The great kundalini gold rush

23. Other Systems and Alternate Approaches
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Browsing about spiritual websites, blogs, YouTube channels and other forums, what I’ve noticed is this fad-like craze to awaken kundalini or engage in kriya yoga practices, often leading to disastrous consequences, burnout of the vagus nerve and extreme pain and suffering, which doctors too cannot cure, since medical science does not recognise kundalini at all.

It is time to reflect. We started out on our journey, each path unique, with the aim to find our true essence (Ramana’s inquiry, ‘Who am I?’) or from the Bhakti perspective, to connect with God. As we can see, the kundalini has nothing to do with this search. If kundalini awakens as a tool, a mechanism, a gift of grace by God to assist us, so be it and we receive His blessings with gratitude but why on earth should we try to activate a potent energy without any knowledge and without any purification process?

I write this because I am pained. Before we attempt to cut a tree, we must first sharpen the axe. But we don’t. We want nirvana instantly and search for shortcuts.

We are God’s children. Ask and we will receive but our heart must be pure. This means that on a moment to moment basis, day by day, breath by breath, our thoughts, words and deeds must radiate love and vibrance of childlike innocence. Are we as such? If not, then we can be if we so choose to shift by continuous contemplative consciousness correction. God then will enable us automatically.

Melding head with heart, fears and desires exhumed, we rest in ever present silence.

Dear friends, forget about all forms of doership, forget the kundalini. I say this as someone whose kundalini has been awakened but that happened spontaneously, without volition.

Let silence be the path and universal consciousness the guru.

God bless.

Moderator note: This topic has been moved for better placement.

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Hi there,

To be honest, history shows us that when you encourage someone not to do something, they tend to want it more (look at the church and sex for eg) , so your attitude may not actually be helping the situation. Might be best if you just let it go and accept that people will do what they do, no point worrying about it. God knows best, he has a plan for all, who are we to say someone else’s path was wrong?

It would be better to be in a position to help when needed, I can’t see the ‘do nothing’ (which is actually a ‘doing’) approach being helpful at all. In fact it reeks of spiritual one-upmanship and is in most cases an ego game. So if you want to ease your pain then you should learn how to help.

Anandamaima said - “reliance on god can only arise when he grants it to you; only then are you truly capable of it”

So how are people supposed to ‘do nothing’ when their minds are constantly in motion, they have lost god. If I lose my car keys before leaving the house I can’t just decide to have them in my hands, I have to take action and look.

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Also this is not true. I started meditating to control negative thoughts, our Ishta changes over time.

I had no idea about any of this spiritual stuff until kundalini woke up as a result of doing meditation practices. Yep that’s right ‘doing’, maybe god likes doing also :wink:

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@ Tom Allsop ~ doing nothing or stillness is actually holding energy in potentiality, like a tiger crouching before it springs.

You’ve raised a great point about controlling negative thoughts, which I take to mean heart contracting thoughts. If we look at thought, any thought, we find it arises from the heart. If heart is quiescent, no thoughts will arise and we can then abide in silence, in a meditation continuum.

To make heart quiescent, we must accept that the joy or happiness we seek cannot be found in the external ephemeral. This recognition automatically then leads us to the internal eternal. For it to work, our choice must be voluntary.

In Hinduism there is a term called ‘bhava’ which has no exact translation in English but it can be loosely taken to mean how we approach spirituality or truth or God. Our prayerful attitude. So if our bhava be pure and earnest, it sets up an intent wave, which energises our silence and magnetically invokes grace.

From the kundalini perspective, the kundalini is kinetic energy but it needs a vessel in which to move, be it this body, be it the manifest universe. So we say kundalini is Divine Mother or Shakti, the feminine principle. The male aspect is Shiva, which we may take as potential energy, which is the totality, within which kundalini moves. So, when we say we are in stillness, in effect we are at the state of Shiva.

Ultimately, when voids within voids are pierced, we see that the unmanifest or noumena in singularity is Brahman or energy tightly packed, very dense, unmoving, energy held in potentiality.

In this connection it would be worthwhile exploring Leadbeater’s theory on space, what he called koilon. It is in his book ‘Occult Chemistry’. Worth a read.

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Hi UnseekingSeeker,

It seems you’re in the “honeymoon phase” of a spiritual awakening—I’ve been there myself. Just remember, this stage will evolve with time. I still practice every day; it’s become a form of spiritual hygiene, much like the other routines we keep to support a vibrant, balanced life.

Sunyata.:folded_hands:t4:

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Melding head with heart, fears and desires exhumed, we rest in ever present silence.

The very best reason to sit every day. There is no pain in that state.

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Hi UnseekingSeeker,

I think that in many ways you’re right. Overly fixating on the energetic (or Kundalini) aspects of yoga can be a recipe for pain. I think most members in the AYP community will agree that the process has to be managed with care.

There are no shortcuts, and in many ways the only thing we can do is plant seeds that will eventually mature into a deeper felt connection with the divine. One of the most useful tools is pranayama practice (in combination with meditation). In many ways, these do affect and also stimulate your inner energies (using another word: the Kundalini), as it is somehow part of the spiritual process. However, it is best to approach them with an openess, without holding on to the expectation of “gaining” some interesting “Kundalini experience”.

:folded_hands:

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@ Adrian ~ yes, I know people who have attained non-dual recognition without kundalini activation. So, kundalini is one of the means to the end, not the end in itself.

What kundalini does, after bliss in permanence is enabled, is that it fixates our attention in all time meditation 24x7. So very useful, kind of being like spoon fed. But there are other ways to recognise the Self too.