My Kundalini Awakening
First of all, let it be known that the awakening of kundalini energy does not result in enlightenment. If it did, you’d find me writing this article as an enlightened being, which I most certainly am not…though I am ever curious.
A respected teacher on this subject, Gopi Krishna, maintained that a kundalini awakening is a necessary occurrence to facilitate enlightenment, however it does not directly result in, or guarantee it. For each person who has had a kundalini awakening, the process is different just as each one of us is different and unique. The process of awakening does have some typical hallmark experiences shared among many who have had awakenings (rush of energy, orgasmic sensation, tingling), but no two experiences are ever the same. For some, the energy doesn’t awaken within this lifetime, for others it gently awakens over time with almost imperceivable subtlety, and for others it is an immediate, undeniable, and life changing experience. That’s what it was for me, immediate and undeniable.
The experience contradicted everything I thought and believed to be true. The awakening forced me to reframe and refocus the lens through which I saw and experienced my life. The motivations, associations and paradigms through which my understanding and desire systems of the world were organized had been blown open to a new dimension of reality. This presented a profound contradiction for me, that something so intangible now felt more real to me than anything I had ever encountered in my material existence.
HARDWIRED FOR AWAKENING
As human beings we are hardwired for the potential of a kundalini awakening. Just as our legs are designed and predisposed to walking, our nervous systems are designed for and predisposed to the awakening of higher consciousness. A kundalini awakening is in essence, an evolution of energy and consciousness coming to experience and identify itself more intimately within our being.
For some it has been a life crisis, others’ child birth, a psychedelic experience, or practicing yoga & meditation techniques that tipped the scales to initiate an awakening. For me, I believe my kundalini awakening came about as a result of my participation in the technology of kundalini yoga back in 2013-2014. I am still coming to understand and transform as a result of it to this day. I’m not certain if my practice of kundalini yoga facilitated my awakening, or if it was my karmic destiny for the energy to activate within this lifetime - with, or without the facilitation of the practice. I know there are many people who practice and teach Kundalini Yoga who have never experienced a kundalini awakening.
The how and why the awakening happened to me is not as interesting as it is to learn about the energy itself and what it has to teach me. What I do know, is that continuing my practice of Kundalini Yoga while my awakening process was taking place was exactly what my being needed to allow the energy to run its course properly and safely. Its as if the ancient yogis who kept record of these kriyas, mantras, mediations and techniques knew exactly what the awakening process within us needed to more effectively express and unveil itself. For that, I will forever be in gratitude for the practice of Kundalini Yoga, Kriya Yoga, meditation, pranayama and the teachers who guide me in my journey whether in person, or through a book.
TRANSFORMATION
I was about a year into my Kundalini Yoga practice and I was inspired by the degree of healing that it was facilitating, not only in my physical body, but my energetic, emotional and spiritual bodies as well. It was as if the practices were making use of this evolved current of energy running through me to facilitate healing and to transform me into a more evolved state of being. Traumas, challenges, limitations and stories lines I had been unconsciously, subconsciously and consciously carrying with me were suddenly revealing themselves clearly and vaporizing. A previously inaccessible and unacknowledged part of my being was revealing itself to me - my soul, my consciousness. It existed higher than my mind and had compassion and resolution for the mind’s predicament.
The awakening occurred in late 2013, however I always remark that the awakening took place between 2013 & 2014. It was a long process punctuated by polarized experiences throughout, serving as rites of passage. A defining event that seemed to initiate the process was in 2013 when I was laying down in savasana after a yoga class. I was relaxed, eyes closed and peaceful, the teacher walked by me and touched my shoulders to offer a relaxing adjustment. As he walked away, Immediately energy shot up my spine and flooded my body with the feeling of warm, cosmically satisfying, electrified, liquid ecstasy. I was beyond self-consciousness. I was in hyper-cosmic awareness, experiencing universally connected consciousness. I didn’t care if anyone saw me writhing on the floor in a full body orgasm. I wasn’t even sure if I was moving, or writhing for that matter. Perhaps it was a sensation contained within my being. You can’t really grab it and examine it in the way you would something material. I think it lasted for about 5 minutes, but felt like hours, or lifetimes. Somehow, I was able to leave the room and get myself home without anyone saying anything to me, asking me if I was ok, or what was going on. It’s possible nobody even noticed, but from my perspective a cosmic event had occurred.
