Saturday, January 10, 2009

Inner and outer Nagas



When we are performing the Naga offerings what is the deeper symbolic meaning of what we are really doing? The reflection of nature is an outpouring of the inner state of humanity. This is a reality if we understand it or not.

The dragon energy lives in the 4 elements ... earth, water, air and also fire. The Naga energy lives in the underground streams, the water ways and oceans. The element of water is the symbolic reflection of our emotional body.

The dragon-lines, the ley-lines, of this earth are the reflection of the two main channels of our kundalini system in our bodies. Now for most of humanity these channels are not recognized and not activated. The Naga system of the earth reflects the nadi system of the central channel of our bodies. When the spiritual energy of the kundalini is activated, we go though an emotional clearing in our own nadi or (naga system). The unprocessed imprints of our emotions from the traumas of our lives and also past lives begin to be cleared. When the earth is clearing the naga system it may look like flooding or earthquakes.

The Christian Church represented these lower parts of ourselves as the evil serpent in the tree of life. But the east has a more healthy attitude about these unprocessed lower energies.

There is a story of the great Tibetan master Padmasambhava who was meditating by a lake.
The Naga Goddess Lhu who lived in the lake kept disturbing Padmasambhava's meditation. He went to battle with the Naga Goddess and used all his magical powers and force to try to kill her, but everyday Padmasambhava grew weaker and weaker. Finally the Naga rose out of the lake with a look of wisdom in her eye and said, "You can't kill me". All of a sudden Padmasambhava understood the Naga's teaching: to try to kill the naga energy was like killing your own sexual and emotional process. It was at that point Padmasambhava understood the power of acceptance.

We also have the story of the Shakyamuni Buddha who was in a deep meditation under the bodhi tree. When it began to rain the Naga king and his subjects rose out of the earth and sheltered the Buddha from the rain.

This story is speaking about Buddha clearing his nadi system. He most likely was sitting in alignment with the ley-lines of the earth. This is why there are sacred places on pilgrimage routes all over the world. What makes them sacred is the ley-line electrical serpent energies. When we approach these places with the right frame of mind and meditation we can also be initiated.

The Buddhist texts refer to a the lifetime before Buddha's last rebirth when he lived in the Naga realm to receive hidden teachings. Some texts say that before any buddha can have higher enlightenment and enpowerments they need to take a rebirth in the Naga Realm for teachings. A tantric text talks about Maitreya Buddha, the future Buddha, living in the Tushita Heavens where he is studying the Naga teachings in a Naga Tree.

The old texts are shrouded in many mysteries, but maybe what was really being said in the above stories is: as we travel though the different spiritual enpowerments our final steps to a full awakening is the integration of our emotional bodies (the Naga realms0 with our awakening. This cannot be done though force or negation but though acceptance and transforming the emotional wounds we all carry in the process of being human.

When we fearlessly look at the wounding of our emotional bodies and allow ourselves to clear the traumatic in prints of our past, then we are touching our inner nagas. One way we clear our emotions is through our breath. We can do this though rebirthing techniques. yogic prana yama, or just mindfully watching our breathing rise and fall.

The first thing we want to do when we come across our emotional traumas is to stop. Therefore, we must allow ourselves to feel and watch our breathing, making sure we do not stop breathing. When we stop breathing we stop the process of feeling our negative emotion. You can feel this though the uncomfortable sensations that are held in the belly.

But if we allow ourselves to fully feel, to fully breathe we can begin to clear the stuck energies and let them rise into the spiritual center of our spacious heart. The heart is the great transformer of these energies. But we need to go deep into our spiritual heart. The outer regions of the heart chakra are our personal likes and dislikes, the way we armour ourselves from the harsh experiences of this world.

But deeper in the very center of our spiritual heart is the throne of God and that throne is spaciousness. When we allow though our breath to transform the stuck emotional energies though the personal heart, then we can be liberated from our past imprints. We can become free. When this happens it can feel like clean air or wind blowing though a hollow reed. What this air is the chi becoming unstuck.

It can also feel like a great serpentine power taking wings of flight. This is the meaning of the icon images of flying dragons, Buddha with the umbrella of cobras, and the medical image of two winged serpents around a staff.

This the true meaning of the outer Naga offerings we are performing each dark new moon. During the naga dark moon we offer our milk. We are asking to uncover our emotional wounds from the darkness of our subconscious. As the moon grows there is the possbility for our emotional wounds to be revealed. Our breath of life is a path to our liberation. When we liberate ourselves, we liberate others. It is an organic process.

Nagas folklore warn us not to let a naga breathe on us since we would fall sick. Their breath is poisonous. When we look at all the toxins we are throwing into our water at this point in time it is just the mirror reflection of humanity's emotional toxins we have not cleared as a collective.

The poisonous breath of our inner naga is our own emotional toxins (or stuck chi) that have not been cleaned and released. It is through deep breathing we can allow the wounded serpent to take wings of liberation. I have also found in the process of my own emotional healing that by practicing sit ups and crunches everyday the hidden locked up emotions in my belly can be released. When I finish my exercises, I allow my breath to clear what has come up in the process.

We are all in this process each new moon as we offer our milk and honey to the Naga Realms. May we allow the serpent take take wings of liberation. May we all be healed.