The Eternal Garden Of The Soul

How It Comes....

As simple as a cup of coffee in the morning
something in me opens up
I am curious
a map unfolds
a world opens
atoms in my body
dance and sing
as two energies
move through each other
in a dance that I know has been eternal.

The room begins to throb
quietly
I feel the electrons spining in my body
inducing a field around me.
It has been years now
and so much I have gone through
and it still feels the same.
Its earthy
but cosmic
it builds dimension
and leads to great longing
and desire.
I feel a field moving
rippling around me.
I know that this is what moves mountains
and awakens minds.
It all sounds so high and mighty.

I step over and slip open a book
and there is a description
of Buddha who had thousands
who awakened whilst he was here
on Gaia...
and I know
we all serve as this
in our way
a steady torsion field
of influence
of the serpent people
the dream makers
the tapestry weavers
the love makers
the magical breatheren and sisteren
that waits with heaving breath
in hope and wish
of ushering in the new way....

I look into your eyes
which are the eyes of legion
everyone
for goddess dwells in everything
everywhere
-split the stone and she is there
she is everywhere....
a calm breeze
a rush of realization
of the sacred androgyne
that this makes of us
and explodes all notions
opening us up to the new
as skin after skin is shed....
as I feel you there
in the kitchen
as the water hasn't even begun to boil
but the universe opens up
so simply and wildly.
I am reaching the goddess
reaching the goddess within
so as to heal the god
and make my world
a garden with no competing weeds

You react in the air around me
as I ride this wave
moment to moment
day to day
a great big silly silence
with nothing present
no one there
with a room full of something
entirely quiet
but screaming too...
the universe yearns this way
and bids us to
so we might create as it does
moment by micromoment
in scales measured in
milennia curled up within nanoseconds
as all time expands perfectly within its one great moment
alive in all other moments
and my inners seek the flow from one polarity to the other
to unlock my own secrets
that I am here to find
in the eternal garden of the soul....

Working Through The Centers

Imagine that overlaid on your body is an extremely fine webwork of energy lines, fine as spiders thread which create a vast jungle of pathways that align to organs and centers in your body that are physical that these lines help to feed the necessary nutrient of life force or prana to. You can't see or touch these lines, but you can feel them.  In fact, there are people, like myself, who can see the energy radiating off of them which can tell you all about where that person is physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  It sounds a little wild to some people, but really, its only because you have never heard of it or experienced it directly for yourself.  But when you do, it is a game changer.  But you don't have to see this energy in order to work with it.  There is a lot that you can do with it that is healthy and beneficial.  
 
These lines that make up the energy body begin so small that they are difficult to see.  They go down in scale to subatomic since the energy force literally does feed right into and out of the subatomic.  Its a very very detailed system for carrying energy.  Most systems for understanding this only show the seven chakras that go up the core of the body.  In the same way that your vascular system goes from extremely small structures that feed into organs and cells, they get bigger and bigger like the branches of a tree.  Finally they go up a central main trunk, which is where the most obvious centers of vortex energy reside.  We call these "chakras" which mean "wheel" or "disc" in the Sanskrit.
You don't need to know anything about esoteric traditions to know and understand what a chakra is or what your energy is.  I can tell you that by becoming sensitive to energy fields that are in others around you and by feeling your own energy, you can learn right away FROM the energy itself to know how it behaves and how incredibly complex but beautiful it is. By learning directly with the energy, you can allow your own natural intuitiveness to bloom.  Most people feel they have to learn this from another person, but I say that you literally have the capacity within you to decode the information for yourself because it is what you are.  But absent that, a few very basic guidelines about how to reach a place where the energy of the infinite can move through you with calm and peace.

Blocks As Solid (Ideas and Emotions)
 
We like to think of energy as something that is not solid, but I want to propose to you that at the level of energy itself, the energy body has amazing structure and a kind of "solidity" to it that makes the lines that run through it that the Chinese have charted as "meridians" as incredibly consistent from one person to the next.  Far from being just a current or amorphous flow of energy, the energy that makes up our consciousness is amazingly structured.  It is out of this "solidity" that energetic objects can get stuck in the system that is our light body.  In the same way that food can get stuck in your throat, energy can be stuck, sometimes for years, lifetimes even, in your energy body.  The result of removing the block is that perception and awareness changes and the person feels much more peaceful and happy. 

