Perhaps our greatest fear is not of the dissolution of self, but of owning up to Self.
"To begin with, our newly received sword-our newly grasped understanding of the mechanics of consciousness-exists predominantly as a concept, a mental construct, somewhat brittle and untried. This mental construct-like all concepts about spiritual matters-will break apart when applied to the rigors of harsh reality. The sword will fly into pieces. We will be left defenseless and with the sense that we know nothing of spiritual reality. This is a necessary part of the process, because if we know something with our minds only, we don't really know anything. It is not until we know with our hearts that we truly know." ~ Diana Durham, Return of King Arthur, 142.
Often we have a radical opening, just to find ourselves flipping back in the opposite direction. The ego and armor seem pull back ones closure around one after a radical opening. Through witnessing the openings and the closures time and time again we become aware that this vascilation is biochemically driven hyperbolic curves. Ultimately though with the radical heart expansions and associated gravity warping and acute sensory and psychic experience...we are essentially "broken open" by love.
To achieve the Grail of the Soul the mind must surrender its frequencies and entrain with the Heart. One could say that the heart is the organ of meaning and purpose. If the metamorphic process proceeds with adequate grace and conditions are not too detrimental to the process then the Percival Heart is born, or the Heart that is radiant irrespective of external conditions. In this we learn to take such radical responsibility that we do not injure ourselves with the world. Compassion is so fundamentally deep at this point that we have transcended our reactive conditioning and the reptilian brain has less of an impact on our functioning. At this point there is just One Love, and so the energy that is usually wasted in ego-definition and protection is now spent on a higher order of functioning.
We may back away from our flowering edge however, just because we can, and this return to a less mature state is taken for various reasons. But the major insight to get is that we have to give ourselves permission to show up in our full glory for the world is not going to invite us to arrive...it must be self-initiated. Thus we must become "causal," through the Percival Heart is the Solar or Causal Heart. If you can stop running from both the "loss of meaning" and the "presence of meaning" then you are enlightened.
The transpersonal includs the glorification of the personal, the amplification of the self. Our inability to be causal and create a life is a matter of responsibility. There are so many steps and things involved, commitment to being here, being the first I think. And knowing approximately what one is doing here. But really a human life takes intimacy with others. If our sense of failure is equal to our faith, this provides a wall of detachment removal--a distraction from really being here.
"Without the inner world the outer loses its meaning, and without the outer the inner loses its substance." ~ R.D. Laing
What is the "purpose" of kundalini? That's an interesting question that subjectively changes over the course of ones awakening. You get to see through the minds assumptions on the purpose of life, and Life and ones own life--from both on-high and on-low--that is from an angelic perspective of the peak and from burn-out hell. The capacity for "choice" is what life is all about. You could say the meaning of Life is "choice." Depending on how one navigates the awakening, (whether one is burnt or well-cooked), this determines whether the ultimate outcome is more creative or destructive. Usually it's a mixture of both for the birth of the new requires the death of the old.
Consider that while we are still preconventional and conventional (conditioned) we are immersed in meaning that is imposed on us from the outside. There is the existential crisis prior to becoming postconventional, after which meaning is interiorized with the development of the stronger umbilical cord to the Self. That is first we are motivated from external authority, and then we become a spiritually sovereign entity. There are infinite modes of interpreting the "meaning" of kundalini...but when we are still operating from the conventional mind and piloted by external authority/motivation (some might say the reactive mind) then we will tend to interpret events as being "caused" by external circumstances...that is our entire world is flavored with the particular stage of the alchemical cascade. Thus the world becomes a reflection of our chemistry and vice versa.
Is kundalini independent of thought and is kundalini is trans-subjective? There is the up-peak of the ecstasy influx and the terror down-peak where the energy seems to penetrate the dark depths of one's being. These two phases are both essential stages of the metamorphosis, and we do not have one without the other. We interpret the physics and physiology of metamorphosis through the conditioned lens of where we are at. The alchemy itself is transcendent of the circumstantial "reasons" but we generally think we are experiencing such and such because of so and so.
Depending on what we are going through at the time we will ascribe psychological meaning to the up swing and the down swing. Although the chemistry itself has little to do with the "content" of the mind, even when the chemistry itself seems propelled by our "reasons" for such ecstasy or terror. The more holy the individual the deeper they go into their Matter of the underworld during their down cycle, simply because they have surrendered and gone-with the transmutational alchemy of the up cycle.
