Staying Relevant

Ever wonder if you’re relevant? According to studies, more people do. But like death, it’s one of those subjects people avoid until it jumps to the front of their minds—when they least expect it.
Do people like me? Do they respect me? Do they listen when I talk about the things that interest me? Do I listen to them? To myself? How important is it that people listen to me? What do people say about me behind my back? Do they believe the image I project is not the real me? Do they think I'm a phony?

Here’s a take on remaining relevant. It’s a floor, the lowest level, of thought on the topic, below which is pantomimed double talk. I include it as such. Not because I endorse or refute it, but because of its provenance:

“As we age, it's important to stay engaged and relevant to maintain a sense of purpose and fulfillment. One way to do this is by continuing to learn and grow. Whether it's taking up a new hobby, pursuing further education, or staying current with technology. Keeping your mind active can help you stay connected to the world around you.

“Another key aspect of staying relevant as you age is to stay connected with others. Maintaining relationships with friends, family, and community can provide a sense of belonging and support. Volunteering or getting involved in social groups can also help you stay engaged and make a positive impact on others.

“Lastly, taking care of your physical and mental health is crucial for staying relevant as you age. Regular exercise, a healthy diet, and practicing mindfulness can all contribute to your overall well-being and help you continue to lead a fulfilling life. Embracing new experiences and challenges with an open mind can also keep you feeling young at heart and connected to the ever-changing world around you.”

As I said, it’s a floor, the kind of pop psychology article found in airline seat back pouches, unusual only that a sentient being did not write it. That’s right, I fed the words “Remaining Relevant” into an AI app’ This was the result—pretty much what I expected. If that’s what it takes to be relevant, it follows as the day the night that people who take these kinds of bromides to heart must spend a lot of time grooming their images.

What about you? Are you the type of person who heeds the advice of a machine—a regular “Hail, fellow! Well met!” individual, bubbling over with personality?

If there is a ceiling—a master class in leading a meaningful life—it’s probably related to meditation, not to philosophy, which a friend once told me was rationalization, a word defined as “the action of attempting to explain or justify behavior or an attitude with logical reasons, even if these are not appropriate.”

He was ahead of his time. In his critique of philosophy as a merry-go-round of subjectivity, he was outlining a case for Eastern energy cultivation techniques.

Recently, I came across the subject on a visit to my primary care persons. After the preliminaries: blood pressure, height and weight, temperature, pulse, and my name, and DOB for the umpteenth time, they asked a string of questions I had never been asked.

Have you had thoughts of death lately? Have you thought of giving up? Would you describe yourself as a chronic worrier? Have you experienced feelings of uselessness? Do you believe things have passed you by? Have you ever felt irrelevant, no longer of use to anybody? Do you have unusual ideas that people you do not even know are plotting to harm you or kill you? Do you feel you are still searching for your sense of who you are? Do you have trouble concentrating or focusing on tasks?

If I hadn’t had those thoughts before my visit, I did so then. In an altogether different way, I might add, than someone who has not lived with Kundalini and Death for the past 60 years. And then, like someone who has lived with Kundalini for 60 years, I turned to mindful thinking and dismissed the idea of relevance.

I felt my consciousness beginning to expand…it soon filled the tiny examination room. I hardly felt the needle as it broke the skin in the crease of my elbow. I had to be tapped on the shoulder when it was over.

My blood pressure was 107.

AI to the Rescue

 Three weeks ago, I happened to catch a discussion about the paucity of audiobooks compared to their readable brethren‚ eBooks and Print books. The participants were deploring the disparity, at the same time they lamented the cause—the high cost of hiring a narrator as well as the cost of editing and mastering the recorded audio files. That, they said, would condemn audiobooks to limited numbers, and therefore a limited readership, a situation disadvantaging folks with vision issues.

A week later, I was updating one of my titles on Google Play when I spotted an addition to their interface: they were offering to convert my eBook to an audiobook, using, you guessed it, a digital voice. In other words, AI.

I couldn’t think of a good reason to NOT test this free offer. Nevertheless, being familiar with the digital voices used by Google Maps and iMaps, I thought I would probably be disappointed. Could their process handle dialog and tricky intonation? I wasn’t optimistic. Boy, was I wrong… The sample voices I listened to were amazing and the choice of voices—male and female, American and British, old and young—was astounding.

The conversion took less than thirteen seconds. My son, who’s into AI says the amount of processing power used in all AI applications—the conversion of eBooks to audiobooks being only one to them— is also astounding. He says AI is not only a toolset with an incredible future, it is an investment bonanza right now.

As soon as the file was converted, it opened a studio interface for editing/correcting pronunciation. In my opinion, this interface was not quite ready for prime time. The whole setup smacked of Beta.

Shortly after this experience, I discovered a joint venture between Apple and D2D offering eBook-to-audiobook conversion. At the moment, their process takes place behind closed doors. Their digital voice samples, however, were indistinguishable from human voices.

This from the D2D website:

“Once your request is submitted, it takes one to two months to process the book and conduct quality checks that include file quality, content compatibility (i.e. no complex formatting elements, limited non-English words and phrases), and editorial review. Pre-orders are not currently supported.”

