is not to be confused with some narcissistic, self-serving project; rather, it is the beauty of our intentions to bring love and peace and harmony and a release of suffering for others that characterizes our utmost spiritual transformation and advancement.

So far, I have described “hell” in this world as some sort of suffering. That is a phenomenal description, meaning that understanding hell as an experience of suffering focuses on the experiences we are having that we would label “hell.” I would like to approach our understanding of hell not just based on our external and internal experiences, but more importantly, on our psycho-spiritual phenomena that are usually overlooked.

Specifically, I would like to help us understand what hell is in psycho-spiritual terms so that we can avoid hell, transmute hellish experiences, and find release from the external expressions of our psycho-spiritual interior realities. But first, to understand hell, we need to understand a spiritual, rather than religious, way of understanding “heaven.”

Heaven is that state of being in which All Is Well. I capitalize this phrase, because the Divine, or God, by whatever name you give Ultimate Being, IS that state of Being in which All Is Well. 

Jesus Christ called this state of being “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven,” depending on the English translation of the original Aramaic which Jesus spoke, and also depending on the Greek text in which his words were generally first recorded, as far as we know.

Here, in the two ways of translating the original Greek, we can see ‘heaven’ equated with ‘God.’ If we remove any anthropomorphization of the Divine, meaning, if we move beyond seeing God as some sort of person, God, or the Divine, essentially becomes Being itself. In other words, the Divine is the fundamental form of reality that gives rise to all other reality.

That reality, the fundamental nature of Being Itself, is the state of Being in which All Is Well. And that is God.

Putting this in Buddhist terms, the fundamental dharma is being and living in that state of being in which “All Is Well” and sharing that dharma with all living beings. We can see that Nirvana can be described this way as well. So, whether we call it Nirvana or heaven or Divine Being, All Is Well reflects the state of Being that we experience as the ultimate Reality.

By contrast, we generally experience suffering, or hell, as that state of being in which, from our perspective, all seems to be not well at all, but rather all seems to be far from being well and far from feeling well.

In order to move past our external and internal experience of suffering, or of hell, we will benefit from understanding what hell is in psycho-spiritual terms. There are three aspects of psycho-spiritual reality from which we will describe hell: the mental aspect, the practical aspect, and the intentional aspect.

In mental psycho-spiritual terms, hell is three things:

• Not seeking the Source of the state of being in which All Is Well.
• Not trusting that All Is Well is the fundamental state of all being.
• Not intending the extension of All Is Well through oneself for others.

In practical psycho-spiritual terms, hell is three things:

• Not accepting responsibility for ourselves, our word, and our actions that did not contribute to creating that state of being in which all is well for ourselves AND for others.
• Not accepting who and what is showing up in our lives and how they are showing up now.
• Not accepting responsibility for our part in what is showing up in our lives now, in the sense that we need to transform ourselves in alignment with that state of being in which all is well, and thereby transform the world into that state of being in which all is well.

Our intentions can be felt by whether we have “good vibes” or “bad vibes” – that is, our spiritual, energetic self-expression. In energetic psycho-spiritual terms, hell is three things:

• Not vibrating with the Presence and intention of Love.
• Not vibrating with the Presence and intention of peace.
• Not vibrating with the intention of bringing the harmony of All Is Well for others.

What life, as our spiritual teacher, has taught me, is that, both on this side, and on the other side of death, taking responsibility for ourselves and intending and trusting Source as All Is Well are the keys to getting out of a hellish state and getting to live in a more heavenly state.

The nutshell version of these teachings is that the fundamental dharma is that All Is Well, and we can live in that state of being in which All Is Well by trusting that it is so, and by intending that it is so for others.

Love and Light,

Carol (Anandi)

Peace Flows from Inside Us Outside into the World

At any given time, there seem to be dishearteningly destructive conflicts going on around the world. Having grown up in a part of the world that is not usually included in mainstream news in the USA, I am aware that there are probably human beings fighting, killing, raping, and abducting other human beings in many places that we don’t even hear about.

Most of us, however, seem to long for peace.

That fact is important to notice. Humanity, unless overly stressed and feeling terrifyingly threatened, longs for peace. The question becomes: what causes us to feel so stressed and so terrifyingly threatened?

