Barbara Whitfield, author of five books including Spiritual Awakenings: Insights of the Near-Death Experience and Other Doorways to Our Soul, The Power of Humility: Choosing Peace over Conflict in Relationships and The Natural Soul, has worked with the kundalini experience and spiritual emergencies throughout her career. In the following essay, she describes her experience with kundalini and near-death experiences (NDEs) and what she has learned about difficulties during spiritual awakenings. She discusses what she calls a “spiritual bypass,” or what happens when we try to ignore the lower levels of consciousness to get to the higher levels. Whitfield also outlines the differences between the voice of the ego and the voice of the soul, asking us to consider this question: Are we able to use the power of humility and compassion to find our True Self during spiritual awakening?
This essay is a guide to assist those who are opening up and experiencing, or who want to experience, the mystical or heart side of their nature and the nature of the Universe. This awakening is not something to be understood logically, but through experience, perception, and intuition. It is a heartfelt experience. Your head will have a hard time sorting through some of this material, so it will help to read it with your heart as well as with your eyes and mind.
Near-death experiences (NDEs)—transcendental experiences on the threshold of death—have been hypothesized to be related to the awakening of a biological process known as Kundalini.[1] Some who are new to this process can get caught in believing that any attendant psychic abilities that manifest are the end result. They may become ego inflated, leading to a “spiritual bypass,” which I will explain further on. Practicing humility is a way to avoid or release these impediments, which leads to better mental and emotional health. That, in turn, allows us to safely extend compassion to others and gives us a peaceful sense of gratitude and a joyful sense of mission. In this essay, I will talk about my own experience in dealing with these phenomena of transcendence.
Like many Western writers and researchers on and in the Kundalini process, my entry point was deeply personal—a near-death experience. This triggered in me what I can now identify as a process we call Kundalini. Like so many other Westerners, I didn’t know about it and didn’t ask for it. Even so, it started me on a lifelong exploration that continues to this day, thirty-four years later.
In 1975, I was suspended in a Stryker frame circle bed after having had five and a half hours of spinal surgery. Postoperative complications set in, and I started to die. After various traumatic medical interventions, I found myself out in the hall, up near the ceiling. I came back into the room and actually saw my body lying in the bed. The next thing I knew, I was being embraced by my grandmother, who had died fourteen years earlier. We relived all of our memories of each other. I could experience her memories of me as well as my own. I knew she was seeing and feeling all of them from both of our perspectives.
Then I was back in my body and confused. I had been an atheist and only believed in physical existence—until this NDE. About five days later, still in the circle bed, I again left my body. This time I reexperienced my whole life of thirty-two years, and again I saw it from everyone else’s perspective as well as my own, just as I had with my grandmother. Only this time there was a third perspective involved: God. It would take me many years as a recovering atheist to use that word.
God’s Energy and mine merged so that we were one energy field. Together we watched thirty-two years of my life. In every scene, each person’s energy field and mine overlapped and sometimes merged. It was as though we were this churning mass of consciousness that became the “dance of life.” Every time I witnessed something that was painful for me, being held and infused by this Energy became the bigger focus. My relationship with It neutralized my judgments against myself and evoked Love throughout my being in a way that can’t be explained in words.[2]
Even as I was merged with God, I still had an individual point of perception. I had few relationships where I could be my True Self or Soul. Most of my relationships were ego-based because most of us were projecting outward our wants and needs and feeling resentful if they weren’t met. I felt no real connections with others, only an awful swinging between feeling needy and numb.
This Life Review showed me a dance that pulls us back and forth between light and dark, good and evil, neediness and extension. It’s this dance that leads us to waking up so that we have choices in all our relationships: with ourselves, with others (including our community and this planet), and with the God of our understanding. As we wake up, we seem to move along a healing continuum toward Unity consciousness.[3]
Then the Life Review ended, and I was back in this reality, still in the circle bed. I tried to tell a few of the medical staff what had happened. They told me I was hallucinating.
