Kundalini Splendor

Hello, everyone,
I am going to be on vacation until the end of July and so will not be posting until I return.  In the meantime, hope you are all having a lovely summer!
Dorothy

All this time I've been whirling
in the space between your thoughts
while you were debating what to name
this silent wildness:
He or She? I or Thou? Particle or Wave?
Come now, be a moth, a petal,
a fountain in a sunbeam.
Be the final breath.
Just dance with me,
and dissolve.

Fred LaMotte

~

Dorothy,
(from the Shift Network)

I am excited to let you know that due to popular demand, Andrew Harvey has generously offered to facilitate another LIVE spiritual coaching and Q&A session, this Monday, July 15th at 5pm Pacific time, about the advanced teachings and practices of the Christ Path!

As you may know, Andrew guided one of these powerful FREE mentoring calls a couple weeks ago and he literally blew everyone away, leaving many of us in awe at the inspired wisdom streaming through him.

Here is your Login Info for Monday:

Listen in on our free webcast
 http://attendthisevent.com/?eventid=43704642

You can also join us by phone: +1-530-216-4294 and enter the PIN 696313# (click here for additional access numbers and methods)
If you've ever had the pleasure of seeing Andrew respond one-on-one, you already know that these advanced Q&A calls are incredibly powerful and not for the faint of heart. Anyone looking to bypass their shadow and escape into the light is in for a wake up call!

Andrew answers each question with unflinching honesty and gives you the raw and sometimes painful truth about the challenges that we all must face in order to actualize our Christ nature.

Yet beneath his sobering assessment of the deeper work that needs to be done, Andrew guides us to contemplate the joyful, miraculous possibilities that are now emerging in the hearts, minds and spirits of those of us that are ready.

So bring any burning questions that you may have about esoteric Christianity, the advanced teachings and practices of the Christ Path or his upcoming advanced training, to the call this Monday.

I hope that you can join Andrew and me for this empowering free session.


  In spirit,
Stephen
P.S. Please note that the exceptional (really unprecedented!) early registration bonus package for Andrews 9-Month Advanced Intensive, expires this Monday, July 15th at Midnight Pacific.

This remarkable collection includes two brand new video teachings from Andrew about some very important themes for the 9-month Intensive that include:

VIDEO #1 - Rumi and the Dark Night of the Soul
VIDEO #2 - The Seven Dark Diamonds in the Crown of the Black Madonna

To learn more and register please visit the course information page:

Register N

 


Bridging the Spiritual and Mundane
by Bhikkhu Bodhi

As I now look at our situation, I distinguish three major domains in which human life participates. One I call the transcendent domain, which is the sphere of aspiration for classical contemplative spirituality. The second is the social domain, which includes our interpersonal relations as well as our political, social, and economic institutions. And the third is the natural domain, which includes our physical bodies, other sentient beings, and the natural environment.

From my present perspective, a spirituality that privileges the transcendent and devalues the social and natural domains, or sees them at best as stepping stones to realization, is inadequate to our current needs. Such an orientation has led to a sharp division of duties that puts our future at risk. On the one hand, the pursuits of contemplative spirituality fall to the “spiritual virtuosos,” the
contemplatives, mystics, and yogis, who aspire to transcend the world and express their compassion simply by guiding others to the heights they themselves have reached. On the other, the steering wheel of humanity’s future is placed solely in the hands of politicians, development experts, technocrats, and corporate magnates, who are usually driven by personal ambition, misplaced pragmatism, and the tunnel vision of technical expertise. This division also opens the doors of influence over our communal institutions to religious dogmatists and fundamentalists.

As I see it, our collective future requires that we fashion an integral type of spirituality that can bridge the three domains of human life. This would entail embarking on a new trajectory. The spiritual quest, from ancient times to the present, has primarily moved along an ascending track: one that leads from darkness to light, from the conditioned to the unconditioned, from mortality to the deathless. Our task today, in my understanding, is to complement the ascending spiritual movement with a descending movement, a gesture of love and grace flowing down from the heights of realization into the valleys of our ordinary lives.

