All Life Phases Have Karmic Meaning For Kundalini

Each kundalini instance is different from every other instance, just as every human being’s metabolic, somatic, anatomical, psychological, intellectual, and cognitive characteristics vary.
 

Find a Lake and Walk Around It

I wouldn't worry too much about God, faith and other religious tropes; kundalini is first a physical transformation that ultimately does lead to the metaphysical and to higher consciousness.

All life phases have karmic meaning — what you were, what you are, and what you will be involved in before, during, and after awakening are equally significant. Wise men and women know the journey is just as important as the destination. You didn't just make kundalini happen. Something led you to it. Ask yourself: Did I find kundalini or did it find me?

Whatever its origin, when the kudalini process started, I gradually realized there were no religious overtones. I didn't need to believe in some dogma or faith. If I was to succeed, I needed proceed as a scientist.

I read other people's accounts, not because they applied to my particular struggle. Some did; some didn't. The ones I identified with offered methodological insights into the kundalini awakening process. In turn, when I wrote an account of my kundalini experience, I provided only such information as I myself had been able to verify, information about the challenges and the choices one makes as the process unfolds. I followed that book with two more books, in each instance seeking to clarify and demystify the process, making it more evidence-based than faith-based.
 

Are There Birds in Your Lake?

Your body is a laboratory; you are the subject in an experiment. How it turns out depends on your ability to observe yourself and make the right choices. You need to act like a detective, sifting the clues and the feedback you receive from your body — and they will manifest themselves.

PD Ouspensky stated:

"There is no question of faith in all this. Quite the opposite, this system teaches people to believe in absolutely nothing. You must verify everything you see, hear, or feel. Only in that way can you come to something."

Biology is an expression of consciousness. You started out knowing only your physical body and its surroundings. To advance beyond those barriers, you must apply Ouspensky’s precepts to your life.

Experiencing Kundalini: Has It Jump-Started Evolution?

Kundalini is the result of stimulating the human body's most powerful energy source — our sexual essences. We call this energy stimulation process Sexual Sublimation. It consists of internalizing the energy produced by the sexual organs, distilling said energy into an etherized elixir some call psychic fuel to allow this psychic fuel to be drawn up the spinal column into the brain where it produces an eruption we call, for lack of a more global term, a kundalini experience.

This energy may be stimulated in a number of ways:

• By voluntarily practicing energy cultivation techniques such as yoga and meditation,
• By involuntarily doing any number of things, up to and including doing nothing at all. It just happens on its own,
• It may also not be stimulated by the voluntary practice of energy stimulation techniques, no matter how hard you, the practitioner, works at it. There seems to be a karmic aspect that governs success in this work. At present, we know very little about why the sexual sublimation process works for some, but not for others.

Whether you call it Orgone, Chi, Life Force, or some other name, Kundalini is but a single energetic phenomenon with as many ways of manifesting itself as there are people on earth. One energy; infinite ways of experiencing it. Why is this? It's because of individual differences in people — physical, emotional, intellectual, somatic, metabolic, psychological, anatomical. The myriad variations of human vitality and form ensure that the process varies from individual to individual: no two kundalini experiences are exactly the same.

Esoteric Human Anatomy (Microcosmic Orbit) - Mantak Chia

In each kundalini experience — whether voluntary or involuntary, purposeful or accidental, permanent or temporary, sought after or unwanted — a distillate amount of sexual energy enters the brain and, depending on the purity of the psychic fuel and the condition of the channels it uses, the result is a variation of kundalini activation that depends on individual differences.

We know that the energy cultivation techniques that induce kundalini have been practiced for centuries — before the dawn of recorded history. What we don't know is whether the new-age surge of interest in and the practice of these techniques at the present time has in any way hurried or "jump-started" human evolution. Has the widespread interest in meditation sparked a tectonic shift in evolution such that a cursory study of popular culture, social trends, world events points to the expansion of higher consciousness? Do you see it?

I don't. Perhaps it's a question of time. We shouldn't believe that the baser aspects of human nature have triumphed just yet. It's going to take a long time to see an evolutionary increase in higher consciousness.

Which begs the questions:

1. How much time do we have, and?
2. Should we even worry about evolution?

Answer One: Time is running out...
Answer Two: Yes! Furthermore, you should know why the answer is Yes. It's why we're here — to evolve, as in Gopi Krishna's notion of the evolutionary impulse.