After a month in the circle bed, I was then in a full body cast for six months. During that time I went to see a psychiatrist. The near-death experience was deeply personal and like many other near-death experiencers, I couldn’t share it with my family or anyone else for the first several years. I have since learned it takes most of us a long time to feel safe enough to share what we went through. It took me six sessions with the psychiatrist to finally trust him enough to tell him about my experience. He listened carefully and then said that what I might do is come back after I recovered and start in analysis with him. He believed that I was depressed and wrote a prescription for an antidepressant. I didn’t feel “depressed.” I felt confused and overwhelmed, not depressed. I often felt a mystical awe.
After the cast came off, I went through six more months of physical therapy to get my strength back. I knew I couldn’t go back to my old life, my old way of being. I was still a mom and loved being one, but my three children were in school all day, so I filled my days with volunteering in the emergency room of the hospital in which I had stayed. That led me back to school, where I eventually became a respiratory therapist. Some of my patients in intensive care and the emergency room told me about their near-death and out-of-body experiences, and I started writing about some of my observations. I was eventually published in respiratory therapy journals while still a student, calling this new topic in health care “The Emotional Needs of Critical Care Patients.”
In 1982 I met Kenneth Ring and told him my story. In 1984 his book Heading toward Omega: In Search of the Meaning of the Near-Death Experience[4] was published and my story, including most of the subsequent aftereffects, was in it. I now had a framework for the part of my journey that didn’t resemble anything I knew of before, and it was called Kundalini.
In 1985 I began to work with Bruce Greyson at the University of Connecticut Medical School, studying the aftereffects of NDEs, especially what we called “The Physio-Kundalini Syndrome.” I also studied massage therapy and energy work. Finally, I combined my knowledge of respiratory therapy with hands-on energy work to create the kind of healing aid I intuited was possible with Kundalini emergencies.
In working with those who are in the Kundalini process, I start with a respiratory evaluation. Many times they need to take deeper and slower breaths or be reminded to breathe more often. This in turn helps their body to relax. It seems that those who are new to this process take shallow breaths because of anxiety until they are helped to “reframe” some of their fears into a sense of “This is all right; this is natural.” Then they can go deeper into their breathing and watch their bodies let go of unnecessary stress.
Sometimes, all my client and I need to do is just sit and meditate facing each other. I talk them through what meditation feels like. They mirror my breathing, and I help them to do a body scan to release stress. Then I explain how our ego chatters, and we let go of that, focusing on the middle of our brains where we sit with feelings instead of the upper part of our brains, which thinks in words. I ask my client to focus on a positive or joyful feeling such as awe, love, trust/faith, compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, joy, or hope. To help clients understand what I’m asking for, I sometimes give them an example of a time with my eight-year-old grandson. I had been showered with wonderful homemade gifts from my other grandchildren at my birthday party, including a homemade cake with lots of candles. He walked up to me, made strong eye contact, and told me he had one more present for me. He took his hand out of his pocket and pretended he was sprinkling something over my head as he told me the present was his love. My heart melted. There were no words. When I bring up this memory of his eyes gazing into mine, I can still feel his hand sprinkling love on top of my head. Then my limbic system (in the middle of my brain) gets activated because that is where these positive feelings reside. The limbic system is at least one place that doesn’t think in words; it is a feeling place. (The neocortex uses words, and it is automatically shut down at this point.) As I sit there bathed in this joyful feeling, my parasympathetic nervous system is activated, and that sends out messages to make my body relax and at the same time nourishes my immune system. Explaining this helps my clients understand how meditation can help us heal.
When working with my clients’ painful energy, I start with EFT—Emotional Freedom Technique[5]—to help them release fears and phobias. EFT uses energy points on the face and trunk to move stuck or blocked energy. Clients learn to do this for themselves in one session. (See more at emofree.com.) If there are painful “blocks,” they lie down on my massage table, and I place my hands where their pain is (felt as burning or other pain). They breathe into the block as we visualize energy coming through me and moving through the block. There is usually relief when these blocks release. Occasionally clients will later report a dream, or while still on the table, a memory comes up that has an emotional charge. I help them to metabolize or process and grieve the blocked feelings, rather than probe for buried memories.