Most people may immediately jump to the conclusion that it is someone else’s fault that we feel stressed or terrified, or threatened. However, that is not the most helpful spiritual conclusion to draw. An ancient saying teaches us: “As within, so without.” Now, clearly it is obvious that someone who is engaging in violent acts against other living beings has some inner rage, inner fear, and has lost of a full sense of self as connected with the harmonies of Life.

Most people might object to me that this “as within, so without,” would not apply to the victims of conflict. Here is where the human psychological level of understanding Life hits a limit in turning to the idea of victimhood. In a practical, objective, physical and emotional sense, yes, there are “victims” of terrible situations, events, and violence.

In a spiritual sense, there are no victims. Universal spiritual principles teach us that none of us are victims for several reasons: past-life karma, pre-life karmic choices, and current life karma. An example of a past-life karma would be having been a violent, aggressive, raping and pillaging warrior in a past-life, and then experiencing it as a non-victimized “victim” in this life.

An example of a pre-life karmic choice could be choosing to experience being in a violent situation in order to be the hero who helps save people’s lives, or choosing to experience being in a violent situation so a loved one can experience the spiritual growth that comes from losing a loved one who dies young.

Examples of current-life karma are not as obvious, so again, people might object, “But I’ve never harmed anyone else, so why would I be in this situation?” Obviously, there is no one universal answer to why someone is suffering; however, there are universal spiritual principles that can help us see what karmic traces we are putting out there into the world.

For instance, we may find ourselves resenting people who act a certain inconsiderate way, only to get in a car accident with, or robbed or verbally abused by someone who acts “that way.” Notice, if you will, that if we have been carrying around resentment, we have been putting out negative energies – the negative energies of our judgment, the negative energies of our lack of acceptance and understanding for others, the negative energies of our sense of separating ourselves from certain others, the negative energies of resisting what and whom Life is allowing to show up in our everyday experience.

That was a lot of negative energies, right? There is also the emotional level of the negative energy. When we feel resentful, there is an emotional energy state – a felt state – that carries that energy with it. So, while we are busy resenting others, we are putting out a lot of negativity, which in turn karmically draws it back to us. In that sense, we create our own negative circumstances. Even one negative, resentful thought can sometimes have negative consequences, especially if it distracts us from what is needed in the moment.

In order to stop sending out negative karma, which reduces peace for everyone, we need to find peace within, so that we can do our part to create peace outside of ourselves and among ourselves as well.

Having a peaceful heart requires having a non-judgmental approach to everyone, doing our best to listen to them from their perspective, putting ourselves in their shoes, as it were, with compassion for their suffering, empathy for their emotional struggles, and understanding for how difficult changing their own internal and external choices may feel for them.

Having a peaceful mind means letting go of thoughts that include: judgment, disdain, disrespect, dismissiveness, analytical separation and “othering” people rather than seeing our connected wholeness together (our “prior unity”* in Spirit), and categorizing others as different from ourselves in some way that gives us comfort or a sense of superiority.

Having a peaceful body means learning practices that release stress and negativity. Having a peaceful body also means practicing meditative physical and spiritual exercises that enable us to embody love, peace, and a sense of harmony with the world, and even a deeper trust in ourselves and in Life.

Ultimately, from a spiritual perspective, when we are open-hearted, open-minded, and also feel an incredible sense of peace, like an ocean of peace and love around us, then we are experiencing a degree of oneness with Spirit, with the Divine by whatever name you prefer, for the Divine is the Source of all peace, all love, all harmony. When we practice our Universal spiritual principles and practices, we can live in that ocean of love, peace, and harmony in a way that we are sharing it with others.

That is how peace within us flows out into the world, and the world needs it now as much or more than ever. If you would like to learn how to practice peace within, please contact me; my website link is below. Also, please contact me if you would like to attend an online Peace Circle, where we will practice peace together on Sunday November 26, 2023 at 8:30 am Pacific Time for two hours, and also Sunday December 3, 2023 at 12 noon Pacific Time for two hours. Minimum donation: $20.

You Are Peace, You Are Love, You Are Harmony, and each of us can learn to experience ourselves as such through beautiful, loving, peaceful practices that enable us to BE the peace we seek.

Love and Light,

Carol (Anandi) https://www.highestharmony.guru/ (My contact information is available here for signing up for Peace Circles, classes, and to work with me individually for healing purposes as a client.)

