A blog committed to the evidence-based study of human energy potential, featuring books by authors who explore and practice energy cultivation. How and why kundalini, neuroplasticity, distance healing, mindfulness, meditation, near-death and out-of-body experience, and other metaphysical phenomena occur and how they influence evolution, creativity, and biology (DNA)
If you haven't already signed up, there's still time to do so. The Kundalini Summit is an entirely on-demand, free-of-charge, five-day event, featuring 24 kundalini adepts, each one an expert in their own field.
The speakers address issues like:
How are bodily sensations that you can't interpret connected with Kundalini?
How does Kundalini work?
What should you do during a kundalini awakening?
Which kind of abilities (siddhis) accompany an active Kundalini and why can they become a trap?
How can you activate your creative and inexhaustible vitality.
How does Kundalini enable Samadhi without any special effort on your part?
How do chakras really work and how do you purify them?
How are Yoga and Kundalini connected and which asanas release blocks and reactivate the energy flow?
Why is Kundalini considered an “intelligent” energy?
And most important of all: What is the cosmic reason behind the surge in Kundalini awakenings?
Want to understand more about Kundalini Energy? What it is and Why it's important? How it will impact your life? JOIN THE COMMUNITY FOR A FREE INTRODUCTORY CALL ON OCT 12, 2017! Ask questions. Speak with real experts directly. Be part of a community of sincere spiritual seekers? Join us in an eight-week 12-hour kundalini immersion forum. When you sign up, you will get a questionnaire that will help you set the agenda and ask the questions you have been wondering about.
In this series of online meetings, we address a wide array of kundalini topics - everything from awakening kundalini to living with kundalini. The dangers to avoid, the safest methods, religion and kundalini, self-healing, kundalini and higher consciousness, sexual aspects of energy cultivation techniques, and much more... Help Us Set The Agenda! If much more's not enough...when you register for the Worldwide Interactive Kundalini Forum Community Event, not only will you have signed up as an active on-camera participant in discussions on crucial kundalini topics, you will also receive a questionnaire inviting you to help set the agenda. That’s right; for all 12 hours of this forum you will be a live video contributor, not just a passive listener.
Your Hosts: JJ Semple - www.commonsensekundalini.com JJ Semple is considered one of the foremost authorities of the phenomena of Kundalini Awakenings. He is also the author of four books on paranormal non-fiction, kundalini, meditation, consciousness, alchemy, and mindfulness, and their effect on human evolution. His first book, Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time, is an auto-biographical memoir of his Kundalini awakening. Corinne Lebrun - www.wilddivinebliss.org Corinne is a Certified Shamballa Healer, Certified Kundalini Yoga Teacher and has a Master’s Degree in Psychology. She has recently been featured in a documentary Kundalini: Awakening the Goddess, and seeks to help others find confidence and encouragement in their spiritual journey.
Prominent Guest Hosts
"When people ask me about the purpose of Kundalini, I tell them, 'If Kundalini didn't serve a useful purpose, it wouldn't be part of our beings. Evolution would have eliminated it, which makes no sense because Kundalini is the driving force behind evolution and evolution doesn't retain characteristics or mutations that aren't part of the evolutionary master plan. The challenge each of us faces in awakening and ultimately living with this powerful energy source is to do so in the safest, most benign and advantageous manner.' "
~ JJ Semple
Details: The cost for the entire series is $200 Early Bird until 10/7/2012 (limited tickets available) and $225 thereafter. Schedule: One and a half hours, 12:30 to 2:00 pm PST every Thursday from Oct 12, 2017 through December 7, 2017, except for November 23, 2017 (Thanksgiving Day).
Upon registering, you will receive the questionnaire, plus links for joining the forum, as well as instructions on using the cutting-edge video interface. Using your mobile device, you will even be able to participate while on vacation or while traveling.
Schedule
One and a half hours, 12:30 to 2:00 pm PST every Thursday from Oct 12, 2017 through December 7, 2017, except for November 23, 2017 (Thanksgiving Day).
A person need only read the international news to understand the level of fear, doubt, and uncertainty in the world today. Despite all of this, there is also incredible hope arising from all corners of the globe. Millions of people are awakening to ancient spiritual truths and customs that show us that a different way of living is possible — one filled with compassion and reverence for all life and the Earth. Kundalini is the biological cause of this global shift, and it is happening now at a faster pace than ever before. In our first Kundalini Symposium event, Kundalini and the Global Shift of Consciousness, we will explore the dramatic changes that are occurring all around us, and how we can all help facilitate real, long-term, and impactful change at a personal and global level.
This is the start of something BIG. A symposium to address the various aspects of kundalini. Hosted by The Emerging Sciences Foundation, it features a number of speakers with experience in raising, living with, and exploring the vicissitudes and effects of kundalini.
