I stood before Swami Muktananda in 1978 at the front of a large, dark meditation hall in a Siddha Yoga ashram in South Fallsburg, NY.  He touched me on my bowed head with a wand of peacock feathers and I felt a flash of energy pass through me.  As I looked up at his face, I could not see him or anything else in the room. All I could see was red-orange light. I was astonished! This was Shaktipat, a Hindu initiation, which awakens the dormant Kundalini energy held in our lower spine. After the initiation, the Kundalini begins to flow through our chakras, or energy centers, awakening us to subtle planes of perception.  For me this was an amazing journey which continues today. In my first meditation after Shaktipat, I had a vision of living lotus flowers growing out of all my chakras in front and back and felt surges of pure energy flow through my body. My upper body swayed back and forth and I began to shake uncontrollably.

As I developed after my initiation, I had many different experiences, known as kryias in the Hindu religion. I danced, shook, sang, spoke in other languages, pushed my tongue up inside my moth to touch the entrance to my sinuses, saw a bight indigo seed of light pop out from my eyes, and had numerous beautiful visions. Soon after Shaktipat, I dreamed of sitting on Muktananda’s lap with him breathing into my mouth. His forehead was covered with white ash. I pulled back because thought it was a sexual advance. He stayed with me, continuing to breath into my mouth. Suddenly, I saw the red-orange light again and then felt the same surge of sexual energy I had felt in my first meditation. I woke up surprised and shocked. Later one of Muktananda’s teachers told me that a guru’s breathing into the mouth is a classical form of initiation.

During this time I was working at a chronic pain clinic in Baltimore, MD., practicing hypnosis among other forms of psychotherapy. One afternoon, I placed my hand on a patient’s shoulder as I led her down into a world of no pain under a hypnotic trance. When she came out of the trance she said she had seen colors, primarily blue, when I put my hand on her.  I realized I was sending her healing energy through my hand.

A few months later, I was in Rome, Italy at the wake of my two-month old niece,who had died of crib death. An elderly Buddhist healer told me I had light coming out of my hands and suggested I study spiritual healing. At the Buddhist chant for my niece, led by Lama Nymkai Norbu of the Dzog Chen Buddhist tradition,I closed my eyes and saw a pastel- colored tiny ball fly  out into space. I asked Norbu what I had seen and he told me that was the soul of my little niece, leaving her body.

I returned to New York City, curious and inspired. I found Barbara Brennan, a spiritual healer who many years later wrote the bestselling book “Hands of Light.” I joined her first class in spiritual healing. We learned to channel spiritual guidance and to heal with our hands. I loved it and found I had a natural talent in both channeling and healing.

My first spiritual guide came to me while I was studying with Barbara. She saw him first, a tall man with mulit-colored robes and a round pill-shaped hat on his head. I learned from him later that he was Zarathustra, a prophet and founder of the Zoroastrian religion in the Middle East. Until then I had no knowledge of him or his religion. I did ask him many years later why he came to me. He told me that I had been one of his closest students when he was teaching as a prophet in the Middle East. He said sometimes I was not a good student because I liked to go my own way. I still tend to be like this!

When I began to channel Zarathustra, I discovered he had much to teach me about personal spiritual evolution. He became a spiritual father to me, and was the only place I could find solace after I suffered theloss of a child in miscarriage. It still brings tears to my eyes to remember my grief.  I recently rewrote a book from the teachings I recorded in classes of his messages, “Soul Evolution with Zarathustra.”  We worked as a team, both needing each other to communicate the wisdom he had to offer.

Several years later, while I was still working with Zarathustra, I began to hear a feminine voice during healing sessions. I began a school of healing, School of Akashic Evolution, in New York and Buenos Aires, Argentina. During the classes I channeled this soft and compassionate feminine voice. I was told by several psychics that this was the voice of Mary, Mother of Jesus, but I did not really believe this. Raised as a Unitarian with no belief in God or Jesus, except that God was Nature, gave me no reason to think Mary would come to me. At one point, I felt brave and curious enough to ask her name. She said, “I am Mary, Mother of Jesus”. I felt in my heart this was true but still I wondered why she would choose me.   I went on to channel her messages in sacred places around the world and together we released pain and suffering of past events held there. My Argentine husband, Esteban, helped me lead pilgrimages later to these places of spiritual power. I wrote a book of her messages, “The Spring of Hope: Messages from Mary” from recordings I did at these places and in classes I taught.

Esteban died in a car accident on the way from Valencia to Cordova, Spain in March 1998. Surviving his death was the most difficult and the most painful time of my life. From moments after his death until now, I found that the spirit world was the greatest source of comfort for me. I wrote about my experiences with Esteban’s spirit during the days just after he died in my eBook “Esteban’s Ascension”.

