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.

Archetypal Model Revisited

In January of this year, I posted Archetypal Model on this site. In it, I presented a well-known Eastern model of the subtle body. At the time of my kundalini rising in late 2005, this model was instrumental in providing me with a framework for understanding the kundalini process, allowing me to integrate these changes into a life that was experiencing a major renovation and restoration.  

This model can be reviewed in detail by re-reading the original post, but a summary is provided here.

The invisible subtle body lies beyond all that represents our solid physical bodies, but is interconnected with it. It is made up of three diaphanous sheaths:

1. Energy sheath is partially made up of energy channels that intersect six major chakras. These chakras can be associated with the physical body’s nerve plexuses and glandular system.
2. Mental sheath consists of the conscious and unconscious mind broken down into three aspects: chitta, or the unconscious storehouse of past impressions and imprints; manas, or the sensory motor mind which carries out and responds to bodily functions, impulses etc.; and the ahankara, or ego which creates all our boundaries, self-definitions, and self-concepts, our sense of I-ness.
3. Discernment sheath, our reflective consciousness or higher mind often referred to as the voice of reason.

This archetypal model provided a visual representation that helped me understand and integrate the phenomenon of Kundalini as it carried out its life changing agenda over a period of many months turning into years.

The purpose of this post is to complete the portion of the Archetypal Model not covered in the previous post by extending it to include the Causal Body.

Just as the Physical Body ends with the skin and then the Subtle Body begins, the Subtle Body ends with the discernment sheath and then the Causal Body begins.

What is this Causal Body? Other terms that could be used to describe it are the celestial realm, pure consciousness or pure essential reality. It is the place where one has moved beyond false and limited identification with the transitory world of illusion, beyond space and time, beyond phenomena, beyond dualism.

The first three sheaths described in Archetypal Model can be presented and understood conceptually, as a kind of body/mind/soul paradigm. That’s why, at that time, I chose to end it there.

The three sheaths represent the areas of consciousness where I noticed most of the renovation and restoration process taking place. In the energy sheath, I experienced the opening of the energy channels and chakras and the many physical and psychological symptoms that resulted from their opening. In the mental sheath, I experienced a collapse in my previous world view as kundalini energy influenced and modified chitta with its past imprints and impressions, unresolved issues, drives, parental and church injunctions. As it moved into ahankara, I experienced what seemed like hitting the immovable wall of the ego, and a dismantling of its self-constructs, self-definitions, boundaries and unconscious attachments. In the discernment sheath, I experienced the observer, looking on, surrendering and submitting to all that was happening.

The movement to the Causal Body cannot be as easily explained, but there is a story which illustrates it.

"It is said that the Buddha loved all sentient beings with a love of a father for his children. But the children did not listen to their loving master. Though there was wealth in their own outer house, they did not want it, and instead they went running around outside in confusion. All the master could do was to sew a jewel into each of their garments so that when they were impoverished and starving, they might discover it themselves and be rich in ways they would not otherwise expect. This was the master’s tender compassion and love." 

What is this own outer house? It is our physical bodies, sprung from our parent’s union. It is that place made up of our form, sensitivities, concepts, syntheses and consciousness, born of time and space, with the appearance of permanence, but fleeting, all the same. What is this garment? It is the Causal Body. Inside it is the precious jewel. In Chinese Taoism, they speak of using the false to cultivate the real. Without the outer house, there would be no way to find the real. But this real is an inner secret.

The door to the Causal Body is opened when we recognize the impoverishment and emptiness of all that precedes it. Our physical form, and even our subtle bodies with all of its kundalini activity is constantly changing. There’s nothing permanent about it. The same is true with every aspect of our sensibilities. They provide a window to the world as we see it, but they are empty of any sort of permanence. All of our conceptions of reality are only constructs of what we have inherited or assumed. They are constantly changing as our views change. Even events like birth and death are only moments in time, the beginning when physical form takes shape, and then changes and dissipates. All such syntheses built into our lives are constantly in a state of change. And finally, our consciousness or awareness, our ability to discriminate is constantly changing and therefore empty of permanence.

We use what is false to discover what is real, and the real is the jewel hidden in the garment. And the real cannot be spoken about because it is beyond the comprehension of the intellect; beyond what can be described in words.  

Revelation

No more my heart shall sob or grieve.

My days and nights dissolve in God's own Light.

