"Individuation is a life-long process of finding the
meaning of our existence irrespective of others' needs, wants and
demands. The early focus of individuation is not in finding "whom I
am," but in learning "who I am not." ~ Karla McLaren
Verena Kast defined individuation as: "The life-long process
toward wholeness, individuality, differentiation from one's parents,
parental complexes and projections."
"Individuation therefore also means separation, differentiation and recognition of what is yours and what is not." 256 ~ Marie-Louise Von Franz, Alchemy.
If kundalini is the energy of individuation, then
how does kundalini relate to relationship? During a kundalini awakening
as more layers of our being are accessed we are both more vulnerable,
complex and sensitive. The energy of kundalini is highly attractive and
addictive and so we have to be careful not to draw unhealthy
relationships, like wasps around a honey pot. It's the kundalini energy
itself that is "attractive" but it's not always attractive. Kundalini
is attractive to the degree that bodies and hearts are "open," and it
pushes uncomfortably against that which is not open.
Those who are nervous, borderline, hypersensitive or unbalanced would
most often be made uncomfortable by contact with someone with active
kundalini. An aggressive person might be stimulated to be aggressive
within the heightened field. And during the die-off and gravity
crushing phases kundalini is definitely not attractive to oneself or
others. However personally I love the die-offs as a holy experience.
During an awakening we are more alone than we will ever be in our
lives, for no one can intimately tread the same territory alongside us.
Beware of selling your values and truth out for the comfort and
security of having someone around. Also during active kundalini, sex
along with all sensation, is greatly amplified and this can interfere
with discretion and decision-making. Also with kundalini flow we are
already greatly in love, bliss and openness and likely to overlook
warning signals, traits and behaviors which normally we wouldn't
tolerate in a partner. So it is a strange condition of being in total
readiness for relationship, and yet the stakes of setting a foot wrong
have never been so high. We will fall into whatever traps we have
prepared for ourselves by our nature. If you find yourself involved in
relationship difficulty, pull back and focus your energy on creative
output and integrating the kundalini through exercise, energy work (Qi
Gong etc...) and nature.
During an awakening it becomes even more important to always seek a
peer relationship. Never fall into the trap of thinking you are doing
someone a favor and helping them to grow, heal or overcome neurosis by
having sex with them during active kundalini. Seek someone of equal or
higher openness and intelligence, for anything else will be degrading,
wasteful and produce suffering. The neurotic that you desire to "help"
will not be able to grow at the same pace, nor commit to conscious
awakening and their rubber banding will be a severe waste of energy for
you at a time when you already have enough to deal with. By rubber
banding I mean the push-pull that goes on in someone who is divided in
their being and their intention, so that they cannot commit to
relationship but flip around, one minute for, one minute against.
Kundalini energy is so "exaggerating" to any mechanism within
relationship that everything becomes an insane parody of relating...one
cannot hide from the potential for love, or one's need to betray that
potential. If one needs to be in a push-pull relationship I advise to
do it before a kundalini awakening, or if it starts happening within a
relationship while in kundalini, just get out of the relationship fast.
Since we are usually already out of our depth and in crisis during
kundalini, engaging in sum-negative relationships with people who are
not up to the task of truly loving us, is perhaps the most dangerous
and damaging thing we can do. For we just waste our time, energy and
spiritual attainment in low-grade human drama. It boils down to whether
a relationship is syntropic and builds autonomy, soul, consciousness, energy and love or if it's entropic and interferes with the evolutionary expression of these.
Since there are very few people who have had awakened kundalini or
are presently active, its unlikely that we can pair up with someone
based on this criteria. In my experience it is best to avoid the person
who has read all the books, knows the lingo and has a spiritual
practice, but is still deeply in schism, neurosis and narcissism.
Instead it is better to choose one who may have none of the trappings
of the spiritual path, but is united in their being, with an open heart
and forthright energy. Don't be distracted by appearances for
in the trials of a kundalini crisis we cannot afford the luxury of
draining or twisted relationships.
