Penny Kelly is the author of five books, including The Evolving Human and Consciousness and Energy and a teacher of consciousness and personal development at Lily Hill Farm and Learning center in Lawton, Michigan. After thirty years of experience with kundalini, she has a remarkable perspective on it and how it can affect one’s life. Taking this opportunity to reflect upon all she has seen, she addresses such questions as: What are we left with when we are empty of everything physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual? How does the experience of kundalini transform our core self or core being? And how do truth and purpose fit into this milestone in one’s life?
I’d never heard of kundalini or spiritual awakening back in 1978 when my first, seemingly innocuous experiences began. They were relatively mild then, resulting in a sudden loss of boundaries and an experience of oneness so profound that I could not find my body and for a moment thought that I was everything in the room. Unaware of what was really happening, I just thought these were odd instances of confusion.
In February of 1979, my kundalini experiences became markedly more dramatic. While making love I experienced spectacular orgasms in my head that exploded consciousness and rocketed me into a place where there was nothing but bliss and a simple but powerful awareness that amounted to “I Am!” Still ignorant of what was happening, I paid little attention. I just thought I was having great sex.
However, when the orgasms in my head began to occur in the middle of the day, while at work or in places such as the grocery store, with no lovemaking to prompt them, I began to be frightened. I tried to short-circuit these orgasmic waves, but the result was a misery of intense heat and pressure throughout my body and a heart that pounded away at a frightening rate.
If someone had told me, “You’re undergoing a spiritual awakening,” I would have been even more confused, because orgasms and spirituality did not go together in the small-town, Catholic reality I was raised in.
In addition to the problems caused by intense heat, pressure, and unexpected orgasms, my perception began going awry in the most perplexing ways, sliding into other times and places, seeing things before they happened, or hearing the thoughts of plants, animals, and other people. Suddenly I would find myself out of my body and moving through walls as if they didn’t exist. I was unable to read or relax and was completely distracted by the glowing lights I saw around everyone and everything.
For someone who was young, working as a tool and process engineer at Chrysler Corporation, and totally ignorant about spiritual unfolding, there was precious little information available to help me understand what was happening to me. My inability to control or manage perception left me certain I was going insane at the ripe age of thirty-one. In the end, I quit my job, and over the next few years I watched my entire perception of reality crumble.
During that period of time, one of the most disturbing changes was my inability to fall asleep. Every night I went to bed hoping to drift into the relaxing blankness of sleep and wake in the morning as I had done my entire life, but when consciousness has awakened, you are awake! There is no such thing as sleep. Night after night for two and a half years I put my body to bed only to discover all over again that my awareness could not be turned off.
Completely frustrated by this constant wakefulness, I frequently left my body and went up through the ceiling and attic to sit on the roof. From there I watched the goings-on that took place in the night: planes taking off or landing at Selfridge Air Force Base, an occasional car moving slowly along the street in the wee hours, deer in the empty lot across the highway, or raccoons and skunks scrounging around the dumpster at Mrs. Kraft’s Grocery.
One night while up there, sitting quietly and looking out toward the western sky, I noticed something moving in the distance. It looked like three dots of light. I watched the dots without a great deal of curiosity simply because I assumed they were airplanes preparing to land at the air base.
However, as they drew closer, I thought the shapes didn’t seem right for airplanes, nor could I hear the sound of engines. In fact, the dots of light looked more and more like people.
Then the lights flew directly toward me and began to descend toward the roof where I was sitting. They were three Beings made of light, and they approached my post on the roof with arms extended in greeting and invitation. They wanted me to go with them. Unable to put enough coherent thought together to refuse, and having nothing else to do, I agreed.
They took me by the hand and I immediately felt pulled upward and outward from the very core of my entire body-mind system. I had great difficulty focusing as I usually did. It was as if I was being forced to let go of everyday seeing and hearing, both of which were replaced by an intensely felt knowing and an exquisite feeling that came with its own vision and sound—and threatened to disintegrate me altogether.
In a slow-motion blur, we approached a place, a world, a universe made entirely of light. The shocking thing about this place was not the light; it was the fact that it looked exactly like earth, with all the same people, plants, animals, buildings, and landscapes—except there were no wars, no crime, no sickness, no accidents. Greed, fear, anger, and corruption did not exist. People were extraordinarily beautiful. No one was overweight, poor, unkempt, or disabled. Everyone was made of light, as were the flowers, rivers, trees, houses, schools, and buildings. Love seemed palpable and alive, and everything responded to our presence as if it were alive and conscious, even the stones.
