Remove the Shadow and Find Your True Self

"I have a tendency to sabotage relationships; I have a tendency to sabotage everything. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of being afraid. Useless, good-for-nothing thoughts."

~ Michael Buble

It is a great pleasure to be writing again for The Kundalini Consortium blog. I would like to thank JJ Semple for giving me the opportunity once more to share my story with the readers of this blog. Various things happened between the time I last wrote for this blog and today. I got divorced and that led to a mental breakdown. I am currently overcoming those obstacles and am happy to report that the worst is behind me.

Relationships, unfortunately, become a vestige from the past sometimes, and one awakens to find that the relationship they are in is not right for them. This happened to me. Having had an awakening allowed me to see this. To be able to remove oneself from that situation, however, is not easy. We still go through the same cycles of trauma and recovery, to be able to cope with the event, and it is not always under our control. I was fortunate enough to have the Kundalini energy guide me through rough waters and came out at the other side stronger. It involved “going with the flow,” and allowing the self to discard the old trappings, comfort zones and attachments that act as an impediment to future growth. Progress requires a reset, some personal assessment, and a genuine attempt to change by discarding psychic layers that no longer served my best interests.

My divorce offered me a great opportunity to find myself in a different period of my life, like when I was single. The last time I was single was in 1997 at the age of 23. I found myself in that same situation again in the early part of 2018, but now with a lot of baggage, learned habits that needed unlearning, and a chance to live once again a simpler, pared down existence to find out how much transformation the energy had brought about into my life over the last 12 years since my awakening began in 2006. It was a wild roller coaster, but I was helped immensely by the kundalini energy and its promptings, which led to some beneficial changes as I type this on a sunny day in the fall of 2021.

As I have mentioned before in previous blog posts, the awakening kundalini energy entails a lot of upheaval, chaos, and can bring about serious mental trauma. No matter how well prepared you are through previous practices, nothing really prepares you for the mayhem that follows. It is like my mind and past events turned against me as I coped with a constant barrage of sensations, thoughts, emotions that were being churned up by a snake moving constantly up my spine. It was like Iwas learning to drive a car, and at the same time, I had to learn basic vehicle maintenance, while parts started to break down or ceased to function correctly. I lost track of how things work.

Of course, the advantage a very powerful supernatural process like this has is it comes with cheat sheets baked into the process. We call this ‘Gnosis’. It is like a higher energy is guiding your exact steps moving forward, warning you and giving you the right advice at the right time. If you are patient and persistent, which you have to be, since you have no other choice, you will learn to drive the ‘car’ at the same time you learn its inner workings. If you choose to oppose that voice, you will suffer, and the process will take longer. So, eventually, you give in and let the energy guide you.

“If you go into a relationship with selfishness, expecting that your partner is going to make you happy, it will not happen. And it's not that person's fault; it's your own. When we go into a relationship of any kind, it is because we want to share, we want to enjoy, we want to have fun, don't want to be bored. If we look for a partner, it is because we want to play, we want to be happy and enjoy what we are. We don't choose a partner just to give that person we claim to love all our garbage, to put all our jealousy, all our anger, all our selfishness onto that person.” - Don Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love

I had a major revelation. For the very first time in my adult life, I understood what having a grown-up relationship meant and how to nurture the self and the other in that relationship without damaging either. By being patient, mature, understanding and by standing up for what made me happy, I learned to co-exist and thrive in a relationship. As much as I would like to blame my past upbringing or the person I was, some of these things, I genuinely felt thankful for certain experiences. You realize that each event, person, and episode is brought into your life to teach you lessons. If you are willing to learn from them, without being judgemental, you will treat each event as an observer, expressing gratitude for having had the opportunity to do so.

Ego, that ever-willing great imposter, is ready to deceive and take you further into unconscious behavior. It's like a great tyrant. If you don’t have the requisite mindset to recognize its doings, you may never learn to take a step back and witness your own thoughts. Changing bad habits comes from learning mindfulness and is very difficult in the beginning. Having the same programming and the same responses to moments of crisis ingrained into you by force of habit, leads to cascades of unconscious behavior. Mindfulness allows you to see the cascade as a choice and your initial response, unconscious, prompted by the actions of others, to be the trigger that sets events in motion, repeatedly, over years, in similar patterns. You are the total of your thoughts that you act upon, creating the indelible patterns of your character that are only obvious when you take a step back and become a witness.

