Kundalini Splendor

El Collie––Branded by the Spirit––Part 3

I was in and out of the hospital for more tests as new symptoms developed. An uncontrollable neck muscle tremor made my head shake back and forth in a palsied rhythm, even when I was lying down. Painless little muscle twitches developed over my entire body. I was advised that I might have an incurable and/or fatal condition. Myasthenia gravis (or perhaps some other rare autoimmune disease), brain tumor, lupus, lyme disease and ALS were speculated. With mounting fear, I began to suffer from muscle cramps and an awful systemic burning sensation. The spasms were affecting every part of my body, including my tongue, causing me to slur my words or bite my tongue when talking. The onslaught of symptoms grew outright weird, ranging from a prickling and tingling that roved around beneath my skin, to a horrifying sensation like toothpicks stabbing into my eyeballs.
All the medical tests came up negative. A dozen doctors, four of them neurologists, had seen me, all told. I was repeatedly informed that I was "an interesting case" -- from the mouths of physicians, an ominous euphemism meaning, "We've never seen a disease quite like this."
During this span of ever increasing disability and bizarre symptoms, I was doing some metaphysical counseling by phone. I use the word "metaphysical" loosely, as I was not adhering to any particular creed. Basically, I helped people bring a larger, more spiritual perspective to their problems. I never charged money for this work. I considered it an ongoing learning experience to be invited into the details and depths of other people's lives. It surprised me when I was sought out for my natural ability to do this. Strangers would somehow sense this faculty in me and approach me at parties or other unexpected places and pour out their troubles to me.
At the time, I was counseling a man who was calling me daily. Although I had reached a point where I could barely hold the phone, and had to lay down with it cradled to my ear, helping him deal with his suicidal depression was also salvation for me. His desperation took my mind away from my own condition at a time when nothing less gripping could have held my attention. What was interesting about this, in retrospect, was that at one point I suggested to this man that he might be experiencing spiritual emergence, though it had not dawned on me that this might apply to my situation as well.
One afternoon, thinking he might be able to heal me, my brother-in-law dropped by. He is an acupressurist with innate psychic sensitivity. As soon as he walked in, he became very agitated. He told us that the entire house was reverberating with the most unusual energy he'd ever encountered. Stranger yet, he said all this energy seemed to be emanating from me!
Charles and I didn't know what to make of this. We briefly considered I might be possessed by some kind of malevolent entity. But in my previous experience with astral beings, I knew that animals, plants and children were most immediately affected by negative influences. Our pets and houseplants seemed to be in fine shape. My brother-in-law's kids had come by with him, and while he was trying to do some energy balancing work on me, we'd given them paper and crayons to keep them happily occupied. After they left, I scrutinized the pictures they had drawn to see if there was anything-sinister coming through. Both had drawn jubilant nature scenes, resplendent with child-scrawled greenery, birds and shining suns. At the time, I wondered if the charged atmosphere Charles' brother detected had something to do with the many people who were praying for my recovery. What else could account for the immense energy he had felt radiating from me?
The pain and fear of fast sinking into the quicksand of physical decline is beyond description. Without a clue to the real cause of my illness, I was simply terrified. Like Gopi Krishna wrote of his own experience: "I did not know at the time that I was witnessing in my own body the immensely accelerated activity of an energy not yet known to science, which is carrying all mankind towards the heights of superconsciousness..."
For several months, I remained in a state of near-paralysis. The physical pain came to a crescendo in the middle of one night. I awoke in agony. Every muscle in my body, from the soles of my feet to the top of my scalp, was writhing and wrenching as if trying to rip loose from my skeleton. It felt as if each muscle and tendon had taken on a surreal life of it's own: a hideous internal mutiny of thrashing, serpentine creatures. If this wasn't bad enough, I was burning up inside. The very cells in my body felt drenched in battery acid. Charles was awakened to my near-delirious cry: "It feels like burning snakes!" We had no idea how apt a metaphor this would prove to be.
Soon afterward, I began to experience more classical, full-blown Kundalini manifestations. Heaven's gate did not swing softly open to admit me; it blew off its hinges in a silent blast, demolishing my circumscribed life. I was in a continuous, radically altered state for months, suspended in an etheric, oceanic energy. In Kundalini, I was immolated. My entire being became a transparency, a gossamer presence no longer identified as flesh and bones, existing as a galvanized consciousness in the midst of primordial, sacred forces. Nothing could have prepared me for the awesomeness of this experience, not even my past LSD adventures. Yet it would be equally true to say that everything in my life had been leading up to this. I understood with unprecedented depth and clarity why everything I had ever done or experienced had been necessary. I was transported to a place of lucidity that transcended forgiveness; no shard of regret, past or present, could lodge in my heart. With nigh supernatural acceptance, I saw that everything made perfect sense; everything had been scripted by a breathtakingly benevolent, incomprehensible Intelligence whose work -- my life -- I could only behold with joy.
My sensitivity -- physical, emotional and psychic -- was magnified to the point of the fabled princess who could feel the pea under a mountain of mattresses. Colors were extraordinarily brilliant and my hearing grew so acute than if Charles so much as coughed from another room, I jumped as if it had been a gunshot.
I had outright convulsions, with energy roaring up from the base of my spine and out the top of my head. My world was rife with holy madness. I became a sort of human tuning fork -- mechanical vibrations set me off in a wild way. Once Charles decided to clean some crumbs off the table with the Dustbuster. As soon as he switched it on, I went into a seizure. Energy blasted through my spinal cord and out the top of my head like a geyser. It was both terrible and hilarious. Charles had no idea that my sudden "attack" had anything to do with the vibration of the vacuum cleaner, and my teeth rattled so hard I could only beg in an incoherent stutter: "St...st...st...STOP!" He finally understood, and as soon as the machine was off, my convulsion ended.