Other gifts in my journey include a visit with Muktananda in the 1970’s, who opened his pink Ashram in Oakland to everyone and who I visited when I was too young to know what I was doing; and some valued time with Gangaji, who demonstrated how an American woman can be alive and awake, and once stopped my mind with a single word. I owe much of the wonder in my life to Dr. Gay Hendricks, who showed me the connection between body and God, and awakened my slumbering energies through Radiance Breathwork.
I was blessed with wise teachers and caring friends at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology who supported my kundalini awakening and my thesis work. Stan Grof, a visionary pioneer in breathwork, taught me about energy release, and offered brilliant explanations for many anomalous experiences. Dr. Joan Harrigan and her teacher Swami Chandrashekharananda hosted me in India, and gave me a good understanding of the classical perspective of kundalini science from the Tamil tradition. Baba Hari Dass of Mt. Madonna, gave me access to his teachings about kundalini in the Ashtanga Yoga tradition. Judith, Marea, Olga, Megan (Maitreya), Maggie, Connie, Briget, Jonathan, Cherla, and Ray are all dear friends who could talk with me about the deepest insights and experiences and helped to hone my ability to express myself.
There were many other great people who helped me to found the Kundalini Research Network, which expanded my work internationally and stimulated my mind and creative expression. I am grateful to my husband Bill, who always supported me through these explorations and travels. And finally, my education would have been incomplete without Adyashanti, his wife Mukti, and his sangha community, who put it all together for me with love, and showed me new aspects of spiritual awakening. Beyond this I am grateful for over 30 years of meeting with people in spiritual process who had the courage to share their experiences and move forward. Each offered another valuable step in understanding.
None of us really know how deeply we may influence the lives of others by simply being real and available. It can seem as if we awaken alone, and only realize something within us that was already there, but there are numerous nudges that make this possible. My deepest hope is that these guides will be among those nudges for you, giving you the courage to keep going until you remember you are free.
Chapter 1:
What is Kundalini?
The eruption of kundalini energy from its secret nest at the base of the spine has been revered by some as bringing ecstasy and enlightenment, and disparaged by others as simply disabling, terrifying and dangerous. Mystics may call it a method of transformation. Skeptics consider it imaginary. Few who have not experienced it believe in its existence. All who have experienced it know it as a mystery and a profound life-altering experience.
The subtle energies that begin to move and vibrate within someone who feels the arising of kundalini, have been reported in many cultures over the centuries, but few in the west know of their power, and even fewer who have heard of it consider it real. This general lack of understanding intensifies its mystery and leaves many who awaken the energy stranded because their medical, spiritual, and energy advisors or guides are unable to comprehend the radical changes that kundalini stimulates in the subtle, psychological and physical systems of those who experience it. This is unfortunate, because anyone is vulnerable to this awakening, either as a result of practices or as a spontaneous event.
The Symbolism of Kundalini
Kundalini energy has been represented primarily by two symbols in ancient teachings, the most common being the serpent, because the energy is believed to be coiled at the base of the spine, until it shoots up like a cobra or twists inside a body as it awakens. This energy movement also triggers the shedding of the old identifications, just as the snake sheds its skin. The snake has long been a symbol for healing and the transformation of consciousness. Even the snake in the Garden of Eden could be interpreted as representing the transformation of consciousness, although in this case moving from the innocence of being a species identified with nature, and unaware of time, space, life and death, to the complications of becoming a human identified with the thoughts, beliefs and concerns of the human mind. A kundalini rising begins the process of reversing this journey, returning a person from mental complexity back to knowing Oneness, and returning with wisdom and understanding about existence rather than innocence.
Kundalini has also been imaged as a goddess, because feminine energy is most often associated with the birth and sustenance of life forms. She is an aspect of Shakti, who when awakened from her slumber at the base of the spine, rushes through the subtle body to be reunited above the crown of the head with her lover, Siva, who represents pure consciousness existing prior to, or without, form. She has been praised as a source of ecstasy and wisdom, and condemned as a cause of psychological disintegration, sought after for magical powers and longevity, and feared for her capacity to annihilate the mind. And yet the truth of this energy is that it is simply a term for the life force that animates all transient and living forms. Prana, chi or ki are the energies flowing within us that transfer thoughts, feeling, intelligence, sensation, connection and movement. Kundalini is their source, that which curls at the base of the spine and holds the system in stasis until it is activated or until it exits the body at death.
Kundalini As Consciousness
In the Vedanta science of India, as in many other wisdom traditions, it is understood that there is only One source of consciousness, which creates out of itself all forms that appear in existence, and we humans are part of this process. Consider that the consciousness inhabiting your body activated mysteriously through an energy flow initiated by this One consciousness during conception. Yogis believe this consciousness moves through sperm into the ovum, and this activates the growth of the fetus, which is eventually birthed as a human being. By the time we function as a human, this speck of pure consciousness is housed inside our cells and subtle body field, and its light is what looks through our eyes and moves through our senses, and is basically the energetic force of our lives. Everything that appears as living creation emanates in a similar way from this same consciousness.
