How Sexual Sublimation Works

I’ve not posted to this blog or uploaded to my podcast for several months because I’ve been writing a novel for the past year and a half. Writing a novel is more absorbing and time consuming than writing nonfiction. It requires complete concentration. Now that I’m almost finished, because the novel addresses a number of sexual issues, among them sexual sublimation, I’d like to clarify how sexual sublimation worked for me. I’m no sexologist; I’m just offering my personal experience.

Spoiler Alert: Just because this process functioned as it did for me does not mean it will work that way for you. Every kundalini experience is different. That said, let’s begin:

Every person is endowed with unique sexual characteristics that express themselves through the various physical, emotional, and psychological mechanisms that make up their beings. They can be summed up in one word — libido.

Suffice it to say that some people are very sexual in nature; some are not — and everywhere in between. Through my own experience and through conversations with other kundalini adepts, I believe that libido affects a person’s capacity to trigger the sexual sublimation process, which has to have enough sexual energy to do its transformational work.

“Libido is sexual appetite or drive. A person's libido is motivated by brain function, hormones, and learned behavior, regardless of their sex, and tends to fluctuate according to mental state, hormonal shifts, and stress. Some medications can affect sexual appetite as well.

“When a person's libido is high, they're more likely to desire sexual intimacy and to seek it out with a partner or through masturbation. This is healthy and normal, but an overly high libido that interferes with quality of life can be a sign of a hormonal imbalance or neurological disorder. When libido dips, interest in sex does as well and may be completely absent, which can put a strain on intimate relationships.

“The neural pathways involved in sexual desire are similar in males and females and include cerebral, spinal, and peripheral components. Libido directly correlates to physical responses: when sexual desire is high, blood flow to the penis resulting in an erection signifies sexual desire, as does lubrication and enlargement of the labia.”

~ What is Libido?, by S. Nicole Lane - https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-libido-5084040

Moreover, age, physical endowment, emotional stability, eating and drinking and other harmful habits, as well as (believe it or not) pollution can affect sperm and hormone counts.

Here’s how sexual sublimation worked for me. First, the raw material, i.e., my libido and other biological characteristics at the time I started meditating had to be taken into consideration. Would my Being be able to furnish enough sexual energy to complete the process?

“It's not just about the climate, our food supply and energy resources – pollution could be affecting men's penis sizes, fertility and libido too.

“That's according to environmental and reproductive epidemiologist Dr. Shanna H. Swan's new book Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race, which explores the correlation between smaller penises, lower sperm counts and the use of industrial chemicals in everyday products.”

~ Pollution is Shrinking Penises, Scientists Warn - https://www.menshealth.com/uk/sex/a35911756/small-penis-pollution-fertility-sperm-count/

I was 31 years old, a good age for this work; young enough and not too old. (I know a number of older persons who’ve had trouble sublimating.) Health: good. Habits: I stopped drinking and drugs about that same time; smoking when I was 22 (I wasn’t a heavy smoker). I came up at a time when this country’s air and water supplies were in a lot better shape; polluted resources were not an issue. I’ve had my share of ejaculations, no way of knowing the absolute numbers, only that I started at 13 years old.

The purpose of the meditation I practiced was to distill reproductive fluids into an elixir and then draw this elixir up the spine into the brain. This process began with my practicing the breathing exercises described on the Golden Flower Meditation website. After a while, I started to feel a buildup of what I perceived to be energy in the loins (lower belly region). Again, because I’ve written extensively on this topic, I refer you to the Common Sense Kundalini website for more detail.

As the meditation progressed, I began to feel weaker and weaker after ejaculating. Eventually, I had to stop altogether; the kundalini process was asserting itself. If I wasted “my precious bodily fluids,” I suffered the physical consequences. Gopi Krishna wrote about a similar struggle he'd had.

