konchog uma

pointless endeavor haiku after bad haiku poetic nonsense

Also, it occurs to me that i watched that Gabriel Cousens video twice, not long before all this happened. http://www.gabrielcousens.com/DRCOUSENS/SHAKTIPAT/tabid/99/language/en-US/Default.aspx the first time i felt an opening in my energies, and calm and happiness. The second time i didn't even feel anything noticable. But i was walking down the street after i watched it the 2nd time (maybe a week later) just doing what i was doing, and all of a sudden i kind of shook like a tremor was rising up my back. It was really powerful, and i stopped and kinda caught my breath, and i could tell it was good, but i asked with my thoughts "what the hell was that?" and i got a clear word in my head "shaktipat". and that was about a month ago, a week before i started reading Layayoga and 3 weeks before the kundalini woke up in me. i'm going to look on that site and see if i can thank Dr Cousens edit: i just wrote him an email

you're welcome 3bob, thank you for helpful advice! well some of the questions have been answered by the book, since i finished the kundalini section in it yesterday. It echoed a lot of the info and advice i found here, and also that i experienced. And some questions have been answered by experience, of which i have very little of course, but it has still been instructional to honor this energy with practice. Does kundalini have a counterpart in qi? I haven't read much about fa qi or holy qi except that it is like the "healing light of god" -Jerry A. Johnson it also reminds me of the mayan word Copoya which was the shaman's "spirit power", and which translated literally as "blood lightening" again, thanks for the advice. I am not even aware of anything advanced to do with it!! hahah so i am just, when it wakes, letting it go where it wants, which is usually up the spine. Sometimes it meanders, and sometimes its just a blinding flash and its reached the sahasrara in an instant, but from there i just let it do what it wants. I don't really direct it, or have any success directing it. Its enough to be able to direct the flow of my qi energy while the kundalini is activated, which i find very refreshing. My favorite is when the kundalini swims up to the white light which is the highest chakra. I find that when its there it reaches a non-dual state (and so do i depending on my level of absorbtion) and i can also cycle my qi up my central channel til it gets to the white chakra and then let it rain down, showering me with healing love energy and surrounding me in a sphere of radiance til it gets to below my feet, and then back up! So in other words, i just try to let it go where it wants and be happy, and then manipulate the energies that i can manipulate. Like i said, i tried to direct it, and it laughed at me and told me clear as day "let go of that impulse" so i did. yes to that last part btw... grain of salt!! I am beginning to trust the process and the energy, and it isn't as scary (vibrate-y and completely f*ing powerful) now as it was the first couple times. It is actually very gentle the last few days. But when i turn my inner eye to where i am feeling sensation within, i see lightning bright energy. Goswami says it is like a lotus filament, subtle and rarified. So i guess it is only forceful when it wants or needs to be.

thanks SotT, thats cool info there aren't many plants that Every part of which can be used medicinally. I used to smoke, but quit, and i'm glad i did. Its still an awesome plant and a friend to people and can be a guide and ally for some, i think. Hehehe if they can withstand the laziness and the munchies!!

those guys can't even be bothered to remember their lines! i love the teleprompter faces. yeah joeblast i remember when snl used to be funny

I don't really understand the question either, but i think that methods are methods and philosophy is philosophy, and (fortunately!) you don't have to choose. You can govern the organization of your ideas and principles with philsophy, and cultivate your energies and spirit with methods. So ideally, they relate to each other in a harmonious way and support and feed each other. If you are working on daoism and wu wei for example, your meditations and practices might reflect that as you explore how the philosophy is put into practice. And the other way around too, practice and successful methods can lead to philosophical insights, as you see how less effort and strain helps your qi move more efficiently, you might adopt a philosophy of wu wei. comparing them directly is like apples and oranges tho, since they serve different purposes. They need to harmonize so that they both benefit.

thanks dwai

you're so welcome! thanks for your support. I think you are right about all that. I don't remember my dreams last night but i woke up feeling a lot less nervous about things. I realized on some level that that energy doesnt help and is only going to get in the way. I have the resources i need in my life, i just need to be careful and respectful and keep them in mind! Thanks for reminding me about chuang tzu. This energy seems to know what it wants to do without my guidance, and yesterday when i tried to move it it laughed at me and said "let go of that impulse".. i trust it, and being mindful of the watercourse way is truly wise advice. thank you

