There’s an issue of chicken-and-egg in Yogi energetics: if there are energetic blockages and impurities in the energy system, what is the right approach to this issue – by attacking it on the level on which it exists, by some form of Kundalini-based technique for approaching those structures directly, or by attacking it on the level where it originated, by addressing the spiritual, mental and emotional causes.
You see, the energy blocks, karmic seeds, larvae and similar things didn’t just get there by some irony of fate. If you repressed an emotion, your problem is on that level, of repressed emotion, and can be more effectively solved by working through emotions, than by observing the repressed emotion as an energy structure and using energetics to try to “cleanse” it. Yes, the energetic techniques can help a great deal, by allowing you to survive traumatic emotions when repressed things burst out in the open, but again, you’re dealing with the problem on an emotional level in order to come to any kind of a solution, and energetic techniques are useful, but secondary.
A lot of noise was made in the Kundalini-circles in the 1990s about the supposed use of Kundalini awakening in spiritual evolution, to the point where Kundalini was seen as a conditio sine qua non of any kind of spirituality. On the other hand, most of the Kundalini people were demonstrably mad. The recurring theme was that Kundalini is often mistaken for mental illness, but I do wonder if mental illness isn’t often mistaken for Kundalini, as well. In any case, they seemed to be encouraging each other’s madness and lack of self-control of any kind, because it’s all either Kundalini at work, or it’s the Moon phases or some time of the year or it’s someone else’s fault, but certainly there’s no need for them to get their act together because that would be restrictive, and they felt the need to open their assholes as wide as they would go and fart out a shit tsunami in hope of attaining at least some kind of “unity with the world”. As you can see, I was less than impressed. It’s not that Kundalini-based techniques are worthless. I used them myself to great effect. It’s just that my approach doesn’t seem to be the rule, but rather an exception.
It is my experience that using Kundalini energetics is great to get things moving, to raise the energetic level of the kalapas inside your spiritual body, which has the effects similar to heating wax in order to make it liquid, which is useful if you want to rearrange things or remove solid impurities. However, if you’re not doing anything else to it, just heating it up, or, to leave the analogy, just stirring shit up in your system, won’t do anything other than decrease the overall mental stability and make one go nuts. So yes, improperly used Kundalini indeed is an enabling agent for psychosis. Used properly it just makes spiritual transformation work faster, as it “softens up” your system in preparation for stuff that actually attacks the real problems, not their manifestations.
So, what are the real problems? It’s very simple, really. The real problems always have a root cause in bad ideas, bad beliefs, and bad actions committed based on those bad beliefs. If you followed a wrong teaching, beliefs that were instilled in you by those teachings create secondary problems, which can then be energetically perceived as blockages, impurities or whatever, but let me put it this way. If someone’s shadow falls on you, do you try to remove the shadow from yourself or ask the person to move the fuck away from the light? The bad beliefs are like that: they are like some asshole who’s blocking the light for you. It’s not your problem, or, it is as much as you have inhibitions against getting rid of the problem because you think it deserves to be there or has more right have it their way than you do. The solution is therefore simple: you need to decide that you have the right not to have some assholes idiotic belief system block light for you and tell him to fuck off with his stupid bullshit. Then, suddenly, you’ll have an energetic cleansing process, as the blockages are dissolved and you are empowered, and here’s where Kundalini techniques come handy. It’s just that you mustn’t allow the tail to wag the dog; Kundalini is not some sort of God, it’s a shovel for manure. It’s very useful, but its place of origin is somewhere between your cock (or your lady bits, if those are what you have) and your asshole, and those are not really the organs that are useful for thinking, resolving spiritual issues and choosing a direction for your life. For those purposes you have your will, your consciousness, mind and the general feeling of spiritual presence that is of God. When those are deployed properly, the energetics will suddenly and effortlessly start working as it should. However, if you fail to approach the problem from the head, you will end up shoveling manure around you with the only result of drowning in your own shit.