Sexual energy is the most powerful source of energy in the human body. Normally, this energy is used for reproductive purposes. When prevented from flowing out (during intercourse and masturbation) and redirected to the brain, the seminal fluids in a man and the cervical fluids in a woman are distilled into an elixir and used for evolutionary repurposing. This is the sexual sublimation process. I didn’t know this at the time I began meditating; I just followed the process as it unfolded. There comes a time when kundalini takes over. At his point, you may be in for some surprises. If you long for your former way of life, you might be disappointed.

If I had to come up with reasons why some people succeed in this work and other don’t, I’d maintain that it helps to have a healthy, energetic libido; excellent breathing and lung capacity; the persistence of a detective; excellent lateral thinking and survival skills; and the ability to follow through without becoming discouraged.

As for sex after awakening kundalini, both Gopi Krishna and I discovered that the body needs to be nourished by high quality foods, clean air and water, this being especially critical after intercourse.

Now it’s back to my novel. Keep an eye out for it.

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.

The Secret of the Golden Flower - Revisited, Part I

According to the The Secret of the Golden Flower (SGF), the Primal Spirit is the formative energy responsible for our physical embodiment; the Conscious Spirit is the ego and its agents, the senses. The senses feed us an endless flow of information. Society (our parents, teachers, friends, and family) tell us what this information means. What we perceive with our senses becomes reality. What we are taught to believe in and hold as values determines our opinions and beliefs. We think we are free, but we are slaves to the cultural, familial, and educational patterns bequeathed to us. Living under the various illusions we are conditioned to, it is very difficult to extract (de-condition) ourselves without recourse to the primordial super-conscious Primal Spirit.

When I first read the SGF over 40 years ago, I realized the above interpretation was not clearly stated on the page; I had to read between the lines for the meaning of its teachings. And it wasn't that easy to decipher. I had to live the lines to get the hidden, between-the-lines meaning; I had to practice.

Living the lines meant accepting there was substance to them, even though I wasn't sure what that substance was. It meant practicing the meditation — more like feeling my way through it because, once again, I wasn't sure I was following the instructions correctly, much less understanding their exact meaning. Nevertheless, somewhat to my surprise, I succeeded. My Kundalini became aroused and ultimately active.

I realize some readers may get lost in my trying to relate the details of my Kundalini awakening to the different terminology used in the Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese traditions. The problem is: Kundalini has become an all-encompassing term, too big for one language or tradition alone. So let’s forget terminology for a moment and define Kundalini as a two-step biological process that:

• Awakens "dormant" energy through sexual sublimation,
• Releases super-conscious energy throughout the body, once the sublimated sexual energy rises to the brain.

However, while Kundalini is a biological process, it is also a rebirth/maturation process, which most seekers tend to ignore until faced with the prospects of living the rest of their lives with this awakened energy. How does the rebirth process work? Firstly, you must accept Kundalini energy and not struggle against it. Unfortunately, many have trouble with acceptance — to their ultimate chagrin. But let’s say an individual accepts this energy, what next? Kundalini doesn’t only re-engineer your body; it remakes your psyche. Talk about seeing things differently, growing up quickly. Overtime, Kundalini removes conditioning, steers you towards selflessness, and has you doing things you never thought possible, not because you suddenly became smarter and thought them up, but because you were driven to do them. You become an instrument, not in a mindless or robotic way. You are an eddy in the pool of super-consciousness, a part of the evolutionary master plan. At the same time, your rational powers become enhanced, you are able to solve problems and make better decisions. You learn not to choose or support things against nature.

What was it that so captured my attention that I spent two years deciphering and practicing the meditation?

At first, it was the text, the poetic ways it was phrased:

"The great One is the term given to that which has nothing above it. The secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to attain non-action. One must not wish to leap over everything and penetrate directly."
~ The Secret of the Golden Flower

What's so startling about the above? For me, it was cryptic and at the same time cosmological. More than the Bible or any other explanation I had run across. Intuitively, I understood the notion of the great One and the goal of attaining non-action. That great power resides in stillness. And that's only the first page.

