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kundalini
August 2007 
Z2: Riding the Kundalini Dragon, Integrating Altered States
Daate
First off, see our other presenters here on these dates:
Wednesday 7/25: Julian
Thursday 7/26: Delia
Friday 7/27: Christiana
BREAK
Monday 7/30: Michael
Tuesday 7/31: Sa'Rah
Wednesday 8/1: Daate
Thursday 8/2: Mijit
Friday 8/3: Jim
I didn't really know how to start this piece, but my awesome forerunners here have encouraged me to realize that there's no definite starting point. The only thing I knew was that it was going to be kinda LOOOONGGG....so, sorry.....:)
As quite a few people here on Zaadz already know, I'm in the process of healing from trauma and this process has made me super-aware of the energies in my body. Or, better put, it's helped me give a name and context to those energies, which have always been incredibly strong and sometimes scary.
I was born in 1977 and am 29 now. As a child, I was intensely artistic, solitary, and independent. I also had the feeling of just having come from somewhere amorphous, and that life was a sea of emerging shapes and forms, but that nothing was particularly solid.
At around age four, I stopped feeling safe in my environment, as my father began to be physically, emotionally and sexually abusive to my sister and I. Childhood was something of a dark nightmare, and I didn't really know what it was to feel safe. My body began to freeze. For as long as I can remember, my spine has felt cold, frozen, and like an electric coil that is sitting somewhere in there, sometimes jangling, sometimes prickling-but I have always been hyper-aware of my spine.
Interestingly though, as a kid I sometimes had access to moments in which I realized things could go another way-that there were alternatives to how I felt. I would wonder to myself about how different it is possible to feel in one's body, and how these states make life look totally different in turn. A couple of these I consider "altered states." The first and one of the most beautiful of those times, I was six and sitting on the balcony of our apartment in Virginia. I remember it was a dark summer night and the woods behind the house were silent, deep and still. I suddenly felt something I'd never felt before-an indescribable peace settling over me. My spine stopped tingling and went silent; my head cleared; the stillness went all through my body and I felt I couldn't have moved if I had wanted to. I felt as if I were being given very clear instruction to stay still and watch. So I did. Being a very visual child, I got a vision of sorts: in the darkness I saw a huge, great, flaming wheel. In the periphery of the wheel were snapshots from life-literally little moving scenes or vignettes. I saw myself as a teenager, a woman, and an old woman; I saw myself with partners and with friends, laughing, fighting, traveling. There was this huge wheel of chaos and messiness and drama and wild motion, and I understood that I was going to partake in all of it. But I also saw what was inside the flaming wheel-a perfectly still and dark center, an endless untouchable silence. No matter what happened in the wheel, the middle would stay still forever and ever; and I also had the inexplicable feeling I had come from there and was going back there. I felt a soothing remove from oftlinethis engaged life I was going to live, as if watching the filmstrip life of someone I loved. It was like saying, "Oh, look, how sweet that they're going to go through all that; they're going to get lost and bound and caught up. How sweet!" while also remembering that the silence was the middle of all of that, that it was going to remain immobile and everpresent.
Afterward I felt deliciously quiet and still for days and days. I marveled at the quiet in my spine. I knew now somehow that the universe was OK-or that I was OK in the universe-because my own personal OK-ness was inextricably tied in with the OK-ness of all life, and the wheel had said that life was OK. Or that OK-ness within life was within my range of possibilities. A bit of the intangible and immense stillness had worked its way into me, and I carried it with me ever after with a sense of curiosity, wonder and expansion that I desperately needed.
Quick note here: a book recommended to me by Julian called "The Hidden World of Trauma; Archteypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit" has helped enormously, even though I do view my wheel-in-the-woods vision as more than simply a trauma-resource.
Over the next several years, life at my parent's house did not improve much, and at 15 I attempted suicide by overdosing. After this I was put on a drug called Dexedrine which treats both ADD and depression, as I was one of the throng of many kids at that time getting put on Ritalin-type drugs. The drug interfered with my desire to do art, which I did not like, and also cut me off from a considerable amount of emotional and somatic awareness, but this may have been for the best, as it prevented me from attempting again before I could get away from my parent's house.
At seventeen I left home and moved as far away from Washington, DC and my father as the country would allow. I lived in Half Moon Bay, California, for two years. During this time I cold-turkey quit the Dexedrine without any therapeutic help, which was stupid and dangerous; but I had not yet met a therapist who I knew could truly help me. My energy was devoted to working, coming home, and feverishly working on a mural on my wall in which I detailed my life. I was intensely suicidal for a year, as I re-adjusted to having feelings again, but was slowly building something else underneath-the understanding that I was not going to take my own life, that my mind was precious, that the returning energies of love and great care and vulnerability-that raw and open beauty that had lived in me all my life despite everything-were returning to me, slowly knocking on the door and trying to integrate themselves. My body was this rich, deep well of sadness and also of joy and seemingly boundless love. I understood somehow that the thoughts of suicide would pass, that they were visitors, and that I could trust that my spirit underneath was undergoing intensive reconstructive surgery.
I started doing yoga at age twenty, once I had globetrotted a bit in Europe and had moved back to America and the DC area. Like many people I experienced a startling change in my thought process and emotional life. I'd had no idea that doing something with my physiology could affect my mind so dramatically. At that time, I considered my life to be more about self-management than growth. My nervous system was not well-equipped to handle sensory input and was easily overwhelmed. I was admittedly afraid of the nervous system, primarily because I was sure mine was hopelessly shoddy. At that time I attributed my intense emotional pain to simply being an intrinsically weak and horrible person, rather than to what I had lived through as a child. In my mind's eye, the nervous system was a delicate beam of electricity inside a person that could be snapped and broken as easily as skin, plucked into a frenzy like that cartoon soundtrack in Fantasia. And you either had a good one or a crappy one-it was the luck of the draw.