Even more recently, I discovered Amazon now offers a conversion process similar to Google’s, only more stable. A Beta, their editing interface is impressive as are their voice samples.

This impending proliferation of audiobooks will benefit 80-something readers and writers with impaired vision. More than the general readership? Who knows? It may take a while for cost and quality to normalize.

An interesting sidebar to the whole thing—purely a subjective impression on my part—is that many existing audiobooks have been recorded with inferior human narration. They can now be re-recorded with a much-improved narration. Yes, I’m saying that many of the human voices offered on the large audiobook sites are not up to standard, mainly because there is no standard. Ironically, AI narration will set a standard.

 

The Journey and the Destination: Part 02

The Journey/Destination discussion and the ways they are intertwined are worth taking a fresh look at. The first iteration was published on Sunday, March 10, 2013: The Journey or the Destination: Part o1.

Let’s reexamine the two notions, starting with the destination. What exactly is the destination? A kundalini awakening, you say. Okay… This blog is full of discussions on the effects — beneficial and harmful — that kundalini confers on those who attempt to cultivate it whether they succeed or not. Yes, I include harmful, in the sense of unwanted, painful, and stultifying experiences do happen on occasion — before, during, and after kundalini arousal.

Recently, seekers I’ve talked with tell me they believe kundalini will somehow usher them into a state of being that makes their inadequacies, anxieties, and dependencies disappear. Before I reveal the term they apply to this state, let me try to describe its qualities.

It's a state that insulates and protects, a state in which the seeker connects with the energy continuum whereby he or she receives all-encompassing grace, expanded consciousness, and limitless ability.

What follows, how the individual lives with it, once awakened, is not clear. Suffice it to say, that boiled down to basics it resembles a yearning to escape life’s toils and torments. Boiled down even further into one word, it’s exceedingly suggestive of the term enlightenment.

Don’t go all to pieces; I get it. You don’t like my definition, but we’re living in the real world where there’s very little escape. Instead, read Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment. Its title alone should be enough to convince you there’s not a lot of proof, much less an objective process, by which it’s possible to determine whether someone is or isn’t enlightened. If you get into the text, it just may help keep your expectations realistic, your feet on the ground.

Remember, Gopi Krishna searched for an enlightened being for a long time in India, the motherlode of spiritual endeavor and experience. He never found one. Even those who others claimed were “enlightened” refused the title, saying they knew nothing — much less nothing they might pass along to others. The best they could do was to tell their story and insist that it was unique to them, adding that each individual must find out for him/herself.

So what was my destination? Once kundalini awakened, where did I land in the energy continuum? Had I taken a great leap forward in terms of grace, consciousness, and ability?

First, let me describe what it took for me to activate kundalini, and to my complete and utter lack of knowledge with what had happened when I did, and how I learned to deal with it. Because, right off the bat, it started working on me. Where had my journey started? Where was I now, after this so-called awakening?

I begin with meditation at age 28. But that wasn’t the real beginning. I’m convinced it all  began when I was born. Some people, like me and Margaret Dempsey, are just born with the idea of a quest in the form of a journey they must take at some point in their lives.

Anyway, after a year of mediation, I went to France where I continued to meditate and live the expatriate life with all its frivolities and excesses. After a time, I began to experience sensations in my body that I knew were connected to my meditation practice, and it was taking me somewhere. There was a certain amount of physical suffering; I could no longer function in a populated surroundings; I needed to drop everything and concentrate on the meditation. I had no access to books on kundalini, even if I’d heard the term, which I hadn’t. I retired to a small village in the south, very remote, living a kind of gnostic lifestyle. No telephones, no Internet, no TV or movies. A basically analog world: Practice, Read, Walk, Eat, Sleep. People did that then — the ascetic hermit trip, like the Buddhist and Taoist monks who went to the mountains, almost impossible to do today.

I gave up my work as a gainfully employed film editor, my social life, my habits, the woman I lived with and loved. I stayed in the house, meditating and reading. For exercise I walked. I ate sparingly.

Up to that point, the journey had been one of abstinence: learning to do without: no alcohol, drugs, or sex. I found out later that sexual energy is used by the kundalini mechanism to awaken it by a process called sublimation, and that’s why I began to feel weak as the process unfolded, more and more sexual energy was diverted to the brain. Read about my experience in detail, the before, the during, the aftermath in Deciphering the Golden Flower One Step at a Time.

Like Gopi Krishna, I’d did it alone, making discoveries as the process advanced; I became my own best detective working in uncharted waters, writing everything down in a journal for future use. Up to then, I was doing the doing; once kundalini awakened, it began doing me. I had no control over it. It started to reengineer my body and has continued to do so over the last 50 years. There were insights into human physiology and a gradual extension of awareness.

During the Journey, I learned:

• To live by myself,
• I didn’t have to try to make others like me; in other words: I became comfortable just being myself,
• To write clearly about metaphysics as previously unknown aspects of human physiology became active in my body and I could watch and learn from them,
• Not feel I was missing something, that others were having more fun than I was
• To live without addictions,
• Metaphysical exploration is not escape.