But we are a cluster of thousands of these blocks.  These blocks are always emotions that were not fully felt in one way or another. Do you fear your rage? Do you find yourself putting it away or stuffing it down?  That breakup with your boyfriend or girlfriend where you pulled yourself together and stopped crying because you were afraid you were going to just fall apart? Its possible that you were stuffing something down. Or how about that moment when you feared something that you did not understand...a feeling that just hung there like dirty laundry on the clothesline?  Afraid, we leave it alone.....and we shove it down.  By not fully processing any form of emotion, we literally create a kind of bottled knot of whatever that emotion is that gets stored in the energy body.  

The Body Thinks
 
There is a lot of evidence that I am finding that shows HOW the energy body and the physical body work together to either store or to release these blocks.  It has to do with the nervous system, the brain, as well as the current of prana and how it is polarized in the life force field itself. 
The light body is made up of two fields of energy that are joined and that replenish each other. They aren't really even "two" but two ends of a spectrum of energy that represents a kind of cosmic totality that makes it possible for you to then connect into the totality that exists beyond you.  This is the way this energy works, and is why you can feel the rush of the universe move through you in moments of nondual awareness (or as a continual awareness depending on the extent of your experience).  Two-in-one (energies) who then birth a transcendent third energy.  You see? All of this activity is felt as taking place not in the head but all through the body.  
 
What I am getting at is that there is already evidence to support that the body "thinks" and stores memory.  Now this stands in direct opposition to what we all have been taught, but what we have learned about our capacity to store memory is simply lacking.  Consider that the tissues in your body contain neurons, enough neurons in your gut for the brain of the average cat.  THAT is a lot of processing power.  What do you think our gut is doing with all of that?  What does your gut tell you? :-) So you see, the body has this capacity for dealing with memory, yes, and there is also a way to use somatics (body knowledge) to aid in releasing these memories.  Unlike the brain, the body seems to be more selective in the memories it stores.  It seems at this point in time, to be storing memories that it has had trouble with.  These can now be released once the individual is ready to release them.  And doing so is a saving grace because whatever the short coming was, or the fault or hurt or fear or rage, it all evaporates after releasing these blocks. 
 
In the work I was doing with my friend Alison who is herself awakened and a gifted intuitive, we found that even matter itself has a propensity to hold blocked energy.  I one experience that unfolded that I write about in my book, I describe how we unlocked an energy that had been blocked at a physical site that involved the murder of a man who had been drowned in a lake.  At the time, we did not know that a body had been found in the lake that we saw in our inner vision, but it had been discovered as the waters receded in what was then a dry lake bed (and his body was discovered along with some of his belongings enough to identify him).  We were able to describe a scenario that had a group of friends going out on the lake in the middle of the night with one of their friends not returning.  By simply recognizing the truth of this event, we were able to release it.  Six months after our encounter our local newspaper printed a story about the man who had died in the lake!  It was pretty amazing that events in the physical world would be so closely tied to our own encounter.  The newspaper story told the story of the four friends who took this man out onto the lake.  What we saw was that he was murdered for an elicit love affair with the wife or girlfriend of his friend. It was perhaps the reason why the blocked energy could be released....because someone was able to see what really happened on that night.  No one else would have been able to really see the events as they took place.  While we had testimony from his friends as part of the historical record, it is interesting how no one seemed to even entertain the idea of foul play at all.  Basically, it came down to four people all saying that their friend drowned. As long as everyone sticks to their story, then no one is the wiser.  
 
And of course, this lead the skeptical to suggest that I saw something that was not there, or that I was making it up or seeing a real event bu interpreting it to fit my own life where I felt as though I had been drowned. And I will concede that this is certainly a real possibility.  What suggests to me that we were seeing real events was because both Alison and I were picking up on all the same information, information that was in line with the story when it came out in the newspapers.
And this is where the second lesson in doing this kind of work comes in.  When we went up to this lake, we were simply going to see the sun setting.  But what unfolded was an event not unlike one that had taken place in my own life. There was something eerily similar to what had happened to me and to our friend who drowned in the lake.  While my life was not taken from me, my experience in my marriage was that I was being held underwater to be drowned before my own children.  It was itself a really painful experience that happened to me, something that people in the psychiatric community call 'Parental Alienation Syndrome."  One parent tries to destroy the other parent in the eyes of the children.  When it happens to you, it feels like the life is being sucked out of your body.  it feels like you are drowning.  It was appropriate that I would pick up on this eerie energy that was skulking about in those hills.  It was scary at first....sinister....but as we worked through the memory, I found that I was touching on a whole host of feelings that were in me as well.  By working with one block we were able to clear the other block. 
 
