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
Waking The Infinite 
My husband has a friend who follows a yogi. This fellow told me his yogi told him that he needed to follow him and only him (it’s been years). To stick to that one path rather than venture out, trying this or that. Reminds me of religions in a way. But then again, I didn’t seek spirituality, it found me. I recently discovered a woman whose Kundalini awakening was a bit like mine (happened spontaneously) and something she said resonated. That if you, as a soul, set up the possibility to have a Kundalini Awakening during your life, it’s very likely to happen. But if your soul hasn’t planned to awaken, you could meditate daily for decades and won’t experience a Kundalini awakening. (I know a bit about my own prebirth planning).
One of my observations is a person can either change their physical structure’s misalignments or disease by changing the energetic template holding them in place by healing beliefs. Or through physical manipulation coupled with intuitive insight, discover what’s preventing the body from self healing or aligning, and coax it back into equilibrium. After my hypnosis sessions these days, my body goes through an integration phase that includes physical realignment and changes. I might heal beliefs around blame, and the next thing I know, my knees that have been creaky no longer hurt. One time on the acupuncture table I was suddenly flooded with deep feelings of remorse, and said I was sorry a ton of times as I bawled.
I’d say I’m an absolute westerner who quite unexpectedly awakened and is still very much in process when it comes to adjusting to living harmoniously with Kundalini energy. Whether or not I’m turning into a yogini or not I’ll leave up to someone else to decide.
Some days I think we should just hunt down the gurus and let it be known that they can no longer have followers, lol! My use of “yogi” is a little tongue and cheek, too, coming from a self-described mechanic.
I agree that there may well be an inner curriculum plan for a life, one that strikes me as fairly practical in purpose. I am surprised it took so long for things to arrange themselves, but it is what it is.
I think with every release there is a corresponding release from the potential of disease because of the way our chemistry forms sickness when the energetic signals are skewed by blocked energy. Every release leads to calmer and calmer energy, but stronger, too. Instead of a frothing sea, it is getting more like a calm lake. I need a calm lake becauae the vibration is so deep that I don’t know what would happen otherwise! Don’t always know how to handle the energy, but I just shine on and look to use it for beneficial purposes.
You know, I have asked a question from the Universe regarding the twin flame drama, because I also got sucked in it not too long ago (I still don’t know why this phenomenon is becoming so prevalent now?). I have experienced enough in life to know that anything that generates this amount of desire and attachment has it roots in karmic entanglement and brings us deeper into the matrix. But it is still quite difficult to shake it and it proves to be a very good mirror into my shadow. I also can’t deny the fact that it really amplified my spiritual work, pushed me into more meditation and self analysis. So I am still unsure if it is entirely “negative”. Also I see that many who were ignorant, have been pulled onto some kind of spiritual path due to finding themselves in twin flame struggles. What do you think about those positive aspects? Maybe that was originally the whole point of it, but it got lost in the romantic BS and the pink fluff.
It still amazes me, when the answers are given so beautifully: I was thinking about this subject, and you came into my mind, because I remembered that you had experienced this, and you are few of those that I trust to remain objective and true to your higher self… and a few days later your new post comes out, mentioning it. What is more amazing, a feeling kept nagging me that this TF obsessive pull might be some kind of spiritual test meant for those who are awakening and as started researching a little bit, I came to another post, where I bumped into YOUR comment on the subject (chemistry, karma, shadow) A big LOL.
I know I am like a child in the toy-store, but the way it all comes together is still so fascinating to me.
Anything you will ever get from me will usually be based on either my experience or opinion, and I don’t always know how far anyone can take what I say unless or until there is enough experience to render opinions unecessary. I always say to rely on your own experience. It seems that even when we get it wrong we have this way of finding our way through. Maybe its more important that we remain dedicated to releasing the karma so we can get to the good stuff, which for me comes down to being real. Clear.
