At One With The Roses

The yellow and gold roses outside my window have a way of bursting into life, falling into ruins a few days later, and then rebirthing and recycling themselves again and again. Some days their bush is a mix of baby buds and depleted blooms. It is a nice metaphor for life, which is always in a mix of birth and decay, growth and faded beauty, glory and collapse, softness and thorns. The difference between humans and roses is that the roses never complain!

How do we find that place in our self that, like the rose bush, sweetly accepts whatever arises in our place and time? It is nature's way to be in continual flux, and however we may resist this we are part of nature. We will always have new life arising with loss. We are part of constant change because that is the only way fresh possibilities and growth can enter life. Like the roses, the cells of our bodies are in continual modes of living and dying, even though we cannot feel it but only notice the changes months and years later.

 What if the rose bush complained and wept over each fallen rose, or agonized about the coming of winter? What a noisy and less joyful world it would be! But we humans have that privilege. We can think ahead and worry and fret that things might get worse, loss might happen, we might make a mistake or take a bad detour when we make choice. Unlike the rose bush, which is unlikely to ever count its losses over time (how many roses have I seen and lost?) we can feel emotional pain for every dream or opportunity we missed or lost along the way. We can miss enjoying our present beauty and the wonder of the new potential always in our grasp.

 People who read my books "The Awakening Guide" or "The Kundalini Guide"  sometimes write me asking help to awaken their energy with the idea it will change their life into something more magical, more powerful or more successful. They have not yet seen that the culmination of such awakening is more like becoming the rose bush or the tree -- more at peace, more present with the essence of our true nature, engaged as the pure beingness of life itself.

It is the dropping away of resistance to what is, along with the openness to change that leads to creativity and beauty, compassion and appreciation for what exists. Whether spiritual awakening will help anyone become more of anything other than his or her true nature is impossible to predict. More likely they will become less of their conflicts, regrets, and neurosis. With awakening it becomes possible to stand where you are free of the past and the future, be aware of what is true, and move with clarity, spontaneity and acceptance into each unfolding in life. We not only "stop and smell the roses" but we recognize our oneness with them. You really do not need a spiritual awakening to do this, you simply need to let go for a moment and be your true Self. But awakening energy and consciousness will help to prune away the old faded debris of the psyche and shift with more stability into the natural state.

Awakening Friendship

I just returned from a few days in Sacramento where I presented two programs about kundalini and awakening experiences based on my new books, ("The Kundalini Guide" and "The Awakening Guide") at the invitation of some close friends. Their gracious treatment and care for me has prompted some reflection on the deep value of friendship. All of us thrive in the warmth of a few intimate friends, and no matter how awake or how spiritual we are, this quality of friendship enhances our lives. We humans need to share and reflect upon our experiences, consider new ideas, express feelings, care and be taken care of, and take time to play. Sometimes family members are our closest friends, but more often your closest friends become family. In my many years of spiritual searching there have been times when I have been too introverted or preoccupied to fully appreciate friendship. But as I am aging it is more and more clear how crucial these connections are to mental, physical and spiritual well-being. I've noticed that older adults with meaningful friendships have vitality, enthusiasm, creativity and a sense of adventure that is lacking in those who are more isolated. Invitations, options, connections and affection make it more fun to be alive and give a reason to awaken and meet each new day.

The people I met through my good friends this week are all exploring life and contributing to others in many ways, such as teaching yoga, hospice work, healing practices, alternative medicine, centering prayer or meditation groups, facilitating radio programs, channeling, counseling, painting and in many other expressions of their passion and engagement in life. They are enthusiastic friends interested in giving to one another and being nourished in return. Many are in a spiritual awakening process.