But what took place in the wake of this experience is also very telling.  In the same way that clearing a block in your body leads to a world of new possibilities, the area where this drowning took place also underwent a lot of changes in the years following our event.  Renovations were called for in the main buildings, a new arts initiative was called for with new people with progressive ideas coming onto the scene.  It was as though a new window opened for the people who lived and worked around this location.  To date, a slew of new initiatives have been undertaken on the part of the owners of the property where this lake is.  Its interesting to see how a location can be stuck for years only to see how it becomes unstuck, with a flow of new people, new ideas, and new possibilities entering the scene.  The same happens to you when you release these blocks, too!
 
Complimentary Blocks And The Law Of Attraction
 
Until a block is cleared, the block can be the basis of an attraction by others who are either similarly blocked or complimentary blocked.  What this means is that you either have someone who has had the same KIND of experience or someone who compliments the experience as in the case of someone who has a fear of being pushed, say, and you attract a person who seems to like to push you a lot!  THAT would be an example of a complimentary attraction.  A positive complimentary attraction would be somethign similar but in the positive, not negative.  In either case, however, the two people feel the similarities even if they are opposites, and these dynamics open up the flow of energy within us. They fill a role be it positive or negative.  These aspects of the other person can lay dormant for decades before expressing themselves, or they can be playing in the background all the time.  However, when you release this material, you release any possibility for this same kind of blocked material to ever be of any consequence to you in the future.  it is gone like a poof of smoke.  And this is why this kind of work is so important and life changing; you can change your whole life based on one big critical pivotal move in clearing your blocks in your body.  The result is that you NEVER feel energized by behaviors that would have effected you before.  It's as though your mind has been completely rewired when it comes to whatever hot button issue this block represented to you in the past.  There is a lot to suggest that this event does literally have the power to rewire the brain in seconds flat!  How's that for a speedy transformation?
 
It really is that fast and that easy.  When you have enough of these you realize that you can actually become a free person in ways you have never experienced before.

Ways Of Clearing Blocks
 
The best way to work through blocks is to pay attention to the ones that come up the most for you.  This is one most obvious way.  But these blocks may also be the hardest to clear away.  I am of the observed opinion that clearing smaller blocks is the way to go since it can loosen up material surrounding one block only to result in a kind of energetic avalanche with other blocks going at about the same time. 

You can identify blocks in your body by simply observing when you feel a sense of resistance or even pain in your body when you move a certain way.  Your energy body changes frequency from one end of the field to the other.  As a result, different emotions are stored at different places along this "column" in the body.  This is why some issues are stored in the root chakra than in the crown. The root chakra deals with nurture, abundance, and safety of self, for example.  When you feel a sense of resistance or even pain from tightness in a given area, you can gain a good bit of understanding about the block in general by thinking about where that block is located.  If its between two chakras, then it will contain aspects of BOTH chakras in some way.  
 
If you can identify the spot where the hurt or twinge keeps happening, you can point it out to a therapists who can work on that spot for you.  The types of therapists who can do this work will be people who do both energy work and body manipulations such as deep tissue massage.  Acupressure, acupuncture, reiki, and deep tissue are all methods that can help.  In pranayama yoga there is a lot of attention given to moving certain parts of the body, something called "locks" that help to move blocked material.  All of these involve vigorous movement of the part of the body where the chakra is located and, presumably, the blocked material.  Even placing your attention on the spot and holding it there through the day is one way that you can help loosen up a block in your body.  If it gets enough aware energy, it can trigger the release of the block sometimes. 
 
