I’m in all the leaves and the wind, and the ancient trees lining the old road, and all the people, and the red dusty earth beneath my feet.

i’m in the plastic table and chairs of the lunch cafe at the edge of the European square.

i’m in the bad plans being conjured in the mind of the person sitting in the corner and i’m in the eccentric thoughts of the genius at the end of the table.

Some part of me is clearly within everything. Some part of me is the all of me. And the whole of me is living simultaneously as everyone.

Some of you are deeply known, most of you are mostly unknown, all of you are far more than I can know. Have you ever looked someone deeply in the eyes and recognized the cosmos staring back?

I have passed so many on the street that were once my closest companions. A thousand lost loves brushed by on a walk through London with only half a glance, a thousand old friends. A thousand old enemies have been greeted with a smile. Have you ever met your old wife or husband in a stranger? What a strange sensation that can be!

I stroll into a brand new place and it’s clearly an old place made new again. There are spots in London where I can almost see all of the shoes I’ve worn before.

Sometimes, from the deep Presence, I’m thrown into a thousand places at once. I look out other faces. Were they my face in other lives? I have no idea if there really is an Atman, an individual Soul. I’m only biased to think so. The Buddha may well have been right, but it doesn’t matter so much to me. Living fully from deep Presence is what matters.

I was sitting on a stool in Hong Kong in 2006, eating beef noodles in a strange little restaurant run by body builders, perhaps the happiest 22 year old meditation teacher in the world, and in a moment that passed far too quickly, I was the Cosmic Dreamer, dreaming myself everywhere, dreaming events that would later come to pass in the little life that my attention favors.

Courses and Resources

Ascension Meditation First Sphere Course- September 19th and 20th: 4pm to 8:30pm UK time

This is a weekend course learning my primary effortless meditation practice of the past 24 years: Ascension meditation. The course runs from 4pm to 8:30 pm (Portugal/UK timezone) on both days. We’ll flow between meditation practice, conversations on the multi-layered evolution of consciousness, and time for questions and answers.

Normally, this class is 300 USD. The special price for this course is 250USD or a sliding scale donation. We don’t turn students away for lack of money. And, if you’ve already learned the practice, attendance is free.

To pay on the sliding scale system, you can simply send a course fee by PayPal and an email letting me know that you’ve signed up. If PayPal doesn’t work, Zelle or Bank Transfers are also options.

Sign up here:

About Me

I am a meditation teacher, writer, gardener, and an evolutionary astrologer. You can find more information about my vocations through my websites: www.ascension-meditation.com and www.awakenedlightastrology.com. I also have a youtube channel, which is starting to get as much attention as the garden.

As someone who engaged in childhood psychopomp work, any time I can have this conversation with someone who is still alive (and up for it) I do so. The unfortunate problem is that the people who need this sort of conversation the most are often the ones who are the most resistant to going there. How many of us are dead at 30 and buried at 80? What a tragedy!

I received a strange early education in human psychology (post mortem!) dealing with the stuck and wandering souls who were drawn to the signal of a living human capable of communication. Some of them knew they wanted to help moving on- they were the easy ones. Many of them wanted to move on, but were lost in a fog of confusion. What seemed to be keeping people from moving on? Fear of the afterlife (esp. if connected to perceived sin, and expected punishment), attachment to people or places left behind, regret upon regret upon piles of regret.

Perhaps the greatest means of achieving a smooth transition is to fill one’s life with as much love as possible. However you can truly love, start there. Start small if need be, one step at a time. Do acts of kindness wherever, even if you don’t feel kind. If you feel love is nowhere inside, you can take a page out of William James’ book of philosophical pragmatism- let action be the change agent. Do kind acts, and kindness will start to fill you up from the inside. Being of service produces wondrous changes in consciousness.

One can also culture love through the act of appreciation. You need not even utter a word. Appreciate the beauty of a flower, or a garden, the trees, or the clouds in the sky. Appreciate whatever you can appreciate.

Perhaps the greatest protections from becoming a stuck spirit is to experience the state of Samadhi as frequently as possible while in the physical body. Meditate every day, a few times per day with eyes closed and the rest of the day with the eyes opened. Choose a technique that produces depth. If this goes well, you may also end up helping stuck souls with their own transitions while still in a body. But the most important aspect of deep meditation practice is the healing it brings to the mind and psyche. A deep practice is a powerful balm to guilt, regret, and fear. Every plunge into the deep waters of Samadhi is a plunge into a place that unties our inner knots and soothes the hard edges of the soul.

If you’ve done truly terrible things, it’s possible that you may never receive forgiveness from those you trespassed against, even if your contrition is marrow-deep and absolutely sincere. In terms of moving on after death, the forgiveness of others is not necessary. Even full self-forgiveness may not be necessary. Sometimes all you need is a single strong point of love. In more practical terms, I’m reminded of a scene near the end of the film Gandhi. A man confesses to Gandhi that he killed a Muslim boy, and that he is surely going to hell. Gandhi’s suggested way out of hell? The Hindu man must find an orphaned boy and raise him up as a Muslim, and care for him and love him.

A Way out of Hell- Gandhi

In such a situation, the good that one does may not make up for the evil, but it’s worthwhile to begin moving in a better direction while still in the same body. Love and service are powerful alchemical agents.

I can’t count how many spirits I’ve encountered who were simply afraid of hell or some hellish future life. These fears are heavy on the minds of wandering ghosts. Some spirits confessed the most awful things to me. In their minds, their crimes would deny them a decent transition. After assuring them that the theological ideas they had been taught were largely incorrect, I would demonstrate the loving nature of the universe, by walking to a bridge with them and calling in any beings that truly loved them, whether in their recent life or in another. This was often enough to get them moving. Every being craves love. The wonderful thing about love is that a few moments of deep love are much much stronger than centuries of fear and theological ideas. So, here too, to get ahead of the game, and fill your life with as much love and presence as possible. Go as deep as you can!

Upcoming Courses

Ascension Meditation First Sphere Course- August 22nd and 23rd: 8am to 12:30 pm UK time/ 5pm to 9:30 pm Sydney time

This is a weekend course learning my primary effortless meditation practice of the past 24 years: Ascension meditation. The course runs from 8am to 12:30 pm (Portugal/UK timezone) on both days. We’ll flow between meditation practice, conversations on the multi-layered evolution of consciousness, and time for questions and answers.

Normally, this class is 300 USD. The special price for this course is 222 USD or a sliding scale donation. We don’t turn students away for lack of money. And, if you’ve already learned the practice, attendance is free.

To pay on the sliding scale system, you can simply send a course fee by PayPal and an email letting me know that you’ve signed up. If PayPal doesn’t work, Zelle or Bank Transfers are also options. (Update: the sliding scale spots for this course have been filled up)

Sign up here:

About Me

I am a meditation teacher, writer, gardener, and an evolutionary astrologer. You can find more information about my vocations through my websites: www.ascension-meditation.com and www.awakenedlightastrology.com. I also have a youtube channel, which is starting to get as much attention as the garden.

Carl Jung had a heart attack in 1944, from which he had a near-death experience. His experience happens to be one of my favorite accounts. I’m especially fond of his use of the term “box world”, in large part because after my own NDE it was a phrase that frequently came to mind as a good descriptor.

The following is the full account of this transcendent experience taken from Memories, Dreams, and Reflections:

“It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the Earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole Earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light.

In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxidized silver. Far away to the left lay a broad expanse – the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the silver of the Earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back – as if in the upper left of a map – I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all. I knew that I was on the point of departing from the Earth.

Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view – approximately a thousand miles! The sight of the Earth from this height was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.

After contemplating it for a while, I turned around. I had been standing with my back to the Indian Ocean, as it were, and my face to the north. Then it seemed to me that I made a turn to the south. Something new entered my field of vision. A short distance away I saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone, like a meteorite. It was about the size of my house, or even bigger. It was floating in space, and I myself was floating in space.

I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been hollowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic dark block. An entrance led into a small antechamber. To the right of the entrance, a black Hindu sat silently in lotus posture upon a stone bench. He wore a white gown, and I knew that he expected me.

Two steps led up to this antechamber, and inside, on the left, was the gate to the temple. Innumerable tiny niches, each with a saucer-like concavity filled with coconut oil and small burning wicks, surrounded the door with a wreath of bright flames. I had once actually seen this when I visited the Temple of the Holy Tooth at Kandy in Ceylon; the gate had been framed by several rows of burning oil lamps of this sort.

As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me – an extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. I am this bundle of what has been and what has been accomplished.

This experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the same time of great fullness. There was no longer anything I wanted or desired. I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence.

Everything seemed to be past; what remained was a “fait accompli”, without any reference back to what had been. There was no longer any regret that something had dropped away or been taken away. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything.

Something else engaged my attention: as I approached the temple I had the certainty that I was about to enter an illuminated room and would meet there all those people to whom I belong in reality. There I would at last understand – this too was a certainty – what historical nexus I or my life fitted into. I would know what had been before me, why I had come into being, and where my life was flowing. My life as I lived it had often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing.

My life seemed to have been snipped out of a long chain of events, and many questions had remained unanswered. Why had it taken this course? Why had I brought these particular assumptions with me? What had I made of them? What will follow? I felt sure that I would receive an answer to all the questions as soon as I entered the rock temple. There I would meet the people who knew the answer to my question about what had been before and what would come after.

While I was thinking over these matters, something happened that caught my attention. From below, from the direction of Europe, an image floated up. It was my doctor, or rather, his likeness – framed by a golden chain or a golden laurel wreath. I knew at once: ’Aha, this is my doctor, of course, the one who has been treating me. But now he is coming in his primal form. In life he was an avatar of the temporal embodiment of the primal form, which has existed from the beginning. Now he is appearing in that primal form.’

Presumably I too was in my primal form, though this was something I did not observe but simply took for granted. As he stood before me, a mute exchange of thought took place between us. The doctor had been delegated by the Earth to deliver a message to me, to tell me that there was a protest against my going away. I had no right to leave the Earth and must return. The moment I heard that, the vision ceased.

I was profoundly disappointed, for now it all seemed to have been for nothing. The painful process of defoliation had been in vain, and I was not to be allowed to enter the temple, to join the people in whose company I belonged.

In reality, a good three weeks were still to pass before I could truly make up my mind to live again. I could not eat because all food repelled me. The view of city and mountains from my sickbed seemed to me like a painted curtain with black holes in it, or a tattered sheet of newspaper full of photographs that meant nothing. Disappointed, I thought, “Now I must return to the “box system” again.”