There is no doubt, Eve, that these connections open us to the soul…both ours and those whom we happen to be connected with. That alone is enough to make me lose my mind because the soul is excruciatingly beautiful when felt in its fullness. It’s kind of like this really amazing dish that gets cooked up. It’s absolutely real and wonderful and amazing. Every piece of that fluff is real (I love the fluff-I could keep my nose in that stuff all day, lol!). But it’s like this dish that’s the most extravagant and real and true meal served up is served on this slightly moldy or at the very least, stale white bread. What’s more, the person serving it up readily admits that the bread is stale and kind of cheap while the other part is over the top amazing. The bread is the karma and the inside is the soul and its love. It’s the most confounding thing. And it’s enough I think to lure us into the game and keep us doing everything we can to get rid of that stale bread.
I sometimes don’t know what to think. My experience was the most confounding thing ever. I didn’t have one but three of these connections. I also had a vivid dream about awakening in the months prior to the full onset of incandescence that foretold the three connections and their basic character. It was very matter of fact even though I didn’t realize what that part of the dream meant at the time. Three people occupying two showers in a temple that was my temple set atop a mountain spring whose waters rushed out from a rocky outcrop. One shower on one side (Pengala) and one on the other (Ida). These women were showering in the waters that flowed there. Was that my energy? Or was it just where I was tapping the Universal flow? Maybe the answer is yes in each instance. That is mysterious. Maybe it is good that it remain so.
I am a bit jealous of people who awaken who don’t have the “twin” concept as part of their experience. Still, I see their experiences involving encounters with god and goddess archetypes as a way to work through the wrinkles in the self in order to clear the pipes of dross.
One of my connections was forced. It isn’t something I talk about, maybe I should, but the connection really was made in a way where I was not able to give consent. I would not have chosen this person. It may be difficult to believe how tjis could even be possible, but it showed me how if you just pull someone in close enough into their soul energy you CAN make a bond that can be very hard to break given even just a little karma. What is so interesting in this case is while she kept saying how we had been chasing each other lifetime to lifetime, I had only one lifetime in this reality where something had happened. When I looked at each life I saw patterns that reflected who I was and had been and who I am today, all of which are fairly consistent along certain lines. None of it meshed with her story at all. So much of it had to do with an inability to face her own responsibility to her own soul and her alignment (or lack of it) to it. I had my own issues that also had to do with exactly the same elements, but just without the matching karma. We weren’t the same at all. In fact the karma got started when I saw, as a magistrate in Spain, her and her brother brought before the court for slander and fraud. I saw her (as a him in that life) as a dangerous person who was going to say ANYTHING she felt would advance her cause. To me, she gad it coming to be locked up away from the public. Thing is, that was done with a sliver of malice. Whoops. This time, I am much less polarized. Be fair to people, but that also includes being honest. It is harder than it seems.
Usually people will have recall concerning the karma that created the union. I did with one other. It was matter of fact and quite clear. But with the forced one, there was just this very brief encounter in this one life. When she began to describe a lifetime she believed we had lived together in, I had already had recall of all lifetimes lived for the century prior and after the period that she was describing. Since awakening I have had a number recollections along with recollections prior to awakening, some which were in the dream state and were clearly reincarnational material and there wasn’t even room for the life she describes. I was living as a freed slave at that time. There was no way the relationship could have ever happened as she described. The more I thought about it the more it made sense that the themes in the life she described were just her own patterns, her own stuff. In fact she tried very hard to recreate the very same sorts of tragic outcomes in her imagined life with me in this life.
I got to see the ugly underbelly of what happens when a person who has no business waking up does so and is constitutionally incapable of facing her own shadow. This led to a person spinning deceit after deceit about me for things that were actually hers. It was a form of cosmic projection writ large against the backdrop of awakening. It exploded every illusion I had about awakening only happening to those who have reached a certain level of maturity. Awakening is just a switch, most often carefully hidden in us, but anyone can flip that switch. It was one of the most dangerous experience of my life for how she would proclaim her love and at the same time spin these crazy stories made of whole cloth that sought to slander, ruin, and destroy. When I started documenting these lies she responded that she had a constitutional right to free speech (really) and she would continue saying whatever she wanted to say. The standard in our culture is if a woman says it, we believe her. What happens when that person is a sociopath with no conscience whatsoever? It strains credulity. Better to step away. She quickly moved on to the next person.
