what to do if your kundalini is hurting you
I in one case knew a yoga teacher who would joke how awakening would never happen to her–she wasn't far enough along the path, or didn't know enough, or wasn't plenty.
She had this idea that awakening only happened to spiritually avant-garde people, or special people.
Yet, by all accounts, enkindling can happen to anyone, anywhere, at anytime.
Why? Because enkindling is nothing special. It is but the shift from full identification with the mind–I am my thoughts–to an experience of awareness or the field of beingness in which those thoughts arise–I amthinking those thoughts (and they're likely not truthful). Eventually, the 'I' that is thinking those thoughts as well disappears, leaving simply perception, or consciousness, behind.
Then enkindling is ashift of consciousness, ofttimes accompanied by energy experiences. Yogis refer to awakening as Kundalini Enkindling, and it can be accompanied past all kinds of concrete, emotional, mental and energetic phenomena–non all of which are pleasant.
Enkindling, in varying degrees, is happening to people right at present, all over the globe.
Information technology happened to Stephan Cope while studying yoga and Vipassana meditation. It happened to Guy Johnson on the showtime meditation retreat he attended. And information technology happened to me, nine years ago.
An Enkindling Experience
In August and September of 2004, I had two psychotic experiences and was committed to the Acute Psych Ward of Lion'south Gate Infirmary. I was diagnosed bi-polar and prescribed an anti-psychotic and mood stablizer.
Yet, despite the psyche-shattering experience of psychosis, I knew deep down that the experience I'd had was some kind of awakening–admitting completely twisted by my entrenched ego.
During my two periods of psychosis, each of which lasted for approximately five days before sedation brought me down, I'd experienced a number of phenomena I was familiar with from my reading of yogic texts–such equally Oneness and Bliss. Iknewmyself as part of 'All That Is' and I perceived the true nature of reality–Oneness–underlying the illusion of separateness. 'I' disappeared.
Yet, there was another darker side to this experience. Suddenly, all of the shadow aspects of my psyche, everything I'd been avoiding and denying for the last eight years of travelling and partying around the globe, crowded into my awareness and consciousness.
It was likewise much energy, likewise much insight and too much connection. I couldn't cope and my mind blew out.
Cue men in white coats, medication and waking up in a psych ward.
Naturally obedient to dominance, I fast took stock of the status quo and realised my best gamble of getting out of the psych ward was to continue quiet near all the spiritual experiences I'd had and accept the diagnosis and medication I was offered.
A psych ward was not the place to be sharing mystical revelations about an awakening feel. So they'dreally call up I was crazy.
My programme worked, and I was released subsequently nine long days.
A Shift in Consciousness
A week subsequently, I'd packed upward my life in Canada and flew back to my mother'due south house in Glenorchy, New Zealand, to try and figure out what had happened to me.
Was I crazy? Or was information technology something else?
My kickoff port of call was local yoga teachers. My intuition told me that what I'd experienced had something to do with yoga. In the years leading upward to my psychosis, I'd been practicing more and more yoga at local studios, plus regularly meditating by myself at habitation. My meditation was commonly accompanied by some kind of consciousness-expanding drug–yes, I loved to trip out while focusing inward. Marijuana was most frequently my meditation drug of pick, only I also used mushrooms and once or twice, acid.
That combination of drugs, meditation and yoga exercise was a recipe for disaster.
It induced a shift in my consciousness before I'd washed the hard piece of work on my psyche; facing my shadows and demons at a moderate pace.
I didn't know all of this then though. I likewise didn't observe it out from my local yoga teachers. They knew far less than I did.
A Dangerous Combination
It was the internet that proved to exist my saviour. There I plant stories about Kundalini Awakening and references to works by men like Krishna Gopi, author ofLiving with Kundalini, and Dr. Lee Sannella, author ofThe Kundalini Experience: Psychosis of Transcendence. I read everything I could get my easily on. I was desperate to prove that I wasn't crazy–that something else had happened to me.
Two or so years after my psychosis, I finally met a real yoga instructor–Swami Shantimurti of Ashram Yoga in Auckland.
He was in Queenstown delivering a workshop on the chakras. During this workshop, he spoke nearly the dangers of using drugs and practicing yoga. He spoke about Kundalini Awakening. And he talked about how awakening Kundalini without the right support and guidance from an experienced teacher could ship people into psychosis.
Afterwards, I joined the throng of students around Swami Shantimurti and choked upward as I asked him in front of this audience if my feel sounded like some kind of awakening. His confirmation acknowledged what I'd always intuitively known–I wasn't crazy and my feel was a known quantity. Swami Shantimurti besides gave me some practices to stabilize my organization.
