Kundalini Splendor

Kundalini and the Aging Process


After the Fact

The people of my time are passing away: my
Wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year old who

Died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it’s
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:

It was once weddings that came so thick and
Fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:

Now, it’s this and that and the other and somebody
Else gone or on the brink: well, we never

Thought we would live forever (although we did)
And now it looks like we won’t: some of us

Are losing a leg to diabetes, some don’t know
What they went downstairs for, some know that

A hired watchful person is around, some like
To touch the cane tip into something steady,

So nice: we have already lost so many,
Brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our

Address books for so long a slow scramble now
Are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our

Index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:

At the same time we are getting used to so
Many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip

To the ones left: we are not giving up on the
Congestive heart failures or brain tumors, on

The nice old men left in empty houses or on
The widows who decided to travel a lot: we

Think the sun may shine someday when we’ll
Drink wine together and think of what used to

Be: until we die we will remember every
Single thing, recall every word, love every

Loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
Others to love, love that can grow brighter

And deeper till the very end, gaining strength
And getting more precious all the way….

~ A. R. Ammons ~


(Epoch)

At first glance, this poem may seem to have nothing to do with Kundalini. But the fact is, that Kundalini does not take place in a vacuum. It occurs within a matrix of many features and aspects, and an important one of these is age itself.

Kundalini awakening in a young person may show a very different face than the same process in someone more mature. The young person in his/her twenties may feel an extremely heightened sex drive and wonder how to deal with it. Someone awakened in their thirties or forties may suddenly feel great surges of “practical” energy and throw themselves into their career or creative activities. Those in their late forties or fifties may suddenly turn their focus on inner rather than outer existence (individuation), whereas those even older may spend time integrating and assimilating their total life experience, including Kundalini itself.

Of course, these are not fixed categories, but suggestions as to how Kundalini may interact with other features of one’s particular life stage. Kundalini may erupt at almost any time of life—I know one woman who was awakened in her nineties (fortunately, she recognized what was happening.) I have also read of children who underwent Kundalini awakening.

One of the great joys of the later stages is that, though the experiences themselves may be less intense, the memory of what is possible is always present to encourage and comfort, the sense that one has “been to the mountain” and the conviction that this state is also that which awaits us once we leave, even though right now we may indeed not remember why we came into the room.