To: K-list
Recieved: 2002/01/08 01:25
Subject: [K-list] Today's journal entry
From: Magdalene Meretrix
On 2002/01/08 01:25, Magdalene Meretrix posted thus to the K-list:
I came in from my daily walk about an hour ago, nearly bursting with
thoughts I had to write down right away. I was right when I felt that this
group of people might be a part of what I need right now -- the inspiration
for today's journal entry comes from the collective catalyst of everyone
here with whom I've interacted, both on the public list and in private
e-mail. I thank you all and this blessed virtual space for assisting in my
growth.
I wanted to share the journal entry here before I post it to my journal as
a return of the gift you all have given me. Thank you.
Surrendering to Kundalini Crisis: Holding the Center By Releasing It.
by Magdalene Meretrix
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; The center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"
- William Butler Yeats
While walking my meditation tonight, these lines came to mind. Yeats could
have been describing my own kundalini crisis -- everything from the
spinning vortex of the widening gyre to the sense that everything is
falling apart. For several years, the elements of my being, my life-system,
fell apart. First came the physical realm as unexplained pains filled my
body. But I believe the systems of my being are interconnected just as I
believe I am not separate from the world around me -- in both cases, the
division is an illusion. So though I initially only percieved an effect in
my physical system, the imbalance spread throughout. My emotional system
suffered along with my physical system as doctors found nothing wrong with
me and I began to wonder if I were suffering hypochondria. My social system
suffered as I became unpleasant for others to be around and uncomfortable
being around people. As I sank farther into the vortex, my spiritual system
faltered and depression set in. Gasping for breath, my intellectual system
sank, mind growing cloudy, thinking muddled.
The core of what is Me, my Self surrounded by these smaller selves, my
Soul, that-which-is, the falconer lost control of the falcon as my health,
self-image, perceptions, thoughts, ideas, sense of connection to the world
all spiralled out of control like dead leaves fractalling away in a
Brownian Motion dance of annihilation. It was as if the vessel of my soul
had shattered, sending shards of mere anarchy loose into the world.
What pulled me out of that tailspin was a reversal of the gyre. I can see
that now, but with the shreds of my life sailing past my head in an
uncontrolled spinning plummet there seemed no way out. I reversed the
process -- focusing on renewing and strengthening my body first. The impact
of that one change echoed throughout the rest of my system. Through
balancing the equation of self-esteem by accomplishing body goals, I
overcame the inertia of fear and depression. Through a more positive
outlook on life, I once again reached out socially. My spirit began to
soar, the falcon willingly submitting to the falconer of Shakti, and my
mind cleared as if ascending from a heavy mist.
The experience of chronic illness has lead me to certain understandings. My
understanding of the nature of understanding is that these things are
valuable to me now but eventually a new understanding will cause me to move
beyond these realizations. For now, however, they are striking and life
altering. One of the most valuable understandings I have gained is an
understanding of what it can be like to live with chronic illness. I
considered myself an empathetic person before being pulled apart by the
widening gyre but shared experience cannot help but deepen empathy and now
I have some amount of shared experience with all others who experience
chronic illness.
Another understanding I've gained at dear cost is a deepening of faith in
the unassailable connection between all things and all phenomenon. I cannot
ignore the needs of my body and expect all else to function smoothly. Nor
can I ignore and refuse to accept and embrace my emotions. My mind, my
spirit, my social and environmental connections, the life energy that
courses through my veins, flows through my lungs -- all of it is everything
and all of it is nothing.
Quantum physics speaks of matter as if it were an illusion. These solid
things we knock up against -- these chairs and trees and human bodies and
such -- none of them exist. Matter is vibrating energy. A block of wood is
made of the same stuff as my pancreas -- vibrating energy. We're all of us
beings of light, not matter. All of us one massive, complex, infinitely
structured and re-structured vibrating dance of Shakti.
A very wise woman recently cautioned me against swallowing science whole as
if it were gospel. I agree with that warning but would add a second warning
not to reject science whole as if it were worthless. After my recent
experiences with doctors who weren't trained in recognizing kundalini
crisis, it would be all too easy for me to dismiss science as a
short-sighted tool of inept and unawakened minds. But when some of my most
beautiful spiritual insights have been gained from reading the scientific
essays of Dr. Lewis Thomas or while watching the animated explanations in
the film "Cosmic Recycling: We Are Made of Stars," I know that science is
not inherently unspiritual.
Gary Zuvak, author of "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" says, "Physics, in
essence, is simple wonder at the way things are and a divine (some call it
compulsive) interest in how that is so. Mathematics is the tool of physics.
Stripped of mathematics, physics becomes pure enchantment." Wu Li, the
Chinese word for physics, means "patterns of organic energy." Fritjof
Capra, in "The Tao of Physics," compared Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and
modern physics -- both in specific statements and in overall perceptions of
reality -- and found that "A Hindu and a Taoist may stress different
aspects of the experience; a Japanese Buddhist may interpret his or her
experience in terms which are very different from those used by an Indian
Buddhist; but the basic elements of the world view which has been developed
in all these traditions are the same. These elements also seem to be the
fundamental features of the world view emerging from modern physics."
When followed to its mystical realms, science is not the hard, unyielding
dogma it's often portrayed to be but a dance to the rhythm of patterns of
organic energy. The same could be said of religion -- there's a world of
difference between a dogmatic and a mystic religious expression. The Wu Li
Masters dance like whirling Sufi dervishes, the gyre widens but the falcon
can still come home to roost. The apparent division between science and
spirit thins and thins the closer one travels to the mystic core until the
two cross paths and merge like twin snakes, Ida and Pingala intertwining in
the Wu Li dance of All-That-Is.
How to separate an experience of the presence of Goddess from the firing of
neurons in the temporal lobe? How to separate a feeling of deep empathy for
another's sorrow from the rush of hormones that trigger tears or aching
sensations near the human heart? How to separate the Life of Prana in
breath from the oxygen that fills the blood cells which pass through the
eyes and spark perceptions of light in the brain? In the face of the
spiritual theory "as above, so below" and the alchemical teaching of the
endless fun-house mirroring between the microcosm and macrocosm, how to
separate the prana viewed in the blood cells rushing through the eyes from
the prana out there in the world, waiting to be breathed in by animal
lungs, absorbed through plant stomata, passed into and through the universe
-- a constant dance of vibrating energy singing Life to itself. Those
sparks respond to energy shifts in much the same way that two particles can
be separated by miles of distance yet each continue to respond to changes
created in the other. "In the sphere I am everywhere the centre, as she,
the circumference, is nowhere found. Yet she shall be known & I never."
If my body is a temple of Shakti, a spiritual tool for use on this
dimension of existence, then every portion of that body is a temple of
Shakti. Perhaps Shakti has chosen to use adrenaline and corpuscles, optical
phenomenon and firing neurons as tools of expression in this dimension?
Such questions! Such answers! And it's all an illusion anyway, a great
cosmic game the universe is playing with herself. These words mean nothing,
these ideas mean nothing. The center cannot hold .... yet there is nothing
that is not center. One great vibrating singularity fooling itself into
believing that all this exists and endlessly, foolishly, mystically
laughing, laughing, laughing like a madman. Or a saint. They, too, are one.
--
http://www.magdalenemeretrix.com
"Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."
-- Henry David Thoreau
http://www.kundalini-gateway.org
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