I have a vague memory of having been taken on a tour. I also have the impression of being told things like, “This is your real home.... Everything you have made on earth has been an attempt to duplicate what is here—but you have done a really sorry job of copying. You can return here to your real home, but you will have to let go of the reality you’ve made for yourself on earth.” I was told other things, some of them very important, but when I arrived back on the roof at dawn, I could not recall what they were.
Over the next few months the three Beings came to get me a couple more times, and then I didn’t see them again. Perhaps they were disappointed with me. Maybe they knew I didn’t understand what I had seen and experienced with them, and that I wasn’t ready to deal with such things as people or cities made of light. I was struggling terribly to manage the flood of phenomena that had become my life—and I wasn’t doing very well. Still, the overall impact of those journeys was indelible. The stunning beauty and flowing love that were part of everything in that world of light have remained with me like a gift that constantly renews itself.
It has now been almost thirty years since the awakening of kundalini and I cannot count the number of times over the years that people have asked me why I thought this experience happened to me. The answer is always the same: “Because it can happen! It is a potential that is built into us.”
“But what triggers it?” is often the next question.
When I reply, “I accidentally moved into a moment of complete presence and unconditional love,” their response is always the same—a blank, baffled look on their faces. Not only is the meaning of one’s ability to be completely present in the moment beyond them, unconditional love is a mystery whose relevance is un certain at best.
What is it about unconditional love that would trigger such a massive response in the human body-mind system? Unconditional love is love that is freely given without conditions attached. It doesn’t say, “I will love you if you clean your room,” or “I will make love to you if you say the right things to me tonight.” It simply pours out of you without hesitation, evaluation, or thought of any kind.
Think of God as a huge ocean of love, light, and bliss all around you. Think of yourself as a delicate bubble submerged in that ocean the same way a submarine can be submerged in the Atlantic. The walls of your bubble are made of the ideas, beliefs, habits, and rules of reality you learned from parents, teachers, and society. These ideas keep you intact as an individual. They form the sandy soil of self-perception. They guide and direct your behavior. And they are fierce obstacles to the love you are immersed in. Poke even a small hole in the walls of your bubble, and God immediately squirts in. Step into unconditional love for the briefest second, and it’s like momentarily dissolving the walls of the bubble. You are instantly engulfed in an ocean of God, bliss, and light. You are face to face with the Source of all life, and when you emerge, you know the Source of yourself in a whole new way. You are awake to your real self.
Imagine yourself on a solitary rocket ship leaving the earth with an explosive roar, a feeling of moving at the speed of light, and then:
Kundalini is the awakening of consciousness. It is the release of consciousness from the small, tight boundaries that comprise ordinary physical reality. It can happen once, or it can happen many times. It can be a little awakening—like a moment of oneness—or a massive, full-blown experience of the I Am at the core of each individual.
In ancient times, God was known as the I Am. Sometimes the old stories were accompanied by descriptions of a place called The Void. When kundalini carries you into the full experience of the Godhead, you end up in a place that is totally empty of everything physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. There is no yesterday or tomorrow, no thought, no sense of being a physical body, no world of family or friends, no list of things to do. A full kundalini experience is a visit with God and the discovery that you are It.
God is Life. In a full awakening, immersed in total ecstasy and knowing only one thing—that you exist—you fully experience the life force that comprises your true self. Only later will it dawn on you that if the great power of the I Am is your core self, then you are made of life and will always exist! You have discovered your eternal self, your God-self.
Following this discovery, old habits and limits begin falling away. Even a “little” awakening can change your life radically because one single, tiny taste of God is transformative—and relentlessly so.
After kundalini, truth and purpose become cornerstones in life. The problem with these is that if your awakening comes in your thirties, forties, or later, you will already have your life set up and working. You may have a spouse, children, a house, and a career. If the setup you have made doesn’t match the truth and purpose that come from within, you will suffer. Marriages end, children are hurt, the house can be lost and the career dumped because something inside will not submit to a life that no longer holds meaning for you. You find that you must live your own truth and accomplish the purpose you were designed for. Society does not look kindly on this because we have never developed a spiritual tradition of understanding, valuing, and nurturing either spiritual awakening or those who are awakened and deeply spiritual. Nevertheless, fortified by a new inner strength, the spiritual neophyte often blunders through, learning to express the self in a whole new way.