*Prior Unity is a term shared by Adi Da in his book Not-Two IS Peace.

Love Is Who Love Wants to Be

In a heavenly state, I was instructed by Ascended Masters:

“Absolute Freedom is Becoming One, for Oneness means Being Everywhere, All the Time, for there is no time, there is no space, there is only Is – Being Itself. As One, you can be everywhere at the same time: in your body, in a heavenly realm, in and with someone far away.

Only when you are One with Love can you be One with “others” who are truly your Self by another name, and on another journey, and that is Freedom, too. For Accepting your Self in Our Many Forms, Knowing our Oneness Hidden, Veiled, and underneath the Veil, we are One.

As One you can affect the Becoming of Humanity, the very Being of Life. As One, you are free, for you are Love, and Love is Who Love Wants to Be.”

Only Love with Non-Attachment will set you Free to be the Love that Oneness is meant to be even here, even now. Love is Who Love Wants to Be.

Love and Light,

Carol “Anandi”

Spiritual Approaches to Climate Crises

Humanity is finally feeling the shock of our energetic impact on several of Earth’s spheres: the hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, and geosphere. Excessive, oppressive heat, raging fires, blankets of smoke covering hundreds of miles, stronger and more prolific tornadoes and hurricanes, flooding, melting ice caps, dwindling rivers, heated oceans, changing currents, and bleaching corals are just some of the most evident and traumatic signs of the effects of humanity living a modern lifestyle on planet Earth.

How have we gotten ourselves into this? How can we get ourselves out? Can we get ourselves out of the environmental crises we have created? How can we and future generations be safe?

What are the answers we need most right now? Many of us will jump first for practical answers and or political answers, but these have been failing for two obvious reasons, as well as for a deeper underlying reason. The two obvious reasons are first, that not enough of us are making the kinds of lifestyle changes and choices that serve the needs of the ecosystems that sustain us, and second, that the powerful, wealthy, and thereby most dominating entities in the world (the 1%, huge corporations, many governments, virtualy every military in existence) seem to like to keep making money even at the expense of Earth’s life-support systems, i.e., ecosystems. This is not to say that there are not rich people and corporations who would like to act in ways that sustain Earth’s ecosystems, because I trust that there are some who would like to, at least in theory, if not yet in practice.

Yet these two practical issues are rendered powerless by the underlying issue.

Indeed, the underlying issue affects all of us, because virtually all of us create it together. The underlying issue is the need to upshift our consciousness, to use the phrase of my favorite systems theorist, Ervin Laszlo. You see, humanity has gotten more intelligent and more educated in many ways, but less intelligent and more ignorant in others. Historically, we humans all used to understand ourselves the way Indigenous people do: as part of one big living and sacred community of beings on this sacred and living Earth.

The main problem is that, for a long time in Western cultures, and increasingly around the world, we have seen ourselves as separate from nature. Moreover, we have increasingly believed that nothing except for biological life forms is alive. We have also increasingly believed that consciousness only emerges from brains. Finally, we have increasingly believed that nothing is sacred. These are all the root of the underlying problem, especially the fact that we have fundamentally seen ourselves as separate from nature, because we have therefore seen ourselves as entitled to dominate it.

There is not space here for me to go into the history of the development of that view of nature here – for an excellent historical account, please see Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature.

Now, I know it may be too much for some of you to jump on board to see the Earth as living and sacred, but let’s look at this underlying issue beginning from where most of us may be starting. To begin at the beginning, I need to ask a few questions:

• What if human beings are not the most intelligent beings the Universe has created (or developed, or evolved)?
• What if the Earth itself, with all of its intricately intertwined spheres supporting self-organizing and sustainable ecosystems is, in fact, the most intelligent and magnificent being the Universe has ever created?
• What if humanity, by viewing ourselves as separate from nature, and by failing to sustain the very ecosystems on which we depend for our own survival, have actually become less intelligent, less wise?

I will help us find practical answers to our current crises, but first, please allow me to invite you to view these questions from a perspective of spiritual evolution of life in the Universe, with everything – that is, everyone – truly consisting of a hidden Divine center of awareness that is alive and awakening.