Kundalini is a Sanscrit term for this energy of creation, the life force that causes consciousness to function in a body. After kundalini activates and enlivens a human body, the stabilized and consistent flow of internal energy that remains is known as prana in the scriptures of India. Breathing supports the flow of prana in living systems and is essential to the connection between spirit and body. Breathing practices taught in yoga and in other eastern energy-based traditions are effective in harmonizing, amplifying or redirecting prana to improve health and vitality, and in specialized training these flows are manipulated to cause a kundalini awakening.
Anyone can easily be trained to feel prana consciously, and people who do healing, practice Aikido or QiGong or other martial arts, or who are just highly sensitive, can feel it moving from their own hands, or sense it in someone else. In Indian medicine, prana is considered responsible for the flowing of energy in the body that causes everything from breathing to burping, swallowing to elimination, blinking to sneezing, the circulation of the heart and blood, and operating all other moving functions. The movement of senses, thoughts and emotions is carried by prana, and these actions form an entire flow of energies known as the subtle energy body. The efficiency with which this prana flows in a body has a significant impact on energy, spirit and health.
After setting the pranic field in motion, the residual kundalini energy coils at the base of the spine, holding the energy in stasis until we die, when it uncoils and leaves the body. This phenomenon would be irrelevant in your life, something you might take for granted the way you take for granted your heart beating and your digestive system working, except that under the right circumstances it can uncoil and force you into a radical systemic change that is part of the awakening.
Initial Awakenings
When kundalini energy is activated there is a great intensification of the life force. For a lifetime, this energy has been
coiled at the base of the spine, having done its primary job of creating and stabilizing a life (you), but now it leaps into a new service. This time the work it does is to help you remember yourself as the source, as the pure consciousness that existed before you became identified as a separate self.
Kundalini awakening usually begins with a rush of energy up the spine or from the feet, and it may flow out of the head, but more often it stops at the heart or throat. It may come in spurts, as if a water hose is turning it on and off, jerking you upward with each shot of water. It may come smoothly and slowly, and feel as if it is winding through you like a snake. It may rush up violently, as if in a panic to get out, and feel like a huge wave of heat or pressure, leaving you terrified for your life.
A few rare people are plunged into cosmic consciousness at the first arising of kundalini energy. But more often it begins as a shaking or vibrating that may feel either gentle or harsh, perhaps bringing fear or perhaps bringing bliss, or even both at once. Sometimes it seems to hit one hard in the gut, or cause an eruption in the heart, or gagging in the throat. It can feel like a rush of sexual energy, or a whole-body orgasm. It can feel like flashes of light or heat. Whatever it does, you notice something unfamiliar is happening to you, and if you have never heard of the connection between energy and spirituality you are likely to be alarmed.
When you have had an awakening of kundalini energy in which it rises above the heart, you are launched on the interior journey. It may be a very slow trip, and there may be many detours and distractions along the way, but if you consciously choose to be among the inward bound, to seek within yourself for Truth or freedom, it will move more smoothly for you. To the extent you want to carry all the emotional luggage of your life along with you, it will have more challenges, just as any trip is made more stressful by a carrying along a ton of luggage. It will help greatly if you have an understanding of this process of kundalini awakening, just as any journey is made more smooth when you have a map, and more informative when you have a guidebook.
It may not seem fair that we cannot take everything we love with us on the spiritual path, but anyone who has tried to backpack up a mountain path knows the advantage of holding down the contents to bare necessity. And you need not worry too much about what to let go of, because the process itself causes much to spontaneously fall away. It is more a process of internal rather than external clearing: it brings to the surface all of your old conditioning, beliefs, and points of view, so that you can see that they no longer fit what you are. But your external life can also change dramatically, especially in the areas where you were functioning out of alignment with your deeper needs. You are forced to become authentic and true to yourself. If you do not you will feel overwhelmed, divided and unhappy.
Once there is an initial arising of kundalini energy, there is likely to be a prolonged period of experiencing random energies, shaking, blocks in the body, rushes in the body that may be startling or pleasurable, ripples of heat and cold, heightened energies followed by exhaustion, and a variety of other phenomena, which will be described in detail in the following chapter.
My energy awakened following an intense body therapy and breathwork session when, later in the day, I was sitting on the floor in a classroom listening to a lecture. It felt like I was being charged over and over again with an electrode at the base of my spine, and with each charge I would feel higher, more ecstatic. This continued periodically for weeks, so that I would walk down the street and feel waves of energy, of love, of seeing the rightness of all things, and I would lay awake at night vibrating and shaking. I felt drawn to sit in meditation for hours, and sometimes fell away into a non-identifiable space from which I would return full of bliss. Sometimes a single part of my body – half of my face, or an arm - would go into bliss. I was my energy, not my mind, and it made me very happy until circumstances in my family life brought the anxious mind back into domination and I came back down to earth. This awakening occurred when I was 41 years old, and had been meditating seriously for much of the past 15 years.
