The title of this page fascinates me. Having
experienced both — meditation and medication — I feel inspired to examine each within a spiritual context.
I first came across meditation when I discovered Buddhism in 1988. Meditation is an integral part of Buddhism, the vehicle for developing self-awareness. One accomplises this by noticing the internal thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, thought processes while meditating. Whenever I meditated, my thought processes quickly overloaded, almost as if my brain had launched a computer virus. I had no idea where the millions of varied, meaningless, but powerful thoughts came from.
It might seem like a contradiction to say that meaningless thoughts can be powerful in their ability to distract during meditation, but they can, and are. The mind is threatened by meditation and so it throws up thoughts that distract from meditation. The Secret of the Golden Flower calls this the battle between the Primal and the Conscious Spirit. The Conscious Spirit wants to maintain its hegemony over our true nature — the Primal Spirit.
Once, I remember sitting down to meditate and immediately thinking, 'I want a cup of tea.' I had gone the previous three hours without wanting or needing a cup of tea and suddenly because I sat down to meditate, I wanted a cup of tea. Why was this impulse suddenly strong enough to propel me to the kitchen to get that cup of tea?
I have always found meditation challenging and for most of my spiritual life have preferred the practice of mindfulness although I didn't know what it was called back then — before it had the name it has today. Gurdjieff called it self-remembering. The practice of being constantly aware and alert to everything that is going on all the time. I found that easier to do than sitting down to observe the thoughts in my mind.
When Kundalini rose the second time it awakened hitherto inactive areas of my brain — in terms of triggering insights and intuitions I had never before experienced.
As a consequence, I went through many shifts of consciousness, one of which bordered on a mania that took the form of speaking endlessly of a conspiracy that kept Kundalini hidden from people and feeling sure that it was a conspiracy by secret societies like the Freemasons!
Such high bursts of energy are inevitably followed by a crash and I did crash for a number of reasons I won't go into now. This dip led me to a doctor who prescribed a very low dose of an anti-depressant. The drug succeeded in lifting my consciousness out of the black place it fallen into.
The mania accompanied by depression might have indicated I was experiencing a bi-polar episode, but it didn't feel like that, given what I have read about bi-polar. Nevertheless, the mania did awaken areas of my brain which had never been active, producing new varieties of thoughts and concepts.
No doubt meditation prepares the body for spiritual awakening and causes consciousness to expand in direct proportion to the degree of one's self-awareness. The rising Kundalini causes an awakening and then, depending on the intensity of the awakening, the renewed meditation may take on a different quality. The awakening may be so overwhelming that medication may be necessary. The outcome depends solely on the individual and the symptoms manifested.
I first came across meditation when I discovered Buddhism in 1988. Meditation is an integral part of Buddhism, the vehicle for developing self-awareness. One accomplises this by noticing the internal thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, thought processes while meditating. Whenever I meditated, my thought processes quickly overloaded, almost as if my brain had launched a computer virus. I had no idea where the millions of varied, meaningless, but powerful thoughts came from.
It might seem like a contradiction to say that meaningless thoughts can be powerful in their ability to distract during meditation, but they can, and are. The mind is threatened by meditation and so it throws up thoughts that distract from meditation. The Secret of the Golden Flower calls this the battle between the Primal and the Conscious Spirit. The Conscious Spirit wants to maintain its hegemony over our true nature — the Primal Spirit.
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| Separation of the Spirit Body for Independent Existence |
Once, I remember sitting down to meditate and immediately thinking, 'I want a cup of tea.' I had gone the previous three hours without wanting or needing a cup of tea and suddenly because I sat down to meditate, I wanted a cup of tea. Why was this impulse suddenly strong enough to propel me to the kitchen to get that cup of tea?
I have always found meditation challenging and for most of my spiritual life have preferred the practice of mindfulness although I didn't know what it was called back then — before it had the name it has today. Gurdjieff called it self-remembering. The practice of being constantly aware and alert to everything that is going on all the time. I found that easier to do than sitting down to observe the thoughts in my mind.
When Kundalini rose the second time it awakened hitherto inactive areas of my brain — in terms of triggering insights and intuitions I had never before experienced.
As a consequence, I went through many shifts of consciousness, one of which bordered on a mania that took the form of speaking endlessly of a conspiracy that kept Kundalini hidden from people and feeling sure that it was a conspiracy by secret societies like the Freemasons!
Such high bursts of energy are inevitably followed by a crash and I did crash for a number of reasons I won't go into now. This dip led me to a doctor who prescribed a very low dose of an anti-depressant. The drug succeeded in lifting my consciousness out of the black place it fallen into.
The mania accompanied by depression might have indicated I was experiencing a bi-polar episode, but it didn't feel like that, given what I have read about bi-polar. Nevertheless, the mania did awaken areas of my brain which had never been active, producing new varieties of thoughts and concepts.
No doubt meditation prepares the body for spiritual awakening and causes consciousness to expand in direct proportion to the degree of one's self-awareness. The rising Kundalini causes an awakening and then, depending on the intensity of the awakening, the renewed meditation may take on a different quality. The awakening may be so overwhelming that medication may be necessary. The outcome depends solely on the individual and the symptoms manifested.
I would like to know more about this. Was this an brief, isolated incident? Are you still taking the anti-depressant? If not, did it help? Hinder? In what ways/
ReplyDeleteI'm a little wary about promoting anti-depressants as a means to getting used to living with Kundalini. If the Kundalini is permanent, the changes come and continue to come as long as one lives. One must adjust. My particular path was to forgo any stimuli. My body told me to avoid them, and I listened.
Nevertheless, I can imagine that this might be necessary in certain circumstances.
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ReplyDeleteI went through the same 'conspiracy theory phase' that you describe. For a while it seemed as if the world was against me and there was a scary world out there. A bi-polar, almost schizophrenic experience as the mind adjusts to the new reality brought about by the kundalini awakening. When the energy is allow to do its job with total faith in its divine origin, this phases passes. Anti-depressants are not the answer in the long-term, but I can see their efficacy for controlling some of the extreme episodes.
DeleteHey,I have a feeling ADHD and ADD are caused by many things, including environmental factors and diet. I've seen kids who have gone from drinking poor diet to a healthy one and they become less irritable, giddy and more relaxed and happy. These kids look more thoughtful and relaxed and happy after a few months of TM. My only worry about TM is how people appear to be exploiting it for monetary gains when it should be available to all for free.Thank you!!!
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sant kirpal singh ji
I found balancing my chakras to be of help. I was very introverted for a few days when mine awoke...was a lot to take in an adjust to.
ReplyDeleteI found balancing my chakras to be of help. I was very introverted for a few days when mine awoke...was a lot to take in an adjust to.
ReplyDeleteWould you care to share the details on how you achieved this?
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