From this perspective, we can see that humanity’s loss of the point-of-view of being part of a greater sacredness of Being that permeates the Universe has led us to be rather narcissistic in our relationship with nature. We have focused mostly on our own needs, but very little on the needs of ecosystems and the other living beings within them, let alone on the health of Earth’s hydrosphere (water systems and waterways) and atmosphere (where’s the fresh air so many of us older adults remember from long ago?).

We have become less wise, and despite our significant advantages gained through technology, we have also become less intelligent.

I am not alone in saying this; British psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist points to a decline in intelligence over the past few generations in Western societies, largely due to cultural and educational emphasis on almost exclusive cultivation of left-brain hemisphere thinking. McGilchrist explains that the left-hemisphere of the brain sees only in freeze-frame snippets of reality, turning everything into separate things, and neglecting the importance of the relationships, the flow of processes, and the wholes of which every individual thing is a mere part. The right hemisphere of our brains see reality in wholes which have parts, experience duration, and perceive relationships of the parts and the whole.

In other words, while the left-hemisphere is good at analyzing individual things, the right-hemisphere experiences reality more directly as it really is. McGilchrist also states that not only is the left-hemisphere less capable of understanding reality as it is in its wholeness, but the left-hemisphere is out of touch with reality. One conclusion that we can draw is that cultivating left-hemisphere thinking and skills in our schools has literally left us less intelligent. (See McGilchrist, The Matter with Things.)

What is the antidote to our decline in intelligence, to our failure to sustain thriving ecosystems, and our current crises that humanity is facing, and has for the most part created, here on planet Earth? While some people believe that humans can find another planet and survive there, I would like to suggest that with our current modes of intelligence, we won’t survive for long because we don’t understand ourselves as part of nature, nor as part of the Universe’s highly intelligent ways of evolving and sustaining life.

As long as we see ourselves as entitled to survive at nature’s expense, we cannot thrive as fully human, ensouled beings living in harmony within a sacred and intelligent Universe. We might be able to have a few of us survive, fighting each other over resources, contending and competing and with others and while depleting and destroying the life-sustaining “resources” of the world around us.

But the Universe is not just about competition and destruction. As Robert Bellah points out in Religion in Human Evolution, many species preceding human beings, along with humans ourselves, long ago evolved a “disposition to nurture” that balanced a “disposition to dominate.” Bellah points to species that parent their young as contributing to the evolution of this disposition to nurture as part of nature’s evolution and sustenance of life.

So, is nurturing the key to our survival, and to the survival of ecosystems on Earth? In large part, the answer is, of course, ‘yes,’ but we humans have to upshift, or consciously evolve our consciousness in order to be able and willing to do that. Since this is a blog, and not yet a book, I am going to list in brief the several moves we need to make in order to upshift our awareness and consciously evolve our individual and collective approach to survival.

First, we need to cultivate right-hemisphere knowing. Cultivating the arts is one means of resting our left-hemispheres to enable us to see and feel as whole beings who are part of something larger than ourselves is one way. Spending time in nature and observing it with the understanding that we are one with it as part of its living web is another, especially central way to cultivate right-hemisphere awareness. In addition, meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, energy healing (such as Reiki), and acupuncture all re-balance our brains and bodies to a state of greater and more expansive wholeness.

Second, we need to learn to think systemically. The Cabrera Research Institute teaches people to learn systems thinking and to apply it in education, business, and planning. Systems thinking is essential if we are to understand (intelligently and wisely) our place within ecosystems, the nature of ecosystems, how ecosystems sustain themselves, and how we need to make choices that sustain and support ecosystems on an ongoing basis.

Third, we need to cultivate the feminine values that patriarchy has eschewed from the cultures that now dominate financially, politically, and militarily around the globe. The disposition to dominate must be balanced with the disposition to nurture. Human survival depends on it. We therefore need to cultivate practices of active listening with a sense of equality and interdependence.

We need to cultivate empathy and compassion in the classroom, the board room, the halls of government, and yes, even in the militaries of the world. Until we learn that we must choose to nurture life together or most of us will die together, we will increasingly continue to die from our own abuse of nature.

For now, I will end here, but these approaches offer our greatest hope for becoming able and willing to create and enact practical plans for saving life on Earth. By practicing right-hemisphere knowing with a systems view of life, while simultaneously listening with empathy, acting with compassion, and making choices that nurture life, we may survive. I hope that humanity will indeed practice this approach, so that together, we will thrive on Earth.