Non-duality can seem like a dry teaching at times, stripping one of identifications and old patterns of thinking, or making a person feel disengaged from the ordinary preoccupations of the world and socially detached. Waking up to Oneness can make being alone restful and peaceful, but also somewhat empty. Many people who write to me have expressed the feeling they can no longer relate to old friends because their interests have changed and they no longer like listening to "stories" or problems. But underneath the surface of the non-dual realization is the recognition we are one consciousness playing these many roles in life, reflecting many facets of potential and each in our own unique dance. Compassion and love are stirring. So it is the case that even if we are illusions, we are still a reflection of the infinite and can enjoy the many other dancers around us. I've often thought how the source of life must love diversity as it seems one of the most consistent patterns on the planet. No two of us are exactly alike and we evolve consciously as we meet ourselves in this multiplicity of divine expression.

So we can enjoy friendships with those quite different from us, and find new depths in ourselves through those quite similar. We learn and grow through friendships. A good friend is someone who listens, shares their truth, laughs with us, explores possibilities with us, feeds us whatever we may need at the moment, and whose projections upon us make us feel wanted in their lives.

We do not awaken in a void. Although I am a person who spent many hours meditating in a darkened room it is through my connections with others that the barriers of separation often fell for me -- sometimes a chance encounter, at other times through classes, retreats, music, therapy and in a myriad of ways. The gifts of friendship and the openness to what another spirit had to offer opened the possibility of seeing Truth, or feeling the bliss of unitive moments through chanting, movement, or shared silence. Friendship encourages expression and contribution to the world around us.

If you wish a vital and spiritually full life find a friend or a few who are open to exploring life, Truth and potential with you, and treasure them.

When Kundaini Energy Arises

Often people who are in the process of awakening are concerned about the phenomena that accompanies it. They are afraid they will be distracted or derailed by the uprising of energy, flashes of feeling outside of time, emotions that arise and even the bliss. Once there has been a taste of pure seeing, without all the commotion and interpretation of the restless mind, the sensation of being alive is so open and so radiantly present that a desire arises to maintain this place of simply being. But inevitably the time of distraction will follow. It may be the distractions of life -- a need to focus on work or raising children or health or lifestyle issues, a challenging issue or relationship to resolve, or a psychological or emotional reaction that is unexpected and unacceptable to the "new" me. It may be the internal distraction of physical and energetic change. When energy arises it can be blissful or uncomfortable, enlivening or depleting, welcome or disruptive. This is the energy of consciousness, that deep internal life force that arises and moves to release and open whatever is unneeded, stressful, or stuck in the body/mind system. It's true that it can be a great disruption and distraction in a life, but if it can be met with curiosity rather than fear, a letting go into it rather than contracting against it, and an appreciation that it is just part of the awakening of the whole of you then the process is much more smooth. This energy, known as kundalini in yoga systems, seems to bring the body to a higher energy frequency, and it demands paying attention to how you eat, how you live, and how you move in the world. It makes you pay attention to yourself, and the physical and emotional needs of your life. It is important to notice the reaction of your energy field when you eat or drink what is unhealthy for your body, overwork or overstress yourself, are not completely honest in your relationships, or get caught in toxic environments. Your subtle energy body is trying to align with the Truth you have glimpsed, and support the embodiment of peaceful presence, but it seems as if everything that is not in alignment must be deconstructed before this can happen. It some ways it is like being emptied out of yourself.
It may be that some people with deep awakenings do not go through this kundalini process, but those I have asked have always acknowledged it was part of their experience. By meeting it willingly, without drama or resistance, and appreciating the mystery of this "goddess" helping to awaken you fully, you will grow and unfold in remarkable new ways, and learn to live fully with what is. Kundalini activated for me following a Radiance Breathwork session many years ago, and as it cleared and opened my body it deepened my receptivity to meditation, opened the mind and heart, and eventually moved from being felt as rolling energy up my back that jerked involuntarily through the nights, to rivilets of bliss throughout the body, to a quiet internal hum. It redirected my life and the focus of my work, leading me into territory I had not know existed. It has been a great gift. If you are in this process you might learn more at www.kundaliniguide.com or my new book "The Kundalini Guide".

