"True love takes its own course through uncharted territory. It knows no fences, has no barriers or boundaries. It's difficult to define, eludes modern measurement, and seems scientifically wooly. But I know true love exists. I just can't prove it." ~ David Buss
There is an extremely volatile and complex human predicament involved with activated kundalini, perhaps more so than any other aspect of being human. Because it involves the radical amplification, derepression, nexus and shakeup of ourselves in relation to our world, it is the raw edge of existence! Metamorphosis, for all its fire and flash is completely useless if undergone at the expense of genuine human relationships. That it is relationship, not enlightenment that is important, and that enlightenment involves skillful relationship.
"No individual can think his way around his own [Limbic] Attractors, since they are embedded in the structure of thought. And in human beings, an Attractor's influence is not confined to its mind of origin. The limbic brain sends an Attractor's sphere of influence exploding outward with the exuberance of a nova's gassy shell." 141 A General Theory of Love, ~ Thomas Lewis M.D., et al.
If you are having a kundalini awakening in association with an initiator and think you are in love with this person, you probably are. But it is love at the supra-sex level that is transcendent of normal sex. In supra-sex there is a radical exaggeration of sexual chemistry as a furnace for the alchemy of transformation. I suppose there have been plenty of people throughout history who have actually had relationships in situations where supra-sex has arisen, but a relationship is not necessary for the alchemy to proceed. If transference with a Limbic Attractor has been the trigger the awakening will proceed without any further interaction.
I liken spiritual preceptors (teachers) to being an antenna for soul/spirit and if you get around them your own soul accelerates/amplifies, ones biology starts jumping around and new connections are made. Being in Mr. Universal's presence was the most physically/mentally/emotionally overhauling thing I have ever experienced. In his presence I experienced the most outrageous symptoms that I will never experience again. The work of transference occurred on a biological and energetic level, and my body dissolved itself at light-speed.
During a full-on awakening it is very likely that you would project your awakened Heart onto a spiritual leader as the sun and source of your own Self...this inevitably happens until the kundalini dies back down again, or until the rational mind has made peace with the sub and transrational sides of existence and the Self moves to the forefront of ones being. This is so because we are relational beings and there is a fundamental propensity to love an object (Guru, teacher, lover) "out there." Whereas indeed it is merely the awesome love of the Self illuminating ones mind and body.
This is a transpersonal social biological evolution that may or may not have a personal relationship component. It's cellular, energetic, atomic and subatomic...and non-local as well, although the effects are usually amplified by proximity. Not everyone is triggered by spiritual adepts, it depends on ripeness and how one is wired. Females probably pop more so than males in the presence of male gurus, because of the sexual polarity and the hormones...sex hormones being fundamental to kundalini awakening. Even the ones that don't pop are "changed" but in a less dramatic fashion when in the presence of evolved beings.
We can of course pop without having an initiator or specific cause and yet if we reflect we can see that our entire lives, the good and the bad and all that has happened to us leads us to that inevitable crucial event, through the very nature of being alive. You don't need a tantric partner to have kundalini experiences, you can "open" purely from giving generously to life and following your Muse. If you commit to going on your spiritual journey, you will go through these types of initiation, even if your eyes never fall on anyone that kicks you off.
Metamorphosis happens within an individual but it is larger than the life of the individual because it is beyond the personality. In this radical move from the personal to the transpersonal there is a dismantling of the ego not the glorification of the ego. If it happens in association with another individual (say a guru) it might feel like the ultimate love affair, but it is of the realm of the Gods, it is not a worldly phenomena, hence cannot be taken personally.
"You are neither possessed by your lover's needs nor by your own. You are love. You live as love. And when you find your heart yearning still, practice surrendering more deeply as love..." ~ Finding God Through Sex by David Deida.
At first we do take such love and bliss personally and identify it intimately with our heroic journey, but after many years we tend to view it as a transpersonal force. Other people who have not experienced this kind of thing, will however take it personally...they will see ones experience through the lens of the sex and attraction faculties of the normal human-relationship experience. Thus normal human jealousies, possessiveness, protection and envy emotions will be lumped onto something that is essentially beyond all these personal qualities.
