The Loving Witness
Have you ever had a moment of stepping out of yourself and seeing your behavior with detached amusement, or surprise? There is a place in us that is always a witness to our lives, but most of the time we are too engaged in the drama to notice this. Some forms of therapy cultivate the witness position, so that you learn to sit in the midst of your own inner division, observing the several positions that your mind might hold, watching its argument with itself. Whenever you are caught between two sides of an argument, notice the witness who is hearing both sides, trying to figure out who is right.
A more deep aspect of this witness is the silence that lies below it. This is the observer who does not make a decision, demand to do the right thing, or place any judgment on the argument. Something has observed every moment of our lives and has noticed how mind tucks away all the memories and images it produces. When we enter stillness or deep silence in ourselves, free of self-reflection, this aware-ing observer is still present. It may be felt as the “I-am”, or simply the presence of being. There is an emanation of love from this stillness, a soothing and all-inclusive perspective in which what is happening in this moment is perfectly okay. When it becomes conscious and sees through the arguments, they often fall away, and what is true is revealed.
When kundalini stirs up the drama of deconstruction it is very challenging for the mind to tolerate. But this loving observer can appreciate and embrace this transformational process without difficulty. Through meditation there comes a noticing and cultivating of a relationship with this loving and silent core within us. Ultimately the relationship falls away as we realize this is the core of who we are. When you can sense this open and loving presence within, you have found the place that can hold and appreciate all the varied aspects of the process you are in. Whatever is happening in the external experience of your body and your life, this witness accepts it with compassion and love. Invite it to come alive in your body and your life. The energies of transformation may then become energies of bliss.
Chapter 8:
Where to Stand in the Kundalini Process
(This chapter has been available on my website www.kundaliniguide.com for several years and is repeated because of the many readers who have told me it was helpful to them)
I was once delayed for several hours in the busy and cavernous train station in Florence, Italy, because I was standing at a track waiting for a train that never came. All the signs had indicated this was the right place, and the number matched with the guide book information, but one by one the trains came up, indicating they were headed toward many towns, other than the one where I was going. Finally I was able to find a station master who spoke English and I discovered the train had come through several times, but on a different track. I had missed the announcements on the loud speaker, all made in Italian.
Looking back on over 40 years of being a spiritual “seeker” I realize now that I was often in a similar situation, standing firm in a territory that had a lot of activity and potential, but simply was not headed where I wanted to go. It is not an easy thing to notice, and one would think there would be great humiliation in this discovery. But I have found finally that no matter what meandering path we take to liberation, it is always our own unique and beautiful way to get there. (Or to get to the nowhere that is there, because where you are going turns out to be right here!) There may be delays, but they are not mistakes. Although it is humbling, the process is also richly fed by joy and gratitude.
There is a movement from the drama and deconstruction process that takes over our lives after an awakening of kundalini, and sometimes it is so subtle that we miss it. We might call it the emergence of stillness. The energy that arises in the activation and continuing process of kundalini awakening could be thought of as our spirit, clearing out the conditioning, points of view, old patterns, and anything that is held in our subtle body that has helped to define who we think we are. People have the idea that kundalini is about gaining powers or siddhis, because in India there are practices that appear to lead in that direction, and many openings can happen that allow consciousness to flow in new ways – bringing forth healing, visions, or paranormal and mystical insights and experiences. There is nothing wrong with these phenomena, but they have no value in terms of liberation. They can be used or not used, according to inclination, but if they become new identities, they can delay our awakening to Truth for decades, perhaps even lifetimes. They are distractions that may block inherent peace.
In my work with people who have activated kundalini energy, coming from all stages and conditions of life, I have found few who become enlightened in the process. Many became more wise and loving, or developed new abilities, or simply stayed for a long time in an in-and-out struggle between mystical experience and frustration with ordinary living. And yet in the yogic tradition kundalini is seen as the method, the path to enlightenment. What I have learned in the last few years through working in the Zen and Advaita Vedanta traditions is that kundalini can be considered not so much a goal, but simply an accompaniment to the spiritual process. By this I do not mean it is irrelevant, only that it has a job to do, which is to strip us down to such pure emptiness and openness that the truth of our nature can be seen directly, and lived completely. In the process it ignites and readjusts our energy field, bringing it to a higher frequency.
In yogic traditions that emphasize the activation of kundalini the idea is that by working with the subtle body, doing practices that move this energy up through the chakras, and bringing it ultimately through the crown, one will trigger what could be labeled cosmic consciousness. Some systems suggest one just stays there, sitting in a cave or hut, or even buried in a hole in the ground, indefinitely. But that is incompletion. Other systems teach the awakened to bring energy back down into hrit chakra, on the right side of the heart, which will enable the consciousness that is embodied to live a liberated life. This is a useful model, however it is exceedingly rare in the west to find anyone who knows how to do it.