Bob, a man who had taught transcendental meditation for many years, attended a six-week retreat where he spent 12 hours a day in intense energy practices, and when his kundalini activated it rushed through his body like a train, knocking him into a near-unconscious state for several days. He felt like every nerve in his body was on edge, his mind could not focus, and he would sweat profusely at night. Emotional memories would arise, along with involuntary crying and laughing. He felt his life was ricocheting out of control.
Louise had a high-level professional career, and her energy awakened following an intense affair with a spiritually awakened man. She begin to shake involuntarily during the night and as she sat in business meetings it felt like her head was spinning in circles. The energy so overwhelmed her she quit her job to take time to understand what was happening to her, and didn’t try to hold a job again for several years. But she became much more creative, and designed a new home at the time.
Joanna, a Buddhist practitioner, began to experience interior vibration when meditating, which made it difficult to hold the lengthy stillness expected in her Buddhist practice setting. She was quivering and shaking and heat was rising into her chest until it was nearly unbearable. She was alarmed and went to a doctor who treated her as if she had a seizure disorder, putting her on medications, and she slowed down her spiritual practice because of her fear. Years later she began to question the diagnosis and she sought out a spiritual perspective.
Steven, following nine years of intense Zen practice, came home from a retreat with a great sense of despair and failure. Sitting in his room he hit the depths of his longing and his sense of inadequacy. Suddenly a gigantic rush of energy poured through his body and pressed against the top of his head. His heart pounded so fast he thought he would pass out and he knew he was going to die. He said to himself, “If that is what it takes to wake up then so be it.” At this, the energy burst through the top of his head and his consciousness expanded into a vast and empty spaciousness.
Jeremy was only 19 when he was in a head-on auto accident, and was thrown from the car to the side of the road. Unconscious, he nonetheless witnessed everything that happened, as if hovering above his body, until he awakened in the hospital hours later. After this he had intense rushes of energy through his body, causing much pain in the areas of his neck and back. His spine was seriously injured. He had flashes when he saw apparent other lives, had floating out-of-body experiences, and suffered with strong internal vibrations. Sometimes he saw images of Indian gods and goddesses in his room, although he did not know their origin or meaning. He lost the use of his legs, and all interest in his college studies and friends. Previously an agnostic, he began a deep search to understand the spiritual meaning of his experiences.
These are just a few of the hundreds of ways kundalini may first be known unexpectedly, and initiate a variety of challenges. Here are a few more descriptions taken directly from people in my files:
I was meditating after doing yoga breathing practices one night and suddenly I felt a burst of energy around my spine. I can only describe it as hot and cold at the same time. It swirled up my spine to the top of my head and then it felt like light was pouring out the top of my head. This lasted a few minutes and then ended. The next day I felt some fluid flowing from the roof of my mouth. It was sweet and had an odd smell. For weeks after I felt flows of energy and this dripping sweetness nearly every day.
***
I felt a horrible burning pain that shot up my spine and my kidneys felt like they were on fire. My heart hurt and was beating way too fast and I went to a hospital for help, but while talking to the intake person, I realized they couldn't help, so I left. For a few days I had extreme fatigue, could not eat or go anywhere, and then it flipped into feeling waves of bliss and I felt in love with everyone and everything. I had many spontaneous orgasms, even while driving. For months I went through cycles of bliss and pain, racing pulses, waking in the
night doing yoga postures. Sometimes I felt expanded into a golden ball of light.
***
For weeks my feet trembled when I was in bed. Then my lover broke up with me, and for days I felt out of control with weeping and very depressed. My mind began racing, and it felt like energy and a lot of heat was stuck in my head. My body started jerking hard whenever I lay down and I felt emotionally drained for days. The jerking started in the lower chakras and shot into the heart. My head buzzed constantly. For weeks I could not sleep and I would feel terror throughout the night.
***
I was alone in a retreat house and my body felt completely collapsed, but with a huge increase in the internal energy. I felt completely centered in the now, and for several days there was a huge rushing river of powerful energy running from my feet through my crown, all day and night. I entered a vast ocean of infinite blissful energy for hours, bobbing up and down, groundless. Every movement I made felt as if I was moving through an ocean and as if I had forgotten how to stand, walk, sit or move. Finally I contacted my old yoga teacher who helped me get more in balance and learn a new way to be in my body.
Kundalini may initially arise partially and retreat after a single experience, or arise to a specific chakra area where it seems stuck for months, or arise through each chakra over a period from days to years, or shoot suddenly throughout the entire body. Awakenings may be temporary, incomplete or (very rarely) complete, depending on the person's lifestyle, history and practice.
The Kundalini Guide: A Companion For the Inward Journey (Companions For the Inward Journey Book 1) Page 2
