Uncoiling Aboard the Magic Bus

I have done very well, I think to myself. A good long walk alongside the river under a cold, low winter sun; visits to plumber, bank, outdoor shop, and supermarket all successfully accomplished. It is only when, with the sun almost gone, I step onto the bus home that I realise I'm whacked out.

I am third onto the bus, and spread myself and accompanying bags out spaciously over the seats. Yes, whacked out. I shall return home, to.... what? I could go to rest, a late afternoon siesta. Only it will be useless. I'll lie down for about two minutes, and it'll all start up. The whirring, chugging, rotating, deep down inside a part of the body that most people choose to ignore. It will build, and build, going ever deeper, over ten minutes or two hours. Finally, warm ripples of energy will take me over as they rise wave upon wave to the top of my head; or a silvery liquid will slowly make its way up the length of my spine. Or there will be an outburst, a spasm of energy, which will pull me half way down the bed.

It is good that I have the house all to myself at the moment! Even loved ones might find it all a touch disconcerting.

I take a look at my companions on the bus. All dressed up in their own particular ways for the cold outside. I am past comment, opinion, judgement: we are who we are, and that's it. My brain seems full of soft warm bliss, refusing to take part in such ways of thinking.

A woman gets on the bus with her daughter and younger son. The boy is in a wheelchair, physically and mentally impaired. The woman's purse snaps open, spilling coins all over the floor; the girl hurries to pick them all up. As we travel further, I notice the girl gazing out the bus window, alone in her thoughts and her world, while mother occupies herself with the boy. I wonder whether she gets enough attention from her parents, or whether she is unwitting victim of her little brother's all-consuming problems. CEN, it's called: childhood emotional neglect. Check it out.

There was a time when our bus route was proudly run on smooth-running, swanky electric buses. In recent times, though, they have been replaced by old, beaten-up boneshakers. Some double-deckers, even, looking as if they've been bought at bargain basement price in a London transport sale of goods from the 1950s. Today, we are rattling along, juddering and shaking as we go. The vibrations get things going: other than jumping off at the next stop, I have no option but to submit. I am taken over by a now-familiar feeling, a mix of unspeakable sweetness and near-despair. I can manage despair, and have come to respect it. Far better than feelings like certainty, which leave no room for growth.

As we continue to get tossed about on the pothole-ridden road, the sensations only intensify. I recall years gone past, when a great fascination was aroused by tales of teenage girls having orgasms while riding their horse. I'm sorry, girls, I take back my lustful delight. It's not always such great fun after all.

It's almost dark now, and we are nearing my stop. The afternoon's events flash through my mind as we turn the corner at the hotel into the final stretch of road. It's the thing to do, isn't it? The question. It happened twice during my little afternoon today, at the bank and at the outdoor shop. "Have you got anything else planned for the rest of the day?" seems the required question nowadays if a shop worker wants to keep their job. I sometimes mumble something about the day not taking up a lot of space in my future memoirs, while I stuff eggs and bananas into my shopping bag. Maybe one day I'll actually tell them. "Have you got anything much on for the rest of the day?" "I am going home, where Princess Kundalini may rise up in splendour. The lovely divine Shakti will meet in tender embrace the mighty Lord Shiva, and they will dance in tenderness and joy at the centre of my heart." One day, one day......

Photo: Andrea Davies

Serpent Rising

For a while, I had intended writing nothing about it. Keeping quiet, aside from in communication with a few empathic intimates. It is, after all, rather specific, personal, to be handled carefully. But it seems that it will be around for a while - maybe for ever. So, unless 'hibernation' on this blog is going to turn into rigor mortis, I have decided that a few words, at least, shall be forthcoming....

Over the past several months, things have got turned upside down and inside out a bit. Everything has changed. I feel simultaneously in a state of near-constant bliss, and as if I have been chucked out of a spin drier at high speed. During this short period, the energy we may call Kundalini has been in process of activation and awakening in this ancient and battered temple I call my physical body. It has become a full-on immersion, shaping everything I do - or, more frequently, don't do.

Needless to say, this is not something I have consciously intended. At the same time, in retrospect, there might be some rhyme and reason to matters after all. What I have been getting up to in recent times is precisely the kind of thing to catch the attention of Kundalini.

Take these subjects. 'Sacred duality, the divinity of polarity'; the four elements in Tarot, and the corresponding four psychic functions in Jung; the sacred feminine, whatever that is, and the dark moon goddesses: blog posts over the past two years have been littered with references to these and similar themes.