Chakra Clearing VS. Meridian Clearing
 
This is especially true for the chakras.  When a block is in a meridian line and not in a chakra, it seems to be harder to release it unless you are using acupressure or reiki, systems that actively move energy through the meridians of the energy body.  The chakras, conversely,  have a churning effect on blocks so that if you can use the chakras in meditation to swirl and move around a block, this can be very helpful because unlike clearig one small block in a meridian, a whole cluster of blocks can often be released all at once when its associated to chakra movement.  This is achieved by simply visualizing it and allowing the chakras to open fully and begin their movements, which often feel like you are moving or floating or even flying sometimes.  By placing your intent to clear the blocked material in a given chakra, the energy can begin to melt away the block.  
 
Clearing along a meridian line is more exact and may only clear one block.  It can also lead to other blocks letting go, though, and these blocks can be worked through by acupuncture, acupressure, and deep tissue most often.  The larger blocks can be "swirled" away through vigorous chakra movement and can sweep away lots of blocks at once, leaving a person feeling as though they are a changed person.  Many people who have these types of clearings describe feeling as though their body was being purged by a wave or by a force that sent a whole series of bubbles or shots of energy up along their spine and out their body.  Fundamental to all of this work is intent (willingness) and willingness to surrender at a deep level even into the body.  By reaching this deep state of vulnerability, you will also be reaching a deep state of awareness somatically about your body and your own body of feeling, too. Trust me, when the moment comes, it will be like suddenly seeing things in a very different way, the way perhaps that things really are instead of the way you have chosen to see them through the colorings of the particular block that you have.  Be ready to see things in a very different way, or to feel them very differently.  And remember; this is nothing at all to do with reason.  This is NOT about working through your emotional backlog rationally.  To try to do so is a trap.  Yes, reason can keep you OUT of the thick hot stew of your feelings and can help you to calmly identify what needs to be released.  However, you need to actually jump in the water with no fear or resistance to what you will find since this is a necessary state of mind and heart that you will need in order to clear the block. If you turn away, you are effectively saying to your body that its okay to keep the block in place.  
 
Some blocks go quickly.  Some take months, even years to dissolve.  A good rule of thumb is that if you have a strong investment in a given block, the harder it will be to rid yourself of it.  The more ego focuses on it, the harder it will be for the block to simply dissolve.

Part of prana is the energy body that expresses itself as a vortex, a kind of doughnut-shaped field of energy that is common to most anything that has an electromagnetic field around it.  It is this field that carries your consciousness and also the energy that feeds into your cells. When the energy is blocked, illness and neurosis can result. Life force is literally being squeezed out of you when it should be more abundant. 

When you remove these blocks you can realize stronger energy, a more peaceful state of mind and greater bliss that is not at the whim of whatever blocks are turning in you at the time. 
Until you are able to release a block, the block itself will be energized by prana in your body and it will remain active.  It can cause any number of problems, all of which will revolve around some kind of meme that is less than who you really are as a divine creature in earthly robes.  These blocks can cause no end of trouble for you.  There is little else work that is as important as this is. 
There are numerous ways to clear away blocks in the body.  One method is through energy work like White Crane Chi Gung.  This method of blending movement with energy work will aid in the removal of blocks throughout the body.  In order for it to work, it requires patience and persistence.  By working at it for weeks and months at a time, you can begin to see results.  Deep tissue massage by a practitioner who knows or understands about blocks is helpful.  Also, body movement is key.  The very act of shaking or massaging or moving the part of the body that is blocked can aid in removing material from it.  
 