If the non-popped partner considers him/herself to be a spiritual
practitioner then eventually narcissism, competition and jealousy will
likely get the better of them and their rubberband of defense will snap
back into place. Thus ultimately it takes someone who is equally ready
to Pop to really be in long term relationship with someone going
through a kundalini awakening, for the degree of surrender necessary is
perhaps absolute.
It
is the openness or “expansion capacity” of your partner’s heart that is
the absolutely crucial factor. Because the supernatural energies of
kundalini will shake everything within the couple, the ability for
compassionate objective nonreactive witnessing is vital. As is an
understanding of the alchemical cyclic process of the sacred marriage
itself. The success of romantic relationship during a kundalini
awakening depends on the interrelationship of the capacity for “faith”
of the two individuals.
To a large degree whether we enter a relationship or not is not up to
us. It is up to the universe. If someone turns up in which attraction,
communion and purpose are aligned then we literally HAVE to go with it
in order to live in truth. Spirit makes such things happen, and we must
obey spirit or move down the ladder of being. Many of us are living
such fictitious lives however that finding something real between two
people is extremely uncommon...all the more reason why we are obligated
into a relationship should one arise. But if a relationship is going to
interfere with who we are or where we are going on the soul level then
it is best to avoid it.
Having a relationship when one is kundalini-active is an
exaggeration and amplification of everything that constitutes
relationship, so it is necessary to be with someone who is more stable
and evolved than yourself, or someone who has had an awakening, or is
having one. As I said before the capacity for openness of the partner’s
heart should be the defining element, not whether they are book-learned
about spirituality, or even if they themselves have a spiritual
practice. Because spiritual practice doesn’t necessary make one more
spiritual, ie: post-conventional.
Individuals of a conventional level are unsuitable for they are too
rigid and will contest you at every turn as you Be and express
information from higher realities. There are many ways to develop a
truly post conventional brain including a kundalini awakening, good
genetics and richly stimulating beginnings, extreme experiences and
adventurous lifestyle, crisis, shamanic drug use and spiritual practice
that involves the removal of the ego’s sense of specialness. We don't
need the conventionally minded to ground us or bring us back down to
earth, for it is our job to bring heaven down to earth. We must have
the space to learn adaptation to the elevated energy and consciousness
ourselves from the inside out, as only this will help us integrate
larger/higher orders of our being. Fundamentally it is our “job” NOT to
succumb to consensus reality, but to bring the gifts of spirit down and
to illuminate the “flatland” world. Another thing is if they are not
thoroughly kundalini.informed, they may tend to pathologize your
kundalini, or seek to exploit it, either way this will be very bad for
you.
If a couple is in active kundalini and having regular sex, then they
really have to do it consciously (ie: tantric), or else they are in big
trouble because everything is so exaggerated. Active kundalini really
needs a 3rd stage relationship (David Deida scale) with fluid honesty
and eyes wide open. You have to watch out that the energy is not being
used in a masturbatory, selfish or codependent fashion. The couple
cannot be egoically using the energy, or be selling it for love or
whatever. That is we must wary of the ego’s attempts to barter
kundalini energy for sex, comfort, companionship and security, this is
a no win situation.
Masturbatory-egoic sex and relationship is driven by the older
survival/defense parts of the brain and is deprivation based. While
transcendental sex and relationship must be governed by cortical
modification of old-brain impulses and reflects “being.” Therefore to
engage in higher forms of relationship one needs to already have a
certain proficency at the basic needs level. Survival stress will bring
us down to inhabit older brain areas and interfere with higher
cognition.