For those clients who want to go deeper, we have individual and group psychotherapy. When you read Charles Whitfield’s essay in this book (page 161), you’ll see that he refers to the Stages of Recovery. Many who are in the Kundalini process may decide to enter a Stage Two or Stage Three psychotherapy group.[6]
Phenomena associated with the Kundalini process are occurring with increasing frequency among Westerners who have never heard of it before, and, like those who have near-death experiences, they have done nothing intentionally to arouse it. Felt as vast rushes of energy through the body, Kundalini rising can create profound changes in the structure of people’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual lives. (A few research subjects never experienced the rushes of energy but still reported the signs and symptoms of the Kundalini process.[7])
Over the years, as a public speaker addressing hospices, hospital staffs, universities, churches, support groups, and media interviews, I have heard of other spontaneous triggers of Kundalini rising besides the NDE. Audience participants have told me about their experiences in childbirth, meditation, intense prayer, experiencing the death of a loved one, withdrawal from chemical dependence, bottoming out from an overwhelming loss, alien encounters—including angels or other beings—intense, transcendent sexual experiences, being in nature, reading spiritual literature or hearing a spiritual talk, in a “big dream” that is remembered for life, and during breath and body work.[8] Recently I was the keynote speaker at the 2007 Annual Convention for Adult Children of Alcoholics. There I heard from multiple participants about Kundalini phenomena occurring in their advanced recovery while working a Twelve-Step program. Note that Step Twelve starts off with: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps...”[9]
Psychic abilities may appear as part of the Kundalini process. Such abilities have been an accepted part of the world’s traditional spiritual teachings over the millennia. This is consistent with Kenneth Ring’s and my view that the near-death experience serves principally as a catalyst for spiritual awakening and development and that psychic abilities usually manifest as a by-product, and other independent researchers support our observations. Ring says that the ancient literature of the great spiritual psychologies links psychic phenomena to the unfolding of higher consciousness.[10] These gifts are specifically identified with the awakening of Kundalini energy in some Indian scriptures and are described in many cases of modern people who have experienced a Kundalini awakening.[11]
When psychic phenomena are discussed in spiritual literature, there is usually a warning included about the dangers of becoming attached to them. From the Buddhist perspective, attaining such psychic powers is only a minor advantage. It has no value in itself for psychospiritual growth. In one who has not yet attained the state of nirvana,[12] these psychic abilities are even seen as an impediment and may endanger progress by enhancing and strengthening one’s attachment to one’s false self. We can, however, appreciate or celebrate—but not be attached to—these new abilities, since they serve as a reminder that we are connected with others and that our subtle energy fields overlap and act upon one another, sometimes even across great distances.
As the masters of the ancient spiritual psychologies warned, focusing on the talent of psychic ability will create attachments that distract us. Many people get caught in this trap. Having these psychic phenomena seems to be so provocative that it becomes a kind of stopping-off point. Then, after a while, the person tends to incorporate it into normal reality. As our transformational journey continues, we realize that these abilities are useful when used with humility and in the act of selfless service. They parallel the Buddhist idea of the bodhisattva: an enlightened being who, out of compassion, forgoes nirvana in order to help save others.
Those who develop psychic abilities who are still centered in their false self or negative ego may believe they are using their abilities for selfless service, but they actually can be projecting their own wishes or other issues onto others instead. Even a sense of compassion can become confusing for those experiencing rapid spiritual growth. They can believe that they are suddenly needed by another, and this may become “ego inflation.” Many hear about, read, or study Eastern spiritual literature and identify strongly with the authors, teachers, or gurus. But being Westerners with different cultural roots, it may be hard to translate some Eastern metaphors and principles.