New Spiritual Books

This note is to announce I have recently published on Amazon and Kindle two new books: The Awakening Guide and The Kundalini Guide.  Both are companions for people on a spiritual path or in the process of spiritual awakening, and are based on 30 years of consulting and mentoring those who have activations of kundalini energy or glimpses of spiritual realization.They are getting wonderful reviews. I am grateful to all who have passed through my life that have made these understandings possible.  They are practical but also inspirational, providing a context and a vision of the unfolding of this process. I am developing another blog kundaliniguide.wordpress.com that will feature essays and questions and answers for those in this process. I already have a websites: kundaliniguide.com & awakeningguide.com but find I plan to move more to a blogging model with similar information.

Social networking has not been my forte but  it is always mentally stimulating to learn something new, and my heart is with getting my books into the hands of those who can benefit from them.  I have been so blessed in my work to meet many beautiful awakening people and find for the most part they only need to value themselves and believe in themselves in this process, and perhaps make a few life adjustments, in order to bring the blessings of a realized life.

In a world as stressed, and filled with negative energies as we are enduring today (although certainly not for the first time) it is a genuine calling to go deeply within and find Truth and the natural flow of life that is meant to be present, radiant, appreciative and loving.  This core is within each of us no matter the back-story and patterns of conditioning we have carried.  A true spiritual awakening is our own true nature longing to reveal itself and lead us into peace and a holistic perspective that has understanding and compassion for human confusion and frailty. Our true nature is ever expansive and vast, easily able to embrace the fullness of life that can cause our smaller conditioning minds to suffer.  To be free of the limitations of our history is to be relaxed in the face of world history, open and engaged in the present beauty available to us, and in this process to bring a bit of healing to the world.  What we release in awakening no longer has to be played forth in the mind-set of our species. What we recognize we are is the All and in this seeing we contribute what we can. It can take a long time to let everything be as it is, but as this possibility open we find a true understanding of life and service.

If you would like to order my books directly and do not use amazon, send me an email to kundinfo@mindspring.com and I will respond with ordering information.

Reflection on 4 Aspects of Human Form

As a life form we are these aspects 1^st Matter – form held together by energy and capable of movement and sensation. Born of matter from parent

2^nd Energy

-- physical   (moves the body),

-- psychic (egoic mind—movement of identification, desire, preference, repulsion, attachment, --mine),

--  subtle (pranas –internal movements that cause us to feel like a separate “me” because they are attributed to one body – the flow upward, downward, and in a circular way connecting thoughts with sensation,  senses with thought, and managing the movement of internal organs such as heart beating, digestion , elimination, sexual activity, coughing, collecting sound into language, expressing thought as words and understanding, transmitting smell and taste.)

3^rd Mind --  psychic energy collected and recirculated in the form of thoughts and  imaginings and dreams being generated from memories and impressions and beliefs, continual in flow

4^th Spirit – awareness, consciousness, presence which entered matter and became identified with a particular form and story.  It likely enters at conception and triggers the growing process and at some point in the womb after the form acquires movement becomes aware of itself as beingness  As the senses and experiences develop after birth it begins to identify as an “I”.

It is through movement that life comes into form – life emerged through the movement of waters over land, repeatedly over millions of years and moved from ocean forms to land forms the same way.  A fetus grows into a child through movement and propels itself from the womb through repeated movements. Movement stimulates growth, expansion and life evolving.

As you walk  and do tasks and exercise notice how the body feels in movement as compared to how it feels in repose?  Can you sense internal energy changes?

It is through psychic movement that identity comes into form.  Notice a desire and how it feels to follow it. Notice restlessness until you decide to do something. Thoughts move forward and back like the tide, repeatedly. What is it that wants to be doing something?  Is it following a preference to be busy, to respond to a sense like hunger or touch, a need to move away from something, a need to have or create or  acquire something? Where are these movements coming from?