Love and Light,

Carol (Anandi)

Universal Consciousness and the Vacuum Field

If you think about it, we cannot point to anything inside or outside ourselves and say, “Look, I see consciousness right there!”

The same is true of the Divine, by any name, whether God, Goddess, Source, or Brahman, we cannot point to anything physical and, with reference to the vast, infinite Being of the Divine, say, “Look, I see God right there!” as if God could be localized to just one spot or just one person.

Following the Hindu idea of Brahman as Universal Consciousness, I would like to invite us to contemplate the nature of the Divine as Universal Consciousness. Specifically, let us focus on both being everywhere – omnipresent. In addition, let us remember that in Hinduism, one becomes enlightened when one fully realizes (embodies), with one’s whole being, “This Atman is Brahman.” That recognition equates our little individual consciousness with the Divine Universal Consciousness – the two are inseparable, as One (Brahman).

A new insight came to me about the Divine as Universal Consciousness quite recently, after I had read Ervin Laszlo’s Science and the Akashic Field, as well as Lynn McTaggart’s The Field. Laszlo equates the Akashic Field with what is called the vacuum field, which permeates everything in space. McTaggart presents a lot of information about the nature of consciousness, intention, and the vacuum field, which she calls the zero-point field, referencing the zero-point energy that permeates it.

Now, just to help us understand what this vacuum field is, we need to think about the fact that everywhere we look, including inside ourselves, inside physical objects, and inside “solid matter”, there is more space than “matter”. Even atoms are made up of more space than mass. All that space, the space that is inside everything, IS the vacuum field. We just cannot feel the vacuum because its effects are at a tiny quantum level.

So, looking at this vacuum field from a scientific perspective, Laszlo and McTaggart are very helpful. They both explain that waves of quantum energy carry information from everything and to everything throughout the vacuum field, and so this information flows everywhere in the Universe.

While Laszlo purports to present a Theory of Everything, ironically, he intentionally leaves out both the Divine and human souls. McTaggart, while presenting the science, does make one comment that questions this tendency when she writes that, by leaving out the zero-point energy from their mathematical equations, it is as if scientists are leaving out God.

Why do scientists leave out the zero-point energy from mathematical equations? They have to leave it out or their equations give rise to infinities. Do you hear the implication there, that everything in this universe is part of something that could become or be infinite? That is, everything could be part of God?

I understand that one does not have to interpret those infinities that way, but this new insight came to me in a flash: All of a sudden, on Saturday March 4^th, 2023, I found myself wondering: Is Consciousness the zero-point field? And I asked that because Divine Consciousness, or Universal consciousness if you prefer, and the vacuum field share many characteristics:

Both God, or Universal Consciousness, and the vacuum field are non-local.

Both are omnipresent.

Both are energetic.

Both connect all things.

Both create all things.

Both can create something out of nothing.

Both know all things.

Both record all things.

Both can affect all the parts as well as the whole simultaneously.

Both imply infinities (David Bohm’s phrase, on 351 of The Undivided Universe – he is speaking of quantum field theory in general, but also of the “renormalization algorithms” that are used to modify the vacuum field so that the infinities are removed mathematically.)

Both are mathematical.

Both are musical. (Resonance of the waves of energy in the Field, and the Divine Harmonies of celestial spheres or higher worlds and of divine or subtle energies)

Both are archetypal. (According to McTaggart, the zero point field creates both mass and gravity.) (Everything flows from the zero point. F=MA the mass of an object flowing the field gets inertia because the condensation of that energy, just like a metal flowing through a magnetic field creates a circuit of electricity, the more mass flowing through the zero point creates resistance. The wavelets create resistance as they interact with the zero-point field, – it’s infinite possibilities, both of scientific laws as archetypes, but also of collective consciousness archetypes, following Jung.)

Both flow.

Both rest.

Both become.

Both are Being Itself.

Both are nothing.

Both are the Plenum.

Both are the ground of all being (theologian Paul Tillich); or, as I prefer, the womb of all being.

Both are the emptiness that gives rise to Aristotelian potentia.

Both are the emptiness of a higher state of mind in Buddhism and other forms of meditation.

Both are subtle.

