As Long as we Inhabit Bodies...

“Patriotism is the fond memory of food eaten in childhood.”
~ Lin Yu T’ang

This statement is very profound. Extended to its logical conclusion it means that our national identities — as symbolized by national flags — could actually be represented thusly:

• American - The Hot Dog
• French - The Baguette
• German - Sauerkraut
• Philippines - Chicken Adobo
• Spain - Paella
• Morocco - Couscous

and so on...

You don't have to agree with Lin Yu T'ang's statement, but you must admire his logic. He's saying that the foodstuffs we grew up with and cherish are really unifying cultural elements. They unite us — send us out as a group to do battle against the "other." They are the things that really bind us together. He's hinting it would actually be more honest to send us out under the banner of The Hot Dog or The Cheeseburger or The BLT than any arrangement of abstract symbols of stars, crescents, stripes in assorted colors.

We identify with our cravings; we form societies around them and, as long as we inhabit bodies, we never quite get over them, to the point where the images of our favorite foods are always foremost in our minds at times of stress, boredom, or respite.

For example, in the service and required to walk a 4-hour guard duty shift on shipboard or on land late at night, what did my thoughts eventually turn to? Not — was someone going to jump out of a tree or mow me down. I kept my eyes and ears open on duty; I was vigilant, but at the end of a long shift, I always seemed to conjure up the image of a bowl of cornflakes, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a cheeseburger. I asked others what they thought about during their tour on guard duty. Always the same refrain: food fantasies, some special dish. We might not — each one of us — crave the exact same dish, but the choice always came from a common taste pool: the dishes Americans identify with.

That's why it's so difficult to be a traitor; most people cannot renounce the foods they grew up with. Think about the things that tie you to your roots and food comes up big. For most people, it's in first, second, and third place. Not only do we identify with foods, we become adept at justifying their consumption, in spite of the danger inherent in many of our favorites.

Over 40 years ago my awakened Kundalini displaced my exploratory relationship to drugs with something much more powerful, but it never completely purged my affection for the foods I loved as a child. For many and most, food is the final addiction.

Today, I eat completely differently. 90% raw. I haven't eaten a cheeseburger in 20 years; I couldn't digest one. Same goes for most of the foods I used to pine for on those long, lonely tours on guard duty. I no longer think about them, but I understand how dangerous they are and I do understand their attraction.

Each one of us inhabits a different body, with different tastes and different cravings. Imagine if we were bodiless beings of pure spirit. All of these cravings, all our longings would disappear. They will disappear as soon as we become pure spirit, which inevitably we will.

How do I know this? My Kundalini awakening revealed it to me. It's our evolutionary path. Without bodies there are no needs, no cravings, no addictions, no negative emotions. Today, we cannot envisage such an existence. That's fine. Before we traveled to the moon, many thought it impossible, or never thought about it at all.

Is it reasonable to believe our evolution is at an end, that no further evolutionary developments can ever occur, that the form our bodies take today will be the same in 10,000 years? And if we do evolve in form, will our immaterial and metaphysical aspects not evolve as well? 

So what form will future bodies assume? A second head, another arm? Or will future evolution concern mostly the brain and the up-to-now mostly esoteric capabilities associated with Kundalini. Given the current runaway interest in kundalini, I'd be surprised if kundalini didn't hold some surprises as to our future evolutionary development. 

Bodiless beings are not for next week or next month. We must survive centuries of challenges to our physical forms, but eventually we will shed those elements that bind us to our earthly limitations. Our bodies being one of them. The first step can be taken now.

“I didn’t arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.”
~ Albert Einstein

Finally, if it’s any consolation, are not the growth and acceptance of ethnic foods already changing the visions we conjure up when famished. Fifty years ago when I walked guard duty, I had only standard American fare to excite my imagination. Today’s soldier has a panoply of ethnic cravings to draw from. As we begin to accept foods from other cultures — the cooking shows on TV offer an endless array of ethnic shows — will our interest in other cultures not increase? And, as a result, gradually allay the feelings of otherness we reserve for foreigners?

Will we still be doing battle under the banner of the Hot Dog in 2518? Or will Pizza or Moo Goo Gai Pan replace it? 

The 'I' and 'Me' revealed by Kundalini

I'm currently doing a seminar about living a life that defies the predictable and I learned the story of Colin Wilson, a British philosopher and writer. When he was young, he dreamed about becoming the next Albert Einstein, but at the age of 16 his family fell on hard times and he had to leave school and go to work. He was so unhappy he decided to kill himself.

He took a bottle of hydrochloric acid and was just about to drink it, when he had two insights. The first was that there were two Colin Wilson's within him:

• The first was the idiotic teenager, self-pitying boy who he called his 'idiot' and then there was the other Colin Wilson who wanted to make a difference in the world by becoming the next Einstein.
• His second insight was that the 'idiot' was going to kill them both. (Acknowledgments to Landmark Education for this information.)

Since awakening Kundalini I have been more aware of the idiot or what I call 'me.' This is the part of me that wants to survive, look good, play it safe and then there is the other which I call 'I' which wants to share, contribute, make a difference.

At every moment I get to choose which one I am going to be. Both are there because the 'me' was created by language (acculturation programming that begins the day we are born) and is designed for survival, but the 'I' was there before 'me'. Out of  'I' we build 'me'. When Kundalini rises, it changes the mind and body by working directly on the nervous system to strengthen and balance. But it also expands consciousness so that spiritual writings resonate much more deeply than before Kundalini rose. Kundalini shifts the consciousness  from 'me' back to 'I' where it initially came from. Now I find when I meditate that I watch 'me' from the place of 'I'. This is difficult to explain and I don't want to give the idea of a split personality, this is very much internal phenomena that  doesn't affect interactions with people or with the world.