But after doing yoga for only about a month (albeit for two hours daily), the transformation spoke for itself. A strange calm had descended on me. It was as though my life had lain frozen in the bottom of my belly like a scene in one of those snow-globes, and yoga had shaken up the globe and the scenes of my life were now free to float up. And I began to wonder about my nervous system. Had I come with all the necessary parts and circuitry after all? I could suddenly think; my head had cleared quit a bit. I realized, with not a little horror, what a frozen ball of rage and terror I had always been, how even my vision had been affected by the constant buzz in my spine. And my spine was getting help, finally, was how it felt-that yoga was taking care to massage it and love it a little, this poor little spine that kept chugging on regardless.
I wasn't doing yoga or anything else I was doing to get or be "spiritual." I hated the word spiritual. It was a word that belonged to the world of my mother, who considered herself a great spiritual yoga/meditation authority yet who had never managed to provide basic needs for herself or her children. No, I was doing yoga and meditating purely to calm the hell down and to avoid ever again being medicated, a thought I could hardly bear.
As far as Kundalini went, it would have been the last thing on earth I would have sought, seeing as I equated it with folks who were less than grounded. I just wanted to feel relatively normal, for starters. I was interested in science, in the science of the spine, in that emerging fusion of science and spirituality-it would have to be that, if I was going to consider spirituality at all.
What I consider my Kundalini experience happened several years ago in DC, when an acquaintance of mine was taking a course to get certified as a hypnotherapist. When she told me her class needed a guinea pig for "practice," I agreed to go (I'm still not sure what made me say yes.) But in that little room, surrounded by ten or so students and with their small Indian instructor, I had one of the most mind-blowing experiences of my life.
I still can't say exactly what happened or why. The little instructor held a dangling crystal above me and told me to look at it, which I did, thinking how hopelessly cliche all this was. He said something else about relaxing before his voice warbled into the background. Then suddenly the room was gone. I was speeding, speeding, zooming down tunnels of cosmic space. I was traveling deeper, ever deeper, stars zipping past me like a screensaver. Just as I thought that there was no seeming end to the depth of me, the speeding stopped-suddenly, abruptly, with a jolt. I was hanging somewhere like a weightless, suspended mass, hovering in a black silence. There was no sound, no breath, nothing to see. I had reached the middle of everything. Somewhere, in the midst of that zooming, I'd left myself and joined up with the rest of space. It was in me, but it was bigger than me; it was an interior dimension that contained the whole world. It was the wildest thing! It was thunderous, ancient, motionless, beginningless, endless, deep, vacuous. I know that I'll never be able to adequately describe that silence to anyone no matter how many words I use. I hung out there for I don't know how long-it literally could have been a year or a day. And then from far away, a voice, unclear as if it were calling me up out of the ocean, was saying my name. Something tugged me gently from behind. I went zooming backward as though by bungee chord at my navel, back up through the endless corridors and tunnels of stars. And then I was awake.
Sitting in the chair in the room, I was immediately so overwhelmed and exhausted that I could have slept for a week. I had the thought that if I hadn't regularly been doing yoga I might have short-circuited.
On the way to the subway afterwards, a very odd sensation began to spread through me, like a vapor or ooze that seeped through my body and beyond. It was an unbelievably warm, golden energy that saturated me and everything around me, a surge of intense, intense love. Something had been pried open and the energy was free to flow and flow. I kept babbling to my then-boyfriend how everything was beautiful, everything was holy, that this was how the saints felt-burning with rapture. Everything was shining. The dirty streets of D.C. were golden; the people around me were busy, unaware extensions of my energy and love; love flooded through and around and between everything, crisscrossing beams of light that burned and scintillated. I was so much more than my body, and people were so much more than people. I had only one desire on earth-that every person alive feel for a moment this powerful and amazing golden love. That desire ached in me the way none other ever had. I sat on the horrible orange seats of the Metro and thought they were beautiful; gum stuck to the window was holy; nothing on Earth fell outside of my love. I was completely, totally at the service of humanity. To be alive was without question to share love: why else be alive?
And in the midst of my heady rapture I was repeatedly and mostly struck by the miracle of the accessibility of this state. It was this experience that led me to become dimly aware that the principle of "enlightenment" or awakening was dormant in every person, which seemed to be immensely important to me. We all have the same brains and nervous systems and the same possibilities available to us. If I, a person who was not yet a practiced meditator, who was not on an intentional spiritual path, who practiced yoga mainly to manage anxiety, and who was leery of the entire New Age community could experience this, anyone could. It was the awareness of the ubiquitous nature of awakening that stayed with me-and to me it seemed more universal than personal.
The bliss lingered for a few days. I was extremely fatigued, and as it began to wear off, my usual thought patterns re-established themselves. The experience was certainly beautiful and a great marker for the rest of my life, but the energy was intense and at times unbearable; I sometimes shook or felt as though electricity was shooting up my spine, that electric hands had reached in and literally begun to violently vibrate my spine-my spine which, let's just say, was still wearing training wheels. It felt safer to "close," as it were, which, at that time, I beat myself up for. I felt terribly unspiritual for feeling relieved to be preoccupied with the "mundane" again.
Several other contributors have touched on Somatic Experiencing Work already. Doing SE work has given me tremendous insight into that experience. (See Julian's Kundalini entry; he delineates this process nicely.) In SE, which is a body-based therapeutic modality for working with trauma, we learn that the human organism pendulates between what you might call expansion and contraction. If the body is out of balance, equilibrium must be restored in the nervous system in order to regain the person's ability to gently and easily pendulate between the two extremes. Too much of either extreme can be dangerous for the person and bring them out of balance.
I can only assume that when integrating an altered state or peak experience, it is useful to monitor and track physical sensations so that if, for instance, the expansion of an altered state is too much for a person to accommodate, they can resource by incorporating a little "contraction," (this can be as simple as actively grounding themselves and returning to slightly more "concrete" reality) in order to give a more grounded container to the powerful energies of altered states. Many altered states, if not carefully monitored, lead away from embodiment and toward dissociation. I'm pretty sure almost everyone reading this knows that.