In the non-dual traditions the emphasis is on consciousness. Either through a transmission of presence, or sitting in stillness, or shocking the mind out of its ordinary patterns of thinking, a person can wake up, deeply and profoundly, to the realization of his or her true nature. Actually it is more accurate to say that the true nature wakes up to itself. This is not an event that can be described well from mind to mind, just as one cannot describe the orgasmic experience adequately to someone who has never known it. It is an experience of our very essence awakening to itself, that which existed even before we were born into this body/mind form, with all the conditioning that make us into a unique and illusory personality. To be awake is the goal of the non-dual traditions. This entails a shift of identity from the little “me” into the recognition that paradoxically, “I am nothing – what I am is this vast, unfathomable, pregnant nothingness; and I am everything. What I am is the essence of all of life.”
Now the mind raises serious objections to this insight, because it seems it will take away the importance of thought, intellect and emotion in ruling our lives, and suggests something else more fundamental is underlying the whole game. And so when there are glimpses of realization the mind quickly rushes into other territory, focusing on new skills, or raising problems, or reminding us of all the limitations we have that mean we can’t possibly become liberated in this lifetime. It is so rare to meet a teacher who is actually living from this truth that it is easy to miss its significance even when it happens, because we haven’t seen it in anyone else. But in the midst of a great or even a minor mystical experience, and also during an ordinary life event, we can have a flash of that which we truly are, free of all traces of individuality. We are briefly awake, and we quickly forget it.
It is an innocent mistake to believe that if we simply accumulate enough mystical experiences we will be enlightened. These are such awesome moments that the mind places great significance on them. Likewise we may believe that our kundalin
i process will enlighten us if only we keep working and working on practices, and indeed it does provide us with moments of ecstasy and insight beyond what we knew before it awakened. The mind thinks it knows how to get to the spiritual goal, enjoys the drama of mysticism, and subliminally resists Self-realization because it will mean its own diminishment, so it can keep us in holding patterns for years, even for lifetimes. Also, the fact that we are continually distracted by other attractions in life, or entangled in emotional reactions or intellectual demands, keeps us from having the complete and total dedication to Truth that would lead us into a stable and permanent Self-realized life. Our personal desires and concepts continually reanimate the ego, even after a deep initial awakening.
Often there is a primal core issue or story that blocks completion of our true awakening. For me, I thought it was a fear of love, although I realized later it was also because I did not know where to stand. I could feel there was an opening that happened in truly free individuals who lived not at all for their personal gain, but in service to others, and it looked like love, a love I resisted knowing because I thought it would take over my life and make me painfully vulnerable. For others the core may be a treasured belief system about what they need, what the world needs, or the idea that they are not deserving or good enough to be liberated.
Unfortunately some spiritual systems tell people they need many lifetimes to awaken and take all hope away from their students. This is a great disservice to the Truth, because awakening is always here in every moment, available to every one of us, no matter what the history or core experience of our life. It is rare because so few of us are willing to give up our stance, or belief systems, or personality attachments, in order to see what is beneath them.
To sense directly the awareness that shines through all beings, peers through our eyes, enlivens our senses, empowers our motivations, and carries us through every moment of life, is to take the first step in the radical awakening to Truth which can lead ultimately to self-realization or liberation. We can experience this when we become very, very quiet, in a moment when there is no mental activity of any sort that we reach for or grasp, no practice to do, no idea to uphold. This is the point of sitting meditation. It is not that we reject the world, because rejection is also activity. We simply move into the silence, the deep stillness that is underneath all form and all movement, in the same way that the sky holds all planetary forms and every other part of existence. This is a consciousness that pre-exists, always exists, and never stops existing, and our personal lives are superimposed upon it. To wake up is to know oneself as That. Jesus said it as, “I am that I am”; the Non-dual sage Nisardagatta said it as, “I am that”; Ramana Maharshi, the great sage who taught Self-Inquiry, said it, “There is only the Self”; Buddha said it, “There is no self.” When asked if he was enlightened, he simply said "I am awake!".
In yogic systems kundalini movement is a long and challenging process that may eventually lead us to this realization. In non-dual teachings waking-up happens first, and then kundalini will likely happen simultaneously or follow in the wake of this shift into awakening, beginning its work of deconstructing the persistent self-identity.
I have seen many people wake up these past few years, while sitting with my teacher Adyashanti, who awakened in the Zen tradition, and now teaches outside of all traditions. And I notice that after the initial waking up, which may be very brief, or very deep and profound, the person finds himself or herself shifting back and forth, in and out of old identifications, even though they know these are not true. They see clearly they are the One, as well as the Whole. They understand there is no personal “me” other than the energies of conditioning that have been superimposed over the One, but the mind keeps reentering the life, bringing up old issues with brilliant clarity, activating dormant emotions, and stimulating great doubts. So in the non-dual tradition the process of living from that which is liberated happens after the initial Self-realization. (And no little “me” ever gets liberated; its importance simply fades away once it has been truly seen through.) It happens as we stand and face all the fragments of our so-called individuality and let them burn away, so that what is underneath can shine through.
