Kundalini Awakening
The year after I graduated college, feeling quite lost about what I wanted to do in life and living at home with my mother, a pivotal event happened in my quest for spiritual understanding. In a freak accident, my neighbor’s 19 year old daughter died. This was a young woman I’d see in the morning and say hello to, as we each cleaned the snow off our cars in our preparation for heading off to work. I was 23 at the time. We never had an extended conversation, but I still vividly remember those brief exchanges in the morning. One day in February there were tons of cars parked on my street and in the driveway of my next door neighbor. I had no idea why but did not give it much thought. A couple of days later, my mom said to me “Karen”! “What”? “The daughter; she died.” My mother explained to me how Karla had passed away in a home accident while her parents and younger brother were away on a brief “escape the winter” vacation. I was shocked, scared, disoriented. I could not believe that someone I had just spoken to the week before could be irretrievably gone. And her youth, the fact that we were just a few years apart in age shook me to my core.
The world appeared different to me in the following days and weeks. I’d look at the trees while driving my car and think how one could just fall on me and crush me in an instant. My perception of the world felt skewed; everything just felt off; I was out of sorts, in a bit of a daze. I stumbled across a flier for a course on death and dying at a yoga center in a small neighboring town. I drove to the center to sign up for the course and met two people (and later a third) who would alter the trajectory of my young life. Tim and Jane ran the yoga center. It was housed in an old farmhouse that doubled as their home. They held classes in the living room on weeknights, and weekly meditations there on Sundays. I told them what had happened and why I wanted to take the course. I wanted, needed, to understand death, to make sense out of death. We had a nice chat; there was instant familiarity, comfort and affection. I signed up for the course and at that time they told me about an Indian woman who was a Kundalini Shaktipat guru, and who happened to be making one of her visits to the center in just a week or two. Shaktipat refers to the transmission of spiritual energy by a spiritual master who has the ability to channel such energy. The transmission is said to awaken your own spiritual energy, seated at the base of your spine. Asha Ma traveled around the country visiting disciples, leading meditations and offering shaktipat to seekers. Tim and Jane told me about the Sunday public program she would be offering, and also that she would also be offering a retreat the following week. Though the retreat was only open to initiated disciples, I was welcome to attend evening meditations, if I felt so moved.
I did, in fact, attend the public program and was intrigued. I was normally a bit of a homebody, an introvert, and did not often go out on a Sunday evening, particularly not to a program at which I would know no one. But something compelled me to go. And, even more unlikely, I chose to attend the evening meditations at which there would be even more people I did not know, and practices with which I was completely unfamiliar. And this was after a full day of work. Again, I felt compelled. So, after work, I made my way to the retreat center, which was located in a fairly rural area unfamiliar to me but not far from my job as an elementary school teaching assistant. The program began with a chanting; that was followed by a meditation, during which Asha Ma and her husband sang ethereal mantras, while we closed our eyes and tried to still our minds. After the meditation was “satsang” during which Asha Ma would speak, tell stories and offer nuggets of wisdom about the nature of god, guru and the practice of meditation. The night ended with individual greetings with Asha Ma during which disciples and others received a piece of blessed fruit.
The weeknight meditations lasted 3 or 4 nights, and after the 2nd, I was hooked. I remember on the final night chanting my heart out as we danced in a circle. It was like I had found my people, my community; I was ecstatic. I sat down to meditate and several minutes into the meditation I felt a palpable shock on my forehead, just above the location Hindus and Buddhists refer to as the 3rd eye. It actually caused me to finch just slightly. Nothing beyond that happened that evening, no visions, or sounds, but in the days and weeks that followed, my consciousness was altered inexplicably. I began to journal, in an effort to capture what was happening.
Two main phenomena happened: I had this overwhelming sense that God is everything and that “everything” is love. This was not a belief or an intellectual thought, but a feeling, or an intuition. God is everything, physically everything - the flower, the grain of sand, the cloud above. God is love - the experience of feeling love is the experience of God. This was intuitive and I felt, at the time, that it was quite apart from my intellectual thoughts, my brain. It was a knowingness that felt like a total gift I had done nothing to earn. I had not asked for it and I could not hold onto it. I did not know where it came from but knew it was a temporary shift in consciousness that would fade over time. And that pained me greatly. I cried many many tears, knowing that I could not willfully hold on to the knowledge I was feeling.