After reaching the Destination and living with an active kundalini for over 50 years, albeit, without prior knowledge of or familiarity with kundalini, I’ve observed the following about this transformative energy; it:

• Triggers autonomic self-healing capable of correcting neural defects,
• Rejuvenate the body and retard the aging process,
• Reverses self-destructive and addictive behavior,
• Heighten and enhance consciousness to effect a release from karmic bondage,All violence is self-hate.

I became aware of the energy continuum and my connection to all matter. Because I’d witnessed energy fields outside the body, I reasoned that we are part of the energy continuum, and therefore, death is only a different state of being.

I don’t belong to a church or follow a religion. I question everything I see, hear, feel, smell, or taste. I still made mistakes, sometimes the same old ones. I’ve continued doing what I did before kundalini, namely yoga and meditation although they really do me. I learned how the ego operates. Am I always able to foil its machinations? No! I’ve found that self-remembering complements kundalini. I watch what I eat and drink; I don’t use drugs.

Could any other means have removed the physiological blockages I’ve had to overcome? I doubt it. Have I acquired extraordinary powers, magical insights, or clairvoyance? Did I start reliving past lives? No, but I have experienced energy states that lead me to believe that reincarnation is a natural part of the cycle of existence.

And you know what, it’s no big deal because if there were millions of enlightened individuals scattered around the world, we might not be in the fix we’re in. Then again, we might be. There are no tales of enlightened beings banning together to address the world’s problems. That’s because those beings tend to renounce the world and everything associated with it.

I have not renounced the world. I’ve answered a kind of calling: to write a book, a novel that frames the Journey and the Destination as a protracted, yet positive process. It’s a novel that doesn’t degrade women, a witness to the folly of youth and the gradual arousal of self-awareness: Tales of the Tinkertoy.

TALES OF THE TINKERTOY

While writing Tales Of The Tinkertoy, I paid short shrift to political correctness and presentism, defined by Webster as An attitude toward the past dominated by present-day attitudes and experiences or, as pundit Bill Maher puts it, Judging everyone in the past by the standards of the present. I found it difficult to filter my experience through a set of informal guidelines that smother creativity and distort reality. Better to rely on the good judgment of readers to understand things were different back then.

Tales Of The Tinkertoy tells it like it was. It’s a story set in its own time—the 1960s. If nothing else, it serves as a historical reference, allowing readers to compare the present to the not-so-long-ago past and to appreciate the ways we’ve progressed and the ways we haven’t.

It's in this context that we meet Gus Mazur, a young man who’s making the same mistakes you and I made when we were twenty-something. It’s the sexual revolution, a time when the uptight standards of the 1950s were turned upside down. Gus deludes himself into believing sex with liberated women will ease his frustrations about the compromises he’s forced to make at work.

Ambitious, Gus has the brains to rise to the top of network television. Yet, as the only non-white producer at WBN, he’s ambivalent about an industry that values money over narrative, politics over truth. He chafes at being obliged to run civil rights and Vietnam stories that hide the truth from the American people. But the money is good and there aren’t that many opportunities “for someone like him.”

He tries everything short of a sex change in a frantic search for love. One woman is determined to set him straight. She gets her chance after Gus is waylaid in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention helping him piece his life back together.

I might write something stupid like, Don’t read Tales of the Tinkertoy if you’re looking for spiritual guidance or tips on meditation—as if I didn’t want you to make the journey, and make no mistake, kundalini is a journey. And Tales of the Tinkertoy is a chronicle of that journy.

Whether you relate to nonfictional or fictional forms, check out the six books I wrote on activating and living with kundalini.

 Tales of the Tinkertoy is different; it's a case study in gradual awareness. When you finish Tales of the Tinkertoy, you can always dig into my six books full of useful information about kundalini.

Right now, however, here’s an opportunity to follow a young man as he moves from the profane to the sacred, experimenting. The answers are not always in plain sight; he learns to read between the lines. He backslides. His awakening hangs by a thread: will he find the Way? Will he take the path untrodden or will he remain tied to a life of materialism? Will he follow the breadcrumbs as the path widens?

I’ve been asked if it’s a kundalini book. I always reply it’s a kundalini inspired book.

 eBook now available on pre-order at Amazon. Print version to follow.

Kundalini Symposium - 19 June 2022

What is Kundalini?

You have within you a latent energy waiting to transform your life known as Kundalini. This legendary power is believed to catalyze spiritual evolution. For centuries, the secrets of kundalini have been guarded by masters and buried in esoteric texts around the globe. Many people teach kundalini yoga, but few have actually experienced a kundalini awakening.

Initiation into the Mystic Path
International Kundalini Symposium brings together some of today’s most prominent voices in the small pool of kundalini-awakened individuals to demystify this mysterious phenomenon. From personal accounts and yogic practices, to research and historical perspective, this compelling panel of speakers will weave together both the mystical and practical perspectives on the rise of kundalini energy to transform our lives and humanity.