What about the ultimate gamble of loving and finding it unrequited? Loving someone who doesn't love us back is not such a bad thing, if we are able to use that love to grow and not react in self-destruction. The pain from such an event can help us to open and be ready for a deeper love, And more grateful when it arises, in awe of the miracle and the precariousness and the rareness of it all. Romantic longing for another is synonymous with longing for the unity of one's own Self. Unrequitted love can result in metamorphic initiation, for the energy that would have been used in relationship is then used in the opening of the inner flower of Self.
The perturbation of consciousness during a kundalini awakening or when we are in love gives us greater access to the right-brain. When the two hemispheres are in greater communicate a profound love is experienced. The worry thoughts of the left-brain are met and subsided by the expansive right-brain. Thus it's like being in communion with the Beloved, for we are the Beloved. Unrequited love and kundalini awakenings both eventually teach us that we ARE the love we seek.
Here is a great article on romantic love, projection of the Beloved and brain science
Michael Persinger's take on romantic love and the hemispheres is essential to understand what happens during falling in love. Our identity is mostly centered in the left-linguistic brain, but we each have a silent "Other" in the right-brain. Meeting another person who we "resonate" with sets off wakeful/relaxation chemistry by which we have more access this silent Other in our "feeling" right-brain. Hence the increase in telepathy and psi during romantic encounters of an elevated kind. A triad emerges "You, your left linguistic "I" and the other person's left-brain identity, and the transconscious communication via the combination of the two right-brain selves in sympathetic resonance. This inner marriage facilitates metacognition, or the fully human human.
Jesus we normally see as a figure of the expression of the inner marriage of male and female, left and right-brains. Current theory is that the left adaptive brain dominates and suppresses the right intuitive brain. During a kundalini awakening there is a perturbation of this arrangement such that the right-brain's voice and influence can be more easily accessed. Or rather it forcibly penetrates our consciousness and influences our operating "I." Thus it seems we are "visited" by angels, Gods and Goddesses, Saints, Gurus, Spirit Guides, the Muse, the higher Self or demons and demigods depending on our flavor of trip at the time. Falling in love also creates a similar perturbation between the hemispheres thus increasing both our psychic, intuitive and spiritual capacities and bringing us closer to the Eternal Beloved as our right-brain illuminates our prior adaptive-self. Thus all spiritual awakenings are in a sense a romantic love affair either with an object of devotion, or without one.
Irina Tweedie's diary Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master is a wonderful example of initiation by shaktipat, projection of the Self onto the Guru and evolutionary tension. Rejection by the Guru was a necessary part of the process in order that Tweedie disidentify her love/sex/Eros/kundalini from exclusive focus on her Guru and to realize the impersonal nature of the force of evolution. This in my opinion is the hardest of lessons--because it's the greatest of loves that one is having to transpersonalize. Here is an excerpt from Irina Tweedie's diary
The cultivated energetic field of the teacher opens the student up to greater love and awareness, the student then projects their Self on the teacher...and thus a current of enormous attractive power is generated. The cultivation of spirit builds sex energy...you cannot really differentiate kundalini from sex energy, but to say that it IS sex energy amplified. So if we are lit with spirit, then the heart is expanded and filled with love, the sex hormones are raging, the senses are amplified way beyond normal levels and the opened psychic level gives us the experience of the Not-two.
Diana Durham's Jungian-style book "The Return of King Arthur, Completing the Quest for Wholeness, Inner-Strength & Self-Knowledge," is a truly fabulous exploration of the dynamic of the discovery of ones own sovereignty and spiritual center through projection onto a King/leader/Guru figure. I recommend this book to anyone whose awakening is in association with another individual.
Temples, monasteries, schools and sanghas might create hotbed conditions to stimulate kundalini. But if they prevent one from having to provide for oneself, if they prevent the need to use left-brain adaptive functions, then these special environments would prevent integration of kundalini in a real-world meaningful sense. Spiritual growth is the movement away from dependency toward autonomy, so anything that encourages dependency lessens spiritual growth.
In India at the time of Gopi Krishna, there was no one to help him with his kundalini, and he was living in the most kundalini acknowledging country in the world. There are difficulties with kundalini just as there are difficulties with life in general, but we have to learn to push through them...the answer is in the problem. Ask the right question and the answers present themselves.
