Spiritual Growth

Summary-Kundalini is an experience that all cultures have given a name...usually attached to religion...and doctrine...There is no need for any doctrine..it is all within yourself..as the philosophy of Buddhism teaches...she gives many examples of this...
 
 
This is what I have realized before I go to the hospital-and why my experiences are the same every time..Universal Consciousness...All is One...collective unconscious..Source..Energy, all these I identify with as being the same thing, whatever name it is given..it's all the same..
 
Kundalini-One Energy-Many Names
 
In every culture and in every time, knowledge of Divine Power dwelling in each human being has been a closely guarded secret.
\nThe First People knew no sickness. Not until separation entered the world did people get sick in the body or head. It was then the medicine man or Shaman, knowing how man was constructed, could tell what was wrong with a person by examining the "energy centres" of the body.
 
Almost all religions or spiritual traditions speak of this Inner Power in some form or other.
Though the names used to describe it may be different, and although the symbols used to invoke it vary somewhat from culture to culture, the experience of Kundalini is a Universal phenomenon which has been experienced in all places and at all times.
Traditionally, the knowledge of Kundalini has been a closely guarded secret, revealed by the Master to only a few close and select initiates. It tends to be spoken of in veiled symbolic language, if it is spoken of at all.
\nThe Common Traditions
 
The Japanese call it "ki", the Chinese "chi" and in Christianity, it is known as "The Holy Spirit". In Mexico, Kundalini was worshiped as the serpent-god "Quetzalcoatl"; the Kung people of the Kalahari called this same power "n/um".

The American Indians know all about the energy that is awakened at the base of the spine and rises to the top of the head, but it is regarded as so sacred that they are forbidden even to pronounce its name. (Shades of the "unpronounceable" name of God.).

The Hopi's believe that each human being is created in the image of "God" but that the door at the top of the head closes and man falls from communion into the uninhibited expression of his own selfish will (This is the mark of "The Beast"). Now man must begin the slow climb back upward until the door at the crown of the head finally reopens and he emerges back into the wholeness of creation.
\nThe Kung believe that "n/um"is not a physical substance, but is instead energy or power, a kind of supernatural potency. They describe trance by saying it feels as though they have a hole their heads, perhaps two inches wide, which extends like an empty column down the spine.
\nKundalini and Western Spirituality
 
In the West, the knowledge of Kundalini has been transmitted by the esoteric or mystical branches of all of the great religious traditions. The knowledge of Kundalini is present in the mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome; in the teachings of both the Gnostic and Neoplatonic traditions; in the Kabalistic traditions of Judaism; and in the personal testaments of the great Christian mystics.

The "Gnostic Gospels", and ancient Christian text says there is in everyone a Divine Power existing in a latent condition. This, the root of the universe, is One Power divided above and below, generating itself, making itself grow, seeking itself, finding itself, being mother of itself, father of itself, sister of itself, spouse of itself, daughter of itself. That infinite power exists in two modes one actual, the other potential.

Various secret societies or "brotherhoods" -- such as the Rosicrucians, the medieval alchemists and the Freemasons -- have sprung up specifically to pass on the knowledge of Kundalini to a few select initiates.

The Masons speak of the energy, or Spirit Fire, that rises through the spinal column. In Masonry, the science and human transformation consists of moving the Spirit Fire up through 32 degrees, or segments, of the spinal column, whereupon it enters the skull.
The Poet-Saints of all traditions have written & sung of classical Kundalini experiences. One of these poets was Kabir
\nLightning flashes without any clouds. There is no son, but there is radiant light. The Pearl in that realm forms without a shell.

There is no sound and yet, the Word resounds. All light is put to shame by the Lord's bright radiance. The indestructible, unfathomable lies beyond.
 
Consciousness and Matter
 
The predicament of most human beings, according to the Caballah, is to identify with Consciousness trapped in matter. Through intense prayer, meditation and a repetition of sacred syllables, these buried sparks of Man's Consciousness can be fanned into a blazing Fire and liberated from their imprisonment in the darkness of ignorance. Man's consciousness can be raised until it rests in the crown from whence the "mystic" attains ecstatic visions and realises his own Divine nature.
\nThe transformation from matter, or darkness, to light and "spirit" is universally acknowledged as the task of Kundalini, the Divine conscious serpent power that resides within us.
 
