Getting Rid Of The Silt

I’m cold! How often have you said this, or heard it from someone else? Actually cold is a relative term. It only means an absence of heat. What’s cold for you may not be cold for me because we function quite comfortably at different levels of heat. It’s a term without any substantial substance. The solution to being cold is to turn up the heat.

From a Christian context, sin means “missing the mark.” It’s also a word without any essential substance. Like cold being the absence of heat, sin is the absence of love. By acting out of love’s absence, we do some pretty terrible things to ourselves, to others, and to the world. The purpose of our prison system is to rehabilitate a person so that they may operate in society in a more appropriate manner; or in a more loving manner. It’s a process that takes a long time and often fails to work at all.

But still, the solution to sin is the same as the solution for cold. We must turn up the love.

For most of us, turning up the heat is easy. We adjust the thermostat on the wall. Not so with turning up love.

I'm impressed with a study by Dr. Carl Rogers who speaks about the development of our personalities by moving beyond the responses we have been developed from our past-life experiences. He says that deep down in each of us lies the "innermost self," the core of our personality which is basically healthy, positive, society-oriented and loving. By plunging down into this innermost area in silence, we make contact with an inner healer. But as long as we live superficially on the surface, with its noise and fragmentation, we will not know the wholeness we were meant to enjoy.

Over the last twenty years, I've made a yearly five to seven day retreat. I have the many journals of these times to remind me of the changes that I experienced during these periods of quiet recollection. Upon arriving on a Friday afternoon, my normal underlying feeling is: Do I have time for this now with all I have to do? By Sunday evening, I have slowed down to the point where I am moving at a similar pace with others, and connecting with them in a more purposeful way. Relationships are being formed; openness is developing as defense mechanisms drop and sharing begins at the deeper level of self. As the days go on, windows and doors begin to open to a deeper reality within, and I realize that the old “normal” is gone, and a new more wholesome “normal" has come in its place. The difficulty comes after the conclusion of the retreat when you return to the world that has not changed. Very quickly, the new “normal” disappears, and the old “normal” reasserts itself, often to the point where you even forget the experience of the retreat. So what is happening here?

The time of recollection has caused a settling of the storehouse of past impressions, imprints, the reservoir of memories, injunctions, unresolved issues, repressed habits, drives and concepts of the “Chitta” and “Ahankara” levels of consciousness, but they have not been disbanded. During the time of recollection, we have opened the doors to a new normal, a new reality, the one which I believe we are called to live, but it cannot be sustained as we return to our customary way of life. The waters that had become settled and clear are again stirred and the silt rising from the bottom is again blurring our ability to see.

How can we get rid of the silt? I believe the unexpected rise of Kundalini during an extensive retreat for me facilitated doing just that.

Kundalini is often described as an evolutionary process within the human metabolism, an energy lying at the base of the spine, often associated with sexual energy, which, when released, rehabilitates the subtle body system. It brought about, and continues to bring about, change in a much more efficient manner than conventional psychological approaches. Constructs of conditional thinking, boundaries of indoctrination built-up over a life time dissolved under its influence. Most of these constructs and boundaries existed as impediments to loving properly. They cause us to miss the mark in ways that we may not even be conscious of. I have referred to this process in previous postings as the renovation and restoration process of kundalini as it makes its way through the various layers of the subtle body system, removing and modifying anything in its path that hinders growth and well-being.

It is futile to try to change or cure another to bring them to a heightened sense of love for themselves and others. To provide a loving relationship, which the other may use for their own personal growth, helps them heighten their ability to love (to turn up the love). But to provide such a loving relationship, we ourselves must be free of the silt that exists in our own lives.

Doesn't the rising Kundalini help us to become that instrument of healing for ourselves and others by removing this silt and bringing wholeness?

To describe the indescribable, don't our scriptures — no matter the source — use their own choice of language, symbols, and images to explain the effects and movements of Kundalini as best they can?

Love's a Skill

I’ve often wondered about Love, what it actually is. It seems so intertwined, so many life facets operating on so many planes. How to define it? Especially when it’s bandied about so freely. Talk show hosts and guests in familiar mutual self-promotion mode. “I love this guy” type statements.

The pull of youthful nature to couple with another human being — to feel and to be felt, to smell and to be smelt, to kiss and to be kissed. How those passions progress over thirty or forty years of marriage. How the young look at their parents and can’t wait to move on with their own lives. How their parents see themselves in their children. How the two find it impossible to communicate their feelings.

How frequently Love is used as a Twitter hashtag — how it peaks at 5:00 PM and again at 8:00 PM.

How the word #Love — even though it’s sincerely meant by many a conveyor and felt by many a listener — somehow gets lost in the sentimentality repetition engenders. In a masterful popular song lyric, for instance:

What's it all about, Alfie, is it just for the moment we live?
What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give
Or are we meant to be kind?

And if only fools are kind, Alfie
Then I guess it is wise to be cruel
And if life belongs only to the strong Alfie
What will you lend on an old golden rule?

As sure as I believe there's a Heaven above, Alfie

I know there's something much more
Something even non-believers can believe in 

I believe in #love, Alfie 
Without true love we just exist, Alfie
Until you find the love you've missed
You're nothing, Alfie

When you walk let your heart lead the way
And you'll find love any day, Alfie, Alfie
 © Alfie - Music & Words: Burt Bacharach, Hal David

And yet, when Dionne Warwick, Whitney Houston, Barbara Streisand, or Cilla Black reaches the payoff line, I believe in love, Alfie, it sends a chill down our backs and we forget about definitions and believe we really know what it means. Then, when the song is over, we ask ourselves, once again, What does it mean? Is it “I believe in #hashtag Love, (fill in your lover’s name here) or is it remaining married for 40 years and being able to live and laugh together?