When there was talk about energetic problems, I’ve heard people mention larvae (repressed emotions or separated self-parts), karmaśayas, vasanas and similar structures, but I’ve seen little or no mention of the inclusions, which look like a layer of soft rock included inside a hard rock, weakening it structurally. However, those are very common, because they are a spiritual representation of bad beliefs that weaken your soul, preventing you from wielding your spiritual power on what would otherwise be your normal level. For instance, if you train a person whose normal level of functionality would be ajna-chakra, to make anahata-chakra the focus of his spirituality, this anahata-focus actually weakens his soul, forming low-energy inclusions on the weak, anahata-level of energy. This then creates phantom-artifacts in the energy system, and if that person is poorly instructed he’ll end up chasing his tail throughout this maze of mirage and illusion. The true problem he has is that he listened to advice given to him by an idiot, and that’s where any possible solution is to be found, not by trying to remove shadows with a hair dryer.
Possible wrong beliefs that cause inclusions look like this:
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respecting someone who doesn’t deserve that level of respect
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obeying someone who doesn’t deserve your obedience
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disrespecting or disobeying someone who deserves either respect or obedience
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adopting inferior spiritual advice as authoritative
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not adopting ideas and behaviors appropriate for your spiritual status
- ceding the right to act or refuse to act in certain ways
Basically, this is the reason why all followers of certain religions are fucked up in the same way; they adopt bad ideas that turn them into zombie-idiots, restricting their spirituality to the inferior level that was put as a standard by the religion’s idiotic founder. I’m not talking just about Islam, although it’s a prime example, because there is no shortage of bad ideas in circulation. New Age is full of them, atheism is just terribly and irredeemably in conflict with facts, Christianity and Buddhism are full of junk, and most Hindu schools are more harmful than useful. Essentially, being spiritually wrecked by adopting bad ideas is probably the most common cause of problems, and yet for some reason this is barely if at all mentioned in Kundalini literature. Which brings me to my next point, which is “fuck Kundalini and the horse it rode in on”. Just focus your spirit in the direction from which you feel the light of God, adopt beliefs that make that light your own and show people what God is by your own example. Those few basic things are enough to make you immune to most problems.
I wish i knew most of your Kundalini advices and teachings 9 years ago. I started to meditate every day, inspired by Zen Buddhism, by short stories, koans, teachings of guys like Osho, Allan Watts, Yasutani Roshi an others… After about three weeks of meditation, my Kundalini was awakened. I was meditating by technique of zazen, trying to empty my mind and focus on that emptiness. While trying to do that, i achieved some deeper level of consciousness and my thoughts and imagination became deeper. In that state, i randomly thought of some spiritual teacher, it was Vivekananda, and that caused powerfull emotions which somehow activated my Kundalini; my heartbeats beacame stronger than ever and fast, my body became hot, and i felt some energy gliding through the center of my spine. I heard of Kundalini before, but i did not know ehat to do with it, and that it makes your whole spiritual energy higher, both negative and positive stuff. I kept meditating with zazen, empty ming tehnique, but i was often tormented by powerfull feelings, fears… i had a strong sexual desire and i was masturbating a lot, even at work, but after an orgasm i felt like shit. I also wrote poetry and short stories on my blog, and i had inspiration for it daily. About two months after first Kundalini experience, i felt it again, but this time it was much deeper. I literally swallowed my tongue and stopped breathing completely. All i saw was deep orange light with smaller yellow light in the middle, and i felt like i was drinking that light instead of brathing. 2 or 3 years later, i read about yogic experience of drinking the nectar, and i knew than that it was my experience. But still, although it was very powrfull, the most powerfull experience of my life, after it, i was not changed… i was still tormented by powerful feelings. I was constantly thinking about myself and that i do not deserve to be on the spiritual path, that i am not enough mature and evolved for that. After about 8 months of meditation, every day for about 45 minutes, without exception, i finally fell down again, and i started drinking as i was doing before whole meditation an Zen thing. Also, soon i met a girl, and after some time, she left me and that completely ruined me, i could not eat and sleep normally, i felt huge emptiness inside my chest, and when i tried to meditate i just could not do it anymore. My point is, i wish that i knew than some stuff about yoga and that i was more aware because of whole high energy level thing that goes with Kundalini awakening. I think that all this articles and books that you wrote are priceless and much needed for a sincere yoga student! Thank you, and i hope that someday i will start using your advices and knowledge that i got from reading your articles.
This clears up a lot of my decade old confusion, thank you
🙂