For it seemed to me as if behind the horizon of the cosmos a three-dimensional world had been artificially built up, in which each person sat by himself in a little box. And now I should have to convince myself all over again that this was important! Life and the whole world struck me as a prison, and it bothered me beyond measure that I should again be finding all that quite in order. I had been so glad to shed it all, and now it had come about that I – along with everyone else – would again be hung up in a box by a thread.

I felt violent resistance to my doctor because he had brought me back to life. At the same time, I was worried about him. “His life is in danger, for heaven’s sake! He has appeared to me in his primal form! When anybody attains this form it means he is going to die, for already he belongs to the “greater company.” Suddenly the terrifying thought came to me that the doctor would have to die in my stead. I tried my best to talk to him about it, but he did not understand me. Then I became angry with him.

In actual fact I was his last patient. On April 4, 1944 – I still remember the exact date I was allowed to sit up on the edge of my bed for the first time since the beginning of my illness, and on this same day the doctor took to his bed and did not leave it again. I heard that he was having intermittent attacks of fever. Soon afterward he died of septicemia. He was a good doctor; there was something of the genius about him. Otherwise he would not have appeared to me as an avatar of the temporal embodiment of the primal form.”

Upcoming Events

Ascension Meditation First Sphere Course- August 8th and 9th (a couple spots open)

This is a weekend course learning my primary effortless meditation practice of the past 24 years: Ascension meditation. The course runs from 4pm to 8:30 pm (Portugal/UK timezone) on both days. We’ll flow between meditation practice, conversations on the multi-layered evolution of consciousness, and time for questions and answers.

Normally, this class is 300 USD. The special price for this course is 222 USD or a sliding scale donation. We don’t turn students away for lack of money. And, if you’ve already learned the practice, attendance is free.

To pay on the sliding scale system, you can simply send a course fee by PayPal and an email letting me know that you’ve signed up. If PayPal doesn’t work, Zelle or Bank Transfers are also options. (Update: the sliding scale spots for this course have been filled up)

Sign up link.

About Me

I am a meditation teacher, writer, gardener, and an evolutionary astrologer. You can find more information about my vocations through my websites: www.ascension-meditation.com and www.awakenedlightastrology.com. I also have a youtube channel, which is starting to get as much attention as the garden.

A beautiful orange-colored moon hangs over the olive trees, a blessing upon the ancient landscape that is currently our home.

This full moon marks Guru Purnima- a day to celebrate the many teachers we’ve had in this life and tune into one’s relationship with the Cosmic Teacher and Guide, a Teacher that has many forms in my life, including three spiritual teachers worthy of the title of Sat Guru- one absolutely informal, and two formal.

There are so many significent moments from this life, far too many for me to compress easily into something short.

I remember meeting my 5th grade teacher when I was a 3rd grade student. I was running on the blacktop in winter during recess, made a jump stop, only on ice, and found myself flying and landing flat on my back with an oak-like thud. Appearing far above me was Mrs. Dinan, very concerned, “ Are you alright?” In my 3rd grade mind, a deep narrator way in the background of my consciousness spoke, “you are the hanged man and here is a guide.” That is one of the moments in this life that felt like it possessed 1,000 other significant moments.

In the late 90’s, after the death of my mother, I would spend hours at the public library and the nearby metaphysical bookshop, Heart and Soul, reading whatever I could comprehend and much that I didn’t. In quick succession I meet Pam, Austin, Walter Matthew Brown, Wendy Yanke, and Tom Olsen. What a group of angels they were.

I used to go to Austin’s house to balance my energy out. I would get these very strange head aches that were absolutely distracting. I was probably going through some kind of Kundalini awakening at 16/17 without knowing it. Once I was 50-100 ft from his house, it was like entering some kind of energetic force field. As I approached the back door it would only get stronger. Often, he would be underneath his beloved truck in his little garage. I would yell that I just needed to use his couch for a little bit, and he’d laugh and reply, “Go right ahead.” I would go into the house, plop myself down on the couch in the living room, and wake up after about 20 minutes feeling like a million bucks. I’d leave the house, Austin still underneath his truck. I’d give a hearty “Thanks Austin!” to which he’d reply, “You’re welcome, freeloader!”

When I arrived to a mist-shrouded property in the Oregon coast range in 2002, it was like stepping into Shangri-La. Have you ever gone to a place and had as strong intuitive familiarity with almost everyone there? That’s what it was like. Even though I was deeply nervous about getting sent away or being judged (for my own capacity for self-judgment knew no bounds) as unworthy for the place, it was one prolonged deja vu for several days.

For years, I wanted to be a very good mystery school student. Some of my peers came up with the best questions. I admired them for this ability, because I felt I lacked the capacity. I would wait and wait until I felt I had a good question to take to my spiritual teacher. I would head to their room, knock on the door, come in, and as soon as I entered the space, the question evaporated from my mind in a thick cloud of Silence. This happened more than a few times, and looking back, it was absolutely hilarious.

I’ve performed hundreds of Guru Pujas, as part of meditation initiations, to sanctify spaces, and for the enjoyment of it. So often when I do them I feel my body as the front of an endless thread, a doorway to a vast corridor, through which love and power flow into this physical reality.

Upcoming Events

Ascension Meditation First Sphere Course- August 8th and 9th

This is a weekend course learning my primary effortless meditation practice of the past 24 years: Ascension meditation. The course runs from 4pm to 8:30 pm (Portugal/UK timezone) on both days. We’ll flow between meditation practice, conversations on the multi-layered evolution of consciousness, and time for questions and answers.

Normally, this class is 300 USD. The special price for this course is 222 USD or a sliding scale donation. We don’t turn students away for lack of money. And, if you’ve already learned the practice, attendance is free.

To pay on the sliding scale system, you can simply send a course fee by PayPal and an email letting me know that you’ve signed up. If PayPal doesn’t work, Zelle or Bank Transfers are also options.

Sign up link.

About Me

I am a meditation teacher, writer, gardener, and an evolutionary astrologer. You can find more information about my vocations through my websites: www.ascension-meditation.com and www.awakenedlightastrology.com. I also have a youtube channel, which is starting to get as much attention as the garden.

Why meditate when I can just enjoy life? Aren’t you wasting your life going on retreat for six months or even meditating at for a couple hours per day? This was one of the common questions/conclusions posted in the comments section of a recent video I put up on youtube that went viral.

The answer: because meditation significantly increases one’s capacity to enjoy life. In so many ways almost every single human being is having a near life experience. How many people have I known who died at 30, only to be buried at 80? Most of us require some practice that counters and ameliorates the deep habits of tension which give rise to existential suffering and limit our capacity to live, perceive, and express.

As Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used to quip, our nervous systems are like vast mansions with many rooms, however, we’ve mostly gotten into the habit of only living in three of the rooms: a very busy and noisy room, a completely dark and insensitive room, and a somewhat wild and chaotic room- these are waking, sleeping, and dreaming consciousness. However there is a fourth room- we might call it Turiya (we might also write Samadhi or the Peace that Passes all understanding) literally translates as “the fourth”- referring to a fourth state of consciousness) which possesses a clarity far greater than the waking state and a level of rest far deeper than normal sleep. When we discover Turiya, it’s like waking up from a dream.

In those moments we realize how dull and numbed out the rest of our not-so-Turiya-centered life has been in comparison. These moments are often remembered for the rest of someone’s life, often as singular moments out of which deeply positive change arises. Turiya is the core element of the flow state or the peak experience. But sporadic meaningful dips into Turiya are not where the story has to end. Entering this vast atrium of consciousness with any regularity has the effect of optimizing the waking, sleeping, and dreaming states, because the experience of Turiya is not mutually exclusive with them.

The more one dips into Turiya, the more its qualities bleed into the other rooms of the nervous system. The waking state becomes clearer and more coherent. Synchronicity becomes increasingly normal. The language of the dreaming state becomes easier to read, lucidity increases, and the door becomes open to truly profound healings of mind, body, and psyche. Sleep tends to be deeper and consciousness may eventually become awake while the mind and body are down.

This process of Samadhi blending into the relative states of consciousness introduces us into several more dormant rooms of the nervous system. These states of consciousness are different iterations of Enlightenment, something I’ve covered more specifically in a couple other substack posts.

None of the beings I have known who are well advanced on the path of wholeness have been boring. None at all. Most of the crowd have been wonderfully eccentric. Even the naturally boring people who have no business telling stories at parties are absolutely fascinating. There is something interesting and beautiful about people who are being exactly as they are, freed from the conditioning piled on by parents, family, school, and society. Without the conditioning, life turns into LIFE. There is finally room for one’s innate creative spark to flow through without all the obscuring edits produced by a thick net of fear and conditioning. The amount of sheer life that comes out of regular immersion to Samadhi, for me, is only comparable to the months immediately after my NDE at age 13.

Deep meditation produces a return to the innocence of childhood. What a joy it becomes to do anything! How easy it is to flow when you contain everything, and you ARE the everything that contains you. Compared to this flow, how can the previous bondage be called anything but a “near life experience?”

Upcoming Events

Meditation, Magic, Prayer, and Manifestation- a 5-Week Class, meeting Sundays from July 5th until August 2nd- 6pm to 8pm UK time. (Although this started last Sunday, you can still join in this week and catch up via the recording)

Within this class, we’ll be immersing in practices of meditation and prayer from both the Hindu and mystical Christian traditions, using mantras and prayer-forms in an effortless way, in addition to practicing with malas/rosaries. We will also delve into the ways in which meditation practice strongly dovetails with magic, synchronicity, and manifestation. This facet of the course will be informed by the experiences of my life, the great mystics I have known, and insights mined from the lives and teachings of such figures as Hildegard of Bingen, Neville Goddard, Carl Jung, and Paramahansa Yogananda.

If you enter the class without a solid meditation practice, you will certainly gain at least one or two everyday practices during the five weeks.

The early bird rate is $175 USD, which is open until June 30th. After that, the regular course fee will be $200.00. There is also a sliding scale option in which you pick a price that works for you, as we never turn people away for a lack of funds. If you’d like to pay on the sliding scale, whether less or more, that can be done through PayPal, Zelle, or direct bank transfer.

Here is the sign-up link.

Open Circle Gathering- July 11th- 10am to 12pm Pacific Time

I once again have the joy of presenting to the online Open Circle community.

When the mind settles into Silence, the heart opens to the great mystery hidden everywhere in plain sight. The formless takes the form of Love, melting the barrier between self and world, reconnecting us to primordial Wholeness. This Wholeness is like a song that is already playing within. Every moment of life- sublime or awful- can be experienced as a flowing wholeness.