"The work on the circulation of the light depends entirely on the backward-flowing movement, so that the thoughts (the place of heavenly consciousness, the heavenly heart) are gathered together. The heavenly heart lies between sun and moon (the two eyes).

"The Book of the Yellow Castle says: 'In the square inch field of the square foot house, life can be regulated.' The square foot house is the face. The square inch field in the face: what could that be other than the heavenly heart? In the middle of the square inch dwells the splendour."
~ The Secret of the Golden Flower

The phrase "circulation of the light" is used right from the beginning. I understood it to mean an energy phenomenon, something that would occur if I practiced correctly. The designations referred to in The Book of the Yellow Castle were probably related to chakras. I wasn't sure, but I allowed myself to skip over them and proceed with the meditation.

"At the time of birth the conscious spirit inhales the energy and thus becomes the dwelling of the newborn. It lives in the heart. From that time on the heart is master, and the primal spirit loses its place while the conscious spirit has the power.

"The primal spirit loves stillness, and the conscious spirit loves movement. In its movement it remains bound to feelings and desires. Day and night it wastes the primal seed till the energy of the primal spirit is entirely used up. Then the conscious spirit leaves the shell and goes away."
~ The Secret of the Golden Flower

Understanding the meaning of the Primal and Conscious Spirits was gradual. I really didn't get it until Kundalini took effect and I witnessed the changes in myself, observed that a new entity had taken control of my being and was leading me in new directions. Along with the physical changes — the rebuilding of my body, which I freely accepted — came changes in attitudes and life goals. None of these originated from my mental processes. All came from the newly reawakened Primal Spirit. I realize this sounds esoteric, but it's very palpable and real once Kundalini rises.

Most important for the meditator are the passages on posture, attention, and breathing:

"One looks with both eyes at the tip of the nose, sits upright and in a comfortable position, and holds the heart to the center in the midst of conditions. In Taoism it is called the yellow middle, in Buddhism the center of the midst of conditions. The two are the same. It does not necessarily mean the middle of the head. It is only a matter of fixing one’s thinking on the point which lies exactly between two eyes. Then all is well. The light is something extremely mobile. When one fixes the thought on the mid-point between the two eyes, the light streams in of its own accord."

"In sitting down, after lowering the lids, one uses the eyes to establish a plumb-line and then shifts the light downward. But if the transposition downward is not successful, then the heart is directed towards listening to the breathing. One should not be able to hear with the ear the outgoing and intaking of the breath."
~ The Secret of the Golden Flower

Getting these techniques took experimentation. I still don't know if I got everything exactly right. I have to work backwards from the results. The fact that they matched the description of the results in the book means my practice must have been nearly, if not completely, satisfactory.

"The light is not in the body alone, nor is it only outside the body. Mountains and rivers and the great earth are lit by sun and moon; all that is this light. Therefore it is not only within the body. Understanding and clarity, perception and enlightenment, and all movements (of the spirit) are likewise this light; therefore it is not just something outside the body. The light-flower of heaven and earth fills all the thousand spaces. But also the light-flower of the individual body passes through heaven and covers the earth. Therefore, as soon as the light is circulating, heaven and earth, mountains and rivers, are all circulating with it at the same time. To concentrate the seed-flower of the human body above the eyes, that is the great key of the human body."
~ The Secret of the Golden Flower

Not only is The Secret of the Golden Flower a manual on the how-tos of meditation, it also offers descriptions of human ontology/cosmological reality — how, once the meditation successfully takes its course, once the light starts to circulate, the practitioner is catapulted out of the limiting duality of the physical world into the metaphysical actuality of the "great One which has nothing above it."

Today's seeker is impatient, keen on quick results. The SGF advises us not to try to "leap over everything and penetrate directly." Are its teaching still valid in the 21st. century?

Read The Secret of the Golden Flower - Revisited, Part II

Is Kundalini Safe?

Two questions were recently posed by a very astute student. Here they are with my replies:

1) Is Kundalini safe? There doesn't seem to be a root cause behind these 'improper activations.' Is there an optimal method that assures safe landings? How do you know it will work for me?