My body was "contracting" and doing what it needed to do in order to manage and contain the enormity of that experience. So this is my example of what happens when someone has no context or container for an experience like this, and especially if someone experiences something like this while they are still psychologically dissociative and without energetic boundaries. Note that at that time I was not yet in therapy, had not yet processed the memories of sexual abuse, and was still riddled with an anxiety which produced insomnia, nightmares, and fits of shame. I feel it's a wonder I had such an experience without exploding, given those circumstances.
My next experience is more of a radical shift in consciousness (which I've in no way fully integrated yet, but I feel this time that I am sufficiently psychologically and emotionally prepared for it, have been in therapy for a while, that my system in general is more integrated and that my nervous system is more stabilized.)
In the process of healing, I've become acquainted with my mortality in a whole new way in the last six months or so. I've been learning to hang out with Death, and it's so weird, it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
I always wanted to know what lies in the bottom of me. I had no idea it was Death. And one thing that healing requires is regular visits to the very bottom of myself. In this land there are no barriers, no cushions, nothing to buffer these immense wild winds that sweep at me from every direction. It's so strange and in a way what everyone who has suffered any kind of trauma suffers-an intimate acquaintance with total existential despair. For the trauma survivor, the face of death takes on a bitter irony. For the child who deeply understands that his life is at risk every day, Death is a daily reality and possibility, a truth from which there is no escape.
I think we often assume that meeting and greeting the truth of Death would be awful. I mean Death unmasked-Death without being romanticized, Death without being monstrasized. How interesting, then, that it seems to be that there is no way (for me, at least) to heal fully from long-term developmental trauma than to walk headfirst into this land and confront Death. I realized I couldn't sidestep him, nor did I want to anymore. I'd developed this bizarre, morbidly curious relationship with him. He had haunted me for so long and worn so many grotesque masks that I wanted to know what he actually looked like. No face of his would really be more terrible than those I'd imagined. My spirit, after all, had been spread so wide, my boundaries so thinned, my capacity for pain was so great and I'd been so elasticized that I felt I could hold almost anything-including the real face of Death.
I had also been through a time of denying death, of thinking that the most enlightened and advanced thing to do was to transcend death; I had a brief spell of feeling like this life was a tiny and insignificant terrace on a great ascending ladder that went, well....up to....you know, somewhere better. Somewhere cleaner, where there were no trash trucks, sexual abuse or taxes. This was primarily before I got into therapy and began confronting the monster of my own past, the various survival mechanisms and beliefs I had employed, and pride about the tremendous resources I had managed to accrue.
And it's so weird being here with Death without being dissociated, without being able to zone out on the things I see in the bottom of myself. I see the figures of my past as stark, bleak, standing out in sharp relief against this desolate sky. I see everything that ever happened and with it, the knowledge that I will die. It feels like an odd relief, to be standing here looking at what happened, and seeing that I was right, my body was right, my little uneducated young child's body had an absolutely sophisticated awareness of its own mortality.
And yes, Death is razor-sharp. No, he's not like my little fantasy-critters of childhood who sang me to sleep. Even the fantasy-critters stand there and look at him-I can hardly believe it-respectfully. They know him, they don't fear him. They have a relationship with him. This is a revelation to me.
I feel closer to myself here than I have ever felt before. Standing here holding hands with Death, I find it funny that he had a hundred different names within my soul and not a single one was close. I have sentimentalized him, I have demonized him. And now I see I can bear standing here with Death, without dying.
And so....not only do I feel great compassion for myself all of a sudden, but I feel it for all of humanity as well. Because standing here in this place is the first time I've gotten a grounded, embodied, feet-on-the-ground sense of that great interconnected matrix to which we all belong, and it's the first time it's been made palpable in all its beauty. I feel I've transcended the place in myself that is about me (without dissociating)-that this landscape I'm in is a fraction of the great country central to humanity, that if we were all to come visit the bottom of ourselves we would come parachuting down, peppering down to land in different parts of this land like Magritte's Golconde. And I see how very terrifying a confrontation with your own mortality can be. For a second I see how for most of us this is simultaneously an abstract finale somewhere on the horizon as well as something that is an underlying, subconscious and powerful hum, one that drives our lives as human beings. I see how very many things we do to keep the wolf-winds away.
But at any rate-here with Death things are different, far clearer and sharper and happier and sadder, and the pain of being alive is tender and necessary and precious. And I didn't mean to come here, I didn't think I'd come here. Here is just kind of where I landed once I started feeling safer in my body. And weirdly enough, my spine, the more solid and able to conduct light it gets, is also buddies with Death. My spine is soothed and calm to see that I'm actually finally looking Death in the eye. I'm realizing my body can hold a hell of a lot of stuff; and really, to be perfectly honest, nothing is really worse than what I've already been through. I never thought grounding myself would allow for more light to pass through; that happens unintentionally, as a wonderful by-product of grounding.
So...don't know if that counts as an "altered state"-it feels so wonderfully earthbound and solid, and somewhere in my little head "altered state" still means airy-but it sure feels like something.
Thanks for reading!
Access: Public
oh yum.
yum, yum.
what a beautifully paired set of epiphanies - undergirded by honesty about unbearable suffering.
thanks so much daate!
i have much to ask and share, but will wait until later….
wonderful piece, daate!! your groundedness is felt in every word.
i resonate on many levels with your story. just last week was discussing having felt death during a deep depression after my father died. the stillness, alone, no where to go or a place to belong.
working with children became the lifeline back for me. the connection to love, joy and hope. giving what i sorely missed and having it come back so unconditionally.
i know you work with children as well. did you start working with them around the same time you met Death as part of your healing? i find such strength in your facing of Death.
thank you for sharing your story.
Daate said:
“There was this huge wheel of chaos and messiness and drama and wild motion, and I understood that I was going to partake in all of it. But I also saw what was inside the flaming wheel-a perfectly still and dark center, an endless untouchable silence. No matter what happened in the wheel, the middle would stay still forever and ever; and I also had the inexplicable feeling I had come from there and was going back there. I felt a soothing remove from oftlinethis engaged life I was going to live, as if watching the filmstrip life of someone I loved. It was like saying, “Oh, look, how sweet that they're going to go through all that; they're going to get lost and bound and caught up. How sweet!” while also remembering that the silence was the middle of all of that, that it was going to remain immobile and everpresent.”
