The hardest thing to handle is the bliss of our own emergence. Either we want to retreat from the "limitless space" of Bliss into the pain-body, or we want to turn the Bliss into some self-indulgent ego gratification. To leave the Bliss pure in its essence is almost impossible at the beginning of the transmutational process. Pain is the result of blockage of kundalini and bliss is the result of the flow of kundalini. As kundalini moves through parts of the body that were numb to us, we feel the extent of our contraction, but as Shakti does her work and we start to open up, what was once painful turns to bliss.

We become addicted to our pain-body perhaps because we have found validity for our existence through pain. Stimulation of our adrenals and dopamine in response to hurtful situations makes us feel alive. Defending our rights is defining our boundaries as an individual and this makes us feel Real, a solid thing that the ego finds reassurance in. Attainment of the Self however requires melting of this limiting defensive structure...which might have been needed in the individuation stage, but is a burden during the enlightenment stage. The caterpillar is completely consumed in the construction of the butterfly.

We can probably equate the pain-body with Wilheim Reich's body armor. Neurosis and psychosis, and negative ego characteristics all stem from embeddedness in our pain remembering mechanisms in the hippocampus and hypothalamus and amygdala and consequently in the neuromuscular as well. Brain information and great brain maps are at www.brain-mind.com

Someone with active kundalini is "elemental" and "archetypal." The cerebrocortex is incapacitated while the limbic and autonomic brain are hyper-activated. As kundalini moves through the brain intense emotions are felt. In the beginning stages there is often panic, anxiety, depression, anger, paranoia, confusion shame, fear and self-pity. These negative emotions tend to take over especially when the left-brain is in a clampdown from overcharge. Then as the work of purging and restructuring proceeds there is more enduring bliss, peace, equanimity, love and joy. If the cleansing work is not done however, instead of attaining a true Witness we repress pain and shadow through dissociation. Dissociation is still the separate-self-sense, it is not allowing the full embodiment of the Self. This need for the work of nature to take its transmutational course is why surrender is fundamental to genuine spiritual growth.

In fact the need for nature to take its course is probably why cathartic release type therapies like Holotropic Breathingª sessions and Osho's dynamic meditations work so well. The "freeze mechanism" of the sympathetic nervous system in response to danger is countermanded such that accumulated shock is released and the chemistry can be resolved and let go. These releasing practices, and kriyas in general, allow the psychosomatic noise to be cleansed from the system permitting normal and supranormal conditions of consciousness to occur.

There is no avoiding the fire. The emotion has to burn in the fires of purification before illuminative wisdom and unitive balance is achieved. This process of roasting in the fires of transformation creates the Philosopher's Stone of Self. Once the bodymind's resistance to conveying greater consciousness is penetrated the nervous system enters a permanent state of higher functioning.

Kundalini's transformation of the limbic brain means that there is a lessening of the ability to condition the brain to pain and fear, and a lessening of the pain-body and armor. The pain-body is still there in potentiality because it would be extremely dangerous to live without the information of pain. Pain is as essential to the path as bliss. Kundalini/meditation/yoga/breathing does alter the pain mechanisms in the body such that we do have more distance from the radical-reactive capacities of our autonomic/reptilian functions.

Of course a lot of our negative and unconscious-shadow material uses and abides in the pain-body because of the energetic "state" affinity...so one does need conscious effort in order to transcend the pull of lower emotional gravity. Suffering is a way of perceiving ones experience in a self-referential and "downer" kind of way. Even bliss is suffering unless it is turned toward soul gratification rather ego gratification. But we wouldn't get the intuition to turn increasingly toward soul without suffering.

Pain, wounds and shadow are the key to our evolution, address these things and the blocks that prevent the full flow of light/faith are penetrated. The generation of bliss from having done this work constitutes an evolution out of living IN the pain-body. The pain mechanisms are still there however, but our neurology is lit up in bliss, thus we could say we have transcended our pain-body.

Ramakrishna says that a man's spiritual consciousness is not awakened unless his kundalini is aroused. I won't make such a huge claim, but I will say that there is no faster and more complete way of emerging from the separate-self-sense and the pain-body that through the fires of active kundalini. Through allowing nature to take her course.

The Christ Light--kundalini is said to burn away ones past sins (life-harming trauma). But even though the body is more efficient after considerable transmutation, if we maintain the normal eating and health habits of this society the body will continue to be aged and decayed via free radicals. One could say that free radicals are the agents of sin, much of what we do physically, mentally and emotionally in this culture just increases the free radical load...that is why most old people look totally broken at the end of their lives. It doesn't have to be this way.

It's probably pretty common that we seek to run from pleasure into pain. We are used to pain, pain is the German ethic, the white-man's safety zone. In kundalini it is easier to handle pain than extreme bliss. Often if we don't have the skills to open into pleasure we will try to clog up our body to buffer ourselves from the bliss. In ecstasy we feel we have no "control". If we come from a trauma background we expect and want things to go wrong so that we can stick to our familiar (family) mode of being.

Evolution requires us to train ourselves to endure beauty and pleasure without retreating. Also consider that you are the universe observing itself, therefore you are big enough to handle all the beauty in the entire universe. Love is merely going with the speed of evolution and fear is backing down from that speed. Resistance to evolution is the fear of letting go of our known identity, developmental level, worldview, opinions, sensoral sensitivity level and habitual groove of consciousness. Growth requires the dissolution of all this before the birth of the new. We must essentially "lose possession" of ourselves in order to invite the new host of greater Soul in.

"Consciousness is raised to a given plane by inhibiting the thoughts and modes of consciousness of all the planes below it." Dion Fortune.

This may be true but there has to be an acknowledgement of a known self and its true feelings prior to sublimation (inhibiting) in the cause of the higher. That is one cannot sublimate what is not called to consciousness in the first place. You cannot evolve that which is repressed.

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