Thomas Keating, a Catholic monk, who wrote several books about a meditation process called Centering Prayer that is used with Christian contemplation, calls this deconstruction the unloading of the unconscious. Other systems have called it purification, or clearing. If a person feels either inflated or dejected by this challenging drama of psychological release, and has no understanding of its function, he or she can stay stuck in this cul-de-sac of suffering for a long time.
Along with the turmoil of having all the unfinished psychological issues arise, people may remember apparent other lives, open up psychic and healing potentials, and feel extremely different inside, as if unfamiliar with how to live their lives, since they now feel unable to follow prior interests and drives. They may fall into unpredictable emotional states. This can lead to another form of the dark-night-ofthe-soul, the sense “I had it, and now I’ve lost it.” There is a great distress that something has gone wrong, because after such a mind-altering realization they believe they should be healed of everything that ever bothered them. They are horrified to find themselves caught once again in an old and painful memory or habit. But in time the personal system surrenders, and the past drops away. There is a new openness, followed by more clarity in perceiving the underlying nature of their being, and with this, contentment and peace.
Fortunately, there are many paths to kundalini awakening and to spiritual realization, because there are many personality styles and tendencies on the planet, and nature has provided a great range of opportunities to thrust us inward in order to recognize the truth of our being.
Gradual paths have the advantage of providing understanding (although this may be limited by the style of teaching), training, discipline, community support and modeling, if led by competent and awakened teachers. Ideally, the body and mind become more open and flexible along the way, and the lifestyle becomes more simple and positive. They have a disadvantage in that many people follow them for 20 or 30 years without awakening, and may feel they are “going somewhere,” without ever knowing a sense of completion.
Direct paths can be taught through direct clarity, or with obtuse phrases aimed at knocking down logical patterns of thought, such as with the mind-bending koans used in certain schools of Zen. The goal is to wake up, to shift consciousness radically, without concern about the impact on the body and psyche. It appears that those who awaken on a direct path are able to transform their lives in accordance with the Truth only to the extent they were ready to hear the Truth. This is an approach that is powerful for those who are ready, but may be either distressing or irrelevant to those who are not.
In the end, either path can lead to awakening or disappointment, and the outcome lies in the receptivity of the student, the depth of awakened spirit in the teacher, and a third element that can only be called grace.
Kundalini in Children
Occasionally it happens that a partial or temporary awakening of kundalini happens in childhood. It is also recognized in tantric traditions that people can be born with kundalini energy partially or fully awakened. In a partial arising they may appear to be unusual children with psychic insights, unusual gifts, or wisdom beyond their years. They may have tendencies toward either day-dreaming or hyper-activity. Those few who have entered life with fully awakened kundalini may become remarkably brilliant or wise leaders, creators, poets or innovators in the world.
If a person has come into life with a partial awakening they may at some point begin to experience many or most of the phenomena of awakening, only without the initiating event that characterizes it for others. They may also be greatly misunderstood in a society that values conformity in its children. When they are drawn toward a spiritual practice they may exhibit rapid awakening and evolution, beyond what their teacher would expect.
Many people have reported to me non-ordinary events in childhood, such as a sense of flying, a visitor sitting at the end of their bed with advice, a prediction of a coming event, a ghost or spirit appearing in the room, or a sense of love protecting them during difficult times. One woman reported having a tea party with Mother Mary during the times she was being sexually abused. Usually these experiences are not accompanied by a rising of energy, or if so, the adult did not remember it, and they fade away in adulthood, so they are not likely to be kundalini-related, but rather appear as brief paranormal or mystical openings. Here is a man’s childhood story, however, that included an intense energy rising, unfortunately framed in the context of a family that was unpredictable, violent, and sexually abusive. I believe it is possible that sexual abuse occasionally causes a premature awakening of kundalini energy in a child who is not otherwise matured enough physiologically before puberty to sustain a kundalini arising.
When I was about 8 years old my family life was quite traumatic, and my house was like a battleground most of time. One night, after being screamed at by my mother, I prayed to God. “If you are really out there, can you help me out?” Then for a few weeks a lot of odd things started happening. Lying in my bed I felt as if I was being stretched from the inside out. I’d leave my body at night and look down at myself sleeping. I could travel through my house along the ceiling, and then out into the street and down the road. I also couldn’t keep down food, and was crying a lot.
But the main thing I remember was the feeling of being stretched. I saw an analogy later on a kundalini website that described it perfectly. It was “like the water pressure from a fire hose going through a garden hose.” At some point it became extremely hot, and excruciatingly painful. I remember being overwhelmed by the pain. It felt as if something very “thick” or very “solid” was coming up into me from the soles of my feet and up into my body. Every night it would work its way up to a point, first to my ankles and then my knees, and then lessen in intensity and go back down. The next night it would return and do the same thing, this time going up a bit further into my body. It was always incredibly painful.
