What Is Kundalini?

There are many resources on the internet and in books that will give you perspectives on what kundalini is.  It is NOT a spirit, not a religion, not even a thing distinct from you.  It is instead, more verb than noun.  It is what we each are in potential.  This I have learned from direct experience with this incredible experience.

It has been described by some as a serpent power, two energies that move up an invisible set of channels along the trunk of the body where they meet in the crown or brain.  It is said that this force is latent and "stored" in the base of the spine until it is awakened. 

The reality, as I have found, is that this force has been described in most traditions by different names, in different ways and with different images.  When describing something that touches on the nonmaterial, it gets very hard to explain something that impinges or affects us here in a way that becomes physical.  

Activating this force is a powerful way to move a person into a greater understanding of their soul.  It is also something that should be approached with caution and care.  I like it to the roller coaster ride that does not ever stop.  You must be so ready within that once you get locked into your seat, you are ready to roll with what comes the rest of your life.  If you are this dedicated to this lightening path, then you may have what it takes.  It is a humbling experience.

In essence what awakening is involves the merging of opposites within the self.  This is done at first broadly and continues through a process that involves a continual purging or cleansing process.  Be you Native American or Eurpoean, Hindu or Muslim, it will not matter since this is a human experience.  It is true that once the process gets underway, you have achieved what many seek their whole lives.  the reason for using yoga has been realized.  You do not need yoga.  Nor do you necessarily need a teacher if you know how to be honest with yourself and look within yourself to see clearly what remains to be cleansed.  I have found that teachers wind up being more of a hindrance than a help during parts of this process.  If you feel you need a teacher, then by all means, seek one, but know also that you will almost always find a teacher who is nearly at your own level.  You need to be willing to entertain radically new ideas or possibilities in order to manifest an experience that will push you well beyond your familiar known bounds. 

Many traditions want to place their own stamp of approval on all of this.  The Hindu tradition has many beliefs about how things should be done. Theirs is a tradition.  I can say quite clearly that you do not need to go find a guru.  The reason why you are here having an awakening is because you are finding yourself.....in a way that you have have never known yourself before.  This moment is laden with a power of possibility so great that you cannot help but manifest your highest.  So why not shoot for the stars?  Why allow yourself to be laden by the weight of ancient tradition when we are now waking up without the help of gurus or postures or methods? 

As someone who has been going through this process of awakening with kundalini, I can offer my perspective, my experience as a primary source to you.  Awakening predates all religion.  It returns you to yourself.  It returns you to the universe and to your higher self. It is  as simple a thing as turning up the volume on feeling.  As this happens, the small things that you did not notice come into view, and what once was a modest life force current now pours through you in powerful surges that had simply never been known to you before.  This can be scary at first because its effect or feeling is so different, perhaps so unexpected.  However, if you know how to ride the wave with grace, what once felt turbulent will refine and become a joy, a blessing.  This energy also churns your dormant or hidden subconscious material in what can only be described as a process of inner cleansing of all old accounts.  It changes your life because the simple self you thought you were is suddenly littered with material there was no way you could have accumulated in one lifetime.  This leads to the realization that you have been at this a long time and you are just now waking up to the wreckage within that you have been carrying around, nearly unaware of.....and which this increase in volume and light that is kundalini is now conferring to your awareness.  It is here that you feel as though a giant work crew has been mobilized in your awareness and is beginning to clean up the mess starting over in the far left hand corner and working methodically, constantly, lovingly within you.  Sometimes the light has to be shone brighter in order just to see through the mists, and as this happens, sometimes the self feels like it will collapse under the scrutiny, under the sudden awareness of the weight of this hulking accumulation of what now is know to be lifetimes of working at this thing called life.  The old way of doing business has finally come to an end......and the degree of success is determined by your willingness to surrender to a process.  You effectively learn to get out of your own way. You surrender to it, you reach into an ancient emotion or state of being called grace.

The curious thing is that as this happens, what was hard becomes soft.  What was difficult becomes increasingly easier.  What once was veiled is not seen more clearly. The unknown becomes known as the self reaches into its karmic accumulation and plucks yet another barb from its side and learns that something beautiful is happening.  Some may want to ascribe methods and ways of going about this process, and some of them may work very well, but most who awaken find that there is a guru within.  As one keeps ones eyes on the prize and learns the devotion necessary to keep up with this tirelessly for years at a stretch, something changes, matures, refines, bit by bit.  Healing the separation that happened in our Garden of Eden, we begin to undo the centuries of wrong-thought or hard feeling, what some call karma, some call illusion, until things get better and better.  Because we each came to this in our own way, we each move out of it in our own way.  Compare if you want, take notes if you want, use any and every tool at your command if need be, but listen to what your insides are saying to you and do not be afraid to follow it at all costs. Even if it means that you lose something cherished.  If it was meant for you in the highest way, then it will remain.  If not, then it does not align with the divine that awaits you.

This is not a race.  There is no expiration date.  You have infinity spreading out before you like a vast sea.  You are here to do two big things: know that you are divine and to find fulfillment in wherever you find yourself.  There is a lot of talk about 2012 nowadays, and I find this to be largely unproductive because underlying it is a current of fear.  Fear of missing the cosmic bus.  But there is no here but a construction of ideas and energy.  And who creates this? Certainly it was created for us, but clearly also is the emerging fact that we are in a co-creative role as we were made in the image of the deity.  We come from that and to it we will return.  This will not be a going but a simple realization, wherever you are, that you are connected into a cosmos that is divine.  Surely there is great change afoot, and if all 2012 is is a marker for this period of shift, then great.  But don't fall for the fear because fear limits you, suggesting some final end.  the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end, no?