 

The Magnificent Whitney Houston at the very moment she tells Alfie, "I believe in love."

And even though we understand in our minds that a big part of it is only a hashtag cliché, we know, there are occasions when it transcends banality. Nevertheless, until a few days ago, I didn’t know what love was, and now I do: Love is a Skill.

A few days ago, in a meeting, a writers group was discussing the meaning of love, going through the usual changes, the sharps and the flats of our various triumphs and failures, until someone said they’d heard phrase, Love is a Skill and it resonated. And, it fell into place for me, because I looked back and realized how unskilled I’ve been for most of my life. At that same instant, I reflected on how Love, when treated like a Skill, is closely tied to self-remembering.

It’s the difference between Reacting and Responding, a shift from emotional to mental, or mnemonic. Reacting is immediate; Responding is the moment one uses to remember one’s self before rejoining the fray. It is, in fact, stepping outside the fray, seeing the fray as an enactment with all the players, one’s self included, strutting and fretting. A true out-of-body experience.

So if Love is more than a hashtag, it must be different than Tin Pan Alley love, just as passion and lust are different than sitting around the kitchen table discussing the family finances, and coming out of the discussion without once raising one’s voice.

There’s a lot of talk about civility today, and rightly so: That instead of calling people names, thinking of them as #Assholes, we need to see people as unskilled or inexperienced in the various arts and sciences of love and/or the practices of civility.

Sex is one thing; Love is another. Not to say that sex has no place in Love; it does. But it’s not the only thing. Yes, it’s the thing we get lost in (like we get lost in a song), the thing that gives us immense pleasure (like a roller coaster or other thrill). And, yes, it has to be done right, mutually accepted and mutually satisfying.

Love is the skill (art and science) of dealing with other human beings, playing a hand of cards, shuffling them around expertly: the money card, the sex card, the prestige card, the power card, the health card, the pride card, etc. Some decks have more cards than others; some players have to play more cards than others at any one time. It’s the hand you’re dealt with and how you play it. What does this have to do with Kundalini?

Progressively, Kundalini gives us an other ethereal, subtle body that allows us to detach ourselves, to observe the daily reenactments, instead of getting swept up in them. It helps us to witness the realities on the physical plane, instead of idealizing them. And that’s why I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a #Soulmate because this notion, if built on sex alone, crumbles over time, as the body debilitates.

Could it exist? Yes, if, when one partner plays a card, the other knows how and when to play the right card in return. It would mean a mutual stepping back to witness an enactment from outside the body — an ability Kundalini readily confers upon those it favors.

Kundalini - Not the End in Itself, but a Means ...

I am moved by the story of Lo-pu who asked: “How is it when the morning sun has already risen but the night moon has not yet appeared? He is told that this is a meditative accomplishment. You sit in meditation and forget both body and mind, and there is just this single brilliant expanse of light. It is as if the sun has already come out but the night moon has not yet appeared. At night, it is not the same. This light is pure and cool.

The Taoist classic, The Triplex Unity says: perfect yang is “brilliant” and perfect yin is “reverent.” After yin culminates and yang is born, when body and mind share the same root with heaven and earth inside and outside, and it’s a single light, this is the realm of “perfect yang is brilliant.”

At this point, you have already gone beyond the issue of whether the ch’i channels are open or not. When you talk of the three channels and seven chakras, you have not even reached the first stage of Samadhi. When Lo-pu reached the stage expressed in “when the sun has already risen but the night moon has not yet appeared,” he had already transcended the state of Samadhi. 

Lo-pu is told: “The dragon carries the ocean pearl in his mouth, paying no attention to the fish swimming by.” There is something here. In the single expanse of light that is both inside and outside, it seems that a dragon is swimming through the ocean, and in his mouth he is holds a bright pearl. This bright pearl is the dragon’s root of life (reverent). Fish are swimming by on all sides, but the dragon does not even glance at them or look their way.

The Dragon Swimming By

If you cultivate the ch’i channels properly and recite the mantra properly, if your cultivation reaches the point where there is just this moment of mindfulness, you, too, will be the same as the dragon carrying the ocean pearl in his mouth, paying no attention to the fish swimming by. You will pay no attention to all the false thoughts around you in whatever form they may take. 

As you do your meditation work, no matter whether it is by refining the breath or reciting the mantra, or any other method, all you have to do is to hold onto that moment of mindfulness, and focus your mind on one object without letting it move; and remember: “The dragon carries the ocean pearl in his mouth, paying no attention to the fish swimming by.” Slowly, you too will be able to reach this realm.
~ Adapted from Master Nan Huai-Chin’s book “Working Towards Enlightenment”.

I’ve always intuitively felt that Kundalini was never meant to be an end in itself, but a means to something more. What is that something more? It could be that which is expressed above in the story from Master Nan Huai-Chin’s book; reaching for that realm where, as a single light, body and mind share the same root with heaven and earth inside and outside. This is a book on Buddhist thought, and this is a Buddhist story. It explains to me my own experience. But I don’t believe it has to be Buddhist. My experience of “the dragon carrying the ocean pearl in his mouth, paying no attention to the fish swimming by” originates from a Christian context. But I don’t believe it has to be Christian.

