Spiritual awakening may initially result in an ecstatic period of time when we feel clarity and openness to life, as it is. We may feel free from a troubling history or from painful patterns of thinking. We can feel absorbed in wonder or love. This is a period of grace. It is often followed by a time when unfamiliar and challenging conditions arise because having a period of deconstruction and reorientation is necessary to learning to live with awakened perspective. I will discuss how this works more in chapter 8.
The challenges of awakening we will look at in this chapter are understood to be part of the awakening process by cultures with long histories of cultivating it. Consider your own awakening events as you read this chapter. My hope is that you will find a description here to ease your mind, let you know that what you went through is important and valuable, and encourage you to reap its many benefits by accepting it. Should you encounter these challenges in the future, this chapter will prepare you to meet them with understanding. Viewing the awakening process this way is important because its challenges are not considered “normal” within Western religious and psychological perspectives. Culturally, we have demonized or pathologized many of them, as I will discuss in the next chapter. For now, read through these common challenges with an open mind and heart, knowing that alongside you many others have also encountered them.
Traditionally, students of yoga are given preparatory training to ease the effects of kundalini energy and awaken it through optimal channels. As a result, they experience fewer overwhelming events. Depending on the lineage, these methods include using asana to make the body open and limber, doing internal cleansing exercises, adhering to strict dietary requirements, gradually adding advanced breathing and meditation practices, practicing celibacy, and releasing ego tendencies through things like obedience to a teacher. Only when a student is ready are the specific breathing practices taught that gently bring kundalini up.
These days, most who activate this energy and report difficulties have not done much preparation—and are not interested in doing it. The result can feel chaotic. In extreme cases, the intensity of initial kundalini activation has been compared to a hurricane or massive explosion, feeling so powerful it could kill. For some, this is terrifying. For others, it leaves ecstasy and unitive consciousness in its wake. In her book Biology of Kundalini, Jana Dixon describes the experience as “a thousand volts of electricity” and “ten-thousand orgasms.” She says it is “the most extreme experience one can endure energetically.”40
Each experience with kundalini is unique and depends on personal history, belief system, personality, lifestyle, health, and many other factors. Emotionally charged traumas may be sustained anywhere in our body or spirit, and when those locations are energized, they release from the energy field. These traumatic memories can impact the way our awakening process unfolds. Here are some common phenomena that may accompany, or arise following, a kundalini awakening. These are usually temporary, and no one is likely to experience all of them.
One of the greatest surprises is when kundalini rising feels like a quantum jump out of what feels normal to us. We are leaping into a new way of being, which can feel as challenging as inspiring. These shifts may arise for months and even years. Do not panic! You are not going to die. Your energy will eventually become more calm and subtle. Be patient, accepting, and take time to adjust life to include new patterns. Chapter 7 will offer supportive ways to do this.
We are engaging a process of clearing and transformation. Awakening is becoming integrated throughout our body-mind, so for weeks, months, or years after an initial event, we need to address blockages so kundalini can flow. These blockages can be felt emotionally, sensed intuitively, or can manifest as physical pain. They may reveal a psychological or medical issue that needs to be addressed.
As discussed in chapter 2, when kundalini energy journeys upward, it moves through sushumna, located in the central channel of the spine. Schools of yoga identify three, sometimes four, major energetic blockages that it can encounter along the way. These knots, called granthis, correspond with points in our body that hold particularly strong attachments and identifications with desires and beliefs. As energy touches these knots, assumptions about our self and our lives are challenged. We are forced to face thoughts and emotions that are inauthentic or self-limiting, based on inadequate understanding of who we are. On a spiritual journey, we encounter these issues in order to move beyond them, so it is important to consider each one.
In the subtle body, the solar plexus is a significant energetic crossing point as we move out of identification with the physical body, through the lower chakras, and into the upper three chakras, which relate with spirit. The belly is where the struggle to be our true self seems to take place. It is where we feel attached to pleasure, material things, and having things go our way. It is where we address issues of will and power. Spiritual awakening challenges assumptions about our needs, whether for comfort, luxury, status, or affirmation. It crumbles our personal attachments while paradoxically demanding our authenticity. As we struggle with issues of identity and control, our bellies may churn or become knotted and hard. As we breathe in, we can direct our breath to the affected area. As we breathe out, we can practice letting go of attachment and identification. Physically, we may need to simplify our diet and reduce stress, in ways I discuss in chapter 7.
