You Don’t Have To Be A Yogi To Be A Yogi or Yogini

Buddha holding golden flower, VMFA Richmond, Virginia, photo by author

Think of me as that guy who has been working on cars for years but doesn’t know the terms used to describe the cars I have worked on. I have overhauled engines, transmissions, brakes, and more, all without having cracked a single book. I just look at it and can figure out it’s use and how it needs to be put back together and how it works (and this also means this has been part of a process of greater and greater understanding). In some cases, going this route could be considered a terrible handicap, but not in every situation is this true.

If you read any of the sutras of Pantagali, or the Vedas, you might think a person would have to spend years winding their way up the eight rungs of yoga to get to the top. Certainly those within those systems believe that, but there are people today that are proving this notion wrong, or at least incomplete. Maybe we did get training elsewhere in another life, or like I certainly did in the dream state all through my life. Maybe you do need maturity, or some kind of preparation so that your personality can handle the extraordinary rigors of what kundalini brings to the table. It is possible that we pick this up organically in the process of living our lives. There are certainly a few simple but absolutely critical and at least extremely helpful qualities one is greatly helped by in picking up along the way.

In a manner of speaking, kundalini is a cheat of sorts. It is a way whereby a person with none or hardly any long-term practice or study in the means of preparation is able, over night almost, to rocket to the top three rungs of yoga as described by the experts noted in these august and ancient writings. I know this only by reading these writings that tend to agree about the levels of attainment involved. Clearly, I had experienced them all. No boast, no brag. I have nothing to sell, no one to convince. The problem is in thinking we somehow have to get it. No, we are already that. If you aren’t that, then you merely have to strip away what does not belong. For me, to do this has involved hundreds of different “techniques” that the energy itself told me to use. Every one worked for the block in question. I was even told to go buy strong alcohol to drink, not a lot, just enough to feel lightly tipsy. The following morning I stood up out of bed and felt something release from my hip almost like a spring releasing. Poof! Gone. I never used strong drink again for energy therapy, but imagine being a real yogi and being told you should have a stiff drink. Yogi’s would reject this because they believe all sorts of things, like drinking will lead to your end somehow.

Don’t get me wrong, I revere the body of knowledge that Indians have accumulated, but no system is complete, finished, or without its error or blind sides. It is up to us to keep pushing at the borders of the known in order to expand our understanding. I am the guy who had no formal training and thus was never told to believe that there are things that can’t be done. I am free to think outside the box.

By way of example I am reminded of the very courteous but corrective comments I have received over the years from men who live and practice meditative and yoga techniques who have very kindly told me, “Mr. Parker, you cannot have kundalini because you have not yet received diksha.” Or the other one, “There is no way you have kundalini, you do not have a guru.” Now on the latter, I understand that the belief is in India is you need a guru. I am living proof you don’t need a guru, but try telling them that. Mist of you reading this, assuming you are like me and awoke one day through a series of fortunate and perhaps synchronistic events, know the fallacy of the belief in the guru as a prerequisite to awakening. There are all kinds of low-hanging fruit that is available to us that can help us step into the numinous.

I had to look up what diksha is, because that is how little I knew about it. You know, I think life itself was handing out its own diksha to me since I was little. It was the dream state and a few carefully placed out of bidy excursions as a child that showed to me that life is not at all what I was told it was as I got older, and even though I tried to shoe-horn myself into the culture I sensed all along that something was gravely amiss. I’m just surprised it took me as much time as I did to finally arrive at the jumping off point where I began exiting the merry-go-round of karma and of conventional thought. Certification in automechanics? No thank you.

In 1945 Gopi Krishna sat in his house and managed to stimulate the flow of prana to the necessary degree that it was able to kindle the constant energetic state known as kundalini. He had a hard time with it, though, and was sure it was going to kill him. He sought out monks at an ashram for help. He explained, but they shook their heads saying, “We have been studying this, some of us, for twenty years. Why should we accept that you, a householder, have managed this feat all on your own?” They patted him on his head, sending Gopi (he suspected) to his certain death.

Gopi didn’t die, though. He worked it out and managed to balance the forces of mind and body that allowed this power to coexist with him in an entirely new synthesis of being. He in effect lifted the hood and gazed at that engine and asked himself what he had been missing. Gopi figured it out. So much for the guru set.

While I doubt Gopi would have died if he hadn’t figured it out, I am certain it may have driven him mad, if only for the strain it puts everyone under who doesn’t get this one part of awakening “right.”