Not reacting, staying silent, holding back and witnessing as an observer, are all powerful catalysts for change. To avail yourself of these techniques regularly, you must stick with the process and allow it to do its work in even the most trying situations. Initially, this is very hard. Invoking these techniques during gaps and lulls, when you still engage in negative behavior and you still have patterns to dissolve, is the best thing you can do for your future wellbeing. Once these methods become routine practice, and the results start to manifest in your life, you begin to wonder why you would behave any other way.

Getting to that stage takes a lot of time and persistence despite failed attempts. It pays to hang in there, with determination and the belief that you have the power— through non-action, witnessing and observation —to change your patterns and stop the long, incessant years of self-sabotage.

This is a powerful thing to know about yourself. ‘The shadow’ that we have accumulated over the years, is nothing but the ego and its mischief being refined into a personality. Certain character traits, driven by the most negative aspects of the ego, resentment, jealousy, anger, the feeling that you deserve better and that life has been unfair, all usually hide the mistaken assumption that one has been harmed by something on the outside. This culminates in the need to assign blame to those people or events and to ensure that you, i.e.,the ego, assumes no blame and comes out looking good. The ego tries to hold on to a fake, non-existent self-image, but facing facts will lead to the collapse of even the most well-constructed mirage. It may hurt. Itmay seem like too much to bear.

Once you learn, however, that not facing pain causes it to accumulate and always get in the way of genuine progress. That is when you start to realize your full potential. It’s called ‘the shadow’ because at every moment when your true self desires to do something incredible, the part of you that has been stung by rejection or failure will create a brainstorm to avoid struggling with those same emotions again.

If you give into those emotions, you’re on the same old path of the past, never attempting anything painful for fear of loss of your self-image. In the process, you never really gain anything worthwhile, thereby losing the immense pleasure and deep sense of satisfaction for having accomplished your goal of release from karmic bondage.

By being brought down a notch or two from your own fake self-image, all you risk is feeling bad. By not realizing you learn a lot more through exercising circuits in your brain that you’ve never used before, you sacrifice a genuine breakthrough as well as the chance at coming out the other end fortified. By facing down the ego, the shadow gets weaker and you get stronger with each passing day. More of who you really are and what you can accomplish becomes obvious.

Are You Ready for GFM?

Before beginning GFM meditation, you must be ready for it. Your state of readiness is not something I, or any other person, can determine. Only you know if you’re ready; only your body can tell you. And it will, if you learn how to listen to it. Here are some recommendations for determining your state of readiness.

Check Your Symmetry

Q: What’s so important about symmetry?

A: “Symmetry means being the same, or even, on each side. Over the last few years, biologists have looked at the animal kingdom, and they’ve made a few discoveries about symmetry, and how it relates to beauty and fitness.

“First, animals that are more symmetrical are more likely to attract a mate. One scientist found that he could turn attractive male swallows into unattractive male swallows (and also ruin their chances of a good sex life) by clipping their tail feathers with scissors.

“Secondly, symmetry influences fitness. Horses that are more symmetrical run faster than horses that are less symmetrical. In one study, biologists measured some ten features on 73 thoroughbreds—features such as the thickness of the knee, or the width of the nostrils. The differences they could measure were quite small, and probably had nothing directly to do with how fast the horse could run. In fact, symmetry is probably a good indicator of general health and strength. Our imperfect world is full of nasty chemicals and germs. Only those individuals that are lucky enough to inherit a sturdy genetic makeup and are also lucky enough to get good nutrition while they’re growing, will end up being more symmetrical.”

~ Karl S. Kruszelnicki Pty Ltd 2003 

Get the point? Symmetry more or less guarantees unblocked nerve channels and balanced growth.

Q: I’m not symmetrical; what can I do about it?