 You are infinite in scope and you are eternal. You are meant to, wherever you happen to be, to begin recognizing who you are deeper down.  If this is not a race, then you are free to drop the old awareness you have lived with for so long and consider there is another realm within you that you have up until this time simply not tapped. But this is not a place or a time or anything outside of you. It isn't a date or philosophy or edict.  It is simply what you are.  Be still and know.  If it tells you that you need to live simply, ten do that.  If it tells you to live in the world as it is in order to accomplish what your soul seeks and craves, then do that.  Some say that you have to give up things in order to be spiritual, but stronger is the person who can use the wealth of the world like the toys of a comsic child without fear, without attachment to greed and jealousy, but instead to help move mountains in service to his or her brothers and sisters.  The spiritual is not found just in someone resting and meditating in a cave in India, but also in boardrooms and hostels and restaurants and factories.  We can take what was less than perfect and bring the inspiration to be more perfect and beautiful, and in our own way help bring what is ours to bring.  The teachers say you have to give it all up because of the temptations that money and wealth and fame offer, but this does not mean that you cannot use these as tools to achieve great things.  Invariably the spiritual leader does not need things as s/he is provided them.  But there is always something providing them, and in providing them, they can be used.  With billions on the planet, it is not possible always to bring a message to the masses in the old way.  So we use what our world offers us in joy, in wonder, in awe. 

It is so simple that we miss it. It is a secret buried in plain sight.  There is an old Hindu story that tells of how the gods decided that the best place to put the key to the universe was in the soul of humankind because that was a place where they were least apt to see or to look.  This is a journey to realization, and it really is just that simple.  The realization brings you an almost overwhelming sense of bliss, joy, and good feeling over what you are deeper down.  But we are like beings who have drilled down 100 feet into the crust of our beings and never found water and thus decide there is simply no water there. But a torrent runs just beneath those 100 feet, and so this requires that you dig just a little deeper.  What you are digging into is feeling.  What you do to awaken is you dissolve the things that have kept you divided. It really is just that simple.

Kundalini is a word and the same phenomenon has emerged in numerous cultures across the world.  This is not something you get into a posture and induce.  If that were the case anyone doing kundalini yoga would have awakened by now.  It is not sought, but you may feel as though you are a seeker, but awakening comes at that place where you stop seeking and begin learning how to feel and be different. Perhaps it is pursued until the day you find it.  It is not outside of you but is in the spirit of the world and runs like blood in every vein.  When it "rises" in you, all that is happening is your own awareness of what has always been rises. If you can understand this one simple precept, you will begin to see that the world is brimming with this energy all around you and the universe changes in a significant way.

There are even rules some have made for kundalini, but the curious thing is that as soon as you do that, make rules, someone comes along and explains how that old idea just isn't true.  Perhaps this is merely the march of human understanding down through time as we fine tune all of it, and I suppose in the end keeping ourselves like a solid island that can float on the sea and go where it must is the way the human mind needs to be.  Solid, but able to flow with the tides and currents of those things larger than itself.  Take the good, but always discern.  Buddha spoke of the middle path and what he meant was that the efforts of the Hindus in starving themselves or mortifying the flesh did not bring about enlightenment, nor did other practices. As he sat under a tree, he found it.  No guru, mo method, no teacher.  Just like the Van Morrison song from the album of the same name entitled "In the Garden."  And this is often how it happens.  You awaken to what you are. 

There are many practicioners who believe or who will say that you MUST have a teacher and you MUST do morning prayer and meditation a certain way if you are ever to perfect yourself.  Well, we here in the West don't have time for that.  Having spent many many lives in the east, I am giving the West one final chance.  And I woke up this life.  And I can tell you, no, there is NOTHING that you MUST do when you awaken......although some things are much more helpful if you do them, such as learning the art of surrender.  But the moment someone say you must do something is the moment when someone comes along and shows the world that this is just not so.  In fact, I fully expect someone to make a comment on this very post.  We will see how it goes, shall we?

Awakening is much more like falling in love.  It is like coming alive.  It is found in the spark of inspiration and leads to a constant state of inspiration as if some on switch has been flipped and then left on.  They called it the "resurrection" at one time but very few understood what it meant. They speak of people being as though they were dead living as "normal" people but upon the stirring of the spirit, they are as though awakened into a new life.  This reveals a very different take on some fundamental Christian precepts that may well have been misunderstood from the very beginning, and got related to a man being crucified instead of dealing with a still deeper teaching that some of his disciples sought to explain but whose gospels were hidden in those desert sands of Egypt for so long (the Nag Hammadi).  This is just how much contrast there is between the life before kundalini and the life after kundalini. And it changes your physiology too.  It pushes for change so that you may enter into a holy life, a life where the spirit of all moves around you and through you.  It is not the holy life of the church fathers or of anyone from any religion.  Religion is human made and this is the pure distillation of the divine being conferred upon your own spirit.  It has no one voice or one brand.  It is all life, all things, and no simple part is devoid of it and cannot be expunged or kept out entirely.

Awakening is passion, love, awareness, connectivity, awakening to a new sensory world within you, and a brilliant light that shines its presence upon you in such a way that you cannot hide anymore from the things that keep you separated from the divine flow that is in all things.  It is also one of the most challenging experiences of your life for how unrelenting that it can be.  Talking about it prior to knowing it is often like speaking about life on another planet.  How do you even do that?  Your eyes will be opened, your ears will hear. It is so simple you will wonder how you missed it.  And you will be ready when you are ready.  If you are seeking this, leaning into it, consider that you are seeking to ripen yourself like a fruit in the sun.  Let this ripening happen and when it is time, when it is perfect for you, it will happen.  You might be meditating, or someone might tap you on the shoulder.  You might be driving (this happened to me) or you might be standing  outside just watching the world happen (this happened to me also).  It will happen when you are ready.  And to make things go more smoothly, my recommendation is to take stock of your life and all the things that BUG you and consider that what BUGS you is connected to your karma.  THAT.  Then, work on softening those feelings.  If you need to forgive someone, do so.  But above all, live your life and be ready.  Just BE perfectly here and now and FEEL all that you are.  the most important thing to do is not some posture, but loving yourself, learning to care for yourself as the fountain of life force that you will become.  Instead of being empty and seeking to be filled, seek to first be full so others may be filled by the inspirational sight that you offer as another blissful soul on the planet. 