The other thing that happened could be explained as psychic. Over the course of several weeks, on a fairly regular basis as I slept, my mind would wake up, my body remaining immobile and still asleep. I became aware of myself, in real time, having thoughts, seeing the room at times, talking lucidly to myself within my mind, but unable to move. Typically, this would be accompanied by a feeling of intense, pulsating energy within me, waves of intense energy that scared me, to be honest.
I still have my journal entries of the event that occurred 36 years ago. I was just 24 years old. Here are a few of them:
Entry One
“I experienced a state of consciousness of not being awake and not being asleep….I thought my eyes were open and I was looking out my window and that I saw lightning flashes outside. Then I felt tremendous pressure on my chest and thought, “God is trying to push my soul out of my body”...I wasn't too afraid and it wasn't painful but the pressure was great indeed…I felt my heart pounding in my chest…I decided I wanted to wake up and thought I could do it if I just moved my head to the left. I did this and awoke. There was no lightning outside. Somehow I had realized how to move and how to stop the experience. I had gained some control but I don't really know how I did it. “
Entry Two:
“I felt the swirling,pulsating energy again last night but I became frightened and woke myself up. As I woke up though, I had the thought - why don’t you let yourself experience this, go with it and see what happens'
Entry Three:
8/9/88: I had an experience while napping today. I was sleeping on my stomach and the vibration started, that intense rapid vibration of every particle of my body. I tried to relax during it but sometimes it's difficult. Usually when my mind is scattered it's a scarier process. This went on for quite a while. I tried a couple of times to pull myself out of it - unsuccessfully. Once I thought, I'm coming out - I thought I saw an angel in a sari (Asha Ma) rising up by me and I was relieved, happy, but I found myself in that same state. I felt pressure on my back pushing down on my body - pushing the breath out of my body more & more. My mind heard voices not really pleasant ones, almost slightly vindictive; they were like the voice behind the force acting on me, sort of. I finally managed to focus my consciousness and wake up. I felt quite stunned and groggy afterwards. This is the seventh time this has happened to me since meeting Asha Ma - plus two or three times before that starting at age 21, but I may have had related experiences I interpreted differently when I was 18.”
Entry Four:
8/12/88: “It happened again while I was napping. I was on my stomach. I was having a dream Caroline was massaging my shoulders. I saw like a kaleidoscope of blue stars of David and they all started spinning on their own axes. This is when the energy came in. Very potent. It filled my neck and shoulders. I was conscious that it was happening though I was still asleep. It had amazing power. I can only compare it to a volcano (my body) which is about to explode; the energy being like molten lava inside - or like a fire breathing dragon on the rampage. I didn't feel comfortable with it but I wanted to relax. I thought once: “I am God” and the energy - its potency and wildness calmed - like a stormy sea becoming a calmer one but definitely still moving. I was very shaky in my statement, trying to convince myself instead of panicking. It rose up again to its more furious intensity. I moaned in my mind trying to figure out how to wake up; I did after a few more seconds.”
Elodea chloroplasts 400x- creating matter from light energy
The other odd thing that happened in the months following first meeting Asha Ma, I kept getting my period, every 2.5 to 3 weeks. But, unaccompanied by the premenstrual syndrome and cramps that were painful and oh so typical symptoms that began a few days before my menses and lasted into the 2nd day of menstruation. I did get concerned at their frequency and eventually went to my doctor. He told me there could be a pituitary tumor, and ran some blood tests, but everything was normal. The first unexpected period happened during that initial meditation retreat, in February, and the frequent periods lasted though perhaps May. Though I did not know this when it first started to happen, Hindus believe that when a woman is menstruating, her subtle (spiritual or psychic) body is being cleansed. Women are not supposed to meditate during their periods and are not allowed into puja rooms or to be touched. Some may consider this simply a form of sexism, control and fear on the part of men, without any basis in reality, a superstition. I would agree, but I cannot deny that during the 3 months when I was having my most intense psychic experiences and shifts in consciousness, I kept getting unexpected and painless periods. And some of these periods occurred before I knew about these Hindu beliefs.