Up to now self-styled holy men and gurus have told us Kundalini was an esoteric process for raising consciousness. They’ve told us they could instruct novices and experts alike — as long as they were willing to pay. The problem is that classifying Kundalini as a means to “spiritual enlightenment” limits its benefits to a realm many people have neither the time nor the inclination to explore. What’s more, many people are put off by terms like “higher consciousness” and “enlightenment.” On the other hand, if they knew that Kundalini Meditation had therapeutic health benefits, they’d be eager to learn about it.

Says JJ Semple, “My students tell me, ‘Don’t give me something to believe in; give me something to DO! I want techniques for self-healing. I also want to awaken, to become enlightened.’” I tell them that, even with an aroused kundalini, awakening is a gradual process: “The ultimate aim of meditation is to become more and more conscious. Enlightenment, therefore, is becoming fully conscious, and I’ve never met anyone who’s accomplished that overnight.”

Perhaps, you don’t think there’s such a thing as “The Life Force.” You’d be mistaken. Our books on kundalini and energy cultivation techniques cover a variety of topics ranging from kundalini meditation to sexual alchemy; they feature accounts of  energy activation that can only be understood as the stirring of a life force energy. There is no other explanation.

All speaker and artist proceeds of this event will go to Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), a non-profit organization that rescues kids from the sex slave trade.

Meet Duncan Carroll, Kundalini Filmmaker

"After a long search I came across the autobiography of a man named JJ Semple, who detailed his kundalini awakening after following the method outlined in a little-known Taoist text called The Secret of the Golden Flower. JJ's account was refreshingly non-mystical. In fact, he seemed like the only person on Earth who'd had a spiritual experience and managed to keep their heads on straight.

"It was after meeting JJ that I decided to make a film about kundalini and the meditation he used to activate this life force energy, knowing, al the while, that the topic would be considered controversial."

This was the manifesto that followed my 2012 meeting with Duncan Carroll. His sincerity, and yet his insistence that kundalini be approached scientifically, convinced me he was the perfect person to handle the challenge of filming the effects of what is commonly referred to as a "kundalini awakening."

Listen to Duncan sum up the challenge in his own words.

The project needed an engineer, not a pandit or a sage—a person searching for truth, not followers. That's Duncan, a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon and an established software engineer, whose metaphysical experiences date back to childhood.

To this end he created a fundraising project Super Meditate Me that's already secured$145K in its drive to reach $500K.

If you're a person who believes there's more to life on Earth, that a higher consciousness rules  our universe and kundalini is a pathway to evolutionary progress, what Gopi Krishna called: the 'evolutionary impulse,' please consider donating to the project.

For more about JJ Semple's experience and work.

Kundalini Pain and Headache

I recently had a consultation with JJ Semple and got invited to write about my kundalini process for this blog. First of all, I want to express my gratitude for this invitation.

I am not an experienced BFM practitioner and the even less familiar with any structured method of kundalini awakening.

Yet, my hope is that the questions, challenges, and obstacles that I experience in my personal process might  relate to others, so that we can  share practical research on the obstacles and challenges we encounter on our various paths.

A few words about myself: I am female, 35, living close to Berlin, Germany, in natural suuroundings. I am an author and bodyworker, focusing my research on embodiment, sexuality, health, mysticism and collective traumahealing.

Ilan Stephani

I had come across books about kundalini years ago, but I did not pay attention to this phenomenon until I experienced a series of violent, unexpected kundalini sensations.

Now, finally, I am focusing on a safe and sustainable approach to awakening kundalini.

The first topic I want to explore is the pain in the spine caused by kundalini activity, especially pain in the most upper part of the spine, around the skull joint.

All of my unexpected kundalini shocks had this one thing in common: a sharp pain in and around my skull joint, accompanied by headaches and contractions in my jaw.

From the first time onward, I was aware that this part of my body ached during kundalini activity because it was chronically tense and contracted. So far, I have not been able to release it in a methodical and sustainable way before experiencing another crisis.

When I checked with JJ Semple on this, he mentioned a contemporary dentist whose treatment for those blockages, uses Cone Beam tomography and a special oral device to reconfigure the airway chambers in the neck, skull, mouth, jaw, and head correctly.

JJ Semple mentioned that this treatment also resolves deep-seated unconscious breathing issues. Overall health is restored and crucial nerves and energies are able to circulate through the upper spine more easily, without chronic stress, friction, or pain.

While discussing this information with JJ Semple, I was reminded of a German method that I had studied years ago—CANTIENICA®.

As you can see on their website, the method does not address kundalini, it focuses on pelvic floor training, posture, effortless running, etc. Nevertheless, it's a process that might help me with kundalini.

I have only studied the pelvic floor module and have not practiced it in quite a while. Yet, in a sense, I "embody" its basic principles so I am curious about how it might affect kundalini related issues.

The method reactivates and trains the inner layer of muscles in the body, the so-called autochthonous muscles that are normally function in the background beyond our consciousness and, therefore, do not get used in our cultural postures and habits. So, once again, as is the case of kundlaini, we are unaware of the dormant resources in our beings. And if the rise in breathing-related conditions such as, COPD, asthma, infections like influenza, the deviated septum, pneumonia and tuberculosis, anatomical irregularities like malocclusion, sinus, allergies, and even lung cancer are any indication, it's getting worse all th time.