"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it."
~ Gospel of Matthew

From my reading and my understanding, I believe that kundalini, like childbirth, belongs in the scientific or biological realm. But just as childbirth, for some, is seen as an unfolding of a mystical or spiritual event, so too, for some, kundalini is seen as an unfolding of a mystical or spiritual event. When the perfect yin, that which is reverent (celestial) is combined with the perfect yang, that which is brilliant (free from all distractions), something new emerges that is beyond the activity of kundalini. And from this new emergence, something new again is probably beginning to take shape.

One of the principal obstacles to this never-ending expansion is getting stuck at any one stage. Each step on this pathless path requires a letting go or surrender of what was previously experienced in order to embrace what is new. It’s easy to get stuck as I have so many times.

Space/Time

Alchemical literature (Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Julius Evola) speaks of the "etheric light," the source of space and time. Seeing in, or with, the etheric light is difficult. It is the "second sight" of traditional wisdom. You're walking along a street. You hear an unexpected burst of laughter. You glance up from the pavement at the approaching faces. You have the sensation that you've glimpsed something immense and completely other than what you're looking at — two pedestrians passing you on the sidewalk, sharing a joke. You've glimpsed something vast and radiant which has shut itself out of your mind too quickly for you to register, and left you with a mere visual, aural and spatial impression. You have a feeling that you're given this glimpse every second of every day, but that something keeps blocking it out of your awareness. You've seen the etheric light, but the brain's been unable to retain it.
 

Chinese Ceremonial Wedding

As Kundalini works on altering the neural pathways in the brain, these instances of second sight become more frequent. There's a more constant presence of radiance around the head and throat, as well as an increased sensitivity to sounds. Clocks ticking and the rustle of truck tires in the street create spaces outside your mind for you to expand into. As well as filling your visual field, other people open a space inside you, like a tuning fork touching your coccyx. All this is normal, or meta-normal.

The depth, however, of this space/time dimension of the etheric light is vast, and can, perhaps, be taken way beyond glimpses and resonances, as Kundalini opens the higher chakras in the throat and forehead.

There are well-documented accounts of precognition, of living for a split second in a future moment of space/time, sometimes in the coming life of others, sometimes in one's own future life. What separates such real seeing from mere fantasy or dream? I think there are two things — firstly, a degree of physical detail, a quality of light, and a three-dimensional solidity to the vision that's not present in dream or fantasy; and secondly, a sense of threat, of being endangered. This feeling of being at risk is understandable — the approaching moment of space/time that we dread the most, and which is the most inevitable, is the time and place of our own physical death. Precognitions are rare, and varied, but they all have the nature of an ending. They share a similarity to dying. This is why they can be easily misread. The mind, in its effort to wriggle out of the impact of its own ending, can misinterpret its momentary transference to another time and place, and become trapped in highly-energized illusion, particularly when it's sexual desire that switches on the etheric light. I describe one such precognition, and its consequences, in Natalie, A Kundalini Love Story.

The physicist, John Wheeler, said: "No one ever saw a place except at a time, or a time except at a place." According to Einstein, this space/time continuum is static. All the events that have ever been, or ever will be, are present in the here and now. Quantum mechanics states that the act of observation is continuous with the event observed. The apparent randomness of particle events could well be a manifestation of a deeper "implicate order" (David Bohm), the action of an underlying consciousness. All this accords with the anecdotal evidence of precognition. We shouldn't let our awe of the physicists' braininess and the complexity of their maths, or even our fear of highly-energized illusion, prevent us from approaching this fundamental state from the angle of shared human consciousness.

Kundalini and the Miraculous

There's a saying: "Be realistic, expect a miracle." Miracles, of course, come from the direction you least expect, and in a way that you don't, perhaps, want. A miracle can seem frightening, or even degrading. The awakening of Kundalini, and the thing that triggers the awakening, is a miracle in this existential sense. It takes place in your body, but only insofar as your body belongs to forces greater than you.

Love, too, can come as a shock, from an unexpected direction, and even seem frightening and degrading. The coup de foudre, the lightning stroke of love at first sight, is a reality. One is hit, split, burned, by another person.

A Tibetan lama, speaking about the awakening of Kundalini, wrote: "Throughout the world there exist countless emanations of the Female Buddha, Vajrayogini. If a practitioner conscientiously follows the Path, he will eventually meet an emanation of Vajrayogini manifesting as an attractive woman..."

If I'd read these words ten years ago, I would have thought: "The geezer's cracked. It's a typical male fantasy. The guy can't cope with a real woman, so he gets himself a female Buddha." ...Except, it happened to me.

Another person, man or woman, can slip out of their ordinary-person-ness and be known as a force that's greater than you. I was walking along a freezing cold sidewalk in mid-winter in London when I glimpsed a woman shoplifting a bottle of Listerine. The glimpse stopped me dead in my tracks and sent a jolt of electricity up my spine. I felt giddy, as if I was drunk. The woman was beautiful, but her beauty was off-putting rather than attractive. Making love to her, a short time later, I couldn't come, even though the act was powerful. The electric jolt going up my spine erupted in my head with a splitting sound, like lightning splitting the air, and flooded my chest with a love more intense than I'd ever dreamed could exist. Within an hour of first seeing her, I was in love with a total stranger, and bonded to her in a way I'd never been attached to another human being. I'd never been a "practitioner," never "conscientiously followed" any Path but my own. My life was in ruins. But something the miraculous had occurred.

