Saturday, March 20, 2004
Questions on Kundalini
Here are some questions I have been asked on Kundalini:
1. Is Kundalini an orgasm, or something like an orgasm?
My own answer is no to the first, and maybe to the second. However, kundalini affects different people in different ways. Some report intense sexual arousal, others lose interest entirely. It has (for me) no sexual provocation, nor a sexual outcome. In fact, sometimes the blissful experience seems to include virtually every part of the body but the lower chakras. How can there be an orgasm if the sexual centers are not involved, and there is no sense of the root or genitals awakening? Then one wonders, where is the energy coming from if not the root? But it is definitely delightful and sensuous. The orgasm is perhaps the nearest thing in human experience to compare it with. It is as though the entire nervous system were awakened in waves of sensuous bliss, which may be gentle or quite intense.
2. Is the experience always the same?
Never. It varies remarkably, just as one's experience of anything (music, sex, viewing art, etc.) is never the same. Sometimes the energy flows from the skull downward, sometimes from the root upward, sometimes it is very strong ("like a brass band") and sometimes it is delicate ("a flute playing in the distance"). It has a million guises and disguises, and varies not only from time to time but from person to person.
3. Is it a "nothing but" experience?
Those who seek to reduce the full visitation to a "nothing but a stirring of chi from breath or meditation or whatever" and who imagine they have had a similar experience which they can easily explain ("it was only...") haven't had it. It is the descent of the holy ghost (sacred divine) in such a way that it catapults one into a new reality, and totally transforms the life. Anything less is a "sip" but not the full cup.
4. What is the purpose of Kundalini transformation?
To divinize the human race, to raise humanity to a new level of vibration in order to prepare it for its advance to the next level of evolution. We don't know exactly what that state will be, when it will occur, or exactly how it will occur. But this is part of a divine process, and it will be executed by divine intelligence. Our role is to acquiesce, to allow the process to play out in our own bodies, to allow the change to occur "creature by creature, being by being."
5. Why is this phenomenon occurring at this time in history?
Because of the acute world crisis. Crisis triggers transformation. And transformation is needed for survival, the race lifted to a revised condition.
6. What awakens the Kundalini flow?
Kundalini can be awakened through a myriad of stimuli--yoga, breath, sexual practice designed for the purpose, music, poetry, art, emotions of all sorts including sadness as well as joy. Its initial arousal can be swift or gradual, through specific intent or accidental triggering. No one knows exactly how to awaken it, nor why it chooses to appear when it does. Most of the descriptions are of an ideal model of awakening (energies proceeding in orderly fashion from chakra to chakra), but in fact almost no actual experience conforms to that model.
7. When we feel the energy of the earth itself, is that Kundalini?
According to some, yes. The kundalini energies are the life force, the impelling dynamic of all that is. So--what flows upwards from the earth is cosmic kundalini. Sacred sites often are located at places where people have felt the earth energies coming forth from time immemorial.
8. How widespread is the kundalini phenomenon at this time?
Again, no one knows for sure. Twenty years ago, few had heard of kundalini, much less experienced it, especially in the west. Now there are countless reports of personal experience, many books, web sites, talk sites, and so forth. Kundalini consciousness is growing at an increasingly rapid rate, as if humanity as a whole were approaching a point of critical mass, when planetary initiation will occur.
9. Is full kindalini awakening evidence of "enlightenment."
Enlightenment is a state often talked about and seldom achieved. To go through kundalini arousal may take one into a temporary "enlightenment state." It may offer a glimpse or taste of the full enlightenment experence. Certain initiates even claim that they are enlightened. However, I wonder if one in complete and sustained samadhi wouldn't by the fact become totally disconnected from "this world," and its activities. Is it enough to know that "we" are unreal, that we are mere phantoms of our own imagining? Is the person truly enlightened whose private behavior is exploitive of or dishonoring toward others? Isn't something lacking in a guru who knows only a certain technique passed down by his own teacher. but cannot converse on matters such as art, or literature or contemporary issues or western philosophy? Do we really need "enlightened" beings here at this moment of history, or do we rather need "bodhisattvas" to aid us all in these most desperate times? The latter is of the world, but not in it. She puts her personal salvation to one side, in order to attend to the immediate challenges of humanity and our planet.
The ideal is both saint and seer, one whose background embraces familiarity with both western culture and eastern practices, left brain and right, compassion and commitment. In my view, there may be hidden saints among us, but those who openly claim enlightment aren't.
copyright, Dorothy Walters
Don't Make Lists
Every day a new flower rises
from your body's fresh soil.
Don't go around looking
for fallen petals
in a fairy tale, when you've
got the golden plant
right here, now,
shooting forth in light from your eyes,
your awakening crown.
Don't make lists, or explore ancient accounts.
Forget everything you know
and open.
At the Very Moment
No matter what you know,
someone is always wanting
to correct you,
to sell you a bill of goods,
from the shop marked
"authority."
All the "authorities" got
frozen into stone years
ago after the great flood
wiped out original knowledge,
and left behind only these granite shadows.
Reality is always
soft clay,
ever shifting and changing
its shape.
Fire it into form, and
at the very moment
you are hailing it as
final truth
it will break in your hands.
In the Tent
Everyone wants to gaze on
the mystery,
there, in the center
of the tent,
all draped in darkness,
like a writing of ebony
inscribed on night.
The crowd, impatient, shuffles, sighs,
becomes an edge of melting snow.