In the heart area, we feel attached to emotions, certain people, treasured beliefs, and objects of passion. We also hold childhood wounding in the heart, from times when we reached out and were rejected or felt disillusion, judgment, and loss. We created armoring to block vulnerability. To live an awakened life, we must open the constrictive ways we have responded to past hurts, and sometimes this happens spontaneously during intense suffering and grief. The heart seems to crack open and a heart-awakening occurs, flooding us with love. When the heart is open, we can enjoy life and engage the world authentically.
Most spiritual traditions have practices to open the heart. Whether through compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness, kind action, service, worship, or devotion, they recognize that energies of the heart serve the evolution of our spirit, and enhance the capacity for inner and outer peace. When our heart begins to open, we often recognize how we have blocked expressions of love, and we see the limitations of personal love because it tends to want reciprocity. As the heart expands, we begin to intuit the essence of universal, impersonal love.
We can experience slight pain, contraction, or burning sensations as the blockages release from the heart. It is important not to dismiss heart pain, racing heartrates, or irregular heartbeats, even when symptoms correlate with your awakening process. Check with your doctor first to see if it is something you need to heal with medical attention. Then work with practices from your own tradition, counselors who can help you process any grief or loss, or the gentle heart-opening practices taught in yoga and qigong systems. Do something nurturing each day that helps you express love for others, for the earth, and for yourself. Cultivate gratitude.
Some meditation practices focus on the third eye, in the middle of our forehead, because yogis consider it a command center for the other chakras. With this chakra open, intuition helps us more easily manage all energetic activity, but non-ordinary experiences may increase. In deep meditation, this area may throb. We may develop headaches or stimulate buzzing, itching, and crawling sensations in the head. Phenomena attributed to opening the third eye include colors, intense light, visions of divine beings, insights, psychic abilities, automatic writing, dissolution of ego-identity, perceiving expansive unity, and forming a mind-to-mind link with a guru.
Psychic abilities are easy to attach to and make part of our personal identity. We can become distracted by feeling special or mistakenly think the powers indicate spiritual completion. In most traditions, psychic practices are considered obstacles to spiritual realization—to be ignored or avoided. Even so, some of my clients experience them as an essential area of growth. Information obtained through psychic means can bring insights into the nature of existence and personal issues. When psychic gifts are used neither to feed ego nor for commercial gain they can initiate a capacity to help heal and support others. I suggest using wise discrimination and getting solid advice before stepping into roles that depend on psychic abilities.
If you are uncomfortable with strong intuitions, frequent visitations, or are overwhelmed by any phenomena, work with a skilled psychic to learn more about setting boundaries. You can determine the intensity and frequency of your openness. This is essential, because third-eye openings sometimes include frightening images, voices that never seem to stop, and other distressing content that can lead to a spiritual emergency. It feels like an area of our brain becomes too open and will not shut off. Substances, shamanic practices, and traumatic childhood histories can contribute to this disorientation. Psychotherapy and medication may be temporarily beneficial to block invasive psychic experiences, especially if they are frequent or you are not sleeping well. A safe place to rest and deep therapeutic work also help.
Some yogic systems identify a granthi in the throat chakra. With a blockage here, you might experience energy arising and feel a contraction as it reaches the throat or struggle with speaking, swallowing, or a shaking head. Psychologically, the throat can be blocked due to habits of withholding our truth and not speaking up for our self. As children, many of us were not allowed to say anything that upset parents or schoolteachers, and trained ourselves to hold back feelings and opinions. Some of us took in spiritual ideas that convince us anger should never be expressed, and hold in justifiably angry feelings that need an outlet. Counseling can help these emotions move by talking about them or feeling them in a safe place. You might also use the bij mantras, described in chapter 7, which are yogic vibratory sounds that open the throat and allow energy to move upward. If physical problems persist, a medical or dental evaluation can investigate esophageal issues and jaw disorders, as these can also contribute.
Some spiritual seekers believe an awakening will erase all psychological issues, but this is not true. During an awakening we may feel completely free of history and personal identity. While some beliefs, preferences, or habits fall away or transform immediately, after the initial euphoria settles even deeper issues and patterns surface. For an awakening to stabilize, we must see through these patterns and attachments by recognizing them as illusions and memories of the separate self that are no longer relevant to life in this moment. Until we release the past, we feel divided in our allegiance and caught in the “I got it, I lost it” syndrome of falling in and out of awakened states.