William Blake. c.1786: From William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

It could be argued that an orgasm, far from being a blissful release of tension, is a spasm of fear in the face of deeper forces that are at the point of taking hold of us. This is the reason that ejaculation, even the most self-surrendering, can feel like a defeat. The immensity of another being, their divinity, is about to manifest, not intellectually, but physically, gripping us by our nerves and muscles and bones. It's awe-inspiring to "... see a World in a Grain of Sand/And Heaven in a Wild Flower...", but it's even more awe-inspiring, and fearful, to see it in another person. Blake knew this, and stated it clearly in the same great, mystical poem: "... God is Love and God is Light/ For those poor souls that dwell in Night/ But does a Human Form display/ For those blest souls that dwell in Day."

The Spiritual Journey Is an Active Not a Passive Process

There is some thinking in spiritual circles that the spiritual process is a passive process whereby you sit patiently and wait for the gift of Grace which heralds awakening and then enlightenment. Without Grace there is no spiritual journey. Moreover, whatever journey there is, is largely conceptual or mind-based. The gift of Grace marks the shift from concept to experience. But that gift of Grace is earned by an active conscious process. You cannot escape the intellectual rigor and reasoning required for the spiritual journey.

That active process begins by being authentic when reading spiritual books or listening to those claiming to have achieved certain stages of realization. Asking yourself, "What feels right about what I am reading/listening to?" What resonates as Truth and what doesn't. This is a process, which, in my case, began in early childhood when I began to identify those parts of the Catholic faith that felt right and those that didn't. Whether or not my reasoning was correct is not the point; the point is to have the courage to ask the questions and begin the vital process of discernment.

This process of discernment continued when I started studying Buddhism. I questioned everything, and most importantly I related everything back to my own experience, not to what I thought about or what I had read or heard — but to what resonated with my own experience. This was a particularly active process in meditation: observing the chaotic nature of my mind and thoughts, recognizing directly their impermanence and the root of my suffering.

However, seeing and experiencing this mind turbulence does not end the process; it continues as Sadhana or one's regular practice, and it is not easy. The process demands the engagement of the consciousness; there is no way around this. It involves facing up to and taking responsibility for every thought, word, action without projection onto anyone or anything else. All of this work is necessary before the gift of Grace is bestowed.

Then, having done all of this work, there is the active process of "letting go" so that everything can be refined, as if by internal incubator so that something new can emerge. This is a challenging part of the process because in my case when I let go in the sense of not reading/writing/listening to anything spiritual, I didn't understand what was driving this urge to "let go." Was it my ego getting too close to its own disintegration or was it a genuine intuition, which I had to listen to if I wanted to progress further? Writing this I can still remember the confusion and emptiness I felt at this time. Up to that point, I had spent so much of my life reading/writing/listening to all things spiritual that I couldn't see how life could be enjoyable without it. Was I self-sabotaging? All of these thoughts ran rampant through my mind.

There are crunch points at various milestones on the spiritual journey and each of these crunch points demands something in order to progress to the next stage. The intuitive impulse to end my search was one of these points. Choosing to surrender to the Kundalini energy when I experienced it was another. I wrote in detail about this experience in my book, Female Kundalini. These times demand that the individual make an active conscious choice at that point. 

On this path, there is nothing given that is not well and truly earned. So, those non-dualists who say, "There is nothing to do, you are already THAT. There's no need for practice, discipline, or self-observation."

I say, "This is simply not true. Believing it so is to live inside a spiritual bubble, which will sooner or later burst."

Surrender

Surrender, from the context of which I am writing, does not mean “giving up.” It means “letting go;” more specifically, letting go of something of lessor value in order to attain something of greater value.

This notion of surrender has an important significance in Christian Meditation, a prayer discipline I have followed for many years. The rules for this discipline are based on the premises of silence, stillness, and simplicity. Learning to meditate is learning to “let go” of your thoughts, ideas and imagination and to rest in the depths of your own being. The Inner Divine cannot be accessed through one’s own willful striving. Just as we cannot extinguish a fire by using fire, we cannot transcend the ego by using the ego. So we wait in silence and stillness, repeating our mantra until the wall of the ego is relaxed and transcended. This involves a surrender of the exterior false self with all of its self-definitions (I am this, I am that) to discover that which exists beyond “self.” For me, this transcendent experience was a dissolving of the “I” into a shimmering blissful lake of Divine light.

     
The fourteenth century Christian mystic, Ruysbrock, describes surrender in this way.

• Believe and accept through Grace that the God dwells within, and therefore turn within to discover and expect to find God dwelling within you.
• Be diligent to rid yourself of all distracting thoughts, images and attachments of the heart to any created being or thing, to escape into God. Guard your outward senses from all worldly attractions which cling so easily, to be carried away in union with God.
• Freely turn your will towards God so that your whole being is absorbed and directed by His presence - body, mind and spirit — in complete dependence and submission.
• Acknowledge your inability of doing this on your own. Only in faith is this possible. So surrender to God, and allow your souls to be over-powered and absorbed into oneness with Him.

Gerald May in his book “Will and Spirit” describes the qualities of surrender in this way:

It is intentional: It is the result of the free and unencumbered use of one’s will. It is a free choice, never forced or compelled in any way.

It is conscious: One is wide awake and aware of everything that is happening at the time of surrender. There is no dullness or robotic mindlessness.

