Kundalini Splendor

Recently, I received the following e-mail (from Swami-G) and today a friend sent me this poem by Billy Collins. Their perspectives seemed to have a great deal in common, though their conclusions were perhaps somewhat different...so I decided to post them together for purposes of comparison.

I have posted the e-mail from Swami-G as I received it, including the original spelling and odd line divisions which tend to occur on e-mail transmissions. The web sites which are mentioned are worth a look. In particular, the list of "symptoms" and of "causes" of kundalini offer important information for understanding this ever mysterious process.

I, of course, believe that the best possible guidance on this journey is from the inner guru, rather than an outer director. And I, personally, do not believe there is a "journey's end" as such. I look on Kundalini as a constantly unfolding process, and feel that "awakening" (the seeing into the reality of self as fiction) is merely the beginning of the ongoing voyage of discovery.

Nonetheless, I realize that some rely on a different mode and that often the stages and discoveries of the initiatory path are remarkably similar over various cultures and eras of time.

Here is the e-mail I received from Swami-G:

"G ....." wrote:

Blessings Sat*Chit*Anand Shanti-Shanti-Shanti OM


Namaste

Am not sure if you would like to use my story on your site - so here it is
first
( it was a journey started at the age of 18 when i received Shaktipat while
in
an esoteric christian order - Kundalini was awakened - completion took place
on the banks of the Ganges in 1999 at the age of 49)
here are my two websites - put together by sadhakas :
www.kundalinisupport.com
www.abide-in-self.com

(attached is the correct cover for my book Kundalini from Hell to Heaven)
they have still the old cover on the sites and so i need to get them to
update it.




Path, Self-Realization and the Now

If people ask me what religion I am I say, “All and none.” I am that Unbound
Truth that runs like a thread through All religious persuasions.

There have been many Gurus, mentors and teachers along the way. Each in
their own way helped this seeker move forward, each lead me closer to the
core of Being.

Many aided in releasing the mind of delusion towards greater awareness. The
last great Guru, Sri Rajiv took me from the individualization of ego
identification to the implosion which leaves the awareness of the great
impersonal core of Being. When dissolving into the Impersonal Brahman or
core of Being (which is Absolute) it is not an experience per say, as
experience is of mind and form. The last takes you beyond mind and thought
into that great pregnant void beyond I AM, which is at the heart and center
and from which all creation stems.

As a seeker meditation was done throughout the day, in awareness insights
came, there was grasping at straws. I learned relative knowledge which I
thought was so spiritually advanced. Meditation deepened, Kundalini kept
pulling away at the supports. Finally my Compassionate Guru (Sri Rajiv
Misra) took the knife of discernment and started slicing and dicing - not a
pretty picture - but

his compassion was in giving what was needed and not what was wanted (for we
want the candy-coated strokes of tell me how great my spiritually advanced
understanding is). He told me, “Fool! You know NOTHING!”, and he was right.
I sputtered and choked and was mute for two days, but this threw me into a
deep self-enquiry that tore the foolishness of conceptualization away.

Sitting on the banks of the Ganges suddenly the last great
fear arose — terror — was it total annihilation or possession that was a
step away? Exhausted, with the acceptance that this seeker had done all that
it was possible to do, left only one option - to surrender within the
impending doom which had engulfed every cell with the terror of its demise.
In that moment beyond time, the world and all its belief~ God; ‘me’; the
nature of existence; the seeking; the clinging; desires; aversions —
shattered. Mind and its holdings were stripped bare, it died to the past and
all its plays of suffering self; the separate ‘me’ was at an end. Nothing
remaining to hold. Nothing remaining to be desired. Nothing remaining to
fight against. Death is no more. Past is no more. Future is no more. ‘Me’ is
no more. Only eternal life that One essence of fill potentiality IS.

You find that the essence, the seed of life is eternal, that you as
personality are a wisp in the wind. In fact in that moment, you do not
exist. It is a great humbling experience. All that exists is the formless
constant, that Perfect IS.

When the One or ‘0’ is entered into frilly there is no longer the seeking
for connection for it is the Reality and it is rested in completely. Yet you
cannot even say that there is the connection for there is at that point, no
duality that remains on any level.

The eyes continue to see diversity but they are not deluded by a mind of
division, there is simply that which IS. (One)

Pure Awareness remains, not logical linear thought, which builds stone upon
stone of constructed images, held together by the glue of mental ramblings
of past ‘if onlys’, and future ‘what ifs’. This cannot even be imagined
until it becomes your reality.

