The Physical Plane As A Bridge To The Spiritual Realm

Embracing spiritual transformation through physical practice and unlocking physical transformation through spiritual practice

The Physical Plane As A Bridge To The Spiritual Realm

It was while writing my most recent post for my other publication, My Spiritual Yoga Journey Part 17, that it occurred to me where I am at on my spiritual journey which deserves a deeper dive into it. My publication, Mahnatoth, is there for exactly that purpose. It is in this publication I can have a chance to explore at a granular level the elements that comprise my practice and those things that are opening up for me.

And it was a synchronization with a reply to that post from Phil (@tarotbyphil) that made me stop and think about the nature of my physical work with the yoga Asanas that act as a portal and bridge to working with the spiritual realm. I was thinking of this at the time when Phil posited exactly that question. It made me acutely aware of what I needed to do.

I needed to write this post.

It is not a question of having to write it, it is a need. It is a deeper realisation that has an energy all of its own. Though it is coursing through me, it is outside of my own creation. As I tap into the creative waters, I am simply allowing for it to flow through my fingertips. As I write this, I am also at the same time equally aware of how this is a manifestation for the practice I am writing about and that is the Asana work which for me acts as a portal to the spiritual realm.

I guess I need to start at the beginning and work from there to reach where I presently am.

Like my yoga practice, my spiritual journey has included, from an early age, an awareness of other things. But it was when I had my injury eleven years ago that it did two things. It stopped me practicing the physical aspect of Asanas in my yoga, and it forced me to strengthen and commit to my spiritual practice. If I was unable to physically undertake the yoga postures then I was going to determinedly train my psychic abilities to the best I could. I therefore committed to daily meditation, and with the purpose of strengthening my Clair senses, as well as astral travel. My mother and her older sister have a strong affinity with this which I have inherited. Though it was not until my injury that I was able to begin to harness this inherent gift.

My determination did not go unrewarded, and I want to say it was a slow process but that is not the case. It was when I decided to do divination with a pendulum that I began to receive information from the spiritual realm that provoked in me the confidence to begin opening up my psychic abilities fully and in journeying. This has included missing time where I have felt like I have been meditating for five minutes when in actuality I have been meditating for twenty or sometimes sixty minutes. That often occurs when I am visiting my spirit guides. But this is also something that is happening on the mat. During my practice I enter a meditative state and it feels like my body disappears or is otherwise ethereal as opposed to being physical - maybe not gossamer but something unlike a physical shell. And as that happens, my mind shifts from this plane and enters the spiritual realm. By the time I feel back inside my body I recognise that my routine has not been half an hour but two hours. Each time I have the realisation that time has blurred or shifted into a different concept or alternate actualisation I feel a strange shift in my physical consciousness. It is a dawning of a realisation that something entirely other has taken place, and taken me with it.

It was through these meditation sittings that I was being guided by messages from my spirit guides to seek out having a physical guide to coalesce this experience. And that was when I joined a Spiritualist Church. There I found like-minded people who were having equally clear visions. This helped to bring most of it into clarity. However my journey did not end there and it was not the sum total of what I was seeking, nor looking for.

I have since stayed in contact but I did leave but not before I had some training which helped me in my present space where I continue to put into practice the teachings I learnt. This includes what is called Sitting in the Power. This is a practice of being in a meditative state but in part being consciously aware whilst opening the psychic mind up to Spirit and in essence Sit in its Power and therefore receive its love and light. By doing so one strengthens the bond so that when practicing one has a strong connection to start with. Messages can come through at a clearer rate and more trustworthy evidence can be delivered. When Sitting in the Power one can feel, see the guides helping you, messages can sometimes come through but mostly it is about feeling and being in its awesomeness. It is something I continue to do and this has also been something that manifests on the mat when I do chanting and use the singing bowl and listen to the sounds ringing all around me. It is then that I begin to Sit in the Power.

Another equally important practice I continue to do that I learned at the Church is Automatic Writing. Most of my writing for my publications is now done applying this technique. I sit at my laptop or work on my app on my mobile and I begin without a sense of what I am about to write. Usually, like this post, I might have a title that is playing on my mind but sometimes even this is not there. And then I quieten my mind and begin to type. This is my version of automatic writing. The usual practice consists of writing with a pen on a piece of paper, closing the eyes and allowing spirit to write for you. By using this practice a lot I have now total trust in Spirit to guide my writing on the computer. I think that is maybe why there are some spelling mistakes as I write stream of consciousness without editing. Sometimes I keep the warts and all approach as it is a portal to what I was working with at the time, but sometimes I do go back and revise it just so that there is clarity in what I am trying to say. It also aggravates my conscious sense of perfectionism. That is something I am trying to eradicate as it is an inherited element from my formative years and a narrative I need to keep in check as it prompts an emotional spiral. But that is for another post.

What I think this all attests to is that since I have reawakened my yoga practice those things I have been delving into whilst I couldn't practice the physical elements of yoga are now deeply rooted in it. I have made a concerted effort to make sure that my newfound yoga was going to encompass all of my spiritual routines. I was not going to keep them separate. They were all intrinsically linked. And by making sure to do this I think I have created a practice that goes beyond the mere application into something absolutely free and over and above what I thought I could ever hope to do. It has been amazing and continues to surprise me as I experience something else and another manifestation happens.

