Kundalini Splendor

I am indebted to the writer of the following for allowing me to publish this personal account.  As we know, each experience of awakening is unique, but we learn by sharing, thus becoming teachers to each other.

    I was shy in sharing the experience with A. because I don't talk about it. I tried to look up similar experiences on the web and of course i did find Kundalini. But many of the descriptions seemed full of drama, of rules, of hierarchy. Some said one had to be pure and go through initiations to have the experience - I'm a middle age woman, I eat meat, I drink wine, I don't have a yoga practice. I didn't find anything that resonated with me, so I  let it be my private thing.

 Like you, I don't know why it happened to me, like you, I think the events of my life did create a framework for it. My first experience was actually fairly young, 17, when I had a Christian conversion experience at my boarding school at the hands of two handsome young Stanford grads who were born again and came to teach. :) It was an authentic surrender to Christ, however, and in that surrender, I didn't get just peace, or relief - I got an ecstatic, undeniable, full body almost orgasmic experience that [put] me on the floor - and left a sweet perfume that lasted for a long time.  In college at Dartmouth I studied religion and philosophy rigorously, finding a real home in Taoism which i practiced, I lived in silence for a year at a Buddhist meditation center, and learned vipassana, I went on to "achieve things" in the world as a journalist.

 But I didn't have another full on experience until my early 30's. It shocked me just as much. I was in a rare yoga class, and at the end, in the rest period, I just casually asked myself, can I give up my fear? Can I give up my body? With every question I could feel this tension, until finally I asked, "Can I surrender everything?" And at that moment, there it was again. Full on ecstatic electric body takeover. I had had it before but I was still surprised. After that it started coming regularly in meditation, and I could feel it in its parts, this lightening ecstasy starting in my loins and at the base of my spine, shooting up through my head. Sometimes it travelled all through out my body, sometimes it lingered a while in my heart.

 I think I assumed it was a common experience, I tried to bring it up to others I knew meditated, and realized it wasn't. I often kept the experience limited or at bay, I didn't feel that I could feel it fully all the time. And then it came at other points during the day. I recently - last year - decided to truly invite it for the first time. And the invitation was - I am open (to anything happening) and i am ALSO open to nothing happening. And I had to really open myself up to being so open to anything - but also to nothing. And man did I get a light show. Instead of trying to guard myself from it, or think about it with my brain, I tried to enter the energy itself. Not labelling, not analyzing but being one with it. It would slow down for a moment and I would repeat my "openness" - and it would start up again. Sometimes it would start in my groin and the base of my spine and shoot up my head, but sometimes it would flow down from my head to the base and back. It would travel all over my body, circle my heart. I let myself convulse and twitch openingly, as opposed to trying to contain it, which I sometimes do.  It was very intense, lasted 20 minutes, and I passed out cold for about a half hour. When I woke up I was infused with the deepest love, and the twinkly beauty of all things, I moved though the days with an effortlessness.

 I now can invite it any time I like. I don't have to be aligned or even in a good mood to receive it. There is such grace with it, it demands nothing but the openness, and the surrender. I feel it now throughout the day.  I recently was at the homeopath, on the table, and when she was working on me I decided to invite it in. And she stepped back and said, "What the heck was that?" And I said, "Can you feel it?" She said, yes, and that she was so glad I came in, because I obviously needed the release of her treatment. I told her I didn't think it was something I needed healing from.

 But I was still not sure exactly what it WAS. Your book is the best account of the most similar experience, and I was so grateful to read it. And I'm still not sure what to "do" with it. I think I am lucky enough to receive it "at will" by which i mean, "the surrender of will" -- because I've never made it mean anything, and Ive never "needed" it to be there. It's been with me for so long, it's been a beautiful private gift. But A. suggested I start working with it. He also said it could be healing - I'm starting big symptoms of menopause.

 And I'm wondering if it could be of service in the following way: I feel like I'm being called to share my spiritual knowledge in the world. Because privately I've had a non traditional and intuitive but very rigorous practice for most of my life. Through many teachers in books and private investigations, I do feel this stillness, this connection and love, often most of the time,and of course this gift of this amazing kundalini energy.