While neither can be neglected, the storms of crisis gathering on our future horizon oblige us to give special attention to the descending movement. Under the impetus of love, we must bring the light and wisdom gained from the transcendent domain back into the world in order to transform and redeem the social and natural domains. More concretely, this entails that in the social domain we must strive for modes of governance embodying justice, equity, and compassion. Social and economic policies must be rooted in the conviction that all human beings are entitled to live in peace, with sufficient access to food, water, medical care, and housing, and opportunities to fulfill their potentials. In the natural domain we must learn to look at the universe with wonder, awe, and reverence, treat other living beings with care and kindness, and ensure that nature preserves its self-regenerating capacities.

In short, the challenge facing us is to ensure that the world works for everyone, including nature itself. We have no better guidance in meeting this challenge than our spiritual traditions, but we must draw out from them their potentials for transforming our relationship to other people and the natural environment. The task ahead will by no means be an easy one, for we can expect staunch resistance from those who profit by preserving and extending the status quo. With the right combination of skills, however, I believe we will be able to prevail.

In my view, what we must do to achieve our goal is to bring together the wisdom of humanity’s spiritual heritage with the prophetic passion of the social activist. It is only when the two are united—when wisdom and love inspire and drive social conscience, and when social conscience draws its guidelines from timeless sources of truth—that we can shape our institutions and policies in the ways necessary to continue the human adventure on this fragile but beautiful planet.

--Bhikkhu Bodhi in Bridging the Spiritual and Mundane (from "Awakin Weekly")

Jeff Richards is a gifted artist who lives in Denver.  His art is of a special kind, unique in fact, for I know of no other like it.  Jeff is also unusual because he likes to probe below the surface and examine the meaning of the deeper issues--who are we? why are we here?--and discover how these basic questions relate to art as a moral enterprise. At the end of his essay, he refers to a philosopher unknown to me--(Charles Taylor).  You will need to look him up to learn more about him--or better yet, go to Jeff's website at : http://hexagonart.com   There you will find more postings and musings on his topic:
The Cosmos as Significant Other.     You will also find more information on his upcoming exhibit in August in Pueblo, Colorado, as well as examples of his unusual art pieces.

Jeff, like many of us, senses a connection between Kundalini and creativity, even though we can't always define what this is with any precision.

From "The Cosmos as My Significant  Other : The Moral Dimension of Art"


There's a thorny question that can present itself when one is faced with a blank canvas, or page, or computer screen (or for that matter, a blank mind) - that is, what is there to paint, write, or think about that is worthy, or - dare I say it - good.  For some this becomes a question posed in the inner mind by the specter of a teacher, or critic, or friend, or parent.  There was an old TV show comedian who used to exclaim, whenever someone started telling him what to do, "Here comes da Judge!  Here comes da Judge!"; and like a stern judge peering down with squinty eyes from a high bench, that inner voice can be downright threatening.  Or like those wacky nocturnal dreams where you suddenly notice you've been going about your affairs in public with no pants on,  the voice can throw you into panic (OK, I'll admit here that I still have those dreams on occasion, the most recent finding me stark naked in a grocery store - the vegetable section, if I remember correctly).  From this perspective the question of worthiness, or the good, can initiate a cramp in the muscles of the creative process, a self-conscious constriction of creative energy, a deflating of elan vital.  In short, a block.  For this reason many simply choose to ignore this question of the good altogether, and I will concur that if it's "Here comes da Judge" it is indeed "There goes da Muse".

But I would like to point to a deeper aspect of the question regarding worthiness or the good, one that looks well beyond external judgments terrestrial or celestial, real or imagined.  When facing a blank page or canvas, one must ultimately ask from the most authentic self available, from the deepest regions of the soul if you will, what it is that is truly good to create, and how is the creative process being engaged in oriented to that good.  From that perspective the question is a profoundly moral one - not in the ethical sense, as in "what should I do?", but in the moral identity sense, as in "Who am I, why am I here, what am I doing here?" (and perhaps just as importantly, "Who are we, why are we here, what are we doing here?").