Daate…this is amazing! for you to have an awareness of this at such a tender age, confirms that consciousness or awareness IS…ALWAYS. don't know your history, but are you of Native American heritage?
am still soaking this one in; beautifully expressed, loved the analogy with the wheel, and just what that has represented itself as in ancient literature…truth is within…
on the death thingy…have been told that unless it is accomplished here…in the valley of the shadow of ego, that we will continue to come back to confront and resolve issues that prevent the so-called spiritual death and rebirth…
thanks annie! no, i started working with kids before i even began therapy, which was a few years ago. i no longer teach, but i do miss kids. they're wonderful. yes, they do return you to joy.
hi starlight, thanks for the kind words. no, i'm half-indian and half-german. well, my dad grew up in pakistan but was born in jaipur. so i'm i guess what you could call a “germastani.” :)
i don't personally really believe that it's helpful to me right now to wonder what i didn't “accomplish” in this life; i see where you're coming from, i really do, and did once believe that. but i think what my comfort with death has done for me is helped this life be all that i need to focus on and cherish. i was once in a position where, in addition to panicking about the everyday difficulty of this life, i was worried what the cosmic council thought of me, and which kind of life they'd relegate me to next, were i to fail in this one. but our mortality burns to the core, i think, and helps wake us up to the reality that there are no guarantees post-death.
again, thanks so much for the kindness. i'm feeling a special fondness for the little girl on the balcony myself. :)
question:
you say -
”
Quick note here: a book recommended to me by Julian called “The Hidden World of Trauma; Archteypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit” has helped enormously, even though I do view my wheel-in-the-woods vision as more than simply a trauma-resource.”
i wonder if by “simply” you might also mean “just?”
which makes me wonder if calling something simply/just a trauma-resource somehow feels diminishing?
personally i think trauma resources are stunning. stunning. amazing. beautiful. filled with meaning. spiritual.
i think that when we have been deeply traumatized and we have an experience of deep letting go, finding a place of safety, feeling relief from the suffering and anxiety, there is an almost epic archetypal grace, gratitude, reorientation to the part of the mind that constructs meaning and offers intuitive/creative perspectives……
interstingly i think that the more extremely not-OK our life experience has been - trauma etc - the more compelling is the thought process/feeling in those moments that says it is all OK - and in such instances not just my relief, but also my trauma (as big as it is) is somehow OK (i think this conception sits on top of the powerful, liberated, grateful relief felt throughout the nervous system - i survived and i am OK now - nothing is threatening my cohesion in this moment….) but the interesting next step is to up the ante on the OK-ness (because the not-OK ness is SO big) and the thought that the whole universe is OK arises…. the stepped back perspective from which the whole universe is OK (no matter what) is powerful and convincing and in some ways a deep embrace of what is - but in another way i think it has an important element of depersonalization/dissociation this of course can easily seem like transcendence/higher truth….. i don;t think even one child - let alone the millions all over the world who are being emotionally, physically or sexually abused and the way this impacts their lives and the lives of future generations is at all OK. period. (i know you are not doing this) but it breaks my heart when out of an unwillingness to see this suffering for what it is - spiritual people try to candy coat it, put a metaphysical spin on it, make it about karma, destiny or some grand master plan the universe has - yuk!
interstingly, i think that when we are extremely traumatized - there is a super-important psychological aspect of healthy narcissistic mirroring that does not occur - in fact the opposite occurs and there is a deeply internalized sense of being defective.
so the compensation for this is naturally a need to be perfect, superior, enlightened and at the center of the universe instead of insignificant.
(the joke is that this stuff often gets all jumbled together with the resulting feeling that “i am the piece of shit that the world revolves around!”)
so it is on this exact issue of how to integrate altered states and again how we interpret them based on our psychograph over time that i think my interest turns here….
when someone comes into my practice convinced of angels, spirit guides, and the multiple universal synchronicities that have guided them to me - i know one thing almost for certain: there is most likely a big unprocessed trauma there…..
so too when people come in with a big investment in this or that guru and/or a deep belief in prophecy, aliens, or how the “work” they are doing in ceremony is changing the karmic energy field for all of humanity etc….
over time as we access the trauma and the person gradually heals - these inflated, dissociative fantasies generally become less interesting and real life becomes more tolerable…
so we get into some highly charged and fascinating questions, no?!
i am not saying that anything you said in your beautiful, grounded, honest piece is refelctive of any of this - merely that it opens the door to possibly explore the continuum between epiphanic genuine insight, trauma-resource and wildly overcompensated delusional fantasies given the stamp of approval by altered state experience..
Daate, thanks so much for your post. While I could probably say that I’ve had a few Kundalini experiences, I am not on the same terms with Death that you are, and I am grateful for the guiding beacon as I attempt to engage with my fear.
cheers,
mark
j…really related to that last post…i agree that the mind protects with fantasy; once those fantasies start crashing down around you…well, as i am certain you know…healing is very painful; the mind wants to make sense of all the pain and suffering, and that i suppose is why it turns to fantasy. we have plenty of it around (LOL). and plenty of those that want to sell it…i think it helps to remember that the mind is going to do whatever it has to do, until it is subjected to something 'better'…then there is that suspician of that something 'better', being much like the previous something 'better'…anyways, thanx for putting this together…it is amazing how through other's experiences we learn of ourselves…
Daate…
wow.
stunning honesty and wisdom and beauty in this piece…the wheel of chaos with the stillness and constancy in the center…what beautiful imagery…right up my alley, ya know?…not to mention so much of your story i relate to…thank you for your willingness to share so much of yourself…
and your friendship with death…right on…the friend that will never leave your side…and opens the doorway to living life…yipeeeee…
anyhow, your strength inspires.
love and grace…S.
hey mr. j,
thanks so much for the comment, it opens the door for me to explain myself a little more articulately. i by no means meant at all that i needed a “lesson” or any of that other crap (i know you didn't think i did) but it's an important point to clarify, because i have related some of these experiences to people in the new age community and have been met with a lot of “your suffering was there so that your soul could grow” type of garbage. and i don't know exactly why i said “just a trauma resource,” but you already articulated that for me (would that i could remember just how) but it was something about knowing in that moment that i was tapped into some kind of archetypal understanding, and therefore felt more connected to the rest of humanity and the human story than i ever had before—and further that this connection fostered a desire in me to keep going, because there was more and there would be a time in my life where i'd be free to explore that “more.” so that's all i meant, both by the “just a trauma resource” statement and also by the “knowing things were OK” statement—because, obviously, things were not in the slightest bit OK.
yeah, when we're highly activated, any reprieve from that state is literally an “altered state,” and i think for me, feeling like anything was OK as a kid was a pretty big deal.