Some with awakening Kundalini experience a small degree of ego inflation. Others become grandiose and may get stuck. A way out is to work on ourselves over time, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. To believe we can be instantly healed through a religious or spiritual experience alone is to attempt what we call a “spiritual bypass.” We try to bypass or ignore the lower levels of consciousness to get to the higher levels. Eventually, however, our false self will usually pull us back until we work through our particular unfinished business.
Other names for spiritual bypass are high-level denial and premature transcendence. It is seen in any number of situations, such as being prematurely “born again,” having a spiritual awakening and focusing only on the “Light,” focusing on psychic ability as a major part of our identity, or becoming a guru or teacher who exploits his or her students.[13]
The consequences of taking a spiritual bypass are often active codependence or conflict, including: denial of the richness of our inner life; trying to control ourselves or others; all-or-nothing thinking and behaving; feelings of fear, shame, and confusion; high tolerance for inappropriate behavior; frustration; addiction, compulsion, and relapse; and unnecessary pain and suffering.[14]
If we live from our ego or false self, we may find it impossible to quiet down our inner life during meditation or when attempting to center. We can only experientially quiet down and connect with God, each other, and ourselves by developing our True Selves—living as our natural souls. Ego inflation and spiritual bypass are instead cognitive intellectual experiences, or “head trips.” Being our True Selves and connecting spiritually with God are instead deeply emotional “heart” experiences.[15]
Our reward for working through ego inflation and spiritual bypass is recognizing and using the power of humility: the solid foundation of an authentically spiritual, healthy, and whole human being. We can begin to define humility as having openness and willingness to learn more about our relationship with ourselves, others, and God. Humility is not about groveling or being a doormat. Instead, it is a powerful attitude and state of mind that, when we are in the pain of conflict, opens us to more choices and peaceful resolutions. Humility helps move our ordinary ego-centered unawareness toward a more expansive, alive, and conscious awareness in which we can live in and as our natural souls. Having humility levels the occasional bumps in the Kundalini process.[16]
With humility, we are willing to continue learning throughout our lives. In its openness, we are free not only to avoid any of the pitfalls of ego inflation, but also to experience a connection with our Higher Selves and Higher Power. In this state of humility, a kind of “second innocence,” we can more easily witness our lives as “heartfelt” experiences.[17]
Recently, scientists have found that the anatomical location of these “heart” or mystical experiences is the limbic system of the brain, which I mentioned earlier in discussing my work with clients. Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron-emission tomography (PET scans), and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) to show that experiential spirituality lies in the limbic system of the brain. The limbic system is where we feel positive emotions and our positive relationships with others.
Newberg studied Tibetan Buddhists who practiced Kundalini yoga meditation and had been meditating for many years. They were advanced in their practice. Newberg showed that when these meditators achieve a state of mystical union, followed by a profound sense of calm, the activities of the neocortical brain were functionally cut off from the rest of the brain. At the same time, both the limbic hippocampus and amygdala were more active.[18] Newberg’s subjects meditated on a spiritual symbol or a positive emotion, some focusing on the feeling of forgiveness. He found that the area these positive feelings activated increased their parasympathetic activity, producing relaxation followed by a profound sense of serenity. There are no words used in this experience; there is only a sense of positive or joyful feelings.
Newberg suggests that experiential spirituality reflects “limbic questions” about love, community, positive emotions, and the feeling of “being one with the universe.” He also reports that, for meditating nuns, “while in prayer, their sense of God becomes physiologically real,” and the meditating Buddhists catch a glimpse of what for them is “an absolute reality.”[19]
Religious and “New Age” theology usually activate the brain’s neocortex, where we think in words. If we are thinking about our spiritual process, we can become confused and even create closed-loop thinking by trying to analyze what is happening to us. When a similar Kundalini process becomes overwhelming and perhaps interferes with our normal life, which sometimes happens, I have personally found that not reading any spiritual literature for a while and not trying to analyze where I am in my current state helps to calm the uncomfortable or overwhelming aspects of the process.
