Awakenings, nonduality, kundalini, Qi.
All of these things describe a phenomenon that is currently happening with greater frequency in our world. For those who have been touched by its awesome power, their lives are irrevocably changed forever. Even glimmers of Awakening can set a person's life on a different course, that is how profound the experience is. Some have had the more stereotypical awakening that is described in the literature coming from the India about kundalini rising up the spinal column and blasting through each chakra to move out of the crown in the head. Because these types of awakenings are the most dramatic events I suspect they are paid more attention to and also because of how the experience was seen to progress in the centuries-old tradition of the Vedics. These traditions, though, reflect their own orientation in the world, and their own perspective colors their perceptions to some degree. in the eastern tradition kundalini is seen as Shakti, the feminine principle in the dual universe of masculine and feminine dynamics. The reality, though, is that the people experiencing this awakening were mostly men and in an experience such as this, we bring to the table or own perception and experience.
The masculine and feminine current in all things is a might broad mirror and you can see limitless stuff in that mirror. In truth, the energies are both masculine and feminine and both move through the body equaly. Such awakenings can proceed ina wide range of ways, and rather than getting locked into a perspective that says one way is valid while another is not, its more important to pay attention to what it is doing to you. Some would say that there are some Awakenings that are not kundalini and I have to say that all kundalini is or all an Awakening is, is an abundance of energy which triggers a physiological change in you and begins an unmistakable process which is impossible, I think, to ignore. It may seem simplistic, but you will know that this is on an order and magnitude different from anything you have experienced.
So have you had a kundalini awakening or an experience with nonduality? Have you felt as though something was definately up, that this energy seems to have a mind of its own. Is it causing your energy centers to rev up and do you feel a definate sense of an energy moving through you beyond mere surface effects? When I was in college I sat across from a friend who suggested we do something called an energy transferal. I wondered what this was, and it was explained that it was a way to understand a person on a deeper level. This was very much like reading an aura I was told, except it involved a deeper sensing. As we sat there, things were very quiet. I wondered what my friend was picking up on? Our hands then were shifted into a new position and something happened. I experienced a sense of myself expanding, as though my awareness was going beyond my body. This went on until I felt myself expand well beyond the attic space of the house, spilling out into the air above as I was given a 360 degree view of the outside around the house I was sitting comfortably in. I understood that this was some interaction of me and my friends' energy fields, but what this was, I didn't know. I understood, though, at an intuitive level, that energy shifts awareness, or can build awareness. Certainly this did happen, but I know it was not an Awakening. I was filled like a balloon energetically , yes, but I did not have an experience with that soul self I have come to know as a hallmark of my experience today. In a sense the energetics of this experience I just described, while interesting, it didn't go deep within me. Something simply wasn't triggered as was the case with a kundalini awakening. And it just might be that we are like layers; we contain layers of material that must be worn away before our energy fields can take the energy of an awakening, before the energy can trigger those centers in our bodies that will initiate the local physical effects that will eventually provide the bliss that this experience is known for. The other thing was that while this was an interesting experience, it also did not lead to a noticeable change in me other than shifting my awareness. While my friend was dumbfounded at the time WHY the energy did what it did, I don't think either of us would describe it as anything like kundalini. it may just be that when we feel kundalini we are experiencing the same energy as e have always felt, we simply have removed enough stuff from ourselves in order to pick up its more powerful sublime aspects.
Kundalini itself a an intelligence, an awareness of a very refined form. It does not seek to create divisions within us about which form of bliss is better or more preferable than another. EVERY form of bliss is bliss to this intelligence. It all proceeds, emanates, and builds from a divine source which is more or less a pure stream of love which is itself naturally creative in nature. As a result of its creative nature, it can and will flow into every single form we give it here. Its what it does. Because of our freewill we can choose forms of creativity that are positive or negative. It is without condition. While we may shrink back at war and pestilence as being an aspect of the creative, they are. This does not make them good, though. They merely reflect their creators. They are only as good as those that made it. In truth, all energy is conscious, so there is a great responsibility that we are handed in our creativity. Events, then, have their own form of consciousness. Certainly they cannot be compared to the consciousness of a lady bug or leaf or an atom of oxygen. Everything made or created has its own life, and we are here learning the consequences of the good and bad. Ultimately, for myself at least, this is the great lesson that kundalini confers. EVERYTHING is connected, everything is alive even if it does not adhere to our understanding of what alive is. Afterall, what we don't know outstrips in scope what we do know. This can be daunting in the face of an Awakening, so small things first!