So, for you, what is kundalini?  How does it help you strike to the center of all that is your soul's worth and wonder in the world?  Does it crown you or bring you low?  Does it chasten while revealing a new kind of truth?  Did it change how you saw the world?  Yourself?  Your pride, your joy, the very contents of your life?  Did it bring a new yearning into your life so that nothing else mattered like it did, setting your heart afire for all that is of the spirit?  Did it leave you dumbfounded and lost?  Did it move you a nudge enough to realize you knew the truth all along?  Was it a whip like force of passion making its way through your body, and did it take you as its own, or were you promised to another?  Did your very world get changed by it?  Does the air now breathe your great secret?  Does your soul now yearn for things you never knew existed?  Do you find yourself revisiting the golden days of childhood and reflecting back into your heart what you seemed to have missed?  Is all of this returning something essential and entirely beautiful to you?  These are my questions for you because I think we need the world that is waking up to say "we are waking up" as those who are themselves in the predawn hours of the big wake-up for the world.  Wouldn't it be great if that was just how it happened?

So a little Van for your day.  Its a shaky video, I know, but its the best live recording of the song I have heard to date.  It details an experience he had in a garden in Ojai California.  Note that the woman he was with "was a violet color as you sat beside your mother and your father."  She glowed with the radiance of intuition as her spiritual mother and father were present upon that awakening....
 

Blessings To You!

Awake

So you wonder about awakening.  Some say ascension.  Its meeting the soul mirrored in the world, a place where science and magic meet, where the rational and irrational merge into a wondrous new thing everyone is trying to describe or explain.

Some say its sun spots….or solar flares.  This is beautiful and perfect, for certainly this hints at the great connection we all share and have with the world.  But this is certainly connected to larger things, but more of it is the Collective humanity shifting and moving. You will begin feeling this once you awaken.  Perhaps before.  I was not aware of it like after I awoke, I will just be honest.  Before, it was more an idea.  A great perfect kind of idea.  But an idea.  Like a photo.  Not the real thing.  And then it woke up inside of me.

Time began doing VERY weird things.  And if you observe this in others exhibiting similar symptoms, you will find some interesting correlations between people.  This is perhaps why some want to say its the sun or something….impacting us all. But imagine the Collective Consciousness of humankind going through energetic bursts.  It would effect all of us who are attuned to it.  Some to greater and lesser degrees.  And what we call awakening does not have an exact demarcation for where it begins or ends. I approached for some six months wherein I had loads of interesting symptoms before the RUSH hit me. Light effects, time slips, rushes of energy, tingling, sweeping, third eye stuff….

Then the feeling of wanting to be of some service.  It becomes a preoccupation.  Slowly, as the awakening clears and cleanses, the things that were less then perfect are refined in ways you could only imagine.  What I once thought of as my very generous nature was revealed to have a hitch….and I worked on that….and it was a big deal because it meant doing things differently and the people on my life did NOT like that.  they punished me big time.  I tell myself; their choice, their karma—-how I respond is also my own karma so I try to be careful.  And as the service thing moves along as I change I keep asking the question; to what end?  Who saves another except that we save ourselves? That is what this dynamo is quietly saying while gently supporting all life and awareness with access to its limitless potential.  Its like we have this inheretance that we forgot we even had.  And there it is. But I have to admit I ask:  to what end?  Once you give it all up, you gain it all.  In letting go, the All is yours.  

And what was a twin becomes a karmic entanglement that will push you beyond what you ever could believe was possible.  But the universe does not ask you to change your mind.  You have to do that.  And as you do, the universe changes.  What universe do you want to see?  Change your mind and you will see it.  It will become that for you, as beggars become kings. 

And always, the greatest love.  Not a love FOR anyone or anything, but a force so powerful, like a bell struck through the universe now ringing in you.  It is less a feeling FOR as it is a force that you are.  And this is a leap.  for me, it was a leap.  A hard one. It matched the whole ego collapse thing.  You almost have to in order to feel it fully.  Ego limits.  So it goes to the edges.  Hangs out in the small back kitchen and makes notes and mutters to itself.  Its very good at being at the edges.  

So sitting here, the universe flowing through, I keep asking; to what end? 

The Great Secret

If you would know the great secret you would know the one who has begotten you before your life in a world where all die.  It was through the father and mother of the great light that you were begotten. To know your lineage is to know their union.  To know your union, you will know your lineage.  In their union, is the life.  It is only through them that you will taste the true resurrection that was spoken about which had nothing to do with the casting off of a body or of dying and coming back to life.  People live in this life as though they are dead. Once they taste the resurrection, they will know the deeper life, the true life. Restoring this to earth has been the mission of many boddhi’s including a man known amongst the Tibetans as Issa who had been crucified and who was said to have lived out his days with them with a woman named Mary.  There is a grave stone that has the foot prints of a man sculpted into it that shows the scars of crucifixion. This was how the word was expressed by one teacher whose teachings were not fully understood.  Much was hidden early on, but what was hidden has also been revealed.  If you can but have the eyes to see, you can understand that there was a teaching much like the Hindu that was based on the two irrefutable poles of conscious energy; masculine and feminine in union.  This is their perfect state, they were never meant to be separate.

The resurrection was not well understood. Because he had died on the cross and survived, he was said to have resurrected, but it is equally possible that he was given something on a sponge that would have put him into a deep state like death long enough to have his body removed and his life saved.  The hidden teachings speak of a different kind of resurrection, one that was not about death, but about coming to life while still alive. This is what we call today as "awakening" and bears the same symptoms and effects.  It was later aped by followers who did not fully know what was meant.  To truly know what this was all about, you had to experience it.  Jesus brought the Darshan (blessing of the grace) what he called a fire which he was casting upon the earth.  This was written in texts which were hidden from view for two thousand years.  You will not read these words in the "accepted" texts as handed down because many were ordered destroyed after Constantine met with the men (no women) who would choose the books that would constitute the first bible and the institutionalizing of the church.  However, seeing the writing on the wall, books were spirited out of the region and were buried in the desert of Nag Hammadi.  These would emerge in perfect timing for our very best translators to examine and bring forth for us.  In them the triad was the mother/father/son.  Consciousness was in truth ordered in the way a family was ordered.  The masculine pole and feminine pole would beget new life.  We were and are born from this lineage of masculine and feminine and bear them in the coding of our souls. When you awaken, what they termed “resurrection”  was as though you had been dead previously before your body arose into a new life. Your body came alive in ways you would not believe. While this involved the hiding of what role the feminine played in this relationship,  her truth could not be entirely hidden.   Many do not know and have forgotten just who the Holy Ghost was supposed to be. Most assumed it was another aspect of an all-male deity.  The early church fathers had bastardized the teachings….not just the teachings, but the irrefutable truth……for when you awaken, you cannot ignore the presence of both shakti and shiva in you….which is the father and mother or "father and holy ghost."  Their role is creative, and out of their orgasmic bliss arises the Christ Consciousness. Its interesting just how much the orgasmic bliss has been demonized. I can only conclude that this represented the final freedom, true spiritual power as well as physical creative power and the early church sought to keep its followers less than empowered. 

