Tag: Panache Desai

Midpoint 2012: Evolving at the Speed of Light

My experience of the long-prophesied and much-talked-about year 2012 has thus far been beyond anything I could have imagined even six months ago. The prevailing feeling has been of infinite possibility and limitless expansion. I have a heightened sense of my own ongoing transformation, day to day, even minute to minute. What I once considered impossible or unlikely (learning how to dissolve pain or fear) has flowed easily into the realm of my own experience. I am evolving, and it’s happening so fast that I am aware that I am evolving. And I’m not alone.

Forget Charles Darwin—this is super-evolution, 2012 style, and no one gets left behind! It is a collective evolution wherein we are all expanding into the improbable and impossible—into our wildest dreams materializing in physical form. The magnificence of our own divine potential is flowering right before our very eyes. As we evolve, labels, roles, belief systems, and separations of all kinds are falling away. We are becoming our own teachers, healers, and gurus—our own luminous pieces of God consciousness on Earth. We truly are “the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Recently, I took part in an online interactive chat session and live streaming video with Panache Desai and hundreds of people around the world (many got up in the middle of the night or before dawn to participate). The oneness and love shared, and then transmitted outward from participants to all beings everywhere, was phenomenal. The energetic shift was palpable. During his weekly webcasts, Panache often guides listeners to create these expansive circles of energy and light. Many spiritual groups use healing, prayer, or intention circles on a regular basis, and with the Internet, these kinds of circles grow and their effects increase exponentially. Using technology combined with psychic connection to share/send the energy of love and light brings more and more people into conscious awareness of oneness. Increasingly, individuals are sensing that something greater is possible—a fifth-dimension world based in compassion, sharing, and loving-kindness for all beings. We are beginning to live that truth in our daily lives.

In the midst of tumultuous changes on the planet, we are alchemists, working miracles, one by one and ten thousand by ten thousand. Metaphoric metal is turning to gold. People are throwing aside crutches of all kinds, physical or nonphysical, and walking unassisted into the manifestation of their own visions. Imagination is the magic wand we wave, and spiritual energy creates the new world before us. The mind alone cannot conceive of the wonders yet to come. It is the heart that leads the way. From a place of love, anything is possible. All it takes is belief—in ourselves, individually and collectively, and in the infinite guiding wisdom that holds us in oneness in the cosmos.

Earth is on track for spontaneous evolution into higher consciousness; together, we are creating an en-Light-ened present unlike any time-bound past that has preceded it. We are stepping into magnificence, into living our soul selves in every moment. I feel the truth of this deep in my own heart because I experience it every day. The miraculous is everywhere. Finally, we are one with those miracles, eyes wide open, hearts wide open. It is a time for celebration!

“We are one heart, one love, and one spirit. We are one consciousness expressing itself in 7 billion different ways.”—Panache Desai

Wake-up Call

For years now, I have been awakened at 3 a.m. by neck pain that often culminates in a migraine headache. Lying down seems to make the pain worse, so I usually get out of bed and sit in the living room. Often, I have taken strong medication to get rid of the pain, not always successfully. Headaches of one kind or another have plagued me since I was a teenager. Tension morphed into migraine in midlife. Having tried every possible traditional and nontraditional remedy, with little success, I had almost resigned myself to always living with chronic pain. It was a never-ending drain on my life energy. That is, until recently.

During a weeklong retreat in Costa Rica with Panache Desai (see recent posts: “The Silence Within” and “Infinity”), I learned how to rid myself of the pain through a deep meditation of “allowing and receiving.” When I returned home, I was initially nervous that I would not be able to repeat the miraculous releases from pain I had experienced on retreat. Admittedly, my apartment is not tropical, nor does it have a view of the Pacific Ocean! Thankfully, I was still able to get rid of the headaches most of the time, partially because of a shift in my own perception: I finally recognized that Spirit, or my Higher Self, wanted me up at 3 a.m. for a reason, and neck pain was an effective way to get me out of bed and into the receptive meditation mode.