Subtle energy can be very quiet or very disruptive. When you are very still, not following any psychic or physical movements, you quiet the work of the senses and you can tune in to the subtle sensations behind them.  It is like a vibration just waiting for something to do.  It will follow attention so if you move attention to different arts of the hody you can feel it there.  Yoga, Tai Chi , Qigong, Aikido and other martial arts work with this vibration, strengthening awareness of it and the ability to direct it in specific ways. Healing practices work similarly but combine psychic energy with the subtle pranic energy in specific patterns.

Certain forms of repeated movement, breath patterns and/or concentration can trigger a deeper rising of energy, causing what could be called a quickening of the life force, and a deconstruction of familiar patterns of thought and sensation. This has been called the rising of kundalini energy, which is a word representing the coiled subtle energy at the base of the spine, which in most lives stays coiled until a person dies and the energy forms are ready to leave the body. When it arises during a lifetime, eventually  all the energies shift  so that  perspectives, belief systems, and identifications move out of the personal orientation and into the impersonal.  It causes a psychic return out of mental identifications and into the ground of being.   Another way of saying this is that instead of identifying with mind one identifies with consciousness. Both still function but consciousness is no longer confused about who it is. Sometimes the ranges and capacities of consciousness are expanded in this process as it knows itself to be unlimited and free. But the person as matter and form can become more naturally present in his or her own environment  as well, as the mind no longer resists the experience of being in a body.  This is wholeness, presence, being here now.   This development satisfies completely the spiritual urge to be connected to God, so it has been called a spiritual awakening or Self-realization.  In Buddhism it is called knowing your true nature.    In Zen it is called Waking Up. In Hinduism it is a form of samadhi

The Biographical Dream

There is some profound Truth at the heart of my story, but I have yet to define it.  It seems to me to be simply: I trusted God,

I lost God,

I found God.

I found there was no God.

I found there was nothing but God.

Perhaps I am living in parallel universes.  There is the rational and conventional world in which I find a body and mind and emotions, all of whom have acquired an identity, a family and a history, which most assuredly demonstrates a beginning , a middle and an impending end. This is my relative world. I look back on this story with gratitude, wonder and a few regrets, and I continue to live it forward – but it doesn’t say anything about who I really am, only who I appear to be to others.  And then, there is also the interior world I will call the mystery world, where anything that happens was never imagined before, and energy and consciousness shifts into new perspectives the way a kaliedescope shifts shape and color, because unexpected events keep turning it upside down.  At this point the interior mystery world is experienced as an awareness that is clear and content, quiet and curious.   I cannot say integration has taken place. Instead, the exterior and relative world has relaxed into the interior mysterious world, so there is no one left with whom to be in conflict about it.

I might tell you of the events, or the circumstances, that rattled and transformed the interior world, just as someone else could describe an accident, or an earthquake, or a war that forever changed their life, and through which they were never quite the same again. Plenty of people today have such traumatic and painful awakenings. Every time I see the lives mangled by war, floods, earthquakes and other upheavals, I am shocked that I have lived in this century and avoided the worst of them. What a grace! So, for the most part there is no proof  in my life that a certain event caused a certain response, or that I was growing or evolving or following a purpose to become someone different than I started out to be. There is only a string of exterior changes, and a string of interior shifts, and when they had passed I recognized I never was who I thought I was in the first place, even as I appear to be continuing along.

There were events in my life – events that impacted both worlds, apparently.

There was Catholicity, which for years effectively anesthesized my psyche with school, church, novenas, confessions, choir, and family events such as christenings, holy communion and confirmation celebrations.  There was a playful, loving and sometimes argumentative Scotch/Irish extended family that provided the illusion of security as a child, and laid a foundation that was called faith. There was Sister Agnes Claire who was the unwitting beginning of the end of Catholicism for me.

There was the death of my mother, which shattered illusion and security, and broke apart any feeling of a being to be depended upon, especially a god. It also left me contracted for almost 15 years, emotionally barren except for sudden bursts of tears which came occasionally, like a sporatic storm  in the sahara.

There was Amelia, a dynamic and inventive fireball of an older woman who provided my first experience with group encounter, and forced me to see that love could exist in the world, even without a mother, but that the hole is my heart was also about losing god.