One night though, it kept coming up. It went up into my head, and then in a rush, I felt like I was shooting out of my body on it. I felt incredibly happy and remember saying, “I remember, I remember.” It’s a long time ago but I do remember this very clearly. For a few days after I felt as if I was in a huge space, and remember seeing the vivid glowing colors of flowers like they were actually lights, like they were casting off a haze of bright color. I had a bursting feeling of happiness for short periods of time and saw everything shining, or as if it was an enormous space with me.
How all this ended is very clear in my mind. I was very sexual for a young kid – and around this time I had some kind of sexual experience with another kid. Afterwards, when I was coming home, I distinctly remember a sudden jolt in the center of myself. All the space I was in disappeared, all the lightness and emptiness inside me disappeared, and I felt full of despair.
It is possible that some of these descriptions are related to repressed sexual abuse, framed in the child’s mind in a way that excluded the perpetrator, especially the great pain in the experience. But the aftermath of the energy bursting through the head, and the extended days of beauty and happiness, supports the likelihood of the kundalini arising.
It is very common to lose the blessing of an awakening when we are distracted and re-identify with our bodies and the limitations or difficulties in our lives. Children would be especially vulnerable to this, having no context or understanding of the experience, and often struggling with other issues too overwhelming to manage. Traumas in early life may set the stage for a lifetime of feeling they do not fit in anywhere, with under-developed ego structures and therefore challenges in work and relationship, but searching deeply to find a true validation for the remembering they have known. This may lead to enlightenment, or to isolation and a sense of loss.
One young man I met in a facility that provided job training for the mentally ill was an expert mapmaker. He had had an experience at 5 years old of falling off a couch and breaking his collarbone. He passed out and during this time felt
he had a direct experience with Jesus, while being bathed in golden light and blissful energy. When he later tried to tell his family about this he was told he was talking crazy and not to say these things. Over the years he became labeled as mentally ill, was periodically institutionalized and heavily medicated, and the illness became his identity in the world.
Until recent years any mention of mystical experience was described in the diagnostic manual for psychiatry as evidence of psychosis. But in the early development of psychology, the great innovator Richard Bucke wrote a book called “Cosmic Consciousness”, in which he described his own spiritual experience and theorized about others. Several other prominent psychiatrists and psychologists, among them William James, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli, have explored spiritual experiences in their writings, and in the developing field of transpersonal psychology it is reemerging as a valid aspect of human maturation.
Chapter 3:
Chaos and Challenge
in the Kundalini Process
Every journey has its unexpected elements, perhaps a tempting detour that brings you to a new place you never would have known about, or a meeting with a charming stranger who gives you new insight about the country and its people, and sometimes a period of panic when you become lost and don’t know the language, and have forgotten the name of your hotel. (This happened to me once in a crowd in New Delhi, India.)
Somehow we survive both the excitement and the challenges of our life journeys, and we probably survive the kundalini process drawing on the same resources that saw us through the difficulties on the relative level. We will tend to deal with kundalini in ways similar to how we deal with other situations in our life: investigation, reaction, helplessness, anxiety, argumentativeness, openness, contraction, etc. We may find that our old approaches are not much help, and we have to throw ourselves into many new possibilities as we try to work though this experience.
In this chapter we will look at a few of the major hurdles described by people who experience this awakening, and suggest the mental attitudes and physical strengths that are most supportive for this process. In the classical method of dealing with this energy one would spend many years with a teacher, who would offer guidance such as specific breathing and meditation practices from one stage to the next, and require a discipline regarding diet, lifestyle, sexuality, service, obedience, study and spiritual practice. In some spiritual systems, like Tibetan Buddhism, great complex visualizations enable one to see through the workings of mind in order to collapse the dependence and beliefs related to the illusory self, long before awakening occurs. Other traditions use energy practices, sound practices, the development of compassion, or a dedication to karma yoga, which is basically steady work and service without any attachment to the results, all of which are long-standing methodologies for breaking down attachment to the ego, and preparing or cleansing the mind, in order to facilitate a fruitful and stable awakening experience.
Given this historic approach to awakening energy and consciousness into a new life, it is not so surprising that westerners, who come into the process with no training or preparation, are sometimes knocked into heavy physical and emotional experiences that disturb them. There are four specific challenges in this process that are possibly more common in westerners, and are little discussed in spiritual literature because in classic times the preparation dissipated the problem before it arose. These are not experiences common to everyone, but are situations I have often seen in my work. They are:
1) A sudden awakening can feel like a major threat to the physical body.
2) A psychological reaction of depression, rage or anxiety related to changes in energy, interests, and personal identification.
3) A terror of emptiness, or of darkness.
