To: K-list
Recieved: 2002/02/18 15:55
Subject: [K-list] My Kundalini Story
From: Copithorne
On 2002/02/18 15:55, Copithorne posted thus to the K-list:
I would like to introduce myself to the list.
I am a thirty four year old white male living in California with my partner and
18 month old son. I have been passionately religious since the age of 16.
I’ve been practicing Zen Buddhism for the past ten years.
For years I talked about burning up with my close friends – it was my
primary experience of my life -- but also I didn’t talk about it as well.
I wasn’t sure what value there was in assigning a label “kundalini
awakening.” I knew burning wasn’t the truth. Charles Manson burns.
David Koresh burns. Burning is not sanity, not the truth so why get preoccupied
by it?
Recently, I felt that I would like to talk about my experience I would like to
have a vocabulary and a support group. I would like to study it. I’m just
going to set down the words as they occur to me. Maybe they’ll make some
sense to the people here.
I think I began burning up in July of 1996. But it could have been before then.
I remember flirting with a woman in the Spring of 1996. I realized it was
possible for me to warm her up by maintaining my awareness in a fire deep in my
belly and communicating from there. I could make her excited by warming her
belly. I don’t use the power that way anymore – use the power to
seduce people -- except with my partner.
I remember being with my dying grandmother in that Spring. Holding her hand, we
plugged into each other like an electrical socket. For a couple of minutes a
strong voltage of electrical energy gripped us both. We were together in a glow
and we stepped inside time and Recognized Each Other.
One morning while working at Bank of America I had the experience that the
stories that I thought were gripping me had no hold on me. I could be anybody I
wanted to be. I felt a warm glow ripple up my body and pop at the top of my
head like a champagne cork.
What I wanted to be was religious practice and service. At that time my
internal conflict with religious practice ended. I had the experience that
practice wasn’t what I did, it was who I was. Service wasn’t what I
did. It was who I was.
I would later say that I died on that day. I was certain that I had not ended
my sadhana by any means. I had just begun it. But something changed for me
existentially.
After that, I had no interest in entertainment. I could watch movies or
television and have entertaining conversations if that was of service to
others. But my motivation had nothing to do with preferences. People would keep
wanting to talk to me in the language of preferences. That language meant
nothing to me.
I think I began burning that July. I think the death experience and the burning
experience were the same. But it may have started later that year. A friend of
mine – a sensitive poet – was getting a divorce from her husband
who became morbidly, schizophrenically jealous. She was shattered, completely
exposed to a volcano of energy in her, unable to eat or sleep. Being with her
fanned the flames inside me.
What does it feel like? It feels like a burning in my belly, though for months
at a time it could be in my chest or throat. It also creates a pressure in my
head that feels like the plates of my skull and jaw are reassembling
themselves. It creates a rictus on the left side of my face so that I am often
seen to be “scowling” or “frowning.” [Anybody else?]
Sometimes the energy is extremely joyful. More often it is excruciating –
not in a painful sense – but as if somebody was touching me in an overly
sensitive spot and the touch didn’t relent.
The burning is fed by religious practice and breath the way a fire is fed by a
bellows. Whenever I focus on my breath, the burning is there. I think that what
burns is culture. All culture appears to me as consumer culture. I can’t
find my place in it.
I may have thought for some time that if the burning got hot enough it would
help kindle bodhicitta in others. And what other worthwhile activity is there
in this life? This has not worked for me and the death of this possibility has
depressed to me. I have spent periods alternating between feeling that people
are in love with their fear above all else and feeling that I am cold, arrogant
and strange.
Even as I spent my time in joyful prayer, my marriage fell apart. This was a
painful mystery to me. How was it possible that I could feel so clear inside
and outside only create chaos? I have heard that some person who tried to
collect evidence on the subject learned that the overwhelming majority of
marriages in which one partner has a kundalini awakening end in divorce. I
would love to hear from others who know something about this or who have been
through it.
My current partner, with whom I have a beautiful baby boy, is frequently angry
with me because she doesn’t feel loved by me. She fights me to work out
her frustration about me not being in love with her. This story doesn’t
mean much to me.
Recently I spoke at my Zen Center about burning up. “Outing” myself
like this helped me move forward, even as I don’t know if anyone has a
clue about what I was talking about. In Zen, as in Buddhism in general, these
sorts of experiences belong to the God realm of experience and as such, are not
especially consequential. [Whereas in the Hindu traditions, these experiences
belong to the God realm and as such ARE especially consequential.] I felt that
the Buddhist view was true and safer, but at the same time I ended up not being
able to talk about my most fundamental experience. As a very religious person,
I have been in that position a lot in my life.
After talking, I began thinking again in more theistic terms. “Mother
Shakti,” I thought, has claimed my life. She makes all the decisions.
She moves me to action. She has control over my life. She brings people and
experiences into my life and She moves them out. I’ll be generally
happier and less stressed if I put my effort into learning to listen to and
obey Mother Shakti.
But who is Mother Shakti? What am I saying?
I still don’t know what it means to talk about it. It seems like a story
and a dream. What do the words mean? Why am I saying them to you? It all
dilates and recedes. But for now I’ve decided to try to learn to talk
about it as straightforwardly as I can. I would like to hear from and learn
from other people.
I have thought of looking for a psychotherapist with experience in kundalini.
Has anyone had any success with this?
Best wishes to you all,
Mark
--
http://www.kundalini-gateway.org
http://www.domin8rex.com/serpent/spirit/kindex.htm
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