I have a lot of calm RV, this is just really powerful stuff, and truth be told, i have NO idea what to do with it beyond the basic path of root-to-crown. I am only 1/4 of the way into the book, and i have never really read a good book on kundalini. I have some ebooks that i will get to after i'm done with goswami, but that is the whole of my foundation. Yikes!! I thank the blessed mother universe and the kundalini itself every time it pokes its bright little head out for being *so* kind and gentle and compassionate with me. I don't even know how to address it tho. Is it considered a deity? it seems quite intelligent. I could see how people might deify it. Or is it considered a transcendental energy, beyond personification? Or something else... Seth thanks for your replies, do you think i should talk to Santiago or someone, just to check in? Are there any absolute Do Nots about practice besides keeping it in the sushumna and avoiding the ida/pingala? Should i um well do anything in particular??

thank you for saying so rainbowvein! for the last couple of days i have been, kind of on the back burner of my mind, stressing out, like "whoa is this gonna be okay?" as if it was too intense to handle. And i used to describe myself (at 18) as an "intensity junkie". Then at 24 as a "novelty junkie", and now 10 years later i feel like i am out of my league with this intense energy. Mostly i feel stressed out because learning from books about this sort of thing is just a classic way to get hurt. But i am starting to feel better and better about it. I think i'll take it easy with it tho your post calmed me down a good bit, thanks

it felt cool. It made me think of night air in the spring, like a pleasant coolness like you said. Not cold. My diet is pretty impeccably clean, 95% organic, mostly veggie, largely raw and local, etc. Can you tell me what kind of diet is recommended for yogis so i don't have to buy that book? Money is tight this month. I didn't really feel any heat, at my centers, or in the energy itself.. just cool. And as to what i learned, firstly, i have been calm and serene all day.. like wow something is different! But once during the day i had a spontaneous experience with the kundalini and i let it run its course, and a little while later, after i had let it go back to sleep, i realized that plants and animals need light, not light from lightbulbs, but light from stars. And that the universe was populated with a nearly infinite number of stars, as if the radiance which enables and nourishes life was so precious and miraculous, and so common and taken-for-granted at the same time, that i almost cried for having never really noticed what a beautiful thing it is to live on a planet like ours and orbit a star like the sun!! It was such a profound realization that i am getting misty now just typing it. I am not sure i can convey the exact wisdom quality of what i realized better than that, to a reader on the other side of the internet, it might seem trite or contrived, but to me it was very profound, like seeing light in a new way, as if i were a fish who just realized the preciousness of water. thank you for your help!

I hope none of those who received hospice in calcutta felt entitled enough to be offended by mother theresa's moral code or religious sense of duty to others. Hehehe for that matter i hope you weren't offended twinner by the moral codes of those who came to your aide when you were faced with homelessness. All this spiritually superior rhetoric doesn't advance an inch any notion that religion hasN'T done myriad good things for people. Again, baby, bathwater. So my opinion has been expressed once, and i am going to quietly retire from the conversation.