For many weeks following that event I would shift into spontaneous movements, experience ecstasy, sense myself surrounded in light, or that light was moving through my body into certain areas of my body, like my left ear. I had visions in meditation of Ganesha, various mandalas and symbols. This was happening both when I was home by myself and inconveniently while in public. I’d shake, vibrate, cry, hear people’s thoughts, feel their emotions and more. On one occasion, in a Hatha yoga class, I began moving between what felt like multiple dimensions of reality. There was my 3 dimensional reality within that class, which would be spontaneously interrupted and transport my awareness into an isolated vision of myself as a crumbling statue distributing its molecules into space. During brief moments of returning to reality, the teacher asked me if I was ok, he even asked me if I was drunk - how were either of us to know what what was going on with me at the time? It was clear I was disrupting the class. I didn’t have the level of awareness to respond to him beyond asking him to please not focus, or direct attention onto me. I just wanted him to leave me alone so I could allow what needed to happen to happen. The guy on the mat next me left the room, unable to continue his practice next to me. I still don’t fully know what happened that day. Thankfully, I am able to reflect back upon it with awe and humor, instead of shame, regret and embarrassment. The power of the experience overshadowed any self consciousness.
This unfolding process made me feel more loving, intelligent and wise as if I was remotely connected into a consciousness that understood more than I could ever learn in this lifetime. I was opening up to access its bounty. I could intuit however, that it had more to offer me than I could currently handle, or understand and held itself back. It had its own intelligence and discernment on how it wanted to express itself through me. I was voraciously reading and digesting easily, what I would otherwise consider to be very complex scientific and spiritual concepts, books and material. I was writing, creating and rarely sleeping. Poetry, music and art moved me in a way that I had never before had a sensitivity toward. I saw certain art as alive now, not just a commodity. I was able to see beyond all my self deceptions, self hatred, I understood death and transformation in a way that was devoid of fear, it contained only love and trust.
Over the course of a few weeks the intensity of the spiritual experience lessened, as did my ability to tap into this universal wisdom. I reclaimed a sustainable balance in my mundane awareness, I was no longer tapping into, or being thrown into the vibration of those higher states of awareness beyond my control, however I was forever changed. My memory of the experience was so real and undeniable, it facilitated a profound change in me, my understanding of the universe and my place in it. I was briefly able to peer over the edges of my existential limitations and gain a new understanding of an eternality and love within my being at it’s most foundational level, which is immeasurable in its vastness and truth.
WORKING THROUGH CRISIS
As beautiful as that all sounds, it also ushered in the biggest existential crisis of my life to date, for which I would change nothing and am now quite grateful for, but at the time felt like my life and world was falling apart. Because it was! Looking back, I now closely resonate with the reference spiritual teachers and texts refer to often which is to “die, while still living”. Something in me was dying and the unchanging essence was being reborn to a new evolved level of understanding.
With all of that heightened awareness during the time of my awakening, my whole value system changed over the course of a few weeks and months. What was of the most relevant importance to me a few weeks ago, now seemed shortsighted and irrelevant lined up next to the enormity of my recent spiritual experience. For example, the fear and reluctance I always held about leaving my long cultivated, but spiritually draining professional career, was now without question seen as an immediate necessity for the sake of my spiritual health. A top priority, despite the situational, financial and professional implications that change would have on my life. Situational and financial discomfort seemed like nothing in comparison to the lesson I just learned and needed to assimilate into my being.
My family certainly thought I was on the fringes of sanity, as so much about me changed in the matter of a few months and I was having a hard time keeping up with what was no longer true, real, or acceptable for me. I was gaining an understanding that regardless of the profound inconvenience it presented, in order to move forward living my life with this new awareness, in truth, with integrity and balance, it required a purging of much that wasn’t true, integral, healthy, or balanced. All I can say is that I am grateful for the fact that I was living in Los Angeles, California. Despite what may seem like a city so focused on “image”, there is also a level of acceptance for spiritual exploration that allowed me to feel nurtured, in safe incubation space during this time in a way that my previous city of Boston, Massachusetts would never have been able to offer.
In addition to a full scale renegotiation of my personal life, professional life and my standard of living, I was experiencing some strange, tremors, pain, stiffness and discomfort in my body, heightened anxiety and emotional instability. Of the kundalini yoga teachers I felt comfortable talking about this with to seek guidance, none of them had experienced anything of this sort. So, I turned to literature of yogis and spiritual teachers who detailed their experiences of kundalini energy and kundalini awakening. Thankfully, I didn’t have to dive too far back into history to find some literature and information that helped me understand that what I was experiencing were “awakening symptoms”. These are an evolutionary byproduct if you will, of the transformative experience I was undergoing as a result of my Kundalini Awakening.
