A Personal Tale of the Rising Kundalini
When we hear and accept the Goddess’s call, our Kundalini begins to rise. Then, we must be willing to observe not only our thoughts and feelings, but our behavior as well. When our chakras begin to open and Kundalini begins Her rise to our crown, our behaviors often get more “out of control” than usual. That is, our behavior is out of our ego’s control.
As our Soul begins to take residence in our physical bodies, it needs to flush out old patterns of fear, limitation, separation, and unworthiness. These patterns and beliefs are often the foundation that our egos have used to define themselves. Hence, the battle between our ego and our Soul begins.
Our ego functions from the self-image that we have created for ourselves, as well as the self-image that others have created for us. Once we have begun the process of balancing and healing our childhood, our emotions, and our thoughts, we can learn to accept ourselves for who we are and not for who we should be.
However, until then, our unconscious needs and desires are too often only discovered through our behavior. This process becomes greatly amplified when the Kundalini begins to rise. The balancing and healing of our past is a slow process, one that is dynamic throughout our entire life. That is, of course, if we do NOT live in denial.
When we deny our pain, of both the past and the present, we become locked into unconscious reactions to life because the unconscious pain of the past amplifies the pain of the present. For example, if someone is late to pick us up we may become slightly angry. However, if our parents were always late to pick us up, and we had many experiences of being frightened or embarrassed, that old pain will piggyback onto the current situation. We then may find ourselves being enraged because our friend is ten minutes late.
When we are able to reveal and heal our old pain, our reactions to the present can be based on the present situation and the present person. The echoes of the past will no longer haunt us and cause us to react inappropriately. If we know that we are very sensitive about time, we can consciously deal with the situation in an adult manner. For example, we would only ask reliable people to pick us up, be sure to be the driver, or find another solution so that the same situation that hurts our feelings does not arise.
If we can observe our behavior, we can begin to understand the unconscious motivations behind it. Often it is only through our behavior, and through our “failures,” that we are able to flush out and heal old pain and fear.
This personal history of the Kundalini rising is presented as my personal case study for others to better understand how behavior can tell us the truths that our minds and emotions cannot.
THE FIRST CHAKRA
TIME FRAME 1974-1979
It was 1974, and I had it all. I was married, which meant I was “good enough.” I had two children who loved me unconditionally. Unconditional love, yes, unconditional love was a secret yearning that came from a memory of the time “before.” However, I had never found it on this world, this place that I lived in, but could never call Home.
I owned my house, and I didn’t have to leave my children to go to work (a strong 50’s message), and I had lots and lots of time to look at my life. Or was it my life? No, it was everyone else’s life. It was the life that I was supposed to have. It was a good “outside life.” By that I mean that anyone on the outside could look at my life and say, “What a good life.”
But, what did I say about my life? I said, “Where did I go?” However, in order to find out where I had gone, I had to find out who I was.
I had spent my life being who I was supposed to be and had never had time to be who “I” was. Early in my childhood I had neglected my inner life, my real life, my Self. I had hidden my Self away because it was too different from everyone around me. Being different was a very “bad” thing. If you were different you were NOT “good enough.”
I had grown up in the 50’s and early 60’s, the first wave of the Baby Boomers. I had been programmed well by my family and my society. I had lost the sense of who I was and had embraced the idea of who I was supposed to be. And now I had it all! I was miserable and lonely. I was lonely for my Self. The only time I could be my Self was with my kids and a very few friends. I was 28 years old and I was VERY tired.
I looked around at the life that SHOULD have made me happy. I had everything. I had a new home that we owned; a marriage, two kids, a girl and a boy, and I could stay home with the children. According to the 1950’s sit-coms, I should be gloriously happy. However, it was 1974.
Luckily, I was still cashing in on the tail of the hippie era. We had huge parties, two to three times a week, and our home was always filled with people and fun. When we moved into our new house, I planted the entire yard, from weeds to landscaping, planted a vegetable garden and made all the curtains, pillows, quilts. I was very creative. Now I needed to begin to create myself.
All my creativity aroused the Goddess within me and she began calling me to join Her. But, I could not feel Her love. All I could feel was Her intense loneliness. “Where am I?” I would ask myself, and “What is this place?” I have everything that society and my family told me to get, yet I am horribly unhappy. Why?