Kundalini is in many ways neutral in that if you are ready to embrace the change, you will find yourself actually doing this in a powerful and beautiful way. If you are oriented towards the shadow aspects of being such as anger, fear, or revenge, things will be powerfully difficult. My feeling is because these things are actually counter to the universe, which always seeks upwards in its divine awareness and being. The shadow or darker parts of ourselves only seem to be powerful because of the energy we put there. If you put a lot of fear into something it will bristle with that creative energy given it (even though its the negative pole of things). This can be as easy or as hard as you make it. It can be hard, though, because it means that some parts of you must dissolve in order for this larger self to make its presence more felt in your life. In the end, this is more like a wall dissolving. It might SEEM like your world is falling away, but give it time and patience, and be easy on yourself. A little love goes a long way.
Awakenings create a bridge to the soul or Essential Self. I like to use Essential Self because when I began using the term in my writing, it was what came to me, what felt most natural. I suppose I may have heard the term before but for me it meant the soulself. As I began to look around at others and their experiences with Awakenings, I saw they too used this term, and that was something of a comfort to this little earthbound self in a way, and also a reason for my Essential Self to nod in agreement. So natural and perfect that we would use similar language even though we are all separated by miles and lifetimes of things on this earth! By creating a bridge to this Essential Self the energetics of the Essential Self begin to flood into the Now, into the earthbound self and its experience here. This can set up a kind of......disharmonious vibration, which is the result of the higher vibrations of the soul coming in greater intensity into the physical realm of your vibrational rates (which are a cluster of rates all contained within your energy field with each thought or emotion having its own particular vibration for example). This lack of harmonic alignment is how the energy of kundalini does its work; it will show you what is not in alignment by its simply being what it is and your earthly self which has these lower vibrations of fear and hurt and anger, frustration, loathing, etc. , associated with it and will reveal those places to your awareness when these things were once more in the background, perhaps even subconcious. This creates some degree of awareness within the self, even though the process can be hard dealing with these new vibrations and what they do inside of us. What is happening is you are being undone, and the feeling of losing that familiar control can be hard. This is where it can be helpful to have someone who can hold your hand and tell you that its going to be okay, that you will get through this. Ultimately, much of what has been shoved under the rug by the earthly self is vibrated to the surface in a sense by this effect. If you want to know this principle in action try harmonizing with someone else's voice and as you do so, bring your tone up the scale to meet their own. What happens as you do this? What do you hear as you move from one tone to another slowly up the scale to their particular pitch? This is sound energy, but its energy just the same, and we can feel how something is disharmonious by the vibrations it produces. It can give you an idea as to how the energies of kundalini can begin to work within you. In this case instead of feeling just a vibration, you will have some feeling attached to the vibration as well. If its negative, then this is something that will hopefully be resolved. If its blissful, then you are aligning to whatever this particular pitch or energy is trying to do in your field, your being.
In an awakening, we don't always have to KNOW what this disharmony is all about (like how you feel an old hurt that was unresolved from a lifetime ago that has remained in your field all this time and its less than divine character sets up a difference in vibration, and when the Kundalini energy begins to move, you can FEEL this in a number of forms...you need not even KNOW that the disharmony comes from something buried since childhood or from your lifetime 600 years ago in Spain).
