"When our desire to continue distracting ourselves from our suffering becomes weaker (or is permitted less control) than our desire to be truly free, we are magnetically drawn to Awakening's alchemy, letting the fires of its crucible provide us with both heat and light." 181, ~ Robert Augustus Masters, Darkness Shining Wild.
Dionysus is an epidemic god, he spreads like a contagion into areas which have had little exposure to him. We ignite those around us simply with our presence while kundalini is active. "...a power that works directly from matter to matter, or from body to body, without mental intervention. Like a contagion. That is the supramental power." 251 ~ Mother, Satprem
It is helpful especially during the peak of kundalini awakening to give a name to our kundalini energy, and another name to our ego-I. By personalizing the energies in this way we are more likely to be conscious of the rising of kundalini and to relax the ego-I, thus preventing an exhausting war between these two opposing factions.
Lets just assume that 99% of reality is beyond the conscious minds ability to perceive. Our Apollo, that is our control freak ego, is intent on assuming that the 1% that it does "know" is the whole ball game. Dionysus (sub/trans-conscious) however looks after the other 99% for us. This is not as far fetched as it seems, Michael Gazzaniga a splitbrain scientists at UC Davis, says “lets face it, 99% of what our brain does is not available to us in terms of consciousness.” Well how about that? Michael Gazzaniga puts a similar ratio of conscious to unconscious consciousness that I did. Of course you cannot come up with a factual %, just as one can never reach the horizon.
When our Apollo is perturbed and shaken off his seat by the rising energies of Dionysus, we get very upset that we are losing our sense of "I" with its control and sense of the known. So we often try to beef up our Apollo with caffeine, sugar, cocaine or whatever, we breathe shallow, we fight the rising energy of oceanic bliss. However, if stop and "notice" that Dionysus has indeed arisen, we can consciously choose to go-with the force of dissolution and rebirth. Then we can raise the energy up, relax into our transformation, breathe deeply and welcome this force that is so much larger than our known self. In surrendering to Dionysus we are respecting chaos, for it only seems like chaos to the limited perception of our ego which has had its rug pull out from under its feet. But what is happening through this Dionysian kundalini energy is the emergence of our unique and Divine Being. Fighting Dionysus is like fighting 99% of who we really are. I really have no idea how much of our consciousness is conscious, but I guess that it really is only about 1%. Which shows how silly and damaging it is to resist Dionysus.
Dissolution is essential to enlightenment. Balance in the psyche necessitates revelry and symbiosis in combination with individuation and rationality. For one without the other leads to pathology. Lean too far toward Dionysus and one becomes addicted, good for nothing and ineffective. Lean too far toward Apollo and one becomes an uninspired tyrant intent on officalizing one's version of reality at the expense of the Real.
The Indians say that a serpent in a tube can only go two ways, either up or down. Each of us, when faced with our energy of evolution, get to taste this point of "decision." It's a decision we have to make with our conscious mind, because the energies are so large and dissolving, that our Apollo is normally in staunch opposition to it. We have to choose to let go of our conditioned mind (box) and melt into space and time. To dive into Infinity. This is the pivotal point where self gets to choose to give itself over to Self. This point of choice is ongoing and increasingly apparent.
We cannot bring all of the subconscious and transconscious into our conscious awareness, but we can acknowledge and respect it. Once Dionysus becomes intimately accepted and we understand what kundalini is and what it is doing in the body then it's like we don't get an option anymore. Our rationality and moral intuition and our very dedication to love, force us to go-with it. Thus we learn to do what it takes to digest it rather than fight, complain, or be small and weak. It doesn't take much, just the decision not to back away from the energy and to do what "it" demands of us.
Calling this kundalini force Dionysus is appropriate for it is like being taken over by a blissful spirit that is not interested in reading or writing or in maintaining a solid sense of self. It's only interested in "Being." One day I was just beginning to wimp and then I remembered Dionysus. On making this decision point conscious I realize that when Dionysus turns up one is just supposed to Be that, not try furiously to hold onto our Apolloness. For the way to achieve a higher more capacious Apollo is by fully surrendering to a deeper Dionysus! If we hold fast to the 1% as the be all and end all of consciousness, then we forfeit the other 99% of the vast reaches of awareness that constitute the sub and super consciousness.