There was a friend who handed me a book when I was 27 called “Autobiography of a Yogi”, written by a recently departed yogi called Yogananada, who had lived not far from my childhood home.  This little story completely de-framed any remaining concepts I had about spirituality. Here was a religion in which people saw beings who were 300 years old, or appeared from the dead, left their bodies and saw other worlds, encouraged the worship of unlimited forms of gods and goddesses, and used energy practices to connect with spirit. I didn’t believe any of it, but I was intrigued. This guy was far more interesting and modern than the Christian saints. I had no idea the adventures awaiting me would make mystical experiences ho-hum events.

Next came Muktananda, a small fiery being in a red cap who wielded a peacock feather amidst a crowd of cheering pilgrims singing “Baba, we adore you,” The crowds swarmed to his pink hotel ashram in Oakland, overflowing with vividly colored purple and red, gold and blue drapes, saris, shawls and carpets, all permeated with  a pungent sandelwood incense. I sat before him one Christmas eve to be whacked with a feather, but he scared me half to death. I avoided his eyes, afraid of what he might see or say if he really looked at me. I had no idea I would someday become an “expert” on the kundalini energy he was said to activate. Never had a clue at the time…

Through events that brought losses and gains, despair and bliss, I took on a role eventually as a therapist, and followed an interior calling toward meditation.  One day I heard of a school where I could merge the two, work on my body, meet spiritual teachers, and go through a personal transformation. I could even earn a Ph.D. for it. “How improbable”, I thought,”And how seductive.” By then I was longing to know who I was and where I was going, and trying to merge my two worlds – the exterior family along with work, and the interior mystery I was unraveling in my meditation practices. Before I entered this school I had a dream that it was run by ex-convicts and secret criminals. I dreamed  my children were kidnapped and I had no one who could help. With some trepidation I went ahead to the early days of class.  There  25 students from various stages of life gathered 4 days a week to sit in circles on the floor, spill their stories, explore their psyches, pummel and massage one another’s bodies, play with Tarot and the I-Ching, and do spiritual practices. In the midst of this we also studied psychology.

All of my life of conventional thinking went down the drain. I became open to any possibility, and every kind of spirit. Eventually I had an overwhelming activation of primal energy, of the life force, called kundalini in the yogic traditions.  For many years afterwards, this relationship with the goddess of energy and form carried my psyche, my work and my creativity in the world. Before I knew it I was traveling to India, organizing conferences, providing kundalini workshops, lecturing, and meeting similarly energized people all over the world.  It was often not the “me” doing this, but rather the force that carried this body/mind, the invisible awakeness moving within. It was another wonderful grace.

In case there was any naïvite left in me regarding the psychological variations in the kinds of life experiences humans might have, I was rapidly exposed to multiple layers of transpersonal experiences. I met clients who reported alien encounters, psychic openings, out-of-body-experiences, paranormal events, the channeling of light beings, the remembering of past or future lives, seeing spirits in native American rituals, and the ability to turn out street lamps by walking under them. I met dozens of gurus, Tibetan lamas,  Masters of Chi Gung or other energy practices, and eccentric physicists.  I  played with remote viewing,  machines that created changes in the brain, the I-Ching, and nakedness at Esalen.  I did  breathing practices that stimulated birthing and other-life memories, in a room with 100 people tossing, turning and moaning. It could have been a setting in  Dante’s inferno.  I sat for hours in damp ancient caves in India that felt electrically wired. I studied visionary events, UFO’s, esoteric Indian teachings , and near-death experiences. There was a rapid-fire education in all that transpires in the human mind beyond the personal – and how such encounters change the lives of those who experience them.

In the midst of a life full of creative work, counseling, organizing conferences, and seeing my children out of high school and on with their lives, I finally began to burn out. So I did something I had always longed to do. I went to Switzerland. Alone. I quit everything. There, in the library of the Jung Institute in Kusnacht, I discovered a great Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi.  In my tiny hotel room with its slanted dormer ceiling and child-sized Swiss kitchenette, along the edge of Lake Zurich, the rain pouring down the walkways outside, my body wanted only to withdraw and rest. I began to read Ramana’s writings and his letters. For the first time I began to question whether the self I had been individuating for so long really existed. It was a shocking perspective! It took a few days to even consider it.

