Kundalini Splendor

Kundalini Splendor <$BlogRSDURL$>

Friday, September 10, 2010

The Source of Bliss in the Body 





Anne Baring is a highly gifted Jungian therapist, art historian, writer, and commentator on ancient and modern culture. Her website is a treasury of acute observations on psychology, history, archetypal symbology, and the evolution of human consciousness. In one of her entries (see link below) she offers these reflections:

This greatest potential achievement of human consciousness is symbolised in Indian mystical teaching by the journey of the serpent goddess Kundalini from the lowest chakra at the base of the spine to the highest chakra at the top of the head where the twin masculine and feminine conduits of the life energy meet in the central channel—the sushuma—and flower into the crown of the thousand-petalled lotus. The long and arduous journey of the instinct from an unconscious state to a fully conscious one in this dimension accomplishes its transformation from blind instinctive impulse to the highest expression of wisdom, insight and compassion. Yet instinct is not ‘lower’ than consciousness. It is the mighty power which animates and organizes all forms, all patterns of life and all the connecting fields between them. To create a conscious relationship with this unimaginable power, coming to know its light and dark aspects, develops the ability to heal and awaken others to their own spiritual or soul potential. In the Buddha’s own words, “Incomparable are the Wake.”

......................

"The transcendent experience of intense bliss comes from the older limbic (mammalian) level of the brain." "
http://www.annebaring.com/anbar20_bk_dreamwater_12.htm

When we experience Kundalini awakening, we marry the conscious and unconscious minds. The content of the unconscious now rises into our consciousness in ways that often startle and amaze us. Sometimes we suddenly are confronted with emotional or psychological content we had repressed or ignored before. Our fears, anxieties and angers may erupt and threaten to overwhelm us. We are forced to face these forgotten impulses--it is impossible to ignore them any longer. But through acknowledging them and exploring them fully, we can rid ourselves of these secret menaces, that otherwise lie in wait like traps that will at some point threaten us with devastating outcomes.

But the unconscious is also the repository of great joy. Anne Baring states the the bliss of transcendence actually originates in the mammalian brain, the seat of instinct. Until the inner "self" is opened, we are oblivious to such states of rapture and ecstasy. Once we enter these unfamiliar states of consciousness, we realize that here is the "natural" state of our beingness, a bliss we had before ignored totally. Those who have not experienced such states of bliss-consciousness cannot imagine such levels of awareness. They are like those who are color blind and thus cannot conceive of the nature of color, or those who are deaf and cannot imagine what sound may be.

Our current task is to unite the instinctual/intuitive and the analytical, the limbic brain and the frontal cortex. As modern humans, we cannot (and should not) simply revert to an earlier stage of human development before the development of rational thought. But we should open to bliss, for it serves as a channel to "God within the self," and should not be cut off or rejected--indeed, it is a key element of our total makeup and must be incorporated into our totality if we are to evolve to new levels as a species.

“How do you know, but every bird
that cuts the airy way
is an immense world of delight,
closed by your senses five?”
William Blake







This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?