Mark—about Death—it's an ongoing dance, that blazing clarity about it is something that is slowly working its way into me, just like anything. but thanks! do you mind my asking a bit about your working with your relationship to Death? I'm interested and fascinated.
and yes, starlight, i agree.
yum - this is the kind of polishing of perspectives i have been trying to engage in the last few days…
everyone - please know that i have the deepest respect for the painful and beautiful experiences being shared - i have been trying (here and on sarah and chrisiana's blog) to expand and deepen some of the interpretive work - which i think is essential to flesh out a picture of integration.
in love
~j
Hi Daate,
A powerful and moving description of your experience after being a “guinea pig” for your acquaintance, and of your ongoing grounding integration of the transformative process. I find your reflections on being with Death quite moving as well.
Blessings,
Jim
thank you, jim. :)
something about the way you brought up the nervous system entered my brain because i have spent most of the day observing it…i have very little to say about it, other than i forgot how key the understanding and importance of regard for it is in the energetic integration of “things” and what a strong voice it is…well, today it is screaming, and my mind has suddenly began listening…so thank you again, my friend…blessings…S.
hey sarah sweetie,
yeah, i couldn't have done any of this without studying the nervous system. i think you'd really like Somatic Experiencing, considering you've got a lot of activation in yours (not good or bad, just activation) and that maybe learning self-regulation could possibly help with it…..
i will be working with hala (the other teacher at julians esalan retreat) starting monday on that…it is nice to have a better understanding of where i am going and look forward to possibly exchanging more thought with you once i do…
oh, that's awesome…..were i out there i'd definitely do a session with hala too…..she seems amazing….and keep me posted! :)
Daate, Julian and community,
This piece deeply touched me, it touched me deeper than I first initially realized as I sit here now with some deep sadness and tears. It is such a blessing to have an intimate relationship with Death. To let Death inform, deepen and give an edge to day to day life. Form arises out of the ground of being and it is Death which gives it shape. To fully embody that truth takes much courage and willingness to look, to accept, to witness the inevitable denials and then look, accept some more. So thank you Daate.
Some personal history. 18 months ago my sister M. was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had never smoked or exhibited any other of the at risk behaviors. She had been struggling with pheumonia that wouldn't heal when the cancer was found. She lived in Ojai and I live in Maine. I had to work through many feelings of helplessness, distance and the difficulties of connecting by email and phone (neither my favorite form). Julian, I hear you about candy coating. There was the 'week from hell' when the cancer was first found. Each day we would get news and try to put the best (I first typed beast) possible interpretation on the information. But it was an exercise in futility. It was cancer; it was stage IV; it was in her bones; it was in her liver; it was in her brain. I flew out to California both to be with her and to support my mom and dad.
Now my sister had a very new age resume and she also had guts. She walked her talk. She had followed a guru in the seventies, agreed to an arranged marriage (guru's choice) to her 'soul mate', divorced him after putting him through law school and he announced that he was gay, left that group and became interested in native american spirituality, channeling, vision quests, shamanism, and more. She had a wonderful sense of humor but also a disturbing credulity. She was a much loved auntie to my two children who both spoke of her compassionate support as they moved through adolescence.
When I arrived in California, I hoped to have a conversation with her about death and about Death. I had recently trained as a hospice volunteer. I expected her to have some sober understanding of her situation. But it was not to be. She told me she wasn't dying, that she was very sick but was going to get better and she did not want to talk about death _ thank you very much little brother….
I supported her in her determination and her commitment to western style treatment and the opinions of her oncologist. I watched the radiation pickle her brain and the gauntlet of chemo pummel her vitality to the breaking point. I sat in Maine with my agony and frustration as her doctors argued for a feeding tube (which only brings minor relief in 5% of cases). So, for the remaining five months of her life she never spoke about death to me or anyone else in the family that I know of. It saddened me and while I have shed many tears, Daate's piece uncovered more veins of grief for me to express, allow, release…
My sister finally entered hospice care after a contentious, week long discussion with her doctor. When he found out that she was not eating he told us (I'm not making this up) ” She must eat! If you have to use a cattle prod to make her eat then do it.” Anger. Grief. Frustration. She moved back home. I went out for two more visits. Each time she was close to dying but rallied. I remember one time I went into her room to just be with her and sit seeking the companionability of silence. She said ” Well, if you're not going to talk I'm going to turn on the TV” . She had some complicated satellite service that brought in hundreds of channels and we spent an hour watching something inane. Sadness.
In June of last year my family came west again to see M and to celebrate our daughters college graduation. It was a contrasting mix of passages. It was very near the end for M.
Mystery: at one point within a few days of her death she woke up out of her semi-slumber and told the care giver “I went somewhere.” The woman, a friend asked her “What was it like?” She answered with a smile “It was goooood….”
We picked a rose from her garden. After our daughter's graduation the four members of my family left for a long-planned river trip on the Yampa. When we reached the confluence of the Yampa and Green we did a simply ceremony of releasing petals of the rose into the rivers edges one by one, each of us saying a silent prayer. It was a marking of her death that she would have appreciated.
So I have done a lot of process work around these events in the year since she died. I attended her memorial service out west and met the hundreds of people that she had met and influenced over the course of her life. Many women spoke of her healing and compassionate wisdom. It was a side of her that I had rarely seen. Very moving and powerful.