If we are protected in an environment that encourages immature-dependency, or gives the illusion of a parental safety...then we will never have to search within ourselves for the answers. We will fail to fall down, and so we will not learn to pull ourselves up. All answers lie within us in our own personal relationship to the Divine and the Kosmos. Spirit always gives us exactly what we need for growth whether we like it or not. Everything is as it should be. We descend into the underworld or ascend into the heavens to the exact degree that we need to in order to become whole.
The decent of the Superman, or spiritual acceleration, seems like an
external imposition, not something that arises and impacts us from the
inside. Those people of past cultures that were prepersonal and
undergoing spiritual experiences would most definitely project their
experience outside of themselves to create Gods. It seems that while we
are still interested in being "parented" on any level, we project our
largeness and divinity "out there."
Coverting the “consciousness” of another. Perhaps one of the first
things that happens on the spiritual path is both a sense of
“recognition” and a sense of “self-doubt.” After spiritual initiation
the observing eye of the mind is enlargened, we become more “hip” to
both our glory and our shit. Another of the early phenomena on the path
is projecting the “wealth” of our soul onto teaching “parental”
figures. During the initial inflation stage we feel the enormous hole
within, and are literally pulling and calling on the universe to fill
it. As we expand the chasm becomes deeper and more painful.
Spiritual-envy is simply a sign that we still think that Spirit is out
there, and not equally within us. This very torture of being pulled out
of ourselves by our projections ultimately results in our calling our
own spirit to the fore…simply because through trial and error again and
again we find out, “Oh shit, it’s not out there.” It’s then that we
become our own “spiritual friend.”
The kundalini journey is a quest for trust in ones own seat and source
of divinity and this quest is undermined by compulsive need for support
or companionship. We have to resolve to tread the untrodden land alone
or there will be no trails for others to follow. The mortal in us must
give way and surrender to the divine and there can be no safety net in
that. The teacher, friend, Beloved and savior IS the divine in us.
Relationship, supra-sex and projection of the Self onto a Guru will
bring on an awakening faster than anything.
Actually engaging in sex during an awakening is a very dicey business, because the sex is a 100X better than usual. The kundalini initiate is so open that a "lesser" relationship may be tolerated because the love is so great and the sex is so good. I would say very few relationships last under these extreme circumstances--the pressure of pleasure and the honor that this brings to our consciousness will expose the couples "game" and character failings.
"The repressions and denials, the guilts and false shames are not merely a result of social mores and bigoted influences, but are actually products of the inability to carry the force of the fully unified power current, whose strength can be borne only by someone at the least relatively liberated from negativity, fear, doubt and destructiveness." 172, ~ Eva Pierrakos, Creating Union: The Essence of Intimate Relationship
Lack of reconciliation with the opposite sex represents a low energy/awareness level coupled with a sense of helplessness, frustration and infantilism. A lot of this disharmony with the opposite sex is picked up osmotically from the attitude of the parents for each other, but it is also programmed within the womb from the state of the relationship of the parents thus becomes intrinsic in the fetus. In this way sexual animosity can be entirely engrained into the cellular structure and brain chemistry of the individual brought up in dysfunctional homes. And this mismarriage constitutes a neuroendocrine war within the makeup of the individual that is played out in all their relationships.
Since in a dysfunctional family the primary developmental needs of the fetus and infant go unmet, the primary matrix is set in a state of subliminal-antagonism to the opposite sex, partly because they are the vehicle for the resolution of this dys-conciliation of the sexes. If the "sexes-poles-hemispheres" warfare was resolved then the individual would gain their autonomy, but because they have been inadequately parented in the first place, autonomy is felt as a threat to survival. Union is so liberating and vastly spaceous and ecstatic that contraction, mismarriage and discord is all one can stand. For a nervous system built in repulsion (relational disharmony) the vitality, Presence, vividness and Reality of Eros is too much to endure. Instead of the Self the misaligned individual is thus caught in disharmony with the opposite sex, blaming of parental dysfunction, and infantile addictions and codependencies, which are used a method of avoiding growing up. This is why Jesus said one has to leave ones family be in order to become ones Self.
