Tontyn Hopman
Zurich, Switzerland

Where to Stand in the Kundalini Process


I was once delayed for several hours in the busy and cavernous train station in Florence, because I was standing at a track waiting for a train that never came. All the signs had indicated this was the right place, and the number matched with the guide book information, but one by one the trains came up, indicating they were headed toward many towns, other than the one where I was headed. Finally I was able to find a station master who spoke English and discovered the train had come through several times, but on a different track.

Looking back on over 35 years of being a spiritual “seeker” I realize now that I was often in a similar situation, standing firm in a territory that had a lot of activity and potential, but simply was not headed where I wanted to go. It is not an easy thing to notice, and one would think there would be great humiliation in this discovery. But I have found finally that no matter what meandering path we take to liberation, it is always our own unique and beautiful way to get there.

(Or to get to the nowhere that is there, because where you are going turns out to be right here!) There may be delays, but they are not mistakes. Of course the process can be humbling, but it is also richly fed by joy and gratitude.

After Deconstruction
There is a movement from the drama and deconstruction process that takes over our lives after an awakening of kundalini, and sometimes it is so subtle that we miss it. The energy that arises in the activation and continuing process called kundalini awakening could be thought of as our spirit, clearing out the conditioning, the points of view, the old patterns, and anything that is held in our subtle body that has helped to define who we think we are. People get the idea that kundalini is about gaining powers or siddhis, because in India there are practices that appear to lead in that direction, and many openings can happen that allow consciousness to flow in new ways – bringing forth healing, visions, or paranormal and mystical insights and experiences. There is nothing wrong with these phenomena, but they have no value in terms of liberation. They can be used or not used, according to inclination, but if they become new identities, they can delay our awakening to Truth for many decades, perhaps even lifetimes.

In my work with hundreds of people who have activated kundalini energy, coming from all stages and conditions of life, I have found few who become enlightened in the process. Many became more wise and loving, or developed new abilities, or simply stayed for a long time in an in-and-out struggle between mystical experience and frustration with ordinary living. And yet in the yogic tradition kundalini is seen as the method, the path to enlightenment. What I have learned in the last few years through working in the Zen and Advaita Vedanta traditions is that kundalini can be considered not so much a goal, but simply a by-product of spiritual process. By this I do not mean it is irrelevant, only that it has a job to do, which is to strip us down to such pure emptiness and openness that the truth of our nature can be seen directly, and lived completely.

In yogic traditions that emphasize the activation of kundalini the idea is that by working with the subtle body, doing practices that move this energy up through the chakras, and bringing it ultimately through the crown, one will trigger what could be labeled cosmic consciousness. Some systems suggest one just stays there, sitting in a cave or hut, or even buried in a hole in the ground, indefinitely. But that is incompletion. Other systems teach the awakened to bring energy back down into hrit chakra, on the right side of the heart, which will enable the consciousness that is embodied to live a liberated life. This is a useful model, however it is exceedingly rare in the west to find anyone who knows how to do it.

The Role of Consciousness
In the non-dual traditions the emphasis is on consciousness. Either through a transmission of presence, or sitting in stillness, or shocking the mind out of its ordinary patterns of thinking, a person can wake up, deeply and profoundly, to the realization of his or her true nature. Actually it is more accurate to say that the true nature wakes up to itself. This is not an event that can be described well from mind to mind, just as one cannot really describe the orgasmic experience adequately in words to someone who has never known it. It is an experience of our very essence awakening to itself, that which existed even before we were born into this body/mind form, which has since accumulated all the layers of conditioning that make us into a unique and illusory personality. To be awake is the goal of the non-dual traditions. This entails a shift of identity from the little “me” of the body/mind into the recognition that paradoxically, “I am nothing – what I am is this vast, unfathomable, pregnant nothingness; and I am everything. What I am is the essence of all of life.”

Now the mind raises serious objections to this insight, because it takes away the importance of thought, intellect and emotion in ruling our lives, and suggests something else more fundamental is underlying the whole game. And so when there are glimpses of realization the mind quickly rushes into other territory, focusing on new skills, or raising problems, or reminding us of all the limitations we have that mean we can’t possibly become liberated in this lifetime. It is so rare to meet a teacher who is actually living from this truth that it is easy to miss its significance even when it happens, because we haven’t seen it in anyone else. But in the midst of a great or even a minor mystical experience, and also during an ordinary life event, we can have a flash of that which we truly are, free of all traces of individuality. We are briefly awake, and we quickly forget it.

Conditions that Block Awakening
It is an innocent mistake to believe that if we simply accumulate enough mystical experiences we will be enlightened. These are such awesome moments that the mind places great significance on them. They can be great gifts that open our hearts and minds, but simply repeating them over and over will not create an enlightened consciousness.