So I am proposing -, with the full knowledge that many will run in terror at the prospect, while others will snicker behind their hands -  that the creative process has a deeply moral dimension, one that is unavoidable whether the creative agent is conscious of it or not.  And I'll propose that if one is willing to look at the creative process through this lens -  if one is willing to mine the creative possibilities and energy inherent in what I'll call "moral sources" -  then new and unexpected doors will open.  And, "Da Judge" will not be behind any of them.

So I can imagine those of you who have read last year's telling of my odd story are wondering what "moral sources" has to do with possible kundalini awakening and its consequences.  I certainly am!  I think one of the keys just might lie in what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls "webs of interlocution".

The following was written in the year before my awakening.  Like a previous entry, it illustrates the kind of thinking that I was engaged in, before my mind "jumped" to a new level composed primarily of feeling rather than contemplation.   But as I commented earlier, this mental preparation was important in laying the groundwork for what followed.

It is as important to trace what goes underground as well as what rises to the
 surface; to recognize the value of silences as to celebrate that which is loudly and repetitiously spoken; to restore, recapture, and recreate what has been lost or forgotten as well as to exalt in endless rituals of monotony the ascendency of the too familiar.
If we were to offer an abbreviated definition of the development of human consciousness, it might be this: the continuing struggle of humankind to step outside the circle of the limited, subjective perception, to capture a less biased, less confined, and thus more accurate awareness of self and its surround.
The “primitive” (and perhaps the mystic) contemplates and is the tree, but the rationalist serves as a constant self-monitor (“ I am an observer observing an object  designated as tree.”)
Yet, in that process of splitting off, of gaining accuracy at the expense of a subjective delight in unity, something was sacrificed.  Forgotten was the ancient counsel, “God made man in his own image, male and female created he them”  The image of god was perceived as reflected in the male alone, and female (claimed to be incorporated into and subsumed under generic Man) was in fact expelled and excluded from the original concept, female  existing thereafter as a pale image or reflection of male, his shadow self, his womb-source, his domestic caretaker, his bawd.
What we call for is no less that the restoration of the feminine component to human consciousness--whatever its attributes (a capacity for experiencing the oneness between subject and object, the inclusion of affect into observation, an insistence on meaning in human experience grounded in basic human relations as they unfold in acts of charity and love.)
If female is nature, if female is self (as opposed to other), if female is feeling--let these be the keys to open to new worlds of awareness, the guide to as yet unacknowledged paths of salvation.
Salvation--whence can it come?  Not from a technology which threatens obliteration either as instantaneous annihilation or as a slower desiccation of our powers through poisonous waste and seepage.  Not from a worn-out theology holding aloft a shriveled corpse for adoration.  But from the source which has always been recognized as the ultimate--the inner being, the hidden spirit, the true self.  Not “Inner Man,” however; “Inner Man” has produced an outer monster--technical, non-accountable, death-dealing.
What must be awakened--indeed is already rousing, stretching her limbs--is the sense of the human as grounded in ultimate categories--of feeling, of love, of worth, and relatedness to what is outside even whenever precise definitions and delineations are not possible.
The women’s movement, like all great spiritual systems, has both an exoteric and an esoteric content. In its exoteric form, the movement expresses itself in easily graspable slogans: “Equal pay for equal work”; “Equality of the sexes”; “Equal rights for all.”
These familiar phrases become convenient foci around which controversies gather--where at times clusters of disputants argue endlessly about real or supposed effects of the proposed changes on their lives and on the shape of society.
However, behind the public arguments and the openly displayed polemic is another level of concern, one with which many of the antagonists are themselves unfamiliar.  It has to do with our perception of the entire range of observed phenomena we label “reality,” as well as our definition of ourselves as observers.  It is the basis of our capacity to intersect external events and to interpret their flow as coherent form.  This is the esoteric level, the return to the feminine in the deeper sense.  It seeks to do no less than transform our total awareness of self, meaning, and purpose--to plunge to the heart of reality and return with the sacred token or gift which will bring us to redemption.