We’ll practice an effortless way of melting into wholeness: easeful mantra practice. Instead of using mantras like cudgels and performing meditation as chore, effortless practice opens into the natural delightfulness of meditation. Using Shakti Bija mantras in a gentle manner is a means of letting Presence move through us like a song; praying until we become the prayer. Woven into shared practice will be time for questions, answers, and conversation.

Here is the link for registration.

About Me

I am a meditation teacher, writer, gardener, and an evolutionary astrologer. You can find more information about my vocations through my websites: www.ascension-meditation.com and www.awakenedlightastrology.com. I also have a youtube channel, which is starting to get as much attention as the garden.

In 17th century Paris there was a monk named Brother Lawrence who was in such a state of bliss while making soup that people waited in lines to watch him from outside the kitchen door. We had his book in our monk-run coffee shop, which was just next door to our Sun Garden Cafe. Lawrence became a guiding light for our little kitchen.

It was thus a very peculiar kitchen. Many kitchens are built on stress and speed- places where people go who don’t fit in with the mainstream society, and often enclaves for functional alcoholism and addictions. Our kitchen had plenty of speed, and we absolutely did not fit in with normal society, but it is such a different feel when everyone is essentially praying and doing mantra meditation.

We were whirling dervishes dancing with fire and knives and pots. Ingredients were tossed, sometimes behind the back. Food was flung from the pan onto plates. Burritos were wrapped with the loving care of an aged Japanese craftsperson.

We often made plates of food on impulse, only to then discover that those dishes had just been ordered. I never tired of peaking over the kitchen doors to see the bewildered look on the customer’s faces. Once in awhile, the server would simply tell the customer, “No, this isn’t old food reheated. Our cooks are sometimes very psychic.”

Total strangers would come in, with no apparent interest in spirituality, and finding the Ishaya they were apparently destined to connect with, would proceed to bare their soul and cry their eyes out at a corner table or in the faery-inhabited back-garden.

One day, customers were manifested to spectacular effect. This was God’s fulfillment of one of my oldest desires. I wanted to experience a manifestation so improbable that my rational mind couldn’t file it as anything else but that. First, a table of 20 came in minutes after I verbally put the desire out. We served them so quickly, they also thought the food was reheated. Next, I verbally put the desire out for a party of 18 to arrive, which also happened minutes later. Alone, these were very unusual, as the largest party we had ever had was 8 people. Together, within minutes of each other, immediately after I voiced the desire, that was my definitive proof that the world is fundamentally made of magic.

One day, while chopping potatoes, it dawned that all of the thoughts and sensory information I was experiencing amounted to nothing but little leaves floating on top of an enormous ocean of awareness that was the truest thing I’d ever experienced. In fact, I realized that I hadn’t been really thinking for God knows how long. The normal tension that narrowly associated me with a particular body and mind was almost completely gone. In its place was vastness. The cafe and all of us working in it, and all of those coming to eat and drink and be sustained by more than bread, and all of the cars driving on Hwy 101, and the ancient trees, and the vast ocean were all dancing fractals of the great wholeness.

Upcoming Courses and Events

Meditation, Magic, Prayer, and Manifestation- a 5-Week Class, meeting Sundays from July 5th until August 2nd- 6pm to 8pm UK time.

Within this class, we’ll be immersing in practices of meditation and prayer from both the Hindu and mystical Christian traditions, using mantras and prayer-forms in an effortless way, in addition to practicing with malas/rosaries. We will also delve into the ways in which meditation practice strongly dovetails with magic, synchronicity, and manifestation. This facet of the course will be informed by the experiences of my life, the great mystics I have known, and insights mined from the lives and teachings of such figures as Hildegard of Bingen, Neville Goddard, Carl Jung, and Paramahansa Yogananda.

If you enter the class without a solid meditation practice, you will certainly gain at least one or two everyday practices during the five weeks.

The early bird rate is $175 USD, which is open until June 30th. After that, the regular course fee will be $200.00. There is also a sliding scale option in which you pick a price that works for you, as we never turn people away for a lack of funds. If you’d like to pay on the sliding scale, whether less or more, that can be done through PayPal, Zelle, or direct bank transfer.

Here is the sign-up link.

Open Circle Gathering- July 11th- 10am to 12pm Pacific Time

I once again have the joy of presenting to the online Open Circle community.

When the mind settles into Silence, the heart opens to the great mystery hidden everywhere in plain sight. The formless takes the form of Love, melting the barrier between self and world, reconnecting us to primordial Wholeness. This Wholeness is like a song that is already playing within. Every moment of life- sublime or awful- can be experienced as a flowing wholeness.

We’ll practice an effortless way of melting into wholeness: easeful mantra practice. Instead of using mantras like cudgels and performing meditation as chore, effortless practice opens into the natural delightfulness of meditation. Using Shakti Bija mantras in a gentle manner is a means of letting Presence move through us like a song; praying until we become the prayer. Woven into shared practice will be time for questions, answers, and conversation.

Here is the link for registration.

About Me

I am a meditation teacher, writer, gardener, and an evolutionary astrologer. You can find more information about my vocations through my websites: www.ascension-meditation.com and www.awakenedlightastrology.com. I also have a youtube channel, which is starting to get as much attention as the garden.

Enlightenment, which I’ll simply define as -coming to experience Samadhi/Turiya and having it become a permanent fixture of daily experience- is actually an absurdly simple undertaking. I wouldn’t even put it in the “easier said than done” category- that belongs more to building the Great Pyramid, slack-lining, or balancing stacks of rocks by a river. It’s really one of those easier done than said or explained things, which our society has become a bit divorced from.

Step One

find a practice or something that consistently relaxes your mind and nervous system to the point where you actually notice the relaxation, and at some point, you start to become consciously aware of Samadhi, or you notice significant issues have started to fall away, as if by magic. This is actually the easiest part. Something that might complicate is that you might not really want Enlightenment at all. Truly, how can we want some projection of some state that is out in the future?

You may also have had peak experiences or experiences of Samadhi, and may want more of those, but down the line, we might find plateaus short of permanent Samadhi that we find perfectly acceptable places to hang.

Step Two

as your nervous system starts to heal from years of being stressed (it’s really hard to be only the little dream character, it’s really hard to be away from Samadhi), you may experience shit getting very real, and having some really uncomfortable stuff begin to arise. If there have been emotions locked away in dark corners of the psyche, those locks may start to fail- good! At this point, you need to just persist in the practices that have been working, and learn to allow the stuff to move through the body. For some, this is the most difficult part. This healing facet is also a part that will come in waves, spread out over time, even during periods when yourself and others might correctly assess you to be significantly spiritually evolved. The human nervous system tends to hold its tensions in concentric layers, like an onion. Dumb stupid persistence in focusing again and again might be the greatest boon here, and is something I wish I could inject in so many of the meditators I have known.

Step Three

we continue with practice, and here we start to experience one of the great stages of the path: the identification of the mind shifts its perspective from being a wave that visits the ocean to the ocean living through a wave. If you have reached this point from doing a mantra practice, you might find that you have now gained the ability to simply shift the mind’s attention into Presence without using a mantra. This is a wonderful stage. Of course, it can also be the case that people have created a kind of facsimile experience of Samadhi. Thus, one of the continuing benefits of an effective practice is that it ensures one doesn’t get fooled by the facsimile.

As this stage deepens, one has the pleasure of possessing a very quiet mind, tapped into that deep Silence, right alongside being actively engaged with the world. In some traditions, like the TM tradition, this is thought of as an initial stage of Enlightenment. One could sit and chill out here and call it good. Really. Or. . .

Step Four

continue with practice and living (which by this point have lost much of their difference) and relax while the heart begins to open. Here, you might add other practices into the mix, practices that are designed more for opening the heart to the Beloved in the world and others than in relaxing the mind back into Peace. The healing here surely continues and for some this could prove difficult, as the deepest defenses for some of us have been built as fortresses around the heart. If the walls do start to melt, life becomes increasingly more love-soaked, subtle, and beautiful. You may pick up Rumi and find an even deeper resonance with the depths of life he was swimming in. This is a great melting into the depths of a vast and unconditional love.

Step Five

here, we come to the point, where the great melting leads into a profound gestalt realization. The deep relaxation of the nervous system unties a knot made some time in early childhood. A false bottom drops away, revealing a grounded experience of an underlying unity with life. The practices here can be profoundly subtle. They might be a sentence one hears in passing, or a well trodden phrase like the Mahavakyas (great words) - such as Tat Tvam Asi or Aham Brahmasmi- that finally turns a tumbler. It may start with looking at a pencil or talking to a friend, and noting that your “selfness” is in both places. They might involve looking out from the window of a bus, watching the snow falling on a quiet night. All the ripening leads to the fruit falling from the tree.

The most important of these steps are the first two- a practice that leads one into Samadhi and most importantly, repeatedly going there. Along the way, there may be all sorts of very helpful auxiliary activities, but all else follows from and revolves around these.

Upcoming Courses and Events

Meditation, Magic, Prayer, and Manifestation- a 5-Week Class, meeting Sundays from July 5th until August 2nd- 6pm to 8pm UK time.

Within this class, we’ll be immersing in practices of meditation and prayer from both the Hindu and mystical Christian traditions, using mantras and prayer-forms in an effortless way, in addition to practicing with malas/rosaries. We will also delve into the ways in which meditation practice strongly dovetails with magic, synchronicity, and manifestation. This facet of the course will be informed by the experiences of my life, the great mystics I have known, and insights mined from the lives and teachings of such figures as Hildegard of Bingen, Neville Goddard, Carl Jung, and Paramahansa Yogananda.

If you enter the class without a solid meditation practice, you will certainly gain at least one or two everyday practices during the five weeks.

The early bird rate is $175 USD, which is open until June 30th. After that, the regular course fee will be $200.00. There is also a sliding scale option in which you pick a price that works for you, as we never turn people away for a lack of funds. If you’d like to pay on the sliding scale, whether less or more, that can be done through PayPal, Zelle, or direct bank transfer.

Here is the sign-up link.

Open Circle Gathering- July 11th- 10am to 12pm Pacific Time

I once again have the joy of presenting to the online Open Circle community.

When the mind settles into Silence, the heart opens to the great mystery hidden everywhere in plain sight. The formless takes the form of Love, melting the barrier between self and world, reconnecting us to primordial Wholeness. This Wholeness is like a song that is already playing within. Every moment of life- sublime or awful- can be experienced as a flowing wholeness.

We’ll practice an effortless way of melting into wholeness: easeful mantra practice. Instead of using mantras like cudgels and performing meditation as chore, effortless practice opens into the natural delightfulness of meditation. Using Shakti Bija mantras in a gentle manner is a means of letting Presence move through us like a song; praying until we become the prayer. Woven into shared practice will be time for questions, answers, and conversation.

Here is the link for registration.