We can feel changed after a beautiful revelation, and still there is unfinished business: parts of our suppressed psyche that need to be seen clearly and integrated. When we are more comfortable with our personal story and have reached more resolution for psychological distress, we are more prepared for the awakening process. Louisa is a Zen practitioner who was troubled by mood swings after a satori awakening.
Free-floating, negative emotions would arise—such as fear, shame, anxiety, grief—without any content or story attached. Old emotions were being cleared out and there was no need for me to know what any of them were about. There have been intensely challenging recurring “dark night” phases, filled with discomfort and fear. At the same time, on another level, I feel interest, trust, and a lack of concern. All of this happens against a background of bliss.
Louisa describes a calm ability to observe her range of emotions without becoming entangled and alarmed. As we face our psyche, we too can see through aspects of ego, woundedness, and the separate self without feeling wrong for having experienced them. Through acceptance of our whole self, we eventually get past these challenging stages and feel more stable in our realization. Here are some of the things we can encounter within our psyche.
After an awakening, life can feel like a rug pulled out from under us. It is natural to occasionally feel anger, guilt, fear, and sadness about the loss of the old “me.” Counseling support can be important as we move into a new life. If we are so overcome by emotion that we cannot care for the basic needs of our human self, we will not move forward spiritually. The two go hand in hand. If it seems that your life is falling apart, address the issues surfacing before you reach for the next step of spiritual maturity. The spirit within us supports cultivating authentic and healthy lifestyles.
At some point in awakening, we see that we are not our thoughts and not our emotions. They are passing experiences collected from our history that entangle the energy field as it attempts to become clear, empty, and open to life. When we see this clearly, our true nature helps us step back into its presence so that we are no longer overtaken by our human frailties and instead see them with a vast view.
When we are in a deeply spiritual transition we can lose interest in work, social interactions, and other life activities. We can feel lost when a familiar enthusiasm has vanished or we struggle to find the motivation to engage the world. This is a stage of awakening. It can last for a long time, and our old drives will not return in the same familiar forms. Peter was thirty-eight when he had an abrupt and intense energy awakening and psychic opening.
I have been working in science publishing for most of my adult life. I lost my interest and ability to work, as I could not focus on reading emails and could not find the motivation to write. My interest in science was almost reduced to zero, as I couldn’t see the relevance of it anymore. Before awakening, my belief in science and science publishing was because of its objective truth. I then experienced how irrelevant scientific ideas and any other rational concepts are when it comes down to holding truth or reality.
Peter moved to South America and opened a bed-and-breakfast, changing his lifestyle radically. Once his life felt satisfying and authentic again, he could slowly integrate his knowledge of science with his knowledge of nondual awakening.
Sometimes awakening is followed by synchronicities, events that pull us spontaneously into a new direction—as if everything is falling into place. But the opposite happens also: a long dry spell, or even a dark night of the soul, that can trigger loss of faith, a sense of failure, fear about the future, and insecurities. This is more likely to happen when we forcefully try to reconnect with previous sources of motivation in life, rather than embracing a new way of being. Jo was a professional woman in her fifties with a long career in education when she lost her drive to act.
I don’t have any physical problems or psychological issues. I’m just facing the end of my world as I knew it. I have come to understand that nothing in the world can make me happy. The world is in ashes, without a doubt, nothing there. I don’t know how to proceed, so I have complete apathy. I get myself up every day and try to do things, take care of my body, and move about like I am living. But I have no feeling, no sense of joy or peace.
A dark night like Jo’s marks a search within for more authentic expressions of our heart. We need to explore ways of living that feel aligned with the truths of awakening. We live in a culture that encourages us to be practical, pursue goals, and follow the norms. When conventional advice seems hollow, we are forced to dig deeper into our authentic nature to discover actions and ways of being that are right for us. A long period of quietude and simplicity leads us inward as we try new ways of meeting life, without attachment to results. We can connect to an inner voice that offers guidance and our direction can gradually become clearer. If we refuse to slow down, listen, and change courses, if we try to force things, we can experience disappointments, emotional challenges, and even physical illnesses. This challenge invites us to learn to express more intuitively and authentically, to listen to our heart and gut, and to act naturally in the moment.
As we are awakening, strange things may happen to our body. We may feel disabled by erratic movements, pain, or discomfort in the stomach, neck, or back. Our big toe may hurt or the nail may fall off. We may feel overheated and get rashes. Sometimes the body purges for a few days as it eliminates toxins. Jonathan had many digestive problems while in India with his guru.