Looked at from one angle, all of this seems a bit fancy. However, it has not - I repeat, not - been intended as philosophical and metaphysical speculation; neither has it been a playing with ideas and concepts. It has been my own attempt, the best I could do, to map out the inner processes taking place within my life, inside my own direct experience. Mysticism, not philosophy. One theme to emerge has been my reservations (which turned into a despising, really) about a life shaped and led by concept and thought. 'Mind', as commonly understood. Now these reservations have born fruit. I am immersed in Kundalini process, which is all energy, feeling, sensation: about as thought-and-concept free as you can get.

I have no intention of sharing the details of the unfoldment which has led to this point. However, the sacred aspect to duality has been a key for me. This is well communicated through the upper section of the Kabbalist Tree of Life, along with its corresponding expression in Tarot. Kether is top of the Tree, parallel with the aces in Tarot. It is Oneness, non-duality, Source. Then comes Chokmah, two on the Tree and in Tarot: Wisdom, the initial division of the hitherto undivided. Basic dualities: light, dark; masculine, feminine. And then Binah, the three: Understanding. The reflexive consciousness which sees the 'One as Two' and 'Two as One'. It cognises the sacred process.

It was an enormous transformation of consciousness for me to see this. Most of my adult life had been led with an assumption (conscious or not is irrelevant) of basic oppositionalism: non-dual = good, dual = bad. Escape this rotten world of dualistic sorrows, the samsara, into nirvana, the pure bliss of the undivided. This was the name of the game.

Kabbala and Tarot see things differently. Duality is just one tiny step from the top of the Tree. It manifests the attributes of the Godhead, if you will. Instead of being opposed to one another, the dual and non-dual are mutual reflections. To see this brings the divine into everything; it is everywhere. We could even venture that Oneness without duality remains a bit dumb. It possesses no means of seeing itself, of self reflection. It cannot be creative. The One needs the Two, just as the Two need the One.

So, once more, just in case any reader still hasn't quite got it. This is not philosophical speculation. I have no time for such things, really. It is an attempt, imperfect no doubt, to communicate my own felt experience through the limited medium of words. The point is that Kundalini appears to take a vivid interest in 'sacred duality', the union of opposites. This is actually formulated better in the western mystical tradition of alchemy than elsewhere, in my view. This esoteric tradition is replete with references to the two-in-one, the sacred marriage of the masculine and feminine, the twin flames, the rising serpent, and the like. It all comes clothed in obscurity, tricky imagery, partly because it is by nature esoteric, but partly also because its physical, body-based mysticism would have been met with hostility, to put it mildly, by western Christianity, were it to present in more simple formats.

Much of my life has been spent with a penchant for the weird, unorthodox, the offtrack, along with a corresponding aversion to much that is considered conventional, mainstream. It is as if someone or something in the Universe has finally called my bluff. "Oh you, with a fatal fascination with the bizarre and inexplicable: get a load of this."

Yes. Living inside this Kundalini process - I shall call it thus - is probably the strangest thing to have happened in my life to date. And it is not something that can be turned off. The alchemical process is a highly autonomous one, it seems: it 'decocts and putrefies by itself'. 'You' don't do Kundalini: it does you. Surrender, give yourself up, shape yourself as best you can to be a receptacle fit to receive: this is the only way to go. Not hugely easy for a little smart-arse like me....

A few notes for anybody wishing to find out more. Some of the more traditional Hindu-based literature on Kundalini I find, well, not exactly dishonest, but partial, one-sided. All those neat and tidy diagrams of chakras, nadis, third eyes, and the rest. While experience has demonstrated to me that these phenomena do exist, it's not in the orderly fashion often depicted. The unfolding is not, to our normal way of thinking, linear or rational at all. Not in my case, at least. Dionysus, not Apollo, rules the house of Kundalini. She - for Kundalini is a 'she' - is Shakti, the goddess, the deep feminine fully embodied.

Though obscure, some of the alchemical stuff is more real. The paintings and engravings. The best sources, though, to my mind, are often the first-hand accounts by 'modern western people', folk who have actually travelled the journey. Look for the taste of honesty and authenticity.

Twitches, jerkings, stretchings, spasms; spontaneous mudras; internal rerouting of sexual energy. All the strange symptoms of Kundalini awakening that you read about I have found myself reliving. Kundalini is not something for the mind; it is energy. I am aware of it reconfiguring my physical body, quite literally. Which is a  bit disconcerting, but comes laced with a heavy helping of bliss.

Living inside the Kundalini process feels a bit like living inside an unscripted miracle. Here on Pale Green Vortex we are in, not so much 'hibernation', as in 'Kundalini quiet time.' I shall leave it there for now.....