I closed my healing practice and pilgrimage leadership programs and put my focus into creativity. I sculpted Esteban’s spiritual journey before, during and after his death, guided by his spirit, in clay. I found this process to be so nourishing that I went on to sculpt the same journeys of my four grandparents. When I was driving with these sculptures to the foundry to have them cast in bronze, I broke into deep sobs of excruciating pain. Later I realized I had unconsciously associated this journey with the trip I took in the ambulance to the crematorium in Granada with Esteban’s body the day after his death.

I found creativity to be the most potent healing modality for me. After I created the sculptures, I began weekly visits to New Mexico’s Ojo Caliente, a local hot springs, and Sanctuario de Chimayo, a nearby place of pilgrimage. While I sat meditating in the chapel of the Sanctuario, I channeled the design of a spiritual board game, “Avalon, Temple of Connection”. I also wrote “The Spring of Hope: Messages from Mary” and “The Power of Sacred Space: Exploring Ancient Ceremonial Sites” during this time. I wrote plays about my memories of my past lives in “The Chalice” and integrated them into screenplays. It is only now in 2012 that I am returning with much joy and excitement to teach in the public arena.

Both Zarathustra and Mary have stayed with me but I do seldom actively communicate with them now. Instead, I have been developing a relationship with the spiritual world of the Language of Light.

One day in the late-1990’s I was sitting on top of the Great Pyramid of Uxmal in the Yucatan Penisula in Mexico. I had a notebook and small tape recorder with me to record any messages that came to me there. I looked down at the people climbing up the pyramid, turned on the tape recorder and closed my eyes. To my surprise, instead of words I heard chants, each one with a stated healing purpose. I wrote this all down. I was told that these chants came from the planet Venus and there were many more to come. Esteban died not long after this and I forgot about the chants.   These are chants that instantly take us to higher states of consciousness. The sounds vibrate deepinto our cellular structures, shifting the energy to allow the cells to let go of the dysfunctional energy and activate more functional energy. The chants are expressions of what I call The Language of Light and some have the capacity to take us telepathically through the center of the galaxy and beyond the center. They are an aspect of the awakening that is taking place now on Earth.  I recently recorded an album of these chants called “Akasha Chants” which are available on iTunes.

Recently I attended the funeral of a friend who died unexpectedly. I found that I was extremely sensitive to his spirit during the ceremony. I could feel his spirit’s fear and resistance during the procession to the site of the funeral and his resignation and courage when his body arrived. What was most amazing was that he came to me during the ceremony to teach me what it was like to be a spirit without a body. He made a gradual transition over about two hours into a state of joy and freedom, encouraged, supported and led by prayers and singing. At first he came very close in his spirit body to those of us who attended his funeral. I could see his face in transparent form hovering above us. Slowly and gently he faded away off in the distance on his journey to the Other Side. I was very grateful to him, as I was to Esteban, for teaching me from personal experience about the world of spirit to which we all will go someday.

I traveled to many sacred places in the world before coming to Hawaii. When I finally arrived I breathed a deep breath of relief, as it seemed that I had spent my whole life trying to get here. On this first trip I felt the power of the islands and the energy of the sacred sites, but I did not have time or focus to pay enough attention to really feel their power. It was when we were making our documentary, “Sacred Space: The Magical Land of Hawai’i” that I came to know the wisdom and beautiful energy of the power places of Hawaii.

I was concerned that the guardian spirits would not want me to visit the temples, because of the past abuse that had been inflicted on them by those who thought them to be places of heathen worship. But as soon as I opened my heart and let them know I truly came with love and respect, they opened their arms and welcomed me with much joy and delight. They called me Daughter of the Light and reminded me I had lived many times before here, including several times in Lemuria. I have come once again to be here during a time of a major global shift

The spirits of many of Hawai’i’s sacred sites, which have been dormant for years, tell us that these places are coming alive now to help keep the Earth in balance.  The messages I have written about here and the messages that continue to come to me from the spiritual world focus on the energetic awakening that is taking place all over the world. Vortexes are shifting New vortexes are emerging. Super vortexes are waking up like sleeping dragons, activating the incredibly powerful forces beneath the Earth’s surface. In my view all this is taking place in order to allow the Earth’s Teutonic plates to shift enough to maintain resistance to a polar shift. This is a crucial time in the history of humanity and all life on Earth, as well as the Earth itself.

It is my hope that all those who read my books, attend our ceremonies, and watch our films will come to realize the enormity of this global shift we are in and the importance of protecting and supporting sacred places around the world. Even a a short visit to Hawaii, can activate powerful healing mechanisms in our bodies, minds and hearts, and enable us, in turn, to help the Earth stay in harmony and balance.

Aloha!

Carolyn E. Cobelo