It is as if we've been asleep and have not begun to wake up.

"Every joint and every bone is meant to have its place and have space. Your body can and even wants to provide space for every joint and bone, there does not need to be any friction or contraction." These are typical CANTIENICA® guidelines.

Since Benita Cantieni, the founder, cured her skoliosis with this work, it is used widely for recovery, dealing with back pain, knee pain, etc.

I managed to find some illustrations for this bodywork, the lengthening of the spine and the engagement of the autochthonous muscles here (sorry, text only in German). You can clearly see how the vision of a totally straight spine etc differs from our cultural norm of internal collapse.

With JJ Semple's hint in mind, I re-opened my books and looked for parallels to the challenges of preparing the nervous system on a more physiological level, the down to earth space that nerve channels utilize while the body is experiencing kundalini activity.

Indeed, I found a chapter in a German book where the CANTIENICA® founder describes how she sensed and intentionally moved one of the key bones of the skull (Os Sphenoidale).

She has developped a module for moving the muscles and structures around the face and skull, but as far as I could tell, this faceforming module focuses on creating a younger face and removing wrinkles.

It does not work directly with the cerebral nerves in "creating more space for every fibre, no matter where."

However, the founder´s writing about her discovery with the Os Sphenoidale is what encouraged me to transfer some principles of the method in order to focus more precisely on all those structures around my skull joint.

I will describe briefly what my practice looks like. However, I have clearly benefited from my past studies in the pelvic floor module of the method, as I am already familiar with the basic postures and inner pulsing of the autochthonous muscles.

There is a lot of instruction available for free on the website and the internet.

Here are some free basic video instructions, and I think there is more out there:

• Pelvic floor module*
• Module for the back*
• Module Faceforming*
• Module on running*

You might also find something in this workout list.* *

*Of course there is zero business connection between me and this method, I'm just sharing my research.

**I also ask myself if this method could help in terms of bodily symmetry and in releasing other pain centers in the body. For sure, this is only a thesis at the moment and requires much more research and testing.

So, before I dive into diaphragmatic breathing itself, my current "warmup practice" looks like this:

I sit down and look at the details of an anatomical model of a skull, trying to embody more of its amazing complexity and learning to sense it inside. I put special focus on the upper vertebrae and the anatomy of the cerebral nerves and blood vessels running through the basic opening of the skull.

POV: Human Skull from bottom

I then align my body with the lengthened spine, opening the joints along the spine by pulsing with the autochthonous muscles fibres (typical CANTIENICA® stuff as presented in the links above) and engage from there with the bones and structures of my skull joint.

I imagine different lines through my skull on the base level of my brain, mostly diagonal ones - and open the space in between in rhythmical pulses. I transfer the method´s principle of pulsing with inner muscles to pulsing with nerve fibres, as well, and simply stretch the length of internal lines in a rhythmical manner.

Of course, there are infinite possibilities for lines in this complexity, i.e., from my front teeth to the back of my mouth, etc. So I make some up to see how it feels.

To some extent, this is "faking it until I am making it," but I do sense that my body gets more familiar with this practice and becomes capable of moving these structures.

I also notice that my body calls me to focus on other areas around my head, i.e., the bones of my paranasal sinuses and eyes. This is especially fascinating because it causes a direct release in my breathing patterns that I was not even aware of—the fact that my breath was blocked before.

Due to this practice, my breathing now flows easier and with less noise. I also sense that I am breathing more efficiently, not needing the same amount of air for the same amount of energy. And it feels incredibly good and right in my paranasal sinuses, jaw and skull joint. I often fall into waves of release with yawning, tears and trembling.

It excites me because diaphragmatic deep breathing is such a strong parallel to the topic that the contemporary dentist focuses on. I will keep practicing and experimenting to see how it develops.

Of course, there is an infinite amount of new questions arising from this.

Could working on one's own come close to what the dentist is able to do in a body, actually changing the configuration of the breathing chamber? I have no clue.

Will this practice reduce the pain I experience during future kundalini activity? I do not know.

Could this body of work help others? I do not know either.

However, it does help me at the moment and it encourages me to keep going. If anything  resonates for you, I would love to stay in touch by exchanging research on this platform.

Remove the Shadow and Find Your True Self

"I have a tendency to sabotage relationships; I have a tendency to sabotage everything. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of being afraid. Useless, good-for-nothing thoughts."

~ Michael Buble

It is a great pleasure to be writing again for The Kundalini Consortium blog. I would like to thank JJ Semple for giving me the opportunity once more to share my story with the readers of this blog. Various things happened between the time I last wrote for this blog and today. I got divorced and that led to a mental breakdown. I am currently overcoming those obstacles and am happy to report that the worst is behind me.

Relationships, unfortunately, become a vestige from the past sometimes, and one awakens to find that the relationship they are in is not right for them. This happened to me. Having had an awakening allowed me to see this. To be able to remove oneself from that situation, however, is not easy. We still go through the same cycles of trauma and recovery, to be able to cope with the event, and it is not always under our control. I was fortunate enough to have the Kundalini energy guide me through rough waters and came out at the other side stronger. It involved “going with the flow,” and allowing the self to discard the old trappings, comfort zones and attachments that act as an impediment to future growth. Progress requires a reset, some personal assessment, and a genuine attempt to change by discarding psychic layers that no longer served my best interests.