It involves responsibility for the consequences as well as for the act itself: We are willing to accept the full consequences of whatever may result from the surrender. We let go of ego involvement in the desire to surrender. We accept the consequences of "letting go" even if it may appear to have a negative result.

It is not directed toward any fully known object: Thus it cannot in anyway be a means of furthering one’s self-definition or self-importance. It must be directed toward that which exists beyond all images and concepts.

It represents a willingness to engage the fullness of life with the fullness of oneself: It cannot be an escape or avoidance. It must be a “yes” rather than a “no.” We are intentional in our desire for fullness.

So what has all this to do with Kundalini?

From my experiences with Christian Meditation and Kundalini, both involve a surrender; a letting go. Other than that, they are very different.

How are they different?

First of all, it was my involvement with Christian Meditation that triggered the beginnings of Kundalini. Christian Meditation is a prayer discipline to encourage letting go of our physical, intellectual and sensing activities that connect and identify us with the exterior world in order to transcend ego and bring us in touch with the inner Divine Presence often referred to as the True Self.

Kundalini, on the other hand, is a release of energy from the base of the spine that relentlessly moves through the physical and subtle bodies with its own intelligently motivated agenda. This agenda is to bring all aspects of the human metabolism (both physical and subtle) into a state of wholeness. This energy does this through a process of renovating the physical and subtle bodies to modify or remove anything that may be an obstacle to wholeness. Kundalini discerns its own path and method, separating the wheat to be kept from the chaff to be modified or destroyed. This modification will include all or many of our false beliefs, values and assumptions, even those which were previously important to us.

Once the Kundalini process has begun, we must surrender to the process. All of the qualities of surrender stated above (Gerald May) apply to Kundalini. I understand from my reading that any resistance to Kundalini’s agenda once triggered will only result in suffering and hardship. Since I had no knowledge of Kundalini at the time of its rising, I assumed it was a spiritually renewing event triggered from my intense meditation. So I embraced it fully despite some discomfort and confusion that resulted at the time. I surrendered to it as I had surrendered to my meditation discipline, always with an underlying intuitive knowing that everything was unfolding as it should.

Kundalini often takes us by surprise with radical results. It turns our world up-side down. We suddenly see life differently. I speak for myself when I say that it is very easy to get caught up in the Kundalini phenomena, and become fascinated and attached to the process itself, particularly the freedom and bliss associated with it. I often had to ask myself one very important question: What is the purpose of the Kundalini experience?

The answer that I receive is always the same: So that we may become engaged in the world in a more wholesome and beneficial way.

Kundalini frees us from the dullness and obstacles of past conditioning and traumas. It breaks down the walls of the ego found in the “ahankara” mental sheath, and releases us from those strong attachment to “self” with its rigidity, inflexibility, and tight boundaries. It takes us away from that sense of “being separate” and allows us to see and experience our connection with every living being and thing.

A further surrender to which I am now called is to let go of the fascination and attachment to the Kundalini experience itself and how it has affected me to embrace more fully the life to which it has called me to live.

Selection of a Kundalini Activation Method

Some people have the luxury of selecting a method; for others Kundalini arrives involuntarily. The goal of a method is to permanently awaken Kundalini. An involuntary,
or spontaneous, Kundalini activation can be temporary — although some effects may endure. No one forgets a Kundalini awakening.

The following is taken from my book, The Backward-Flowing Method: The Secret of Life and Death...

The Brain Continues to Evolve

"According to Gopi Krishna’s findings, 'There have been very few instances of individuals in whom the serpent fire burned ceaselessly from the day of its awakening until the last.' What does this have to do with 'kundalini meditation'? It establishes one criterion for qualifying a method of 'kundalini meditation': namely, that the method’s results must be permanent, not temporary. What’s more, we must realize that when we speak about method, we automatically exclude involuntary Kundalini experiences. Why? Because, by definition, if we talk about involuntary, we are talking about a Kundalini experience that can happen anytime, anywhere, in any set of circumstances, and cannot, therefore, be the result of any method. A method must be a systematic process with documented controls and predictable results. It must be a system anyone with the proper training can apply in order to produce the same results over and over, time after time. Moreover, to be considered, it must be a method that is safe, repeatable, and standardized. So, what is the ideal 'kundalini meditation'? I would say it’s a system that is:

• Voluntary. It doesn’t happen on its own account. Its techniques are based on the documented experiences of others. The practitioner chooses to apply these techniques in order to achieve predictable results. 

• Permanent. The results last a lifetime; the individual experiences daily Kundalini-Life Force activity that “burns ceaselessly from the day of its awakening until the last.” 

• Safe. It does no harm to the individual. In fact, it serves as 'an upgrade mechanism,' restoring proper health and stability to the body and the entire being. 

• Repeatable. The method can be used over and over, time after time, in a scientifically controlled manner to produce the same set of predictable results.

"Does this mean that involuntary or impermanent Kundalini experiences have no value or validity? No, it means that in order to advance this work, we must define what the work is. Can we not learn from involuntary or impermanent Kundalini experiences? Yes, of course we can. But just as a material scientist, who accidentally mixes several chemicals together in his lab, must repeat the process under scientifically acceptable conditions for it to be considered valid, the person who experiences an involuntary Kundalini awakening must be concerned with the repeatability of his process. If it isn’t repeatable, what lasting benefit can be attributed to the process? And if the effects do not last, isn’t that sort of like taking off in a flying contraption only to have it crash to the ground after 150 yards?"