What are the efforts of the new vision?

l. To provide an alternative to the notion that “reality” can be known only through external observation, and that the universe itself is a “closed system.”

2. To offer a history of the oppressed rather than a narrative of the oppressor.

3. To go into history to reveal how awareness has been stopped, killed, snuffed out, blighted.  To show how, as a consequence, the oppressed frequently become co-conspirators with the oppressor.

4. To trace the underground stream of human experience.

This may be the humanities’ last chance.
As business fails--as technology fails and institutional religion fails--as the sense of apocalypse intensifies--people will be searching, crying out the old questions--Who are we?  Why are we here?  Does our life have meaning?
Already, some collectives are delivering their purported messages of salvation--witness the rise of cults and sects, the “born agains”--born-again as Christians or bizarre occultists.  The humanities--the inclusive study of what it means, or has meant, or is likely to mean to be human--are being presented with what may be a last chance.  Only if we are prepared to revise our definitions, to broaden and expand our views, to include all groups which in the past have been outcast or rejected--by sex, by color, by lifestyle, by condition--will we have a message worth heeding.  If Minority Studies has suffered a decline, is this the fault of minority scholars or of reactionary faculty in humanities who refuse to revise curricula?  If Woman’s Studies develops outside the conventional offerings, then how and when will it be integrated?
We cannot answer these many questions fully.  But one thing we can and must do--keep the dialogue open.

Then shall I leap into love

By Mechthild of Magdeburg
(1207 - 1297)

English version by Frank J. Tobin

I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me.
If you want me to leap with abandon,
You must intone the song.
Then I shall leap into love,
From love into knowledge,
From knowledge into enjoyment,
And from enjoyment beyond all human sensations.
There I want to remain, yet want also to circle higher still.

As most of us realize, Kundalini is not all bliss and joy.  Sometimes the pleasure goes away (perhaps because of physical or other difficulties) and we are left in a state of anxiety or downright pain.  This is when we ask ourselves if we have done something wrong, or if we do not deserve all the blessings we have experienced earlier.  At those times it can be helpful to turn to whatever sources have given us nourishment and support in the past.  For me, one of the most important of these is sacred poetry and music, especially Rumi and similar poets of the sacred.  Here is one that I love, and read even when I feel far away from connection.


Drunk on Love

Be drunk on love, because love is all that exists;
Without love, no one has the right to enter His house.
They ask, "What is love?" Reply: "Giving up your self-will."
He who hasn't given up his will isn't chosen.
The lover's an emperor, the two worlds are at his feet:
Does an emperor notice what is thrown in his path?
It is Love and the Lover that live eternally.
Don't lend your heart to anything else; all else is borrowed.
How long will you go on and on embracing a corpse?
Embrace the soul that is embraced by nothing else.

- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
(Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)

I have just watched a fascinating documentary film on Link T. V. about the history of Iran told through clips from film makers of the time.  One of the main points of the video was that in order to be true to your own values, you must not bow down in abjection to the rulers of the time, but show the truth as you perceive it.  Again and again they made the point that the "face" of the nation as the authorities presented it was not congruent with the actual conditions under which the people were living.  The authorities used law, censorship, propaganda and whatever tools they could muster to present a shining image of a country that had horrific problems for the people at large.

As I watched, I observed a display of fireworks (official) in the distance from my apartment window.  This display was part of the celebration of our status as "the greatest nation on earth."  In light of the many disturbing actions of our government--as well as the financial institutions, the media, the leaders in various fields--I paused to question whether or not there was not a great discrepancy between what we imagine ourselves to be  and what we truly are.  Are we saviors or destroyers?  Do we rescue the countries we invade or are we simply military aggressors, intent on seizing the wealth (not gold but oil) of these nations helpless before our might?  Does our government truly serve the people or is it in the pay of big business, arms manufacturers and the like?

It is easy to wave a flag and call oneself a "patriot".  But when does such thoughtless "patriotism" end and honest evaluation of ourselves and our actions (as well as our history) begin?