About Me

I am a meditation teacher, writer, gardener, and an evolutionary astrologer. You can find more information about my vocations through my websites: www.ascension-meditation.com and www.awakenedlightastrology.com. I also have a youtube channel, which is starting to get as much attention as the garden.

Portland, Oregon- Sept. 2017

On a rare day off from carpentry work, I was enjoying meditating in the red lazy-boy chair in the corner of our small but pleasant apartment on NE Fremont and Mississippi St. I began to practice the compassion technique of the Ishayas’ Ascension meditation. I had used this technique faithfully for 15 years, and while I was mostly sure that it had been a positive part of the mix, it was among the techniques that never gave me any kind of fancy bells and whistles experiences.

As soon as I thought the technique, I found myself exiting my body through a kind of transparent tube from the base of my spine. I shot through the wall of my apartment building, noting the lathe and plaster and the bricks. Moving through the wall and into the field, I felt myself connected through my root chakra with the life force and consciousness of the grasses and the giant tree, and in the birds on the branches. I felt that I was in a kind of geometrically organized energetic web with countless nodes. I was in a squirrel, and the laurel hedges. I could feel myself as all of the children playing outside 3 blocks away, and in the hipsters at the coffee house down the block.

I was the rooted Silence under the suffering and joy of all life, living in a hundred places at once. And then the streams converged, and shot my awareness back into my physical body and it was clearly time for a walk and some Thai food. MSI wrote of the compassion technique that it’s full mastery would heal one’s relationship with humanity. I would amend that statement to, “it heals one’s relationship with sentient beings, and it turns out that sentience is in many more places than we think, and includes trees, grasses, bricks, and damned near everything.” And, where does this healing take us? It taps us into a primordial unity that already exists among all beings and all things. We are all the same Ocean, emanating into countless waves.

Offerings and Events

Meditation, Magic, Prayer, and Manifestation- a 5-Week Class, meeting Sundays from July 5th until August 2nd- 6pm to 8pm UK time.

Within this class, we’ll be immersing in practices of meditation and prayer from both the Hindu and mystical Christian traditions, using mantras and prayer-forms in an effortless way, in addition to practicing with malas/rosaries. We will also delve into the ways in which meditation practice strongly dovetails with magic, synchronicity, and manifestation. This facet of the course will be informed by the experiences of my life, the great mystics I have known, and insights mined from the lives and teachings of such figures as Hildegard of Bingen, Neville Goddard, Carl Jung, and Paramahansa Yogananda.

If you enter the class without a solid meditation practice, you will certainly gain at least one or two everyday practices during the five weeks.

The early bird rate is $175 USD, which is open until June 30th. After that, the regular course fee will be $200.00. There is also a sliding scale option in which you pick a price that works for you, as we never turn people away for a lack of funds. If you’d like to pay on the sliding scale, whether less or more, that can be done through PayPal, Zelle, or direct bank transfer.

Here is the sign-up link.

Open Circle Gathering- July 11th- 10am to 12pm Pacific Time

I once again have the joy of presenting to the online Open Circle community.

When the mind settles into Silence, the heart opens to the great mystery hidden everywhere in plain sight. The formless takes the form of Love, melting the barrier between self and world, reconnecting us to primordial Wholeness. This Wholeness is like a song that is already playing within. Every moment of life- sublime or awful- can be experienced as a flowing wholeness.

We’ll practice an effortless way of melting into wholeness: easeful mantra practice. Instead of using mantras like cudgels and performing meditation as chore, effortless practice opens into the natural delightfulness of meditation. Using Shakti Bija mantras in a gentle manner is a means of letting Presence move through us like a song; praying until we become the prayer. Woven into shared practice will be time for questions, answers, and conversation.

Here is the link for registration.

About Me

I am a gardener, meditation teacher, and an astrologer. You can find more information about my vocations through my websites: www.ascension-meditation.com and www.awakenedlightastrology.com. I also have a youtube channel, which is currently getting less attention than the garden.

It started very early while living in my crib. I would close my eyes, leave the top of my head, and find myself in a larger body, sometimes at a city in the sky, other times on a large patio near the top of a snowy mountain, in places where ideas were exchanged in pictures and tonal frequencies. My memories of this time are few compared to the memories of my waking life, but the ones that I have retained are extremely crisp to this day. Despite their high strangeness and profundity, the experiences I’m sharing below did not define or dominate my waking life. At different times I was fairly focused on school, playing drums, being liked, basketball, friends and girlfriends. I thought of this whole world as simply part of my dream life, until I realized that it was something much more.

The real activity began when I was a bit longer of body and was now sleeping in the twin bed that I would use until age 18. I would engage in a certain pattern of breathing: taking a deep and slow breath in, I would feel a blissful energy flowing up to my head from the base of my spine. At the top of my head, I would hold my breath for a few seconds, and then release down my spine. A few cycles of this breathing would crescendo in such bliss and relaxation that I would eventually find my awareness leaving my body through the top of my head. Next, I would travel through the wall of my house, over the large maple tree in the backyard where I would try to touch the leaves with my astral hands. Then, I would fly higher and higher into the sky. At this point, I’d often lose awareness and come back in the morning. However, there were other times in which I would travel much further to specific destinations.

Another activity that seemed to lead to astral travel was a peculiar practice I had before going to sleep. Starting from the present moment, I would attempt to rewind and remember my entire life in as much clarity as possible. When I would reach a place that I couldn’t remember, there would be an associated tension in my psyche and/or body, and I would give my self a kind of psychic massage until the memory would arise. This practice also had a tendency of making me feel blissful and relaxed, until at some point I would fall asleep or find myself directly transported to one of the night schools.

In my earliest years, the most common destination was a floating city, built in a kind of classical Greek style. I understood the whole place to be a kind of school, with lectures happening frequently in the many small and large theater spaces. There were tons of astral people there, and some people I would recognize, as if we knew each other well on that plane. There are a few people I’ve met in this life that carry the resonance of that space. The communication was done telepathically, through thought images that were densely packed with information. Interestingly, the memory of many of these concentrated images still exists for me, and if I give those memory bundles my active attention, it’s as if some of them are still unfolding nearly 40 years later.

At around age 7, I also started to attend another night school. This one was in a high snow-covered mountain range. A collection of patios and interior spaces seemed to be improbably perched on the side of a tall mountain. At some point, I was exposed to Tibetan and Himalayan vernacular architecture and I realized that to be the style of my night school. There was always far fewer people at this place than the classical Greek space, and almost all of the instruction at this place were meditation practices. One thing I did recall clearly into my waking life was the musical dimension of it. It was infused with a very specific tonal tapestry. My memories of this place are far fuzzier than the floating classical place, probably due to the stress that was accumulating in my nervous system between age 7 and 14.

However, it seems that breadcrumbs had been strongly placed in the back of my mind. Every now and then my yellow-walled room would disappear, giving way to a room with mustard colored walls and a tiny window that looked out over a deep chasm. When I discovered Madame Blavatsky and Theosophy at age 13, I encountered a strong blast of the “music” I associated with the Himalayan night school. Five years later, when I learned the Ishayas’ Ascension meditation practice, it was as if all of the tonal impressions of the night school were present and blaring. Later, when I arrived at a small, mist-shrouded Ashram in the town of Neskowin, Oregon, it was as if I could almost touch that Himalayan astral space, as if it was superimposed onto the people and place I had just found.

In my late teens, most of my night school activities had shifted to a large floating city, high above Geneva Lake, just miles from my bedroom. Most of my life I had interpreted these night school experiences as dreams. However, two people that I knew in person- the great psychic Walter Matthew Brown and my shaman-teacher Austin- spoke to me about the floating city. Austin went further, claiming to have enjoyed a lecture that I presented on the botany of the future- the day after I woke up from a dream of presenting the lecture in the floating city. What struck me was that I mentioned nothing of my experiences to Walter or Austin. Through all of my life I had interpreted these nocturnal activities as dreams, but it was at this point, that I realized that many if not all of these were truly night time journeys in my astral body.

These journeys have continued to the present, and were especially prevalent during my 6 year tenure living in an Ishaya ashram on the Oregon coast. Something that I’ve always found interesting is that from my first recollections as a baby to the present time, my astral body has remained largely the same- I look like I did in this life at about age 23- a big mane of long curly blond hair, sometimes shirtless- sometimes wearing a silver-white garment, bluish or golden light coloring my skin, wearing a Greek skirt, often with a sword- not so different from a Spartan in 300. So, if you have been an attendee of these “night schools” and remember someone like that, perhaps we’ve met! Seriously though, do let me know if we’ve met at one of these places- or if I keep popping into your dreams in ways that I don’t seem to be a product of your unconscious mind.

While I think these experiences have had numerous positive and expansive effects on my life and the lives of others who have had them, I can’t help but differ with the OBE teachers who frame OBEs (and NDEs for that matter) as some kind of panacea or as the essential key to happiness and Enlightenment. I’ve known more than a few frequent astral travelers who persist as egomaniacs. A much more reliable keystone for unfolding into Enlightenment- but still no panacea- is a deep and solid meditation practice. For many of us, myself included, said meditation practice may end up providing us with an even more elusive happening- the In-The-Body-Experience.

Offerings and Events

Meditation, Magic, Prayer, and Manifestation- a 5-week class, meeting Sundays from July 5th- August 2nd- 6pm to 8pm UK time.

Within this class, we’ll be immersing in practices of meditation and prayer from both the Hindu and mystical Christian traditions, using mantras and prayer-forms in an effortless way, in addition to practicing with malas/rosaries. We will also delve into the ways in which meditation practice strongly dovetails with magic, synchronicity, and manifestation. This facet of the course will be informed by the experiences of my life, the great mystics I have known, and insights mined from the lives and teachings of such figures as Hildegard of Bingen, Neville Goddard, Carl Jung, and Paramahansa Yogananda.

If you enter the class without a solid meditation practice, you will certainly gain at least one or two everyday practices during the five weeks.

The early bird rate is $175 USD, which is open until June 30th. After that, the regular course fee will be $200.00. There is also a sliding scale option in which you pick a price that works for you, as we never turn people away for a lack of funds. If you’d like to pay on the sliding scale, whether less or more, that can be done through PayPal, Zelle, or direct bank transfer.

Here is the sign-up link.

Summer Solstice Gathering and Meditation- Sunday, June 21st, 6pm-7:30pm UK time.

Bring a delicious beverage, find a comfortable spot to relax, and invite the fae, for we shall ring in the Solstice together. I’ll be sharing a variety of solar, warming, and fire mantras on this day associated with the Sun’s zenith in the northern hemisphere.