This past month I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. I was thrown into a space of psychic turmoil. Logically, dispassionately, I know that I am not my sister, that her story is hers and mine is mine. But the imagination is not interested in logic. It wants to plant itself in the deepest, darkest soil it can find. So I have had many thoughts about life and death. Many tears as I shared my news with my mom and dad and witnessed their fears and longing. I have had to deeply recognize my own mortality and try to know and feel it as broils and moves through me.
Now it seems from further blood work and xrays that my cancer was discovered at an earlier stage. I am scheduled for surgery on the new moon and the urologist is confident that will completely resolve the problem and I'll be back in health in 4 weeks. One of the odd pieces of this interactive puzzle has been the abstraction of it all. I am strong and vital with no observable symptoms. The symptom that prompted the initial CAT scan has disappeared. I am grateful for that demonstration of Grace. But that doesn't mean that my world has not been turned upside down.
I deeply resonated with what you wrote Julian. There remain areas where I spin and slant the narrative differently but I very much respect your contribution. Death is the key that unlocks the heart. The willingness to face what is found when that door opens is the essence of spiritual inquiry.
I still wonder where my sister “went”. I have no doubts that it was goood.
Thanks to everyone for this rich conversation.
coyote…thank you for this…your courage has touched me deeper than i can express and i wish you strength in your fight…highest blessings…S.
i second that emotion - thank you so much coyoteyogi.
authenticity, courage, grace….thanks for meeting me exactly where i was standing - and then a whole lot more - i appreciate our interactions over the last two weeks a great deal.
Daate,
“And in the midst of my heady rapture I was repeatedly and mostly struck by the miracle of the accessibility of this state. It was this experience that led me to become dimly aware that the principle of “enlightenment” or awakening was dormant in every person, which seemed to be immensely important to me. ”
If there is anything that distinguishes the Kundalini experience from the wilderness of psychosis, it is this realization of accessibility, the “seeing” it in others, and the sense of how close it is to the surface. This, too, is true of death.
I have never felt comfortable with the word, “death.” The letters involved, the way it starts with a hard “duh” sound and ends with the tongue lost against the roof of the mouth. The word does not seem to reflect the experience. This passage, this transition is our greatest act in life. How many of us will discover and trust that we are living to die and not dying to live? The world, the sex-drugs-cash-celebrity nightmare the pursuit of which dominates our culture, is about dying to live - desparate longing for something to kick-start the life, to get us into the play, onstage/tv just once, take our turn at the wheel, test our worthiness on the slopes of Olympus, be humiliated by the gods - anything that will let us stick our heads up out of the mists of mundanity for one second, for one moment of recognition that we belong to … . what? Well, for those dying to live, we seek to belong to life, we seek that moment when we can stop denying that we are somehow already dead, or deeply asleep, so we push and struggle, lie, cheat, steal and whine - “Somebody, please, recognize me!!” Admit me into life or I will surely die!!” - Dying to live.
Awakening, our first real “act” wipes this slate clean. We see that, now, with new eyes, the shadows are lit from within, that our contact with the earth is more than pressure from gravity and friction from the trudge of sleepwalking. The fatuous quest for “meaning” is over. Awakened, we release the crushing weight of unanswered questions and begin to shift our awareness from self-centered fear, to self-love. Trust arises. The indigo-mantled evening horizon no longer looms upon us. We learn to welcome that moment when, blessed by the day, we slip between our covers and sheets knowing full well that we are practicing, training, surrendering to the next great act. Living to die.
Again, for many of us, death is about yearning, not for oblivion, but for the joy of reunion, the wash of peace when the final turn for home is made and the gardens come into view.
Oh yeah. Thanks Daate for having the courage to put this on the table.
Coyote, man, I do hear you, your telling of the journey you had with your sister and your own recent discovery. What happens is that you are stunned that something which was so easily taken for granted could vanish in the face of a piece of paper or a CT scan image. How huge that missing thing is now, that ephemeral something that we took so long for granted.
yer pal,
Michael
Daate,
Thank you so much for your beautiful and very inspiring contribution. What I find so lovely about what you have shared are you innate abilities to live. Though Death may hold your hand, he has not held your heart. And I love that throughout any pain or fear or suffering, you have sought to grow and heal.
If you place a small young plant in a dark remote closet with only the smallest amount of light shining in through a tiny crack—that plant will grow toward the light. It will reach and stretch and twist and spin itself by any means necessary to grow toward that light.
From the vision at 6 years of age that you described in your post, it is clear that this light was accessible to you from early on and that, no matter what, you have sought to grow toward it.
In a similar fashion, Daate, I too choose to not limit mystical experiences to a trauma/resource ratio only in terms of perception/integration. It's certainly a great option, yet not the only option. I do not think trauma and altered states necessarily always go hand in hand. In some cases, perhaps. Yet not in all cases, and certainly not at all times.
All of our life is a woven tapestry, and in as much, every element can inter-relate with itself. Trauma with mystical and trauma with mundane and mystical with mundane. It all relates. When we see it as such. And yet it is also all very distinct and beholden of its own inherent such-ness.
We love patterns. It is our nature to see them in the universe. Yet they are not necessarily the absolute end-all-be-all truth. Just as clutching to invested beliefs in other dimensional synchronicities and beings can be dissociative, so to can be the clutching to invested beliefs in psychological theories and philosophical thought structures. I perceive them all as different colored threads in a tapestry. None more important or viable than any other. All giving sense and purpose to the whole.
Thank you so much for contributing such a thoughtful and intimate post, Daate. It moved me and also gave me much to contemplate.
One question that this topic raises in my mind is: how does a trauma survivor encounter spiritual groundlessness? Many traditions speak about the basic anxiety and struggle against our personal finitude as being a fact of human nature, and true awakening can only come about once we've really accepted this fundamental fact, and surrender into this void. The quote attributed to Meister Eckhart is “The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life, your memories, your attachments.”
