Kundalini Splendor

In Blackwater Woods

by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.
(picture found on internet)

Note: This is one of Mary Oliver's most famous and beloved poems.  As beautiful as it is, and as profound the sentiment, I would add a further thought.  Yes, we must "love what is mortal," but, once Kundalini arrives, we find ourselves loving something "immortal" as well--that is, we love the spirit of the Other, which transcends the material realm, with all its temporality and ephemeral qualities.  If Kundalini is the essence of that which engenders and empowers  all that is, it is eternal, not evanescent.
I think that we are best served by loving both worlds, and, of course, letting go of such attachments "when the time comes."