Likewise we may believe that our kundalini process will enlighten us if only we keep working and working on practices, and indeed it does provide us with moments of ecstasy and insight beyond what we knew before it awakened. But it appears to be an act of grace if this movement of energy ever penetrates the subtle fields that actually show us who we are. In addition by great devotion to practice we can strengthen the mind and cause it to believe it knows how to get to the spiritual goal, although it subliminally resists the goal because it will mean its own annihilation. We cannot trust the mind to get us there as this realization is beyond the scope of mind, and our thoughts can keep us in holding patterns for many, many years, perhaps for lifetimes.

Also, the tendency we have to be continually distracted by other attractions in life, or deep emotional reactions, and a wide range of other experiences, keeps us from having the complete and total dedication to Truth that would lead us into a stable and permanent self-realized life. Our personal desires and concepts continually reanimate the egoic self, even after a deep initial awakening.

Often there is a primal core issue or story that blocks completion of our true awakening. For me, I thought it was a fear of love, although I realized later it was also because I did not know where to stand. I could feel there was an opening that happened in truly free individuals who lived not at all for their personal gain, but in service to others, and it looked like love, a love I felt would take over my life and make me too vulnerable. For others the core may be a treasured belief system about what they need, what the world needs, or the idea that they are not deserving or good enough to be liberated. Unfortunately some spiritual systems tell people they need many lifetimes to awaken and take all hope away from their students. This is a great disservice to the Truth, because awakening is always here in every moment, available to every one of us, no matter what the history or core experience of our life. It is rare because so few of us are willing to give up our stance, or belief systems, or personality attachments, in order to see what is beneath them.

The First Step
To sense directly the awakeness that shines through all beings, peers through our eyes, enlivens our senses, empowers our motivations, and carries us through every moment of life, is to take the first step in the radical awakening to Truth, that will lead ultimately to self-realization or liberation. We can experience this when we become very, very quiet, in a moment when there is no mental activity of any sort that we reach for or grasp, no practice to do, no idea to uphold. This is the point of sitting in meditation. It is not that we reject the world, because rejection is also activity. We simply move into the silence, the deep stillness that is underneath all form and all movement, in the same way that the sky holds all planetary forms and every other part of existence. This is a consciousness that pre-exists, always exists, and never stops existing, and our personal lives are superimposed upon it. To wake up is to know oneself as That. Jesus said it as, “I am that I am”; Nisardagatta said, “I am that”; Ramana Maharshi said it “There is only the Self”; Buddha said it, “There is no self.”

In yogic systems kundalini movement is a long and challenging process that may eventually lead us to this realization. In non-dual teachings waking-up happens first, and then kundalini will likely happen simultaneously or follow in the wake of this awakening, beginning its work of deconstructing the persistent self-identity. So I have seen many people wake up these past few years, working with a delightful and clear American non-dual teacher called Adyashanti, who awakened in the Zen tradition, and now teaches outside of all traditions. And I notice that after the initial waking up, which may be very brief, or very deep and profound, the person finds himself or herself shifting back and forth, in and out of old identifications, even though they know these are not true. They see clearly they are the One, and the Whole, and there is no personal “me” other than the energies of conditioning that have been superimposed over the One, but the mind keeps reentering the life, bringing up old issues with brilliant clarity, activating dormant emotions, and stimulating great doubts.

So in the non-dual tradition the process of becoming that which is liberated happens after the initial self-realization. (And no little “me” ever gets liberated; it simply fades away once it has been truly seen through.) It happens as we stand and face all the fragments of our so-called individuality and let them burn away, so that what is underneath can shine through.

The Truth is not in the Mystical Experience
So to fulfill the promise of a kundalini process the consciousness must recognize its own Self as the One Self, and this involves giving up the illusion that mystical experience is the Way. Usually the power and drama of a beautiful mystical experience overwhelms the emotions, and we come back longing for more and more of it. The problem is the continual reconstitution of the person who longs for more. In the excitement we forget to ask who was having the experience, or what is it that has the experience. It is the same One that has all experiences. When we know absolutely that we are only that which is presence, in this moment, open and awake, then we find there is no longer any hunger for mystical experience, no longing for realization, no more “seeker” and no more objection to whatever arises in our lives. Kundalini may tear through us and we say – whatever is happening is okay. Kundalini may stop its continual gnawing at our subtle field and become quiescent and we just enjoy the peace of it. A mystical opening may occur and it is pleasant. No mystical experiences happen and life is still good. The one who was in the middle, the little “me” who thought things should be a certain way, has dissolved.