In the gospel of Philip, a very important document for revealing the truth of the feminine and masculine as making up the deity….as well as the higher self emerges. He points out the obvious saying that those who say Mary begot with the Holy Ghost are in error, for "when does a woman beget with a woman?"  He was pointing out an issue that was already something of a mystery to people at the time….or it was already the subject of people seeking to lessen the presence of the female in the truth. 

Since awakening is not contingent on any religion belief or faith, the issue of what some called the resurrection or awakening, or kundalini, is not one that can be forever hidden.   Every culture on the earth has stories and teachings about it. 

Go as far afield as you wish in any faith.  When you awaken, the truth fills every cell in your body as the presence of THEIR ecstatic union fills you.  You feel bliss because they are now in union within.  These are your cosmic parents and through them, you may learn all secrets.  You must learn how to listen at the portals of reverie and imagination….for it is here in these unlikely places that the universe will rush in to you. If you look at the world and see how it poo poos the imagination as nothing real is the degree to which the world has forgotten how to access the mysteries.  These are those who ape and mimic but do not feel the indwelling spirit. But even they have it within themselves to feel this, to embody it…..as soon as they dispense with their twisted dogma that demonizes bliss.  Imagination leads to inspiration, and inspiration is divine grace.  This is your divinity present in the moment.  Under normal circumstances, it only arrives under certain circumstances.  When you awaken, its presence fills you. It is the very nature of inspiration to break you out of old limited thinking in order to help you to view and know the divine reality.  You can use this energy however you choose, but when it comes as a tidal wave continually, it fuels great creative output as well as insight. You do not necessarily have the heavens open up, but a reality will reside closer to you, within you.  Slowly, the secrets will be shown to you as you climb that stair ever higher. Some of it is not knowledge, but knowing.  Presence.  You do not go out into the world of things to discover truths, you se that you and the universe are the same. As the Upanishads have said you are a spider that lays down its thread which it then travels in this world. You are the creator and the created.  It is IN you. Your revelation will be in coming to know this great family unity.

You are born of a seemingly dual being of both masculine and feminine.  In truth, the only experience of their existence seems only to happen when they are in union.  Their creation is not something that is separate, and so even in your own consciousness, their bliss in you emerges from their unity, not disunity.   All life reflects this begetting that has its source in Source, the All.  This is an ancient teaching that many have sought to hide and change to their own egoistic whims. It does not change its truth and reality.  It waits for you, for the day when you cast off the shackles of your old life. Like two wires loosened in your being, connecting them will bring the current of the ALL into you immediately.  It will come like a freight train….or a great wind….or a surge up the spine.  It will be so strong it can take you out of your body.  Ecstasy will be a daily experience.  You will learn to open more and more to this and its presence will show you how to loosen the shackles and energetic blocks inside of you.  And as you awaken, you strengthen the field within all people. It grows, it builds, it is like a begetting that comes into itself. You learn what Thales, teacher of Pythagoras knew when he said "all things are full of gods."  Within the petal of your awareness, there is a still larger awareness of your whole self….the divine flower.  Every particle in nature and in ALL is built in this way.  It has its higher form, its “god” as Thales once proclaimed so correctly.  it is hard to know precisely how this is, but you will glimpse it in your being when you awaken.

With or without the old knowledge, or teachings, all of this is returning.  It returns no based on any teaching, not on the success of any philosophy or creed or method.  It returns because it is a very human experience.  We are evolving, and the world is undergoing great change.  Great events come with great change. The field of the collective consciousness has within it the spark which is turning like a great wave now.  Awakenings will continue to grow in number.  As each who awakens learns to build ever greater energetic potential, it will have a formidable effect upon the whole.  The single best thing one can do is to consider it a possibility without needing to know how it will happen to them.  When your mind is pliable and leaning into possibility is when the impossible has a way of happening.  The way of it is to be found in our yearning to know why we are here, who we are, and what this is all about.  THIS is the singular yearning that exists yet remains a mystery to our minds.  This is the evolutionary impulse, the divine spark. What we yearn for, most of us, is what we all do not know.  But we search.  We search through things and ways of life, all coming up short and unhappy.  

What we seek is a love beyond all loves.  We think it is in other people, but it must first reside in us.  We seek outwardly, but this loves dwells within.  It is your own connection to the universe.  When you feel it, the thirst for trying to find "it" ceases in large measure.  This was what I spent my whole life chasing after.  I just didn't know exactly what it was.  And so it is with each person.  So feel into this yearning if you want to know the path to awakening.  It is here that you will get your "answer."  It is not knowledge, it is a knowing beyond all knowing.  It is a knowing that confers great bliss, great knowing, a silent but loud presence.  It is coming home.  Lean into it.  Feel inspired.  This is very human. Dream, hope, lean into it.  Seek.....but know that what you seek is not to be found in reincarnation or ancient texts or some old secret hidden from view.  The secret lies inside of you, in a FEELING. So FEEL.  The more you feel the closer you will be to its truth. No method will bring you to it.  People are studying kundalini yoga, but it wont come until they are ready.  There is nothing magical about it.  It focused intention. The physical side of it helps to keep you fit and gives you a discipline to practice, but most people waking up today are not doing so because of the yoga.  Having said this, though, if you are ripe for it, then anything that connects you to the feeling of rising energy will work.  So kundalini yoga or meditation could work.  I have a friend who tried this meditation and it worked the first time he tried it.  He was ripe.  He was ready. I never was involved in a practice.  I sparked it by forgiving myself of something I had been carrying around for years, a feeling like I was not living up to something between me and the universe. When I was able to let that go, events changed from that moment forward.  Kundalini began its six month period of unfolding.  

