I have been asked to do a blog entry for the website. The idea being, the more we input into the website as members, the more the website will become a resource for people going through kundalini awakening, and other spiritual awakenings also.
For me the only trouble is I have never done a blog! To be honest, I have instinctively steered away from them. It’s like on Facebook, when some people go on about their cat’s dietary preference and somehow think that other people should be interested in this. That is, why should anyone be interested in hearing me go on about me?
Anyway in the spirit of adventure here we go.
I will not repeat the story of my initial kundalini awakening, or rising as Joan Harrigan would say was more correct, that is in the Forum of this website.
I want to talk about what has been my main concern of the last three of four years, once the crisis had passed and I realised that kundalini was a gift and not a curse. That is how can I make the very best of the gift that I had been given?
This to me has two aspects.
Firstly, how can I use the gift to progress along the journey of moving towards being able to reside in Self, rather than the constructed self that we as a matter course call “me” and tend to see as our centre? This I see to be a central part of the kundalini process. The movement towards Truth.
Secondly, how can I use this “awakening” to contribute; to do my little bit to benefit the planet and all that lives on it? I also believe this desire is part of the process, as we are all One, so it is only natural to want to contribute to what is only part of what we really are!
I will concentrate on the first aspect here, and go onto the second in a future blog.
So, how can we move along the path towards Self?
The caveat here is that I do not pretend to be wise or super spiritual. I have never followed any particular spiritual path. I have always though, since a young child, been aware that there was far more to life than met the eye, or what we were told, and “reality” existed far out of the reach of language. I have also had a number of spiritual glimpses in my life, the most significant being a strong experience of seeing the light when I was 12 years old. I had spent hours working out the definitive argument for why there could not be a God, and then as I got to the punch line, “bang” a blanket of light switched on! Wish I could remember that argument.
I suppose I have been trying to follow a middle path, though one friend described this as having your cake and eating it. That is some spiritual practice but also enjoying “normal” life.
I do maintain an element of spiritual practice. Before my kundalini awakening I often did (but not methodically everyday) an active meditation which is from the hermetic school. It is called the Lesser Banishing Ritual, and aims to purify the psyche. However, this ritual was a trigger to my first rising of kundalini, and as that was so traumatic I stopped doing it; although just in the last couple of months I have started to revisit it.
However, my main practice has been doing Heartfulness meditation. I try to do this daily, but probably manage this around five times a week. I stumbled across this a year after my initial awakening and was introduced to it be a friend. It is essentially bringing the centre of awareness down from the head to the heart. I find this really useful. Firstly, like I guess all meditation, it reduces mind chatter, the thinking that tends to lead us away from Self. Secondly, though it places us in our body and aligns us with our centre of Love. To me Love is a central part of our journey. Love takes us away from the self, “me”, and places us in the Unity. I believe that Love is at the heart of Spirituality in that it is in essence the Oneness reuniting.
My other practice is being consciously aware of my thoughts as thoughts and not identifying with them so much. This includes observing how my thoughts and feelings about people are not static; they are constantly changing even if the circumstances are not.
Another main element of “practice” for me is reading books on spirituality. Before my kundalini awakening I read Eckhart Tolle’s New Earth seven times! Interestingly, I have read it once since. It was a different experience, as this time as well as having some intellectual grasp of the concepts, I also had a deeper experiential understanding. At the moment I am re-reading Bonnie Greenwell’s “Awakening Guide” which I can thoroughly recommend.
As I write this, I am realising that I have more “spiritual practices” than I thought! A final one to mention here is being aware of and recording my dreams. I have been lucky in that I have always dreamt vividly, and love dreaming, even when the dreams are difficult or “negative”. I have found that there are often very useful lessons from dreams. For example, over the last three of four years I have had a number of dreams about carrying too many clothes or possessions. In one particular dream I was walking down a mountain path, wading at some points through water, walking a bicycle. I had an invisible guide and was making progress but this was very much slowed by having a too heavy back-back. To me, wading through water means working through emotional issues….the heavy pack quite obviously relates to our various identifications that we are reluctant to let go of that build our ego and sense of self. So let go, let go! I have not decided yet what the bicycle was!
Going back to eating my cake, and that perhaps I am not living my life “as spiritually” as I could do. My main guilt here is that I have always enjoyed beer! Having a few beers with friends has been central to my social life style since I was a teenager. I understand the argument that alcohol can reduce spiritual energies. I also know of people who after kundalini awakening have lost all desire to drink, or just cannot stomach it. That has not happened to me yet. If it does, fine, but for now I will carry on enjoying a beer, though obviously not on a daily basis.
To summarise, I am sure I could improve my practice, and I am very open to suggestions. At the same time I am very aware of the need not to try so hard that the spiritual search becomes another pursuit of ego.
I think we need to create the environment where the Sun of Self can emerge through the clouds of thought and identity. A spiritual identity is only another cloud blocking out the Sun.
And finally has there been any progress?
Sort of is the answer. A while ago I woke up early in the morning and realised that I was not Alan Foulkes…..he was a story that was in the corner of the room, I was just Consciousness…..But this only lasted a few minutes.
However, each day (and I hope I have not broken the spell by saying it) even on bad days, I can sense a background noise of Joy.
That I have Kundalini to thank for though, rather than it being through any efforts of my own.