Patterns and Potentials of Awakening
Eastern scriptures have described three forms of kundalini awakening, based on the intensity of energy that moves through the body at the time. It may be mild like a river flowing, moderate like a snake crawling up the spine, and intense like a geyser.
When this energy activated fully in the non-dual teacher Adyashanti it was sudden and intense, causing his heart to pound beyond normal limits, and his conclusion to be that he was probably going to die. When he surrendered to this with the thought that if it took death to be free, so be it, the energy process swept through and stopped, plunging him into an experience of cosmic unity.
Another modern spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, speaks of his awakening more in terms of a permanent penetration into emptiness and space. His awakening was spontaneous, without any spiritual training, after he fell completely into the depths of depression. After falling into emptiness, he never retrieved his former mental patterns again, but instead demonstrates a deeper access to wisdom and understanding.
For many people there are tastes of this empty-fullness in meditation for many years, before they fall into the realization that this is what they are. Others come upon it when out in nature, and being swept into a realization that they are everything that is – the mountains, sky, earth, rocks and every being within it. It is as if there is a sudden movement out of the form with which we were narrowly identified, and into the pure consciousness out of which every natural form has emerged. We may be moving into the space of our cells and discovering it is one with all space, full of the consciousness that is all and eternal.
It’s important for those awakening, as well as for therapists or friends of those moving through this process, to hold the utmost respect for the difficulties experienced as cells restructure and release all the trapped experiences and patterns of the past. Imagine if everything you believed about yourself was dissolving into space – who and what are you without the mental concepts, without words, without any system to hold on to as truth? Interiorly this is what people who are leaning into spiritual awakening will eventually experience. If it happens as a glimpse they will bounce back into the ordinary lives, and may feel divided between two worlds until the process is ended. The great gift of having an authentic spiritual teacher who has gone through this is that they can unflinchingly lead the person into a life in which they live from who they truly are.
I have met with hundreds of people caught somewhere in this process, and I believe most spiritually awakened people are living this gradual deconstruction, inspired by sudden bursts of wisdom, or insight, or love, or the bliss that bubbles up as cells release themselves. We can be allies along the way if we are willing to give up our own rigid patterns of belief and simply share the wonder and the faith that this is a natural and hopeful process of evolution which all of us will eventually enter.
I began my research in 1984, looking for commonalities in those who were in a kundalini process, and looking for solutions to the issues and difficulties, but this perspective of energy and emptiness, is the deepest truth I have found thus far through the research I have been offered by participating in my own process and those of many others.
What are the implications if it is so that many can and will encounter this awakening? It means more and more of the people who share this planetary mindset will understand their true and intimate relationship to each other. We will see clearly how the way we condition our children impacts the painful patterns that are set in adults as thoughts and emotional reactions, and underlie the greed, addiction and violence in our society. And we will recognize there is an element of eternal life, goodness, and wisdom in all beings. When we move out of addiction to thought and begin to search for the flow of authenticity and relationship in our lives we then ask the right questions and move in more natural directions in our families, cultures and societies.
We are vibrations of energy moving through space and fields of energy-thought-forms.
We are consciousness capable of recognizing itself. We are forms and formless both and when we have the direct understanding of this we can relax and simply live our lives in natural response to each moment.
COPYRIGHT BONNIE GREENWELL 2015
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