For about the first ten years of my awakening that inner voice that I had been hearing since I was a child that told me not to join any religion or school of thought persisted until secetral key hurdles had been passed by me in my life. Some part of me expressed as a larger or more universal self or awareness wanted me to keep to my own experience. As a result, I haven’t known much about the religions of the world. That was lifted once I had reached a certain point and I am able to look at other traditions like the sutras of Pantagali or the Vedas. I understand that for myself it was critical that I develop in this fashion. I am here to tell you that to the degree that you accept someone’s own theories and ideas about awakening, you are at the same time limiting your own development. It isn’t that a theory about this phenomenon isn’t in some way based in fact or truth, but that this phenomenon is so broad that no one theory can hope to contain it and also by definition cannot hope to be instructive to any significant degree. Instead, there are pieces if truth in eveything we observe, but by being individuals, we also have built-in biases that blind us to a more briad view of just how big all of this awakening business is.

There are those who on a daily basis write about how we are ascending, and how this means that we will at one point no longer be physical, that we will shift into another world. When I look at this I think how silly that is on the one hand, but also how in a way there is truth to this. I am not one to toss the baby out with the bath water, but clearly I think we all need to put a little more thought into this idea to refine it based on real world examples. Such a grand theory requires just as grand evidence.

I know of a writer who insists that the communication between twins (take your pick: twin souls, twin rays, or twin flames) is in fact not really happening, but is instead akin to an “alien love bite ” phenomenon. On the one hand, I have pretty clear evidence that the one who I thought of as my twin starting out was having inner communication from a 1500 mile distance that we were able to describe independantly of one another. On the otherhand, the issue of entities filling our space and interacting during this communication cannot be ruled out because they certainly do play a part in all of this, I just don’t have the evidence that all of this psychic phenomenon can be attributed to just those nonphysical lower-level forms of consciousness that act in a kind of parasitic way. And lest I wax extreme, let me say at the same time that all of life and consciousness is cooperative and symbiotic, so one person’s parasite is another person’s guide or helper. The operative question for me is what proof do you have that these nonphysical influences are helping or holding you back? You see, this takes the kind of self reliance and willingness not to just crack a book or blog an the subject in order to find the truth of the matter. What I might say is entirely from my own experience.

What holds for me may not hold for you. Also in addition, we ARE all viewing the same field, so there are some basic facts about all of this that are underpinning this phenomenon, which is to say yes your experience will vary from my own, but it varies more in the sense that when we walk through this field, you may go right where I go left. Our choices may create different experiences and our own relative perceptual abilities may also differ as well. Don’t assume that we can all have perfectly stirling views of this new world…not even me. What will make the difference will be testing your assertions to see if they stand up. I would also add that if you bbelieve sonething to be true, don’t just believe in it, test it. I know you might not know how to test your idea or theory, but trust me that if it is real, there is most certainly a way that it can be tested. This may not appear easy or obvious because it requires invention based in insightful thinking. It takes work, and some things may not be testable for the simple fact that maybe you can’t prove what, say, prana is as a “substance’ or phenomenon. To my knowledge there is no device that detects prana or proves it existance. But perhaps there are other ways to test for it to monitor its traces, such as resistance testing, or using consciousness to regulate its flow, or the effects of transmitting prana, or any number of other alternative means of gathering that much-needed data.

If we are ascending into other layers of matter, what might be some experiments you could conduct to show that this is happening? Some cameras with super low light sensitivity have filmed objects and what appear as life forms not of this world. Here, I propose, is one way you could set up an experiment for fleshing out a part of what may exist in these other levels or layers of reality. I would consider using human subjects using their own powers of perception in such an experiment to see how what that person percieves matches with what such a camera picks up. If you are unfamiliar with this technology and its use, look into Steven Greer’s use of cameras to peer extradimensionally during his CE5 experiences. You can find his web sites very easily.

What I find as a result of going it alone but then reading some of the material written on the subject is something akin to what our mechanic might find when finally cracking a repair manual on a Ford GT, say. Most of it makes sense right off the bat and some things strike him (or her) as awkwardly stated. Maybe it is a cultural thing. What this shows me is we have more to do, more boundaries to push heyond.

We have to push beyond the idea that we need teachers. We do not. If you need help, help will come. Keep your eyes open. Be ready for anything, but for goodness sake, you do not need to give your power to any authority. When you rely on others, you stop relying on yourself, and people who don’t rely on themselves are the worst kind. I know because I was one of them. It is in this place that these people fall for being a victim. It is the worst form of self-blindness I have known and seen because it almost always signals that the person wants you to be responsible for them. It is bad for them and bad for you. Claim your power no matter how disempowered you think you are or how much you think you need a guru or teacher.