I began to lose attachments to myself in those days, but this was only the first introduction to the world of non-duality. Non-duality is a term for seeing our selves and the world as One, without a second. It points to the substance we are, rather than the structure, just as gold is the substance of a bracelet and all gold if melted down is one. Or as the waves in the ocean are really just variations of the substance of water. The term is beyond spirituality, but in some way completes it. It refers to that which we are, our true nature.

It would be another few years before I would meet a young American man who called himself Adyashanti (it means primordial peace). He was only the age of my sons, and in fact went to their high school at the same time. He was 38 when we met. He pumped his bike up the hill where I lived hundreds of times throughout his adolescence, but I had never seen him there. He was a slight young man with a  timeless and penetrating presence, and the clarity of his teaching completely collapsed my world view. He demonstrated a way to live simply in the world, while not being of it.  When I looked into his radiant blue eyes I sometimes saw the planets, or the endlessness of deep space, and I recognized myself there. It was as if we could not be two, only One. In his presence I began to seek Truth within my heart and gut, with no more hunger for any experience.

So this is a journey of no one becoming someone and then becoming no one or every one. It is mysterious in that way. It is loving as well– for often in my life it seems I was carried by love rather than violence, in a world that is suffused with violence.  My neurotic, hysteric and depressive tendencies as a young mother were erased by the kindness of meditation and the passage of time. Chunks of old patterning fell away.  The events that supported my becoming no one, and brought me to a simple peace within, cannot really be said to be the cause of anything at all. Yet I am grateful for each of them because the journey was rarely a bore, and the energy in my body and my life was gentle on the whole. I asked it once, when it had awakened me in the middle of the night, “Is this really kundalini? I had thought it would be so difficult.   A voice spoke out in the darkness:“This is really kundalini, we’re just taking it easy on you.”

So now I have told you what I am about, instead of showing you as every good writer is advised to do. If you simply believe my story is real it cannot awaken you. If you understand it as a dream, your own dream may unravel itself so that this one that we are can become more free. You will not wake up in the same way I did, or anyone else has. Our journeys are as unique as our faces.  But at the core there is only one awakening, and it is available to all the many diverse variations of humans.

Hello world!

Welcome to my new blog. Shanti River is the name of the center I have started in Ashland Oregon as a gathering place for discussions on non-duality, spiritual awakening and the kundalini process. For 10 years I have had websites dedicated to these themes, and a kundalini blog at blogging.com, but I hope to expand with this new invitation on wordpress to people who are seeking a deep discussion on the possibilities inherent in the awakening of consciousness, often called simply Waking Up, and in its fullest unfolding called enlightenment, meeting your True Nature, or Self-realization.  I have just returned from a conference on Science and Non-duality held in San Rafael CA and there I found several hundred people engaged in a search for the core Truth of our existence, many of whom have reported “awakening” and others who are dedicated to a search within themselves for the realization spoken of in scriptures of every tradition.

This is a major movement in the West.  Many eastern traditions begin teaching here in the U.S. from the 1930′s onward, but these teachings appeared esoteric and requiring a commitment and devotion to a teacher or system that seemed foreign and incapable of integration into the lives of most westerners.  These eastern schools had much to offer in terms of their emphasis on turning inward for the Truth, and learning to be at One with our inner silence.  Some, like Yoga, tantra and Qigong, offered energy practices that have initiated many people into subtle energy changes that impact their consciousness and their lives.