This realization profoundly affected Eckhart Tolle, who wrote in the Power of Now of the moment after he had spent many years suffering from depression when he said to himself, "I cannot live with myself any longer." Suddenly he was struck by the two Eckhart's within him. 'I' and 'myself' and he asked "who is me, and who is myself?" This insight shocked him into realization and has resulted in him being a world famous spiritual teacher. He says after this "he felt himself being drawn up into a vast vortex of energy" which I assert must have been Kundalini.  It was the combination of insight and energy which shifted his consciousness permanently into the place where he is who he is today.

The Divine Vibration

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
~ Nikola Tesla

What is the nature of reality? Albert Einstein, that wise sage, once remarked, "Nothing happens until something moves." This is quite literally true. Nothingness is the pure potentiality, the unborn absolute in it's un-manifest form. When vibration happens, the nothingness gives birth to all that is. Call it the big bang theory or 'yoga spandakarika' The theory of spanda (pulsation or vibration in Sanskrit) or string theory. "There was the word and God said, let there be light". This primal sound or vibration, called Aum, Amen, Ameen by different religions is the basis of all creation. Whether we approach this reality through scientific thought or through the inner realization in samadhi, this is the absolute reality underlying all existence.

Existence, the framework based on time-space we experience as finite mortal beings is a very very small part of the infinite unchanging never-born reality that transcends such classifications. The nature of reality. This is a deep subject and there are no easy answers. Can us mere mortals even begin to fathom the universe in it's vastness? Cognitively, we can only grasp at straws. With the experience of kundalini and the deep 'samadhi' or union with the absolute, we can become one with it and experience the 'I AM'.

All that we experience is a result of vibration. Even in an empty room, the molecules and atoms that make up the room and the air within are pulsating at fast speeds. What we call solid material is neither. Physics tells us that the deeper we look, the more difficult it becomes to find a solid particle. Everything is broken down into smaller particles and under it all are just different forms of energy, vibrating strings of energy that make up the mass we experience in the world around us. Reality is not so real. We are made up vibrating energy experiencing other forms of energy around us through our 5 senses.

My kundalini awakening was a 'spontaneous' one. Meaning, I was not consciously aware that I was seeking this blessing but certain guiding forces led me to practices such as yoga and meditation a few weeks before this event occurred. I was leading a 'normal' existence. 9 to 5 job, no interest in spirituality, but a fascination with music (of the Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, Eric Clapton variety). The weeks before my awakening, I became interested in Indian classical music. The simplest form of vibration that we all know is music. When a musician strikes a string on a guitar, the string vibrates and we hear a sound. When we organize those vibrations in a composition with rhythm and a beat, we create music. Indian classical music, I later found out, had its origins in the meditative practices of adepts familiar with kundalini energy and the formulation of 'ragas' or compositions based on various scales were specifically formulated for meditation and through it, the awakening and smooth passage of K energy through the chakras (propellers of energy) and nadis or meridians as described in the acupuncture system that are canals that move the energy through the body. Each chakra corresponds to a certain musical note and the ragas are ascending and descending vibratory activating mechanisms that can be used to balance the flow of this energy.

As described before, I was being drawn to this music and I listened to it more and more. In this state of musical ecstasy, listening to the ragas, being aware of the cyclical nature of sound, the peak and trough that make up a wave, but in an intimate way that is not merely 'listening' to the sound but becoming it, one day, at the culmination of the sexual act with my wife, I heard a cracking noise at the base of my spine. For some reason, the word kundalini flashed in my head right away. Having grown up in a religious Indian background, I was aware of the concept even though I had no active interest in the phenomenon up to that point. I laughed off the idea and thought to myself "Yeah, right. That's a fairy tale" and thought nothing of it. I was curious about the crackling sound and the feeling of energy rushing up to my head. Very mysterious and uplifting. Not scary but definitely weird. A sensation I had never experienced before.

As i went out of the room, I felt different. Like I was aware of every little thing that was happening around me. 'Hyper-awareness' is the best word to describe it. There was water gushing out of the kitchen sink and I was aware of each rivulet and how each stream created a complex vibration as it mixed with the other, creating the focused jet of water. Water coming out of a tap. Something we see every day. But at that moment, it was a profound realization. "I understand spin resonance," I said to my wife. A concept from chemistry I had learned without really 'getting it.' Well here I stood, almost hearing each water molecule bounce against another, feeling this resonance. My wife stood there bewildered, not knowing what to say. She could sense something very different about me. I 'saw' (definitely not the right term but the only one I've got) everything as vibrations. The music, the streams of water, the glimmering light from the bulb above me.

That night began a journey down the rabbit hole that continues to this very day. It took me another 2-3 months to confirm that this indeed was a kundalini awakening, but the evidence was piling up high each moment. My body started behaving like it was possessed, contorting into involuntary 'kriyas'. Yogic positions that the body was forcing itself into. I decided to remain skeptical and make sure that this was what it seemed to be, but the energy started moving up and down my spine and became a regular feature of each waking moment. I read up on each and every book I could lay my hands on, researched every website, book and first hand account I could get my hands on. It was a fascinating journey and one that showed up unannounced at my doorstep saying, "Here I am. Deal with me."