Dionysus needs a lot more oxygen than Apollo. So when we are acknowledging the reality of our kundalini and "going into it," we breathe deeper. Breathing combines the present with the past, the mental with the corporeal, the conscious with the unconscious. To raise energy up I imagine a cobra rearing above my head, this prevents collapse into regressive emotional states and the tendency to push down against the energy to revert to the comfort of our contracted shell.
Changing ones focus from inside the head (Apollo/self) to outside in the world (Dionysus/Self) is a challenge in mindfulness. I found that if I try to stay in my habitual Apollo, then things become incongruous as deeper energies emerge. That is if we try to hold onto the sides of our box with mere rational function, we do not get the benefits of the ego-dissolution, absolving of the past and expansiveness that kundalini energy can give us.
We are much more than our conditioning. The whole person needs to be both Apollo-man made and Dionysus-Goddess made. Trying to be something other than what one is at the moment is suffering. Going fully into what one is might be called wisdom, maturity or surrender. As the metamorph proceeds we learn to handle greater and greater degrees of love, bliss, energy and consciousness without question.
Have you noticed that the Mind and its preoccupation with good and bad, right or wrong, exists within a state or psychosomatic condition of contraction. Such that even if there are no thoughts going through the Mind or even if ones judgments are positive...this contracted condition and the original sense that "something is wrong" is ever present in the background. One can feel this as a sense of dis-ease within and as a sense of separation from others and the world. As this fundamental contracted state is made conscious dropped, the underlying sense of disharmony is dropped also. What arises is the biology of relaxing into the Unified Ocean--sanctified and made sacred.
The self has to make the conscious decision to surrender to the Self--otherwise friction, regression and degeneration occur. The pivotal choice of self or Self defines the difference between turning into the bliss and raising the body up, or backing away from it in fear and weakness (immaturity). Immaturity therefore is the denial of What Is! Allowing fully "What Is" is the spiritual path. Once we are comfortable with "limitlessness" however, we find we can fly.
The hardest thing to handle is the bliss of our own emergence. Therefore it takes a conscious decision at some point to commit to allowing and following the intelligence of bliss, whereby we create our wisdom-body. We transform to the degree that we have the faith needed to suspend fixation to our box. Our relationship to this energy of transformation, call it Kundalini, Dionysus or the Holy Spirit is essentially the relationship we have to our own soul. It is a matter of how much of the formless are we willing to allow into our world of form?
No sooner have we figured out one puzzle than we are called onto the next...no technique or formula can keep up with the unfolding of our Hero's journey. The true bible is written in our hearts. Surrender is allowing the soul to take command of one's biology and behavior. Realizing the ever-present witness of the truth of love that is Spirit. Such that one's small "I" gains greater participation in awareness that bubbles up from the subconscious, or descends from the superconsciousness.
Communication between the layers of sub-con-super is reliant on the degree of communication of energy and substances within the cells and between the cells. Thus union of body, mind and soul we could say is based on this primary cellular communication. After which all the other forms of communication between people, within society and between worlds, past, present and future, takes place. If all people looked after their bodies and brought them up to the speed of spirit and allowed the spiritual transmutation of their flesh, we would see more evidence of a Global Brain of infinitely loving intelligence.
To grok Being-time and kundalini a transtemporal sense must be achieved. Events are occurring now because other events are going to happen in the future. The alchemy that is occurring now is the preliminary alchemy to that which is coming up in the future. Bodies prepare themselves for alchemical relationship beyond both time and space. We are drawn inexorably toward our pivotal nexus. The Global Brain is the greatest attractor field and greatest force of nature on planet earth.
Evolution would have us evolve despite ourselves. Surrender is allowing the world soul to take command, to allow ourselves to become all we were meant to be. The alchemy itself draws us into situations in which the full realization of the chemistry can occur. Thus all we need to do to become our Self is follow our Muse, follow our soul through the hottest heat of the Sacred Fire.
A few of the books from Michael Gazzaniga’s prestigious body of work include: Nature's Mind; The Social Brain; Mind Matters; Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind; The Ethical Brain.
It seems everything we do in spiritual growth is the stripping away of our ignorance.
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