Kundalini is Life

It is often said that Kundalini is life, and it has revived my life. One Christmas morning I awoke to go see a present built for my brother, but instead I found that my mother had chosen to end her life. No one is prepared to handle a discovery like this, not a person or a family. Most of my life, my mother’s name was barely mentioned, which in some ways was even more confusing than her death. Her decision covered and cloaked me. I became layered with heavy energies of grief, shame, and confusion. I wondered at times if I would ever be able to crawl out from under it. There was nowhere to go to un-spin from it.

Kundalini is a powerful yogic practice that can help liberate you from dense energies by clearing unconscious and subconscious barriers clouding the original Self. Kundalini Yoga has helped me to release a lot of this heavy and oppressive energy. Through Kriyas (targeted actions), meditation, pranayama (breath exercises), mantra (sound), and visualization, the opportunity exists to awaken you to You, the original Self. The original Self contains the pure divine source and energy of life. Just like a 3.5-ounce, 6-centimeter oak seed turns into a 20,000-pound, 80-foot tall oak tree that recreates a new 3-ounce seed with same creative potential, we have that infinite creative potential within all of us. Like the acorn seed buried beneath the ground, we have the ability to break through what is dense and heavy and express this infinite potential within us.

It is up to us to Self-realize our true creative spiritual potential. The original Self is not your limiting beliefs, past imprints, thoughts, emotions, or other people’s projections. The original Self is both finite and infinite. It is your birthright to return to it and live in a deeper awareness of you and your connection to the divine.

Yogi Bhajan describes it this way: “This unlimited potential is limited in practical action. Your possibilities meet with your actualities at the border of awareness. Awareness varies and gives you different choices and capacities. To break the unconscious limits, a person needs a technical know-how (Kundalini yoga). That know-how is required to expand the caliber and capacity of the mental faculties, to bring about an equilibrium, to control the physical structure and to experience the Infinite Self.” Kundalini is life, and Kundalini is awareness of our true identify.

The infinite and finite self can be understood through three facets of you: body, mind, and soul.
The body is a very complex physical system that carries this life source. All systems need to be cleaned, cared for, and maintained to properly process, receive, and accomplish tasks in life. Kundalini is life for the householder and the practicality of living on earth: the finite experience.

The Mind can see the unseen, know the unknown, and understand the consequences of each action as it begins to awaken. The mind can take you to the heights of heaven or to the depths of despair. As Yogi Bhajan says, “Happy or unhappy belong to your mind, not the world.” You can perceive yourself or someone else as this or that, but it is only your perception directed by the mind. The choice exists to see you or others as an infinite creative potential, as the same infinite source within you, as the infinite experience.

The soul (spirit) is inseparable from life. Yogi Bhajan writes, “As no lamp can burn without combustible fuel, so no life can exist without a relationship to the spirit in it.” The spirit is known through yoga as the Cosmic Infinite Energy, or life source. Kundalini Yoga is fuel for that life source.

Kundalini in many traditions is understood as the energy that resides at the base of the spine. Through yogic practices, we can elevate this energy to higher energy centers within the body to raise our consciousness and expand our understanding. This is done in technical terms by stimulating the dense energy centers in the pelvic region, sending this creative energy up the central channel, or sushumna nadi. This action affects the central nerve which stimulates our master glands: the pineal and pituitary glands. These glands then stimulate the nervous system, so we become Self-sensory human beings.

The opportunity to Self-realize and train our minds to know our original Self is infinitely accessible. We are far more than we think we are. We are both finite and infinite. Yogi Bhajan says, “Awareness is the active interaction of you as a finite individual identifying with you as an infinite potential identity.” It takes discipline to achieve Shuniya, where the ego is brought to complete stillness and the spirit prevails to understand and merge with the creative spiritual infinite.

Here is a gift for you. Try this Kundalini meditation for finding happiness and peace within for 11 days and after, assess your experience of your Self.

Sit upright in sukhasana and apply jalandhara bandha (chin lock). Chant the sound Ong in a long and slow manner. The mouth will be slightly open, making the sound nasal, while you focus on the third eye. Chant this way five times at 10-second intervals for one minute, and then gradually increase the speed of the mantra so that you are chanting one Ong every 2-3 seconds for another two minutes. Total time will be three minutes.
Chanting ong is very similar to chanting OM. Ong means creative infinity and it is the active form of OM. In this meditation, we are trying to create a very specific effect on the thalamus by stimulating the second plate in the nasal cavity.

“Ong is the sound that man found out of the conch where he put in the breath of life. The sound of the conch is an expanded Ong. When a disciple or seeker practices at the center of the nose, his entire brain gets a very specific vibration and then the nectar starts coming.
Through time man started writing and reading about the chanting of Ong, but not practicing it. The result was that he eventually forgot what the sound is and then he became a shopper. He went from one place to another, to another, to another. He went from one person to another person to another person, asking, begging for happiness. He went from one religion to another, from one house to another, just asking for peace. He forgot that what he is asking for is within himself.” -Yogi Bhajan To learn more about Kundalini Yoga, study the teachings of Yogi Bhajan, enjoy a Kundalini Yoga class, and try this meditation.

Come have an experience to expand your awareness.  Give the gift of a Kundalini Yoga class to a friend for the holidays and let us elevate each other to serve each other.

Written by Steph Smith (Navjeet)
December, 2017