The regular fee is 33 USD, though we also operate on a sliding scale. If you would like to join, here is the sign-up link.

Open Circle Gathering- July 11th- 10am to 12pm Pacific Time

I once again have the joy of presenting to the online Open Circle community.

When the mind settles into Silence, the heart opens to the great mystery hidden everywhere in plain sight. The formless takes the form of Love, melting the barrier between self and world, reconnecting us to primordial Wholeness. This Wholeness is like a song that is already playing within. Every moment of life- sublime or awful- can be experienced as a flowing wholeness.

We’ll practice an effortless way of melting into wholeness: easeful mantra practice. Instead of using mantras like cudgels and performing meditation as chore, effortless practice opens into the natural delightfulness of meditation. Using Shakti Bija mantras in a gentle manner is a means of letting Presence move through us like a song; praying until we become the prayer. Woven into shared practice will be time for questions, answers, and conversation.

Here is the link for registration.

About Me

I am a gardener, meditation teacher, and an astrologer. You can find more information about my vocations through my websites: www.ascension-meditation.com and www.awakenedlightastrology.com. I also have a youtube channel, which is currently getting less attention than the garden.

This is perhaps only the second time that I’ve shared this publicly in writing, and the first time I made sure that it wasn’t particularly public. For all the weird stuff that I regularly share, one would think that I’d have no hesitancy in sharing anything, but I am hesitant, and here I go anyways.

In the summer of 1995, while listening to the drums of the yearly “Honor the Firekeepers” pow-wow of the Potawatomi nation, I fell easily and comfortably to sleep in my little bedroom in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I tended to have magical dreams the nights of the pow-wow and had been looking forward to it. A sleep that should have lasted into the morning was interrupted by a sharp and intense pain on the side of my head. It felt as if something hard was trying to push itself into my temple. My first thought was, “I’m far too young and healthy to be having a stroke. Is this a stroke?” My second thought was to look in the direction of the pain. Turning toward my window I was astonished to find what looked like two grey aliens floating in the air just outside my second story window. The area between the houses was well lit due to my neighbor’s motion sensor floodlight being activated. These were solid beings that cast a shadow.

From one of the floating beings I saw a spiral of energy projecting from its head toward mine. It looked like the heat waves you see on top of asphalt on a hot summer day. The other grey kept tapping the window pane with its finger, seemingly confused that its finger would not pass through the glass. The sound the glass made was yet another element that added to the real sense of the situation.

Seeing all of this, I understood that the pain in my head was not being caused by a stroke but was the product of the alien attempting to get into my head. My alarm was transformed into anger, and from that anger two blasts of energy flew out of my stomach and my forehead at the alien. Its telepathic wave ceased and the pain in my head stopped. Still pissed off, and thinking that a good defense might be a good offense, I decided to telepathically barge my way into its head- and mind you- I had never barged into another being’s head before. But since I’d never seen two grey aliens floating outside my window, I was up for some improvising. What happened next was equally strange.

Without consciously knowing how to do it, my consciousness shot out of my head, and into the head of the grey alien. I proceeded to angrily rearrange some of its neuronal wiring, but then I found myself enter its mind field. My little room was completely gone. I now found my awareness (I didn’t look to see if I had an astral body or any body) in a cavernous space with hexagonal geometries connecting countless points of awareness. It reminded me of some kind of hyperdimensional bee-hive. I realized that these beings were organized in some kind of vast networked consciousness.

I decided that I wanted to talk with the manager. Spontaneous thoughts flowed through my telepathic stream- older thoughts than my age. I told them that they “were breaking our agreement” and that “just because I was now in a different body, and it has been tens of thousands of years of linear time, I still had the same soul signature” and “security fields”- evidenced by their inability to move into my mind or my house- and that their attempt to do so was the work of “completely incompetent amateurs.” I told them very firmly that I was not to be bothered again in this lifetime. After several seconds a detached, somewhat clinical response came from what felt like the faraway center of the cavernous bee hive. “You are absolutely right. Our apologies. It won’t happen again.” At that, I was back in my body, still staring down these two grey aliens floating on the outside of my window. A few seconds later they started to float up into the sky. I watched them until they disappeared into the darkness.

I pinched myself, slapped my limbs and moved around the room, touching the furniture pieces, as if those were good reality tests. My neighbor’s motion light that had been turned on was now off. I was clearly awake. I’d never taken any drugs, and even though I had plenty of strange experiences, I didn’t seem to be prone to delusions. It wasn’t that late at night. My sister had music playing in her room, which was a very usual occurrence. I could hear the sound of Letterman or Leno wafting upstairs from the family room- another regular ritual of my parents. Apart from the weirdness that I had just experienced, everything was absolutely normal. Because I had never heard of aliens floating, I filed the experience into a kind of junk drawer, not ready to assign reality or unreality to it, essentially treating it like a dream even though I was absolutely certain of being fully awake. Plus, my grand future political ambitions meant I had to be careful about what weird stories to share and with whom. I told this to no one for nearly 30 years. A few ghost stories add some interesting color, but floating grey aliens would be beyond the pale. I never repressed the experience. It was always there, I just never brought it out of the drawer.

Years later, while watching and reading abductee accounts (some of them connected to John Mack’s research) and discovered that floating grey aliens, telepathic control, and greys passing through walls were actually common motifs. When I learned this, I took the memory out of the junk drawer and placed it in the regular memory files- one more bit of high strangeness into the already full mix.

I am a gardener, meditation teacher, and an astrologer. You can find more information about my vocations through his websites: www.ascension-meditation.com and www.awakenedlightastrology.com. I also have a youtube channel, which is currently getting less attention than the garden.

A feature of life for the past ten years has been the sense of having many lives occurring all at the same time. Sometimes they can be incredibly immersive, so immersive that, although fully awake and aware, the environment around me can give way completely to the world of the memory or the vision. Other times, it can feel as if I am experiencing two or more lives all at the same time.

One day, while sitting down to relax, this vision streamed out from my heart: I seem to be in my 50’s and am dressed in a kind of tunic. I walk over to my desk by the window. It looks outside onto a beautiful little garden, with a smaller lawn, surrounded by a thin border of trees. I have a brown robe that I wear. I’m a kind of monk. In fact, I love being a monk. I love praying and meditating and gardening and reading the beautiful words of the ancients and the living luminaries. I have no problem with celibacy, even as I think it too restrictive and unnecessary. I love working as a spiritual director for monks and priests and lay people. There’s a sense of honey like bliss in my heart and in my head almost all the time. It wasn’t always like that, but years of prayer and service and grace made my inner garden bloom in this way. The sense of Love is almost overwhelming.

There’s something different about today. I’ve sent off all of my important letters in the morning. I tidied my desk last night while listening to music. I burned a special candle from a pilgrimage site. When I greeted the sun this morning, I had the sense this might be my last sunrise, and so it might be the most beautiful I’ve seen. I’m so thankful for this life.

I’ll remember this moment in another life when I’m born as Thomas Howell from Wisconsin in the late 20th century, and I get to be a monk with the odd name of Ishtar. He’ll be surprised by the amount of gratitude from being allowed to speak monastic vows in a simple ceremony. This moment and others from other lives - the Atlantean Temple, speaking with friends in ancient Italy by the sea, farming in many guises, working with stone, dying in battles, learning and teaching in an Ashram in ancient India, garden parties with Theosophists in the UK- will briefly stream through his mind, connected to each other as if they were all iterations of the same event, because they are, and, the same honey like fullness will return for him too in the same manner. And, with that, the vision receded and my living room with the high ceilings returned.

In 2017, I began to experience a deep sense of oneness with the world, which coincided with my crown chakra opening and so many very tangible healings and releases throughout my body and my subtle bodies. At the same time, what were once brief intermittent flashes of other lives and other times became extremely immersive and would last for minutes and even hours. This phenomena became so intense that I took to wearing a wool winter hat on my head while driving to dampen the effect and insure personal and public safety- and it worked like a charm.

As much as I loved Portland, Oregon, for years I had wondered why exactly I was living there. Then, the answer to that question started to arrive. As I walked down the streets of my happening neighborhood, I would find the scenes of life in an ancient Roman town and medieval Tuscany superimposed on the entire scene. I started to realize that many of the people I knew in Portland I had known in those places, both significant and tertiary relationships. For instance, while buying Snapple from the guy at the convenience store, I experienced a small talk conversation in both Latin and English, and saw the man’s present face and previous face.

More significantly, I remembered that my boss/carpentry teacher and my most significant client had previously been close relationships as soldiers and builders. In that same period, while working in that clients back garden I sat down at a table to repot some flowers, noted the strange habitual position of my hands as if I am about to play the piano, and was transported into a body sitting at a very old and beautiful wooden piano, in a room with high wooden ceilings and large candelabras, and the feeling of about 60 people sitting behind me, quietly waiting for me to begin playing. I had buckle shoes and stockings and lace around my wrists. I could smell the oil that preserved the wood. I could hear the breath of the small crowd behind me. I could feel the wonderful concentration of my mind. In a flash I realized that the man who was paying me to compose and perform music was in this life employing me to take care of his beautiful garden. With that realization, the scene dissolved and I was again in the back garden.

Something I gleaned while slipping into these “other lives” was that my experiences of Samadhi in this life found their way into all of them, and that my experiences of Samadhi in the other lives affected this one. Profound healing seems to ripple through network of lives. I’ve had several experiences when I have felt my current self soothe another life at the moment of death, and have felt another nervous system’s profoundly developed sense of forgiveness translate into this life, which can always use more patience. Sitting here in my green chair, I feel a ripple of love echoing back and forth between all of these lives, all of them happening at the same time, emanating from the same Wholeness, one Self living one Life through a thousand faces.

My Vocations:

If you are interested in learning deep and effortless meditation, check out my meditation website. I also work as an intuitive astrologer, giving words to the unique archetypal patterns found within our births. For a reading, here’s my astrological website.

Upcoming Events:

Beginning in July, I’ll be offering a 5 part class in meditation, prayer, and magic. Details to be determined shortly.

Imagine being immersed in a pool of safety and wholeness that soaks so deeply into you, that in so doing, it dissolves the fears, grudges, and hard knots that are the building blocks of your psychological suffering. And, as those dissolve, a river of joy and clarity and peace floods into the space left behind. Of the many gifts of meditation practice, this is one of the loveliest.

There’s an invisible weight that nearly every human being who has lived has carried, and this weight hasn’t been one of the necessary pains of life, it has been purely extracurricular. Apart from certain moments of clarity and relaxation, you barely knew this weight had been there, and as those moments passed, the knowledge of the weight was lost.

Imagine waking up one day, and it is as if this 50 pound sack of potatoes- that had affected every part of one’s life, including most conspicuously, one’s basic sense of identity- had been removed.