Speaker: Michael Bradford
Michael Bradford has been involved in research on Kundalini for more than 35 years. In 1977 he traveled to India where he spent six years serving as a volunteer worker for the Central Institute for Kundalini Research, founded and directed by the late Pandit Gopi Krishna. Michael has been a board member of the Institute for Consciousness Research (I.C.R.) since it was founded, and has been Director of Publications during this time. In 1985 he began working full time as an IT consultant in the data processing field, and retired in March 2014. He began studying Vedic astrology with Hart DeFouw in 1995, and in 2003 founded his own Vedic astrology practice.
Speaker: JJ Semple
JJ Semple is the author of four best-selling non-fiction books dealing with energy cultivation techniques, kundalini, meditation, consciousness, alchemy, sexual sublimation, enlightenment, and mindfulness and their effect on human evolution. He is the founder of Life Force Books, a publishing company featuring books on energy cultivation, the neuroplasticity aspects of Kundalini, and helpful guidelines for living with Kundalini. His Golden Flower Meditation method (GFM) is practiced by neophytes and adepts all over the world. In addition, he teaches sexual sublimation techniques for facilitating the kundalini process.
Speaker: Corinne Lebrun
Corinne’s journey with mystical experiences begun as a young child which led her on a rich academic path of inquiry into various subjects such as theoretical physics, anthropology, psychology and various mystical traditions. She has a M.S. in Psychology her studies focus on how spiritual awakenings impact positive social evolution. She is also KRI Certified Kundalini Yoga teacher, a Shambala Multi-Dimensional Healer, a graduate of the Berkeley Psychic School, and is a dancer, musician, artist and writer. Corinne has created a career in empowering start-ups and purpose driven organizations to be successful. Her career has led her to work with brilliant minds from places such as Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA and the Alliance for Innovation in Science and Technology Information. Her company Pitch Deck Ninjas serves the business sector. She is also the founder of Wild Divine Bliss, an educational forum for kundalini awakenings.
Speaker: Carl Calleman
Carl Johan Calleman is a scientist and philosopher who has devoted his past thirty years to understanding the evolution of consciousness and life based on the Mayan calendar. Born in Stockholm, Sweden he gained a Ph.D. in Physical Biology and spent twenty years doing laboratory research into toxicology and Cancer Research. In this capacity he was a Senior Researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle and has served as an expect for the World Health Organization in addition to giving lectures at places like MIT, Institut Pasteur, Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine and the National Cancer Institute in Tokyo. In 1994 he left his carrier in the hard sciences behind and started to lecture about one of the greatest mysteries of our time: The Mayan Calendar and has for instance written six books on this topic with the aim of making this accessible to modern people. The most recent books are The Global Mind and the Rise of Civilization (June 2016) and The Nine Waves of Creation – Quantum Physics, Holographic Evolution and the Destiny of Humanity (December 2016). His focus has been on explaining both biological and mental evolution up until the current time and beyond. He has also worked with Mayan elders such as Hunbatz Men and Don Alejandro Oxlaj and helped them to get their message out. For his own spiritual evolution Carl Calleman has been part of the Oneness University in India, which looks upon Kundalini energy as a crucial element in this. Speaker: Teri Degler Award-winning author Teri Degler has ten books to her credit including The Fiery Muse: Creativity and the Spiritual Quest (Random House, Canada). Teri has spent many years writing on yoga philosophy, Tantra, kundalini-shakti, and the lives of highly creative women mystics. A deep interest in kundalini has lead her to do extensive research on the divine feminine known as Shakti in Hinduism and the parallels found in Sophia in Christianity and Shekinah in Jewish mysticism. Teri’s books have been translated into French, German, and Italian, and her freelance writing has appeared in many publications in the U.S. and Canada. She teaches workshops on writing and creative expression and has made many media appearances. Her most recent book, The Divine Feminine Fire: Creativity and Your Yearning to Express Your Self, was an Amazon.ca # 1 Bestseller in two spiritual categories.
Speaker: Michael Molina With a Bachelors of Science degree in business from California State University, Long Beach, Michael Molina has over 15 years experience in technology and marketing, and has led multiple “big data” projects. The founder of the Emerging Sciences Foundation and the creator of Brilliano, a social networking platform and collaboration tool, Michael believes in empowering people with the knowledge and tools necessary to improve the world we live in. He has served as an ESF board member since 2009. He is married with two young sons.
Be sure to sign up for this unique and exciting event today...
In the Ekottara-Agama Sutra, Buddha teaches his son, Rahula. The first question Rahula asks is: "How can I practice anapana in order to get rid of my sadness and worries and be free of all thoughts?"