So, if you're not sure why you've chosen a particular spiritual path and/or practice, now's a good time to discover, if you don't yet know, why you're doing it.

"Evolutionary developments generally start with a few individuals of a species, scattered in time and location. Over long periods of time these developments eventually become a widespread, then permanent feature of that species as a whole. We would therefore expect that this new evolutionary faculty might already have shown itself infrequently in some individuals of the human race.

"The three primary characteristics of this new faculty would therefore be 1) a direct perception of consciousness as an aspect of Creation independent of matter, 2) an ability to acquire knowledge from that consciousness without the use of the intellect, and 3) an extremely infrequent distribution of individuals with this new faculty over a long period of time."

Bradford, Michael. Consciousness: The New Paradigm (pp. 51-52). Institute for Consciousness Research. Kindle Edition.

Kundalini and the Now

If your goal is enlightenment, why bother with kundalini? After all, even its proponents admit there are risks to raising kundalini. Things do go wrong on occasion: the initiate never achieves his goal, the energy never awakens, it awakens in some frightening manner, or some sort of psycho-physical damage occurs.



There’s far too much hustle associated with enlightenment. Is it reachable? Is it achievable? Is it teachable? Do you need a guide? Recently, I got a call from someone willing to pay me if I could guide him to enlightenment. He got angry when I asked him, what effort he’d have to make, why he believed he could do it, and what enlightenment was. Not that I told I could help him, I didn’t. My questions made him angry — that I should just shut up, wave a wand and voila, he’d be enlightened.

Well, what is it? What is enlightenment?

Is it the highest possible state of human evolution? Will all humans eventually become enlightened? Which leaves me to think there’s a physical component to it, just as there’s been at every stage of human evolution — Something in the brain changes. Usually over long periods of time, enough time for an attribute to be passed along to DNA. Or is it a stage only attainable by an individual on one off basis after an arduous preparation, like a Boy Scout earning merit badges.

Which causes me to rework the old saying: "Is it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the unenlightened to become enlightened?" Not just because we’re so completely unenlightened at this moment, but because no one really knows what it is.

I wish people would stop talking about enlightenment as if it was like learning to drive a car or winning an Oscar.

It obviously isn't. In the first place, no one has ever defined enlightenment. It's a condition everyone claims they'd be able to recognize should they run across someone who is enlightened. A highly subjective claim.

Is enlightenment relative or absolute? Is it like switching on a light? Or is it a steady drip-drip-drip of becoming more conscious? For the time being, I like my working definition:

"The ultimate aim of meditation is to become more and more conscious. Enlightenment, therefore, is becoming fully conscious."
~ JJ Semple

It leaves room to include the struggle inherent in the journey. And because I learned so much during my journey, I can't shake the conviction that the journey is as important as the destination.

"Self-realization begins at birth. It is as much the journey as it is the destination."
~ Araminta Matthews

Secondly, designating or labeling a person as enlightened is problematic, and is usually bandied about frivolously. Is the so-called enlightened one actually enlightened or is he/she just a spellbinding talker? Think back. To the various Jonestown-like episodes in recent history. Were those self-anointed prophets false or real?

Eckhart Tolle says, "The enlightened person’s main focus of attention is always the Now, but they are still peripherally aware of time."

Gandhi Spinning

Which would seem to point out that the more you stay in the Now, the less likely you'd be talking about it. In fact, wouldn't someone In The Now live a fairly uncomplicated, simple life? All the better to stay in the Now. Simple actions = fewer distractions. Like Gandhi spinning cloth, an almost inconceivable way of life for the westerner.

"So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action — just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord. This is a powerful spiritual practice. In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in existence, nonattachment to the fruit of your action is called Karma Yoga. It is described as the path of 'consecrated action.'"~ Tolle, Eckhart. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (p. 68). New World Library. Kindle Edition.

When Tolle talks about staying in "the Now," he is repackaging "mindfulness," which itself is a rediscovery of Gurdjieff's "self-remembering" — the idea of freeing oneself from psychological time:

"The time-bound mode of consciousness is deeply embedded in the human psyche. But what we are doing here is part of a profound transformation that is taking place in the collective consciousness of the planet and beyond: the awakening of consciousness from the dream of matter, form, and separation. The ending of time. We are breaking mind patterns that have dominated human life for eons. Mind patterns that have created unimaginable suffering on a vast scale. I am not using the word evil. It is more helpful to call it unconsciousness or insanity."
~ Tolle, Eckhart - The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (p. 67). New World Library. Kindle Edition.