It is widely known that yoga is not just or only physical practice of Asanas and postures and that there is a whole other area of study which is linked with Buddhism. When I started out attempting to learn the basics of Asanas and postures with my friend who lived with me when she was homeless we were twenty years old. She had, as I have previously said in earlier posts, been a Glastonbury baby and had learned yoga since an infant there. Back then I was just interested in learning the postures. As I began to get more serious, I attended my local Buddhist temple and that began a process of learning the more spiritual elements. This also led me into Kundalini energy which then was my whole focus. As soon as I was opened to it, I was able to manifest its power. That was then a chain reaction for me to harness it and only do Kundalini yoga. As much as it was incredible it was also negative as I felt wracked by it.

And then I had my injury.

I was kicked behind the knee by a student I worked with and that caused a clot the size of a golf ball in my upper thigh. This also was a catalyst for sciatica because of the way I walked, placing all my strength down one side and as a result began limping. This put pressure on my coccyx which overtime aggravated the sciatic nerve. I saw a very good occupational therapist who worked with me to bring some relief through doing some regular stretches. Some of them reminded me of my yoga and so I tried back then to slowly incorporate yoga into my daily routine but my body was not ready. It has been a slow process to get to where I am now practicing yoga and developing healing in my physical system. I had a recent cramp or strain in my calf and I saw the same doctor who treated my Deep Vein Thrombosis and he was able to ascertain that I am actually clot free.

This journey has been a process of developing my spirituality at the same time. My yoga now is a practice encompasses meditation, crystals and sound, primarily using chanting and the use of a Buddhist singing bowl, and Mala beads. All of this is something I did not even consider all those years ago when I first started placing my feet and hands in Mountain Pose in my family's garden with my friend. It is light-years away from what I imagined my yoga was going to be. I am bringing healing into my own work. This is important as I have been a healer since a child which I have written about in an earlier post (linked with my empathy and can be found in My Spiritual Yoga Journey publication) but alongside healing others I am now bridging this into my own orbit. The GP mentioned that he was surprised by the amount of healing my calf muscle underwent and greater than he suspected. That and other things like missing time and visions I have in my altered states of consciousness while journeying on and off the mat are a testament to the deepening of my spiritual practice and manifestation.

This leads me onto what I am currently working with. My yoga now hugely consists of Kundalini energy. But this is very different to before. It is more holistic and is based upon my spiritual practice. It is but one layer of the overall whole and is as equally important as the other parts. They make up a whole range which, when taken in singularity, are not as strong as working in unison with each other. Part of this, as I spoke about in my last post in Mahnatoth, also includes using bonds that place an area of focus on my body. They create a constriction and a push and pull which at the same time means I have to yield into its resistance. This is an emotional connection and practice as much as a physical state. Both of these together creates a sense of awareness from which I can begin to transcend. And it is in that transcendence I can begin to arise out of the merely physical and embrace the spiritual realm.

Placing crystals on the Chakras enables a shift in my conscious awareness and psychic energy so that my unconscious dreaming and intuition is freed as well, thus generating a seismic shift that elevates my psychic and spiritual form out from its physical shell. All of this occurs when I am moving through the postures. The process is a dynamic one which is both grounding in my body and uplifting beyond the mere physical. But it is then when I am sitting in Half Lotus and begin playing the singing bowl and chanting that my conscious awareness falls away and I fully embrace and unite with the spiritual realm.

This shift in my psychic consciousness breaks me free from the emotional bondages that are related to past lives and past experiences in this life. As I journey I see these things as tangible remnants and fragments like discarded flotsam and jetsam abandoned on the shore from a wreckage at sea. They are no longer fully built ships that challenge my present. Instead they are echoes of another life, not existing as a Shadow but as long forgotten pieces of a jigsaw that was never completed. Rather than clinging on to the pieces in some vague hope that the jigsaw can finally come to a conclusion, I am now placing those bits into the bin. They do not serve me now and never did. This is my shedding and shredding that no longer serves me. This is a part of the process of being in alignment with the 9 year (2025 added together) and the Green Snake Year too. Added with that Pluto in Aquarius as well as Uranus moving out of Taurus and entering Gemini for the next seven years and for the first time in eighty years. All of this is about letting go of old wounds and old ways of doing things and embracing change and growth.

This time working with Kundalini it is not a double-edged sword. It is a process for transformation and harnessing change but there is a difference this time. And it is because it is being united with my other spiritual practices which then gives it a safe grounding from which to carry forth and exert its influence. It is from the wellspring of spiritual thought and feeling that the serpent of Kundalini can rise up from its slumber and transcend the physical Prima Materia of substance and drive consciousness into a complete reverie in unification with the spiritual realm and the ethereal infinite.

And as such it is a power for good. It is shaping my mind, my psychic health and physical energy. It is shaping my karmic debt and reforming my past lives into the present so that rather than remaining vastly distant they are conjoined and shaping the present with reverie.

I hope some of this resonates with you. And if you have any questions about any of this then please do get in touch and I will endeavour to get back to you as soon as I can. Or if you feel called to share your thoughts and experiences then please do share them here too. I see this publication as a community platform so that we can all grow together. We are all using the same energy perhaps in different ways or forms but it all aligns with the same thing which is alignment with the Universe. I may use the word Spirit at times which speaks of my practice within the Spiritualist Church but at root it is the same thing. I would deeply love to hear your stories about practicing yoga, and what ways this is shaping or opening your mind to spiritual practice. Also if you practice something other than Yoga then what does this look like and do you use some elements from yoga in your daily routine and how does that influence you. It is these stories that enliven our understanding of what yoga means and how it provides a stable foundation from which to grow.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. It means so much to me.

Sending you all many Blessings,

Namaste,

Tom (@tomrambler319) 🙏✨🕉️🌼🦋