If we believe that the biology behind Kundalini is linked to evolutionary advancement and it will ultimately — one way or another — be available to all persons, then we need to refine available methods and vet them. Let the experiments with Kundalini in the laboratory of individual bodies become an experiment on a mass scale across a vast number of willing and able bodies.

I'm glad I used a method; everything it claimed to accomplish was accomplished. 

Triggers and Effects

I use the notions of triggers and effects to denote causes and results in describing Kundalini arousals, triggers being the cause and effects being the results or the symptoms displayed.

How do you activate it? (Triggers)
In my 40 years of listening to Kundalini awakening stories, I have heard so many trigger variations it is nearly impossible to categorize them. Everything from meditation to drugs, physical exertion to sexual ecstasy to Shaktipat to minding one's own business. For me, my trigger was meditation.

But my activation method only applies to me and to those who have practiced the Golden Flower Meditation method. Once you practice a given method, and get to a point where the sublimation process becomes active, it is difficult to change course and begin all over again with a new method.

I stayed on a houseboat while meeting with Gopi Krishna - Dal Lake, Kashmir, 1977

This is especially true for those whose Kundalini is permanent. I could no more undo my permanently active Kundalini, go back to a time before it was active, and start over with a new method than I could reinsert myself into my mother’s womb and be born again.

So what does this tell us? Simply that there is no one size-fits-all trigger for arousing Kundalini and no guarantee that a given trigger will actually work in a specific case...so if you're looking for one, you may not find it in books, conversations, or retreats. It just may up and hit you when you least expect it...or not. However, once your experience is triggered, accept it as the ultimate experiment in the laboratory of your own body.

And while we're at it, the triggers I referred to are really only different kinds of detonators. The actual explosion occurs when a quantity of stored-up, distilled sexual energy collides preternaturally with certain elements in the brain.

No matter the detonator — be it drugs, meditation, or sexual rapture — each detonation causes a release of life force energy. The initiate may not feel sexual activity during the release — kundalini works at a deep neurological level, — but the sensations/effects/symptoms the individual does feel when kundalini activates are related to the release and upward climb of sexual energy to the brain. For example, you may feel tired, enthralled, frightened, or depressed without any erotic undercurrents. Nevertheless, sexual energy is present. The reason you may not feel sexually aroused is because the energy kundalini releases to the brain initiates a rewiring of neural and cerebral circuits, which once fired, can cause behavioral irregularities, up to and including bliss, psychosis, and depression. If the initiate realizes what he/she is undergoing is benign, any aberrant mental and psychic states can be stabilized by accepting kundalini, not fighting it. So be patient. Let the rewiring and the restorative work begin. As Osho said:

“Kundalini is not felt because it is rising; kundalini is only felt if you do not have a very clear passage. If the passage is completely clear-cut, then the energy flows, but you cannot feel it. You feel it when there is something there that resists the flow. If the energy flows upward and you have blocks in the passage, only then do you feel it. So the person who feels more kundalini is really blocked: there are many blocks in the passage, so the kundalini cannot flow.”

There’s another element that must be accounted for, a deterministic element I call the Field. Not every person seeking to activate Kundalini is able to do so. At the same time, not every person in whom Kundalini becomes active wants it to happen. This is especially important at the present time when so many people are striving to activate it by so many different methods. Most of them have no idea what awaits them if they succeed. And if and when they do succeed, they are often ill-prepared to deal with the aftermath.

So how is the determination made on who’s going to succeed? This is important because forcing a Kundalini activation is almost beside the point in evolutionary terms: we’re going to get there anyway over time — to even higher states of consciousness. Evolution will see to it; that’s how evolution works.

For the trigger and the explosive charge to collide, the Field must move them into alignment; that’s its deterministic nature. This Field could be called The Energy Continuum or Consciousness or even a Quantum or a Karmic event, one whose moment is come to pass: the collision in time and space of Detonator (sexual energy), Explosive charge (brain matter), brought together by the Field (quantum event) whose purpose is to escort an individual’s destiny through an evolutionary leap.

Today, there's so much buzz and crosstalk about Kundalini, but so little sharing of Kundalini knowledge and experience. Everyone’s off in his or her corner, trying to protect his or her itzy bit of Kundalini turf, scared someone else will steal it or, at the least, somehow diminish its gainfulness. Trying to convince the world that one trigger is better than another is counterproductive. I could tell you that my method is the one true and only method, but I’ve found that promoting exclusivity leads to a compartmentalization of knowledge. Kundalini doesn’t need insider bickering among adepts; there’s enough hostility, doubt, and prejudice directed at it from outside sources. Better to spend time sharing information on triggers and testing them under laboratory conditions.

With Farad, my guide, in front of Dal Lake - Kashmir, 1977

 
As far as I know, there are no statistics on the success rate of any given trigger, so although there's a lot of information out there, it's muddled. How do you choose a method or a trigger? In my case, my method chose me. Someone gave me a copy of The Secret of the Golden Flower and I practiced the method in the book. One factor that helped me succeed was sticking with a single method once IT found me. Doers complete the journey; dabblers tend to end up back where they started. Recognize the difference.

What does It do for/to you? (Effects)
The foregoing applies to the activation method (the trigger); however, when we speak of the effects and aftermath of Kundalini common among practitioners, we find many effects are shared. However, each case is different. It would be great if that wasn’t the case, but it is. Until there is a trigger that produces the same effects time after time over a given population, and a critical mass of practitioners who share a comparable set of effects, we won’t achieve unanimous acceptance from researchers. So even though I’d like to consider my method as capable of producing uniform results, the sample group of practitioners is as yet too small.