My stomach would expand to the size of a bowling ball whenever I ate, I had constant belching and gas, and my vision was blurry and clouded. Yet doctors said nothing was wrong with me. I experienced incredible heat and burning in my body, as if I was on fire. I went to the emergency room several times fearing I was having a heart attack.
These conditions could certainly be evidence of gastrointestinal illness, but the doctors found nothing, so Jonathan regarded the physical symptoms as releases of energy that would ultimately be healing. His journey may have benefitted from probiotics and other digestive assistance. And his body may have needed a break from the intensity of his meditative practices.
One common complaint is pain in the neck and shoulders that has no medical cause. Energy is often blocked here, as we tense up with stress or by holding rigid positions while using computers or doing other tasks. The throat is also where we restrain self-expression and feelings. As I mentioned in the section on granthis, it’s as if everything we’ve ever left unsaid gets trapped in the throat. When something outrageous happens, we can swallow our feelings to maintain an illusion of what it is to be spiritual: all-tranquil and all-forgiving. This is just a form of avoidance, because to be truly spiritual we need to face whatever arises. I met one man whose face twitched and jerked spontaneously but, once he released his anger in therapy at a wife who betrayed and abandoned him, these problems went away.
Pain, night sweats, and extreme shaking may arise because an old injury or emotional distress is finally releasing, or because toxins from alcohol or medications are moving out of our system. One client’s jaw had been damaged long ago by dental work, and as he did energy practices his head began shaking. Another client, a recovered alcoholic, told me he would sweat so heavily that he had to change his bedsheets every night. Kundalini seems to work to remove anything held in the body that is damaged or unhealthy.
When physical difficulties are seriously impacting our life, it is helpful to take a break from meditation or energy practices. It is possible that overstimulation is causing shifts in hormone levels, depleting electrolytes, or damaging our nervous system. Consult with a naturopathic doctor, ayurvedic practitioner, nutritionist, or any allopathic specialist if physical discomforts persist.
Difficulty sleeping is the most common complaint from people in an awakening process. As soon as our body relaxes, energy rises. Our mind churns with concerns and we feel anxiety about what is going on. An estimated 50 to 70 million people in the US suffer from insomnia,41 so it is difficult to say how much it is related to awakening and how much is due to modern lifestyles. People who meditate for long periods of time often need less sleep, but still they believe something is wrong if they can’t sleep for seven or eight hours. In ashrams and zendos students often get up at 4 a.m. to enter deep meditation, and I’ve met people who do this spontaneously.
Energy can awaken us in the middle of the night and we can move involuntarily. Whether moving into yoga postures, hand gestures, shaking, jerking, or stretching, or even encountering sleep paralysis, try not to resist. Let the body release naturally. This will pass, as deep relaxation in sleep can trigger release and restructuring as part of a spiritual process.
We need some sleep each night to clear our brain. If we do not sleep at all for more than two nights, we may experience confusion, visions, erratic thoughts, and impulsive reactions similar to a mental illness like psychosis. These states will pass once we are rested. For this reason, if you are ever awake all night and cannot sleep the night after, take a sleep aid. I am occasionally awake all night long, and have learned to read, write, meditate, or watch television without concern. I just go to bed early the following night.
Insomnia is common, and there are many suggested remedies on the Internet, including relaxing audio recordings. I have found that avoiding electronic devices for two hours before bedtime is helpful, and also a simple practice of counting my breaths backward from one hundred. Avoid becoming angry and stressed about not sleeping because you can create an anxiety that makes it even more difficult. You could try rearranging your schedule to accommodate your sleep needs and the times of day when you feel most functional. Experiment with finding your natural rhythm, and know sleep is a foundation that may have shifted along with your energies.
We can develop heightened sensitivity as we awaken. Some people can no longer go into large box stores or be in crowds, as their senses are too easily overwhelmed or they seem to absorb others’ problems psychically. This absorption can cause feelings of nausea or illness, which is especially hard for anyone in a profession that involves working with people’s pain and suffering. After a deep and insightful meditation retreat, Barbara returned to the world and encountered this.
Sensitivity has increased so that I take in others’ feelings and emotions. This causes physical problems, mostly tension in the muscles of my back, arms, and legs. I also feel tired. Memory problems have increased at work, where I try unsuccessfully to follow very logical and technical discussions in a noisy environment.
An increase in sensitivity can cause us to realize a work environment doesn’t fit any longer, or that certain people in our lives create stress, conflicting emotions, or reactivity. We may need to change our situation to be more congruent with our new way of being. Barbara chose to leave the stressful work environment and become a yoga teacher.