It is better to feel into your own yearning for the hidden things of the world, the world within the world.  If you know this pull, you know the divine impulse already. It is here where you will find it.  Surrender.  Let go of all that burdens you.  Clean up your relationships. Forgive what bothers you.  Let go as much as you can let go for this will make the path easier.  Be like a child who knows how to forgive easily. Its much too hard to remain connected to these old hurts.  Its more fun to be happy and go play....

Universality of Awakening

I came across an article stating how there was an evil kundalini spirit infiltrating the church…..I had a moment of eyeroll and read a little.  One person, who was experiencing an awakening had a blissful experience until…..it got SEXUAL.  Then she knew it was of the devil.  yesirree.

My sense has been all along that there awakening is not predicated on a given philosophy or religion.  the switch in us is univeral.  Its HUMAN.  We are all born of one Source or Creator.  To suggest its some dude up in the clouds is really sily once you touch the infinite.  So lets take a look at just how different an awakening is from one culture to the next, or religious background.  For a creator, having this available to all people regardless of religion would make sense. If we are so arrogant to consider that none of our religions aren't somehow off the mark, then maybe we need to rethink things just a little.  Just looking at the events that led to the Nicene Council being called and the events in its wake are enough to raise real concern about whose truth is being told....(this takes a little research and might be the subject of another article although these investigations are generally viewed as merely a way to criticize the religion somehow....never mind that those bringing up the issues weren't themselves responsible for them...aruge if you wish about opinions, but when people argue with facts, this gets very troublesome).

Turns out that all awakenings tend to result in an initial very positive experience.  Not always, but often. Then, after some time, it can get hard.  In fact, so hard that the individual goes through what we all term a dark night of the soul.  Again, this is pretty universal.  You will see discussions about this in Hindu texts as well as Christian ones.  Both Saint Teresa of Avilla as well as St John The Cross both went through terrible trials that actually deibilitated Teresa in her younger years.  I think about this and my own experience.  There were days, weeks even, when I could barely rouse myself enough to get out of bed.  I felt flattened by this. In truth, I was struggling against the divine…..and to some in the church, this could easily be seized upon as evidence that its some evil spirit.  Not so. This belies a lack of knowing about just what happens in an awakening. IN this process its as though you suddenly have a tuning fork going of all through your body and this tuning fork is perfect pitch.  It is the divine pitch.  No other. It SEEMS like the energy is hard, but once you get through it, you realize it was merely your own dross, the junk that you grew up with that was causing the problem, those dark nights of the soul.  In truth, the ego was just hanging on for dear life.  Another universal trait in overcoming this trial is surrender.  You just let go of your need to control.  You give it up to the Creator.  When people do this in a supreme way, in totality, all struggle ceases.  This is true for Hindu as well as a latter day experincer regardless of culture or religious affiliation.

The scared ones seize upon the weird jerky movements as evidence that someone is being posessed by an evil “kundalini spirit.”  However, if people are honest with themselves, they will realize that in their own traditions, the movement of the Holy Ghost causes this very same behavior, right down to the jerky movements.  When you view people in the Christian Church under the posession of the Holy Ghost, they will tremble and jerk.  No one dares say that they are posessed of an evil spirit do they? On the contrary, this is seen as evidence of the movement of the divine in them.The Shakers were so called, along with the Quakers because they BOTH found when they reached ecstatic states, they would have these jerking movements which in the Hindu tradition are called “kriyas.”  What I find so amazing is that in one video the church followers slow down one woman’s kriya movement in order to make it appear sinister somehow.  I have to say, they did a good job of it….and yet, if their own people were doing this, there is ample evidence that this is the Holy Ghost.  The truth is, on a neurological level, shaking actually seems to do something to us that helps to eleviate stress from the strong current of energy moving.  The movements are sometimes impossible to keep a lid on.

Another element present in awakenings is speaking in tongues.  This is termed glossolia and is not limited to the Christian Church.  It happens to people who are of no particular faith at all.  In the Christian Church, its seen as evidence of the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost, even though its roots have been forgotten, was widely considered to be the feminine aspect of God.  Some Christians want to refute this, pointing to no evidence whatsoever for this being true. There is in truth, quite a bit of factual basis that this is true.  In the Acts Andrew describes a vision of Christ where he sees a triadic being and this being speaks to him in Jesus’s voice so he knows who it is. Jesus states that he is one with the father, the mother, and son.  In most other works its shortened to just say “I am one with the father.”  However, I think there is a very good reason for why this was shortened and its simple’ paternalism or chauevnism that was so strong even amongst the disciples that some disciples chose to cut the feminine out of their retelling of facts from the get-go.  In those documents which were buried in Nag Hammadi and which are now understood to be even older than the documents used for the King James’s version, Jesus speaks clearly in mutiple gospels about the deity as being BOTH masculine and feminine.  The difference is that most people never got to read these documents so it only SEEMS strange.  In an awakening, this is hardly strange, but is APPARENT. In the Hindu tradition, for example, the rise of kundalini is all about the unification of the masculine and feminine into a unity.  In the Gospel of Philip he explains that Jesus came to heal this separation between the masculine and feminine that is within, which is what he calls the restoration. Jesus calls the feminine both the Mother of the Universe as well as Sophia and indicates she is also called Pistis.  The Ebionites, the earliest of converted Christians have a prayer to the Father/Mother God who are the parents of the Christ (son).  Philip explains that we all seek to become Christs.  Over and over in these hidden documents its made quite clear that this is not a male only club, but that the triad is more a family unit way of understanding our lineage to the divine. There are also a few documents which did not get destroyed that also show Jesus directly alluding to the Holy Ghost as being feminine.

Now hang on a minute.  The Hindus talk of this as being a serpent.  What about that?  Look, the things you have to realize is that all of this is entirely without form, so what is being described is a best effort at trying to describe this experience.  When I felt my awakening there was a very sensual feeling to the energy….and it had a kind of feeling at least in the beginning that felt almost like something moving like a snake does, but clearly I did not have a snake inside of me.  Even more than this, I felt no snake going up my spine.  This is just an image created by the Hindus who happen not to have the same association with snakes that the Christians do. Clearly, in both Christian and Hindu texts, there is no snake.  Its an IMAGE to seek to give word to something that is formless; it is a spiritual power, not a literal form.  Further, the tale of the garden seeks to explain something that most liekly never even happened as told….it does however express how we came to be dual beings…separated from the garden within.