Here is a little I have found on my own…

• Awakening leads directly into a persistent meditative state that takes some years to achieve using traditional methods.
• The trigger behind awakening is by way of a unitive state. This joins the two hemisphere’s of the brain in a synchronized state that leads to an order of magnitude of efficiency leading to physiological changes and benefits along with an intensification of libido, which is an outcome of the stimulating effect of this physioligical union mirroring the nonphysical inner union possible. This simple condition leads to a world of things, with a cosmic or transcendental state and awareness resulting. This is itself a doorway to some pretty amazing discoveries about consciousness, matter, and the true nature of space-time. Gulp.
• The Shakti and Shiva correspond to the two hemispheres in function as mirrors of a larger nonlocal consciousness (the soul). Kundalini,then, is in truth, the fusion of opposites that allows the feminine aspects of consciousness in everyone to come forward, an aspect missing in most people (including women!). Recent brain studies have shown that the left brain serves as a brake against the right brain. The right brain handles cosmic consciousness, the left serves process-based tasks and is highly limited (for a reason). Both hemispheres need each other to adequately express or mirror the full power in consciousness as a nonlocal phenomenon. The brain may be a transmitter more than a container for memory and all thought (maybe some thought, but not all).
• The awakened state provides all the potential needed to uncover what needs to be known about the phenomenon. One must always be devoted to pushing beyond belief to uncover the deeper truths.
• The awakened state, as described in the Pantagali sutras, allows the person to look at anything in nature and peer into it to see the information associated with it, allowing one to understand information that may not yet be available even to theoretical physicists (this happened to me). This also means that considerable insight can be had when dealing with people making those awakened good at energetic healing. You have to be as clear and neutral as possible to get an uncluttered undistorted signal. Many healers can only heal along those lines that they themselves are clear on. Many healers wind up projecting their neurosis onto their patients subconsciously.
• If you are dedicated to allowing the inner knowing alive in this state, you can release any belief that does not align to what is true (tension and emotional turbulence are clues). This involves learning how the right brain works. The right brain has a focus that can be broken by the focus that the left brain has (especially early in awakening). It is a skill learning how to defocus from the left brain so the right brain “open focus” can propagate. This works in opposite fashion to left brain operations. Books are written on this one aspect of learning how to not be the “doer.” There is a marvelous TED talk that supports my observation avout the role the right brain has in awakening (hint: it involves both).

I will keep it there as a short list. What are some of your observations? I would love to know.

-Image by author

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Kundalini Flu

There is a large and growing community of people who have experienced a phenomenon known as kundalini, tummo, golden flower, or awakening. This used to be an extremely rare occurrance, often requiring a guru or teacher in order to reach it. Because so many have managed to “flip the cosmic light switch,” a group of people who have had little to no grounding in yogic practices or methods are suddenly dealing with the rammifications of such an occurrence.

There are many symptoms tied to awakening, and most of them are listed on this blog on the symptoms page found along the top menu of this blog. One of the symptoms or effects from the energetic event that is kundalini is a range of near flu-like symptoms. I am going to go into understanding this symptom and ways to cope with it if it happens to you.

I have had to deal with this symptom in a variety of ways throughout my awakening process. Before the full “rising event” I was experiencing bouts of diarrhea that had no apparent cause, something that would come and go about every three to four weeks in the run up to the fuller awakening or rising event that took place in January of 2007. I even went to the doctor for it, but nothing could be found that could have been the culprit. It was suggested that I try adjusting my diet, a mention of perhaps too many fats in my diet, or that I might be eating at odd hours. It was a kind of mouse that roared.

After the full rising event happened, just a week or two after my visit to the doctor, most of my initial stomach distress went away. I hadn’t felt flu-like symptoms through my body, just the odd coming and going of diarrhea. I never felt really sick. This was different, I just didn’t know how it was different at that time. Since my stomach trouble seemed to resolve itself, and with the blast up my spine not long after that, I quickly forgot about the incidents of that distress.

My awakening process was gradual, one that came in stages over 5 months,so while the energy hadn’t risen, it was moving.

Over the next two years, however, I would have more symptoms much more like flu. These were never marked by an elevated temperature, at least not one that I would consider out of the normal. But I would feel something very close to flu symptoms of a mild sort.

I would sometimes feel warm, but not hot. I would feel nausea the most. I would also feel a mild but fairly persistent nausea as if my stomach felt on edge. I would lose my appetite sometimes, but I never would throw up or feel so bad that I wouldn’t be able to work. Often, it could be pushed into the background and ignored.

During the first five years after awakening I had many changes physiologically, and from time to time stomach upset would come and go. In some cases it would affect my appetite somewhat, and at other times my appetite would not be significantly impacted. I went through periods where I couldn’t eat meat, and there were times when I would crave certain foods. There was a period during high energy that eating spicy foods would make me feel blissed-out, but that would cease after about six months, only to be replaced by some other facet of reactivity with digestion.

My sense has been, watching my own process, has been that stomach issues have remained but have changed, waxing and waning depending on the way in which the energy, prana, has flowed or has been blocked along certain channels in what we know or call the light body.