A: If you’re not symmetrical, something must have happened. After my accident, my symmetrical body became asymmetrical. I gambled, and , my symmetry. Now, I didn’t get up one day and announce, “I’m off to find the Secret Teachings.” I stumbled onto them accidentally. Destiny put me on a course toward my childhood accident and serendipity (a creative form of destiny) put me on the path to discovering and mastering the backward-flowing method. So, however you get there, whether by destiny, fate, happenstance, Karma, or serendipity, if you’re meant to get there, you will. It’s up to you to understand the commitment and make the effort.

Q: How do I check my symmetry?

A: There are various means of checking symmetry:

• Musical ability, rhythm. The ability to sing notes with proper intonation.
• Mathematical ability, computer programming.
• Sports. Especially balancing sports such as skateboarding, target sports, ice-skating, gymnastics, bicycling, tightrope walking, juggling.
• Kirlian photography.
• Regular photography, a process you can undertake yourself. Here’s how:

Take a portrait-sized photo of yourself. Scan the negative into your computer, load it into Photoshop, and crop the image until the face is tightly enclosed in the frame. Drop a line down the exact center of your face, cut the image in two, then separate the two sides. Duplicate each side and drag the two left and two right sides together. Flip the duplicate horizontally and nudge until it’s vertically aligned with its corresponding other half. What you have, in each case, are faces composed of two instances of the left side and two instances of the right side, one half merely flipped to complete the image. Here are sample images taken by a couple of Australian teachers. Study each composite image and compare it with the original.

“After much thought an Art teacher at school and I worked out a way to find out. We photographed some of the children and then through a bit of ‘darkroom magic’ manipulated them. You’ll notice that the photos of each child’s face is made up of the original photo.”

~ Adrian Bruce–www.adrianbruce.com 

Right/Right                     Left/Left                Original Photo

Some faces are more symmetrical than others

In his empirical wisdom, Gopi Krishna perceived a direct link between symmetry and the qualities leading to success: “Can we deny that whether a fortuitous gift, or the fruit of Karma, in every case there is a close link between the talent or beauty exhibited and the organic structure of the individual.”

Note: Failure to pass any of the tests does not constitute a lack of symmetry or mean that you are not apt to undertake kundalini training. There are other determinants, namely your own resolve and fortitude, but the extent of your symmetry will determine the outcome to some degree. The more symmetrical, in all probability, the more advanced your breathing and lung capacity. Of course, this depends on your physical state, your age, your habits and your libido.

Get Clean!

This means including more raw foods in your diet! You can’t heal on a poor foundation. This was the one issue hindering both Gopi Krishna and myself. So, learn from our mistakes. By the way, even if you decide not to undertake Life Force activation, this step should be a keeper.

Why? Let’s take a closer look at the relationship between a raw foods diet and GFM. What do these two healing instruments have in common? Well, nothing secret or cryptic. In fact, a little common sense reveals that both rely on ingested substances. For a raw foods diet, it’s the food and drink you consume; for GFM, it’s the air you breathe. One, as food and drink, fewer fats, less sugar and less salt; two, elements in the air that your body converts to Prana. I won’t go into the science of nutrition or Prana. There are researched volumes of relevant materials. Let’s just say that both mechanisms use and refine the elements we introduce into our bodies, so it’s up to us to make sure these elements are pure.

How Sexual Sublimation Works

I’ve not posted to this blog or uploaded to my podcast for several months because I’ve been writing a novel for the past year and a half. Writing a novel is more absorbing and time consuming than writing nonfiction. It requires complete concentration. Now that I’m almost finished, because the novel addresses a number of sexual issues, among them sexual sublimation, I’d like to clarify how sexual sublimation worked for me. I’m no sexologist; I’m just offering my personal experience.

Spoiler Alert: Just because this process functioned as it did for me does not mean it will work that way for you. Every kundalini experience is different. That said, let’s begin:

Every person is endowed with unique sexual characteristics that express themselves through the various physical, emotional, and psychological mechanisms that make up their beings. They can be summed up in one word — libido.