The strength of Kundalini is what allows us to expand infinitely so that we can see the whole universe within our own Self. Then, we no longer remain a limited, bound creature; we achieve total union with Universal Consciousness.

 

Some good thoughts ...
 
There are two types of people: Those who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!", and those who say, "Ah, there you are". 
<em>Frederick L. Collins</em>
 
 
 The only way to find God, is to let go of God ~Meister Eckhart
 
 
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself. 
<i>Galileo</i>

 ​

 
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; 
it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship. ~Emerson
 
 
 
There are two ways to live your life. 
One is as though nothing is a miracle. 
The other is as though everything is a miracle. ~Einstein   .....a great statement
 
 
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. 
<em>Malcolm S. Forbes</em>
 
 
Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.   ~Kahlil Gibran
 
^An especially beautiful thought

 

 
Labelled as mania...I've come to understand after many years and things I've read recently..such as the kundalini shit.. who have had the same realizations about these things..the Universe and some things that are possible w/consciousness-not related to drugs...that it is in fact-a spiritual awakening process that I was trying to have....and it hit me all at once...and had no one to help me interpret what was actually going on...
 
My family always jumped in and took me straight to the hospital. They couldn't really see what was going on w/me. My perceptions had changed...like a layer...an onion skin...had been lifted off. I was reading ancient texts and talking about them in metaphors...I didn't do the things that real bi-polars do...ever....spend money...have sex w/every man that has a cock...gamble....just about every addiction/vice that you can have times a hundred. So if reading all manner of ancient texts, looking at light..any...and thinking about ..Energy..The Source...etc...Conscious Awareness is crazy...I don't want to be sane. There's a big trade-off however...I want to keep teaching kids...I have taken that trade off for now. and that means taking meds....mood stabilizer..to be exact...pfft
 
Don't get too happy now! You know where that leads!? Straight to the power within you...Seeing and feeling that Power that is everywhere and its location no where...!
 
If this happens again ...I will run before I go back to the hospital..and I mean it... - _ -

 

 Yes, I am a woman
 
I guess I may 'talk' like a guy..b/c I am more in their company more than women..also I'm one hell of an experienced smoker  idk..most women are ditzes to me..interested in superficial things
 
Anyway-apparently many people have similar things happening...but it's grossly misunderstood...a tragedy really...I'm glad I finally found out what was really going on rather than never knowing it though

 

 
*Ok...I wrote all that down there and realized that it's long...I've often written that this thread, in a lot of ways, serves as a journal to help me with thinking about these experiences...and what I thought about during those times. So this is one of those posts..they don't happen too much anymore.. this is one I haven't written about..
 
 
I have benefited from my experience from all these things that have happened as well. I question sometimes, would I rather have just had a typical life and not gone through these things...? ....and always the answer comes to be 'no'. There's always a price to pay for everything it seems, but if I have to pay for one ..I definitely choose this.
 
Back on my 2nd visit I decided that I needed to take the meds b/c it was ultimately selfish to want that state of being...Idk-just so I could feel It and be in It...in that way...I felt very strongly like 'It'..(whatever you label it as) wanted me to serve others vs. myself.
 
After that, I found an issue of 'Time' magazine (while I was still there)...It had a boy on the front with the title 'Dyslexia' on it..then I knew what I wanted to do...I went on to finish undergrad/graduate school, and today I teach dyslexics   ...among other types..
 