The changes and upheavals can be so great that it is essential to
look for the ultimate support within oneself. If you feel you need
support from sangha, Guru, mate, parents or doctor you will just run
yourself ragged and end up increasingly deprived. Isolation often leads
to the evolutionary chemistry of the mystics. The energy/awareness has
to go somewhere, so it turns into the inner flower. When we witness
anything, be it loneliness, horniness, kundalini, desire, pain, fear
etc...it can be transmuted into its own satisfaction. But if we turn
our consciousness away from it and resist it or suppress it then it
just persists in an unconscious fashion to infest our behavior and
destiny. The "derepression capacity" of kundalini is so great that the
whole relationship has to be dedicated to the All or both parties are
screwed no matter what they do.
Like a hurricane, a tornado, an ice age, Metamorphosis is an
inevitable universal force that descends upon us from beyond our
control and to which there is very little we can do about to alter its
path and effects. Because of its rare and self-perpetuating
(self-initiating and autopoietic) nature we must as a society learn to
distinguish the difference between personal-temporal-earthly
relationship and ephemeral-spiritual transpersonal chemistry...and so
clarify our thoughts and emotions around these two very distinctly
different phenomena. For the creation of a benign, beneficent human
civilization we must evolve beyond the security bound ego to the
unconditionally loving soul. So focus must be shifted from survival to
transmutation, without transmutation becoming yet another goal of the
security seeking condition. To do this we must achieve spiritual
autonomy from the world such that we can relax into unconditionally
loving soul in the midst of the chaos of the world.
As the Global Brain awakens and connects there will be such a
floodtide of transpersonal alchemy that we will collectively gain the
skills and language needed to address it. Until then the pioneers will
largely be stumbling in the dark, with barely a candle other than the
light in their own heart. To be touched with affection we must first
touch with affection. The heart of the world grows thus. We fill up
from the inside out, after which we can shine our love on all creation.
The sheer intensity of kundalini forces us to trust that which is
beyond the known. It forces us to surrender to that which seems
infinitely larger than ourselves. It forces us be befriend ourselves
and forces us to love.
The hardest won lesson I learnt from my awakening was: that there is
a very real danger that if we are already blissed out of our tree and
intent on some heroic journey, we can accidentally pass up on the lover
of our dreams. Thus we must be weary of the dangers of our inflation
and idealism, to be responsive to the inner call to action when faced
with a meaningful encounter. And even more importantly if at all
possible we must be aware of our degree of spiritual pride, and
prejudice which in the end does nothing but disrupt our lives and
create misery, loneliness and division.
True love, the soul-love that the universe creates, is really rare,
so we may have to settle for ego driven relationships that drive us
batty. The main problem with prolonged removal from romantic
relationship, is the likelihood of us dismissing the One because we are
so used to holding nothing to us, so no relationship "feels" like ours.
A fabulous partner turns up and we marvel at his/her beauty for
"someone else" not us. That is we have turned a prepersonal situation
into a transpersonal and forgotten the personal in between. Distracted
by our duties and survival strategies the chance meeting then becomes a
one hour conversation instead of a lifetime of relationship. The degree
to which we have fought the pain of loneliness rather than accepted it,
is the degree that we escape into transpersonal amnesia by which
relationship is unlikely to touch us if it does arrive. Similarly if we
have fought for the "right" to have a relationship this resistance to
feeds into our transpersonal removal...which as I say becomes a
prepersonal prison. We could call this phenomena, "relationship bypass."
Relationship boils down to personal responsibility. If we are
dissociated from ourselves and the world, it's rather hard to make
relationship happen. Being on the path of ones life purpose is the
opposite of dissociation. But we have to learn to contain these global
cosmic forces, carry out our Kosmic-quest and have a personal life as
well, because we can dissociate by prepersonal and transpersonal means.
We can be so driven by transpersonal imperative that we miss out on
personal life possibility. That is the personal responsibility to
accept life and to fulfill ourselves within it.
If we still feel dependent (fighting enmeshment with parents or
employers) then we are not really in this personal responsible state
via which we can surrender ourselves into accepting a relationship that
might be happening..."to accept life and fulfill ourselves and our
purpose within it." Thus paradoxically relationship requires
sovereignty. Sovereignty is empowerment by Essence, and Essence, soul,
spirit is the ability to be response-able to life.