Both are multidimensional and interdimensional.

Both are us. And we are them. (This Atman is Brahman, Universal Consciousness as vacuum field.)

This insight forms my new thesis about reality: that God and the Zero-Point Energy Field, also known as the Vacuum Field, are one. So far as we know, everything that exists is within the Field, and the Field is in everything that exists, just as everything is in the Divine and the Divine is in everything. The Field and the Divine are One. The Field and the Divine are in Us, and we are in Them. So, indeed, in the Field, We Are All One.

Does Christmas Have a Universal Spiritual Meaning?

What do you think of when you think of Christmas? If you are non-religious, or spiritual but not religious, or practice a different religion, do you think of Christmas as only a cultural holiday for gathering with family and friends and exchanging gifts, highlighted by the numerous myths about Santa Claus? If you practice a different religion than Christianity, do you think of Christmas as a holiday for “Christians” who believe that Jesus came to save them and that God will damn to hell everyone who doesn’t “believe” in Jesus as Christ, Lord, and Savior?

If you are a Christian, is that what Christmas means to you? Or does Christmas have broader and deeper meanings, perhaps of love, forgiveness, hope, joy, peace, generosity, and compassion?

If Christmas only meant that God sent Jesus as Christ to those who “believe” in him and that everyone else is damned to hell, I could never be that kind of Christian, and I never have been. I seriously doubt that any religion’s highest truths ever include a God who damns people to hell forever. Christmas would hardly be a joyous, loving occasion if that is what it stood for.

Since I was raised, educated, and ordained in the Christian tradition, I will honor other religious and spiritual traditions by not speaking for them, although I have studied Daoism, Hindu Tantrism, Integral Yoga, as well as Buddhist and Hindu thought while pursuing a PhD. While my religious views have primarily transformed into universal spiritual principles, beliefs, and practices, I do still practice Christian forms of worship and prayer, along with Raja Yoga Meditation and other similar practices. For me the evolutionary universal spiritual view of Christmas represents the greatest meaningful potential for the individual and collective destinies of humankind.

I would like to suggest that every religion and spiritual tradition has its basic levels of meaning as well as including more universal spiritual principles about the psycho-spiritual development of humanity.* At the level of conscious awareness of universal spiritual meaning, I would suggest that people can still celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or Diwali or Guru Purnima as spiritual rather than as religious holidays. To celebrate Christmas or any other holiday as a spiritual “holy-day” rather than as a religious holiday means to cherish and embody the universal spiritual principles and depths of meaning that each holy-day brings as a gift for the spiritual evolution of all people.

For instance, the various celebrations of Guru Purnima in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism represent a similar concept, beginning with a celebration of the birth of the particular guru. While Jesus as Christ was understood to bring the Light of God to earth for humanity, the concept of a spiritual ‘guru’ is quite similar. A spiritual guru is a person who brings divine light to dispel the darkness of ignorance, fear, and sense of separation between human beings and the divine.

Gurus generally teach methods for obtaining Nirvana, Oneness, God-Consciousness, Samadhi, or a similar state of ongoing awakened consciousness. Christians, for the most part, have lost sight of that higher state of consciousness to which Christ invites us, but I believe that such teachings from other religious traditions can help us better understand Christ’s teachings, even though they seem to be minimally available in Biblical texts.

Our spiritual evolution entails our gradual approach to union with the Divine through many lifetimes. Every religion theoretically can help us to do that, if we understand its higher principles (the ones designed to help us evolve) as empowering us to expand our conscious awareness into Oneness with the Divine and with all Life.

Does Christmas offer humanity such evolutionary universal spiritual meanings?

Recently, I attended an online session in which people were asked to share what Christmas means to us today. There were a variety of reflective personal and meaningful answers. Obviously, Christmas means a variety of ideas, beliefs and practices to everyone who encounters the idea and/or the experience of it. What I would like to share today is how I have come to understand the meaning of Christmas from a universal spiritual perspective.

When I reflect on the meaning of Christmas, I find it impossible to do so without bringing in a personal element, for I was supposed to be born on Christmas, as a Christmas Carol – A song of joy about the birth of Jesus Christ. Instead, I was born earlier in December, and so I have always been an “Advent” Carol – a song of joy about the imminent coming of Christ. As a former church pastor leading or helping to lead countless worship services during Advent, I have come to understand the deep benefits of focusing on the meaning of Advent.