Since that time, I've written and shared of my experiences openly. Many people have contacted me to share their own experiences and ask questions. Virtually are so relieved to learn that what they're experiencing is a normal part of the homo status. Enkindling is non mutual, but information technology is normal.
Or, as Swami Shanitmurti says, awakening is humanity'southward evolutionary destiny.
Awakening is Humanity's Evolutionary Destiny
It's our evolutionary destiny to accept these experiences. The only way to inhibit them from happening is by hedonistic behaviour like eating meat, drinking lots of alcohol, taking lots of substances and living an unaware life. Then the energy doesn't get intense enough to create an awakening on whatsoever kind of level.
Anyone at any time can have an energy shift and it could exist on a physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual level. Depending on what level information technology is will determine the intensity of the experience, how difficult the experience is and how difficult it is to sustain a balanced mind.
Swami Muktidharma of Anahata Yoga Retreat in Takaka, New Zealand, who, like Swami Shantmurti, studied and learned from Swami Satyananda, agrees:
These things tin happen when at that place is no genuine guidance. Many people accept come up across the experience of making mistakes due to the lack of proper guidance. This becomes painful because some of them tin can terminate in mental hospitals and even cease upwards in a comatose country. In that location are mental purification practices in yoga that first need to be understood considering they bring up deep rooted impressions or samskaras.
Kundalini Enkindling
These awakening experiences are frequently referred to every bit Kundalini Awakening, but both Swamis point out that a full Kundalini Awakening is a specific feel that means all of the knots and samskaras of the psyche have been resolved.
Traditionally, an aspirant would spend years, or lifetimes, methodically working through the knots and issues of the psyche through the cleansing practices of yoga before finally having an awakening feel. Now notwithstanding, there are all kinds of people having various types of awakenings and these awakenings are oft lumped under the phrase 'Kundalini Awakening.'
However this is far abroad from being a spiritual experience. When people have these kinds of physical experiences they often confuse it with awakening the Kundalini. Swami Muktidharma says:
At that place is a big misuse of the term 'Kundalini Enkindling.' Well-nigh people who claim to accept Kundalini awakened are confused. They do not empathise that when you practice some yoga practices energy is bound to move through the body. This is the stimulation of prana moving through the body.
Swami Muktidharma'southward view is not entirely shared by Swami Shantimurti though, proving that even among long-time yogis, at that place can be disagreement over exactly what these awakening experiences are and how they're happening.
A lot of energy experiences aren't Kundalini Enkindling but all energy is Kundalini-based whether information technology is physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. People are having an energy shift and they can awaken levels of perception that activate the chakras for a while. They can motility into some strange modes of behaviour.
The real full-on Kundalini Awakening feel is a surge of energy coming from Mulhadara up the back of the spine, over the top of the caput and culminating in the brow. The whole system has awakened. This tin can be very potent if people aren't prepared for information technology they tin become quite schizophrenic or paranoid or have serious so-called mental sicknesses. However, the whole experience can be dealt with successfully through yoga and through associating with someone who'southward aware of what is going on.
The problem is, many of us who take these free energy shifts take no idea what's going on at the time, and sometimes even the yoga or meditation teachers nosotros're studying with don't know either.
Meditation Retreat
In September 2011, Auckland-based Art Director, Guy Johnson, headed off to a x-day Vipassana retreat about Auckland, New Zealand.
I'd never meditated earlier or had any noesis of what meditation really was. I thought I would acquire a technique to help relax and bargain with the stresses of life.
What happened on that Vipassana retreat was to alter Guy, and his life, forever.
Information technology began on Twenty-four hours 2, with a dream of choking a man to death and waking upwardly choking on his own tongue.
Several hours later the penny dropped and I realised I was killing a part of myself. For the rest of the day I was in a surreal state.
Past Day iii and four, Guy was experiencing flickering visions and lights of all kinds, and his body had started moving through spontaneous mudras.
My tongue felt electrified and rigid. Information technology had curved back to the roof of my oral fissure. I couldn't stop it from doing this in meditation. It seemed to be directing a current of energy between my caput and my body.
Guy didn't know it, merely he was experiencing a spontaneous Khechari Mudra, or natural language lock mudra. Information technology was minor compared with what was to follow.
Towards the end of this hour-long sit my entire torso was brimful with sub atomic particles–I felt fluid and unreal. Then a tranquillity buzzing sound rapidly grew louder and louder and I felt a rumble deep within me. This was accompanied by a very intense pleasurable sensation–almost erotic.
I felt like I was being hit by a freight train and an explosion of the most pure white electricity/energy I'd always seen. It was inside me, rapidly moving upward and down my being. I realised I was nothing but energy–pure white free energy. It was extremely intense and felt like a volcanic eruption inside myself. It was besides scary. I opened my eyes. Everything looked very surreal.
