"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.
Due to the power of Limbic Attractors and since the hormonal chemistry
of kundalini awakening is the similar romantic love, only tenfold, it
is very easy to assume one is in love with the teacher, Guru or person
that provides the initiation stimulus. In fact this transference cannot
be gotten over until the kundalini awakening has abated...for the
heart, sex and love sensations will indeed be synonymous with the inner
image one has of the initiator and probably wouldn't have occurred
without him or her. Transference is the tendency to respond to
particular others as if they were figures from our past.
"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.
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