Ultimately kundalini fuels a deconstructing of our old ways of thinking and being. This is because of how we have chosen to be in the world and these are merely habitual patterns that kundalini has to undo. I had images in my mind of a giant iron coming to iron out all my wrinkles. The feeling of the wrinkles being ironed felt destructive to what I had always known. This can feel very hard to deal with, as though some force is coming to change your life whether you like it or not! Oh my. It seems hard and scary at first, but through learning that this force has never and will never seek to bring anything that was not in your alignment spiritualy, you can actually learn to trust this energy, even partner with it. In truth, when I feel ready for the next wave of work I whisper to kundalini like one might beckon the beloved and this energy obliges in spades. I can even ask that it come on extra strong in order to work through what I sense is a particularly difficult area in me. Most times, it obliges. I can also shut it down, but this always creates a deep sense of tension and discomfort as though I am fighting the flow.....which of course I am. If you are left feeling like this experience is seeking to change your life, you are right, and the best strategy is to go forward with curiosity and love in your heart. You will find, I think, that as you open up to this new world inside of you that it only reveals greater and greater levels of bliss. Can't believe you could feel bliss stronger than you do now? Just wait. As you surrender, you will BECOME this bliss.
While you may feel like you made no decision to bring on kundalini, some part of you did certainly, and a lot of consternation in the beginning is the result of more subconscious knowing coming to the surface in a way that seems as though this is simply thrust upon you. In some way, deeper down, some part of you accepted this, sought it, and dreamed it into being. Once the energy begins to move in you, it can stat from the core of your spine or it can move like many describe as being like goosebumps, chills running all over your skin in what begins as a rather superficial way. This was part of my own experience, and I found that when I had experiences that knocked the kundalini out of me (very emotional events that shut me down for a week at a time sometimes), this lighter energy that tingled would reinstate the deeper energy in me by way of this tingling sensation. This happened enough that I was able to see the connection that it had with my body.
The linkage with kundalini is both spiritual and physical. When kundalini sets up shop, it is inducing the body to go through a change. It does this through the endocrine system for the most part. This is a kind of partnership between the energetics of the soul and the physical as vessel for mirroring the nonphysical energies. At some point in order to FEEL the intensities that the soul provides, the body has to have some means of processing this information in physical form. So the body goes through a change as this happens, and this can be broad in range. Some people may feel an increase in appetite, while people like me felt some nausea and discomfort in the beginning. The body begins to process a lot of fluids. I found a noticeable increase in an ongoing output of seminal fluid even though I was not physically aroused sexually. I found that my senses were heightened, and my sleeping patterns changed some. My dreams took on a greater intensity and I felt I understood them better than I did before. I was filled with a growing and moving energy that filled me from top to bottom.
All of the shame and guilt and unprocessed junk in us that has built up on our earthwalk here becomes subject to the energetics of kundalini, and a huge pat of the experience is divesting ones self from this dross. This is achieved through grace and surrender.
Some signs of kundalini are:
tingling
involuntary twitching or jerking
a feeling of electricity or some energy moving through the body
Unusual body postures or a feeling like one needs to arch the head or back in response to the energy
Feelings of intense burning or heat moving through the body. This can be a mild heat all the way to a feeling like one is running a fever but without the associated symptoms of ache.
Headaches and pulsations in the forehead
A feeling of the forehead being gripped or being put under pressure (this is third eye awakening)
Insomnia
Lower back pain, also bodily pain in response to the energy moving powerful
Depression as a result of not understanding what is happening
Inability to feel as though one can find rest in the midst of this relentless energy (surrender heals this)
A feeling of intense energy which can lead to a feeling of mania and inability to sleep
Hearing voices--these can be unintelligble murmurings that sound like they come from a distance
A feeling as though you are hearing the voice of a divine presence like God or Goddess. You may also feel or see angelic type beings that interact with you.