Straighten out your body and make it correct. Straighten out your mind and make it correct. Straightening out one’s body has to do with putting it in a comfortable position for meditating. Straightening out one’s mind involves breathing. Controlling the bird of thought is a matter of breath. If you cannot get hold of thoughts, they will run in confusion. If you cannot concentrate your thoughts, it is because one’s breath is scattering. When the breath scatters in confusion, then the mind scatters in confusion as well.
The Buddha advises his son “tie your consciousness to your nose.” Imitate the white crane. When the crane stops and rests, its nose faces its anus, and the two breaths circulate together. The phrase “tie your consciousness to your nose” does not mean to observe the nose. It means to pay attention to your breath as you breathe in and out. Make your consciousness follow your breath. Be aware of everything in respect to your breath. How long is the inhalation? How long is the exhalation? Is it a cold exhalation or inhalation? Is it a warm exhalation or inhalation? Observe in full detail as your body breathes in and out, and be aware of it all. The results will be that the power of memory will be very good and your brain will be especially alert. ~ Master Nan Huai-Chin - Adapted from Working Towards Enlightenment
“Observing my breath as I sit one morning, I am aware that it has the property of direction. At each inhalation the hitherto imperceptible wind in my belly appears to eddy slightly at the bottom of my abdomen as it descends before taking an upward circular course. Or so it appears to me: Down the back, then up the front, in a circular motion. Something clicks. I remember the words ‘backward-flowing method’ in The Secret of the Golden Flower, words I’ve passed over a hundred times, never having a clue as to what they meant, never imagining they might be important. I break off to look for the passage. In two quick flips, I‘ve located the text: “At this time one works at the energy with the purpose of making it flow backward and rise, flow down to fall like the upward spinning of the sun-wheel…in this way one succeeds in bringing the true energy to its original place. This is the backward-flowing method.”
This is a good example of “tying ones consciousness to the breath.” In fact, by the mind alone, (by directing one's intention) consciousness can change the direction of the breath to facilitate the rise of Kundalini and the opening the energy channels as explained inJJ Semple's book.
My own beginning experience with kundalini is a little different but had the same result. During a period of intense meditation, I suddenly became aware of a spontaneous change in my breathing patterns. It started with deep inhaling and holding, and then a release of breath. It was as if the breath from the pressured inhale was being directed towards various areas of my body, particularly the diaphragm, to open up these places previously devoid of air flow.
A short time later, I began to notice further changes. I became conscious of my breath rotating in a circular fashion in the abdomen area. I felt compelled to encourage this circular flow of breathing as it gave rise to bliss and a sense of being moved deeper into meditative absorption. Along with this change in breathing pattern, in my mind’s eye I visualized a wheel rotating in the same direction with my breath. It was as if my consciousness and breath were working together to keep this wheel turning in a smooth consistent rotation.
This is another example of “tying consciousness to the breath." Both cases, cited above, resulted in the rise of Kundalini and the opening of the energy channels and chakras.
Dhyana is a Sanskrit word which means an absorption into a state of mind brought about by meditation. In particular, dhyana refers to the four stages of absorption, sometimes called the "four dhyanas."
Anapana, or “tying consciousness to the breath,” is the beginning of the first stage of dhyana. It is a cultivation practice that begins the process of eliminating worries, vexations, and confused thoughts as one develops an inward awareness of all that is happening in the body and a concentration centered on the breath.
In a future post, I will give a brief explanation of the four stages of dhyana as described by Master Nan Huai-Chin in his book Working Towards Enlightenment.
I read Cobalt Blue after author Peggy Payne and I reached out to each other in an attempt to define the similarities and differences between Kundalini fiction and non-fiction. Today, non-fiction outweighs and outsells the fiction category, but that may change as more and more authors investigate Kundalini, either by experiencing it or by reading about it.
Before Christmas, Peggy and I agreed that I would send her questions about how she was able to work the Kundalini theme into Cobalt Blue. Here is the Q&A:
JJS: There’s kundalini and kundalini. The strip mall kind and the Gopi Krishna kind. Are you’re at all familiar with the differences? To what degree?
PP: I feel strongly about making no judgment on anyone’s spiritual experience.
Certainly I’ve read the literature:
Gopi Krishna, Lee Sannella, Irina Tweedie, Stanislav and Christina Grof,
Muktananda, your own work, JJ Semple, and many others. Also, early Christian mystics who
described similar experiences.
As for “strip mall kundalini,” I once attended a
workshop where I was informed that we had all had our kundalini raised (I didn’t believe that for a
second.) So I know what you mean
if you’re talking
about glib bandying of the term.
However, much more important
to me than making any such distinction is to respect each person as the expert
on his or her own experience.
JJS: In which category do you place Andie?
PP: Andie’s experience rocks her to the bottom of her
soul. At the time of her first
experience, she has never heard the word kundalini. She doesn’t
know until near the end of the story what has happened to her. For most of the story, she is in the
midst of an enormously disruptive ordeal that unmoors her from everything she
thought she knew about herself. And to make things much worse, she is fighting it.