We have to be boundaried before we can actively include another
within our boundaries. But if we are dissociated (removed from
Essence), it means we are a borderline personality, our self is not
adequately solid enough to "accept" relationship. If we are dissociated
we cannot be self responsible. Therefore it seems that the quality of
our relationships throughout our life are determined by the quality of
human interaction we had in the development of our self-system in the
first few years of our life. If we got inadequate heart-eye contact as
an infant chances are we will be cut off from Essence, dissociated from
self and other and be isolated for life
Relationships are so complex that there will always be an occasion
to disprove all our assumptions and theories. The question if celibacy
enhances or impedes spiritual development is not black and white. Some
sexual matches generate more energy through synergy, while others
dissipate and drain energy and consciousness. Thus being celibate is no
guarantee that you will have more energy available for metamorphosis.
Chances are that prolonged celibacy while dry up your hormones and you
will become spiritually desiccated.
Some traditions insist that celibacy is essential for
spiritual transformation, but you could just as easily say that
intimate relationship is necessary to transform. Celibacy can be just
as damaging and wasteful as relationship. Relationship or celibacy
undergone in an entropic or energy wasting fashion is obviously counter
to evolution. Over masturbation or excessive sexual intercourse will
tend to waste the neurotransmitters and energy necessary for
transmutation. There is some charming information on this at
http://www.actionlove.com/cases/case8676.htm
I personally find celibacy a distraction from both creativity and
spiritual practice and inadequate for deep human experience. The idea
of celibacy as being useful for spiritual growth is largely ignorance
and misinformation. Avoidance is not transcendence and that which is
repressed cannot evolve. Since relationships are fraught with
complications and engage the play of the ego, the wounds and the
self-system there was the tendency to make a career out of avoidance
and join a monastery or nunnery. Nowadays we have modern psychology and
relationship science to help us navigate these murky waters, so we do
not have to be so distracted and distraught by personal intimate
relationship anymore...we have the technology!
Church systems of the past played an intrusive and usurping role in
the sexuality of their flock. Take away sex, replace it with a set of
rules called God, promise rewards in heaven and you basically have a
stagnant, prepersonal slave pool to draw from and build great wealth
and power with. "Sexual suppression becomes an essential tool of economic enslavement."232, The Function of the Orgasm, ~ Wilhelm Reich
Traditionally it was thought that sex was counter to spirituality
because churches and gurus wanted to control their flocks through
manipulating their sex drives. A fully sexually cognizant person is a
liberated sovereign individual and therefore of no need of organized
religion, and certainly cannot be manipulated to offer absolution money
for sins they know they are not committing in the first place. Only the
childlike can be indoctrinated by fear to give up their sovereign soul
to external dictatorial forces. Thus religions interference and
insistence that their flock remain prepubescent and malleable to their
machinations.
There are some benefits to celibacy however...if ones ego structure
is undeveloped, or ones wounds unhealed avoiding sexual intimacy will
conserve energy and time needed for self-survival. Also anyone going
through a full-on awakening might be so overwhelmed in just dealing
with that, that a relationship would be harmful--being too vulnerable
for intimacy so to speak. And if one engages in sex compulsively then
neurological and hormonal resources may be used up which could have
been applied to evolution of the bodymind.
Since metamorphosis uses the sexual hardware as part of the general
psychosomatic hyperactivation, any sexual energy and development that
is not "used up" in relationship will directly act to transmute the
organism. Thus unconsumated hyper-arousal can and does lead to the
inner-conjunction (10,000 orgs up the spine), for the energy has to go
somewhere. Conversely if sex and attraction is avoided then the sexual
hardware becomes atrophied or latent and so the very foundation of
spiritual energy is thwarted right there. Biologically there is no
spiritual evolution without fully engaged sexual engines, because the
foundation of our life energy is not separate from causal
consciousness. If the sex hardware is not revved up then there is not
enough energy available to reach the higher levels of consciousness,
perception and being. Without the higher-play of the
poles/hemispheres/sexes there is no alchemy period!