An increased sense of empathy
An increased psychic ability (these vary depending on the person and seem to be the result of boosting each person's own native abilities)
An awareness of energies around you as well as other consciousnesses seen or not seen
Outbursts of crying or laughing
Experiences of extreme bliss (along with body postures--sometimes)
Dropping into mystical states or altered states of awareness
Seeing lights both dim and bright (these can come with a sudden awakening when the energy shoots out the top of the head for instance) some lights can signal the presence of others around you, while others are harder to discern. The phenomenon of lights in a gradual awakening are harder to pin down and may be the result of the nervous system adjusting to the energies.
A feeling of intoxication, being high on life
An increased production of both adrenaline which makes you feel anxious with an increase output of dopamine, which makes you feel at peace and calm.
Increased or decreased libido
These are just a few of the symptoms and along with this experience is the feeling of the body being filled with an energy moving through it that has an awareness. This can cause some worry and paranoia in the beginning. Ultimately the person learns to channel this energy through them in the process of integrating the experience and this can involve supreme ecstasies as the masculine or feminine pole of the personality matches an energy in the cosmos that is its opposite. This experience creates a very magnetic effect and like attracts like. This is why the monks experienced the energy as feminine; they were all men. Quite naturally, then, they would see this experience from their perspective as men. St. Theresa of Avilla, who most certainly was going through kundalini experienced the energy moving through her as masculine (and cast her experience in the roles of God the father and Jesus as her divine consort---she expressed how she wished for death so she could be reunited with her beloved). Soul connections with people currently incarnate on earth can also become part of this experience as part of channeling a more balanced sense of energy in the self. These also serve as catalysts for change since they operate on the principle of like attracting like. Since they involve two people who have a connection with their own Essential Selves, the connection between them transcends time and space and feels extremely significant (as any experience with the Essential Self would naturally be because the Essential Self is itself a manifestation of divine love)
In the East there are practicioners that pass on the energy of Awakening to their students in a process called Shaktipat. This is a touching of the student, it can also be through a look or even a thought. Since this transcends time and space contact is not necessary. There is another aspect of this which is called darshan, which sounds like a blessing bestowed through the eyes, however, this sounds just like shaktipat to me. The one thing to be aware of is that when a teacher may confer this on a student his or her own karma becomes entangled in that of the student. The teacher can suddenly experience all the same maladies that effected the student. In the purest form, he bestowal of shaktipat could be an act of love. On the other end it can be ego driven. The way we choose to create will have within the creation a mirroring of the intent and energy that first created it. If you move in ego, then ego will likely be a part of the process and ego will need to be moved away from the center of ones self in order to reach a better place internally. I suspect that the best way is by each person awakening on their own. Having said this the energy of others do play into this, can help us to understand, become more aware of things we were not aware of. In the final analysis, though, kundalini needs to be a personal journey of reaching a better place in my opinion. Without that refinement, we are simply what we were before but supercharged with the energy. As I have said in other posts, kundalini is not itself enlightenment, but the infrastructure that can make a more enlightened being possible. What kind of vessel you become for this divine energy is your choice and creation. What do you wish to create in this world today?
The difference between an Awakening and mania or psychosis is that an Awakening does not involve beings telling you to kill yourself or to do disturbing things that are disruptive. It also means that you know that what you are going through is part of a process of change rather than simply being caught up in delusion. Your experience, however, can seem perfectly delusional to those who have never gone through such an experience. You may experience some amazingly unusual things with these beings, but they all will tend to make sense within the context of the experience with them. Any being that does not have your best interest at heart is not one that should be allowed in your field.