Perhaps it stays off for good. Maybe you live a few hours or a few days or a few months like that, and then the weight comes back, but it is never quite as heavy and never quite as believable as it had been for all of those years.

And then, little by little, it comes off, so gradual that its imperceptible until singular moments of contrast arise that signal that we aren’t living in Kansas anymore, and the weight that was once ubiquitous to the point of inconspicuous, is now the fuzzy memory of a strange dream.

That’s the wonderful positive risk of immersing in Samadhi. Things just fall off without you even noticing it. You might be practicing while immersed in the fabric of a busy life in a busy city, catching a couple hours of meditation practice per day, and some morning at the grocery store it becomes apparent that you and the hash browns and the people and the tables are all just emanations of the same love-soaked Presence.

How to soak the tension off? I can’t disagree with the statement that “Enlightenment is an accident, and spiritual practice makes us accident prone.” It is all a ripening process, a process of relaxing, relaxing, and relaxing some more until enough existential tension falls away that people call it Enlightenment.

Apart from having an effective tool for ripening- of which Ascension Meditation is an excellent example, I tend to think that consistency is the most important element in the ripening process. A little bit of ripening activity every day is far more effective than a whole bunch happening during one or two days in a week, or an intense 10-day retreat with nothing else going on around it. Anywhere between one and four hours of practice a day does absolute wonders. I’ve been very privileged to witness so many amazing transformations in the last 24 years of serious practice, including my own. As Maharishi Patanjali wrote in the first Pada of his Yoga Sutras, “To the intensely vehement, soon.”

Communing with the Goddess: Sarasvati

May 31st, 6-8pm UK time

Sarasvati moves us into Wholeness through sublime wisdom and intelligence. Sarasvati is the Goddess of language, music, art, intelligence. Once upon a time, her river was mighty, the great flowing heart of the Harappan civilization, the river which nurtured the hymns of the Rg Veda, and then she dried out, but the spiritual stream of Sarasvati is still very much flowing.

This class is one in a series of short classes focused on communing with the Great Goddess in Her many forms. Through the whole series we will be exploring several facets of the Mother through meditation practice, satsang, and a dive into their particular mythos. We will approach Sarasvati through her Bija mantras and her name mantras. Group practice will be balanced with conversation, and times for questions.

My life has been rich with the energies of Sarasvati, my own Shakti strongly flavored by her energy. And my beloved mother, Candace, was at the essence level, part Durga/Kali and part Sarasvati.

The course fee is a sliding scale from 11 to 44 USD, while no one is turned away for lack of funds. Additionally, paying more than what I ask to support my sliding scale practice is deeply appreciated, as it supports those who can only pay less or can’t pay anything at all. For paying sliding scale rates, Paypal, Zelle, and Bank Transfers are good options. For that information, please send me an email.

Here’s the regular course link.

Wednesday Meditation- I’ll be resuming the Wednesday group meditations at 6pm UK time. Attendance is free or by donation. These are for those who have learned the Ascension practice with me or someone else. If you’d like to join in, let me know, as I am currently sending the invitations out from a gmail account. Soon, we will also be hosting an open group meditation on a different day.

Saturday, May 30th- Online Group Meditation with Luna
If you are interested, my wife Luna is hosting a group meditation. Here is the link to her website.

Other Internet Portals of my Work:

www.youtube.com/ishtarhowell

www.awakenedlightastrology.com

One of the joys of or time in Rishikesh was meditating in Tat Wale Baba’s cave. I have been fascinated by the late Saivite yogi-saint since I first read about him on a Transcendental Meditation history blog some 15-20 years ago. For those unfamiliar, Tat Wale Baba had been a soldier who, after taking a man’s life in combat, felt so horrified by the act, that he immediately decided to adopt the life of a renunciate and ultimately made his way to the hills above Rishikesh, where he lived in a very humble cave-ashram surrounded by the lush jungles of the Garwhal Himalayas.

The cave isn’t huge, but the Presence emanating from the whole place is vast and quiet. The room in front of the cave has a place for Pujas and now boasts a painted sculpture of Tat Wale Baba in meditative pose. The statue is a very Indian combination of genuinely charged with the energy of those who visit and extremely kitschy. To the side of the puja room is a small and fairly dry and comfortable cave. As soon as I sat down against the back wall I was tapped into a meditative space of brightness and clarity. Meditating in the cave was Luna, our friend Yogi Amar Nath, and myself, but to me it felt like at least one other person was with us. I kept feeling someone about two feet to my left, and was graced with an inner vision of Tat Wale Baba sitting with us in meditation.

A large part of Baba’s mystique was his physical prowess and appearance. In his 70’s or 80’s, or perhaps older if one really takes the mythic stories seriously, he had the appearance of a much younger man and regularly exercised by pushing large boulders around. His hair went down below his feet, requiring attendants to carry it behind him at public events. Looking into his pictures, he comes off as wild in every way.

One story that was related to me by my friend Jerry Freeman- a longtime TM meditator- was of a young seeker who had visited Tat Wale Baba some time in the 60’s or early 70’s, when Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was running Teacher Training courses just down the road. The young seeker walked into Tat Wale Baba’s cave only to find that it was filled with Cobras, which wasn’t bothering Baba one bit. In fact, he was apparently talking to them, gently telling them that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was his friend and asking them not to bite any of Maharishi’s students- a truly amazing happening. Not knowing anything of the fellow who visited the cave, I can’t comment on the truth of such stories.

A story that is more certain is that Baba knew how he would die and who would kill him, mentioning it twice offhandedly well before the incident and in the weeks leading up to it. He ended up being shot by a neighbor who had aspirations of being a well-visited world famous Guru, and was jealous of all the students who sought out the presence of Tat Wale Baba. It was also relayed to me that Baba was very much fine with being shot, considering it a fair payment for the life he took in his previous life as a soldier.

After meditating in the cave, we came out into the Puja room, offered more bows to the altar, and headed out to Baba’s Samadhi. We walked up the path to the mountain stream and the pool where he Baba used to bath. Yogi Amar Nath mentioned that we might encounter a leopard enjoying the clean waters of the pool, and that he had once before. It is a wild and alive place. It’s a place for wild yogis and feral mystics. If you need to get away from the crowded commercialism of Rishikesh, come here and soak in the energies of a great mystic who may be dead, but is still very much alive and present.

Upcoming Events- May 23rd and May 24th Ascension Meditation First Sphere

This is a weekend course learning my primary effortless meditation practice of the past 24 years: Ascension meditation. I can’t be thankful enough to have encountered this practice in January of 2002. I had been a High School ascetic, pushing myself with fasting, cold showers, Zen and concentration practices, and waking up at 3am. Every now and then, after hours of practice, and probably due to exhaustion, I would fall into the most wonderful absolute silence.

Practice was producing results, some of them very interesting and useful. Some of them perhaps not so useful! When I learned Ascension, I found myself in as deep a state of consciousness as during my NDE of five years before, and very quickly deeper still. Within a year, Samadhi became a regular conscious experience with the eyes closed and with the eyes open in the flow of work. Within a couple of years, after a great deal of nervous system healing, that Silence became a consistent experience.

The course runs from 4pm to 8:30 pm (Portugal/UK timezone) on both days. We’ll flow between meditation practice, conversations on the multi-layered evolution of consciousness, and time for questions and answers.

This special price for this course is 222 USD or a sliding scale donation. We don’t turn students away for lack of money. And, if you’ve already learned the practice, attendance is free. To pay on the sliding scale system, you can simply send a course fee by PayPal and an email letting me know that you’ve signed up. If PayPal doesn’t work, Zelle or Bank Transfers are also options.

Here’s the link the course.

From 2008 until 2014, I was in and out of a dark night of the soul, relatively adrift and sleepy when compared with the years before and the years immediately after, but every now and then, in those years, the clarity burst out, likely when someone else needed it or my soul really needed to fulfill a role in the play of another’s life.

One such time came at Portland’s Cartopia Food Cart pod, a regular haunt during those years- oh, how I miss Pyro Pizza! As the seating was communal, a few people came to share the picnic table with my friend and I. We exchanged some pleasantries. One of them was a British fellow, traveling through the United States. I looked into his eyes and had a vision of a black blues musician in a sepia-toned photo. I had a sense of a short life. Robert Johnson roared through my mind. In fact, the face of Robert Johnson seemed to be overlaying the face of this young British fellow.

This all became so intense that I had to talk about it. I asked him, “pardon me, this may sound odd, but do you feel particularly connected to the Delta Blues musician Robert Johnson? Whenever I look at you, he comes to mind.”

His face lit up completely. Apparently he was so obsessed with Robert Johnson that he had traveled to the US to learn and play Delta Blues and had a large tatfoo on his arm that was covered by the shirt. He asked how the hell I knew, and I told him that I used to be quite psychic, and every now and then, the old skills come back. It was a joy to see him beaming. The space between us crackled with that same old veil-thinned electricity and Presence.

It was soon time to go. And, like a good wizard, I was able to initiate some high strangeness and quickly step out. I have no idea whether I was picking up on his Robert Johnson obsession or if I was recognizing Mr. Johnson reincarnated in a life that looked like it might just be a whole lot easier than the short life lived in Jim Crow era Mississippi.

Upcoming Events and Courses

Communing with Kali: the Great Dark Mother, May 17th, 6pm to 8:30pm UK time

This class is one in a series of short classes focused on communing with the Great Goddess in Her many forms. The first June class will focus on Matangi- Sarasvati’s tantric form.

Through the whole series we will be exploring several facets of the Mother through meditation practice, satsang, and a dive into the mythos. We will approach Kali through her Bija mantras and her name mantras. Group practice will be balanced with conversation, and times for questions. I’ll also share some of my personal experience with Kali throughout my life.

This course will be one of the more personally meaningful of the series, because Kali is one of my Ishta Devatas- those aspects of the Divine with which we are the most connected. Kali, or the Black Madonna, is and has always been one of my Mothers.

The course fee is a sliding scale from 11 to 44 USD, and no one is turned away for lack of funds

Here’s the link.

Ascension Meditation First Sphere via Zoom- May 23rd and 24th 4-8:30pm UK time.

This is a weekend course learning the effortless practice that is Ascension meditation. This meditation practice is essentially cheating at sadhana- an insult to my midwestern need for wonderful boons to come with great difficulty. If you want a slower path, do not do this practice.

The course runs from 4pm to 8:30 pm (Portugal/UK timezone) on both days. We’ll flow between meditation practice, conversations on the multi-layered evolution of consciousness, and time for questions and answers.

Sign up Link.

