My Significant Other is the Kosmos: Darker Than Any Mystery Part 1 - Where's the Juice?

Prelude

It's been six years since I published "My Significant Other is the Kosmos" and I've done very little with this blog since.  It's been almost 2 years since I posted anything here, and quite frankly the flow of my writing simply disappeared.  Perhaps it was the consequence of my focus honing in on the visual art work I do, which has indeed been on a warp drive adventure in this recent period.  But there was another factor that I see in retrospect - the intuition that after writing "Significant Other", I had reached the end of the truths I could convey in my musings on evolution and creativity, as well as in the narration and interpretation of the subtle energies I had awakened to in my mid-fifties.

Eleven years have passed since the inception of that mysterious process sometimes labeled Kundalini awakening.  As dramatic as that initial opening was (as I described in the book), it pales in comparison to what is occurring now.  I spoke in the book of orgasmic-like sensations ten times the intensity of any I had experienced previously, rolling up and down my body for 10 to 15 minutes at a time.  Back then, especially in the first year or two, the energies were elusive and inconsistent, though always in potential.  I found over time that by lying down and putting my attention to the base of my spine I could, with increasing success, conjure them up, even if not always with predictable intensity.  That's where things stood at the writing of "Significant Others".  As of this writing, six years later, the energies are always available with little or no prompting; in fact I would describe it as more of a 'falling in' to them.  When I think of those early body/orgasm experiences I can now with confidence say that what I get now is ten time that!  I have frequent sensations of electrical flashes zigzagging over my scalp and forehead, and there is an almost constant pleasurable throbbing at the base of my spine.

You might imagine this all leaves me with an ongoing shit-eating grin on my face.  But in fact, I am profoundly mystified by it all.  I've read many accounts of this kind of opening, and found enough commonality in other's experiences mirroring my own to give me confidence that this is indeed a body-based energetic process that has engaged me.  One of the puzzling things is that, even with the commonalities, there is so much disparity within the details as recounted by so many.  Even more puzzling is the number of those claiming that the Kundalini process has ruined their lives, sent them into a kind of hell - if you google Kundalini you'll find that more than half of the results point to this problem, ominously labeled 'Kundalini Syndrome'.  Thankfully for me it has been nothing but a blessing.  I feel my creativity has expanded, my cognitive abilities have sharpened, my health has improved, my intuitions have deepened.  These benefits can't be easily quantified, of course, but they are qualities I'm experiencing.

There is more that will be fleshed out in future blog posts here, though I want to offer one caveat - I have not been transported mentally, or psychically if you will.  No experience of cosmic consciousness, nondual oneness, out-of-body travel, God's infinite love, or anything related under the umbrella of  'The Spiritual'.  This is all still body based, almost mundane... OK, perhaps to use a phrase, super-mundane?  Nevertheless, I feel I'm in a process that is a train ride with an unknown destination, and this is perplexing at times.  And now, especially in the last year or so, a new intuition has arisen that a new stage of this process is in a state of emergence.  If this is indeed the case I want to capture it in writing contemporaneously, while it is fresh.  I know the art work I am pursuing can do exactly this in a subtler, perhaps truer way, but I think clarity of thought and articulate communication is also essential if I am to capture the experience in a way that can engage a dialogue with others - namely, all of you reading this blog.  Some of you may remember from "Significant Other" that I am fond of webs of interlocution.  This is a new web I'm initiating, one which I hope we can weave together, and maybe in the process we can all evolve just a bit further.

Fugue

One of the odd conundrums that confronts me with Kundalini energies - at least to the extent of my direct experience of them - is exactly how to categorize the phenomenon.  Generally, most tend to put this under the rubric of 'The Spiritual'.  Yet as I mentioned earlier, as intense and awe provoking they are, the energies are decidedly body bound for me.  I've read accounts of some being transported to mystical dimensions or other-worldly landscapes, others discovering a oneness with the universe or a feeling of infinite love.  Not me.  OK, I'll concede that sometimes I feel I'm being ravished by unseen forces, and from the inception I've been struck by the realization that, until that first eruption, I had no idea of what was possible!  And that realization can be quite liberating.  Nonetheless, even if I've gotten my socks knocked off, my feet have remained firmly on the ground throughout.  No visions, no heavenly hosts, no angelic visitations, no world bathed in light.  Nada.  Which for me begs three questions - What is it?  Why is it here?  What is it doing here?

It's possible that all of these questions will be answered if and when a new stage emerges in my process.  Gopi Krishna, a 20th century savant who experienced an extreme Kundalini awakening and wrote extensively about it, was of the opinion that the Kundalini energies were actually an agent of evolution, and that these energies worked on the physiological level and caused actual physical evolution of the brain.  The energies themselves, though usually described as working on the subtle plane, indeed have correlatives on the physiological plane, and on that plane they are not subtle at all!  I've often felt that my nervous system is being worked over, though I haven't submitted myself to medical instruments that might detect such things.

Recently I came upon a distinction that was worked out in the Hindu Tantric traditions.  Their map indicates that Kundalini appears in three distinct stages - Prana-Kundaline, Chit-Kundalini, and Para-Kundalini.  Prana-Kundalini is the initial release of the energies, energies known in the Hindu traditions as prana, the Chinese traditions as chi, and described and named in many traditions around the world throughout history.  This helped me to make sense of my predicament, it being obvious in that light that I'm still soundly in the Prana-Kundalini stage.  Chit in Sanskrit means consciousness, the inference here is that Chit-Kundalini goes beyond the body and starts to directly effect consciousness.  Perhaps that's the emerging stage I'm intuiting...but who knows?  I could be fooling myself. after all.


But let's assume I have at least a toehold on the truth here.  As Ken Wilber is fond of saying, no one is completely, 100% wrong.  Conceding that, a related conundrum appears to me, and that is the seeming disconnection of my experiences to the types of deep spiritual experiences that many traditions describe, be they satori, enlightenment, nondual oneness, Christ consciousness, or simply bliss.  And that will be the topic of my next exploration here.

To be continued...