Until you have cleared one chakra region, you will be dealing with what blocks remain in that region.  You will likely find that less obvious blocks come to the fore in your awareness now after having one bigger more obvious block removed.  Your attention can become much more highly tuned in this way to detect blocks in your system.  As this happens, you can also become much more sensitive to the presence in blocks in yourself and others if you are interested in learning a healing art.  I have dug so deep into myself that I have had some practitioners unable to detect the blocks.  One actually scolded me, saying I should not try to CREATE problems when there were were not problems there.  This practitioner was not able to pick up on this material, and I went on to have a number of clearings surrounding this region, so yes, there was more there, but not all of us will be as good about picking up on it.  While I have done the bulk of the clearing on my own, I have used a variety of methods to assist in clearing my system, and these have all worked well for me when they came along in my awakening journey (almost as if they were perfectly suited for the blocks kundalini was churning away on at the time!).  In many ways, I have been very gifted to have found a certain modality at a given time, as though the timing was perfect.  I was talking with my latest therapist about doing more work in the Fall recently as she expressed some surprise with the level of release I was experiencing with her work. I had to explain that while my being able to release blocks was different from her experience, it wasn't from my experience.  For many people, it seems they get a deep tissue massage and maybe loosen up some material a bit.  For me, I am headed into the final stage of releasing material, a process that has taken years of steady daily attention and work, and I am having flashes of past lives, of deeply held traumas from my ancient past. It seems the deeper I go into it, the harder it is, the deeper the shadows. New things come up, things that had not come up before.  Because I am dealing with the root chakra last, I am encountering a landscape inwardly that shows me all of the feelings that have arisen in me ever since I was a baby.  These are very old things, lifetimes in the making, and yet even so, I am here to deal them a kind of wonderful kind of death, which is in truth a redemption.  I let them free, no longer prisoner.  As this happens, I find that I experience emotions that I have long since pent up.  It isn't easy!  I am afraid I will offend someone, that I will get caught in the vortex of its energy while I am actively trying to clear it out!  But regardless, I go forward.  I go forward relatively alone because I would not want my anger and rage which was so-long suppressed in the root to be bubbling up with people near me.  How would I respond?  What would I say? In moments like these I feel like someone with terrets syndrome, afraid of walking into public places and calling the nice old lady at the counter something I shouldn't.

I know.  I hear that voice in my head, too.  "Oh really, fellah? You mean you might call an innocent old lady who did no harm to you an ugly old hag or a bitch or something?  Is that what you are saying?  Doesn't sound very spiritual to me, fellah....not very spiritual at all!"  This is of course where I give the voice in my head the virtual finger and turn back to what I am focused on.  You see, all of this is spiritual.  The sooner we get that, the better.  Some people will point out that calling someone names is not really spiritual, and I will say you missed the point.  This isn't about pretending to be something we aren't.  But the path to becoming what we know we can be is one that is involved in removing the error (shadow) that gets in the way of that perfection.  So its all about being real.  Its like being the Velveteen Rabbit. 

So don't be afraid of the shadow, I say.  That you get down into such shadows is cause for celebration.  Who on the planet has managed to get this deeply into themselves....to overcome the world?  That is pretty special and pretty damned spiritual.  :-)

This is why clearing blocks is so important; it is all about overcoming the world.  Would you like to see with new eyes?  With clear bodies, we can build a clear world.  And that is why I am writing to you today.  Pass it along!
~P.

Kundalini and Flu-Like Symptoms

I have been away for a bit and have not had time to work much up on the topic of awakening, so my apologies.  I had a wonderful trip to the West coast to celebrate my 50'th year here, and it was a marvelous gift from a wonderful friend who is one of a kind.  I like to travel because I have found that the very location, the particular flow of energy from the earth itself can trigger a different turn of mind or some new realization.  It is true that the electromagnetic field that protects us from plasma from the sun has a different feel or flavor that really has little to do with the surface appearance of the location. Its just....different.  And out there on the Island of San Catalina, it was an energy I was so ready to feel into.  So what a wonderful gift, right?

I have noticed that there are a lot of search inquiries on my blog about flu symptoms connected to kundalini.  I don't look at my stats enough, apparently, because this is a topic that I may have touched on from time to time, but never directly. So given the interest, I am going to hopefully give you some insight into these symptoms that might make the going a little easier.

As many of you know, I feel that we have everything we need inside of us to discern the manner of our condition and how to heal ourselves. This is especially true in the midst of awakening.  Even so, the sheer volume of symptoms and the fast-paced change can be a lot to take in and try to make sense of! 


The Reaction To Solar Energy

The Hindus describe the qualities of energy (prana)  in our bodies as solar and lunar.  It isn't that your energy is tied to these solar and lunar qualities, but rather it seeks to describe the character of the energy.  It is no different from the Chinese yin and yang. Simply, we have and are aware we have two complimentary energies that we often ascribe a character like male and female, hot and cold, solar and lunar, etc. Sometimes different qualities of energy are needed to help dissolve the blocked material that awakening brings.  A very male-leaning energy (yang) might need the compliment of the cooler feminine to help move it along (yin).  Solar energy most often can cause stomach upset.   The answer is to find ways to unblock and let ourselves FLOW in a more balanced way.