But here is the thing. I was able to see how this fueled one of the most persistent and powerful connections. It was like it had a gravity of a black hole. I had fallen in love with her soul, but her personality was miles from what her soul was. How is that possible? My power and downfall is in seeing people’s souls. I spend most of my time looking away. Maybe it is because I am not done with my own stuff. Oh, I experienced something similar with my higher self in the beginning. I could see how different I was in places than He was. My early attempts at learning to be like Him were hard. And yet, I sensed He represented the me I was struggling to become. Every time I took on that better light, things got easier, better. I had, though, lived a life prior to that whuch hadn’t been in alignment with some central themes that made him…Him. That was my life prior to awakening.
If anything, waking me up put me in closer touch to that higher self and it catalyzed a release process that has been hugely helpful. It has also shown me that the source of all life lives in a restrained but powerfully vibrant state of desire. To me it feels part and parcel of its magnificent creative potential and activity. I feel it every time as ready for union because it IS in union itself. I know that same union exists as the divine spark in me of the Ida and Pengali currents merging to create the sacred third, the child, the Christ or Cosmic Consciousness in the central channel. It seems to me that desire isn’t the problem, but how unclear we are with that desire. The more we clear, the more clear the desire seems to be and it has fewer pitfalls. It maybe isn’t so turbulent or chaotic, but then the flow is less restricted, like putting your finger over a garden hose. It is the same flow, its higher pressure because of the restriction the karma puts on the plumbing. And what is karma deep down? To me, it always feels like a resistance to the divine within…that clear state, a deeper more true way of being. We accept things that are not true in regards to the universe, spirit….and those clog our precious temple or vessels because of our misunderstanding. All of this seems to be house-cleaning for the arrival or presence of the divine within us…which also seems to be in all other things too.
Through all of it, I could not hope to break that spell that had been thrust upon me, and lived with it for years. I realized that the passion I thought I had for another was the passion that I am…on my own. Because of how we go about things here, we wind up projecting our ideals on others that we should just be loving in ourselves. Not narcissism, but authentic self love. Some people love others passionately because there is something they can’t stand about themselves, a deep unacknowledged glitch that the other doesn’t have and sometimes we fall in love with that, telling ourselves they will seep into us via osmosis and make us better.
I actually thought I could just love this lady to health…she was the picture of imnense self loathing and inner hatred. Me, I was hopeful and foolish. I wasn’t up to the task. Maybe that is because all of this is an inside job. Personal. As such, don’t take what I say as gospel. Take what works and leave the rest. To thine own self be true.
I suspect I rattle on as much as I do because I have neen living like a monk ever since. I will admit I woukd jump in if given the chance even though I know how foolish that would be. So chop wood, carry water. Normally, I am very quiet. Maybe we need an online community. Or maybe I do, lol!
You are so funny. After spending a few months with monks, I was in fact planning to go live in a monastery a few years down the line, lol. But I recently realized that it might just make it too easy to bypass things, the real stuff is tested here, choosing every day again and again when we are faced with business, family, money decisions.
Thank you for sharing those experiences and for not cutting your answer short, it was beautiful to read. And helpful. Sometimes I remember things that I read here much later, when I encounter the experience, and it makes it more humane, soft, also helps to keep it real.
Please don’t take my comment about fluff as negative, I am more emotional than I care to admit. It may just reflect the fact that I have a slight problem with the amount of ego, neediness and (self)deceit that is built and promoted around this subject in online circles, explained away with romantic feelings.
Anyway, we can’t really escape our karma unless our evolution grants us such deep understanding, that the lesson is not necessary anymore. So, the relationships and experiences that are meant to be, will probably be. Still, I remain cautious with this beautifully intense, but obsessive, hard to manage, very up and down, emotionally taxing experience I am going through now, trying to face myself all the way.
Relationships and love with the right partner can be a beautiful testament to the love of God, and are also the ultimate learning ground. I, too, would say jump in, if a good one comes along.
I am down for the community!
I would have lived in a monestary if it hadn’t been for the fact that….well…that it was a monestary! No, to be serious, I think it is absolutely possible to get important things done in a life like that, I just think that for me, depending on the group or school, there would be some stuff I would just need to go it alone on. Maybe having that “voice ” the kept reminding me not to join. It wasn’t until the cosmic flower popped open that all that stuff from early life began to make sense.