So if my awakening of kundalini is so evil, why did I encounter an angel who did to me precisely what he did to Saint Teresa?  At the time I never even KNEW about Teresa’s story  All I knew was the sculpture by Bernini, and only then did I know that there was a small angel standing over her looking like a mischievous kid.  When I read Teresa’s account I wondered how on earth her account could have been so exact.  I suspect that what each being did was to effect a change in each of us that was through something that we will learn is a science of the soul….and as such it will work for Christians, Hindus, Native Americans, and other pagans….regardless of belief. Why?  Because this is because we are ALL connected to the same Creator.  Many names, same name.  Different stories, the same story.
People who have awakenings often go into healing work of all kinds.  How different is this from  a Hindu who is awakened who writes or teaches, helping others to come to love and to the Source of all life.  And how different is this from someone in the church who is awakened wanting to minister to others about the goodness that resurrection has to offer?  It get to be a little silly….and like how some people prefer Evion water over Deer Park. Why?  Its all water.  Its just packaged and marketed differently. I suspect that its less the contents as how its been SOLD.  Its all just water, really.  One does not have some kind of poison in it. That’s like saying you just can’t trust the universe or god to come to your aid when you need it.  I have had God come to my aid, thank you very much, and its between him and I to be quite honest.  I also have the Holy Ghost coming to my aid daily, too, and that too is between me and She.

When we let fear enter in, we also cut ourselves off from healing.  This is what an awakening offers.  I am kind of sorry that the lady who felt it get SEXUAL got all freaked out that it was of the DEVIL….because now, she will now likely remain stuck right where she is and not move forward through the briar patch that is her soul.  Its unfortunate because it doesn’t need to be so difficult.  Getting the ego to stand aside is very universal too….be you from ANY belief….and yet in each instance, it will absolutely bring relief (not because its the energy in you making it hard but because its just not natural for you to try and drive this experience with your smaller self….just doesn’t work!)
When we want to label something evil, we actually close of all possibility of seeing that this evil is actually something else entirely.  This is not to say evil does not exist, but the path to the divine is something that we each come to without any intermediary and it seems those in the church are pretty afraid that they are going to become possessed….and yet, possession by the Holy Ghost is esteemed by them. Its esteemed by me most certainly because I feel the presence of this Holy Ghost every single day. She is the very force that humanizes me, makes me more whole.  But I also know she is the same thing as Shakti.  Many names, one name.

And lastly.  A ” kundalini spirit” is a misnomer.  Its not a “spirit.”  Kundalini is life force energy.  As such, the divine created all of it….and is inside of it as a supportive force.  You can actually FEEL the divine in the moment in this way.  Kundalini, like life force, is a term, not some religious label.  Kundalini is NOT some spirit. It is the Source.  Life force leads you to the divine.  Life IS Creator.  Now stop being silly. Trust in your Creator.  Its here to bestow gifts upon ALL of us, not some select few who will go running out of church like their hair is on fire the moment someone starts moving the Holy Ghost.  We will heal and we might move with the spirit, and we might also speak in tongues (I knew someone who had kundalini doing this and I thought how similar this was to speaking in tongues this was….). We will all do this because we are all after all, human, and the love of the One shines on all of us regardless of race, sex or creed.  If you want to drink Deer Park over some other brand, please feel free. In the end, its all the water of life.

The Coming Awakening

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

Sublimation & Kundalini

Sublimation is  both concept and practice whereby the  fluids related to sexual operation, namely seminal and cervical fluid, are said to rise up through the spinal column into the brain where they  nourish the brain and higher energy centers, namely the crown chakra.  This method, it is claimed, is a form of alchemy, a transmutation of bodily fluids into prana.  The only problem with how it is thus described is that this process is itself a biological impossibility.  Anyone who has a grasp on biology can tell you that the fluid from our sexual organs do not cross into the spinal column to go upward into the brain.  This is due to what is famously called the blood-brain barrier, and it serves some important functions (namely keeping things like seminal fluid and other fluids that ARE part of the blood system and processed by various organs such as the kidneys and the liver) out of the brain and nervous system.  This notion has arisen as a result of how the sensation feels when one is actively sublimating.  It is a vivid feeling of pressure which rises upwards along the spinal column.  Yet, there are those who express an interest in pursuing an understanding of kundalini from a scientific perspective who continue to cleave to this notion that somehow these fluids co-mingle in the way that they are felt to do.  The creation of this model for understanding predates modern medicine and scientific models from the last hundred years, so it was very probably an effort to describe the phenomenon based on feeling alone instead of anything empirical.

In his book,  The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius, Gopi Krishna states the prevailing wisdom of his time concerning sublimation in this way:

"It is sufficient to mention here that during the whole course of this (kundalini) transformation, in addition to the blood and other fuels present in the body, every particle of powerful reproductive fluid in the system is sucked up through the spinal canal to irrigate and feed the various nerve junctions and the brain. This entirely biological operation is carried out in such an unmistakeable way that even a novice in physiology cannot fail to notice it. The semen in men is now produced in such abundance that a tiny stream rises day and night through the spine into the cranium to provide the richest and the purest food for the now heavily overworked brain cells. In women, the sexual energy and secretions involved in erotics are used as the fuel. This is a perfect example of the forethought and ingenuity of nature to keep the body equipped with all the necessities to make the completion of the evolutionary process, normally needing eons to accomplish, possible in the short span of one life."

