Kundalini Splendor

Note:The following excerpt is taken from El Collli's website called "Shared Transformation."  This site contains some of the best writing on the Kundalini phenomenon that exists.


Branded by the Spirit (Part One)
El Collie

Lightning Strikes
"The incidence of disturbances having a spiritual origin is rapidly increasing nowadays, in step with the growing number of people who, consciously or unconsciously, are groping their way towards a fuller life."-- Roberto Assagioli, 1965
Kundalini is most likely to rise spontaneously in people who are spiritually inclined, creative, sensitive, open-minded, and open hearted -- all risk factors I knew nothing about until after the fact.
After I settled in with my present husband, Charles, although my life was better than it had been in quite awhile, I was vaguely dissatisfied with myself, and sometimes remarked to him that I wanted "a brain and body transplant." (This private joke has come back to haunt me many times over. I've learned to be a lot more careful what I ask for, even in jest.)
When my Kundalini first erupted, I didn't know what hit me. I was not completely unfamiliar with the concept of a Kundalini awakening, having read about it many years earlier. I knew that Kundalini was the Hindu word for the mysterious agent, which unfurled the tight bud of human consciousness. I'd explored innumerable spiritual/metaphysical avenues, but never with the desire or intent of activating Kundalini. Yet some part of me seemed to have known this was coming. For instance, while my tastes run to the unusual, I surprised even myself when, just prior to our wedding, I'd bought a prophetic gift for us at a street fair -- a bronze casting of a cobra raised to strike!
I didn't connect my symptoms to the rising of the "Serpent Power" until five months into my illness. Prior to this, I had spent grueling months in limbo. Neither I nor my doctors, knew what was constellating my strange illness. (I later discovered this is a common dilemma for those in whom the Kundalini symptoms are primarily physical). I'd initially dismissed the increasing weakness in my arms as unwelcome signs of aging. But now something seemed seriously wrong. An enormous weight was bearing down on my chest, making me labor to breathe. I couldn't seem to get enough oxygen; I felt dizzy and light-headed. Having smoked for twenty-five years, I figured the dues collector had arrived.
While I draw the line at do-it-yourself appendectomies, short of emergency, I turn to doctors only as a last resort, after I've exhausted my self-healing attempts. Fortunately, I have been fairly healthy for most of my life. But this time I knew I was in over my head. Scared and contrite, I made the first of what was to become, for me, an unprecedented number of trips to various medical specialists. My dreaded chest X-ray came up clean. I was given an EKG for good measure, and my heart passed with flying colors as well. All the same, I stopped smoking immediately. The elephant sitting on my chest didn't budge. My symptoms multiplied and worsened, which at first I accepted as inevitable. I had no expectations that whatever damage I'd incurred would be healed overnight. I had tried to quit many times before and withdrawal had been a nightmare. But in the past, aside from the craving to smoke, the worst of the physical symptoms began to fade after a week. Much of my distress came from being so alone in my predicament. Had I been able to find another soul who shared some of these uncanny gifts, I may have been able to handle them with more aplomb. As it was, I learned quickly that trying to talk to anyone about these things provoked skepticism, fear or frustrating misunderstandings. True to form, establishing consonant relationships was of far more importance to me than being a species unto myself with weird powers. For the record, the criteria for spiritual progress are quite different than generally imagined. One does not have to be a paragon of virtue or perfection. I have heard from people who were alcoholics when their Kundalini rose, and from many whose real or imagined shortcomings pressed them to ask, "How can I be worthy of this? Why me?" When the same question rose up from my depths, a voice of quiet conviction answered simply: Because you were ready.