The traditional Christian focus on Advent refers to celebrating the imminent approach of Christ as both newborn King and Savior, and thus, a time to reflect on what the coming of Christ means to us personally. Traditionally, Christmas entails the deeper meaning of the imminent coming of Christ into our lives personally, as our inner guide, Lord, or Savior, the one who hears us – and often answers – when we pray. From a universal spiritual perspective, the imminent coming of Christ to each individual may be understood as the approach of Higher Consciousness or Awakened Consciousness or Omniconsciousness within us.

Each of us, no matter what our religious or spiritual tradition (and I include materialism and atheism as spiritual traditions, if only in the mode of negation), are on paths of spiritual development through many lifetimes. We are liberated from this earth-bound, ego-conscious existence by breaking free from egoic awareness into Higher Consciousness.

Christ, like other saints, prophets, and gurus of many traditions, came to model and guide us into such higher consciousness. However, the means which Christ gave us for overcoming ego-consciousness have too often been overshadowed by shallow emphases on sin and Christ as savior if we simply “believe” in him.

What Christ actually taught was a redemptive process of attaining higher consciousness through spiritual disciplines of prayer, solitude, fasting, and continual acts of compassion and generosity, tied with non-attachment to material goods, including money. If these teachings of Christ become emphasized, one can see a path forward for attaining higher consciousness by following in Christ’s footsteps. Indeed, if we are not following the ways of Christ, do we really “believe” in him?

Most, if not all spiritual traditions within the religions of the world teach compassion of some kind, but constantly to highlight compassionate and humble service to others along with extreme generosity, while also relinquishing attachment to desired life outcomes is an extremely demanding spiritual path that few of us truly live out daily. If we truly strove to live the way Christ lived, rather than focusing on the narrow and often self-focused and judgmental message that many Christians teach about Jesus, then we would gradually begin to approach that higher consciousness that Christmas represents.

Today, I invite you to view Christmas as an invitation to Higher Consciousness, the Awakening which can be referred to as Christ Consciousness or Buddha Consciousness or whatever term you prefer that carries that sacred awareness and selfless service to humanity in alignment with the Highest Good, that is, the Divine blessings for all life on earth.

If each of us lives out, and truly embodies the highest, most selfless, service-oriented teachings of our chosen spiritual tradition, then that Higher Consciousness will become incarnate in each of us. The Incarnation of Divine Consciousness in all people everywhere is the universal spiritual meaning of Christmas. When the Divine Incarnation in Jesus Christ at Christmas is understood as the invitation for everyone to attain Omniconscious, Unconditionally Loving Awareness, then the joy, peace, hope, and love embodied in Christmas can bring us lasting transformation of ourselves and the world we share.

My prayer during this holiday season, which includes the Twelve days** of Christmas carrying us into the New Year, is that we each will find within ourselves a fuller measure of that Inner Greatness of patience, love compassion, and forgiveness that leads us closer to peace and harmony for all life on earth, and thus, leads us closer to union with the Divine.

Love and Light,

Carol/Anandi

*For more on the psycho-spiritual development and evolution of humanity, please see my book:

Truth and Illusion: The Politics of Spirituality and How One Person’s Lie Is Another One’s Truth

https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Illusion-Politics-Spirituality-Persons-ebook/dp/B073V58NS4/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1PKJR83YMNT9N&keywords=truth+and+illusion+the+politics&qid=1672433454&sprefix=truth+and+illusion+the+politics%2Caps%2C688&sr=8-1

**The Twelve Days of Christmas come from the understanding that the three wise men did not arrive at the manger until later, on what Christians now celebrate as Epiphany, or the revelation of Christ’s true nature to humanity. Epiphany is customarily celebrated on January 6th of the new year.

What Is a True Savior? (Or Saint, Guru, Shaman, Healer)

A true Savior does not save you. Rather, a true savior empowers you to save yourself. If someone saves you, they are not really “making you whole,” which is one understanding of salvation. Rather, if someone else “saves” you, they are really only rescuing you.

We only need rescuing when we are in victim consciousness, either having had an experience of victimization, or feeling inadequate to meet the challenges we face. When we are in victim consciousness, we can only be rescued, but not made whole.