My perspective is that as long as we use models that do not reflect reality, we will tend to misunderstand in a more precise way what is happening to us.  Ironically, the Indians and the Chinese were excellent observers of energetic phenomenon who were able to map out with great detail the channels that run through the nonphyiscal energetic matrix called the subtle body, the naddis and meridians, to a great level of specificity.  All of this was a masterstroke of accumulating a knowledge base for something that could not be touched, or seen, with our physical eyes, or monitored by physical devices.  And yet, we have this rather odd idea still circulating about how cervical fluid and seminal fluid are transmuted into prana through a physical channel which is simply not possible.  It is curious and it continues to be repeated.  Perhaps this is because of how the etheric body interfaces with the nervous system, that we get the sensation of something rising upwards in this way.  This is an example of how, lacking sufficient understanding, we as humans can sometimes come up with explanations that are less about what actually happens physiologically as it does nonphysically.  This is a distinction that is important if we are to learn how to determine the real forces at work when it comes to the action of sublimation.  After all, sublimation is itself a very important strategy or method for working through the issues that confront the individual when awakening becomes a presence in your life.  To better understand what is actually happening, I am going to offer to you some careful observations that I have made in my own life and offer them up to you for consideration, all in the hopes of forwarding understanding of this most important of phenomena.

The Brain Interprets

What I do know from my own observation over many years is that if the brain ever receives input from a source outside of the five senses, its tendency is to place that sensory input into a place that makes sense. This has been the result also of speaking with physiological psychologists who have all explained that this sort of things happens all the time.  There is referred pain as well as phantom sensations and what can only be considered an interpretation of information.  Let me explain by way of another example.

An excellent example for how the brain interprets  phenomenon that does not directly exist, is by observing what happens when a sensitive sees a human aura.  This energy, which they eyes cannot see, is still picked up by the person reading the aura.  The simple fact is that the eyes simply cannot detect the particular wavelength of energy which constitutes the human aura.  And yet, there are many individuals who claim to see them.  Being someone who reads auras himself, I have noted that what I in truth do when I see an aura is to feel it first.  When I observe very closely to what happens when I "tune in" is that I am feeling the aura with my body, with my own energy field which interacts or reads the energy directly.  This information is then translated by the brain as something akin to a phantom image which can be deciphered by me in a way that makes sense.

When I first came across this idea that we do not actually see the aura, I rebelled against it initially, but as my own mind came to accept the logic behind it, I ceased for an entire year, seeing auras.  In that time I came to peace with the idea that my brain may have been merely translating the information in the only way that it could.  After that, I began seeing them again.  I never stopped feeling them throughout this period of time, however.  There is a basis for our sensing these weak electromagnetic fields in living creatures, and we find them in the animal kingdom, most notably among those animals living in our oceans.  Similar kinds of sensory abilities are observed in other animals who have been observed as being sensitive to the weak electrical signals and electromagnetic fields around living creatures, most notably  some fish and sharks.  Some sharks have been observed, such as the Great White, to hone in on prey using a sense that is sensitive to electrical currents.  Before a shark goes in for the kill they have an opaque inner lid that comes over the eye to protect it, rendering the shark temporarily blind for the last few feet of its attack on prey.  It is this sense, marine biologists have discovered, that allows them to continue to track and locate their prey.(1)  Bolstering this observation is the fact that sharks will often chew wildly on metallic objects near boats when food is put out to attract them for study. They will often miss the food and go for metallic objects in stead, chewing wildly on them. This was a behavior that biologists observed over many years and were for a long time puzzled by it, with many surmising that it was due to a shark simply being hungry and being blind as they went in for the kill.  What biologists noted, however, was that this was a fairly consistent behavior, and sharks were often seen going for metal objects that were a good bit further away from the food being left for them to eat.   Metals emit a strong electrical current in sea water, an electrical current that would be strongest than living or recently living flesh.  Monotremes, most notably the platypus, are also known to have similar abilities.(2)  This is a sense that is called electroreception, and to learn more about it you can read this article to find out more.

There are other examples of nonphysical senses that have a physical compliment, such as healers using Reiki, a form of energy healing, to sense changes in energy as hot and cold.(3)   Healers who are sending energy to clients have reported that their hands felt as though they get hot.  While some reiki effects do seem to impact the physical body through increased blood flow in the hands, there are many effects noted that do not appear to be directly related to actual physical heat.  Some feel pressure, or lack of pressure while others will feel cold.  Again, as I have sensed in my own experience, there is something I am picking up on as it relates to this subtle energy (which kundalini is said to be) which is often expressed as a kind of sensation that begins first within as a feeling that is nonphysical and "rises" to the level of a full blown physical reaction.  It may be that the brain simply does not have a good way to deal with the idea of energy being sense directly, and so instead seeks to interpret in a way that makes sense to it.  Again, the brain is known to interpret what it may be receiving through the "ether channels" of the light body or pranamayakosha.

It is extremely common in early awakening experiences for individuals to feel very real physical pain that is the result of kundalini becoming active.  Read any account or go through the list of awakening symptoms and this phenomenon is regularly cited as being connected with kundalini.  This is, though, a nonphysical energy streaming into our awareness, if our current understanding of the phenomenon is to be understood correctly.  As doctors will most often point out to their pained clients, there is no observable reason for the pain.  There are many stories of people who have awakened going to their doctors to find the cause of their painful dilemma, only to be sent home.  As awakening continues to unfold, the force of kundalini most often tends to assist in releasing blocks within the energy body that also has the result of reducing this pain.  In my experience, this pain was itself a form of extreme tension that was held so strongly by the body or reacted to by the body so that it felt like pain. Upon careful observation, in every case, the pain emerged from a state of emotional or psychological discomfort.  The release of the pain always came from an ability to surrender, to let go, to engage in what can be considered a non-rational method for dealing with a problem involving buried or latent trauma, pain, or old hurt.

Very recently I was reminded of how difficult this process was as I went through something poorly described as "ego death" by a reader of Waking The Infinite. It is interesting how often people in this situation describe it as feeling as though their bodies are being squeezed in a vice.  I experienced this same kind of pain in varying levels and in various places in my body as a sensation that was akin to having the bed of my fingernail being pressed very hard until it hurt.  This pain would persist for months until I was able by hook or crook, to release the old pent up block of material, after which the pain would transform into a radiant sense of joy and bliss.  I observed this same condition play out  many dozens of times over the course of a few years where the most difficult sensations of pain were released.  There are many other people who also describe these blocks in the same way, which is an exaggerated form of tension which begins to take on the sensation of pain.