Above the toil of life my soul

Is a Bird of Fire winging the Infinite.

I have known the One and His secret Play,

And passed beyond the sea of Ignorance Dream.

In tune with Him, I sport and sing;

I own the golden Eye of the Supreme.

Drunk deep of Immortality,

I am the root and boughs of a teeming vast.

My Form I have known and realized.

The Supreme and I are one; all we outlast.

From "My Flute" by Sri Chinmoy

What to Do While "It Does You!"

There seems to be a polemic building around the notion that "spiritual" work (meditation, praying, attending workshops, seminars, and retreats) takes care of underlying psychic issues, so you don't need to undertake any type of behavioral work to complete the self-actualization process:

"... the vast majority of us who are engaging in spiritual practice are making a similar mistake. We tend to put far too much emphasis on the need to “work out” our personal psychological issues as part of our spiritual path.

"The way this plays out practically is as follows: let’s say that you take up a spiritual practice in earnest, and you notice in the course of that practice that you’re deeply defended against life and intimacy. You won’t let other people see you. You always wear a social mask which hides a deep-rooted insecurity.

"The trouble is that although this “archaeological dig” into the depths of your psyche might lead to greater self-understanding, it won’t necessarily make it any easier for you to be vulnerable, authentic and present. Indeed, it might even take you further away from authentic intimacy with life by making you more self-preoccupied than before.

"It’s important to recognize that this tendency toward self-preoccupation isn’t our fault. This habit grew out of our over-psychologized culture which basically told us that we were all damaged by our childhood and that we have “inner wounds” that need to be healed in order to become happy and fulfilled as adults."

~ The Mistake Most of us Make on the Spiritual Path – Craig Hamilton

This appears to go counter to Margaret Dempsey's hypothesis that some psychic work may be needed, not so much to overhaul the psyche, but to help the individual recognize the ego indoctrination process:

"So before any spiritual work is attempted, I strongly recommend individuals, especially those who have been on a spiritual path for many years, do a transformative, self-development programme. In my case it was the Forum from Landmark Education, but there are others. It's not important which one is done. What is critical is doing something to deal with the sloppy thinking in which one presumes that simply by meditating or doing yoga one is going to transform the ego that stands in the way of awakening. 

"Trying to transform the ego on one's own is like a thief turning detective to catch the one who is the thief; it can't be done and leads to frustration and disillusionment."

~ The First Stage of Spiritual Awakening: Know Yourself  – Margaret Dempsey

To answer the question "What to Do While 'It Does You!'," I created a diagram of the process that attempts to illustrate what happens when you reach the It Does You! stage. In short, it really does do you!

That is to say the Kundalini-Life Force energy starts re-engineering your being (body, soul, mind, ego, psyche, all) and you can sit back and let it work its evolutionary magic, or as Craig Hamilton says, "... feel instantly connected to the heart of Life and energized by the impulse of evolution itself."

The challenge is, at least for me, that I have been living with this energy for 40 years, exploring, as time went by, many facets of my being, and I don't believe that delving into the various aspects of my being has been counter to the It-Does-You! work that Kundalini carries out on a daily basis. In fact, doing this work has helped change my Being. No longer was I simply a body and a mind, but rather a Being with a capital "B" in it, connected to an energy continuum, like the scent of a pine forest is connected to living trees.

That said, I can see how too much psychic self-analysis might short circuit an individual in the You-do-it! phase, leaving him/her prey to what Hamilton terms "inner wounds." Nevertheless, once you reach the It does You!, there's no harm in gaining insights into how the mind and the ego work, especially as pertains to the finer aspects of social interaction. In my case, I never felt the need for psychoanalysis; I got the point of it after reading Eric Berne's Games People Play.

The Marketplace of Inner Wounds

The work I've done on myself since Kundalini took over has been pretty much confined to self-remembering, which is geared toward the issue of self-control, the key to success in the material world, and I'm not using the preceding term in a materialistic sense. I mean it in the sense of learning to respond instead of to react.

Other than that, any polemic brewing over the question of what to do while pursuing self-actualization is a non-starter. I think all three of us (Hamilton, Dempsey, Semple) are basically saying the same thing: It depends on where you are in the journey:

• If you're in the You-do-it! stage, beware that psychic contents don't usurp your real intentions.
• If you're in the It-Does-You! stage, you should have the perspective, and the metaphysical knowledge, to manage the important aspects of your life.