Solar energy, or yang, can be very healing.  It can be the "fire" that burns away blocks.  But because of the nature of this energy (which is not always experienced as heat, but this is how many traditions describe it), you can also experience varying degrees of over-stimulation from it.  Good, yes, but if you have too much of it, it can lead to discomfort.  For what it is worth, in my own experience, I experienced a lot of yang energy in my body that helped to move a lot of blocks very quickly.  I also suspect that it also led to my body protecting itself by producing extra fluid to insulate it from the energy that was so strong. What this means is that the body creates mucus, and mucus can lead to feeling of nausea.  It is kind of a double-edges sword.  Hair of the dog: you sometimes need that strong energy to clear you out, but it can also make you feel....bad.  The light at the end of the tunnel is that as the body is cleared of stored emotional material called "blocks" or "knots," you experience a much calmer and peaceful state with the energy. This has been my experience, and I have noted that others who I know have expressed similar observations. But this is all intuitive.  What do other sources have to say about this?

To illustrate to you how you can know intuitively what kind of energy you need to help bring a fix of healing, I just typed in the paragraph above my feeling that yang energy was tied to the stomach/colon, and is responsible for problems we see there.  But the truth is, I had no outside source telling me this.  I just wrote it and then figured I could find out if this was right.....and if I was wrong, I would correct it.  Want to know what I found?  Look here to read this very interesting article on the type of energy in the stomach and intestines (you will need to skip down several paragraphs....I will excerpt the information for you but the link could prove helpful so that is included also)

http://www.steppingstoneacu.com/blog/2012/08/08/The-Large-Intestine-Transformation-Change-and-Letting-Go.aspx

Traditional Chinese Medicine is all about relationships. The Large Intestine energy also has a special relationship with the Stomach energy, in that they are both designated as “Yang Ming” or “Yang Brightness”. Yang, as we have mentioned, is the active, hot, fiery, expansive parts of our being. (As opposed to Yin, which is the passive, watery, cool, inward parts.) Yang Brightness, as the name implies, are strong Yang energy systems. This means that they are easily affected by heat. This heat may be generated by long-term patterns of stagnant energy, a poor diet, or physically or emotionally toxic environments. The Yang Ming designation also means that we can effectively use these systems to clear pathological heat from the body. Some of the best acupuncture points in the body to clear excess heat are on the Large Intestine meridian.  One of the ways to clear excessive heat (such as a high fever) with herbal medicine is to use herbs that stimulate the Large Intestine to promote a bowel movement and bring the fever rapidly down.

In the excerpt above, the tradition comes from Chinese medicine.  As with all healing modalities, there is always, or tends to be, a leaning in one direction or another towards certain ways of seeing and treating a given issue.  The gist in this article, though, as you may well find, is that yang energy is tied into the digestive track and is probably often responsible for problems when this energy becomes stagnated (which can also mean it is moving too strongly, the other side of the coin!).  If this is the case, how then do you correct for this?  You move that energy!

These energies become much more intense during awakening.  They can be so intense that they can have very real physical effects.  The question in people's minds is if these effects are bad for us?  What is important to bear in mind is that when the self resists the flow of this energy, there is always pain, anxiety, etc.  Whenever the self surrenders, the energy flow goes from hard to blissful.  This is the important lesson of this new world of energy. It is simple: don't fight it.  I guarantee you that at any point at any time when someone is feeling difficulty in the midst of awakening, it is ALWAYS attributed or has its root in some resistance in the individual.  But when you awaken, you don't just magically enter into it perfectly formed for letting this energy flow through you.  Yes, the INITIAL awakening might have involved a blast of white light up your spine that sent you into a transcendent state for a few minutes or even a few days, but everyone, and I mean everyone, returns to their lives to work at the level of the personality to work to clear and purify all levels of the self into a finer form.  This takes time.  As a result, you can be dealing with the effects from the dross or old material as it exists side by side with this other energy.
Flu symptoms are not unusual.  I had them.  I had them but without the accompanying high temperatures that might tell me this was a real flu.  Instead, I had stomach upset, nausea that would come and go, and even diarrhea which would itself also come and go with no rhyme or reason.  My appetite was effected, and my stomach often would feel on edge at certain stages of the cleansing process.  The observations I made were that just prior to and just after a big release of blocked material, I would get these digestive anomalies.  They would come based in large part to how big the block was.  I found that breath work (I was shown that I should pant like a wild cat....a type of panting that is not unlike the breathing that yogi's teach to their students when dealing with kundalini), as well as physical exercise, mild foods, and proper hydration were all aspects to my working through these symptoms.