If we are doing something unhealthy for our mind, body, or spirit, we can suddenly feel it in ways we never noticed before. It is an unfortunate myth in some spiritual communities that if you are awake you have a capacity to tolerate anything. You may feel love and compassion for everyone, but that does not mean you can continue to be in environments or with people who are hostile or toxic. You may need to leave.
Sensitivity can increase so much it becomes hard to be in any social situation. We might become psychically sensitive, like Roberta.
I see spirit beings. I see the auras of trees and of humans, deceased and living, most of the time. I feel every emotion a person feels or is experiencing. It is overwhelming. I must avoid groups, crowds, and shopping.
When we’re overwhelmed by sensitivity, it helps to think of ourselves as porous. If energy can enter our field, it can also move through it, and keep going into the universe. Instead of catching and holding feelings, let them move right through. They don’t belong to us and we do not need them. Let them move on out, into the infinite sky.
Another type of sensitivity is heightened vision, smell, taste, touch, and sound. A classical scripture about kundalini describes how the senses can become so acute we might see ants crawling up a tree many yards away. Some people become aware of internal sounds, such as bees buzzing, kettledrums pounding, or bells ringing. Some hear chanting in a foreign language or the toning of ohm, which according to Vedanta is the sound of the universe. Vedanta describes this heightened sensual sensitivity as a great intimacy with everything that follows deep realization experiences. Here is Joelle’s experience.
My senses were so enhanced I would stay in my room and touch the wall, fascinated by the subtle texture, for the whole evening. An hour would pass like ten minutes in the shower, where I could see every drop of water. I could stare at my hand, a blade of grass, or a candle, and be totally captivated. Listening to the wind blow the leaves outside my window was mesmerizing. I would see the same energy in everything: thousands of strands of light moving through living things and inanimate objects. The connectedness I feel in this state is profound, and also a little scary. When my ego kicks in, I feel almost too present, like I can’t step back and find perspective on my experience. There is so much beauty and love in this state, but also fear.
Another form of sensitivity is hearing the thoughts of someone else. Mindreading has been reported in stories of Tibetan lamas and Indian gurus. A modern Christian mystic and spiritual healer, Joel Goldsmith, reported an ability to hear the thoughts of others, and some who have followed his meditation practices for a long time also develop this capacity. Lanelle, one of his students, told me:
This made having honest communication extremely difficult, since people react badly to the possibility that you might know their thoughts. My head was so full of thoughts belonging to other people that I hated it and prayed for it to go away. The ability did go away and has not returned.
In a few people, particularly if there is a history of trauma, heightened sensitivity can release memories and emotions long repressed. We feel bombarded with experiences that pull up deep, unconscious material. Yet even while facing these painful emotions, underneath there can be a sense that all is well, love is here, and even happiness is arising. The Christian saints seem to carry this same complex mixture of suffering, love, and joy. Margo experienced this sensitivity for two years.
I was aware of energies around me, whether from nature or people. I was releasing a lot of emotional pain and felt emotions I never felt before. When I saw someone on the street who looked familiar to someone from my past, the release would begin. But besides all the negativity and pain, I also had a loving feeling I cannot describe. It was like floating or being in heaven. There was missing a loved one, then there was love, and the sense of loss dissipated.
In some cases, heightened sensitivity can make us appear so out of balance that we are referred to medical attention and even hospitalization. When this happens, our psyche is too overwhelmed to cope and spiritual emergence has become an emergency, which is the topic of chapter 6. It can lead to a diagnosis, perhaps of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or a psychosomatic or conversion disorder. When we are this open and vulnerable, we may need conventional therapeutic support to work through a traumatic history.
Besides sensitivities of mind, the physical body can become highly sensitive. Invasive treatments, such as acupuncture, can feel hard to endure. It can impact sexuality and the ability to be in groups. Reactions to medications, toxins, and supplements can intensify. Practices such as qigong or kundalini yoga can occasionally raise so much energy that body heat becomes overwhelming.
When sensitivity is heightened, we need to moderate activities and pay attention to our reactivity. Often this means giving up practices that increase sensitivity. Pushing through reactions to reach some next level can burn out our energy system, lengthening the time needed to recuperate and balance. Instead, engage activities that feel calming and grounding. Listen deeply within, and avoid people and situations that are overwhelming. Instead of limiting our quality of life, heightened sensitivity can become an enhancement, enabling us to see radiant beauty in creation, enjoy quiet moments, and enrich our connections with others.