Thanks everyone for your support and your cautionary advice! I am aware that kundalini is very powerful, and i don't usually do powerful things from books, but in this case, i got the book to learn about chakras and it happened to include words on kundalini, which apparently triggered this experience. I don't really have my thoughts organized, but i will try to touch on what has been said in order. thanks seth, i appreciate your adventurous spirit. I hoped you would help me. I knew that what 3bob and Tibetan_Ice said cautionarily was coming, and i know that they are right. I don't know a lot about kundalini, so i don't feel like having further adventures until i get a better handle on the territory i am adventuring in. If you recommend a teacher like Santiago that i could skype with, or any books to help me, i appreciate it. Of course, the same goes for everyone. All your help is really appreciated. I will say that I did my usual chakra meditations this morning, and tried NOT to have a kundalini experience, and was unsuccessful. When i focus on my root chakra, the bright bright light peeks out and wants to climb up to the crown. When it gets there its like its making love to something (goswami says there is another kundalini in the crown) and when the crown is absorbed in the kundalini, there is a bliss wave which just drowns me remorselessly, and i feel like shiva shakti is merging into one formless nameless thing and flooding all my channels and every cell of my body with the energy of the divine. I don't really know if thats the "right" thing to do with it tho, so i am really hesitant to try to guide it. I just pray to it to be kind to me and get out of the way while it does its thing. thanks 3bob! I am blessed to have some amazing help from the invisible world. I don't talk about it much, but its a big part of my life, and since you mention it, i don't mind saying you are quite right. In light of what i have read about other peoples experience with kundalini, it seems like mine is completely gentle and loving! I mean at the level of my heart, where i still have some blockages, there was some pain and spontaneous shaking.. breaking through the locks and such, but aside from that it was so much better than some awakening experiences i have read about!! In response to your observation about doing things intentionally, i don't know what to say, except that I have done very effective chakra meditations with a master's guidance for almost 2 years, and i have done water path MCO meditations since i was 18 (34 now) so in that regard my channels and centers are clean and open. So even tho i am just having my first experience with the strong force of it, i have carefully prepared the path for it before now. Your dampeners are completely appreciated! But I was just sitting there meditating on my root chakra (minding my business ) when it started to really hum, i mean REALLY hum, like holy wtf is that? So i was just kind of drawn along in the current of it. I felt like the worst thing to do would be to try and stand in its way or shut it down. Plus i was excited (oops). Anyway, thank you for your advice. thanks tibetan_ice. The whole area was vibrating, but i was meditating on my perineum/muladhara, and i felt it in my hips and sitbones and almost up to my sacrum. I didn't have a painful experience until i got to the heart, where i still have some minor blockages. Assuming this was kundalini, I will call it that for now... this kundalini didn't tolerate blockages, and shook mine off like i spontaneously knew which direction to shake in to crack my back between the shoulderblades in just the right way. It was forceful and painful but only for a second and then (and now!) i felt great! Yes i just let it go up the spine, that is where it wanted to go. I didn't really have total control of it, it sorta had a mind of its own. i wasn't controlling it, it wanted to get to my crown. And since thats the course of my chakra meditation anyway, i just stood out of the way. Although it was pretty gentle in that it roughly followed the course of my meditation and the speed of my progression up the chakras, at times it would go to the next one before i was done with the one i was on. I am kinda gifted, i dunno about really gifted. I think i am more blessed and practiced than particularly gifted. if by the brow, you mean the ajna, i shook something out there too now that you mention it, but i wouldn't say heat was generated. Yes highly ecstatic is right! it was very blissful , and im not that into bliss, but i just sat there in that glow and forgot about everything else! It was actually completely incredible. right, brilliant light, and mine had a hint of purple in it, not even really purple just that it was more than blue, kinda just a shadow of purple like around the edges. I don't know if everyones is that same, but in my mind's eye, it was blazing bright just like that. Thats also how i knew it wasn't ordinary energy. Thank you for confirming that. Like i said, i just let it go the whole way up. I knew better than to try to stop it or block its progress; it was way too powerful for me to have a stupid idea like that In a way i feel fortunate not to have my perception colored by a lot of kundalini literature. I don't know who gopi krishna is, or why its too bad that his book was the introduction to the west. In that way, i did not have much to color my perception of the events. They just happened (as events do) and I was an openminded participant in it. The practice was of breathing in for a count of 4 Om mantras, holding the breath for 16, and out for 8. I shorted it from 16, 64, 32 cause i can't breathe like that. I was applying the neck lock, anal lock, and abdominal lock, while holding the breath. It is outlined in pages 49-54 of the book in the section called Pranayama. I was doing those breaths with my awareness on my root chakra. Thank you everyone for your help! it means a lot to me

life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on genetically modified life wait what? that was unnecessary ouch

yesterday i actually had my first kundalini experience. I was working with some techniques from the book, and long story short, before i knew it, my tailbone was "buzzing" sorta "humming" or vibrating with the cosmic electricity. I knew that it was the kundalini too, in the way that you just know things. So i did a simple meditation with it, raising it chakra by chakra and letting it infuse and awaken (enlighten?! hehe)each center until i got to the crown chakra, where goswami says lives another kind of kundalini which must be awakened by raising the root kundalini to it. Well i haven't gotten that far in the book to know what to do with the crown kundalini, so i just let it all vibrate really blissfully for a while and then lowered the energy back to the root and put it back to sleep. thats an official FKE (first kundalini experience) although it might not be, it was the first one i was sure of like "oh thats kundalini!" and then did things intentionally with it! so huzzah! i look forward to reading more, especially about the crown kundalini. I did the same thing today, just sitting in the glow of bliss for a while and then closing down. yes huzzah