Much like the process of a caterpillar needing to go through a cellular and atomic metamorphosis to become a butterfly, we as humans, when the kundalini is activated begin a metamorphosis process into a subtler level of spiritual evolution. Teachers who have shared their wisdom and experience related to this energy: Gopi Krishna, Gabriel Cousins, John Selby and even Carl Jung helped me gain understanding and feel comforted and supported during a profound period of isolated crisis in my life. A crisis that my friends, family and teachers had no experience with, or understanding of. In addition to turning to yogic literature to gain understanding of my experiences, I looked to modern medical doctors to help me gain understanding of what might be happening physically in my body. I was prescribed a number of medications (anti-depressants, anti inflammatories, etc.) to bring relief to what were defined as ‘mysterious symptoms’ of the nervous system and immune system, with no known cause, or cure. I felt no relief from the use of these medications and intuitively sensed that following the directives would be detrimental to the healthy expression of kundalini energy that was continuing to make itself known to me and continuing to take up residence in my being. I felt very much on my own in a realm that modern medicine did not acknowledge, explore, understand, or accept.
That inclination was further supported by the dismissive response I received from a few medical doctors when I explained to them I had recently experienced a kundalini awakening. Their reaction lead me to think I might risk getting myself committed if I share too much about my experience. This also gave me awareness that they saw no correlation between the experience I had and the challenges I was now facing physically and emotionally, despite my strong intuitive sense that the two were interrelated. Interrelated, but not necessarily indicative of a disease or disfunction, but perhaps reflective of a transformation process taking place that was putting stress on my body. There was nothing in their protocol that accounted for supporting, or managing a kundalini awakening, despite it being as natural of a potential within the human body as child birth is, albeit occurring less often.
Irony abounds that the Caduceus is now used as a symbol that represents the modern medical practice in many ways. You see the symbol on ambulances and outside of hospitals. The Caduceus, (symbol of staff with two snakes inter-coiling upward to a crowned eagle) is originally considered to be the symbol reflecting the ultimate healing that takes place through the awakening of kundalini energy. The two snakes representing the Ida and Pingala energy channels and the staff representing the Shushmana energy channel. Those are the three main energy channels, or nadis associated with the awakening of kundalini energy. In order to more fully align with the intended understanding that this type of natural phenomena facilitates as symbolized by the caduceus, the practice of modern, allopathic medicine, would require a foundational reworking of the fundamental causes of, and assigned methods for treating disease and facilitating healing. In my experience based on my growing intuition and the recommendation of holistic practitioners, incorporating massage, yoga/meditation, acupuncture, sound healing, herbs and cold water therapy helped bring and maintain balance to my body in a way that supported the energy’s expression and work.
IN REFLECTION
Now, being able to reflect back in 2021, back to 2014 I have seen a profound transformation take place within my being and in my life that I, in no way think has completed, or yet fully expressed itself. Perhaps further evolutionary punctuations with kundalini energy will express itself within me during this lifetime, perhaps not. I have learned from the teachers who write and speak on this topic, that chasing the experiences of a kundalini awakening can be a trap of sense gratification that inhibits growth and the further expression of the energy itself. Much like a heroin addict is described as constantly chasing that first high, one can start to think that awakening kundalini is about claiming and reclaiming the ecstatic experiences that punctuate the awakening process. That the ends are equal to the means, but they aren’t. It is about continuing to live your life in awareness, with the ups and downs, continuing to “chop wood and carry water” as the parable suggests. Maintaining the understanding that our work to be done is here in the material realm, even though the multidimensional experiences we have are often preferred. Doing so without losing connection with that part of you that is transforming, evolving and connected to something higher than your mind. Knowing the energy may never express itself quite the same within you again and assimilating the experiences into your being so the whole process can serve as a guiding intelligence in your life.
I have a handful of books to recommend that helped me through my spiritual awakening process. Some informed me about the energy itself, provided case studies and real life experiences of individuals no different from me going through their awakening process: Spiritual Nutrition, Gabriel Cousens; Kundalini Rising, Selby, et al.; Kundalini The Evolutionary Energy in Man, Gopi Krishna; The Kundalini Experience: Psychosis or Transcendence, Lee Sannella; and The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Carl Jung. Other supporting books that aren’t specifically in refernece to Kundalini Awakenings, but provide supportive understanding are The Maser Game, by Robert DeRopp and Power v.s. Force, by David Hawkins.
BEING OF SERVICE
As a result of that transformative process, I now teach Kundalini Yoga and Meditation as a purposeful passion in life. I am a Practicing Vedic Astrologer working with the astrologocal sciences of the Vedic Scriptures and I provide support as a coach and mentor to people going through the polarizing and sometimes terrifying personal transformations that spiritual and kundalini awakenings unearth. I trust that the energy has an intelligence of its own that is higher than the intelligence of our mind and ego. We must learn to understand, trust, align and surrender to it. It connects us to the miracle of creation and life itself. It has been my experience that regularly practicing yogic techniques as found in Kundalini and Kriya Yoga along with maintaining a connection to a spiritual community that supports the transcendence of the mind and ego, is highly beneficial in activating and supporting the unfolding of kundalini energy within all of us as human beings, experiencing a spiritual evolution.
Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have regarding kundalini awakening, spiritual awakenings and life transitions.
More information on my Kundalini Experience can be found on YouTube