Negative experiences that are more ordinary arouse suffering because of our belief in permanent, enduring selfhood, so does the trauma survivor also experience this basic fear within the more specific emotions around the trauma? Is that at the root of trauma, and if not, then what is? Our attachment to finally freeing ourselves from pain is the originator of pain itself. How does a trauma survivor relate to that, after years of therapy and great strides and improvement, only to find that, on some level, their brokenness is innate and shared by everyone. Is this the bitter irony?
One response to these bleak facts of life is to be strong and steel ourselves against being engulfed in the waves of despair. And yet, that sensation of drowning is an illusion, no more true that the former sense of groundedness that we just freed ourselves of. After all, who is lost at sea? That figure in your imagination gasping for air that you feel yourself to be is a mental construction. In reality, we are never grounded, never ungrounded.
I was really touched by your sharing, compassion, and wisdom. What a beautiful story and so clearly articulated.
I do have a question do you consider your relationship to Death having any association to the Non-Self?
I'm not familiar with Death yet, but like most I have issues about it not just about my Death, but with other people as well.
coyote—-
thank you so, so, so much for this; i can't say it enough. what an incredible story. i can only imagine how the experience with your sister would have acquainted you with something that is purely abstract for most of us; and then your own experience—my goodness. thank you so much for your courage and sincerity and the honesty with which you are facing all this. many, many blessings to you. :)
michael—yes, i found that within the reality of death, life really burns. it isn't funzzy anymore. it has this weird, dazzling, harshly beautiful quality. it isn't as necessary to wonder what happens after; or i wonder, but it is gentle and playful and not really my concern.
teacup—-thanks so much for your post. well, the way i see it is that trauma is physiological and is rooted in the reptilian brain. when a person is traumatized, they do not necessarily ponder from within a body and mind that feel safe and healthy about the reality of life or death. they are in an animal-state of primal terror, and perceive most things as threats. the body doesn't yet understand its own strength or capacity to set boundaries or defend itself.
the journey toward feeling human, then, is a little different—someone who has suffered trauma might be doing what looks like exactly the opposite of what someone who is not deeply traumatized yet on a “spiritual” path might be doing—-they are trying to form attachments, process memories, honor individual experiences, and learn to attach, attach, attach, since life has been lived in a sort of vacuum or void, and early developmental stages have been missed. so the groundlessness doesn't just appear as a “spiritual” struggle, it is psychological and physiological. the only time a trauma survivor is trying to overcome their great struggle to live in the world by some purely “spiritual” contemporary activities without deep psychological work is if they are trying to bypass their primal terror, and do not yet understand that their fear is not a philosophical contemplative existential concern but a nervous-system imbalance rooted in the reptilian brain. but this mistake gets made frequently, especially with intelligent, introspecitve trauma survivors with great capacities to rationalize and who are interested in what it means to be alive anyway. many times it is hard for such people to be present with their primal fear, because it has nothing to do with many of their other strengths and resources.
you said: “Our attachment to finally freeing ourselves from pain is the originator of pain itself. How does a trauma survivor relate to that, after years of therapy and great strides and improvement, only to find that, on some level, their brokenness is innate and shared by everyone. Is this the bitter irony?”
again, to trauma survivors, “trying to free yourself of pain” can take two paths—the healthy route would be therapy and a road toward greater self-understanding, and alleviating painful symptoms this way; the other road would be to avoid feeling any pain at all, which of course produces suffering because it is often painful to be alive. i would agree that the attachment to freeing ourselves from pain is an attempt in futility, and also seems to be something of an American idea. my European relatives have a much more grounded understanding that pain is a part of life. i would say that it is far less painful to give up on the notion of “freeing yourself of pain” and allowing your body and self to feel what it needs to feel; this act alone decreases suffering tremendously. it isn't suffering at all to be able to feel and contain pain. and most trauma survivors are so ridden with anxiety that when they finally access that deep well of emotion and sadness, it is a sweet relief to feel the feelings the body is meant to feel; it is a surge of life-energy and a signifier of health.
many people who need to allow themselves to feel suppressed pain talk themselves out of the need to do this because of spiritual doctrines that encourage non-attachment. this is unfortunate and such doctrines ought to always note the different stages of development and their importance.
as far as finding out that my “brokenness” (if by this you mean the human condition of mortality) is innate and shared by everyone, i feel no irony or grief over this—because i never saw it as brokenness to begin with, and i never entered therapy with the desire to overcome or conquer any inadequacies in myself that i thought had anything to do with general human brokenness. i got into therapy so i could learn how to live without terror, love without terror, and function more fully. by the time i got in i didn't want any deep existential questions answered—i just wanted to have a night without nightmares and a day without anxiety and shame. it was that simple. that's the benefit, if there is one to be found, about childhood trauma—i find that i can choose my battles more carefully now, and a lot of the things that plague other people about what it is to live a “spiritual” life don't bother or hound me. i don't really care if i'm being “spiritual” or not; i don't feel there is anyone policing this. i'm just glad i can sustain friendships and enjoy joy and be present with people, and feel the great love in my heart—because the enormity of love is a terrifying emotion and rips you raw, and for a long time my body couldn't accomodate how deep and vulnerable it is to allow myself to feel love—and now i can, and fully. i am just happy that my body can contain emotions and rejoice in them. that's all.
i get your question, though. but like i said, the journey is different. the inescapable fact of mortality and mortal danger are in the psychic consciousness (or subconscious) of the abused child every day. so obviously this creates different conditions than someone who has a happy, safe, healthy childhood and then can muse about death as a concept,
and what does it mean to be spiritual and so on? if you are traumatized all such questions, no matter how brilliantly intellectual, will be informed by the physiological trauma, as will the resolution of physiological trauma address these questions. (it's interesting to note which amazing minds of our day might have been deeply physiologically traumatized and how this may have affected their work.) no matter how brilliant you are, chances are once you've worked on your trauma you'll just be grateful you can walk down the street without feeling panicked. it sounds dramatic but it's true. i admit i often am grateful, when i see people struggling with how to “live an authentic spiritual life,” that i don't know what that feels like anymore. all i ever wanted was to feel a sense of belonging, community and understanding. if this means that we are all going to die and that there are no guarantees and no buffers, all it does is increase compassion and awareness in me.
