Finally met a man who has spent half a lifetime studying under a kundalini master. Ponder than a moment. Half a lifetime? What hasn’t he been taught that he needs to stay the pupil in his 50s?
Turns out, a lot, for he returns again and again, making the long flight from Hawaii to Illinois, to have “enlightening” kundalini experiences through the grace of his master. He has been taught to avoid having them on his own because, his lord and master says, it is dangerous to do so. If true, then what is he returning to? Access to a taboo, right? This secret power bond between higher and lower, master and himself, dealer and junkie?
Kundalini is wrongly treated like a hallucinogen without the drug, a parlor trick of the mind. This is not to say that no psychic phenomena occur when experiencing kundalini, but that the overarching phenomenon is the ability of a kundalini master to make a living by doing nothing. Spiritual masters are, if nothing else, the original Paris Hilton.
Imagine what it means to see yourself as a spiritual master with disciples. You must live in a bubble where you are revered, which is a nice word for put on a pedestal and feared. So, the first job of a master is to instill fear through a show of strength, usually in the form of power, wisdom, and/or knowledge. How else does such a one get others to kneel before him? You have to heel to receive healing. And this we call respect. If he were truly respectable, I mean inwardly so, he would renounce himself right now.
Kundalini, like ego death, is a mystery that childish millions around the world treat as something they control, something they do, so that they do not have to be confronted with the unknowable. More to the point, so they don’t have to be the unknowable. Psychonauts will find a shaman to guide them so they aren’t completely out of control as they hand the reigns of their perception to plants and fungi. Meditators will find a master to guide them spiritually through the psychic terrain of “kundalini awakening.” It is truly all the same ego crap born of desire.
It starts as bravery, a dare in the name of finding out something new and thrilling and more alive than this. And then it becomes routine, or knowledge, a safe haven in the brain where you can go to relax and remember that there’s more to life than what Joe Schmo believes in. Before you know it you’re doodling intricate mandala art and having deeply boring discussions about the merits of cannabis as a spiritual tool or which yoga pose is better for elongating your spine and opening the chakras. Meanwhile, you’re still an arrogant wreck inside who flies off the handle when life doesn’t go your way, which is still almost always, which is why you need a happy place to begin with.
To begin with. Hey. Yeah. Imagine what your life would be like if you had just stayed there? I mean wherever that was for you, before you took off on your spiritual quest that has become your prison. Imagine if at the beginning of the journey, while everyone else was picking that right path for them that leads to the same place (and here I’m still talking about prison), you just sat down and didn’t go anywhere because you didn’t understand any of this and you were the only one honest enough to admit it? Imagine sticking with honesty, with innocence, instead of picking the first path that appealed to your vanity or your fear? Who would you be now?
What do master and novice look like to the unknowable?