My sense is that many people simply have a block when it comes to considering that something nonphysical could feel so physical.  It is my suspicion that when faced with such vividly charged emotional energy that we do the same thing that is done when there is no direct physical sense available to express a deeper truth that is taking place within the individual.  This is a place that is perhaps difficult for some people to entertain because it moves away from the physical senses, and we are anything if not overly tuned to the traditional five senses as the arbiters of our experience here on earth.  But just as kundalini will often reveal, there is much more than just the five physical senses.  But how we become aware of these nonphysical senses may create something of a challenge for some people when faced with them since they stream into awareness along untested or unknown pathways.  It may also help to explain why we wind up with ideas that seem to straddle the anything-goes world of energy with the more orderly realm of the physical.  As energy moves upwards along the charged and electrically capable spinal column, there is an accompanying sense of SOMETHING happening as the pitch or vibration of the energy is changed.  This becomes a near-universal sense of pressure, a pressure that feels like a fluid is moving.  It is my consideration that we begin thinking anew about these phenomenon and take a page from the book of the physiological psychologists who know that when faced with something outside the physical senses, we will most often have a brain that will do its level best and interpret this very real phenomenon for us.  It is just as likely that the pressure that is felt is the effect of the energy actually in the process of changing pitch or vibration as it then is passed on to a chakra cventer in the body that is able to sense it more clearly.  What was once a raw root energy and perhaps highly sexual is changed, and this change results in a feeling of upward pressure as the vibration shifts from a low to higher vibration.  We all seem to sense or know that the vibration of the root chakra is very different from the heart chakra and what the heart can feel is different from what the root can feel.  What happens when you transmute an energy in the root?  We all know that energy does not go away, it simply changes form.  In this case, we are the energetic vehicles responsible for the change, for the transmutation taking place.

When my third eye first activated in what was one of the more dramatic effects of an early stage of kundalini rising, I experienced a sensation that at the time I could not discern as being anything except physical, although I now know there was no possible way that it was.  In this particular experience, as I lay in bed, I felt what I knew to be someone grasping the temples of my forehead and squeezing my head for all their might. This was a very real sensation of physical pressure on my skin and muscle groups along the side of my forehead (these are the muscles that you can feel tensing when you chew, but are located well above the jaw into the side of the forehead)  At the time I imagined that some invisible guide in spirit was by my bedside doing this in order to achieve some effect.  This sensation was so vivid that I did not consider at the time that it may have had a different origin, which was as simple as a chakra opening in a dramatic way.  This happened not just once but a number of times until my entire forehead was engulfed in a series of bands of pressure that radiated out from the third eye center all the way to the back of my head. It was only after I placed my entire focus on my third eye in my inner vision that my inner sensory field exploded into a vision of a fiery eye rising up into my field of inner vision as the eye flashed from a brilliant blue to green.  You can see, though, how I could have easily thought that it MUST have been a nonphysical presence somehow acting on the physical in some unknown impossible way.  After all, how could it be otherwise?  There was no one else but me there!  What is so interesting is that one of the foremost awakening symptoms prior to full rising of kundalini is a third eye activation that results in a near-universal sensation of pressure along the third eye chakra that can often spread, in bands, all the way around the forehead to the back of the head.  And yet, for as vivid as this pressure is felt by those who go through awakening, there is simply no actual physical means by which this sensation could have been produced.  Again,  ideas like sublimation emerge due to how the phenomenon feels to us rather than stepping back and observing more closely in order to get at the underlying issue.  And for that matter, it may be difficult for some to do this.  It may be impossible for some, and so we wind up with something that sounds more like an urban myth than anything that seems logical in its explanation.  Call me pedantic, but if we are to understand kundalini in a "scientific" way as some seek to suggest they are involved in, then finding some models that fit known biological activity will need to be found.  I am just as interested in observing this phenomenon scientifically as the next person since I too have had direct experience with kundalini and would like to see some solid models developed that can help forward our current understanding.

I think that what is most likely is that the brain is an amazing device for handling an immense amount of data, but at the end of the day, it is known to interpret.  Does this interpretation fit what is possible physically?  We are surely experiencing something, yes, and it seems that our very crafty brains are doing their best to put together something that will help to communicate that something is moving upward somehow.  It may be just as likely that all of this is a sensory analog, an attempt to define something that simply cannot be sensed through our physical senses.  If so, it helps to illuminate who and what we are and also helps to guide us in understanding how we can perceive a host of phenomenon that simply isn't there in the usual understanding.  Either way, it helps to expand our knowledge of ourselves as well as what we think constitutes reality.  This idea is itself not foreign at all in the area of those who awaken as so much of the old literature about awakening is centered on undoing the "illusion" that is physical reality.  If physical reality is itself something that we can agree is illusory, then why not something as simple as how the brain deals with sensory stimuli that is coming in through less than physical channels?

How far fetched is it that the nervous system itself has the capability of reading the bleed-throughs of this electrical phenomenon called kundalini through its sheath of insulative myaline in the same way that an electrical wire running from a speaker to an amplifier can sometimes pick up signals from the environment outside it?  And indeed, could it be that all phenomenon like mind reading, reading auras and all the rest, comes from a hitherto unknown capacity for the nervous system to pick up on these "stray" outer signals which are not part of the physiology as modern medicine has suggested exists?   For if that is possible, then it is just as possible that something like changing vibrational energy in the light body can be felt and picked up and interpreted by the brain as a feeling of delicious energy rising upwards as a fluid pressure.

To understand how spinal and cerebral fluid is produced these articles may be of some help in explaining how this has been observed in a scientific context:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_is_the_cerebrospinal_fluid_produced 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1890044/   A bit technical,  the article explains in exacting detail how the fluid is produced.

http://www.anaesthesiamcq.com/FluidBook/fl3_6.php  This brief article also explains that this fluid is protected from the blood-brain barrier.

Sources Cited:
1. Scientific American, R. Douglas Fields, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-sharks-electric-sense
2.  http://web.archive.org/web/19981206164009/http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/bionb420.07/anelson/platypus.html
3.  http://www.iarp.org/reiki-sensations.html

As a post script to this, here is a video of Osho, also known as Bagwan Shree Rajneesh who explains some important aspects of being that bear remembering....

In my next post I will address the role of breath in all of this. Like sublimation of fluids, breath is important, but the etheric body breathes in its own way and our own physical breathing reminds us of what we need to be centered in when it comes to pranic breathing. 

Nemasté