During the accelerated growth period of an awakening we need to create the environment for our spiritual birth as the spirit itself dictates. Because it is fear-based, a family still at basic needs/survival level is often steeped in projection and about telling you who you are, what your role and duties. Security based families are about ownership and usery of its members. To evolve beyond this system one way or another you will have to show them how you want to be treated. Not in a reactionary way or with anger, but to be Always Already so liberated that you can just tell them "how it is." In this way you show them the path to their own freedom and once you have left them "completely" then you can be "one with them."
The family that is not kundalini-savy is likely to be very upset
with a member undergoing a kundalini awakening, for you are going
somewhere that they cannot follow. If at all possible bring a vision of
a wider world to them, and encourage them to step out into the rising
sun. Then just as you have broken free, they will also. All they need
do is look outside the nest and begin finding out who they are. The
further you are able to leave trauma and sadness behind, the more you
will help them. It is a state resonance thing, and it operates through
space-time automatically. This gives a deeper dimension of the
Bodhisattva vow of helping all sentient beings to reach enlightenment.
Because of the Oneness of the Global Brain you can see that responding
in kind with depression in the face of depressing circumstances is
counter to the Bodhisattva vow. Responding to degeneracy with
degeneracy, anger with anger, neglect with neglect is simply not
spiritual...for it's not transcendent. The heart of Bodhisattva vow is
to bring light into the darkness in whatever way we can. Do not wait
till after an awakening in order to spread the light, because the
energy of awakened kundalini is there as a beacon for us all.
"The guru is someone who steals your watch and sells it back to
you. Of course, if you didn't know you had a watch, it may be the only
way to get you to realize you had one." ~ Alan Watt
The "watch" is the recognition of the Self or Spirit. If you have
been treated as a utilitarian unit in materialdom then you usually need
a powerful Other to unconditionally recognize your Spirit or Spirit in
you. But then once you grok this recognition it is morbidly maladaptive
to get addicted to the Guru. Some people like to pretend to be
seeker-students their whole life because they will not draw their will
into self-recognition...therefore they cannot perform the Guru function
in the recognition of Spirit in Other, but remain as drones or workers
within the Grace of the Guru.
THE TRANSPERSONAL NONRELATIONSHIP
I used to be emotional to a fault, but the kundalini did something to
my emotional brain—by making it go through massive extremes, I now find
myself unable to feel affected by my emotions as much, perhaps due to a
constant background of endorphins as well as the rewiring.
Prior to my awakening I used to be mostly affected attraction-wise to
people I could love only from a distance...separate-self-sense intact.
So I never had what I consider a real relationship. Then I projected
all of myself onto Mr. Universal and had the ultimate kosmic love
affair that I couldn’t have...it had me. It had me so thoroughly that I
am now unsure if I can actually "fall" in love again. My love has
turned to "like and appreciation." It feels much healthier in a way,
because I can no longer be made dysfunctional by over-attachment to
another human being—and yet I cannot probably be attached to them
either. Now I think there is a chance for me to relate to people
without making them "mine."
I think the massive alchemical love affair is something that can happen
which clears the way for a lighter, easier kind of love. Perhaps the
best of us have to go through this heart wrenching excruciating event
in order to find ourselves and be made whole. But it’s not about the
object of our affection, it’s all about us, and the kosmic chemistry
unfolding within. We are pulled into greater depths of ourselves than
we have ever known, pulled out of ourselves into spacetime, splattered
in all directions, crucified, flayed and spread-eagled to the vultures.
That is what this alchemical transpersonal nonrelationship event is
like. It’s an atomic bomb in our soul.
It’s such an upheaval I am not sure that actually having a relationship
with the object of the alchemy is a good idea while the chemistry is in
full force. Perhaps after the peak is over.
The person that was isolated as an infant and thus has primary
abandonment wiring is the most volatile candidate for this
earth-shattering type of event. I also think that people that were not
given the correct developmental social cues at the right time during
the first 3 years, are more likely to have to go through this
cataclysmic chemistry in order to rewire their primary social wiring.