How difficult it is to stay in "the Now" can once again be compared to a camel's passing through the eye of a needle. It's very difficult, and very painful.

Attaining enlightenment — whatever it be — is so complex, yet so simple. The catch being that for most people the Simple is, and always will be, out of reach.

How does kundalini fit in with enlightenment, the Now, and nonattachment?

Very simply, it brings to bear the organic, somatic, metabolic, and hormonal resources of the body, allowing the mind and ego to rest while it does the heavy listing of staying in the Now. Kundalini creates a new Being dedicated to returning You to your true self.

And it isn’t a collection of merit badges, a reward for prayerful behavior, kindness to animals, or inspirational fellowship.

As pointed out by Mariana Caplan in Halfway up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment, a book that examines Enlightenment from many angles.

“Author Lee Sanella explicates Carl Jung’s perspective on the kundalini: ‘Jung described the kundalini as an impersonal force,’ writes Sanella. ‘He argued that to claim the kundalini as one’s own creation is perilous. It leads to ego inflation, false superiority, obnoxiousness, or even madness. For him, the kundalini is an autonomous process arising out of the unconscious and seemingly using the individual as its vehicle.’ 

“This definition suggests that enlightenment neither belongs to an individual nor is personal to them. A person does not experience the energy of enlightenment because of their good deeds or their extraordinary nature. The movement of enlightenment is an unemotional force, indifferent to personalities and personal preferences, that uses the most suitable human vehicle to fulfill its needs.”

Caplan, Mariana - Halfway up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment

This underlines the evolutionary aspect of kundalini, that it doesn’t just awaken on command or through a practice of some sort.

There are two schools of thought:
1) You are selected to play a role in evolution because of certain karmic qualities you possess. You are not selected because of something you did or didn’t do. Nevertheless, if it does happen to you, think of yourself as a conscript in the evolutionary upward march. You are neither a prophet nor a victim; you serve some greater purpose.

2) You can awaken kundalini by some sort of effort — yoga, meditation, prayer, good works, intervention of a guru. You are not selected at random to play a role in evolution; you are the prime mover in the process.

Once active, however, don’t expect that you can just relax and let kundalini take over. It’s not automatic. As a conscript, you have to make sacrifices — one of which is subduing your ego.

Leaving aside the risks of awakening kundalini, taming the ego work is never finished. Nevertheless, kundalini does jump start the process.

Here’s an excerpt from my latest book, Kundalini Musings, looking back on how kundalini affected and instructed me. Notice I don’t say “enlightened” me: 

"How do we change our consciousness? That’s the purpose of Kundalini — a powerful, yet dormant mechanism in our beings that allows us to realize our full potential. Kundalini is the motivating catalyst behind the transformational experience. It's the key to our changing our consciousness. How? Kundalini stimulates neuroplastic activity in the brain which, as a consequence, changes our metabolism, our organic and hormonal structure. Overtime, our behavioral aberrations vanish. We are no longer cogs in the machine.

"So how do we change human nature? We don’t. We run an 'end run' around it; we change our state of being, our consciousness. How do we do this? By raising Kundalini in a safe, permanent fashion. How does this work? My books detail the process, but the upshot is Kundalini produces an entirely new being, remolding your DNA.

"It’s an active process. You can’t pray for it to happen; you can’t do it by reading philosophy, by undergoing psychoanalysis, or becoming a scientist, lawyer, or doctor. You can't even grasp it intellectually. Why? Because you can't see the mountaintop until you're on top of the mountain.

"You have to involve the whole being. Master three powerful meditation techniques: diaphragmatic deep breathing, control of heart rate, the backward-flowing method and you’re there, standing at the threshold of a new being."~ JJ Semple - Changing Human Nature

Does Kundalini lead to enlightenment? Is there a cause and effect relationship? There’s so much to ponder. Nevertheless, think of staying in the Now (aka, Mindfulness or self-remembering) and Kundalini as complimentary partners in the great work of returning you to the simple, non-attached life. What’s at the end of the journey for you, only time will tell.