The role of community in awakening

I think the important negative force in spiritual awakening is that things lose their meaning. Higher and higher things you could find into your life - they still lose their meanings, either for you, or even generally. I also became a part of kind of community, it seemed worldwide and very powerful - rather a telepathic connection, but showing me signs all the way; so enlightened, but even this lost it's meaning one day as my soul wanted to grow even higher - in awakening, you see the weakness in things and this negative force is your force to grow. Bless the negative forces - this is my current main thing I want to teach - and know that as stronger the negative force, the evolutionary process or God Shiva gets, as more efficiently the culture you were part of becomes extinct in your world, as stronger is the road, which leads to growth. I think if all people started to feel this emptiness so strongly, the culture would grow up ;)

It cannot be very positive, because what you did build before the enlightenment, with your lower level of consciousness - indeed this cannot work for you any more. So I am happy to hear you have a negative experience, and I hope that in the end, it turns out to be your best experience ever. You need to see the harmony, symmetry, perfection and beauty in how the negative and positive forces are in harmonious union; you cannot even see, how symmetric and beautiful part is the world - until you start to see the negative as part of this beauty. Things which destroy you, create scars, break your soul and heart - they are fueling you, creating the process, this is a living emptiness, which is the true force to fill you with new; it breaks everything up, but the meaning of this force is living to unbecome; you need to see this negative force in it's true beauty and learn to love it. It's your main teacher, it's the experience, and use the wisdom about experiences to understand this - I love the principle of imperfection of the world; even the highest truth, the truth of God Himself, must contain one half of negativity, one half of stability, and one half of dreams of future - the Hindu Trinity symbolizes that.

Also the evolution is such force - it's the creation through negativity unbecoming (so you need to bless this too); so in your life, those things you used to see as ideal, they become meaningless by this negative force, or meaningless for you - and this negative force through that, is the seed of your experience. But this experience, in the end, is going to fill you with something creater - as negative force cannot do it's job directly, it's clever like devil; it's like a good devil in you. You need to see it as high truth as the one you see in positive forces - otherwise, you will never enjoy reality, you would only enjoy something impossible; and then, you would never see the perfection in reality - being not perfect is a perfect part of perfection.

Charlotte, you raised several very important questions. In the 45 years since my kundalini awakening, I had been actively involved in three different spiritual communities. The first community was with one of the Self Realization Fellowship centers, an organization founded by Paramahansa Yogananda. They had a large community in Detroit, where I lived when I first began my spiritual journey. I was just starting a meditation practice and found the friendships that developed from that group very meaningful and supportive. The weekly service and community gathering afterwards were a respite from my worldly responsibilities and my social life. However, my kundalini awakening occurred several months later and the teachings and spiritual training no longer seemed relevant to me. And so, I stopped attending the services. A few years later, now in Pittsburgh, I was introduced to the teachings of Sufi Master Hazrat Inayat Khan. These teachings resonated with me and, for me, was the next step in my inner transformation. In addition to attending several retreats at the Sufi center in New York, there was a small group in Pittsburgh that met several times a month for various activities. Again, this group was supportive and meaningful for me, as well as a respite from my other responsibilities. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the group slowly dissipated after a couple of years. As valuable as the Sufi teachings and spiritual practices were for me, my state of consciousness resulting from the kundalini awakening prevented me from feeling a more complete connection with others that were following the Sufi path of spiritual growth. Eventually, I left the Sufi community. Many years later, I felt the need to connect with others that were following a spiritual path and I started to sit and meditate weekly with the Laughing Rivers Sanga, one of the groups under the direction of the Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh. The people in this community were warm, sincere, and committed to a spiritual path. It was refreshing to part of another community. However, since I was already committed to a Sufi path, in addition to having the kundalini awakening, I did not feel the depth of connection to the group that I needed to continue my involvement. After a couple of years, I left that community. As both you and Sameer have commented, I completely agree that a community is important. From my perspective, a community that is kundalini-centered, such as described by Sameer, will be the one that I can connect with at the level that has been missing from my past experiences.

Hi Charlotte,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the group. This group was created by Alan and myself out of a wish to have something that was more informal and relaxed. We connect on the Zooms and the in person meet ups which are posted in the event forums and people seem to drop in and out as they like. For me, I did not have a community for the first eleven years of my awakening and I am glad about that as I had to find my own way, and work out what made sense for me. However I can see how important a community can be for sharing ideas and normalising the experiences which can be so internal. In my opinion what works for a community is the idea of support when needed, rather than a community adhering to a set of dogmatic rules. The issue that we had was that many of the communities or people we encountered seem to have hierarchical structures which did not work for us. We believe in peer support, but also the need to connect to our real world. In this way our community should hopefully be one of many that people connect with..