As I sat meditating in the predawn hours, breathing deeply and letting go into “allowing and receiving” (and sometimes listening to Panache’s meditation CDs), I found that the pain would slightly abate but not disappear entirely until I had passed the three-hour mark. At that point, I could begin my day, not only pain-free but also filled with a deep joy and love for the world around me. I saw only blessings everywhere I looked. It was just amazing.

Clearly, then, I was supposed to practice allowing and receiving for three solid hours on a daily basis. (One morning, when I slept through the usual 3 a.m. time, a loud voice in my head shouting my name woke me up with a start at 4:30. No sleeping in!) After several days, it occurred to me that I was being firmly guided to follow this regimen not just to get rid of pain but also to learn how to allow and receive everything: anger, sadness, and fear as well as beauty, joy, and love. Challenging events, emotional reactions, stunning sunsets, loving friendships—they are all part of the human experience on Earth, and it is impossible to have one aspect and not the others. They are the intricately interwoven blessings of being alive. That perspective alone has completely changed how I experience life on a daily basis.

Through this meditation, I practiced how to live from a place of receptivity instead of resistance, gradually learning how to be in the flow of the energy of life, however it showed up. Allowing and receiving has seeped into my moment-to-moment experience. Each day, I open more and resist less. My inner default setting has shifted from defense to gratitude, from worry to trust. The accompanying insight for me is that physical pain is not inevitable. I discovered that it was the voice of Spirit within my body persistently trying to get my attention. At long last, I woke up and listened.

Infinity

“The infinite nature of your being exists beyond name and form. Any definition that you place on infinity becomes a limitation.”—Panache Desai

During my week on retreat in Costa Rica with Panache Desai (see last blog post “The Silence Within”), transformation occurred at many levels. Yes, it was about accessing the silence within each of us, but it was also about living from that place of spaciousness and calm no matter what the circumstances in our lives are. For me, it was also about facing a lifelong fear of infinity/eternity.

Panache always tells us that we are infinite beings with infinite potential, that we are expanding infinitely, part of a universe that is also expanding infinitely. It’s amazing how often he uses the word infinite! And I love what he says, while at the same time being terrified of infinity—how cosmically ironic is that? Clearly, synchronicity led me to this human being, this avatar who embodies a Divine presence, for a reason. So I decided that this week would be a good time to take a look at that fear of infinity so deeply embedded in me. I signed up for one of the hour-long personal breakthrough sessions that he offered mid-week.

On the morning of my appointment, I walked to the meeting room, and Jan, Panache’s wife, who works with him, met me at the door. She sat to my right, holding a calm, supportive space, and Panache sat across from me, eyes half-closed, clearly in a deep meditative state. He told me that all layers of fear were going to be peeled away first. We then sat in silence, and I began to cry as I felt the inner shredding occur. After several minutes, I told him that the core fear for me was infinity/eternity. He asked what I was afraid of, and I said I couldn’t really say, just that I had had a terror of “the world going on forever and ever” since early childhood. He said, “Okay, we’re going to go there, experience it.”

Initially, I felt overwhelming pain and sorrow, tears streaming down my face, as I released a lifetime of struggling to avoid that powerful terror. He told me that it was moving up and out my crown chakra, and he saw it as a fear of embodying my own infinite power as a soul on Earth. The next step was to dissolve the density of old stories, beliefs, experiences, emotions, and separation. I experienced all sorts of shifting energy inside: heat rushes, heaviness, lightness, shakiness, brain expanding. Then, slowly, all emotion drained away, and I felt…empty…my body insubstantial. And along with the emptiness was a stillness, calm, peace…almost a comforting energy. When I described this to Panache, he said, “That’s infinity. It’s inside you. It’s who you are.” The final step was to anchor this within me. I could feel my whole system being recalibrated as my body was rebooted “from self-defense to relaxation.”