The general question “What does kundalini do for you?” must be rephrased as “What did it do for me?” This I can answer. For me, the effects included, but were not limited to:

• Triggering autonomic self-healing mechanisms capable of correcting defects due to neural degeneration;
• Rejuvenating the brain and the body as a result of intense neuroplastic activity;
• Retarding the aging process;
• Reversing self-destructive and addictive behavior;
• Heightening and enhancing consciousness through the awakening of various metanormal effects and powers;
• Cleansing the ego by removing the effects of conditioning and programming: self-actualization;
• Clearly demonstrating that the spirit persists after death;
• Helping to end dependency on ineffective health-care models; and
• Facilitating the transition into the next state of being.

And it didn't necessarily stop there. Not all of the effects come “online” as soon as activation takes place. Kundalini is still DOING me — forty years after I activated it! And it doesn’t operate wantonly! Kundalini is intelligent.

What’s more, these are not the only effects I will ever experience; new effects are happening all the time, without warning. Kundalini doesn’t stand still. And that’s part of the challenge: Don’t try to contend with the power of Kundalini; don’t try to control it because you won’t be able to. Once permanently activated, it’s best to submit to whatever Kundalini has in store for you.

So how can you tell if your Kundalini is really awakened? For Gopi Krishna and myself, two persons who practiced Kundalini meditation, we were able to observe somatic and metabolic changes in the body as the sexual sublimation process engaged and as it ultimately reached a dramatic crescendo, ushering waves of pranic energy into the brain, igniting all chakras. In these cases, the proof is incremental: The trigger induces the effects and you can follow the process as you would follow a laboratory experiment.

What about those whose Kundalini has been ignited surreptitiously? In these cases, you have to work inductively, from the effects back to the cause. If you can identify a number of acknowledged Kundalini effects/symptoms, you can conclude that Kundalini has somehow been aroused. Nevertheless, this is tricky. There is a tendency to attribute Kundalini symptoms to various mental states, persuading yourself that Kundalini has actually awakened when it hasn't. In such cases, you must verify everything you see, hear, or feel.

For me, the effects have been benign. Whether this holds true in your case, I can't say. And whether you're able to withstand the effects depends on your ability to accept Kundalini and adapt yourself to its dictates. I've talked with many people who have shared some, if not all, of the effects included in my list above, and, in doing so, have thrived. Nevertheless, since effects vary from subject to subject, but are also shared in many instances, I believe it would be useful to classify effects by triggers and then rate each effect by impact from negative to positive. That way we might learn which triggers to avoid, if possible, and which ones produce positive effects.

What about ecstatic states of bliss? Yes, they are common, especially in the beginning. But don’t get caught up in them; they take you away from the real world. And as long as we inhabit bodies, the real world makes demands on us, and we must balance these demands with the thrall an awakening experience casts over us as we learn to put the layers of past conditioning into proper perspective.

Thinking About Death

As well as being the awakener of the Life Force, Kundalini is also called, in the Tantric texts, the "Fire Of Death." There are times when the Kundalini energy is so intense one feels gripped by it, snatched bodily out of oneself, stopped dead. If not death itself, this is a near approach to dying. The body becomes shell-like. Sharply focused light floods the chest. A prickling sensation covers the face, like needles being pushed up from under the skin. The prickling becomes so acute it's only a deep absorption that can stop one scratching uncontrollably. It's strange that at moments like these, the body is experienced, and even visually seen, with a greater clarity and reality than it has in ordinary day-to-day life.

The blueprint of the perfected body comes more into focus, and one cherishes it more deeply than ever. The texts say that there are seventy two thousand nadis in the human body. I'm sure that the facial prickling, which can be maddeningly acute, is the pushing outwards of some of these nadis, awakening and shaping the surface of the face, which is where each of us is most visibly human, as well as being the most weather beaten and marked by experience. As the "Fire Of Death" rises up the body, the physical blueprint becomes less and less one's own, and more and more the physical form of the Non-Self, the "face one had before one was born."
 

Decay

Of course, there's a danger that one is merely thinking about death, playing with the idea of death, or even worse, escaping into a callous fantasy when faced with the death of others — friends, loved-ones, and strangers. Never-the-less, even on a merely intellectual level, death is a constant, all-surrounding reality, which must be faced. In traditional times, people turned to ars moriendi, the art of dying, to prepare themselves for death and to give depth to their final days and hours.

The khyrystaia, or warrior caste in Vedic times, chose to die standing up, either in battle, or by keeping on their feet as they passed away. John Donne, the metaphysical poet, used to wrap himself in a burial shround to meditate. Shelley, who was a bit of a poser, drank wine from a skull. WB Yeats, in a fine line, celebrates "those who come glad-eyed and laughing to the tomb." The whole idea of the "quantum," in quantum mechanics, is that energy manifests itself in "parcels" or "packages," which, even at the speed of light, have a beginning and an end. The apparent solidity of the body is made up of an untold number of instantaneous beginnings and endings.

Kundalini doesn't think about it, Kundalini is it.

My Early Visual and Affective Journey

“Wow! This description of the renovation and restoration process of kundalini is sure in line with my own experience.”

 

This was my reaction while reading sections of Kundalini Vidya: The Science of Spiritual Transformation several months after my forty day retreat.