JJS: Unless I’ve
misunderstood your background, it seems that you don’t have direct experience with energy cultivation
techniques like kundalini meditation. How did you become interested in
kundalini as a subject for Cobalt Blue?
PP: I’ve studied reiki, done some kundalini yoga as well
as other kinds in India and the U.S., attended various workshops on energy, and
been a meditator for many years.
But when I finished my early
drafts of Cobalt Blue, I, like Andie, didn’t even know the word kundalini. I had overheard it
used once at a party in a two sentence exchange behind me. Noted it, but didn’t know what it meant
and didn’t look it
up.
Then years later, I thought I’d finished my novel and
was sitting out on my porch by myself one night listening to the rain. A thought popped into my head: “It’s
kundalini.” The next day I did a little
research, and I found that this force fit the story that I’d already written, that
it was roughly comparable to experience others have had. This gave me a new understanding of
what this woman — and,
vicariously, I — had
been dealing with. (It was a ferocious hard novel for me to write.)
I don’t claim anything as dramatic as a kundalini
awakening for myself. Only
twinges. I found this in a journal
I kept years earlier in India doing research for my previous novel, Sister India:
“Throughout the morning I keep noticing a sensation I
have felt here before, a small physical thrill that I cannot explain. It comes from simply looking around
me. It's like an electric pulse,
made of molten color, the brilliance of all the silk saris at once; and it
pushes past my fatigue and travels along the wire that hooks together body and
soul. Jet-lagged and short of
sleep though I am, that jolt keeps pushing through. I welcome it. It’s
somehow part of what I’ve
come here for."
JJS: I found Cobalt Blue an easy and fun read.
You write very well. I especially liked the way you developed Andie’s place in her artist
community and her relations with others. Talk about your approach.
PP: Thanks, JJ. Her place in her artist community came
naturally to me. I’ve been in the same
weekly writers group for 32 years. And I share office space with a dear friend; other writers and artists
also rent in the building from time to time. I’m
part of a close-knit group of supportive fellow artists. It’s a great thing. I’d
hate to try to do this work without it.
JJS: Kundalini entails a repurposing of sexual energy by preventing it from
flowing out through masturbation or intercourse, and instead, diverting it up
the spine to the brain. If this is an accurate analysis of how sexual
sublimation works — and
documented experiences from ancient Indian and Chinese to modern practitioners
says it is — what
made you think that Andie might go on a sexual rampage when conservation of
sexual energy is the only way to avoid deleterious effects associated with the
loss of sexual energy (prana)? Or, to put it another way: after awakening,
heretofore unused functions in the brain become active and warn male and female
kundalini adepts (by sending biological signals) about the harmful effects
ejaculation has on the body. Do you think someone could go against the
biological changes in brain function that kundalini induces and actually waste
large quantities of prana?
PP: Andie is no adept. Her awakening happens in jolts and
ragged pieces at a time when she is depressed and her life is already in
disarray. Its genesis is the
meditative practice of painting, even doing work she considers routine. She thinks she’s ill and her biological signals are utterly swamped
by confusion, emotional uproar, and the powerful sexual sensations that so many
people experience in kundalini awakening. But without a teacher or any kind of guidance or knowledge, she finds
herself compulsively acting on the mad sexual impulses. That’s very upsetting and frightening to her.
Yes, the sexual energy should
be transmuted. But for a long
time, Andie is in the throes of a “wrong rising” and an effort to
suppress what is happening.
Finally, however, a valuable
spiritual development comes about through the sex as she begins to regain some
control. It gives her a
body-and-soul recognition of the passion to merge with others, to know herself
as one with other people, to give up, if briefly, her separateness.
JJS: Nevertheless, even if my take on the triggers and effects of kundalini don’t
jibe with Andie’s
actions, I found your hypothesis very interesting to the degree that I cannot
positively say that the effects she manifests (her sexual behavior) could never happen
as a result of a kundalini awakening. Have you thought about that? About the
subconscious urgings that caused you to take her in that direction?
PP: I didn’t feel I had any more control of her than she did of
herself. As so often happens with
novels, the story and the character had their own life to live.
I do feel strongly that sex
and spirituality are vitally intertwined. Sex and spirituality are central to my other novels as well and I write a blog on the subject.
And subconscious urgings?
Well, having been a teenager in the years of the frustrating sexual Double
Standard, I was perhaps due to erupt in some way. (I’m 65 now, BTW)
JJS: What’s
more, if a person did go on a sexual rampage like Andie’s, she would probably act in much the same way. Who’s to say?
PP: Exactly. I think our imaginations know things
that our minds and bodies are still catching onto.