The unique problem when talking about kundalini is that we have what I would call "referred" symptoms that happen a LOT.  I define "referred" symptoms as energetic symptoms that aren't even physical that get picked up by the brain and then are interpreted to BE a real physical symptom.  The way to tell the difference between real and referred is that when you go to the doctor, they can find nothing behind the symptoms.  In time you will be able to discern for yourself what is real and what is referred.  Many people do go to the doctor in the beginning of their awakenings because they think there is something wrong, only to find nothing is to be found. The real danger in this situation is the doctor who feels he or she must prescribe SOMETHING to make the patient feel better.  The accompanying sense of relief that you get when they give you that piece of paper called a prescription begins to bring relief right away, long before you even buy the prescription.  However, as you may know, the placebo effect is not improved upon by taking drugs that we really do not need, so patient beware.

When I awoke I was having this nagging stomach problem that would come and go with no seemingly good explanation for it.  Of course, I worried about what it might mean since it was unlike any stomach problems I have ever had, so I thought it was something new.  Well, the short story was that it was something new, just not what I thought or feared it might be.  Luckily my doctor did not give me medication, but suggested it was some kind of re-balancing of my system and to just give it some time, watch what I was eating, etc.

In my case, I was having bouts of diarrhea for no known cause.  I would feel a little sick during these bouts, but not as if I had a flu or some bug.  In my mind I thought this could be some unknown effect from something I might need to be careful about.  The clue for me was that each time that I took pepto bismal, the symptoms went away, only to come back about a month later.  This happened a number of times in the six months between my first initial epiphany encounter with nonduality and the sudden rising of the force that came up my spine in serpentine fashion. I simply had not connected the dots yet.

So some strategies for dealing with this

Treat Yourself Right

• You might want to see a doctor first to rule out anything that might be the root of something physical first.
• Take simple remedies that will help settle your stomach(pepto worked well for me)
• Lighten your food intake to include bland softer foods (barley, oats, wheat, etc., for morning)
• Certain foods will be easier on your stomach than others such as eggs, eggs, high fiber grains

Help Yourself Move Energy

This is what is causing the flu symptoms if it's not due to a bug.  Learning to move energy and help with blocks is an important long-term strategy

Breathwork - See Pranayama and Hatha Yoga. Using a panting type of breath while concentrating awareness on the solar plexus and imagining the energy rising out of the stomach into the heart, is a good way to encourage energy flow through your body.

Physical disciplines that help to dissolve energetic blocks in your system.  Consider Qi Gung (also called Chi Gong), Thai Chi, as well as yoga all can be helpful in dissolving blockages.  Acupuncture/pressure and deep tissue work can aid in energy movement. Deep tissue massage with a therapist who is good at energy work can also be extremely helpful.  You will have to do your homework here.  I have found two extremely good practitioners who know how to listen to my energy and then help to move what they can feel is causing me problems. One therapist was trained in Kahuna massage and turned out was only a few blocks from my home. The other is a dear friend who approaches this type of work in a big picture way, integrating a broad range of methods all used when the moment requires it.  Sometimes she will make things up based on what her inner guidance is telling her at the time.  As a result, she is one of the most sought after masseuse in her area. 

I often will simply ask myself why I am having trouble.  As I do, I observe myself carefully, and I zoom in on my feelings as I ask myself this.  It is really amazing what you can find out about yourself when you are no longer invested in hiding things the way you used to.  Access to the subconscious is much clearer now in awakening.  You might want to sit quietly and ask your stomach or gut why its feeling this way.  FEEL into it, don't think into it.  Is this feeling reminding you of a feeling you have had before?  As  child?  Or in a certain circumstance?  What do these instances all have in common? You would be surprised just how quickly you can do this type of inner inquiry in order to get to the root of the cause or issue.  This type of work can be very healing and very helpful for you in all other forms of healing work (releasing blocks).  Don't be shy, give it a try.  :-)

Alternative Methods

• Diet

Try changing your diet.  You might need a higher fiber diet.  Very high fiber has helped me to deal with some of the fallout from energetic block movement.  In fact, I often use "All bran" as a kind of tonic in the morning and make sure that I eat food high in fiber. Cut down on sugar intake and eat foods that are high in beneficial bacteria.  This aids digestion and also gives the immune system a boost.