When awakening happens we can become lost in space for awhile; that is, enjoying the leap into emptiness and vastness and the sense of who we are without any of the limitations our mind had placed upon us. We can feel expansive and qualities of compassion and unconditional love may awaken, because our true nature naturally expresses this way. We might feel we can do anything, although this tends to be spiritual ego leading us down a high-risk path. It is true in an absolute way, because at the absolute level we are indestructible and One, but not necessarily true of the bodies in which we carry this realization. To dance in this vastness without any sense of boundary is not the whole of freedom however, because if we can only be free in space we are not free.

Completion
So the completion of this journey is really a return into ordinary life, and the discovery that the light and spaciousness of the whole is reflected in a myriad of ways in form, and seeing the delight and play it enjoys in those forms. Of course one also sees the pain and anguish that is inherent in the limited life, and especially in the limitations of a world lived through the mind’s belief systems, which are dualistic and thus full of conflict and fear. When the mind, the thought-forms of our conditioning, is ruling life it is completely self-centered. This is not a judgment but an observation – mental patterns center around the individual selves, or in some cultures, the cultural selves. That is why people with divergent ideas, beliefs, theologies, financial status, political stances, etc come to blows so often, and are even willing to kill to protect their opinions and their differences. When people are fully awakened they can no longer take on self-righteous positions, because they see through the limitations of mind. So realization is not about creating a more brilliant mind, but discovering a deeper wisdom, one that comes through the heart and has no investment in being right. It becomes a way to live that is simply flowing with what seems to be arising in the moment, a responding, a natural meeting with what is, a blending of love and wisdom, as Adyashanti describes it. To the mind this sounds impossible, even dangerous. But to the heart it is clearly a reflection of the ancient teaching “Thy will be done.”

Kundalini awakening is a great opportunity to become fully conscious to who you essentially are, and to find yourself at one with all beings. The completion of this process is not what the mind would think. Adyashanti says in working with hundreds of students he has never had anyone say to him, “This feels just the way I thought it would.” That has certainly been true for me, because I now see I stood at the wrong track in the station for many years, entranced by my love for the ecstasy of the kundalini energy, and the mystical experiences I had. Many spiritual seekers are trying to escape this ordinary world, and do not realize the great gift of returning to it as a whole person, finding no difference between the profound and the profane, seeing God in all of it. Sometimes God is blinded by delusion and sometimes God is experiencing great congruence, but it becomes more and more obvious nothing else is happening but God having many experiences. One of the Zen sutras puts it, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” All One.

To become whole we embark on the great process of being stripped to the core, seeing all our patterns and all the darkness of the world as well, arising inside of us.
There is waking up to knowing “I am this” just as in the Bhagavadgita, Krishna shows Arjuna his true face, and Arjuna cannot bear to look for more than a moment. The little “me” cannot sustain this understanding, but the greater Self that we discover we are, can hold it all, and is already holding it all. That is what leads to liberation, the absolute willingness to hold it all, and then when the timing is right, to live as that, to give up the boundaries of being self-centered, and ask what is that which wants naturally to be expressed through me. It will be different for each of us, according to some unique divine plan that no one has access too, but there will be an expression. We can’t decide to do this with mind and it is not a practice. It just happens when we let awakeness run its course. Certain old traces of the human-ness may object, just as Jesus asked the cup of crucifixion to pass from him, but in the end it will be done, graciously and with no attachment to the outcome. We begin to flow with the impersonal consciousness that lives this multi-faceted life of human existence.

This is what I have learned finally, after 35 years, and after giving up the search. Because it was so important for me to know where to stand, I find myself passing this along to you. Wherever you have stood it has never been a mistake, but may you be blessed to discover along the way just who it is that is having the experience. That essence that is the real Self is here right now, in the middle of the kundalini process, and before it, and after it. Just become wordlessly and profoundly still and you will discover the mystery you are, and know that you are One.

(Bonnie Greenwell Ph.D. has been a transpersonal therapist in California since 1988, specializing in spiritual emergence, and is the author of “Energies of Transformation: A Guide to the Kundalini Process,” and a founder of the Kundalini Research Network. She has studied Kundalini and Ashtanga yogas, Advaita Vedanta and Zen extensively, and in 2004 became a dharma teacher at the invitation of Adyashanti, an American non-dual teacher who awakened in the Zen tradition. She compiled and edited his ground-breaking book “Emptiness Dancing” and is working on a second book to be released next year on the process of spiritual awakening and liberation.)

Please do not reproduce this article without the express written consent of the author.
© Bonnie Greenwell Ph.D.

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