It was one of the hardest parts of my awakening experience. All of a sudden, awakening turned a corner and went into high gear. As if it wasn’t high enough! With it came a sudden influx of….adrenaline. But this was no ordinary adrenaline rush. Oh no. This was a constant flow of adrenaline as if some unknown button had gotten stuck in the on position. To say it was excruciating was a mild way to put it. I had days where I could not escape the rush that went on for days, weeks, months. It was awful, and I was very worried that if I didn’t do something about it, it could do some permanent damage. I would sit in the most comfortable chair I had where I could relax the most without falling asleep and try to get control over this crazy thing that was happening inside of me. Tears streamed down my face. I wanted to leave, exit, be done. It was no fun. I felt driven by this constant drumming of this chemical soup in my body. I wanted to leap out of my skin. Please let it be over, I thought.
I did a lot of physical exercise which did help some. This, though, was only temporary. As soon as I got off my bicycle or stopped my vigorous walk/run, it would all be back, pounding out its painful rhythm again. You see, it is entirely possible to wind up in a state of adrenal failure some call adrenal burn-out. A family friend who went through kundalini a few years ago described her harrowing experience with it and how she was able to break the spiral down into who knows what. For her, she simply surrendered. In the middle of the night, unable to take it anymore, she just asked the universe what it was she needed to do. And then it came….a deep sense of release and calm began to settle all around her. She had gotten out of the briar patch. She also had adrenal collapse or burn-out and had to take adrenal gland treatments to get it functioning properly again. Word to the wise. Don’t let this go on for too long. And if it does, be ready to talk to a doctor or other practicioner like a naturpath.
For me, I wish it had been so simple. However, my experience showed me how to balance on a very specific wave of awareness that involved tuning my body chemistry in just the right way. I don’t know if anyone going through this will relate, I can only say what it was I observed, which was that I was hyper aware of every little thing going on inside of me. I could feel each drop of adrenaline being released. I mean, I really mean, I could feel it. It was located near my kidneys. At first, I didn’t know what it was, but with a quick anatomy lesson, located the adrenals right over top the kidneys. I could then feel the drops of adrenaline, for they were now like drops instead of the steady flow they were in the months past, and could trace each one upward as it moved into my heart muscle and affected it. I could FEEL this. It was not imaginary. I learned, over hours and days and weeks, how to identify it because it was so persistent and strong. When you see enough of something like this, you learn a lot about it. So I tuned in, and I found that over time, the bliss response is actually a complex cocktail of different body chemicals.
I first identified something that served to bond me to things and people. I didn’t know what it was, but it was real. This chemical was stronger than many others. This was what I call the first step into bliss. This can also be accompanied by sexual feelings, or a leaning into bliss. But I was not fully there. As I slowly learned, there were other feelings that were matched in physiology, and there were two that were obvious to me. Once all of these different compounds were surrogate through my feelings, they were matched in my body through its chemistry. See? Feeling does it. But you have to WANT it so bad, you will do anything for it….and this is strong enough to counter what adrenaline is doing in your body. Again, this was what I did. Later, I did some research to see if there was anything out there to match what it was I was feeling with the first compound. I found the compound; oxytocin. This is the bonding hormone. It goes up when women are pregnant, specifically their last trimester and continues through until after the birth. It is present in both men and women and it is what makes us feel the rush of being head over heels in love with someone. Oxytocin is interesting because it is also a neurotransmitter! Wowza, huh? Yes, so it is not just important to how we feel, it is involved in transmitting important signals in the brain. Love signals perchance? I think it is most certainly likely. Then along cam what I suspect was either dopamine or endorphins. I am less sure about these, but I know they were involved. I learned this balance by hook and crook over a period of some months. Once I got the first step, the other steps became much more rapid and the process began to fall together much easier with each step taken.
It was like listening to a chorus in my body. I would FEEL the bonding hormone. Just FEEL it. Then something else was needed to balance that and broaden it, too. THAT would then be felt. Another voice was joined and suddenly I would find I was atop this wave. I felt BETTER! And I will tell you, it was not easy STAYING on that wave. I fell off LOTS> But I would get back up and get back on and each time, I got better at it. this simply goes on and on until I can return to it with less and less effort. The truth I will tell you, in MY experience, was that none of this actually countered adrenaline. Nope! This is what is so amazing to me. Adrenaline was like….my enemy for a while. this giant gorilla of a thing ready to clobber me….and did. Many times! I have the bruises and a couple of T-shirts. I am happy to give you one of them if you want. I joke, but what is no joke is that once all of the compounds were balanced, adrenaline was an important part of the overall chemical chorus in my body. Yep! adrenaline was STILL there, but it was now no longer the ONLY juice running my body! Now, all of the chemistry was tuned to this new condition I found myself. Pretty wild. Adrenaline helps to create bliss…..but it has to be in the right proportion.
We associate adrenaline with fear. We can, however begin to associate very different things with it if we just let ourselves. For me, adrenaline now has a different role to play. This is alchemy, my friends, pure and simple. What once was horrible, turned golden. Kundalini makes it so that you can see all of this under a microscope. So use that microscope to your own best advantage! Let what might have blown everything out of proportion be the force that now gives you an up-close view of your physiology! Brilliant!
Just settle in and relax as best as you can and then think of something that would make you feel really good. In fact, I often found I didn’t have to think of anything from memory, I just KNEW how to feel different. But why hadn’t I felt different before? My sense is that we have latent fear in us that is being swirled around, is getting ready to flee our bodies, but before it does so, it gets mixed up, kind of like silt in a river clouds the river for a while. the body is simply responding to a somewhat over-blown effect that is now working overtime. the other side to all of this is adrenaline kind of forces you to learn how to be…..different. Can you do it by just surrendering? I suspect you can. Maybe that way is the simplest and best. For me, I am curious about how everything works. I am the kid who took things apart. That is how I am . Curious. For you, who knows? But the bottom line is to go with what you feel is right. And who knows, you might find that you do something completely different. You know, if you ask, it will come to you. In one way or another, through dream, direct cognition, a voice in your head or heart, or someone dropping off an article without ever knowing what you are going through, it will come.