But the opening now — the emphasis on simply awakening, and the non-dual realization of Oneness with all things — is presented in a much more simple and direct way by many who have had a glimpse of what it is to know consciousness in its primal form, before it is entwined with the forms, thoughts, concepts, senses and emotions of the relative appearance of the world.  Through their insights we begin to see that awakening is not an experience available only to those with saintly lives, but seems to be possible to all humans who sincerely open to it, especially as it is only the realization of our own deep essence, which is shared by all.  So it can be remembered if one can only let go, even momentarily, of the identifications and attachments of the separate self.  In this letting go we discover the stillness and expansiveness of consciousness (without a me moderating it), and this is a life-changing event.

I have met about 2000 people in the years since I began this work who have had awakenings of energy or consciousness or both.  Some were in formal spiritual traditions, some had dived into many different practices and teachings, and some woke up spontaneously without any preparation at all.  Most were confused about what happened to them and no longer felt connected to their old identities and interests, but could find no one to talk to about the changes, either in psychology or religious groups.  There has been no clear understanding of the primacy and the nature of consciousness in either field, and no clarity about what it means to know you are not the character you have  been trained and conditioned to be.

From the moment of conception a spark of consciousness begins to develop a sense of separation, finding itself in a human body that is being formed with certain DNA, and then identified quickly enough as male or female, and soon afterwards in a family role, a nationality and race, a certain kind of education, and all along the way it develops a sense of who it must be to survive.  If it is blessed it learns the world is a friendly place; if not it learns to be protected on defended in many ways. All of this conditioning and training is considered healthy if one ends up with a good identity and a positive sense of separate self emerges out of it. But of course most children internalize a lot of beliefs about inadequacy, inherent “badness” and not fitting the status quo.

In this “becoming human” process the absolute source  from which we began, and the sense of  peace and wholeness that is our innate condition, is clouded and contracted.  Meditation is simply a process of remembering and returning to this, seeing through thoughts and sensations and perceptions as subtle forms created by experiences collected while consciousness inhabits a human body.It allows us to discover an inner silence that can open us to our true nature, and thus to insights about the nature of all.  Awakening happens in the dropping of all identifications and the pure explosion of consciousness itself.

There are many conditions that may precede or follow the awakening of consciousness, including the arising of kundalini energy, the energy of the subtle body field that carries all our inner experiences of senses, feelings, thoughts, etc. Many challenging and many blissful phenomena may follow a kundalini awakening, which is described in much detail on my website www.kundaliniguide.com.  I have spent many years offering guidance to people who have difficulties with this process.  But a shift in consciousness can bring its own difficulties and confusions, because it orients you differently in the world, and you no longer feel like your former self.  There can be non-ordinary experiences, mood swings, a kind of brain fogginess, and a shifting back and forth between feeling very clear and present to feeling like you have lost something wonderful when the clarity and presence shifts away.  It can take months and years for an awakening process to stabilize and a return to letting this awakening live through you as its own expression in life.  You, the character, do not become enlightened. The character of ” me”  becomes nearly irrelevant, although the flavor remains, and the sense is more of a presence or consciousness that is peaceful and open to life moving through you [or as you] and responds in a more natural way to whatever arises.

There are many kinds of “spiritual” experiences, openings, insights, visions, heart openings etc. All can be rich and good for the evolving of the “me” into a more compassionate, wise and capable person. But when all these events have happened, many people still wonder, is that all there is? Who am I really? Then there may follow a deeper questioning about who or what is having these experiences, and a discovery it is the same presence that has all experiences, good, bad, spiritual, profane. Ultimately one can not feel complete and at peace until they have  released all the phenomena and directly felt themselves to be the source.

It won’t make your life perfect or make you powerful.  It only makes you free to live in a natural way and with a natural connection to life as it is.

This blogspot is for those who are on this journey and would like to share their journey or ask questions related to the phenomena along the way.  I hope to include reviews of books and teachings by other non-dual teachers and to bring my experience of many years practice and listening to others to help readers feel more at home in this process. Although one can only use language to form concepts and mental positions, I hope this site will offer pointers beyond any concept and encourage you to fall within your own stillness to find what is true that cannot be said in words, what is real that cannot ever be lost or diminished, and what is eternal.