I began my search with my best friends, books. I searched furiously because I could feel the demon of depression closing in on me like a dark cloud. All that I had, all that I had attained, meant nothing to this demon for it engulfed everything in its darkness.
The red doors of the unconscious were opening before me and I could not close them. “Perhaps I should stop resisting and allow the craziness to overtake me,” I pondered. But two of my book friends, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, and Eden Express, showed me that insanity was NOT the answer.
Then I found another book, Richard Hiddleman’s 28 Day Plan for Yoga, which showed me another path, the spiritual path. Instead of giving in to insanity, I decided I would let go of what THEY wanted me to do. But I didn’t know how.
Luckily, my Soul had heard my call and gradually started altering my behavior. I had gone down to my deepest unconscious and felt the ancient pain that had been hiding there my entire life; in fact, my entire “lives.” Because of that journey, a glimmer of my spirit was able to filter through the vast network of walls and camouflages that I had built around me in those 28 years.
At the end of each day’s yoga session, Hiddleman wrote, “Now, listen to your body.” I had no concept of what that meant. My body was not me, it never had been me. My body was the trap that kept me from going Home. My body was what separated me from…what? I did not know. I only knew that I wanted to feel connected again, connected to something INSIDE.
I continued to read every book I could find about yoga, yoga sutra, spirituality, meditation, everything. One book, and I do not remember which one, said, “When you step upon The Path, you must do so ALONE.” Well, I had felt alone my entire life so that was not too ominous for me.
In fact, the only time I didn’t feel alone was when I was with my Self, the one I had abandoned to get married and live in denial. Fortunately, there were also my children and a few, very few, special friends. My spirituality had always been something I had experienced alone. Even when I was with my gregarious teen church group, I felt different and alone.
Then I met Mrs. Reed. My friend, one of the special ones, introduced me to her, and I instantly knew she was my teacher. However, I think it was about a year before I was ready to begin studying with her. I had to decide to make my spiritual growth more important than the many emotional dramas that filled my life. Practicing yoga is what helped me make that decision. Yoga gave me a taste of peace, and I wanted more!
After studying about the ascended Masters and astrology with Mrs. Reed for a while, I gained the courage to go to graduate school to finish my major and get a license. As Kundalini began to awaken, the Goddess told me that I could not be free in the world that I lived in until I could support my children and myself.
CAREER LIFE
Graduate school was a great mirror for my many unconscious fears. My first fear was that I was too “stupid” to get a MA degree. Therefore, my second fear was that I would fail the comprehensive examination. However, both of these conscious fears paled behind my unconscious fear, which was, “If I get a masters and a job, I will have to leave my unhappy marriage and be ALONE.” There is that word again. I thought I wasn’t afraid to be alone, at least not consciously afraid.
Because my conscious and unconscious mind was not in agreement, I had to create a cover story. “I know,” I told myself, “I am going to school to save my marriage.” In reality, the reason I was going to school was to leave my marriage; two very different opinions to be locked in one mind. Luckily, or unluckily, my mind was very busy learning many new things and worrying about “failing the comps,” which of course I did. But, that was much later.
PHYSICAL BODY
My mind was a wonderful liar, and it believed my cover story. I thought that I was determined to achieve my goal, but which goal? Was my goal to leave the marriage or save the marriage? Was my goal to get my degree or fail my comps? Was my goal to follow my inner guidance as I had learned from Mrs. Reed, or was my goal to manipulate the “Higher Beings” to give me comfort rather than the truth?
My body was very confused and a very poor liar. My body knew that the first chakra’s adrenal glands were firing adrenaline into my system, that I was totally ungrounded, and that I was going in opposite directions with every thought. My body also knew that a war, about which I was totally oblivious, was being waged inside me. It will be “fine”, came a voice that I labeled as spirit. In actuality, it was the voice of denial.
Denial is a tricky deal. When you live in denial in your outside world, how can you determine if you are living in denial in your inside world? Was I saying it would be fine, or was my spiritual guidance saying that it would be fine? Well, I had a simple solution, I denied that I was living in denial.
Meanwhile, my body was in stop/go, stop/go, stop/go mode. I had five car accidents in one year. None of these were my fault. Denial! And while doing yoga, one stormy evening when I was alone, I wrenched my right knee. Now, that was an interesting message from my body. The right knee, the masculine side, which teaches us how to step out into the world, the shock absorber of “learning-how-to-go-out-into-the-world-to-take-care-of-yourself,” was giving me a message.