Kundalini—the full, spontaneous awakening of consciousness in the human being—is a wake-up call to begin unfolding the hidden pattern of potential within each of us. That pattern contains the design of the God-self. In the West, it has long been known as the pattern of the Christ within us. In the East it may be called developing Buddha mind. In other places it may be called something else. But whatever you call it, it is the call to move past death and step into life.
Jesus got there. He figured out what was possible for himself and realized that if he could do it, anyone could do it. He then tried to teach it to the people of his time and place. After is death, churches organized to continue his teachings, but they quickly lost the thread of truth.
The truth is that deep inside each human being is a river of Life. That Life is an Intelligent Presence within you. It is like a seed that can grow and become something marvelous and beautiful.
When this Intelligent Presence is nurtured, developed, and brought to full maturity, you become a living Christ, able to maintain deep peace and joy, perfect health, access to immediate abundance, and eternal life. When you do, you bring about your own salvation, saving yourself from the need to come back again and again to the suffering and sorrow of the physical realm.
The secret to developing this Intelligent Presence, which is sometimes referred to as the inner teacher, is to stop everything, become silent, and listen for the “still, small voice within.”
What will that voice say? It will be different every time you hear it because it will offer an insight, direction, or solution to something you are dealing with at the moment. Past and future do not exist for the Intelligent Presence that lives in the now and attends only to the present. By listening to its voice and following the advice given, no matter what it says, you deepen the relationship with this Presence. As it deepens, you will discover that it always moves you in a direction that nurtures and supports Life. Always choosing to nurture Life is how you transcend death to reach eternal life.
The Intelligent Presence within you is a powerful advocate for personal peace, love, patience, joy, forgiveness, health, integrity, gratitude, humility, and beauty. When you stop every thought that contains any hint of fear, anger, hurt, vengeance, or other negativity, you stop creating a world full of pain, sorrow, sickness, and suffering.
When you gracefully sidestep conversations about the past, the future, someone’s sense of injustice, or gossip about your family, coworkers, or the world, you become more and more silent—and more able to hear that still, small voice within.
As you listen for that voice, you must let go of what your family thinks. You must forget what your neighbor does and concentrate on changing yourself. You must develop your own consciousness.
When you decide to make every action a thoughtful, compassionate, timely, humble, and loving action, you demonstrate a way of being that transforms yourself and others. Get enough people doing this and you end up creating a world of light and love like the one I visited with the three Beings who escorted me from the roof and back, a world I now realize was one of the heaven worlds.
One of the most destructive ideas in the world today is the idea that Jesus died to save you. Jesus died to demonstrate that he was beyond believing in death. The second most destructive idea is that he is going to come back and save you at the “end of the world” and that you can sit back and wait for this to happen. The third most destructive idea is that becoming a religious or spiritual person means becoming a clone of Jesus and acting just like you think he acted.
Each person is a unique and wonderful expression of human individuality. Likewise, Christ consciousness will be expressed in a way that is unique for you. If you are a painter, it will be expressed in your artwork. If you’re a cook, it will show up in your food. If you’re an architect, it will appear in your buildings. If you’re a mother, it will unfold in the way you raise and care for your family.
Each of us has a set of gifts and skills that are perfect for the time, place, and relationships we find ourselves in. Imagine a world in which everyone did what they loved to do. Imagine there was an unlimited awareness in each of us for what those who are special to us need from us. Imagine that money was neither a priority nor a solution, and that the real priority in life was managing ourselves and our resources so that everyone is cared for. Imagine that instead of going to a corporate job each day, we simply met locally to find out what needed to be done that day, then did it.
What would it be like to meet all of our needs out of the same kind of knowing and abundance that healed the sick, raised the dead, fed multitudes with just a few loaves and fishes, appeared wherever help was needed, and taught love in every situation? What would your life be like if you unfolded the full potential of your human design?
When we look at the world today, we see perfect examples of hellish existence for millions of people who are caught in wars, hunger, or catastrophic illnesses. It is a far cry from the world of light I once visited where war, crime, sickness, fear, pain, sorrow, and corruption did not exist.
Perhaps we needed to sink to this level just to see how bad it could get. Yet the lower the conditions on earth sink, the more spirituality and an awakening of consciousness will arise as its polar opposite. The result will be a need to choose which direction to go.
Will you sit around waiting to be saved? Or unfold your potential, coming to know the God within and living your life in a whole new way? The awakening of kundalini starts the process of developing our human design to its fullest expression. Once it begins, the path to unending Life will open, and we will discover we have found the royal road to creating a whole new reality filled with peace, joy, health, abundance, and eternal living.