bingo

religion can give a person who doesn't know how to channel their natural spirituality an anchor and guideposts so that they can begin to develop virtues in their life. It gives people role models in the saints and sages of that religion so that they can see that people attained to great heights by means of doing good and cultivating in themselves the virtues that the religion teaches about. For you to say that it disallows one to follow their own spirituality assumes that everyone has their own self-actualized independant and auto-directed spirituality in the first place. Logical fallacy. A quick survey of people will tell you that left to their own devices, they would not follow the spirit in their hearts, they would follow logic and intellect (and faulty selfish logic at that...). And thats speaking of the Logical people!! Of course you have non-logical people, but i'm not going to go there. You might be blessed with a strong spiritual sense in your own life, but to say that other peoples attempts to be spiritual via religion are invalid is spiritual materialism and elitism. I encourage you to come down from your tower and accept that most people don't have an internal compass, and need an external one. And if they are ever to hope to develop an internal compass, they need some practice first. Religions and moral codes give people the framework with which to develop their own sense of spirituality and integrity, and this is their purpose. Will organized religion tell you that it is the be-all-end-all of the spiritual experience? yes! is it? no! But does that change what i have just pointed out in the above paragraphs? no! not in the least. In short, there are higher paths than religion, but religions have their purpose, and i don't believe that they are mutually exclusive to spirituality just because of handful of bums say so. Like i mentioned, i know religious people who are paragons of virtue and spiritual attainment, who radiate love and acceptance, compassion and a host of virtues with their every breath! Shit, i know catholic nuns who fit that description!! Things are not as easy as the simple pronouncements on this forum make them out to be.. you should be thankful for religious institutions because the world would have fallen completely into darkness and corruption long before now without them.

Well you are making a logical leap in supposing that if we all followed a moral code, it would be the same code. I wasn't implying that, and I think that human diversity has made its own point throughout history; that no one code is going to suit everyone. People need something they can relate to via their own culture or worldview. So in other words, i disagree that if everyone followed a moral code, that it would be necessary that it be the same exact code. Also, doing no harm is a moral code. Its a simple one, but you can follow it strictly. So I hear you saying that we don't need religious codes, we just need common sense and to do no harm, but again, thats a moral code, and common sense is ummmm uncommon I like the lines from the TTC which say roughly: When integrity is gone, people adopt ethics When ethics is gone, people adopt manners When manners are gone, people roll up their sleeves and coerce each other by force. and i agree with it entirely, except that i have nothing against ethics or manners, since they are both better than coercion by force. In fact, if they keep people from coercing other people by force, i think they are probably doing a lot of good in the world, and should be encouraged. It is not the case that by encouraging lower forms of virtue (ie religious codes) we are excluding ourselves from the possibility of also encouraging higher ones (ie natural integrity). They simply aren't mutually exclusive, so i don't choose which one is better. People just are where they are, and integrity, ethics, manners, and coercion are What they are. So the whole thing speaks for itself to me, and i don't feel the need to pass judgement upon someone who follows a strict religious code if it helps him or her be a better person. Maybe one day that same person will develop natural integrity, so set an example by accepting them for who and where they are. Then maybe they will see your inner light and peace and find in you an example of dao.

I am interested in learning this from you, if you are still into teaching. I guess i should PM you. I'll do that now.

that sounds like a good idea. Or we could just say sunday is TTB meditation day, and chime in here as far as when we'll be sitting. So that way we could avoid centralized organization (very dao) and kinda keep it spontaneous. Just an idea. I tend to sit from 9:30 - 10:30/11am on sundays and then later throughout the day as i'm moved to, usually once or twice more. So if it worked best for people to sit at like 1pm EST for example that would be equally cool with me, as would any other time that was reasonable... so i'm pretty open ended, and don't want to dominate the decision making, just throw ideas around for now.

I know some deeply spiritual people who are religious. And i know some people who do spiritual practice but don't even display the most basic of virtues. So i don't think its as easy as a black/white divide where religion is the horrible witch-burner and spirituality is the great panacea. Thank you cat for pointing out that religion does a lot of good things for people. Not everyone has the insight to seek for themselves and have a direct experience of the nature of things, that usually takes a lot of effort, energy, and work. So have some compassion, you spirituality freaks! Remember that stuff?? Some people are spiritual by nature, and some people need religion. There is room enough on earth for both and they both do good things. Just because they have a lot of power, and naturally attract people who want to abuse power widely, doesn't mean that we're better off without them. It points to a problem in human nature, not a problem with religion or spirituality. So everyone who wants to make absolutist statements about how religion is just an opiate should look into their own human nature! And deeply! Not this surface level, "im-going-to-quote-marx (or osho) and-leave-it-at-that" rhetoric. Even opiates have a medicinal use. I don't personally like them, or need them right now, but i know better than to insult them and their users. In short, i see most religious people as doing the best they can with what they've been given. Even the hypocrites and homophobes and haters... at least they have the example of their particular sages and seers in their lives and they aren't just out there in the total darkness. its too easy to be a critic.

"Don't take spiritual advice from people with biochemical warfare labs in their basements. and 78 rolls royces." -anamatva

whats's wrong with following a strict moral code? if everyone followed one of those we'd have a lot less problems!

I am on american east coast time too. In retrospect, sundays might be better. ??

oh yeah those guys look naked without their monocles and not one of them had the manners to wear a bowtie honestly