When kundalini is active in our body, energy may activate brain centers that make you vulnerable to visionary and auditory events. Kenneth was fifty-two when he experienced three days of clairvoyant and clairaudient experiences during a fast.
Shortly after my awakening, I took on the task of forgiving all who had ever harmed me. One night, I crossed my kitchen to turn off my boiling tea water. I clearly heard, “Get that tattoo artist away from my guitar player!” It sounded like it was coming from the teapot. Later that night, on my next trip to the newly-boiling teapot, I heard an otherworldly chant overlaid by a male voice babbling and talking about demons, the kingdom, and such. It was as beautiful and fascinating as it was shocking and terrifying. I was most relieved to pick up that boiling teapot and have the chanting end. Any form of white noise made it easier to hear sounds like these, whether it was the refrigerator, computer fan, forced air heater, or running water in the sink—all consistently turned up the volume.
Kenneth’s prior history of sound health meant that he could pull himself out of these altered states by eating, sleeping, and grounding himself. Kenneth needed to reorient himself with simple everyday activities, to stop fasting and isolating himself.
Designer drugs like LSD or plant medicines like ayahuasca and mushrooms also produce visual and auditory events. In his book Hallucinations, Oliver Sacks describes these possibilities from the perspective of neurological research.42 He writes that many who have hallucinatory experiences are not psychotic, but the brain compensates by producing visions and language when normal pathways are not functioning, such as following a stroke or during long periods of sense deprivation—as occurs in deep meditation or fasting.
I believe that when intense energy strikes certain brain areas, it triggers visual and audio hallucinations that seem to come from other dimensions. In most cases, a person who is awakening experiences a positive or encouraging message such as “Peace be with you” or “It’s really okay” or “Just keep practicing” that helps them face a difficult time.
Psychic openings may also happen in a spiritual process, producing inner messages or precognitive dreams and visions. Melanie had this experience.
I was driving to work when a voice in my head told me to drive to my father’s home, a few miles out of my way. I argued with the impulse but it kept arising, so finally I went to his house—and discovered he had just had a stroke and fell to the floor. I was able to get him to a hospital and saved his life.
Other clients have told me they had periods of time when they were able to:
The ability to predict the future can bring great concern along with it, because we can feel we are responsible to warn others, yet the likelihood of being taken seriously is slim. Usually, psychic abilities pass, or occur rarely in our life, but a strong intuitive sense does become more stable after awakening energy and consciousness. Intuition is subtler than psychic ability, and usually more personal.
Yogis say that opening the crown area of our head begins a dissolution of the sense of a personal self. Uncomfortable sensations in the crown include the feeling of being drilled or operated on, buzzing or popping noises and other disturbing sounds, and a temporary feeling that we cannot concentrate or think as clearly as we used to. There is no set pattern to these phenomena, as they can happen while in meditation, reciting mantras, trying to sleep, or doing daily activities. Janice found her energy spontaneously moved around her head.
I see lots of color when meditating or closing my eyes. Sometimes flashes of white light swirl around, but mainly shades of purple, violet, blue. I hear lots of crackling in my head, like popping noises.
Thomas described waking up late at night, feeling half asleep and relaxed until he entered the bathroom, turned on the light, and shut the door.
I suddenly and without warning felt an intense buzzing, vibrating, energetic force low in my back that blasted up though my spine and straight out the top of my head—giving off an intense, bluish-white light, like lightning. It was overwhelming, but there was no pain. The buzzing was loud and otherworldly. The light seemed as bright as the sun, but did not hurt my eyes. My body shook from the unimaginable power coursing through it. I was simultaneously overcome with a level of primal fear and terror that I did not know a human being could experience. The moment seemed to transcend time and space, being ancient and beyond description.
As dramatic as these encounters are in the moment, they pass, and we recover. When we have an attitude of surrender, energy can move all the way through, which allows great peace and insight to flood mind and body. Life goes on and even returns to an ordinary rhythm, with a changed perspective.
Jana Dixon, author of Biology of Kundalini, believes that solar and lunar cycles, climate and atmospheric conditions, the seasons, and the energy of the earth all impact the pressure or pulsing of energy in our head. They can trigger the tinnitus and vertigo sometimes reported when kundalini is awakened. She has found that people who have opened their energetic field are more responsive to these universal conditions than the average person. To reduce reactivity to nature’s vibrational forces, she recommends long walks by rivers, lying on the grass, and avoiding dairy products.43
If energies in the head are not moving, but feel circular and repetitive and uncomfortable, imagine energy flowing from the head to the heart or to the center of your body in the belly. Changing a meditation practice so that it is more grounding and centering can also help balance energy so that it is not so intensely concentrated in our head.