I almost never recommend prescription medication for my clients who are undergoing a Kundalini awakening, even though many physicians believe it will help. Some psychiatrists and neurologists wrongly diagnose an upheaval in this process as psychosis, depression, mania, or “bipolar.” They commonly misprescribe psychiatric drugs such as neuroleptics, antianxiety agents, and antidepressants, which are toxic and hard to quit.[20]
Any upheavals along the Kundalini journey should be treated using nondrug modalities first. Try increasing or decreasing meditation, or increasing or decreasing energy-type massages. Acupuncture and psychotherapy focusing on the release of painful emotions may be all that is needed. Spending time in nature may also help. Eliminate television viewing or reading anything with highly emotional content. Nutrition should be of primary concern because we are what we eat. Fast food and processed food should be eliminated.
Psychic abilities and compassion can be confusing for those experiencing sudden openings and rapid spiritual growth. Our abilities to sense others’ (or our own) pain can overwhelm us. When we sense others’ pain, we can practice giving them compassion without taking on or absorbing their pain. The more aware and connected we feel to spiritual energy, the better we tend to know that feeling of compassion. Having compassion for others may become easier once our heart chakra is opened, but problems with it will probably continue if we haven’t finished our own emotional release. Our hearts—our attention, sympathy, empathy, compassion and the like—can be open to others but still carry our own wounds. Then our thinking brain (neocortex) can trick us into projecting our own need for love onto others, while simultaneously rationalizing that we are being compassionate. If we feel exhausted, agitated, or needy after an encounter in which we believed we were giving compassion, we may have instead been projecting our own needs.[21]
The word empathy, in part, means feeling for the other. The pain or distress they are feeling is now registering in us, but it originated in them. With compassion, in contrast, we are stepping aside selflessly and allowing energy from a higher source to flow through us. We can do this without feeling what the other is feeling.
Compassion registers in our metaphoric heart. (As Newberg has demonstrated, it may also reside anatomically in our limbic brain.) It opens us so we can actually feel ourselves in a new way. In order to experience this opening, everyone must develop a method that works for them. In my case, I state my intention in a prayer and ask for help in getting my ego out of the way. At this point, the chatter in my inner life quiets down and stops for a little while. The connection to Spirit and to the healee is then a subtle yet sometimes profound felt sense that can even be experienced with the healee at a distance.
It takes a kind of balancing act to actually know for sure when we are helping someone else as opposed to helping ourselves by thinking we are helping someone else. Somewhere in the middle of this we have the choice of proceeding or backing off, remembering and activating our own healthy boundaries. We can benefit from learning ways to set these boundaries that will give us another choice: allowing the other person the freedom of working through their own painful predicament while we avoid becoming enmeshed in it with them.
A boundary or limit is how far we can comfortably go in a relationship and how far someone else can comfortably go with us. A boundary is not just a mental construct: Our boundaries are real. Other people’s boundaries are real.[22]
Boundaries and limits serve a useful purpose: they protect the well-being and integrity of our True Selves. Our awareness of boundaries and limits first helps us discover who we are. Until we know who we are, it will be difficult for us to have healthy relationships of any sort. Without an awareness of boundaries, it is difficult to sort out who is unsafe to be around, including people who are toxic and people who may mistreat or abuse us. Becoming more sensitive to our environment is part of the evolving Kundalini process, which also includes a greater sensitivity to toxic people.
When I practiced as a respiratory therapist, I wrote about the emotional needs of critical care patients because I could see and sense how much my patients needed to talk about what was happening in their inner life. We, the health care team, were focused on their physical needs because every second was critical. But at the same time we were ignoring their emotional needs. That was what had happened to me while I was suspended in the circle bed. Because of this experience, I found a way to help others a few years later in the way I had not been helped; I eventually published my work and taught it to others.