While this rewiring is taking place it might be better for the
individual to just look after his or her developmental and survival
needs, rather than be triggered so deeply into this 0-3 years
reconstructive chemistry that they may be incapacitated for an extended
period of time. My period of reconstruction amounted to 3 years of
prior chemistry and 3 years of post-Mr Universal chemistry before I
started to disengage my soul from my projections and claim myself back.
While we are going through it we will insist that is all about our
love—our pure, pristine, pervasive and holy love and all about the
object of our love—and why we should or can’t have them. After the
event we see it was all about losing ourselves to find ourselves and
about the reconstruction of our primary neurological matrix. The
challenge for me now is to expose myself to the possibility of feeling
some deep emotion, for everything is buffered, I can't "feel" much
depth, even as I appreciate "connection." I essentally have
to relearn to feel some intensity, for being indifferent and unaffected
is to be half alive, bored, dispassionate and suspended in the twilight
between worlds. Eventually I might even recover my romanticism.
Do I want my romanticism back? No not if it keeps me from genuine relationship and stuck in adoring from a far. However in my present reactionary state I don't think I could fall in love enough to actually engage in relationship (mature monogamy). What might have happened is a deepening of the pathology of separation that I originally had, only now it doesn't hurt because I cannot be blown away by my attraction to another.
Is this pathology or transcendence? All I know that I value my
freedom more than my need for human contact. You could say I am still
in the fallout from being struck with atomic bomb and I don't know
which way is up or down. The prepersonal and the transpersonal meet in
this event such that the personal is aghast to figuring out what is
what. You might say that I am so afraid of being affected like that
again that I will remain rigidly in my own sphere for the rest of my
life. Which was perhaps the trajectory I was on even if this event had
not taken place.
Funny how the prepersonal and the transpersonal feels more
personal than the personal. Which is probably why we get dragged down
into the muck and seduced by the stars so much.
COOPERATION VS. COMPETITION
States are temporary forays into permanent structures of consciousness.
We have to have a stable ego structure before we can venture into
witness as a structure. And yet when someone has an undeveloped ego
structure ie: they are in deprivation consciousness; they are
borderline and are triggered into competition or aversion mode by the
existence of other people. “There is a structure deep inside the brain
called the amygdala, which plays a key role in fear and aggression, and
experiments have shown that when subjects are presented with a face of
someone from a different race, the amygdala gets metabolically active
-- aroused, alert, ready for action.” Robert M. Sapolsky
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060101faessay85110-p0/robert-m-sapolsky/a-natural-history-of-peace.html
Do we really know ourselves or each other except as semi-predictable
patterns of response and behavior? People will run through their
patterns no matter what we do, we just have to figure out how we fit
into their patterns and whether its going to serve us to participate.
Often the role they have got us playing is not going to be good for us
no matter what we do. In such a case it’s best to just move on.
These days when almost 100% of us are suffering from some form of PTSD or stress we are all a little borderline. You could say this the age in which we learn to remain whole under the attack of fragmentation...we learn how to have a broad and pliable personhood within an impersonal world. How to maintain a soul within a bombardment of soundbites, figments and groundless mindsoup. You could even say that if one is not borderline in this day and age, then one is simply not here and awake to circumstances.
Part of the main problem with our existence at present is that we think there is something wrong. That things should be different, things have to be faster, slower, deeper, more meaningful, more united, quieter, louder, etc....Fact is we are doing remarkably well in an accelerating pace of awakening to spirit.
Lets just eat the good parts of the apple and get nourished from that. We may see the rotten parts, but we don't have to eat those, we can compost them. Where love and peer-friendship (teleiophilia) comes in is to stabilize higher states into structures, without always being triggered by collective stranger-danger into being pulled down into lower brain functioning. Hence higher structures of consciousness are built via a leap of faith into the dark with no knowledge of where we might land.
"This competition thing, this conditioning which had been naively
installed in the psyche of man was plainly suicide. He knew that
cooperation had to be the pivot around which all human life centered or
we would always be on the very edge of extinction—always living in fear
of ourselves." Thete
For reading on projection and transference one of the most precise books is Jung On Alchemy by Nathan Schwarz-Salant.
back to Relationship
Continue to Supra-sex