Often "cooling" foods will help with these symptoms.  Try melon.  Melon also has the effect of calming symptoms of kundalini, something I discovered early in my awakening process (I was told about this by a guide in the middle of the night-he showed me an image of a cut piece of cantaloupe or all things, I only later read about how melon can be helpful) Try cucumber and light vegetables.  Fruits have also been helpful.  Things that never caused you upset may now be upsetting.  Foods that you didn't like you might find that you like because of how they can help you feel in the throes of awakening. 

Bland foods often work.  Fiber could also make it worse in some cases, before it gets better.  Your body will tell you what feels the best.  Consider trying different methods for more than just a few days since it takes time for your digestive system to re-balance itself. 

During the early stage of awakening, I used Pepto-Bismal to calm my stomach.  It worked for several weeks until the next round came back around.  

• Fasting

Fasting may help tone your gut.  How you choose to do this depends on you and your health.  There are many ways to fast, some that involve still consuming food.  Some fasts involve colon cleansing.  While you will want to check with your doctor whether fasting is right for you (if you have health issues that could be affected by a fast), there are a lot of resources on the web today about the many ways to fast.  When I fasted, I found that it really helped with my energetic flow.  It helped the energy to flow less hindered.  My fast was a draw-down of food so that I ate half the amount the second day of the fast, then I ate nothing the third day and then did not eat anything for the next three days.  I made sure that I always had water on hand.  I was physically active the third day of my fast, but not excessively so.  I drove on a four hour trip one way and had no problem with being light headed. I found this type of fast to have been very beneficial to me.  Everyone is different, so the results I have may be different for you.  My experience has been that fasting tones my body as well as my mind and seems to help open channels of energy.  Fasting was long considered a way to open ones self to the world of the spirit. You can read up on the history of fasting from a number of different cultural and religious perspectives.

In a story about Pythagoras who was seeking entry into the Mystery Schools of Egypt, he was told that to "be different" he needed to fast, do breath work, and focus on different places in his body (such as the third eye).  Fasting was done for extended periods back then.  When Pythagoras had done as they instructed, he returned a changed man. Did he have an awakening?  Its certainly possible that this was exactly what took place.

This link is ALL about fasting.  Really. An entire site dedicated to it. :-)

http://www.allaboutfasting.com/types-of-fasting.html

~As in all practice, extremes are to be avoided.  Good luck in your work!

UPDATE: 7/2016

I have been doing a lot of research on the dopamine connection and Kundalini experiences. Without going to deeply into this let me just say that there is I believe a very real connection between the experience of Awakening and the production of dopamine in the body. The effect of an opiate like opening is almost always something that produces a certain degree of knowledge. I am not a researcher and I do not have studies to back up my contention, but I do think that this is an area that warrants more attention. I think that it is possible that the increased level of dopamine in the body can contribute to feelings of nausea and loss of appetite. I began by looking at what compounds similar to dopamine did to people and their appetites.  Opium, for example, kills appetite, and often creates nausea.  While opium is not exactly like dopamine, it is a natural analog to it, and I think it is very likely that there is a connection with the effect in one being expressed in the bodily produced one. What I have found in my own experience is there is little to ameliorate the effects of nausea other than altering my diet so I take in foods that are more bland and soothing to my stomach. Everyone may be different but my experience has shown that protein sources like Greek yoghurt and eggs have helped me to get the nutrients necessary to remain healthy. Also a vegetarian diet has helped in many instances.

Not directly related to this have been several foods that have helped to smooth out the more difficult sides to intense energy. These are cantaloupe (try any melon that you like) when energy is running high. Also Indian curry has helped at early stages. Later on hot spicy foods have seemed to provide a smooth bliss during times of intense energy. This was only beneficial during a stage in the process, but it gave me a couple of hours of relief, which was a welcome change at the time.