On another visit...I was out in the observation room.......... - _ - ....and found a bookmark...It looked like it was from the '70's and had this boy w/a dog on it...It said, 'READ TO SOMEONE EVERYDAY'...that was during the hospital visit during grad school...and that was a big one...lasted for months...even though I was taking their meds...Still got through grad school and working as a grad assistant...although it was hard when I was trying to do a paper...and I'd start looking at the light on my desk and feel like I was a part of 'God'..if you will...and that It is every Where and It is every Thing. There was never any feeling of 'you need to have these rules' or follow 'this' to understand It or have It with you..I always felt like it just IS. It is IS...or as Christian/Jewish doctrines say..'I AM'
 
 ...I've had more hospital visits b/c they didn't have me on 'the right thing' or I couldn't stand the med anymore...and actually have been a couple years w/o it at times...
 
At those times when it 'happens', I come across something that really gets me 'up'...whether it's something like a music festival or something in my inner personal life that just makes it 'click'...It is like a switch has been turned on...that layer peeled back.. and this whoosh feeling...a little like when you exhale  ...but the world immediately becomes synchronous... the world is your dream..
 
I still believe in all that I experienced as well (as you)...I still have the intellectual understanding of what went on...I am just able to handle it w/o realizations/experiences coming allll the time. Trying to take all that in like that will not let me focus on what it is I think I should be doing.
 
Sry about the length..It helps me think about it. 

 

Over the last few days, I have seen several things about 'the Mirror' pertaining to our selves...
 
These two were not connected together on one website, but thought the comment was useful to connect w/the poem...Obviously, it could be taken literally...she was a much better poet than that though..Just the same..it makes you feel a pain for her and what she went through
 
 
 
 
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
 
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
 
 
"....We won't notice the underlying mirror, however, if we become entranced by, fixated on, or conditioned by the reflections. The reflections in the mirror are like thoughts in our mind; the problem is that we become absorbed in, react to and identify with the thoughts in our mind, without recognizing that who we actually are is the pure, all-embracing, mirror which underlies and is transcendent to the reflections. Thought-forms in our mind are like dreams, in the sense that if we recognize the empty, illusory nature of our thoughts, they have no power over us, just like when we recognize within a dream its illusory nature, the dream has no binding power over us. On the other hand, if we identify with our thoughts, which are like whole, self-contained universes, it is as if we have gotten absorbed into and attached to the forms of the dream, which we then take to be ‘reality.' In doing so, we have invested our thought-forms with an unwarranted reality and have unwittingly created reality to reflect back our thought-forms, thereby limiting our creative freedom, as well as ourselves in the process." ~Paul Levy

 

 
Yes..it has extra meaning or something.. it really makes sense..really clicks for all of them even though they're different in what they say..just a different of trying to put It in a context.
 
For me personally, I've started to look -as in up there-as few posts up..back into kundalini..when you have an extreme 'aha!' moment..and the understandings stay w/you... some people work on it and some it just happens to..
 
Looking into it has shown me huge amounts of people have experienced this...a very overwhelming feeling of it crashing into them, etc..There's forums of people w/stories about it..very relieving, actually, that other people have been through it

 

Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to. As you listen more and more to the teachings, contemplate them, and integrate them into your life, your inner voice, your innate wisdom of discernment, what we call in Buddhism “discriminating awareness,” is awakened and strengthened, and you begin to distinguish between its guidance and the various clamorous and enthralling voices of ego. The memory of your real nature, with all its splendor and confidence, begins to return to you.
You will find, in fact, that you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide, and as the voice of your wise guide, or discriminating awareness, grows stronger and clearer, you will start to distinguish between its truth and the various deceptions of the ego, and you will be able to listen to it with discernment and confidence.-S. Rinpoche
\nI have found out lately that the first rules my life. I listen more often than I used to, though.

 

...I'm posting this first for the speech at the beginning...starting at about :54...about success...LISTEN to it...posting it also for its greatness in general..This DJ uses a lot of Motown type samples in his music...and although there's SOME dub-step in this particular album...which I can't stand..lol... he uses it the right way-doesn't let it take over..would love to see him.. ...can't imagine how great it would be to see him do this
 
 
 
http://youtu.be/JmR7D2funBM
 
 
 
 
This post is definitely about spiritual growth  :lol:
 
 
 
 
http://youtu.be/ouHtMSs02tY
 
..lol..this is just amazing playing w/a guitarist  @12:04 
 
*I would outright shit myself if I saw this
 
 
**not just some knob twisting either..lol

 

"All we need to do to receive direct help is to ask. Didn't Christ also say: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. Everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth”? And yet asking is what we find hardest. Many of us, I feel, hardly know how to ask. Sometimes it is because we are arrogant, sometimes because we are unwilling to seek help, sometimes because we are lazy, and sometimes because our minds are so busy with questions, distractions, and confusion that the simplicity of asking does not occur to us."
 