Only the god-haunted few
remain,
staring into the purple cleft,
waiting.
from Marrow of Flame
1. Is Kundalini an orgasm, or something like an orgasm?
My own answer is no to the first, and maybe to the second. However, kundalini affects different people in different ways. Some report intense sexual arousal, others lose interest entirely. It has (for me) no sexual provocation, nor a sexual outcome. In fact, sometimes the blissful experience seems to include virtually every part of the body but the lower chakras. How can there be an orgasm if the sexual centers are not involved, and there is no sense of the root or genitals awakening? Then one wonders, where is the energy coming from if not the root? But it is definitely delightful and sensuous. The orgasm is perhaps the nearest thing in human experience to compare it with. It is as though the entire nervous system were awakened in waves of sensuous bliss, which may be gentle or quite intense.
2. Is the experience always the same?
Never. It varies remarkably, just as one's experience of anything (music, sex, viewing art, etc.) is never the same. Sometimes the energy flows from the skull downward, sometimes from the root upward, sometimes it is very strong ("like a brass band") and sometimes it is delicate ("a flute playing in the distance"). It has a million guises and disguises, and varies not only from time to time but from person to person.
3. Is it a "nothing but" experience?
Those who seek to reduce the full visitation to a "nothing but a stirring of chi from breath or meditation or whatever" and who imagine they have had a similar experience which they can easily explain ("it was only...") haven't had it. It is the descent of the holy ghost (sacred divine) in such a way that it catapults one into a new reality, and totally transforms the life. Anything less is a "sip" but not the full cup.
4. What is the purpose of Kundalini transformation?
To divinize the human race, to raise humanity to a new level of vibration in order to prepare it for its advance to the next level of evolution. We don't know exactly what that state will be, when it will occur, or exactly how it will occur. But this is part of a divine process, and it will be executed by divine intelligence. Our role is to acquiesce, to allow the process to play out in our own bodies, to allow the change to occur "creature by creature, being by being."
5. Why is this phenomenon occurring at this time in history?
Because of the acute world crisis. Crisis triggers transformation. And transformation is needed for survival, the race lifted to a revised condition.
6. What awakens the Kundalini flow?
Kundalini can be awakened through a myriad of stimuli--yoga, breath, sexual practice designed for the purpose, music, poetry, art, emotions of all sorts including sadness as well as joy. Its initial arousal can be swift or gradual, through specific intent or accidental triggering. No one knows exactly how to awaken it, nor why it chooses to appear when it does. Most of the descriptions are of an ideal model of awakening (energies proceeding in orderly fashion from chakra to chakra), but in fact almost no actual experience conforms to that model.
7. When we feel the energy of the earth itself, is that Kundalini?
According to some, yes. The kundalini energies are the life force, the impelling dynamic of all that is. So--what flows upwards from the earth is cosmic kundalini. Sacred sites often are located at places where people have felt the earth energies coming forth from time immemorial.
8. How widespread is the kundalini phenomenon at this time?
Again, no one knows for sure. Twenty years ago, few had heard of kundalini, much less experienced it, especially in the west. Now there are countless reports of personal experience, many books, web sites, talk sites, and so forth. Kundalini consciousness is growing at an increasingly rapid rate, as if humanity as a whole were approaching a point of critical mass, when planetary initiation will occur.
9. Is full kindalini awakening evidence of "enlightenment."
Enlightenment is a state often talked about and seldom achieved. To go through kundalini arousal may take one into a temporary "enlightenment state." It may offer a glimpse or taste of the full enlightenment experence. Certain initiates even claim that they are enlightened. However, I wonder if one in complete and sustained samadhi wouldn't by the fact become totally disconnected from "this world," and its activities. Is it enough to know that "we" are unreal, that we are mere phantoms of our own imagining? Is the person truly enlightened whose private behavior is exploitive of or dishonoring toward others? Isn't something lacking in a guru who knows only a certain technique passed down by his own teacher. but cannot converse on matters such as art, or literature or contemporary issues or western philosophy? Do we really need "enlightened" beings here at this moment of history, or do we rather need "bodhisattvas" to aid us all in these most desperate times? The latter is of the world, but not in it. She puts her personal salvation to one side, in order to attend to the immediate challenges of humanity and our planet.
The ideal is both saint and seer, one whose background embraces familiarity with both western culture and eastern practices, left brain and right, compassion and commitment. In my view, there may be hidden saints among us, but those who openly claim enlightment aren't.
copyright, Dorothy Walters
Don't Make Lists
Every day a new flower rises
from your body's fresh soil.
Don't go around looking
for fallen petals
in a fairy tale, when you've
got the golden plant
right here, now,
shooting forth in light from your eyes,
your awakening crown.
Don't make lists, or explore ancient accounts.
Forget everything you know
and open.
At the Very Moment
No matter what you know,
someone is always wanting
to correct you,
to sell you a bill of goods,
from the shop marked
"authority."
All the "authorities" got
frozen into stone years
ago after the great flood
wiped out original knowledge,
and left behind only these granite shadows.
Reality is always
soft clay,
ever shifting and changing
its shape.
Fire it into form, and
at the very moment
you are hailing it as
final truth
it will break in your hands.
In the Tent
Everyone wants to gaze on
the mystery,
there, in the center
of the tent,
all draped in darkness,
like a writing of ebony
inscribed on night.
The crowd, impatient, shuffles, sighs,
becomes an edge of melting snow.
Only the god-haunted few
remain,
staring into the purple cleft,
waiting.
from Marrow of Flame