Okay, just felt the need to put this all down for the just in case column. I hope it helps someone out there!
UPDATE 3/17/2014: I was watching a presentation being made by a man who has done research into brain function and he explains something that I have experienced quite clearly and offer it here for your consideration as it relates to getting a grip on your body/mind and brain connection. He explains that there are substances called neuro-peptides that are compounds that turn thought/feeling into a physical representation of that energetic quotient in consciousness into a very real physical response in the brain/body. For every thought you have, there is a specific orchestration and tuning of neuro-peptides in the brain in order to create a unique and very specific representation of that feeling (which I am assuming is consciousness/energy and thus not entirely physical in the way we normally think of it…although it iS energy) in the body. This then gives each feeling, thought, and emotion, its own fingerprint. Imagine the body taking what it is your consciousness decides to feel and making a chemical representation of that feeling in the body. Imagine the brain as like a kitchen and it is getting signals on the nanosecond-scale….trillions of these signals from all parts of you, including your own consciousness (not merely feeling physical sensation only through the nerve endings), and in this kitchen, the brain is putting together unique recipes, like a short order cook, but each order that comes in is itself highly unique, custom-made even. One recipe asks for no salt, but extra mayo, or some barley, and in another the veggies should be steamed, not stir-fried. There is an amazing level of detail involved in all of this and the brain is engaged in helping to create a physical representation of what it is you are feeling. One the one side, the brain does take in sensations from the gross body, but there is another level where the feeling parts of the self feed into all of this also. Its amazing, but it also points to how you yourself can choose, were you to want to, to shift and change the character of your feelings so that your body will output a different result, a different message. I experienced this deep and detailed level of signal processing in awakening and I know that if I can become aware of it, it is in all of us to be do. What I experienced was merely a larger flow of conscious energy in my awareness, which I think aided in being able to detect these seemingly miniscule changes taking place in my mind/brain/body/consciousness. In the case of adrenaline, something was happening to keep adrenaline pouring in as if I had no control. This was itself the result of kundalini serving to highlight ever little thing happening in my body, a good thing on one side, but a bad thing when I still had latent fear/trauma in my conscious energy field. The body was merely doing what it had always done, which was to generate the signals to release the chemistry that my consciousness was sending to it. When I learned how to feel different, my body began, immediately, to respond to those new signals, those new feelings.
At a site managed by the National Institute of Health it described neuropeptides this way:
“The discovery of neuropeptides is founded on groundbreaking research in physiology, endocrinology, and biochemistry during the last century and has been built on three seminal notions: (1) peptide hormones are chemical signals in the endocrine system; (2) neurosecretion of peptides is a general principle in the nervous system; and (3) the nervous system is responsive to peptide signals. These historical lines have contributed to how neuropeptides can be defined today: “Neuropeptides are small proteinaceous substances produced and released by neurons through the regulated secretory route and acting on neural substrates.” Thus, neuropeptides are the most diverse class of signaling molecules in the brain engaged in many physiological functions.”
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21922398
Now that is a more generic description, but since neuropeptides have only recently been discovered (last 40 years) what is the more current understanding of these compounds in the body?
Larry Young, in his video on neuropeptides explains:
“So the brain has multiple different kinds of chemical communicators or transmitters; one of those is neuropeptides. A neuropeptides is a chain of amino acids that is released either into the blood where it activates receptors in our body, or directly into the brain where it can activate receptors in our brain. When a neuropeptide is released it binds to the receptor and that activates a series of events inside the cell, inside the neuron, and then that causes that neuron to become active. If that neuron is placed within a particular circuit, it can activate that circuit. So now you can begin to see how you can have a single molecule released from one neuron activating another neuron, and then activating a circuit and then a circuit can change an emotion and a behavior.”
Source: http://www.dnalc.org/view/2388-Neuropeptides-can-Change-Emotions-.html
Based on how Young is describing it, you can begin to see how if a neuron is itself activating a circuit in the electrical/neurological system connected to the brain, this is essentially also what the energy of consciousness is doing. This is what I have observed. I am not a researcher, and do not wish to be, I am offering you my insight and you can take it or leave it. But I do and have experienced energy as made up of a series of switches, which are actually activated by feeling that will themselves serve to allow the flow of universal energy into consciousness. the body, in this description is doing the same thing. This description is one I made as a result of my own experience in earlier blog entries. We tend to think of energy as nonphysical, but I experience it as another state of matter, which of course it is. As we know in physics, all matter is composed of energy! Within our own consciousness lies a switching mechanism that is actually composed of our own thoughts. We let in certain things and exclude others. We do this selectively and based on what we believe is important. We do this in regards to day to day experience and we also do it down to the micro-level, and the body responds perfectly by putting out the chemistry that those feelings and thoughts represent. Getting a grip on what is within you, your beliefs and biases, etc., is THE way to shift your body and brain chemistry for the better. This is itself a form of freedom. And really, the great things is the body is this amazing tool, and like a computer, we do not have to get down into the source code, down to the actual calculations being made each fraction of a second in order to appreciate and experience the changes as they happen. But it may be that if you understand that this is not something that you are a slave to, but CAN change, then knowing how your choice to feel differently can actually begin to dismantling an older means of being and feeling that did not serve you as well as a less cluttered and more direct way of feeling and knowing. ~P.
Waking The Infinite 