Ultimately, the process of integrating kundalini involves surrender. We are taught that bad things are not good and we either push them away or develop some kind of guilt or self loathing over our personality not being able to "get around" whatever the loathing is about. In the final analysis, this is being okay with paradox, with irony, with things not being perfect, and accepting the self in total and moving on. When this happens, and it can happen piece by piece, these pieces feel as though they drop away, are transmuted, or changed in some way. These things then do not occupy our energy field and awareness in the same way. Suddenly and sometimes dramatically, as these issues from our past are resolved in us, there is an instantaneous burst of free flowing energy. For me this has involved being able to forgive myself, others, and to let things go. By doing this, I was able to feel increasingly freer within myself. I reached a place where there was no pain in the energy body, no hard energy, no tightness in the energy or knots that needed to be dissolved. When we are resolved, we become more easy within ourselves and this results in our becoming better channels for this energy to flow through us. This posture, though, has to remain constant, and it is the energy which helps, I think, to train our physical and nonphysical sides of our being to find that perfect balance which seems to be a hallmark of ascension. We can fall backwards into things or old ways of thinking or feeling that were habitual. Old habits can die hard sometimes, but in the end when we can reach a place of clear resolution, we are free forever from whatever the old issue was. This experience though involves self love and compassion. If we do not have that, we will simply not have the means to move forward within. The problem many people seem to have is how different this love and compassion is. Many are not used to how completely unconditional this energy bids us to be is. We can in our ego chose not to accept its flow in us, but we also wind up restricting it, which has its own painful consequences in the midst of an awakening. Don't try to manage the flow of the universe. Learn perhaps to manage yourself in relation to It, but you are up against a billion pound gorrilla. It will spank you every time if you try to go up against it. But don't confuse this "spanking" with punishment. Its not. Its just the the flow of this is greater than your egoic self. By letting go you surrender to the discovery of what you are deep down. In a sense this is a bit like being a tree who never knew it had roots. Discovering your roots is what this awakening is about. And then from there, who knows?
Our world has been built on sin and retribution through divine discipline. We have a lot of hangups about all of this. In the end, its about loving forgiveness. This is the ONLY way forward that I can tell. By being punishing and hard, we really do not resolve anything. As long as we feel like another person SHOULD be punished, the only things that we accomplish is staying in that old hard energy. As this energy moves through us we have the opportunity to come to the realization that the way forward is forward, which is to say that keeping ourselves locked into the old postures of tit for tat or a desire to punish or get even or to loath the self for some unknown or forgotten wrong done wont get us very far at all. Our lineage spanning into the future lies with unconditional love and staying in grace.
In the end, listening to yourself is the best policy. Your own self will lead you to those resources that you need, and life will take on a significant character as you find your higher self bringing to you those resources that you need just as you need them.
Finally, I will leave you with a story, a rather old one, but one that I think is reliable. The well known mathematician Pythagoras sought entry into the Mystery Schools of Egypt. Over and over he was rebuffed. Here was the greatest mind of his day seeking entry into a school that would not have him! Finally he asked them what he needed to do to be a part of their school, and what they said was very illuminating. They said "We aren't interested in knowledge; we are interested in experience." They went on to explain that only after he had fasted for nearly a month, had done special breathing all while focusing on his third eye center, would he have hopes of attaining what was a prerequisite for entry into their institution. Pythagoras went away and began to practice fasting, breathing, and focus on his third eye center. Something happened to him because when he went back to the school, he said that the man he was no longer existed, that a new man stood before them, utterly changed from what he was previously. It was then that he was admitted to their very secretive world of advanced spiritual study.
What I will say in all of this is that I think that there indeed exists a pathway to awakening the body so that it becomes the ressurrection, the life, as originally described in the gospels that were not included in our bible (anyone wish to guess why?). For the gnostic gospels, the ressurrection did not happen at death, but was something that should happen before we die, in order to know the kingdom on this earth. Before this happened, it was explained, a person was as if dead, and after the ressurrection, was suddenly alive in a way they had not been before. And what more could the holy ghost be than the feminine principle of the the Creator? If you look more deeply into these things, I think you will find a hidden doctrine that many sought to keep from public view for whatever reason (perhaps because simply because it empowered people beyond what a church might want that would seek to control and grow power). Irregardless of our past, we have had this trigger within us waiting, and now it seems that all of this is on an upswing and growing day by day. By seeing it for the blessing that it can be, we choose to see it in its positive pole instead of through fear or ignorance.
In the end, the single most important thing to know in all of this is love, for love will confer grace and love will confer surrender. Love thyself!
Nemaste