2) Presuming it is safe, will it affect normal family life? Is there an optimal age at which to begin practicing?

Answer 1: You answered your own question, at least partially, when you stated: "... there doesn't seem to be a root cause behind these 'improper activations.'"

This is accurate. There are many forms of activations (triggers) and outcomes (effects). When Gopi Krishna and I spoke about my practice of Golden Flower Meditation method, he kept coming back to the Backward-Flowing Method (BFM), a technique based on sexual sublimation. He was aware of it, realized it might be the key to safe awakenings. How so?

All Kundalini episodes are the result of some sort of sexual sublimation. But it's how the sublimation process takes place that's crucial. The BFM assures the energy is drawn up the correct channel. How does it assure the conversion of sexual energy into elixir and the proper channeling of the elixir? The following is copied from the Golden Flower Meditation method.

"Some respondents ask me what’s so special about Golden Flower Meditation. They say any number of serious meditation methods include some sort of sublimation process. And they’re right; some do. The difference is that the backward-flowing method works by drawing the distilled seminal fluid (breath-energy) up the spinal column, not by thinking or visualizing it. What do I mean by drawing? I’ve been asked that question many times. This is a very subtle technique whose implementation begins only at the moment when a practitioner perceives that this distilled breath energy has the property of direction. This occurs in the lower belly.

"Why is drawing the distilled seminal fluid (sexual energy) up the spinal column superior to thinking or visualizing, or forcing it up the spinal column? Those methods can cause the distilled seminal fluid to go up the wrong channel, a condition that may induce severe pain or cause other problems. In Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man, Gopi Krishna explores this issue in depth.

"The backward-flowing method never lets this happen. Why? Because, once again, it’s like pump-priming. Changing the direction of the breath energy kicks off the sublimation process, opening the reservoir of seminal fluid and sending its distilled essence on its way up the proper channel. It’s a seamless, imperceptible, hand-shaking process — the breath slowly drawing the seminal fluid out of its reservoir, distilling it, and sending it up the spinal column.

"The question most people ask after What is the backward-flowing method? is How does it work? The backward-flowing method is a process with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And like any process it has to proceed step-by-step in proper order, like a scientific experiment. The first step is to reverse the breath. Reversing the breath triggers step two: drawing the distilled seminal fluid up the correct channel in the spine. It ensures that the process will unfold correctly, without harming or frightening the practitioner."

I followed this method in The Secret of the Golden Flower (SGF), updated it for modern practitioners in Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time. I know it works. So did Gopi Krishna, so did the ancient adepts who contributed to the SGF.

How do I know it works for others? Tom Kinney has already addressed this. I'd like to add the following: CHECK YOUR SYMMETRY. Symmetry is the best indicator of future success. Gopi Krishna spoke to this: "Can we deny the fact that whether fortuitous gift, divine grace, or the fruit of Karma, in every case there is a close link between the talent or beauty exhibited and the organic structure of the individual."

Any difficulties I experienced were not those of poor implementation of the techniques, they were due to my asymmetry, detailed in Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time and since corrected by my Kundalini.

2) Questions concerning Start or Don't Start or When should I start can only be answered by you.

Nevertheless, I offer the following: it's very important to consider what life would be like should you awaken Kundalini. Gopi Krishna told me sex would be amazing once the settling in process was complete. Was he correct? Depends on the individual. Kundalini inventories the body after activation and determines the neural adjustments to be made. Depending on the individual, this process takes the time it takes. Don't take kundalini for granted; there are challenges you must consider.

One thing is certain: Your life will change! Will you be able to manage the changes?

I would add "children" into the mix. Think carefully. I've had children, so have others. Just remember Kundalini requires some part of your sexual energies. Is there enough to go around? Enough to spare? Living with Kundalini is the least explored aspect of the whole experience; so many focus on the "transformational" aspects, believing once it happens, their work is over and Kundalini will manage the rest.