Now the T. V. is showing a video of the Dalai Lama.  He is, to my way of thinking, an image of a true leader, someone not afraid to speak truth and stand up for the principles he believes in.  He has (in the film) gone to receive an honorary degree from a university in China.  Some students are holding signs applauding China's policies on Tibet.  The Dalai Lama reflects that privately they may express different opinions.  Same scenario, different setting.

Because of the social and political questions of our time, where truth speakers are hard to find and honest political leaders scarce, I feel that it is important to keep one's contact with the inner spirit, to continue one's spiritual journey, for in that realm truth can flourish and personal authenticity reign.

Old Man Leaves Party

It was clear when I left the party
That though I was over eighty I still had
A beautiful body. The moon shone down as it will
On moments of deep introspection. The wind held its breath.
And look, somebody left a mirror leaning against a tree.
Making sure that I was alone, I took off my shirt.
The flowers of bear grass nodded their moonwashed heads.
I took off my pants and the magpies circled the redwoods.
Down in the valley the creaking river was flowing once more.
How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body.
I know what you are thinking. I was like you once. But now
With so much before me, so many emerald trees, and
Weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not
Be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment?

- Mark Strand

This poem appealed to me because it reminds us that we should love and honor our bodies no matter how old we may be.  Self acceptance is an important element in all spiritual/psychological journeys.  
Likewise, Kundalini is also beautiful, even when we grow older and the energies diminish from what they were when we were younger.  Apparently, Kundalini, once fully activated, goes on forever, becoming always more subtle and delicate.  What a blessing this is!
Strand also tells us that we are, after all, but a "dream of flesh," inhabiting our physical forms merely from "moment to moment."  As someone has said, we are doomed to love, and must love what vanishes (ourselves).
___

Praise Song For The Day

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

- Elizabeth Alexander
__

The traditional way for preparing for Kundalini involves yoga, meditation, diet and such.  However, there is another kind of preparation that is not prescribed in any text or teaching but which will, I believe, much enhance the overall process, because it will provide a secure foundation on which to build a Kundalini experience.  This (preliminary) path is that of the mind, and should included consideration of certain fundamental concepts and universal notions basic to understanding the environment in which one finds oneself.  What follows is a list of the ideas occupying my own psyche in the period before awakening occurred.  These are not necessarily the concepts that another might explore, for there are many configurations of such mental topics.  But one can only follow the mind to a certain point, and at that juncture the mind must give way to the experience of embodied wisdom, as Kundalini enters and transforms the self. I will simply list my own preoccupations here, and explore some more fully in later entries.

Reality vs. Illusion
Multiple Angles of Vision Producing
“Simultaneous Reality,” Depending on the Observer
The Metaphoric View:  This = That, Where
Truth Resides in the Nexus
Superimposition Leading to Superperception
Reality as Process, not Fixity; Flow, not Stasis
Principles of Contrast
Dialectical Unity of Opposites, as:
Male----Female
(Hormonal levels, etc., create a spectrum)
Life-----Death
     (Even machines cannot always tell)
Good-----Evil
      (The perennial issue of the philosophers)
A Self-Enclosed System
A Self-Validating Concept
Rhythm vs. Beat (Pattern vs. Item)
Cognition as Possible Only Through Contrast
The Heisenberg Principle  (on Oneness of the
Observer and the Observed)
Duality, Twinning
(Thus, there are two ways of completing the self--one, by choosing its opposite, as in heterosexual relationship, finds its complement; the other, by choosing its likeness, repeats, stresses, emphasizes the pattern, bringing out its essential completeness through highlights and contrasts. It is as if the two figures, in juxtaposition, move closer to and are superimposed one upon the other.  When the two figures are of the same sex, what was shadow with the opposite sex becomes light, and what was secondary asserts itself as primary.  [For example, the female can express her active nature more easily, the male his receptivity.  Now each partner explores and expresses that part of sexual identity hitherto left to the mate who was contra.  Perhaps this phenomenon may be likened to the patterns of laser beams in holography, where interference at one level brings out an added dimension at another.])