I remember the micro-moment of being absolutely certain that I was about to die in a car accident- a large Lincoln moving at high speed just about to crash into us. I was 13 years old. For several years death had been what I was most afraid of. Reaching that moment, instead of panic, I was surprised to discover blissful relief, not because I was sick of being alive, but because at 13, with a good and relatively easy life with no major traumas, I was already exhausted from maintaining an identity, and I didn’t even really know it until the last moment. Such ill-fitting costumes we’ve been convinced to drag around, and most of the time we didn’t even know we were wearing them, nor do we know how constrictive they are.

Like many people who’ve gone through a near death experience, I had a life-review, the entire life in complete detail and then some played out in an unimaginably short period of earthly time. In my life review, it became clear that since the age of 7, there had really been very few moments in which I had actually been really truly fully alive, fully there, living with only the thinnest of self-reflective filters. I had simply been sleepwalking in a world of other sleepwalkers. And, when the tape of a short life was over, there I was, finally fully Here as the curtain was about to close, and not just in a car in a 13 year old body in Wisconsin; I felt myself in all times and all places. Every moment of my life and the moments of so many other lives was somehow right there. It seemed like all time was happening right there. On top of that, I consciously knew that this infinite awareness had been there- typically in the background- every moment of life.

In the days, weeks, and months after the NDE, I would walk around, mouth agape, seeing the people of my town as vast beings crammed inside small bodies. This cramping wasn’t due to a fault in the material world itself. Nature had never been so beautiful. All of nature was perceived as free and vibrantly alive, and every now and then I would encounter a human who did not seem to be sleepwalking. The constriction I noticed was wholly caused by the adoption of the self- referencing self as the central locus of identity. Under the weight of this psychological construction, everyone appeared like 100 foot tall golden angels stuffed inside 6 inch egos.

It is wholly possible- and largely preferable!- to back-engineer the most significant aspects of a near death experience through meditation practice. I was completely charmed by the Ishayas’ Ascension practice partly because it took me to the same depths of Silence as a transformative NDE in the first few minutes of practice. That is not the experience of most people, nor did that crazy depth last for me. It took a couple years of solid practice to bring about a fairly consistent experience of a deep silence alongside daily life.

With any good meditation practice, one takes the same pathway into the place where the personality melts into the soul and the soul melts into an indescribable Wholeness. It is certainly true that not all NDE’s involve a conscious immersion into an Infinite Silence (in fact some NDE’s are even awful and hellish), but my own NDE and those of many others did involve a merging with a totality. Like these sorts of NDEs, Samadhi dissolves the tensions and barriers that block us from the experience of our True Nature- and through that dissolution they reveal the bliss, contentment, and peace that come with flowing along with the river of life.

Coming Events and Courses

Meditating with Ganesha- May 9th- 6-8:30 PM UK time- via Zoom

An early memory from my childhood involved the comforting presence of an elephant-headed being dancing in my bedroom. It was a night in which I was frightened by ghosts, and prayed for help. Years later, after learning about Ganesha, I figured that I may have just encountered Ganesha.

Ganesha is a great patron of scholars and writers and all those involved in creative undertakings. He is a great lord of Mantras: lover of knowledge and wisdom and joviality. A great patron of sacred language. In this class we’ll be exploring the living presence of Ganesha through his myths and mantras.

The course fee is done on a sliding scale from $11 until $44. The course will also be recorded for those who would like to join, but can’t attend at that time.

Here is a link to the sign-up page.

Ascension- First Sphere Course via Zoom- May 23rd and 24th- 4pm to 8:30 pm UK time.

This is a weekend course learning the effortless practice that is Ascension meditation. This is the practice that most effectively brought me into Samadhi, and has been my primary practice since 2002. The course runs from 4pm to 8:30 pm (Portugal/UK timezone) on both days. We’ll flow between meditation practice, conversations on the multi-layered evolution of consciousness, and time for questions and answers.

If you sign up by May 14th, the early bird rate is $222.00. After that, the regular fee for this course is $250.00 USD, free for those repeating. We also have a sliding scale option as we don’t turn students away for lack of money. To pay on the sliding scale system, you can simply send a course fee by PayPal and an email letting me know that you’ve signed up. If PayPal doesn’t work, Zelle or Bank Transfers are also options.

Here is the sign-up link.

I also have a Youtube channel. Please subscribe, the fate of the Universe depends on it!

No part of this post was produced by AI :)

After a month hosting a meditation retreat and pilgrimage at the foot of Arunachala in Tamil Nadu, the Mideast War delayed our return to Portugal. This delay became a happy temporary exile in Rishikesh, in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand. You probably are very familiar with Rishikesh as the “world capital of yoga” or the place where the Beatles, Donovan, Mike Love, and the Farrows came on TM retreat with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968, a retreat that gave us much of the Beatles White Album.

As was the case the last time we visited, at the top of the list of our favorite spots in Rishikesh were the caves down by the Ganges: the Vasishtha Cave and the Arundhati Cave, which is also referred to as the Jesus Cave. If there’s really a point to this writing, it is to get yourself over to these caves if you A) enjoy meditating in caves, B) enjoy going to India, and C) have the resources to make such a trip.

The Vashishtha Guha (cave)

Named after Sage Vashishtha, the mythic teacher of Rama and one of the Saptarshi (Seven Sages) of Hinduism, this cave is very dark in the most wonderful ways, both actually and figuratively. I was drawn very quickly into a deep internal silence. Deep, deep, deep. Dark as the most beautiful aspect of Tamas guna, but purified Tamas guna, the “Sat” of “Satchitananda.” The door to Samadhi presented itself as a black hole. It felt instantly like having the most wonderful weighted blanket placed on my nervous system.

And then fun of a different sort began.

Above that wonderful dark depth, visions arose and streams of images appeared, both in my inner vision and in my physical vision when I would open my eyes. First, the opposite wall of the cave seemed to give way to some kind of endless tunnel. This also happened in 2023, the last time I had been in this cave. Then, corkscrewing vortices began to appear, which after a few seconds seemed to be swiftly moving celestial beings, that had a snakelike quality to them. I’m reminded of the account found in one of Sri M’s books linking this cave with the mythical Nagas.

Whatever is happening, this cave feels as if one could have some kind of underworld initiation occur. There are some energetics in there that made me feel uncomfortable in a way that I enjoy. There’s something about that cave that is actively scraping my psychic barnacles out. It’s a great sandbox for shamans. For me, it’s a place that seems to really work the root, crown, and third eye chakras, but I assume it will work whatever channels need it at the time or whatever channels are most resonant for a given person.

On another layer of vision I was watching a long time lapse of thousands of people walking into the cave and meditating. This was like watching a tape rewind. Several of the people appeared to stay for years on end. Clothing styles changed considerably! After these movies finished, I was able to again enjoy a beautiful weighted silence for a few minutes until a very loud party entered the cave, signaling my own subsequent exit.

Obviously, all of these experiences are of the energetic terrain are deeply subjective and potentially very idiosyncratic. I’d be very interested to hear the accounts of others who have enjoyed time in these caves.

The Arundhati/Jesus Cave

Only a short walk down the rocky beach (around 5 minutes walking slowly) from Vasishtha’s cave is the Arundhati Cave, named in honor of Vasishta’s wife. It came to also be known as the Jesus cave after two different swamis- Papa Ramdas * and Swami Rama Tirtha- had visions of Jesus while they were residing in the cave. Because of this, people have further speculated that Isha himself spent time meditating in the cave during his Lost Years.

Because it is significantly more open to daylight and has a view of the Ganga in the distance, this cave has a much lighter feel than the Vashishtha cave. But, it may also have something to do with the types of people who have imprinted their energy into walls through long hours of meditation. While it shared the wonderful weighty silence with the Vashishtha cave, the energy in the Arundhati cave was much more bubbly and uplifting, as if someone has poured champagne into one’s crown chakra. In this cave it felt as if someone was actively pulling pranic streams up and out of my spine. There’s something very soft in the Jesus cave, something that is massaging my heart from the inside out. I could sleep for days here, resting in the arms of the Goddess. Unlike the Vashistha Cave, which I would want to use for vision quests, I would absolutely love to live full time in this cave.

As of this writing, both of these caves are probably under-visited compared to the other sites around Rishikesh, which is a marvelous thing. If you are staying in near the Tapovan area of Rishikesh, you should be able to hire a driver for a half day’s rate of 3,000 rupees. I recommend going right when they open at 8 in the morning on a weekday, and don’t at all recommend visiting on a weekend day or even a Friday, because the traffic back into Rishikesh will take forever. If you do visit at 8 am, you’ll have a good chance of having a private cave for 90 minutes to 2 hours, as most of the yoga groups seem to roll in between 10 am and 11am. I recommend going first to the Vasishtha cave because it is the first one you’ll reach and is more well known than the Arundhati/Jesus cave. Once you are finished in there, head to the beach, turn right and in five minutes enjoy the next cave. At the end, it’s a very pleasant thing to head to the Ganga and enjoy the very natural boulder seating.

* In his 1934 book “In the Vision of God”, Papa Ramdas recounted his vision of Jesus in the cave. His account was that Ram directed him to find the Vashishtha Gufa, which at the time was only a myth. Heading north up the Ganga, he eventually found it occupied by a Swami who directed him to stay the night in a smaller cave nearby. In that cave, he had a vision of Jesus.

Upcoming Events:

Meditating with Ganesha- May 9th- 6-8:30 PM UK time- via Zoom

An early memory from my childhood involved the comforting presence of an elephant-headed being dancing in my bedroom. It was a night in which I was frightened by ghosts, and prayed for help. Years later, after learning about Ganesha, I figured that I may have just encountered Ganesha.

Ganesha is a great patron of scholars and writers and all those involved in creative undertakings. He is a great lord of Mantras: lover of knowledge and wisdom and joviality. A great patron of sacred language. In this class we’ll be exploring the living presence of Ganesha through his myths and mantras.

Here is a link to the sign-up page.

Ascension- First Sphere Course via Zoom- May 23rd and 24th- 4pm to 8:30 pm UK time.

This is a weekend course learning the effortless practice that is Ascension meditation. This is the practice that most effectively brought me into Samadhi, and has been my primary practice since 2002. The course runs from 4pm to 8:30 pm (Portugal/UK timezone) on both days. We’ll flow between meditation practice, conversations on the multi-layered evolution of consciousness, and time for questions and answers.

If you sign up by May 5th, the early bird rate is $222.00. After that, the regular fee for this course is $250.00 USD, free for those repeating. We also have a sliding scale option as we don’t turn students away for lack of money. To pay on the sliding scale system, you can simply send a course fee by PayPal and an email letting me know that you’ve signed up. If PayPal doesn’t work, Zelle or Bank Transfers are also options.