Suffice it to say that some people are very sexual in nature; some are not — and everywhere in between. Through my own experience and through conversations with other kundalini adepts, I believe that libido affects a person’s capacity to trigger the sexual sublimation process, which has to have enough sexual energy to do its transformational work.

“Libido is sexual appetite or drive. A person's libido is motivated by brain function, hormones, and learned behavior, regardless of their sex, and tends to fluctuate according to mental state, hormonal shifts, and stress. Some medications can affect sexual appetite as well.

“When a person's libido is high, they're more likely to desire sexual intimacy and to seek it out with a partner or through masturbation. This is healthy and normal, but an overly high libido that interferes with quality of life can be a sign of a hormonal imbalance or neurological disorder. When libido dips, interest in sex does as well and may be completely absent, which can put a strain on intimate relationships.

“The neural pathways involved in sexual desire are similar in males and females and include cerebral, spinal, and peripheral components. Libido directly correlates to physical responses: when sexual desire is high, blood flow to the penis resulting in an erection signifies sexual desire, as does lubrication and enlargement of the labia.”

~ What is Libido?, by S. Nicole Lane - https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-libido-5084040

Moreover, age, physical endowment, emotional stability, eating and drinking and other harmful habits, as well as (believe it or not) pollution can affect sperm and hormone counts.

Here’s how sexual sublimation worked for me. First, the raw material, i.e., my libido and other biological characteristics at the time I started meditating had to be taken into consideration. Would my Being be able to furnish enough sexual energy to complete the process?

“It's not just about the climate, our food supply and energy resources – pollution could be affecting men's penis sizes, fertility and libido too.

“That's according to environmental and reproductive epidemiologist Dr. Shanna H. Swan's new book Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race, which explores the correlation between smaller penises, lower sperm counts and the use of industrial chemicals in everyday products.”

~ Pollution is Shrinking Penises, Scientists Warn - https://www.menshealth.com/uk/sex/a35911756/small-penis-pollution-fertility-sperm-count/

I was 31 years old, a good age for this work; young enough and not too old. (I know a number of older persons who’ve had trouble sublimating.) Health: good. Habits: I stopped drinking and drugs about that same time; smoking when I was 22 (I wasn’t a heavy smoker). I came up at a time when this country’s air and water supplies were in a lot better shape; polluted resources were not an issue. I’ve had my share of ejaculations, no way of knowing the absolute numbers, only that I started at 13 years old.

The purpose of the meditation I practiced was to distill reproductive fluids into an elixir and then draw this elixir up the spine into the brain. This process began with my practicing the breathing exercises described on the Golden Flower Meditation website. After a while, I started to feel a buildup of what I perceived to be energy in the loins (lower belly region). Again, because I’ve written extensively on this topic, I refer you to the Common Sense Kundalini website for more detail.

As the meditation progressed, I began to feel weaker and weaker after ejaculating. Eventually, I had to stop altogether; the kundalini process was asserting itself. If I wasted “my precious bodily fluids,” I suffered the physical consequences. Gopi Krishna wrote about a similar struggle he'd had.

Sexual energy is the most powerful source of energy in the human body. Normally, this energy is used for reproductive purposes. When prevented from flowing out (during intercourse and masturbation) and redirected to the brain, the seminal fluids in a man and the cervical fluids in a woman are distilled into an elixir and used for evolutionary repurposing. This is the sexual sublimation process. I didn’t know this at the time I began meditating; I just followed the process as it unfolded. There comes a time when kundalini takes over. At his point, you may be in for some surprises. If you long for your former way of life, you might be disappointed.

If I had to come up with reasons why some people succeed in this work and other don’t, I’d maintain that it helps to have a healthy, energetic libido; excellent breathing and lung capacity; the persistence of a detective; excellent lateral thinking and survival skills; and the ability to follow through without becoming discouraged.

As for sex after awakening kundalini, both Gopi Krishna and I discovered that the body needs to be nourished by high quality foods, clean air and water, this being especially critical after intercourse.

Now it’s back to my novel. Keep an eye out for it.