No, Im not taking your fluffness as negative. I’m maybe making light of how much I have relished how the divine current has stimulated my senses and physiology. Maybe too much…maybe not enough. I was always one to exit the burning building by walking through opening the windows to make doubly certain that the fires would rage and cleanse. I never felt running from the flames was a way to overcome them. Not that this is an easy way, but it always felt most natural to me. When I read about Tibetan tantrism, the “pure” stuff, I see their way is mine. Overcome by no longer being commanded by it. I learned to handle crazy bliss without thinking it needed an object or purpose beyond a new way to be.
If you are talking in terms of the “twin” phenomenon, then I am with you on that one. It seemed more like karma creating chemistry with the soul flooding in and making it all feel destined….when it was more this quantum leap into an ecstatic state in the midst of a poverty (karma) that something was trying to useto reform us with. Like drinking from a fire hose or a sudden encounter with a being a hundred thousand years in advance of us. What are we to do with that? I think it is to learn best we can. Others create sweet myths that never felt like they quite fit. I’m no longer cynical about it, I just find it a bit of a mystery.
And there I go rambling on instead of going to sleep!
‘You don’t need a yogi to be a yogi or yogini’. That is perfect! If I had to nominate one lesson for me to learn in this lifetime, it is precisely this one. And, if I have learnt that and nothing else, well this life will have been worthwhile.
I said a bit about this in my interview. It’s about 12 years since I formally resigned from the Buddhist order/organisation that I had been part of for, well, too long. It was non-monastic, non-celibate, but still required commitment to Buddhism as interpreted and practised within that group. It is now crystal clear to me that leaving all that behind was one of the main conditions needed for the kundalini to awaken. In other words, were I still to be part of that group, with its teacher/guru, its do-s and don’t-s, there’s no way that the energy would have appeared.
There’s a quote somewhere from Terence McKenna, who says basically that he doesn’t do ‘belief’, because once you ‘believe’ something, you automatically preclude the other half of possibilities. This is the trouble with following a pre-ordained path, a guru. I needed to have a truly open mind, to be able to wake up in the morning and feel free to think, feel, and do anything. Absolutely anything.
A few years after formally resigning, I began to feel this niggle. I hadn’t done it yet, not completely. And I needed to. Then I remembered: the kesa. A kesa is a thing you’d wear around your neck when you were teaching meditation, Dharma, or suchlike, to other people. It signified you were the real deal(!). It was still there, in a little box, and it needed to go.
I took it out, and walked the 90 minutes to a Neolithic burial chamber on top of a hill near my home (what fortune to be here!). It was a cold, March morning. I lit a little fire, and consigned the kesa to the ashes. As I did so, a flock of geese flew low overhead, in magical v-formation. I always take these as magical birds, and took it as an omen.
It was after this that things really began to motor. I started to experience a bunch of serious synchronicities, and other events came together leading to the kundalini waking up about three years afterwards.
Maybe the guru/yoga/lineage trip worked for Tibetans. But I know of little good that has come out of westerners following this system, really. Our deep conditioning differs, our collective history has followed a long path that almost makes us a different kind of animal to a Tibetan following a tradition with its roots in medieval Asia. That’s how it seems to me, anyhow.
Insightful and so well put!
In struggling at a certain phase during the first couple of years of awakening, I was having a series of people show up to help me through. One, who I call my “zen guy’ said how all of the efforts of pilgrims, monks, priest, priestesses, yogi and yoginis was never lost, that it was all accruing to us in such a way that no prayer was in vain, no meditation lost: it accrued to the whole. He also pointed out that we all benefited from this, and explained its not as hard as it once was. A threshold had been crossed, an energetic threshold. It was a way of saying “You have it easier now: just step into the new state like a new skin.” And this was firsthand experience for which I can obtain no corroberation, only the sense that perhaps there is this field effect that we might do well to look out for if only to test to see if it is true. The ancients all descri e versions of it, so maybe.
I think it is hard to know what will wind up bearing fruit in pur experience. I seed planted here might take a lifetime to mature.
I am certain my past experiences, especially the last three centuries worth, helped set me up for awakening. So maybe for as much as I say about no guru or method, maybe at an earlier time in development all that mantra and ppsitions and devotion sets us up for that moment when we step out into the wild blue yonder.