Unless one has penetrated linear time and can cognitively grasp the fact that something in the future causes a certain chemistry to happen to us in the present...then we are stuck in the egos mythic interpretation of events. Psychological meaning is the "story" that we create for ourselves about who we are, what the world is, and our relationships. It's ones life-myth; it's a kind of Jungian level understanding of archetype, motif, gods and goddesses and how these elements play on our chemistry through our personal interpretive lens.
As the alchemy unveils, this symbolic map-making ability of our mind operates at full bore in a valiant effort to digest and explain our experience. For a sense of reality and grounding we look to our environment (projection) and use anything as a metaphor for our inner experience. And believe me on kundalini we project our interiors to epic proportions. Of course such sign and symbol making does have a deep importance in the psyche and to the health of the soul and to the richness of life experience. We can be so pulled around by our interiors that after an awakening we see everything as symbolic and thus gain detachment from both inner and outer phenomena. In its morbid expression this could be existential meaninglessness, in its healthy expression it is Freedom.
Often during ones first awakening the down cycle is as electrically energetically powerful as the spontaneous explosion of energy up the spine. It's the same intensity of energy up the body threatening to blow one's head off, however instead of ecstasy one experiences great terror. Of course whatever rational faculty we have going at that moment will ascribe a particular "reason" as to why we are in such terror. Often the real reasons for us reaching such a crisis are deep in our unconscious and psychic life. This meaning propels the chemistry further as we rationalize why we are in such terror. Such an event can lead to ongoing depression beyond the initial blast up the spine itself, because our "reasons" can perpetuate our dark night, and this can stretch on for years if we do not have the discipline and insight to turn our chemistry back into an up swing. Going deeper into being can kick up mud in our pond, but the lotus flower is just as beautiful all along.
Stressed about enlightenment--thought about changing your self-talk a little? In the initial stages of transformation we might operate more from the deprivation side of ourselves, to be intent on whipping ourselves into shape through guilt, shame, self-loathing and fear. This approach is almost inevitable except in those who have been uncommonly supported and unconditionly loved as a child. To avoid the paradox of being stressed out by our drive to transform, we need to observe this phenomena and change our self-talk. Instead of transformation, we could use the word Enjoyment-Aliveness, for real transformation actually amounts to this.
If we find that flagellating ourselves on the spiritual path then we can be sure that the dominant figures we have in place are the Superego-Parent and the Self-Righteous-Teacher. When it comes to establishing your integral-lifestyle, this is not going to get you anywhere. For true transformation is bought about via the Child and the Sage...and neither of these will give you stress. If you sit intimately with the disharmony and disillusionment that your transformation-drive sets up you will be able to see and feel it as an object, then move around the edges of it to the Child and Sage and allow them to heal you and make Whole.
Every time the Parent-Teacher shows up to unsettle you, you have the opportunity to become conscious of this and immediately switch to the Child or Sage. You will find that the Child is the Sage and the Sage is the Child, they represent unconditional love, and infinite knowledge. The Sage is All-Knowing and the Child is All-Innocent. By relaxing into the not-knowing of the Child this allows the Sage to be heard. But if you stay in the Parent-Teacher mode, their voices are so strident, loud and overbearing that you lose touch with the true agents of transformation.
Consider that it wasn't until the industrial age that humans became unbalanced in their lifestyles. Village and tribal lifestyle was integral at the mythic level. We now have to find out what it means to live a Whole-HUman lifestyle in the very unbalanced information age. Considering the vast resources at our disposal it should be easy...but greater choice and information sometimes makes it harder to focus, to choose and to commit. Thus we must draw on the Percival and Merlin within us to find the path that is true to us beyond all outer appearances and distractions. The heart and intuition will stabilize the incarnation of our Divine Child and Sage.
HILLS AND VALLEYS
Sometimes for no apparent reason, the moon?, the season?, the world soul? the galactic alignment?, the future? we do go thru periods of shadow type chemistry...just as a child has nightmares. It can happen in the beginning stages of kundalini or in fever, in dark nights or drug trips--it just represents a particular perturbation of consciousness. It's not any deep or mysterious dark secret with Kosmic meaning, it's simply the detoxification and restructuring of the limbic system. Often we don't know what is inside us until we are triggered. Partly this phenomena is due to the fact that the first 3 years of our life are largely unconscious to us, and these are the "formative" years, so there is a lot of programming in there that we only get to learn about through the course of life in how and why we are "triggered." So our source-programming is made conscious through contemplation of happenstance and our reaction to it. "The brighter the light, the deeper it illuminates shadow." Light being infinite and shadow being infinite...this is why I think enlightenment is never ending.
