I was reading the other day about this yoga, and came across this:
The Sanskrit adjective kuṇḍala means “circular, annular”. It occurs as a noun for “a snake” (in the sense “coiled”, as in “forming ringlets”) in the 12th-century Rajatarangini chronicle (I.2). Kuṇḍa, a noun which means “bowl, water-pot”, is found as the name of a Naga in Mahabharata 1.4828. The Sanskrit feminine noun kuṇḍalī means “ring, bracelet, coil (of a rope)”, and is the name of a “serpent-like” Shakti in Tantrism as early as the 11th century, in the Śaradatilaka.
I looked it up because I remember reading that one of the features of “activated Kundalini energy” is shaking.
Here is a thought I will put on the table: “activated Kundalini energy” is actually something like the shaking and twitching and involuntary running Peter Levine describes in his Somatic Experiencing. It is gut energy, which is to say most likely unmyelinated vagus nerve energy. And that energy certainly does rise.
When I shake awake at night, which happens often, it always feels like a tightly bound coil of metal, released. It spins quickly and expands. The tension was latent; now it is manifest. If I had simple trauma, I can’t help but feel it would have resolved by now. But I don’t.
So Kundalini Yoga, which takes many forms, is basically learning to relax and transform traumatic energy. That is why it takes many forms. The basic intent is simple.
And I will reiterate, perhaps in a slightly new way, an old formula, after a contextualizing comment. I am continuing to read, slowly, the collection of talks with Jean Klein published as “I am”. He says to read them like poetry, which I am trying to do. Every talk amounts to “everything you think you know is an illusion, and the only thing that matters is everywhere. You just can’t feel it. But it isn’t a thing. It isn’t not a thing. Well, shit, I guess you just had to be there, instead of here with me.”
That is only slight satire. The recurring theme is he knows something we don’t, and he can’t communicate it. I feel there is value there, which is why I keep reading, but also cannot help the feeling that a teacher without a method of some sort is a bit of an imbecile. It’s a bit like writing a math formula on the board, and those who get it get it, and you did your part picking up the chalk.
Here is what I will propose as the backbone of all spiritual work.
First, you need to learn to relax. And by relax, I mean to completely master all residual chronic fears COMPLETELY. I don’t think you can (or should) get rid of fear itself completely, but CHRONIC fear, standing fear, continual fear–which I think normally amounts to trauma, which is the fear of fear–you CAN I think master and rid yourself of. This means full bodily letting go, emotional letting go, and intellectual letting go. Peace.
And this is a progressive process. There is, since I mentioned it, Progressive Relaxation. There is Autogenic Relaxation. There is Muscle Control, Yogas of all sorts. There are flotation tanks, Audio-Visual Entrainment devices. There is, of course, meditation, which means “paying attention” in Sanskrit.
Any sitting still in silence long enough WILL release latent tensions. If they are huge, they may come unwound very quickly in unpleasant ways, like a coiled snake striking, (although I don’t think that was the explicit image intended in the original use; I am adapting it a bit for my own purposes.)
So, you first pay attention to tension, and learn to control it and release it. You don’t rid yourself of fear, but of the fear of fear, of the voices that won’t leave you alone, and the emotional baggage that also won’t leave you alone, and of course the resting, continual physical tension that follows both.
At some point, what I feel happens is a spark flies by. Something luminous and good. Brief, instantaneous even, but very real. The second stage of the process is sitting and waiting for it to happen again. This is mindfulness, properly speaking, where you are attuned and waiting for what might be termed a cosmic accident, or a return, or something else. Whatever you call it, it is the point of this work.
And if and when these miracles start happening with any regularity at all, you focus on them. You concentrate on them. That is the third phase of spiritual work. You relax to invoke, pay attention to the results, then learn to control those results with long patient effort.
And I will say that I feel the Earth has within it a sort of ambient Fear. A transpersonal fear. A fear within the Collective Unconscious that unites–or in the event divides in violence–all humanity.
I felt this fear a few weeks ago. My nights are filled with terrors. I joked to myself the other day that I am the star of my own horror film. Well, sometimes, in some of them, one of the heroes kills the villain. That is the ending I am looking for.
And in this case it is that fear, which I will describe momentarily. As I say, I have issues every night. I would describe them as what happened to you in the worst nightmare you ever had, where you woke screaming, maybe shaking, completely terrified. That happens to me several times most nights. I’m used to it, but not used to it. I will hazard a guess that most of my usefulness as a thinker comes from the extreme focus I have always required to survive. I just compartmentalize things, and keep everything in its place with a very strong will. I’m very, very good at that.
But a couple weeks ago it went next level. There was this sort of creeping cold, as depicted for instance in the Harry Potter movies when the Dementors come close, that just came in the room, and it felt like just injected me with fear of the purity of pharmaceutical heroin.
That is where this idea comes from. Transpersonal Fear, connected to this planet. Fears and Fear are part of the scheme, the environment. They are in the air and sea and earth. They are part of being human, and perhaps part of the reason we are born on this planet is to master that energy; which, as I say, is the first step of spiritual evolution.
And I will append to all this one last thought, that of Walking Time. I have recently realized–an insight brought from my efforts to relax–how out of the moment I am most of the time. I think many of us live like this, outside the sensation of the passage of time. We live in dreams, and ideas, and of course media, which are a sort of manufactured dream.
But I had a few moments where I was feeling the passage of time, and I realized this is a key spiritual task. Feel yourself in time, as if floating on a river. Now that I sort of hone in on it, the passage of time often feels frightening, doesn’t it? Perhaps being bored is a hypoarousal–a powering down–brought on by fear of time.
I think this is the essence of being present in the moment. I tend to think of Being Present as an abstraction, like you can Be Present once, and just stay there, being present endlessly.
But of course it is a dance, a give and take, a back and forth, a RELATIONSHIP. That is the word.
I think this is part of what Klein described. Following my own method, I have been and will continue to try to reconnect with that feeling.
And OK I will add one more comment. A not implausible reading of Buddhist teaching is that Nirvana (extinguishing or snuffing out) is a successful spiritual suicide. Samsara is horrible, and Samsara is all there is, so if you want out, you need to figure out how to kill yourself.
I have never seen it put that way, but I’m pretty sure I’m on solid doctrinal ground there. In the original formulations heaven and hell are both part of the wheel. Even going to heaven is not enough. As I read it, Nirvana is essentially a negative, as in Not Samsara. When asked, I don’t recall the Buddha giving a clear answer. Perhaps I’m making all this up, but I don’t think so. I probably need to reread some books on their ideas.
But the point I wanted to make, and I think I’ve said this somewhere before, is that plausibly what is extinguished is RESISTANCE to What Is. I used to try to imagine living forever as a kid–never mind where, although I was raised Baptist–and always getting dizzy. Infinity is a concept you cannot imagine. I can’t in any event. We simply created a word for it since the possibility is logically necessary. You could for example start counting today and count the rest of your life without reaching the last number. More simply appear as you travel and always will.
So what if your destiny is to live forever, both on Earth and on other planets? Could that not be seen as scary, because that is impossible to conceive, and I now notice that I become frightened of things I cannot conceive? It is unknown and unknowable. That frightens many of us.
But I think what I will call Living in Time is a useful practice.
That’s enough for today and much more than I intended.