Paramahansa Yogananda
The other day I was sitting today at my favorite Thai restaurant reading when someone commented how straight my posture is. I smiled and replied that I had to; years ago when I picked up golf I had realized how crooked my spine had become so I did my best straightening it. She smiled and said that she is a yoga instructor and has an eye for those things. We have to watch our posture because that’s where the kundalini energy is flowing. There are yoga disciplines with the aim to stimulate our energy centers but for me the kundalini expansion has been a natural process over the years. What I contributed was rhythmic breathing, walking and sitting straight, and opened up to a spiritual path that continuously encouraged me to balance my chakras. After a 12 year transformation process I have received that nice perk that I can consciously activate this energy with the result that thoughts literally come to standstill and serenity prevails for a while. Spirituality has its visible benefits!
Everything probably started years in the late 90s when I picked up a book on my travels to India—Raja Yoga, written by Vivekananda. He advised, besides sitting regularly with an erect spine in a high energy place in meditation, breathing in through the left nostril, and out of the right one. I practiced that over the years and learned to straighten my spine. Then in 2008 a mysterious process kicked in. I was in a conference room with many colleagues when I felt a bubbling activity in my spine, just at the end of my neck and the beginning of my head area. Energy was flowing through it, which put me in state of serenity and bliss. Around the time my spiritual path opened up as well introducing me to a journey that was simply beyond my self.
Many of you know what it feels like to embark on spiritual Awakening, a higher Force puts us on autopilot. It’s a healing journey and a continuous spiritual transformation. Energy centers get aligned over the years. I have attached a table on the significance of the seven chakras. For me the adjustment has been mainly about consciously disengaging from my powerful mind and to teach myself to become more assertive. I cannot comment on the chakra rebalancing that took place over the years. Most of these changes were just to subtle for me to notice. I did notice when my heart chakra opened up though earlier this year. It happened with a bang! For several weeks I felt rage, jealousy, and unspeakable love all at the same time. This may sound strange, but I felt alive for the first time when my heart chakra opened up! The biggest perk of kundalini energy awakening is mental serenity. Fear has completely disappeared from my life. My thinking stops for large stretches and I just perceive things without an agenda, without a thought about what’s happening. Life is often a walking meditation for me, but this slipping in and out of spiritual Consciousness comes and goes, as it probably does for many of us. Kundalini energy or not, my ego is definitely still present and kicking.
You probably heard the symptoms described before when kundalini energy moves: the ringing in the ears, the pressure in the forehead. These aches and pains are all over the place. I panicked a little when a mentee texted me that she felt fluids in her brain and asked whether this was normal. While I have never had symptoms like that, a couple of my friends with more kundalini experience conjectured that it could. Well, my friend got an MRI done and it returned normal and she has made great strides in her Awakening journey, so it likely was. My adjustment was much more gentle. From time to time I felt a pleasant vibration in my upper neck area, a little like champaign bubbles coming to the surface.
The process of kundalini rising is natural. Some people fear that artificial stimulation of the kundalini energy has risks attached. Based on my observations our chakras open up entirely in accordance with our spiritual development. For me it took a decade in-between my first kundalini energy experience and the stage when I could consciously activate this energy reservoir. There is need to hurry with anything, our energy centers open up whenever we are ready to take the next step. Awakening is a process, and our energy centers are the plumbing that embarks us on the journey that we are supposed to take. ‘Have a little faith that God knows what She is doing’, is what I say to my clients when they have kundalini concerns. Everything that happens to us, happens exactly at the speed it is meant to, at least that’s what happened to me.
In a survey to some 30 spiritual friends some had very intense kundalini experiences, but then some others didn’t comment on it. I view the kundalini energy breakthrough more as a perk of traveling the spiritual path than an indicator of spiritual progress. Yet, as said before, I would also not force anything. Our chakras get adjusted by spiritual living. Let life be your teacher of the work that still remains to be done. Kundalini energy is God’s plumbing of our energy centers. We just show up each day putting our best for forward and God does the rest.
1 comment:
I really feel that Kundalini awakening needs to happen naturally. I saw many people loosing themselves when the process was forced and there was no readiness. I agree with what you say, that actually spiritual awakening happens naturally and I believe that soft practices connected with mindfulness and building strong awareness will prepare our spiritual self to awaken Kundalini in a healthy and harmonious way.
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