Nosotros all went outside for a suspension. I was staggering, nigh unable to walk straight. I establish some earth and kneeled in that location with my hands on the ground, not actually sure what the hell had simply happened. I had the same feel again in the evening on the next sit in an most identical manner.
Spiritual Quest
Guy had no cognition of yoga. He'd never heard of Kundalini. His knowledge of meditation was limited to the retreat. It was time to speak to the Vipassana teacher.
I don't think he really understood what was going on. He only said: "What Vipassana unlocks is very powerful."
Following this dramatic fourth day, the rest of the 10-day grade was bathed in a mystical air.
I couldn't sleep at all. Every time I meditated, something new and weird would happen–visions or spontaneous hand mudras, similar to the i you lot seen Christian saints making.
I'd get electrified later on every 'sit.' By the evenings I'd be so wired I began hunting the retreat premises looking for a tree big plenty for me to hug in a desperate try to try and earth myself. I feared for my sanity. I thought I was dissolving and had the eerie sense my body was disappearing. I felt hyper sensitive, nigh in a supernatural state. I felt like I was beingness healed in a vey brutal way. Former emotions and memories came burning dorsum into my present mind. I took all this to hateful Vipassana was working and clearing out the toxic karmas in the mind.
Guy left the grade feeling similar he was bathed in calorie-free.
I felt extremely happy, lighthearted and sensitive. For half dozen months after I remained in this state. But more importantly what it had created in me was the showtime of a spiritual quest to want to know myself deeply and to understand the nature of my beingness–a quest that I tin't seem to ignore or stop or want to. It feels like this quest is the most important aspect of my life now. It'south a massive shift with large questions being asked and repercussions that are imperceptible to most people, just inside me it feels similar a tempest is raging.
It was hardly the relaxing experience Guy thought he'd get out of Vipassana–a style of meditation which uses a technique described as an "observation-based, self-exploratory journeying to the common root of mind and body that dissolves mental impurity."
The Cultivation of Clear Seeing
Develop too much clear sight or wisdom into yourself, without the requisite foundation and support of self-possession or calm abiding, and all kinds of strange things tin can happen. In his book, Stephan Cope shares an experience he had at a calendar month-long Vipassana retreat. Like Guy, he too felt like he was 'disappearing'–he'd lost a solid sense of Self, or Being-ness. Stephan, writer ofYoga and the Quest for the True Self,characterises Vipassana every bit the tillage of clear seeing. In his book, which shares his own Kundalini experiences and that of other students and friends, Stephan emphasizes the necessity for the technique of articulate seeing–i.eastward. Vipassana–to be every bit counterbalanced with equanimity.
Panicking, Stephen made a late night visit to one of the Vipassana teachers, who calmly told him:
You're not going crazy. Y'all've refined your sensation to a very loftier caste… Your awareness has grown faster than your self-possession. You need to go back to a do that creates equanimity.
Stephen was fortunate that his Vipassana teacher was able to recognise the experience he was having and offer a balancing practice. (The Vipassana Centre that Guy attended declined to comment on this story, or Guy's experience.)
Twin Pillars of the Reality Practise
Stephen's experience led him to develop the Twin Pillars of the Reality Exercise–two sides of usa that need to develop at a similar footstep during yoga and meditation practice so we tin can stay balanced and sane–awareness and self-possession.
At our peril, we focus all of our effort on cultivating awareness, frequently ignoring the vast repertoire of self-building and self-possession practices that are meant to become hand-in-hand with building insight. In fact, the preliminary practices of yoga are almost all about building the calmly abiding self.
This was where my practise went wrong too. Not merely was I focusing generally on clear seeing practices, but I was turbo-charging them with drugs–a recipe for disaster.
I hadn't all the same congenital a calmly constant sense of Self, and in fact was woefully ignorant of many aspects of my Self.
It's a signal that Swami Muktidharma makes also.
People who are searching for transformation should understand that we demand to apply ourselves to the required processes of learning with the right guidance. Learning yoga techniques straight from books is a big mistake because everyone has his or her own personal interpretation from books and books cannot correct united states of america. Everything that happens must happen in a very systematic process:
- Awakening of the nadis or flows of free energy;
- Enkindling of the chakras; and,
- Finally awakening of Kundalini, which brings us into dissimilar stages of samadhi from Savikalpa Samadhi to the ultimate Nirvikalpa.
Information technology'due south a systematic and supportive way to piece of work through our evolutionary destiny. However, it'southward not the fashion that most of us practice yoga. Many of us waltz from practice to practice. Nosotros go to teachers who trained in a month and know trivial more than correct alignment of the trunk in asana.