Sex is not an obstacle to God Realization, but lack of love is. The
quest is not "how to avoid sex" but how to reveal the inherent holiness
of sex through spiritual, mental, emotional, physical communion. It is
obvious that intimacy or "connection" requires a surrender or sacrifice
of ones egoity and defense. But Robert Augustus Masters furthered this
insight when he said that connection requires us to include Other
within our own sphere of Being. So for intimacy there is
both the need for the yin of surrender and the yang of active
inclusivity. And beyond even this--for connection to occur there is the
need to let go of ones own identification with separation itself.
Conscious sex in a harmonious evolutionary relationship is definitely
the ideal, and I suspect that such as supportive circumstance will
actually reduce both the down cycle and recovery time, such that ones
spiritual gains from kundalini awakening are substantiated and
creativity is maintained.
One of my favorite movies is "Notes From Underground" by Gary
Walkow, based on the novella by Dostoevsky. Depressing yes, but one of
the best expressions of the interiors of the general neurosis and
complexity of being human I ever saw. The ruthless introspection
reminds me of Robert Augustus Masters, and gives me a taste for
Dostoevsky whom I have never looked into before. It also is an
exquisite display of the hopelessness of using the mind to outdo the
mind, as you watch the main character torture both himself and those
around him relentlessly--because he cannot get outside himself with the
resources of his self-imposed prison. This movie is perhaps the best
advertisement for the necessity of spiritual practice there ever was.
One can clearly see the self-manifest destiny of literally being
attracted to doom like a moth to the flame. It's a perfect description
of Eckhart Tolles' pain-body and Reichs' body armor. Thing is usually
we are so into playing tennis with the to and fro of our ego thrashing
about as it seeks to both masturbate with the energy, to deny it and to
push it away. So engrossed we are with the expansions and contractions
as the armor is touched, melted and rubber-banding...that we cannot see
the overall nature of the relationship process. Relationship is the
process where by we are annealed and tempered, both softened and
hardened by the forces of separation and union.
There is no way to side step this work, for by avoiding relationship
altogether we just remain half dead enclosed in our cocoon. Eros is
there to help us break free and become a butterfly. To work through the
death throws of the Pain-body and armor we need to have great
compassion, intelligence and willingness. Willingness is the key I
think, intention is not enough...there needs to be a willingness to be
vulnerable and be undone by love in order to be "remade" by love.
Is sex evolutionary or devolutionary? It depends on the people
involved, if it is a synergistic spiritual relationship sex should not
detract, but amplify spiritual progress. However it cannot be a lower
order sex...that is the sex itself must be used for awakening. Such sex
does not degrade or deplete energy, but it takes a lot of courage to
have this kind of sex because it is post-egoic, it directly opens one
to absolute vulnerability...absolute vulnerability being the only state
that it is really possible to grow spiritually anyway...everything else
is a fabrication of the mind, and not necessarily spiritual in any real
sense. Finding two people that are in the same space mentally is hard,
finding two people that are in the same place spiritually is harder
still, and then they have to find each other unearthily attractive as
well, which is hardest of all.
One of my favorite books on relationship is Love, Freedom,
Aloneness, by Osho. In it he says that love is painful because it
transforms. Love is mutation!
Robert Augustus Masters is the Word on things relationship, check out his books and essays at www.robertmasters.com
The Way of the Lover by Robert A. Masters is one of the ultimate
books giving a vision of a higher form of relationship. Look for his
upcoming book Mature Monogamy, which goes even further.
The Mystery of Human Relationship: Alchemy and Transformation of the Self, Nathan Schwartz-Salant; Routledge, 1998.
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, Helen Fisher; Owl Books, 2005
Secrets of Attraction: The Universal Laws of Love, Sex, and Romance, Sandra Anne Taylor; Hay House, 2001
©2006
Biology of Kundalini by Jana Dixon