4) Special issues arising due to sexual or physical abuse in childhood.
When the Body Feels Threatened
Lorraine had a dramatic awakening of energy following a weekend workshop with a QiGong master from China, when she was 49. Before this weekend she had been suffering with severe back pain, to the point she spent hours laying in bed. Prior to this she had spent 20 years working as a hospice director, sitting for hours with people who were dying, and her life had been very service oriented in a spiritual way, although she would not have called herself a spiritual seeker. After two days of practicing QiGong, Lorraine’s pain left her body and she felt open and energized, and then suddenly huge rushes of energy took her over, along with heat, and a continual elimination of fecal matter and other liquids from her body. She was so hot she felt she was on fire, and she was incapacitated by stomach gurglings, and a need to be near the bathroom. Her body shook and she couldn’t eat or sleep. At times she felt paralyzed, curled in a fetal position on the floor. She wondered if she was dying, while at the same some part of her mind was telling her that this was really okay. This process continued for about five days, and then gradually dissipated, leaving her exhausted and confused, but healed from her previous physical problems. She felt different inside, but could not define exactly how. A few months later she was at the scene of an automobile accident and felt compelled to help an injured person by the road. Her touch seemed to calm and heal him, and she discovered an inner directive that advised her what to do to and simply followed. After this she began to explore healing with friends and family, and a Chinese guide seemed to assist her and direct her from another dimension as she opened her consciousness and moved her own psyche out of the way. Over the next two years she learned about the kundalini process, and was advised to integrate her life into the process, which she has done with great success.
***
James was a college student, working on his M.S. in economics, when he had a powerful energy awakening while using LSD. His body shook for hours, and he felt as if his mind had shattered and opened into the sky, while his nervous system was shot, and he couldn’t sleep for several days. He ended up in a psychiatric ward when his thoughts became convoluted and his expression manic, and he was found walking on the beach at night crying and laughing and talking to an entity. Following a few days of sleep and medication his thinking function became more normal, and he was able to leave the hospital, but he felt fragile, nervous, and unable to focus on his schoolwork, and dropped out of school. A friend took him in and he spent several weeks with her, living a very simple life, fearful he would never be able to function again. In time he began a journey to find a teacher, understanding, and a new life direction, having lost all interest in the college courses he had been pursuing. Over the years he developed a spiritual orientation, returned to college to become a psychotherapist, and had a successful career.
***
Margery was crippled by polio at the age of 14, and lived in a high-rise apartment with her mother. When she was 24 a yogi came to visit her mother and came into her bedroom, offering to give her healing energy. He placed her hands on her and she began to shake, and she felt a great wave of energy move through her body. After he left the energy rushes continued, and she began to see visions of demonic energies outside her window, which was nine stories up from a busy street. This went on for several years, and she tried to contact the yogi, and the center where he had lived, but no one was willing to see her again or offer any advice. She was greatly distressed that there was no improvement in her health, and now there was a serious distortion in her mind.
***
Lisa was pregnant, and had a late term miscarriage. She nearly died in the hospital and was ill for weeks afterwards. She went to a homeopath to regain her strength and was put on an intense formula that apparently triggered a massive reaction of energy rushes and panic, which continued for many months. She was bedridden because of pain in her belly and energy vibrations she could not manage, and she was diagnosed with panic attack disorder. She lived in a community headed by a lama, but no one there had any advice related to her energy process, probably because it had happened out of context from the way it was
supposed to in the Tibetan tradition, so it was not interpreted as having anything to do with her spiritual life.
All of these situations, culled from my files, are stories of people who came into an energy awakening with no preparation, no understanding, and no support to help them through it. As a therapist who has specialized in this field I have heard hundreds of variations of these stories.
Sometimes I am asked if kundalini is dangerous, and I usually say it does not need to be, because I believe that fear in the receiver of this energy magnifies the difficulty of the experience. The function of kundalini awakening is positive, being a natural movement of consciousness to clear the way for a peaceful and wise life. But fear is inevitable if you have no context for such an experience, do not see any spiritual or physical advantage to it, and believe that it is destroying your life. And there are significant difficulties when it awakens out of the context of one’s understanding, or during a traumatic event. This would rarely happen to a person living in spiritual community under the guidance of a true teacher, although in some cases the community has such a narrow paradigm for its occurrence that students are considered at fault when the energy awakens in a chaotic way. This can be crippling to their spiritual process. In one case, a student of mine had contacted the head of a major community that teaches Kriya Yoga, which is a gradual process for awakening kundalini, and asked for help with his energy problems. Her response to him was, “This can’t be kundalini, because kundalini is always positive!”
The Kundalini Guide: A Companion For the Inward Journey (Companions For the Inward Journey Book 1) Page 5