Finding a True Teacher
Still finding atrue yoga teacher is a souvenir, as they are rare. Swami Muktidharma says:
Some teachers have a lot of noesis that comes from their own personal experience. These are the existent teachers who will be able to contribute with proper guidance for those students who have had such experiences.
Swami Shantimurti is pragmatic in his view.
As a yoga teacher you have to await something to happen to a educatee of yours at some time. Y'all take to await it these days as the potential is there. But because of the number of yoga teachers out there at present it's incommunicable to expect them all to have a comprehensive understanding of the energy aspect of yoga. Equally long as yoga teachers have someone they can refer a student to that they accept confidence in. That's good enough.
I found that teacher in Swami Shantimurti. Guy Johnson found Tara Springett on the internet.
A Britain-based Tibetan Buddhist teacher and psychologist who's had her ain Kundalini experience, Tara works with clients all over the world who've had Kundalini experiences.
I educate people on what Kundalini is, how it works, how it progresses, and what information technology can include and then they can experience safer about what'due south happening because they understand it'south a normal process.This helps them to permit get of the fear effectually what's happening to them.
Then I deal with the problems that are arising as a result of the experience–starting with the emotional and spiritual issues. Usually, if those are addressed, the physical symptoms volition fall away.
Her guidance and support made a world of difference for Guy, who had gone from intense energetic experiences at the retreat, to dealing with the reality of his experience–mood swings, and feelings of alienation and dislocation from friends and society, feet and fearfulness. Although Guy's too quick to point out that there's many gifts to his feel too.
I feel like I've had a system's upgrade for my ideas and intuition. I too experience clairsentience ofttimes–feeling another's energy. Non that these elements are important or the goal–they are just some of the more pleasant side effects.
Tara was a great ballast for Guy and taught him how to basis himself with heart chakra-based meditations that develop loving kindness.
I learnt that Kundalini, once activated, will piece of work through the system bringing up anything that was negative and toxic for it to be worked on. At present grounded and informed I can handle the rocky moments with much more acceptance, and I've as well learnt to enjoy the pleasant moments and run across them for what they are–picayune fleeting indications of progress.
An Expanding Experience of Reality
Guy's experience mirrors mine. Once I knew what I was experiencing, and how to residue out the free energy fluctuations and work with the arising samskaras, I was able to settle back into regular life, albeit with an expanding experience of reality.
Guy is simply one of many people I've been in contact with over the concluding eight years who've had awakening experiences.
Virtually of them haven't known what's going on and take struggled to find yoga or meditation teachers who could support them.
But with the assist of the internet and serious teachers like Swami Shantimurti, Swami Muktidharam and Tara Springett, it is possible to piece of work through shifts in consciousness without experiencing too much alienation or dislocation from regular life–and without catastrophe up in a psych ward.
Ane danger for those who've experienced awakenings of some kind is the immediate co-opting of the experience by the ego–the awakening becomes another story that bolsters the ego identification. The shift in consciousness fades and one moves back into identification with thoughts. That was my immediate feel after the psychosis. I was my thoughts once more and the enkindling was relegated to an experience that I'd 'had.'
Yet one time there'south a glimpse of that other globe, the knowing remains. That knowing became my N Star, as I knuckled down to do the hard piece of work on dissolving the many samskaras and knots in my psyche. I met teachers like Swami Shantimurti and discovered that ironically, some of the all-time teachers of awakening are non yoga teachers at all, merely men like Adhyshanti and Eckhart Tolle.
They've both written and spoken extensively most their own experiences and what information technology's like to live an enlightened life–Adhyshanti going as far as to write a near helpful volume calledThe End of Your World.
The End of Your World
Because at it'due south centre, that's what enkindling feels like. One world has ceased to exist and another world has arisen in it'due south identify– non 1 where the 'me' or the 'I' rules though, but rather a world in which i just is.
Today, my experience is characterised mostly by Being. Ego identification too takes place, only it's condign easier and easier to spot that subtle shift in sensation when it occurs. I see the stories the 'me' wants to generate and buy into, and with that awareness I can let them become.
This is the work of awakening–moment by moment, coming back into an abiding sense of awareness.
Considering that'due south all that awakening is–an ordinary sense of Beingness right now. Nothing magical or special nearly it. That yoga teacher who in one case told me she'd never awaken in this life fourth dimension–she's probable experienced moments where she's Awake without even realising it. So besides have you lot.
Moments like complete absorption in dazzler, like a sunset, where you cease to be and at that place is only perception. Or moments similar being carried away by a beautiful piece of music. Or moments of life; like a newborn child, and moments of death; like intense grief.
In those moments, all thoughts of 'I' disappear and simply perception remains–consciousness.
That's awakening.
Simply perception.
Source: https://uplift.love/the-hidden-dangers-of-early-enlightenment/
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