I often tell people our Kundalini process works this way: there is an invisible intelligence that seems to gently pull us along. We may not be able to see what of a higher order is actually happening at the time. But looking back over our process helps to show us the richness and beauty of our path. Keeping a journal helps to identify this blessed guidance, including in it any dreams that stand out as possibly being spiritual in nature.
Early in the Kundalini process we may feel frustrated because we do not know what our mission might be. As we relax into the journey, though, our answers will appear over time, and then we can realize that wanting to know the future is a source of agitation. Peacefully surrendering to the process makes the journey easier and more pleasurable. Our faith and trust settle in.
Assisting in Bruce Greyson’s research revealed that I was certainly not alone in my search for expression of my newfound spiritual quest. The sense of mission can be profound, and we may need to find ways to express it helpfully in the present moment.
In Twelve-Step programs, this sense of mission is spelled out in the Twelfth Step, which reads: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others who still suffer, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”[23]
Those of us who work in the healing arts are fortunate to have an appropriate setting in which to open ourselves to others and help them. It is clear in a healer/healee relationship whose feelings are going to be focused on, and in which direction the healing energy is going to go.
In my private practice, I work in individual and group psychotherapy with adults who have been repeatedly traumatized and abused as children. When I am in a session with a client, I sometimes feel awareness of heat, pain, or pressure in the same physical area the client is feeling pain, although not with the same intensity. This is a kind of empathy I referred to earlier: understanding or actually feeling what the other person is physically and emotionally feeling without identifying personally with the feelings. It is observation and a kind of understanding without taking on another’s pain. This is a complex area: I am feeling what my client feels, but I do not identify those feelings as my own. To make sure I don’t so identify, after a session I use a ritual of shaking my hands and washing them in cold water to break the connection and reactivate my own healthy boundaries. “Boundaries” in this context means distinguishing and keeping out what does not belong to me, and maintaining in place what does.[24]
For anyone working on emotional and psychological levels with patients, it is important to educate ourselves on the psychological definition of transference and countertransference and then, when needed, seek supervision from another therapist who can be objective. This is a safe way to stay clear and make appropriate responses.[25]
In The Power of Humility, we list twelve key characteristics of humility. These include openness, an attitude of “don’t know,” curiosity, innocence, a childlike nature, spontaneity, spirituality, tolerance, patience, integrity, detachment, and letting go—all of which lead to inner peace. After describing these twelve characteristics, we address two more related aspects: gratitude and “being nobody special.[26] I find gratitude to be my internal mantra. It keeps me focused in my soul. Being nobody special is more difficult, and I didn’t understand it as clearly until we wrote this book.
We spend the first half of our life becoming “special.” That’s part of the journey, part of our development. But in the second half of life, or when our journey of spiritual growth becomes apparent, being nobody special allows us to become all that we can be. It’s the ingredient and paradox that gets our sense of self, alone and in relationship with others, out of the way so our True Self can emerge. And it is a relief in every present moment to give up roles of who we think we are and instead just be.[27]
Here is a table to help us know whether we are in our egos or being our True Selves.
| © BARBARA WHITEFIELD 2009 |
As we continue our own healing and grow spiritually with Kundalini energy, we will know when the time is right to focus on our psychic abilities because we will be able to trust our own judgment. We can open in deep trust to this process. While these signals, these moments of empathy for another, can be in our awareness, we have the choice to act on and use them or ignore them, and we have the confidence to recognize what is ours and what isn’t. If it is appropriate to act, I then answer in honesty, all the while being in a clear, expanded state of consciousness. I start with the same prayer each time: asking to be an instrument of a Higher Power and asking for help to get my ego out of the way. I set aside my sense of separateness and join for a time with the other. I open myself to feel what he or she is feeling. In turn, my heart opens with a sense of compassion that becomes an instrument of the Energy coming through me. I become a connection, a conduit between the healee and the Energy of Spirit (God’s loving Energy, Kundalini, Holy Spirit, Ruach ha Kadosh, etc.) doing the healing.