Here is the sign-up link.

Monthly Group Reiki Transmission with Sundari

Would you like to receive gentle energetic support as we move into the month of May? I’ll be sending out Reiki from our home back in Portugal.

Please note that there’s no Zoom link for this event. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing—including sleeping—just be open to receiving.

Here is the link.

Above: my old friend Austin, pictured on the right.

Here’s another rich and strange campfire tale of “psychic Lake Geneva” and my old friend and shamanic teacher Austin. When I was a teenager, I had to wear a clear plastic retainer, and I lost it all the time, which would lead to frantic searches. This is where my friend named Austin comes into the story, who claimed to be a “walk-in” and at whose house I had some wild mystical experiences. Any time that I couldn’t find the damn thing I would call him, and he would tell me exactly where it was in my house, like Edgar Cayce finding patent medicines in the back of Ohio drugstore cabinets.

The brilliant thing is, he’d never been to my house, nor had I ever described the contents or arrangement of my house to him, and I never lost it in the same place twice. Once he told me that it was “under the blue couch that is against the north wall of your TV room, near the left front leg, in the pile of magazines.” On the north wall of my TV room was indeed a blue couch that had a stack of magazines next to the left front leg. I looked, but couldn’t find it. I went back to the phone to tell him, and in co(s)mic exasperation he said, “no, no, no, you have to look inside the magazine! It’s hidden in the Newseek! For such a hard worker, you are so lazy!” I went back to the Newsweek and there it was exactly as he had said.

This kind of interaction must have happened around 10 times. Sometimes when I would call him (and I frequently called for reasons other than retainer rescue) he would just start by telling me where the retainer was currently located before I ever got to the question and there it was. Once I had left it on the shelf in my refrigerator, next to the apple juice, and he sent me right there- accompanied with my incredulous protests!

My rather busy neurotic teenage brain never fully appreciated the ramifications of it all! Even as something of an amateur parapsychologist, I never really took it for definitive proof of such abilities, as I was simply so focused on finding the thing!

I once asked him the precise mechanism for how he was finding the retainer. Initially he told me that he was simply connecting to his “guidance.” I asked him to elaborate further. For Austin, his Guidance was a consciousness above his head that he referred to as both a singular wholeness and a plurality- probably the reason why he was fascinated with the Hebrew word Elohim. He would simply send a question up through his crown, and an answer would descend into his mind. I found this fascinating because one of the elements I was aware of while he was actively helping me was a distinctly pleasant ticklish feeling at the top of my head.

Before I could ask him if I could master the same process he told me, “Of course you can, you do it all the time.” Unconvinced of my apparent ability, I asked for some practice to help me deepen the connection, and Austin happily obliged. At the end of cleansing my energetic channels with a piece of kyanite and “breathing through the chakras” (two already established exercises), if I found myself in a deeply quiet place, I was to simply let my attention rest there, and then move my attention to the very top of my head and out. To my surprise, something seemed to open when I would do this, though, it worked much better when I would do it at Austin’s place.

Instead of helping me with finding missing objects this seemed to open me to a pleasant and sometimes intense flow of energy moving down into my head. It also seemed to correlate with subsequent deja vus and instant flashes of knowing into what awaited me in the near or distant future. For instance, I was doing this exercise when I asked the Universe where I’d be in a year and was given a vision of being an 18 year old monk working in a kitchen.

It was only after a longer period of meditation and sadhana that this channel at the top of the head seemed to open up with more regularity and integration with normal activity. Now I understand that my nervous system simply needed to unwind and relax, and that through that process of relaxation, the nadis and chakras of the subtle nervous system would open as and when they needed. When I started to practice the Ishayas’ Ascension meditation, that relaxed opening happened with speed.

To my slight disappointment, finding lost objects has not been a pronounced feature of the information that flows from above the head. Instead, my wife Sundari seems to have a special knack of finding my lost objects.

Offerings

I am a meditation teacher and an intuitive astrologer. For more information on my work, you can check out my websites: Ascension Meditation and Awakened Light Astrology. I also have a youtube channel, which requires me to tend it with more videos.

We recently finished a one month retreat in Tiruvannamalai. We’ll probably be holding another long retreat period there in the future.

I woke up in a dream the other night, in which a female spirit was attempting to seduce me but I wasn't interested. Instead I was attempting to act more as a psychopomp therapist. As soon as she noted my lack of sexual interest, she jumped on me. This partially woke me to my physical reality, and there was indeed some kind of being attempting to have sex with me. This was completely physically palpable. Claw-like spirit hands were attempting to find a way into an astral shielding which I was largely unaware of before. Another being was standing behind me, watching, for what purpose I do not know. Whatever the case, it gave me the shivers.

It immediately came to me to get this entity off of me with some speed. Instead of blasting them off myself, my instinct was to ask for the help of Archangel Michael and his angels to forcefully but compassionately move this entity away to a place where it could ultimately receive some form of help. As soon as I thought this, two fast moving rivers of energy entered my body from the top and the bottom and converged in my torso. My entire body vibrated with a power that was also entirely comfortable and healing. It formed a single strong stream that unclenched the "claws" of this being and sent it and its residual energies up a tall column of light that had appeared just above my body, where it was reluctantly attended to by light-filled beings that appeared in the forms of golden art-deco style angels.

Several of these angels remained and escorted the spirit who was standing behind me. Several other angels went through my room and seemed to be erecting an energetic barrier. An angel invited me to look through the wall. Outside the room, a line of spirits who were apparently waiting to make contact with me, were now also being helped by members of this angelic host.

It had been awhile since such a powerful blast of energy had flowed through my torso. I had begun to doubt my own memories, thinking that perhaps they were far more subtle than I had made them out to be. Had I been fooling myself? Nope. Good heavens, no. It was like the time I had touched the back of an old TV as a teenager and found myself shooting backwards toward the couch.

With the room cleared and the space feeling much more secure, it took me about thirty minutes to shake it off and again relax- just another night in the life of a friendly neighborhood Scorpio monk.

In my Junior Year of High School I had been reading a spiritual book that stressed the importance of the development of a boundless unselfish Love as a means and core reality of spiritual development. Much of the time, meeting the particular definition of this unselfish Love seemed a completely impossible task to me. Not in a million years would I have put myself forward as some kind of ever-full, non-needy, fountain of love. I was desperate, feral, wounded, afraid, and attached. But then, one afternoon it came to me in a sudden flash that if I put forward an intent in that precise moment to live the next day immersed in the field of Love, it would be so. I wholeheartedly aligned with the intent on the spot, though I wouldn’t have placed any bets on that coming to fruition.

Upon waking the next day, both myself and world were completely absorbed in a powerful field of Love, to the degree that there was very little differentiation between the world and I. The Love was so strong that none of my buttons or psychological triggers were at all active. It was so so very bizarre. If there was a day that I could have died from astonishment, this was one of them. If harsh words were spoken to me, while I could hear the negative intent and perceive the configuration of stress that produced them, the whole experience was softened by directly experiencing that all people and things were emanations from this underlying field of Love. What a wondrous day that was. Unfortunately, upon waking the next day, I was rather back to square one! The old familiar mind chatter was back and gone was that wonderful sense of living in the field of love. Fortunately, my sense of humor was very much intact, as I slapped my knee exclaiming, “You idiot! What were you doing! You should’ve asked for more than one day!”

A couple years later, after thousands of hours of meditation, I realized that I had somehow slipped into an especially love-filled flavor of Samadhi. While rare, this was not the only occasion on which a sudden stirring to speak words out or follow an intention would lead to the subsequent realization of the intent. I don’t know why this type of experience has been a pattern, and I don’t need to know. My throat chakra has always been one of the stronger openings and I suspect some grace at play, providing interesting previews into deeper and freer states of being that would later become more consistent experiences.

Rishikesh

I’ve been working on two pieces on Rishikesh. Being here, there is almost so much happening internally and externally, that I want more time to digest it all. Perhaps I’ll push something out the gate tonight or tomorrow. Suffice it to say, underneath the overcommercialism of yoga and all the regular noise of India, this place is brimming with some truly extraordinary energies.

Reading Sale and Links

To commemorate being slightly stuck in India due to the Mideast war I’m running another sale on intuitive astrological readings, 75 minutes for $108. If you are interested in joining in, here is the special link. For all other intuitive and astrological readings, you can head to my astrological website.

And, if you are interested in learning the meditation practices that brought me very quickly into states of abiding Samadhi, here is my meditation website.

It seems that every January I feel deeply connected to my time on the Oregon coast in the 2000’s. It was a time and place, soaked in magic, and something of that time period is flooding into the here and now of the Iberian olive grove.

Long walks on the beach at night, feeling Awareness merging into the Pacific and with the Cosmic Ocean above, the mantric techniques of the Ascension practice and the Rg Veda felt moving under the surface of everything- emanating from Silence, leading back to Silence. Lots of messy stress release and tantrums of a scared and stubborn ego. Missed opportunities. Shedding layers. Practice, practice, practice. Service. Joyful service. The boundaries of self melting into work and meditation. Now, now, now. Strange synchronicities constantly washing up on the shore of life.

Teacher Training- 12 hours a day of closed eyed meditation, in a bunk room with a window only to a hallway. Less a room than the healing chamber of a space ship. A small room that opened up to unfathomable vastness- a Yogi’s cave that bloomed out of a 1930’s era Presbryterian Church building. In that small room, hours floating in Everythingness. Hours floating on the waters of Samadhi. Awake in Presence while asleep. Awake to the Infinite in lucid dreams. Laughing like a maniac at the joy of a wild grinned witnessing consciousness opening into Unity.

Sleeping with the window open, whispered in the salt breeze, nothing is dead, it’s all magic. In deep presence, veils falling away, revealing the sense of all past and future experiences coalesced into the present moment. Such was the heart of living in Lincoln City, on the Oregon Coast. In this life, it wasn’t just a place on the map, but a living school where the soul could come home to the Self, a Shangri La by the waves. And today, for whatever reason, it is very present in my heart. Through tears of joy, thank you. Thank you, Divine Mother <3

Upcoming Events:

In less than one week, we will start a month-long retreat in India. We may have one spot left. If you are interested in coming, here’s the link- please do get in touch.

March 14th and 15th- Ascension Meditation First Sphere Over Zoom- It’s been awhile since I taught one of these weekends over zoom. If you are keen to learn one of the most magical and effective practices I’ve ever encountered, here’s the link.

Intuitive Astrology Readings-

This is one of my other lines of work. If you enjoy insight into the music of your soul, and the lessons of this lifetime, you’ll enjoy these sessions. Please get in touch and/or check out my website.