During awakening moments, consciousness can seem to move free of our body—whether we observe our own physical activity from a distance, are plunged into vast dimensions of space, or become a diffuse and etheric essence without boundary. Blake was a college student whose spiritual quest took him to India, where he asked the guru Satya Sai Baba for initiation into the Gayatri mantra.44
A few days later, I was safely tucked in bed, chanting the Gayatri mantra till I started to nod off. The next thing I knew, I was consciously leaving my body and floating upward above my bed, the house, the city, the earth, ever upward until I was flying freely through the universe in my perfected form. When I say “perfected form,” it was the form I have now, only perfect in every way, dazzling with brilliant light and energizing sparks. After some time, I started falling back to earth very quickly. I fell into a deep pit on the earth’s surface and kept descending until I hit a huge, sleeping serpent or dragon of some kind. I was frightened, as I intuitively felt this creature was very powerful. The serpent chased me up and out of the abyss, and let out a mighty roar that I can’t describe in words. Next thing I knew, I found myself back in bed with a racing heart and sweaty body. I continued to chant the Gayatri mantra till sleep took me over.
Although it may seem unlikely to Western minds, in Eastern traditions repeating mantras—which are spiritually potent words, phrases, or sounds—can have powerful effects that include transcendent and visionary states. Many people feel anxiety about out-of-body experiences, which may also happen spontaneously in response to emotional stress, as a half-awake dream state, during surgery, in life-threatening situations, and as a teachable skill known as astral travel or remote viewing. This capacity can be learned, so it is less a spiritual gift and more of a latent human potential not commonly developed. While we can be tempted to decide these transcendent states are evidence of awakening, they often do not lead to self-realization. Instead, they exhibit the range of consciousness. Once the drama and excitement are over, we still need to understand who or what is aware of every experience, both transcendent and mundane. If the excitement produces a longing for more and more adventures, realization remains elusive. Awakening is about finding what never changes—and all experiences change.
Every tradition has ways of opening our heart and expanding our capacity to love, whether through ritual, worship, devotion, or chants. Some people feel their hearts open through relationships with gurus, and Christian saints describe overwhelming love for Jesus. Our hearts can also open by falling in love, sometimes irrationally or without any hope of reciprocation. The heart also breaks open with grief.
The heart can be a powerful portal into realizing our true nature, as a heart opening can lead to dramatic shifts in our energy and worldview. It is an intensely physical and emotional experience as all armoring around our heart breaks down. It opens the contractions around our heart that we formed in our early years. This also has risks.
Love arises when we are touched deeply by someone, and this can make us vulnerable to a spiritual teacher who cannot contain sexual energy. Any therapist is aware that, because he or she may be the first person to ever deeply listen to and value a client, the client may fall in love. In psychology, there are licensing ethics that forbid romantic or sexual liaisons with clients. But in spirituality, the boundaries are not so clear. If love arises and a teacher exploits a student by engaging in a sexual relationship, it can derail spiritual process by personalizing what is actually a deep awakening to being love, rather than needing love. When teachers misuse this connection for personal satisfaction, they do a great disservice to their community. Christine’s description of her experience of love for her teacher offers another way to approach it.
I felt an overwhelming love for my teacher after a profound realization and awakening in his presence during a retreat. For weeks, it poured through me and my body became so alive and full of joy whenever I saw him. As a therapist, I was well aware of this experience as a process, and of my own need to open my heart. Since he was young enough to be my son, I felt comfortable telling him how I felt. I even apologized for being such a gushing idiot around him. He laughed and said he would hold the projection for me until I was able to own it myself. In time, the intensity faded into a sweet affection and gratitude, and the desire to be around him dissolved. I recognized I was experiencing my own self. I believe any true teacher will turn this energy back to its source.
Opening the heart is a great blessing in the awakening process, and if respected the experiences that arise do not lead to a crisis. If we understand that the feelings, sensations, and emotions are part of a heart opening, we can consider them to be catalysts for our benefit that operate alongside our own aspirations. When there is no underlying psychological imbalance or projection onto another person, each step can be navigated with relative ease. The journey produces gratitude, insight, and relaxation within unconditional loving. Mystics across traditions emphasize the role of the heart in self-realization, and the discovery that awakening itself is an experience of love.