I found that there were foods that I was directed to eat at one stage by a being who unceremoniously entered my bedroom early in the morning hours, showing me what some of them should be.

I was shown that during this early stage of awakening that I should eat eggs for protein. I was also shown cantaloupe. I ate both. I found that the cantaloupe had an unexpected yet welcomed effect of smoothing out the energy. This worked for about a year after this initial experience. I think the changeability was due to my own working through the knots or samscaras, suppressed emotion, that was rapidly being liberated from my system. My reaction to foods was based on my inner process I observe, dependent in part to the effects that stored emotion has in a body “lit up” by this excess of energy.

I continue to eat a lot of eggs as a protein source. I also have found duck eggs to be very good I suspect because ducks are a very calm bird. Their chemistry I suspect has an effect on what compounds wind up in their eggs.

Overall I have found bland foods, often grains, have been helpful. I have found oatmeal to be soothing while providing good amounts of fiber. At one point I lived on the stuff because of what I was going through digestively.

If you have read through my blog you might know about the five month period where I inexplicably lost my appetite. I began to fast and never felt hungry. I did eat a meal each week, though, because I felt like it might not be healthy to simply not eat. The very curious thing about this is that while I did lose weight, I didn’t lose as much as I thought I would. It was kind of bizarre, really. I had developed sensitivity to potato a couple of years previously and I suspected that I was mildly sensitive to wheat as well. I tried to avoid it, but never cut it (wheat) out completely.

My appetite returned after this period and I went on to eat like a horse, and a range of foods.

I found that high fiber foods were very good. There would be times when I would eat close to a vegetarian diet while at other times I ate like a caveman. I would say, though, that a plant diet has been the kindest to my system.

I would reccomend having a powdered milk protein that you can mix up in smoothies when your stomach feels bad. You can experiment with nutrients. I was using blue-green algae for nutrition as well as fruits and vegetables. I was given a juicer right at the time when I thought juicing might be a good thing to do. Sometimes a liquid diet is very soothing. I often took lunch at work as a shake or drink with good nutrition. I often did this by taking a thermos to work to provide this during my short lunch period.

It turns out that in the Hindu system, melon is used to “cool” kundalini. That means cucumber, watermelon, honeydew, and cantaloupe are all good. Cucumber is surprisingly nutritious and can be used to calm your system at the same time. Consider how you can include cucumber and these melons in your diet. While cantaloupe was prescribed specifically to me by a guide, you might find other melons as helpingto “cool” the energy as you experience. While melon didn’t calm my stomach, it had at a specific period in my process a positive overall effect on the energy as a whole. You could say it calmed my mind and response to the energy.

When worse comes to worse, pepto-bismal has calmed my stomach. I suspect that it should only be used occasionally, though. It may be that other things that coat the stomach can soothe it during periods of irritability.

Nausea is often felt as a result of the stomach producing mucus. Mucus is a way to protect the stomach lining, and mucus is what can cause nausea. For me, nausea is a sign that I am running strong energy or that blocks are being dissolved. I have learned that mild nausea is part of the experience. Small buts of some foods, mentioned above (bland grains-if you don’t have reactions or allergies to them).

Broths can be beneficial if you are having trouble with heavier foods. Try bone broths, or vegetable broths, created by cooking these things down. You can create flavor by first sauteeing them, browning some of the vegetables first. Consider using oils like roasted sesame, which will impart lovely flavor once the vegetables have been browned, then boiled. Other light soups can be very soothing. Miso has been particularly good. I can add ginger (which is soothing to the stomach) and garlic along with onion and other vegetables and udon noodles (Japanese noodles-found in Asian food markets most often) if you want to go all out.

It’s important to listen to your body through this process. Make adjustments when you do not feel well. What grains work? What protein sources feel the best to you? Are uncooked vegetables better or do cooked work better? I say this because awakening has a great deal of variability that its hard to say exactly where you are in how the energy is impacting you. It can change from day to day!

During times when I feel like not eating, often it has been eating that has been the very thing that helped calm my system. Nothing has led me to think that only a vegetarian diet was THE way to go forward, but a vegetarian diet is a healthy one provided you keep your diet balanced so you get enough protein and iron.

I suspect that some stomach problems are linked to awakening. Celiac and other conditions considered permanent I suspect can be brought on by a reaction to prana (this is not to say celuac IS a condition stemming from awakening only). I have observed a few historical cases of individuals who showed a level of awakening who also had stomach trouble.

I hope that this helps you and that it gives you some insights and ideas of your own for caring for your system. Additionally, I would be interested in your own experience, whether it is similar or different. This blog is about helping understand and come to grips with this phenomenon.

Blessings…