In Shamanism--Arachaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Mircea Eliade says that usually the sicknesses, dreams and ecstasies themselves constitute the initiation of transformation of the profane individual into a priest or technician of the sacred. Initiation incorporates isolation, suffering, death (pain and unconsciousness) and resurrection. The initiate ascends into the sky (influx) and descends into the underworld (die-off and dark night). In this book Mircea says that to become a shaman there needs to be an ecstatic hysterical crisis (kundalini awakening), which occurs in most cases at maturity. But one cannot become a shaman until several years after the first experience and a subsequent period of instruction.
In order to succeed in the profession of shaman a predisposition to nervous disorders was essential. Shamans come from particular families in which nervous instability is hereditary. The only difference between a shaman and a hysteric is that the former can deliberately enter trance. However no neurotic or paranoic can become a shaman...the crucial determination is that the individual is chosen for their ability to directly relate with the sacred. Shamans are often found in a community by their early childhood interest in sex, for example masturbating earlier than usual. Thus showing a sensitive intuitive nervous system and high life-force.
Kundalini is so deeply personal and unique chemistry, it doesn't seem advisable to try and block or counter its progress. If you look into cases where people have used antidepressants or antiseizure medicine for kundalini, you will probably find that they were worse off with the medication than without. They aborted their chance of shamanistic death and rebirth...they forfeited the experience of their highest highs and lowest lows...and so are lesser people for it. Instead of medication a POSITIVE APPROACH to kundalini awakening is needed. That is preparation, protection, practices and higher purpose. The transpersonal is achieved via the amplification of the personal.
We each describe our kundalini experience through our information base and attachments. But you can't really describe the ineffable, although poets do try...and that poetry directly channeled from the Fire of Fires, might come close to communicating its depth and novelty. Thing is that kundalini has so many effects simultaneously that to a non-popped person a kundalini revealer might sound like a intoxicated looney. This is partly so because the psychic realm is so widely opened by kundalini that ones dreams, precognition and remote sensing ability infiltrate awareness. So we have these newly amplified extra-sensory abilities to navigate a consensus world that makes little sense and is of questionable value.
During a kundalini awakening we are at a lifetime peak in pituitary potency, so our center of being rises to the psychic level, and we have access to a vastly higher vision and taste of reality. While at that level we cannot fit our larger being down into the consensus flatland "reality." Thus when in this higher operational mode we are essentially alone; unless of course we find others that are operating in this higher space-time. But considering the numbers of poppers it's rather unlikely, especially to find someone stable and healthy in that condition.
Also kundalini is not definite thing because it is a unicity of experience and affect from subatomic to spirit...And so how we explain it in its beginning stages will perhaps be far different than how we explain it five years after our peak...How we explain it in scientific terms is going to be far different than explaining it as a neophyte with no knowledge of kundalini whatsoever. It's not so much where we are on the spiral of development, it's the degree of information and contemplation we have given to our experiences that denotes how we will relate it. Kundalini is a natural phenomena with infinite perspectives, interpretations, implications, and explanations.
Consider that life is exactly like surfing waves. There is a charge of lifeforce that arises with any new exciting event be it meeting a lover, or a Eureka discovery. But if we fail to ride the energy of that charge we miss the wave and get ground into the sand. Each time we do this aborted surfing trick we get further and further from the life we want, and we get less and less excited about every new event. Thus if we don't learn to surf properly we become generally apathetic or downright depressed, so life is like surfing and opportunities are waves.
If we do not learn how to handle the energy of kundalini and use expanded consciousness effectively and creatively, then it turns on us and we become listless, depressed and dysfunctional. Thus it becomes obvious that we need to transcend our own and the collective shadow to reintegrate ego into a higher mode and larger purpose. That is if we don't pick up and constructively proceed with the light-sword, it will cut us to pieces.
To ask the question we have to "dare" to be who we really are--a truly terrifying thought." ~ Diana Durham, The Return of King Arthur
Hopefully we can live beyond our ability to rationally understand. Interpretation of experience by reducing it down to its component electrical impulses and atomic elements becomes rather dry, and even then all the empirical investigation and understanding in the world can never really explain happenstance. I see us progressively moving into an experiential transrational investigation of manifestation by Games of Spirit. Consciously laid plots of scientific inquiry into the complexity of human nature and the universe. Thus we will be participating in the evolution of God, as we investigate Gods existence. Not in an effort to "prove" but to participate, reveal and cocreate.
©2006
Biology of Kundalini by Jana Dixon