It is rare to find a spiritual advisor or a health provider who is familiar with what we are going through, and our family may seem bewildered. Misinterpretations are common. Many who teach yoga, qigong, meditation, Christian contemplation, martial arts, shamanism, Reiki, network chiropractic, Internet courses, and other practices that can activate kundalini, know very little about the spiritual awakening process. A few have called me in a panic when kundalini energy arose, and some even want help making it go away. Gopi Krishna wrote a groundbreaking book about his own experiences in 1960, when he could find no one in India who could help him. Many who awaken this energy have no one to turn to for help, and no paradigm that can be used to explain what is happening other than illness. Usually the people we turn to for guidance have the same limitations.
Doctors may prescribe heavy medications that exacerbate the problems or create new ones. We can encounter unnecessary hospitalizations and assumptions that we are mentally ill or physically disabled. This can come from allopathic or alternative practitioners alike: one man I spoke with was told by an acupuncturist that he needed to be hospitalized and given oxygen treatments to alleviate his symptoms. This is not the fault of the medical system. We are painfully missing a paradigm for the process of adjusting to spiritual awakening. During a summer internship, Margo participated in some Shamanic practices at an Indian reservation. When she told her dad, a psychiatrist, about these experiences, he said she was crazy and insisted she come home and be institutionalized. He accused her of being a loser who wanted to drop out of college.
I was afraid that I’d do something drastic and I didn’t trust myself, but I stayed in school. There was no one I could talk to about it. After my talk with my dad, I forced myself to forget it and committed what I call “emotional suicide” by stuffing it all down, deep inside. This was followed by a major depression. The next year I went back to the reservation and told one of the women who lived there about it. She told me that it sounded like spirit was trying to break free.
It is worth a search for supportive professionals, because many can offer useful techniques for balance even when they don’t have the complete picture. When you make inquiries of a provider, ask if they have an interest in Eastern spirituality, an understanding of energy release and grounding, or an openness to alternative healing. A few doctors and therapists are trained in, or have personally had, transpersonal experiences. They may be able to support you physically and emotionally through this process. Use discrimination about who you choose to work with.
Living in an awakened state in the world invites us into a paradoxical mystery: we feel alone, yet at one with every living thing. We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with opinions, positions, fear-based commercialism, and models that demonstrate how we should eat, dress, interact with peers, perform our roles in life, and even think. It isn’t easy to find our unique way and trust our self when burdened with all these messages.
We also live in a world filled with churches. As organizations, they have gained great influence by convincing large groups of people to follow one belief and to lean on a hierarchy in which the upper tier is the sole interpreter of spiritual wisdom, the sole source of guidance. This presents a challenge for any believer who feels the inner urge to seek truth, who has questions about just what the nature of God is, who is curious about exploring the meaning of life. This personal, independent search has been condemned as heresy and many great mystics were outcasts, even martyrs, in their time. All because they saw beyond the boundaries of the religion or culture they had trusted.
A true awakening breaks us out of all systems, all conventions, and all need for blind faith. The result is an isolating experience. We personally encounter the mysteries of an existence that is infinite, unbounded, without concept, and free from judgment. The tragedy of the human addiction to concepts, and conceptual ways of understanding existence, becomes apparent.
It can be a horrific shock to discover this is a lens ignored by most of the population. Spiritual awakenings take us out of the status quo, out of living in complacency. We see that many social patterns are pretense. They are not wrong, they are just not real. We see how people live from their egos, centered on personal desires and aversions, and are clearly separated from the deepest understanding of their own true self. And as a result, we can be labeled strange, rebellious, uncooperative, or even mentally ill by our friends, family, neighbors, pastors, medical professionals, and therapists, who might know better if they only had a paradigm for recognizing our experience and vision. This can lead to subtle or extreme feelings of alienation.
When we understand the reasons for these challenges and open to the changes they bring, we can find our center. Some teachers have even said we are on the edge of an evolution of human consciousness, so we find ourselves frequently in unknown territory. If we can trust that this is a process occurring for our benefit and find a quiet core of acceptance and peace, we can effectively support our self during this transitional time. We need to address these challenges, not by racing to find an expert to cure us, rather by finding a silent witness within, and an interior capacity to love and support our self. We need to take care of our body and create a nurturing environment as free of stress as possible. And we may need to stand up against negative thinking about awakening, both in our self and in others.