How many people just read this and only thought about the first statements in purely Christian terms...? This is explaining a major tenet of life and how to live it. It doesn't matter where it comes from...Other religions might put forth the concept in different words...doesn't mean it negates the idea.
 
Some people go through life trying to make everything fit into little boxes...there is no box.
 
So 'asking'...asking who? Yourself...what is in your Self. What's in there?? Knock, and find it..ask and seek..and then you'll Know. If you never look...how 'you going to solve whatever situation you find you need to help? Self-discovery...again.
 
A Dzogchen lama made the quoted statement. 

 

The masters tell us that there is an aspect of our minds that is its fundamental basis, a state called “the ground of the ordinary mind.” It functions like a storehouse, in which the imprints of past actions caused by our negative emotions are all stored like seeds. When the right conditions arise, they germinate and manifest as circumstances and situations in our lives.
If we have a habit of thinking in a particular pattern, positive or negative, then these tendencies will be triggered and provoked very easily, and recur and go on recurring. With constant repetition our inclinations and habits become steadily more entrenched, and continue increasing and gathering power, even when we sleep. This is how they come to determine our life, our death, and our rebirth. ~S. Rinpoche
\nIt's interesting that although it is a belief for Buddhists-there is no 'requirement' per se to believe in re-birth...only their belief that it will happen. They believe that s you die it's important to keep in the right state of mind to affect how you are re-born. I guess you could say that you'd have to believe in re-birth so as to live with karma in mind and this would affect your re-birth-But if you live with trying to do good things because of that, etc....this would defeat the very idea of karma...Kind of like doing 'works' in the Christian way of thinking.
\n 
 
If you've never gotten why Jerry is such a big deal...this will do it...also Merl Saunders is king of the Hammond organ. These kinds of shows are the truest spiritual moments I can have-because music touches your Soul and can make you feel how great it is to be alive........  
 
http://youtu.be/lkvozFOUNno

 

What this woman can do with a hoop is amazing...plus she's super sexy... that core  
 
...this is what Flow~~~~ is about. You are totally in tune when you are doing it...I can do a little...nowhere near anything like this...does it to some good music too
 
 
 
http://youtu.be/OieV55-MoPc

 

Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. … The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world. ~Tolle
 
 
I would only add Conscious to the beginning..in that Awareness is full of intention..The intention Awareness eminates...not your own.
 
This gives meaning to all life ever is..imo
 
.
 
http://youtu.be/9qWkIweYB2Y
 
A beautiful summer day...

 

The more often you listen to your discriminating awareness, the more easily you will be able to change your negative moods yourself, see through them, and even laugh at them for the absurd dramas and ridiculous illusions that they are.
Gradually you will find yourself able to free yourself more and more quickly from the dark emotions that have ruled your life, and this ability to do so is the greatest miracle of all.
The Tibetan mystic, Tertön Sogyal, said that he was not really impressed by someone who could turn the floor into the ceiling or fire into water. A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion. ~S. Rinpoche
 
I think that what he is talking about is that 'little voice' inside. Awareness that comes from what Spirit is...I 'hear' that when I listen and have had quite a battle with myself over where exactly that comes from...Finally, I decided that whether it comes from me listening to my Self or Something else...what difference does it make..really? I think it's probably both...they are interconnected.
 
The difference is when purposely turn my awareness toward it...it is always positive and in my benefit....whereas, if I'm just thinking to myself in some situation-it can be negative self-talk.

 

Also-This will blow your mind     
 
http://youtu.be/cKJLSF-ypos