So to fulfill the promise of a kundalini process the consciousness must recognize its own Self as the One Self, and this involves giving up the illusion that mystical experience is the Way. Usually the power and drama of a beautiful mystical experience overwhelms the emotions, and we come back longing for more and more of this. The problem is the continual reconstitution of the person who longs for more. In the excitement we forget to ask who was having the experience, or what is it that has the experience. It is the same One that has all experiences.
When we know absolutely that we are only that which is presence, in this moment, open and awake, then we find there is no longer any hunger for mystical experience, no longing for realization, no more “seeker” and no more objection to whatever arises in our lives. Kundalini may rage through us and we assume whatever is happening is okay. Kundalini may stop its continual gnawing at our subtle field and become quiescent and we just enjoy the peace of it. A mystical opening may occur and it is pleasant. No mystical experiences happen and life is still good. The one who was in the middle, the little “me” who thought things should be a certain way, has stepped aside.
When awakening happens we can become lost in space for a while, enjoying the leap into emptiness and the sense of who we are without any of the limitations our mind had placed upon us. We feel expansive. Compassion and unconditional love may awaken, because our true nature naturally expresses this way. We might feel we can do anything, although this tends to be spiritual ego leading us down a high-risk path. It is true in an absolute way, because at the absolute level we are indestructible and One, but not necessarily true of the bodies in which we carry this realization. To dance in this vastness without any sense of boundary is not the whole of freedom however, because if we can only be free in space we are not free.
So the completion of this journey is a return into ordinary life, and the discovery that the light and spaciousness of the whole is reflected in a myriad of ways in form, and seeing the delight and play it enjoys in those forms. The pain and anguish inherent in the limited life is also clear, and one realizes that the limitations of a world lived through the mind’s belief systems are dualistic and thus promote conflict and fear.
When the mind alone rules life it is completely self-centered. This is not a judgment but an observation – mental patterns center around the individual selves, or in some cultures, the cultural selves. That is why people with divergent ideas, beliefs, theologies, financial status, political stances, etc. come to blows so often, and are even willing to kill to protect opinions, and differences. When people are fully awakened they can no longer take on self-righteous positions, because they see through the limitations of mind. So realization is not about creating a more brilliant mind, but discovering a deeper wisdom, one that comes through the heart and has no investment in being right. It becomes a way to live that is simply flowing with what seems to be arising in the moment, a responding, a natural meeting with what is, a blending of love and wisdom. To the mind this sounds impossible, even dangerous. But to the heart it is clearly a reflection of the ancient teaching “Thy will be done.”
Kundalini awakening is a great opportunity to become fully conscious to who you essentially are, and to find yourself at one with all beings. The completion of this process is not what the mind would think. Adyashanti says in working with hundreds of students he has never had anyone say to him “This feels just the way I thought it would.” That has certainly been true for me, because I now see I stood at the wrong track in the station for years, entranced by my love for the ecstasy of the kundalini energy, and my mystical experiences.
Many spiritual seekers are trying to escape this ordinary world, and do not realize the great gift of returning to it as a whole person, finding no difference between the profound
and the profane, seeing God in all of it. Sometimes God is blinded by delusion and sometimes God is experiencing great congruence, but it becomes more and more obvious nothing else is happening but God having many experiences. One of the Zen sutras puts it, “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.” All One.
To become whole we embark on the great process of being stripped to the core, seeing all our patterns and all the darkness of the world as well, arising inside of us. There is waking up to knowing “I am this” just as in the foundational Indian scripture, “The Bhagavadgita”, Krishna (Divine Beingness) shows Arjuna (his human disciple) his true face, and Arjuna cannot bear to look for more than a moment. The little “me” cannot sustain this understanding, but the greater Self that we discover we are, can hold it all, and is already holding it all. That is what leads to liberation, the absolute willingness to hold it all, and then when the timing is right, to live as that, to give up the boundaries of being self-centered, and ask what is that which wants naturally to be expressed through me. It will be different for each of us, according to some unique divine plan that no one has access too, but there will be an expression. We can’t decide to do this with mind and it is not a practice. It just happens when we let awakeness run its course. Certain old traces of the humanness may object, just as Jesus asked the cup of crucifixion to pass from him, but in the end it will be done, graciously and with no attachment to the outcome. We begin to flow with the impersonal consciousness that lives this multi-faceted life of human existence.
The Kundalini Guide: A Companion For the Inward Journey (Companions For the Inward Journey Book 1) Page 11