You enter the flow of life - Being simply Truth, Consciousness and Bliss,
clear of all past preconceived notions and illusions created by the forms’
experience. There is no longer a feeling of “I am this form” but rather, the
Universe is consciousness moving. There is no “I” separate from
consciousness. Only consciousness beyond the form remains - ever conscious
of the One and knowing the many to be only seeming aspects of the One. There
is no longer any concept of separation nor judging nor categorizing. It
becomes pure, undiluted experience beyond minds’ colorations.

It is spontaneity that remains, a spontaneity that isn’t caught up with the
worldly things, nor based on knee jerk reactions. There is no driving self
image. No stagnation of a me self. No doership, no one doing. What needs to
occur does, the body goes through the actions. There is simply Peace, not
one resting in peace, not one looking for peace, not one attempting to
create peace, it simply IS.

One is fully grounded and yet there is no attachment to actions - they flow,
they are momentary, emotions are momentary. When that moment is over there
is no residual fallout being clung to, to bring into fruition the bitterness
of suffering. A body is seen - yes, pain is felt, but it is not myself (- it
is pain belonging to the body which has no substance (empty in nature) and
not the Self This may only be directly Known and cannot be manufactured by
the logical mundane mind process).


How can one be fully human and yet look within and no longer find anything
that can be called a ‘me story’? It is a paradox but is quite natural..
.this cannot be explained or learned or given by any intellectual dialogue -
it can only become the Living Reality immersed in the Absolute Primal Purity
of IS and yet one is fully human. It is impossible to explain how this is,
it is just the fullness of life as it is that remains.

There is simply a seeing manifestation as it rises from that silence and
void into seeming patterns which rise and fall due to the Conscious movement
which is created by the mass mind - the grand illusive play called ‘Maya’.
Being at that point, beyond the illusions, you see it as just the
ever-expanding dream called ‘life’. There is no longer death nor life.. .for
you have ever been that which is beyond both these seeming aspects.

A Realized One lives fully in the moment, there is nowhere else to go and
why would there be a need to? Suffering is at an end no matter where one is
or what is going on in the external world, there is a center of Peace, that
~unmoving eye that has not one minute of bondage no matter what is raging
around it.

As the spirit moves so moves the emptiness of Being, Being as simply
simplicity that which you are at the core beyond the ego
self-identification.

in Realization, mind can be equated with a tool of the divisionary
experience - the mind can, and does, remain for some as nothing other than a
bit of flotsam that floats on the sea of consciousness yet does not binder
the purity of the sea or its vast nature ~f clarity.

Some will look and challenge (this unknown Reality) by saying who is
speaking? The ‘me’ (which others relate to) is likened to a wisp of
fragrance without solid moorings. ..aware of mind yet not contained by
mind.., it is neither one nor another.. .it is at once the whole of creation
and yet forever separate and distinct.. .it is something most wonderful and
yet it is totally natural...there is simply a flow and a dance that remains.

Love- Light - Great Peace & IS

And here is the poem by Billy Collins,which, to some extent, seems to reflect a similar point of view as to the unreality of the experienced world:

Final Words

I cannot leave you without saying this:
the past is nothing,
a nonmemory, a phantom,
a soundproof closet in which Johann Strauss
is composing another waltz no one can hear.

It is a fabrication, best forgotten,
a wellspring of sorrow
that waters a field of bitter vegetation.

Leave it behind.
Take your head out of your hands
and arise from the couch of melancholy
where the window-light falls against your face
and the sun rides across the autumn sky,
steely behind the bare trees,
glorious as the high strains of violins.

But forget Strauss.
And forget his younger brother,
the poor bastard who was killed in a fall
from a podium while conducting a symphony.

Forget the past,
forget the stunned audience on its feet,
the absurdity of their formal clothes
in the face of sudden death,
forget their collective gasp,
the murmur and huddle over the body,
the creaking of the lowered curtain.

Forget Strauss
with that encore look in his eye
and his tiresome industry:
more than five hundred finished compositions!
He even wrote a polka for his mother.
That alone is enough to make me flee the past,
evacuate its temples,
and walk alone under the stars
down these dark paths strewn with acorns,
feeling nothing but the crisp October air,
the swing of my arms
and the rhythms of my stepping--
a man of the present who has forgotten
every composer, every great battle,
just me,
a thin reed blowing in the night.

~ Billy Collins~


(Sailing Alone Around the Room)