 

At the time of my retreat, I had never heard of kundalini, nor did I know about the layers or sheaths making up the subtle body. Written by Joan Harrigan, this book uses an Eastern archetypal model that resonated with my own profound kundalini experience. This model was described in detail in my previous posting.

Beyond our physical bodies, but emanating from our physical systems, lies the energy sheath made up of energy channels intersecting with six major chakras. Next to it is the mental sheath of our conscious and unconscious minds that can be broken down into “chitta,” the unconscious storehouse of past impressions and imprints, “manas,” our sensory motor system that carries out automatically the many biological and psychological functions of our metabolism, and the “ahankara” or ego, defining and giving us that sense of I-ness or separate identity with all of its attachments and boundaries. Next to that lies the discernment sheath, reflective consciousness often referred to as our inner voice. With this blueprint in mind, I will try to describe how this model is connected with what I experienced.

In Christian Meditation (which I had been practicing for nearly three decades before encountering kundalini) we are told to breathe normally. So breathing becomes principally an unconscious response. You just let it be what it is. I would describe this as “manas” or an automatic response. If you wish to change it by holding your breath or breathing faster, you can, but normal would be to inhale, exhale with no special attention.

On the thirty-eight day of my retreat, the first noticeable and unexpected change was in my pattern of breathing. This changed in two ways. While I was meditating, it seemed that “manas,” or the automatic response system, temporarily shifted my breathing pattern to a deep inhaling and holding of breath for as long as possible. This inhaling and holding of breath created pressure which was then systematically directed towards certain areas of my body. First to the diaphragm, then to the left and right sides, to the upper chest, back, neck and head. I described this in my journal as an opening up of areas in my body previous devoid of air and energy flow.

The second thing I began to notice was the development of a new pattern for overall breathing. My old normal breathing pattern was comprised of a shallow inhale, exhale; an in and out routine. It began to change into diaphragmatic deep breathing, but of a circular nature, clockwise to be more specific.

In the past, I've seldom had, or paid much attention to, visions. In fact, I was quite suspicious of them, but during the kundalini process these mind pictures become a fairly common event. And these psychological pictures and affective impressions were of a great assistance in helping me understand what was happening during this unusual time.

During this change in my overall breathing pattern, the picture that frequently popped into my mind in respect to circular breathing was my breath following the curvature of a large wheel (positioned perpendicular to my body) that was circling slowly in a clockwise fashion. Upon exhaling, the breath followed the downward descent of the part of the wheel that was closest to my body. As the full exhale changed into the beginning of the inhale, the breath would follow the curve of the wheel through the bottom of its cycle to begin its upward climb until it reached the full inhale as it curved around the top to begin again its descent with the beginning of the exhale. Amazingly enough, it was the breath that was pulling the wheel around in its circular motion.

 

You may ask: What’s the significance of this? The significance is that "manas," the autonomic motor system, seemed to be changing my breathing pattern in a manner that was necessary to arouse the flow of kundalini energy up from the lower chakras to the brain as part of its transformation agenda. It seemed that circular breathing was continuously being called upon to facilitate this process.

 

In the following days, particularly during meditation time and at night, kundalini relentlessly took control of this agenda leaving me as an observer. The journey up the spine and into the brain became an ebb and flow over a period of weeks. This ebb and flow revealed some repeating patterns of mind pictures and affective experiences that I had no explanation for at the time, but were ultimately tied in with the archetypal model I discovered some months later in Kundalini Vidya.

Repeatedly, as kundalini made its journey, it was as if it was entering the mental sheath at the level of “chitta,” the unconscious storehouse of past impressions and imprints. The first repetition of images began with a scene where I was looking, as if through a window, at the bottom of the sea that was filled with murky, dirty, filthy and polluted water. The water had gross sea monsters and creatures swimming about like predators. Dark seaweed swung about, sometimes covering me. There was no fear associated with this mind picture as I was only an observer. Could this have been a psychological image of unresolved issues, cultural conditioning, repressed habits and drives, defense mechanisms, etc., accumulated over a lifetime, content that was never dealt with?

As kundalini continued its journey, it was as if it passed into the “ahankara” or the ego area of the mental sheath. Consistently here, I became aware of a side of myself I did not like. I became consciously aware of my deceitful and manipulative side, of boundaries that prevented me from living in accordance with a deeper truth. It was an awareness that many things I thought were true were not true at all. It was an awareness of attachments and constructs of my own making. These affective experiences caused, at times, a deep emotional grief that brought up sobs of remorse.

This experience would invariably move to mind pictures of things falling away; more specifically a truck going down a hill in reverse out of control, buildings, crosses, churches crumbling to the earth, pieces of the earth falling away into space.

As kundalini continue its journey, finally it was as if it entered the discernment sheath, “buddhi,” with its silence, its expansiveness, the clear sky without any clouds, a place with the absence of “self” — home.

With each ebb and flow, each cycle of kundalini through the sheaths of the subtle body, a renovation and restoration was taking place, noticeable changes in the way I saw the exterior world around me. There was a freshness, a newness. There was a connection with others, those close to me and strangers, that I never experienced before. Episodes that would have previously triggered an emotional response were now neutral. And many of my own constructs and boundaries, some of which were the values, beliefs and assumptions that I held as an important part of my life, were mysteriously absent. It was confusing, but at the same time liberating, and the ecstatic bliss associated with the whole transformation process provided the assurance I needed to move with its flow.