Kundalini Splendor

I went to hear a brilliant talk last night by Karen Armstrong, the renowned writer on world religion and the history of the Middle East, among other things. The title of her talk was “Understanding Islam.”
(photo from source)

The evening began with a recitation from the Koran by one of the Sufi luminaries in attendance. The “chant” was extremely moving, reminding me of the great spiritual power of certain Sanskrit passages.

Karen has an uncanny knack for bringing together solid factual information and comprehensive analysis of the underlying patterns of meaning. One of her main themes was that what we are now involved in is not an encounter between medieval and modern culture, nor between Islam and Christianity, but rather a conflict arising from the extremist minorities of both sides. The majority of Muslims do not feel that the attack on America was justified. Their primary concern is that Islam is so poorly understood in the West, and that they are somehow being judged for the acts of a radical few. By the same token, those who most flagrantly fan the fires of war in the West are a minority of so called “fundamentalists,” who in fact, are not practicing the fundamentals of Christianity at all. As she pointed out, the sacred text says “love thy enemies,” not go out and massacre them.

The extremists of both sides thus distort and misrepresent the essential, core teachings of their faith, and it is they who provoke hostile actions toward the perceived “enemy.” To those who insist that Islam is a religion which condones violence, she pointed out that Mohammad, once his followers were no longer threatened, renounced violence and indeed spoke against it.

She also noted that we now have a form of “secular fundamentalism” which rejects any notion of a divine reality, and insists that all action, both public and private, be totally stripped of any allusion to a truth beyond the mundane. She cited the example of what happened a few years ago in Utah, when the Dalai Lama, as part of a conference which was held in a school stadium, blessed the school children in attendance. This act of loving compassion was greeted with outrage and protest by some who contended that it constituted a violation of the separation of church and state.

When she was asked if she had had a key moment in her life when she felt profoundly connected to the divine, she said it was when she realized that in order to write about Mohammad, she would need to approach her subject with true compassion, that is, a deep seeing into and feeling with this man who was called by God to speak and deliver a new vision of spirituality.

The audience was enthralled by her presentation, and twice gave her a standing ovation.

Tomorrow, I plan to attend a day long workshop (on mysticism within the various religious traditions) with this remarkable woman. Once a nun, she left the cloister to go out into the world, and is now recognized as a major scholar in many fields, one who can take intrinsically challenging material and present it in a cogent and comprehensible way for the general reader. She has also written about her own life journey. She has won many honors, and yet presents herself with modesty and warmth. She is a jewel among us, and I strongly recommend her writings to you.

P. S. I just looked Karen Armstrong up on Google, and discovered some interested facts about her background. She is now in her early sixties. She suffered from epilepsy for many years before it was diagnosed, and this caused her to lose her teaching position. And (of special interest to me) her doctoral dissertation on Tennyson was rejected by an "outside authority." I know many women who suffered s similar fate. Only a few days ago I met a woman who had done special and original research on an early French philosopher, but her director was so slow in getting her through the process that someone else published similar material before she could submit her work for print. All of this was commonplace in academia at that time. Only after the women's movement erupted did women in higher education receive equal treatment.

And, since I am talking about that era, I will mention that, oddly enough, I see a connection between the shifting landscape of that time and kundalini itself. The connection I make is that this was the era when the notion of the "divine feminine" came to the fore. The goddess was rediscovered, the body was restored to its rightful place as the twin of the spirit, and the importance of the inner feelings (as loving energy) was affirmed.

For me, the kundalini energies are the essence of the divine itself, the impulse behind the goddess symbols, and the creative power of the universe. My journey took me through all these various stages, and perhaps this is why I feel such a strong connection to this interpretation.

In any event, it is truly gratifying to sit in an audience and imbibe the wisdom of this remarkable woman who survived many challenges along the way.

She now calls herself a "freelance monotheist" who values all the monotheistic religions equally (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) and feels they are differing expressions of a central core truth.