My divorce offered me a great opportunity to find myself in a different period of my life, like when I was single. The last time I was single was in 1997 at the age of 23. I found myself in that same situation again in the early part of 2018, but now with a lot of baggage, learned habits that needed unlearning, and a chance to live once again a simpler, pared down existence to find out how much transformation the energy had brought about into my life over the last 12 years since my awakening began in 2006. It was a wild roller coaster, but I was helped immensely by the kundalini energy and its promptings, which led to some beneficial changes as I type this on a sunny day in the fall of 2021.

As I have mentioned before in previous blog posts, the awakening kundalini energy entails a lot of upheaval, chaos, and can bring about serious mental trauma. No matter how well prepared you are through previous practices, nothing really prepares you for the mayhem that follows. It is like my mind and past events turned against me as I coped with a constant barrage of sensations, thoughts, emotions that were being churned up by a snake moving constantly up my spine. It was like Iwas learning to drive a car, and at the same time, I had to learn basic vehicle maintenance, while parts started to break down or ceased to function correctly. I lost track of how things work.

Of course, the advantage a very powerful supernatural process like this has is it comes with cheat sheets baked into the process. We call this ‘Gnosis’. It is like a higher energy is guiding your exact steps moving forward, warning you and giving you the right advice at the right time. If you are patient and persistent, which you have to be, since you have no other choice, you will learn to drive the ‘car’ at the same time you learn its inner workings. If you choose to oppose that voice, you will suffer, and the process will take longer. So, eventually, you give in and let the energy guide you.

“If you go into a relationship with selfishness, expecting that your partner is going to make you happy, it will not happen. And it's not that person's fault; it's your own. When we go into a relationship of any kind, it is because we want to share, we want to enjoy, we want to have fun, don't want to be bored. If we look for a partner, it is because we want to play, we want to be happy and enjoy what we are. We don't choose a partner just to give that person we claim to love all our garbage, to put all our jealousy, all our anger, all our selfishness onto that person.” - Don Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love

I had a major revelation. For the very first time in my adult life, I understood what having a grown-up relationship meant and how to nurture the self and the other in that relationship without damaging either. By being patient, mature, understanding and by standing up for what made me happy, I learned to co-exist and thrive in a relationship. As much as I would like to blame my past upbringing or the person I was, some of these things, I genuinely felt thankful for certain experiences. You realize that each event, person, and episode is brought into your life to teach you lessons. If you are willing to learn from them, without being judgemental, you will treat each event as an observer, expressing gratitude for having had the opportunity to do so.

Ego, that ever-willing great imposter, is ready to deceive and take you further into unconscious behavior. It's like a great tyrant. If you don’t have the requisite mindset to recognize its doings, you may never learn to take a step back and witness your own thoughts. Changing bad habits comes from learning mindfulness and is very difficult in the beginning. Having the same programming and the same responses to moments of crisis ingrained into you by force of habit, leads to cascades of unconscious behavior. Mindfulness allows you to see the cascade as a choice and your initial response, unconscious, prompted by the actions of others, to be the trigger that sets events in motion, repeatedly, over years, in similar patterns. You are the total of your thoughts that you act upon, creating the indelible patterns of your character that are only obvious when you take a step back and become a witness.

Not reacting, staying silent, holding back and witnessing as an observer, are all powerful catalysts for change. To avail yourself of these techniques regularly, you must stick with the process and allow it to do its work in even the most trying situations. Initially, this is very hard. Invoking these techniques during gaps and lulls, when you still engage in negative behavior and you still have patterns to dissolve, is the best thing you can do for your future wellbeing. Once these methods become routine practice, and the results start to manifest in your life, you begin to wonder why you would behave any other way.

Getting to that stage takes a lot of time and persistence despite failed attempts. It pays to hang in there, with determination and the belief that you have the power— through non-action, witnessing and observation —to change your patterns and stop the long, incessant years of self-sabotage.

This is a powerful thing to know about yourself. ‘The shadow’ that we have accumulated over the years, is nothing but the ego and its mischief being refined into a personality. Certain character traits, driven by the most negative aspects of the ego, resentment, jealousy, anger, the feeling that you deserve better and that life has been unfair, all usually hide the mistaken assumption that one has been harmed by something on the outside. This culminates in the need to assign blame to those people or events and to ensure that you, i.e.,the ego, assumes no blame and comes out looking good. The ego tries to hold on to a fake, non-existent self-image, but facing facts will lead to the collapse of even the most well-constructed mirage. It may hurt. Itmay seem like too much to bear.

Once you learn, however, that not facing pain causes it to accumulate and always get in the way of genuine progress. That is when you start to realize your full potential. It’s called ‘the shadow’ because at every moment when your true self desires to do something incredible, the part of you that has been stung by rejection or failure will create a brainstorm to avoid struggling with those same emotions again.