A few times I have been naïve enough to use my psychic abilities with my family, and it has backfired. I quickly found out that I was invading their boundaries, their privacy. I then realized that my false self, or ego, can’t always be out of the way when I am personally involved. Now, occasionally, someone close to me will ask for my help. I am careful to stay objective, keeping my own agenda out, or I say I can’t do it. Then I offer them the opportunity to hear my opinion. The water gets murky when working on a psychic level with family members, and I don’t recommend it. I try to be respectful of others’ boundaries, but this is a hard lesson to learn. It requires psychic maturity as well as trusting and learning when to speak (seldom) and when to be silent (mostly). When in doubt, if you choose to proceed, a helpful way to begin is by saying a prayer with the family member.
Once we have a spiritual awakening and move into the Kundalini process, our unconscious material from our inner life tends to come into our conscious awareness in powerful ways. We can now actually recognize when we are stuffing—repressing or suppressing—our own hurts or traumas. With this new awareness come new choices. These include being able to choose whom we care to be around. Before awakening to this process, we might have been able to numb out when in the company of toxic people. Now the signs of another’s toxicity are collecting, and part of becoming psychologically and emotionally healthy is to learn to protect ourselves instead of numbing out. We can welcome this material from our unconscious for our own personal growth and wellbeing. We can identify ourselves as awakening spiritual beings in human physical bodies. And we can ask Spirit to help us cocreate better ways, such as practicing compassion for ourselves.[28]
Being aware of our inner life with compassion for ourselves and without blaming others requires a delicate balance. This takes patience and practice.
I have been a student of my own inner life since my awakening almost thirty-four years ago. I had no choice. I was suddenly awakened not only to my spiritual connection, but to the emotional connection of my True Self, and it was letting me know it needed protection. After years of experiencing personal growth, it is fun to observe all of this going on in my inner life. I trust my abilities to negotiate when to stay open and when to protect my innocent True Self. Occasionally, I can still hear my negative ego/false self doing a good imitation of loving friendship as it tries to take back control. This may translate into some humor that keeps me chuckling at times. My inner life is always busy. I have to stay on my toes and stay aware of who’s “running the show.” And in meditation, during play, or when doing any conscious centering, I can relax, letting my inner life quiet down and allowing the Light of God’s unconditional love and compassion to wash through me.
The bonus for the hard inner work of healing is the realization that being truly spiritual means the wordless feelings of awe, love, trust/faith, compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, joy, and hope. Like Andrew Newberg, Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant suggests that these feelings appear to reside anatomically in my limbic system. When I am focused on them, they engage my parasympathetic nervous system, which relaxes me and helps generate nourishment for my immune system. At the same time, this mechanism gives me an experiential connection with God/Goddess/All-That-Is. These two realizations—the positive feelings that I just listed and a connection to something greater than ourselves—is what Vaillant proposes as true spirituality. In his book Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith, he writes: “Spirituality is virtually indistinguishable from these positive emotions and is, thus, rooted in our evolutionary biology.”[29] He goes on to say that spirituality is not about ideas, sacred texts, and theology. Rather, he sees spirituality as being about positive emotion and social connection. These are the very emotions that Newberg’s meditators focused on for the research that demonstrated that this is all going on in our limbic system. It appears that in this sense we actually have spirituality built into our biology!
As we heal and proceed along our spiritual journey, which may be directed by what has been named Kundalini in the East, we can release our past emotional and psychological wounds and replace them with positive feelings and a clear mind. As we work through our Kundalini process and find balance, so much more comes with it than we could ever have predicted. Gratitude and humility give us constant renewal that allows us to feel the overflowing abundance of the Universe. As our physical beings and our souls become one, our journey and destination become one, demonstrating the truth about dark and light, positive and negative, Yin and Yang: it was all an illusion, a dance to help us to wake up spiritually. Separation collapses. All our striving to become who God meant us to be comes to fruition. We realize that we are One. Even the belief in heaven after this lifetime recedes as we experience creating heaven here. We remember who we are, and we are Home.[30]