Only we can make ourselves whole, by finding the True Presence of Being within, which is our True Self. (As Buddha says, there is no “self.”) The self that we are begins to dissolve in the larger reality of Being, which we can call a Self, or the One Self, or Oneness, but really, Being is a Who without a single or singular self. Oneness is diversity of Being within a Unity of Being.

When we come to know that we are part of Being Itself, we come to know that we are never victims, but our own saviors, the only ones who can heal ourselves, transform ourselves, and make ourselves whole.

To do this, we need to let go of that smaller self which we desire to have in control, and allow the Oneness of Being to guide us, heal us, transform us, and make us whole, so that we can serve the Light of Being, the Light of Oneness, that all may come to know themselves and save themselves as One.

Love and Light,

Carol (Anandi)

I AM Being: We Are Multidimensional Beings and Consciousness Is Interdimensional

This summer has been an amazing experience of a regular flow of synchronous experiences. Since I am working on a PhD, most of the amazing synchronicities have entailed having an intuitive insight (or revelation or intuitive download – please choose your language!) and then seeing a matching idea in a book, or reading something meaningful in one book, only to find a linkage in another book that I happened to see.

As part of my PhD, I had been reading about Rene Descartes’s process that led him to conclude, “I think; therefore, I am.” I have also been reading about how the various German Idealists approached the concept of the “I” or ego at the center of our conscious awareness.

Reflecting on these various understandings of the ego, or the self as an “I,” one day I asked Higher Consciousness: “What is the ‘I’ that thinks?”

The answer that I immediately heard was: “Being.” It was clear to me that this was both divine Being as the root of all being, and that being itself permeates everything that exists in the universe, including each of ourselves. I felt a touch of bliss at this revelation, that the center of who we are is Being itself. When we recognize this, we recognize that we are one with all being, for we are all just part of the larger universe of being. There are no dividing lines in Being as being. The divine Being is the center and manifestation of all being. As Medieval philosopher Nicholas of Cusa expressed it, the universe is omnicentric. Everywhere is the center of the universe, and everyone experiences themselves as the center of the universe.

We are all therefore centers of awareness of being, not separate from the rest of being, just centers of awareness of being itself.

One morning, while I was meditating, it came to me that we are multidimensional beings. I had recently watched a youtube video on string theory by physicist Michio Kaku, author of The God Equation, in which he explained that the mathematics of string theory, in order to describe the universe accurately, requires 10 or 11 dimensions. As a mystic, I have experienced being in other dimensions of the astral realm. So, the revelation that we are multidimensional beings makes sense to me, and I am grateful that physics may perhaps confirm that aspect of reality.

Then it came to me that consciousness is both multidimensional and interdimensional. While our physical bodies cannot go directly to other dimensions, our consciousness can, because it is being itself, and being itself is multidimensional. Consciousness, then, is interdimensional because it can bridge awareness in the 4D universe with awareness and activity in other dimensions.

The synchronicity in this one case occurred the same day that I received the intuition that we are multidimensional beings. Later that day, I was doing my student job at the California Institute of Integral Studies, when I happened to open a book to wherever it opened, and the page it opened to stated: we are multidimensional beings. That was certainly quick and synchronous confirmation from another mystic!

What does interdimensional consciousness imply more broadly? Well, physicist David Bohm wrote of the “implicate order,” a source of the patterning, if you will, of the events in this universe. Similarly, physicists rely on mathematics to help them figure out the nature of the universe, but, if you think about it, the math and the formulas and axioms themselves do not actually exist in nature, the universe, or matter itself. Mathematical formulas and principles and idealized geometrical shapes exist only in our minds. That means that there is a world of the mind that does not actually exist in matter as matter, per se. Ideas, math, and awareness itself cannot be pointed to in matter, nor even in the brain. Even when we can say that part of the brain is lighting up when someone is thinking spatially, for example, we still cannot see the actual content of their thoughts in the matter of the brain.

Consciousness is multidimensional and interdimensional, and energy is what allows it to be and to know. This idea calls for a separate blog on that … to be continued.

For now, please know that you are Being Itself, expressing itself in a center of awareness which is you being Being Itself in this universe, and you, like the rest of being, are multidimensional, capable of interdimensional knowing.

Love and Light,

Carol (Anandi)