If you give into those emotions, you’re on the same old path of the past, never attempting anything painful for fear of loss of your self-image. In the process, you never really gain anything worthwhile, thereby losing the immense pleasure and deep sense of satisfaction for having accomplished your goal of release from karmic bondage.

By being brought down a notch or two from your own fake self-image, all you risk is feeling bad. By not realizing you learn a lot more through exercising circuits in your brain that you’ve never used before, you sacrifice a genuine breakthrough as well as the chance at coming out the other end fortified. By facing down the ego, the shadow gets weaker and you get stronger with each passing day. More of who you really are and what you can accomplish becomes obvious.

Are You Ready for GFM?

Before beginning GFM meditation, you must be ready for it. Your state of readiness is not something I, or any other person, can determine. Only you know if you’re ready; only your body can tell you. And it will, if you learn how to listen to it. Here are some recommendations for determining your state of readiness.

Check Your Symmetry

Q: What’s so important about symmetry?

A: “Symmetry means being the same, or even, on each side. Over the last few years, biologists have looked at the animal kingdom, and they’ve made a few discoveries about symmetry, and how it relates to beauty and fitness.

“First, animals that are more symmetrical are more likely to attract a mate. One scientist found that he could turn attractive male swallows into unattractive male swallows (and also ruin their chances of a good sex life) by clipping their tail feathers with scissors.

“Secondly, symmetry influences fitness. Horses that are more symmetrical run faster than horses that are less symmetrical. In one study, biologists measured some ten features on 73 thoroughbreds—features such as the thickness of the knee, or the width of the nostrils. The differences they could measure were quite small, and probably had nothing directly to do with how fast the horse could run. In fact, symmetry is probably a good indicator of general health and strength. Our imperfect world is full of nasty chemicals and germs. Only those individuals that are lucky enough to inherit a sturdy genetic makeup and are also lucky enough to get good nutrition while they’re growing, will end up being more symmetrical.”

~ Karl S. Kruszelnicki Pty Ltd 2003 

Get the point? Symmetry more or less guarantees unblocked nerve channels and balanced growth.

Q: I’m not symmetrical; what can I do about it?

A: If you’re not symmetrical, something must have happened. After my accident, my symmetrical body became asymmetrical. I gambled, and , my symmetry. Now, I didn’t get up one day and announce, “I’m off to find the Secret Teachings.” I stumbled onto them accidentally. Destiny put me on a course toward my childhood accident and serendipity (a creative form of destiny) put me on the path to discovering and mastering the backward-flowing method. So, however you get there, whether by destiny, fate, happenstance, Karma, or serendipity, if you’re meant to get there, you will. It’s up to you to understand the commitment and make the effort.

Q: How do I check my symmetry?

A: There are various means of checking symmetry:

• Musical ability, rhythm. The ability to sing notes with proper intonation.
• Mathematical ability, computer programming.
• Sports. Especially balancing sports such as skateboarding, target sports, ice-skating, gymnastics, bicycling, tightrope walking, juggling.
• Kirlian photography.
• Regular photography, a process you can undertake yourself. Here’s how:

Take a portrait-sized photo of yourself. Scan the negative into your computer, load it into Photoshop, and crop the image until the face is tightly enclosed in the frame. Drop a line down the exact center of your face, cut the image in two, then separate the two sides. Duplicate each side and drag the two left and two right sides together. Flip the duplicate horizontally and nudge until it’s vertically aligned with its corresponding other half. What you have, in each case, are faces composed of two instances of the left side and two instances of the right side, one half merely flipped to complete the image. Here are sample images taken by a couple of Australian teachers. Study each composite image and compare it with the original.

“After much thought an Art teacher at school and I worked out a way to find out. We photographed some of the children and then through a bit of ‘darkroom magic’ manipulated them. You’ll notice that the photos of each child’s face is made up of the original photo.”

~ Adrian Bruce–www.adrianbruce.com 

Right/Right                     Left/Left                Original Photo

Some faces are more symmetrical than others

In his empirical wisdom, Gopi Krishna perceived a direct link between symmetry and the qualities leading to success: “Can we deny that whether a fortuitous gift, or the fruit of Karma, in every case there is a close link between the talent or beauty exhibited and the organic structure of the individual.”

Note: Failure to pass any of the tests does not constitute a lack of symmetry or mean that you are not apt to undertake kundalini training. There are other determinants, namely your own resolve and fortitude, but the extent of your symmetry will determine the outcome to some degree. The more symmetrical, in all probability, the more advanced your breathing and lung capacity. Of course, this depends on your physical state, your age, your habits and your libido.

Get Clean!

This means including more raw foods in your diet! You can’t heal on a poor foundation. This was the one issue hindering both Gopi Krishna and myself. So, learn from our mistakes. By the way, even if you decide not to undertake Life Force activation, this step should be a keeper.