Lucidity—thank you so much. Please explain what you mean by “Non-self.” as far as other people's deaths go, i would of course be devastated if certain people in my life were to die. and yes, it would raise all sorts of questions and grief. but i think my primary focus would be on how to allow myself to fully feel the grief, how to be present with the experience. i think such events naturally raise questions in us about the nature and permanence of existence, but i believe that in the end all we can do is be as present as possible and let ourselves grieve.
beautifully said, daate! i'm working my way through waking the tiger right now. the SE work has helped tremendously in understanding my traumatic childhood. you've done an amazing job in expressing the importance of the physiological aspect of trauma.
death was a frequent visitor for me growing up. during a 4 year span i lost 2 grandfathers, my uncle and a great aunt. all had lived with me growing up except the uncle. my father too was often ill, heart condition. i learned all too well the impermanence of life and struggled with grieving. 'keep a stiff upper lip. suck it up.' i clearly remember the day i was told my aunt died, i cried for hours and hours. it was the first death i allowed my body to process the pain of loss. i didn't do so well 8 years later when my father died.
we aren't given time to grieve in this culture, work and responsibilities keep pushing us ahead. our bodies don't understand this. if we keep moving then death can't catch us… eventually it does. do you have resources to cope? child… adult… was grieving modeled for you?
thank you for sharing, annie. :) i am so glad that se is helping you too.
no, our culture doesn't make room for healing and integration. it's hard to take room out for healing in a world that values efficiency and productivity over the very process that would allow us to eventually be authentically productive and joyful. i'm sorry to hear about so many early losses in your family.
no, grieving wasn't modeled for me. the healthy expression of any emotion is something i had to learn (and am still learning) throughout adulthood. i was fortunate to have art in which to express and develop some of aspects of myself.
have you found yourself doing a lot of grieving work right now?
the first 3 years of yoga were all grieving. it subsided for the last year or two. however, it does continue to reveal itself every now and then but at a much deeper layer. fortunately i have many more tools to deal with the emotions and an amazing community of support.
prior to finding this yoga community i thought i was the only person who had felt such deep loss. most of my peers hadn't even lost a grandparent yet. it was reassuring to see that i hadn't been the cause of the deaths, as some children do… was i 'bad' so grandpa died. loss had happened to others and they were willing to talk about and express how awful it felt. i feel so blessed to have found such a tribe.
yeah, grieving wasn't modeled for me either. i didn't have art, but water. could be how it became a resource for me, not just a trigger…
the Non-Self as in non-dual awareness, primordial face, the absolute, etc.
But re-reading again, I'm guessing it's more about the death of your self identity, peeling away the layers so to speak.
Or am I completely off base?
Yes, non-resistance to grieving. Non-resistance is very much my struggle in coping with anger, disappointment, and bitterness. My habitual pattern has been to push it away or avoid it. Lately, dealing with disappointment has been the greatest obstacle, something to do with my nihilistic tendencies. At least, I realize that is what I habitually do and what some others do too.
I also love your artwork. Really beautiful. I can relate with you in regards to art. It was the one thing that gave me the most inspiration when I needed it.
thanks for the comments fellas….yes, it's great to have a community annie, i agree. :)
lucidity—i'm not sure about the non-self, as i don't really consciously practice any of that and don't particularly think of it that way. do you mean you resist dealing with anger and bitterness, or that you don't resist? a little confused, but very interested….
i love art too. a very important thing.
had my first somatic experiencing session today…and, wow, what an important piece of the puzzle…so often i have been using my cerebral cortex to interpret the experiences of energy, but to switch into limbic and exercise that part of my brain will hopefully bring a higher sense of control and balance to the experience of it…just wanted to share that and i look forward to more exploring of this modality…very powerful.
i am getting up and snoopy dancing around the room sarah!
This a very late response but here goes.
Thank you Daate for your “story;” the whole story. You described so many of my experiences as a child and young adult. Bravo for finding your way so early. I am now in my forties and it took me up until the last two years to begin to get a handle on what happened to me and what to do with it. I never had a clear thought of committing suicide. Instead I chose drugs, alcohol and unsafe sex practices to attempt the same.
I recognize your discription of the insantity of life swirling all around you but having a certain sense that somewhere at the bottom (or center) of it all there was a real “me” who ws clean, clear, protected, powerful and who had a joy in life because he knew death so well. I have often felt split in two, a good and a bad - which is something that many traumatized people feel.
I have tried to die to the old - to create a life free of suffering and pain - at times not even knowing that was what I was doing and never being successful. What a concept to embrace the pain, the death, the confusion, the darkness.
My work has taken me through something similar to Somatic Experiencing and a variety of bodywork techniques to unlock the memory tied up in my body (issues in the tissues) and mind. They have been very successful and I find that there are more layers everytime I care to look.
I liked what Julian said “i don;t think even one child - let alone the millions all over the world who are being emotionally, physically or sexually abused and the way this impacts their lives and the lives of future generations is at all OK. period. (i know you are not doing this) but it breaks my heart when out of an unwillingness to see this suffering for what it is - spiritual people try to candy coat it, put a metaphysical spin on it, make it about karma, destiny or some grand master plan the universe has - yuk!”
AND, I know that out fo these experiences can come some of life's greatest treasures. I have become a bodyworker in the last three years and I know that my experience has added to my intuitiveness and awareness. I am not afraid of my body or the bodies of my clients, I am sensitive to mood and emotional shifts and states that others may not be. I don' t think that my life is better because of what happened but I believe that I have taken what happened and turned it into something exciting and important - making lemonade….
I will go on to study structural integration and possibly hypnotherapy this coming year. Now I want ot look into Somatic Experiencing too. By this time next year we will have a health and wellness retreat center open in my area which will address many of these issues talked about in this blog.
Thank you for opening this up. Maybe you will see this or maybe this is a dead end but I am glad for the forum.