Afterward, as I walked slowly back to my room, instead of my usual desire to write in my journal after an experience, I only felt a wish to lie down and rest in the inner peace. My personality-self seemed very distant. I rested and slept a bit and then just remained in silence for the afternoon. At dinner, even as I took part in group conversations, there was still a core of silence within me.

Flying home and returning to my daily life, I watched myself not reacting to things that might have triggered a judgment or fear before. There seemed to be a neutral allowing, something like “witness consciousness,” emanating from that still space inside. As the days and weeks passed, I would sometimes be swept up in the emotions and experiences of my life, but if I took time to breathe deeply and focus on “allowing and receiving,” that feeling of infinite peace at my center was restored. I could feel the emotions and let them pass through me, knowing it was just part of being human. And, for the first time ever, I was able to look forward to the rest of my life and beyond, into infinity, and feel excitement undiluted by fear. Truly miraculous.

(See http://panachedesai.com/ for gatherings and webcasts with Panache Desai.)

The Silence Within

“Silence is an internal state of being where life is met with no resistance. All is embraced as part of the greater journey.”—Panache Desai

I recently returned from a weeklong retreat in Costa Rica, where spiritual catalyst Panache Desai guided us through the process of accessing and anchoring inner silence. In choosing this retreat, I was strongly drawn to the idea of experiencing extended inner silence. Exterior silence, especially in nature, has long been a refuge for me because my mind tends to be very busy, even though I have practiced both yoga and meditation for many years. I treasure the times of silent spaciousness that I have experienced, but I’ve always hoped for a deeper immersion….

Initially, in addition to periods of silent meditation, Panache had us work together to express and release emotional blocks and triggers. In small groups of two or three, and then in the larger group of sixteen, we processed whatever was keeping us stuck in resistance to the flow of life through us. “At any given moment, you are either in complete acceptance of what is or in resistance to what is,” according to Panache. “That creates your experience. Letting go and allowing opens the flow of energy.” Sounds good, but how exactly does that happen?

Well, with Panache, it is never really about words or language, though what he says is both inspiring and heart-opening. It is the experience of vibrational transformation, however, that creates radical inner/outer shifts in people. The profound, loving energy of Spirit, or the Divine, that Panache embodies—through his voice, his touch, his presence—transforms individuals at the deepest levels. If you’re around him, you’re gonna get shifted, guaranteed. And the shift opens the door to your own divinity and authenticity. He sees himself as a “catalyst,” not a guru or teacher. As the week progressed, we meditated for increasingly longer periods of time, either in complete silence or with music in the background. And each day, the inner journeys and group interactions were deeper and more powerful, the effects spilling over into all parts of our lives.

For me, Panache’s directive—to breathe deeply and “allow and receive”—became a miracle mantra. I came to Costa Rica not only with a busy mind but also with a long history of neck pain and migraine headaches that woke me at 3 a.m. During my week there, on four consecutive nights, I awoke at 3 a.m. with the familiar pain. In the past, fear always gripped me, and I often ended up taking strong medication to stop the pain from getting out of control. In Costa Rica, I got up, drank a full bottle of water, stretched, and then sat in silence in the dark, palms open, breathing deeply, just “allowing and receiving.” It took two to three hours, but each night I got rid of the headache. And it did not return during the day. This was beyond anything I had ever imagined myself capable of. Resistance to what is and all the accompanying fear had fallen away—and with them went the pain. I had let go on a very deep level and allowed the energy to flow unimpeded through me.

During group meditations, I relaxed into the silence and breathed long deep breaths of gratitude and peace. My mind, too, was quieter; it was if the mental chatter had been trying desperately to cover up my own resistance and fear. Now, I felt a slowing down and relaxation on an energetic level, allowing experiences to pass through me without judgment or clutching. It was a completely different way of being in the world.

(See http://panachedesai.com/ for gatherings and webcasts with Panache Desai.)