Why? Let’s take a closer look at the relationship between a raw foods diet and GFM. What do these two healing instruments have in common? Well, nothing secret or cryptic. In fact, a little common sense reveals that both rely on ingested substances. For a raw foods diet, it’s the food and drink you consume; for GFM, it’s the air you breathe. One, as food and drink, fewer fats, less sugar and less salt; two, elements in the air that your body converts to Prana. I won’t go into the science of nutrition or Prana. There are researched volumes of relevant materials. Let’s just say that both mechanisms use and refine the elements we introduce into our bodies, so it’s up to us to make sure these elements are pure.

How Sexual Sublimation Works

I’ve not posted to this blog or uploaded to my podcast for several months because I’ve been writing a novel for the past year and a half. Writing a novel is more absorbing and time consuming than writing nonfiction. It requires complete concentration. Now that I’m almost finished, because the novel addresses a number of sexual issues, among them sexual sublimation, I’d like to clarify how sexual sublimation worked for me. I’m no sexologist; I’m just offering my personal experience.

Spoiler Alert: Just because this process functioned as it did for me does not mean it will work that way for you. Every kundalini experience is different. That said, let’s begin:

Every person is endowed with unique sexual characteristics that express themselves through the various physical, emotional, and psychological mechanisms that make up their beings. They can be summed up in one word — libido.

Suffice it to say that some people are very sexual in nature; some are not — and everywhere in between. Through my own experience and through conversations with other kundalini adepts, I believe that libido affects a person’s capacity to trigger the sexual sublimation process, which has to have enough sexual energy to do its transformational work.

“Libido is sexual appetite or drive. A person's libido is motivated by brain function, hormones, and learned behavior, regardless of their sex, and tends to fluctuate according to mental state, hormonal shifts, and stress. Some medications can affect sexual appetite as well.

“When a person's libido is high, they're more likely to desire sexual intimacy and to seek it out with a partner or through masturbation. This is healthy and normal, but an overly high libido that interferes with quality of life can be a sign of a hormonal imbalance or neurological disorder. When libido dips, interest in sex does as well and may be completely absent, which can put a strain on intimate relationships.

“The neural pathways involved in sexual desire are similar in males and females and include cerebral, spinal, and peripheral components. Libido directly correlates to physical responses: when sexual desire is high, blood flow to the penis resulting in an erection signifies sexual desire, as does lubrication and enlargement of the labia.”

~ What is Libido?, by S. Nicole Lane - https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-libido-5084040

Moreover, age, physical endowment, emotional stability, eating and drinking and other harmful habits, as well as (believe it or not) pollution can affect sperm and hormone counts.

Here’s how sexual sublimation worked for me. First, the raw material, i.e., my libido and other biological characteristics at the time I started meditating had to be taken into consideration. Would my Being be able to furnish enough sexual energy to complete the process?

“It's not just about the climate, our food supply and energy resources – pollution could be affecting men's penis sizes, fertility and libido too.

“That's according to environmental and reproductive epidemiologist Dr. Shanna H. Swan's new book Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race, which explores the correlation between smaller penises, lower sperm counts and the use of industrial chemicals in everyday products.”

~ Pollution is Shrinking Penises, Scientists Warn - https://www.menshealth.com/uk/sex/a35911756/small-penis-pollution-fertility-sperm-count/

I was 31 years old, a good age for this work; young enough and not too old. (I know a number of older persons who’ve had trouble sublimating.) Health: good. Habits: I stopped drinking and drugs about that same time; smoking when I was 22 (I wasn’t a heavy smoker). I came up at a time when this country’s air and water supplies were in a lot better shape; polluted resources were not an issue. I’ve had my share of ejaculations, no way of knowing the absolute numbers, only that I started at 13 years old.

The purpose of the meditation I practiced was to distill reproductive fluids into an elixir and then draw this elixir up the spine into the brain. This process began with my practicing the breathing exercises described on the Golden Flower Meditation website. After a while, I started to feel a buildup of what I perceived to be energy in the loins (lower belly region). Again, because I’ve written extensively on this topic, I refer you to the Common Sense Kundalini website for more detail.

As the meditation progressed, I began to feel weaker and weaker after ejaculating. Eventually, I had to stop altogether; the kundalini process was asserting itself. If I wasted “my precious bodily fluids,” I suffered the physical consequences. Gopi Krishna wrote about a similar struggle he'd had.

Sexual energy is the most powerful source of energy in the human body. Normally, this energy is used for reproductive purposes. When prevented from flowing out (during intercourse and masturbation) and redirected to the brain, the seminal fluids in a man and the cervical fluids in a woman are distilled into an elixir and used for evolutionary repurposing. This is the sexual sublimation process. I didn’t know this at the time I began meditating; I just followed the process as it unfolded. There comes a time when kundalini takes over. At his point, you may be in for some surprises. If you long for your former way of life, you might be disappointed.

If I had to come up with reasons why some people succeed in this work and other don’t, I’d maintain that it helps to have a healthy, energetic libido; excellent breathing and lung capacity; the persistence of a detective; excellent lateral thinking and survival skills; and the ability to follow through without becoming discouraged.

As for sex after awakening kundalini, both Gopi Krishna and I discovered that the body needs to be nourished by high quality foods, clean air and water, this being especially critical after intercourse.

Now it’s back to my novel. Keep an eye out for it.