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.