The right knee, which is on the right leg that pushes the brakes and the accelerator in the car so that you DON’T have five car accidents, was in great pain. Was my body telling me to slow down and watch where I was going? Was my body telling me that I was experiencing a great deal of psychic pain? Was my body telling me that I should bend my knee to my higher guidance and listen rather than direct?
No, I denied, my hurt was bad luck, just like the car accidents. But luckily my higher guidance was protecting me. I did listen to it sometimes. On the way to school I would chant “Blaze, Blaze, Blaze the Violet Fire, transmuting all shadow into Light, Light, Light”. When I tried to study in my tension-filled house, I would chant, “Nothing will disturb my harmony.”
My higher guidance even came to me in a blazing ball of golden light one night when I was ALONE. It was just before I was to take the comprehensive examinations. The golden light entered my bedroom and slowly approached my bedside. Had it come to warn me, to tell me that I was NOT in the state of mind to take on such a big challenge? I never learned the answer because I hid under the covers until it was gone. Oh, the joys of denial.
When I learned that I had failed the “comps,” I blamed God for “leading me astray.” But later, after I had taken the responsibility for my own inner battle, after I had learned that I created my own reality, and after I had learned that fear has as much power to create as love, I passed the exams.
FINAL INITIATION OF THE FIRST CHAKRA
I can forgive myself for my youthful mistakes because now I see that it all was a grand drama,” all the world is a stage,” that would crescendo into my final initiation. Through the last year of graduate school, I had dream after dream of great disasters involving just my children and me, ALONE. We always survived.
I can look back at this time and think that I was having a nervous breakdown, or I can look back and think that I was having a spiritual initiation. I choose the latter. A nervous breakdown can be “bad luck” or “a major setback”, whereas as spiritual initiation is “a difficult transition into a better person.” Well it WAS a difficult transition, and I do believe that I became a better person. I became a better person because I learned some very important lessons.
When I got the grim notice in the mail that I had failed, all my illusions burst in one great explosion. I could no longer deny that I was miserable. Then, when my husband spent that night of my “bad news” away from home, away from me, I could no longer deny that my marriage was over. The next day, after one of the worst nights of my life, with my kids, our dog, and my school and spiritual books, I left. I left that house and I left that life. I would take the test again, and I would pass because I was no longer at war with myself.
My unconscious and my Soul had won. I learned that I was NOT stupid. In fact, I learned that I was smart and powerful. I also learned to listen to my Soul when it tried to warn me. But, of course, at the time I probably would not have heeded the warning if I had heard it.
I had to manifest my greatest fears so that I could conquer them. I had to fail in order to learn that I was strong enough to try again and succeed. I had to fail to finally break through my wall of denial to find the courage to leave a bad situation and face my fear of being alone. And, I had to fail in order to learn to distinguish between the voice of fear and the Voice of Soul.
Through my behavior, I had proven to myself what my Soul had always known. My first chakra had opened. What a ride! I learned to support myself for the first time, I created a new home, and I learned that I could integrate my masculine and feminine energy to create a NEW LIFE. I stepped upon the first step to Soul. Now I had to LIVE it…
THE FIRST STEP TO SOUL
The small child had grown up. It had taken much longer than she had ever intended. And even though she felt like an adult, she knew that there was a center that was still soft and vulnerable.
If she were to give that center up, she knew she would become hard and inflexible. For in the center, she felt pain. In feeling pain she could remember to learn and grow and change.
Now, she had to learn how to guide herself, not just from her strong, adult exterior, but also from the soft vulnerable interior that was the center of her Self. She had to learn to shield that center from the outside pain while she still allowed love to enter from the ones whom she trusted.
This center was the threshold to her inner life. The inner worlds were now fully accessible to her. Upon that threshold she would place her deepest love and trust so that she would be protected and guided in every moment of her life.
Inside the doorway of that threshold was a pillar of light with a shining crystal atop it. This pillar guarded the first step to Soul. The light of this pillar would always shine to remind her of the spiritual life-force which flowed continuously from her Soul into her physical universe.
She entered the doorway and stepped upon the first step to Soul. Standing tall, she peered into the crystal and saw a bright red glow. As her vision focused, she realized that red glow was a flame ~ A FLAME OF COURAGE!
She would need this courage to maintain the responsibilities of her everyday life while she continued her inner journey up the Seven Steps to Soul.
