Kundalini in many phases was like wandering in the dark with my hands outstretched! I am sharing some elements of my story today for those of you who, like me,  are either in a difficult or perhaps dark moon phase of awakening, or sometimes wonder if you can make it through to the other side. I am here to say you can!

Kundalini awakening has transformed my life, from a disjointed, chaotic and traumatized process, a life that I lived much more unconsciously, to something that is centered and grounded in embodied awareness, love and deep calm that informs every day. Yet I didn’t know amidst the wild throes of awakening that such a transformation would finally arrive or ever complete. The outcome for much of the journey felt completely uncertain. 

I can see without Kundalini my gifts would have lurched from one expression to the next without a lot of congruency, with simply a desperate hope that they could be meaningful. 

Kundalini has restored me to who I really am, and allowed my deeper potentials to blossom in a way I doubt they ever would if I had not gone through the fire of Kundalini. I would be stumbling. My gifts would be a tip of the iceberg, poking out of the ocean of my capacity, not liberated to shine and offer their fullness.

In the midst of the Kundalini journey I had no idea if I would succeed. This at times torturous and demanding process, would it give back to me as much as I was having to feed it, with every element, energy and part of my life? Kundalini was a very hungry and divine process in my life and I had to put a lot of my normal way/s of being, my worldly expectations of my life, and my hopes on the bonfire and let them burn in the hope that something phoenix-like would arise and bring me forward.

In the background at the start of awakening I had just a Transcendental Meditation practice and a mantra to chant that I had received from Amma, this was the grounding in my life, but I had no accessible teacher, only this. In therapy, I focused on my trauma healing.

All around me in my 30’s my friends were in good careers, buying houses, and getting married, and while I went to the weddings, housewarmings, and baby showers and I celebrated my friends’ career milestones, what I was in was a strange process of continually putting my life on the bonfire. And bowing to the bonfire with a lot of trust, while my critic whispered in my ear that I was insane, and why wasn’t I doing what my friends were doing?!

I lived in fear and hope!

I did not have a teacher, a hand to hold, or loads of friends who understood what I was going through (but I did have some who lovingly held space for me, thank you!) and Kundalini just kept going. When I looked at the mostly male teachers around me, at their very masculine up-and-out awakening process, I recognized that what had happened to me was completely different. Almost the opposite.

My awakening was fully embodied, it first went out but then returned down and through every cell of my being and has never stopped doing that.

While everyone was talking about emptiness, awakening for me was an embodied fullness – experiencing intimacy with everything through both awareness and body. This has never changed.

Some part of me felt like my style of awakening was not as important as the glamorous Vedanta process, yet it was where awakening was taking this life and this body. 

I kept trusting.

Inside the energy of Kundalini, I could feel a map, but not a visual map. I could feel that when I put another thing on the bonfire, the map told me I was doing the right thing even though the world judged me for doing the wrong.

I did not tell many people what I was going through, I felt it better to keep it a quiet process, run a healing practice and keep this quest to myself. 

There was nothing conventional about this phase of my life and there were no huge signals that it was going to work out. There was this subtle, intuitive map and this pull of Kundalini on my heart, to keep going, to keep trusting that this was the path of my life, that I was doing the right thing even when it looked like the wrong thing.

In early 2009, all those risks I had taken, all that effort and dedication paid off, and my Kundalini completed. It has not been all bells and whistles since then, there was significant work to integrate that I continued to show up for. And still do as needed.

Over the years Kundalini has rebuilt me from the foundation of the Sacred Feminine embodied awakening, warm, nectar-like, deeply inside and enriching me in every moment.

She has returned me to a financially successful business, one I doubt I would have had before her. She has given me the capacity to serve others with an unquestioned embracing of who they are, something I would not have been capable of before. She has reminded me of the infinite sense of welcoming that exists inside me today.

She has taken me to a place of simple humility, that I love in every moment. To dwell in a humble, earth-anchored awareness.

One of the most precious gifts of Kundalini awakening has been clarity –  it has pulled away programming and conditioning, so many trauma-colored lenses, dissolving bad habits and grasping needs. All of which is a phenomenal effort by a divine energy inside my body, and her demand that I serve this clarification process in every moment since I was in my mid-20s. Half a lifetime. 

The clarity that she has given me feels like a mountain inside of me that I don’t move from often partly because it feels so good to stay in that clarity and also because it is immediately painful if I do. It will be expensive to move away from it, and it feels good to sit in that clarity. 

In many ways I never imagined it possible, looking back on all the agony, tears, terrors and heartache of going through the Kundalini process, that it would be totally worth it. 

The most important things she has given me are infinite resources within – wisdom, love, care, insight, and the knowledge with which I can do my life purpose – which is to serve and serve you.

What she has crafted in me, beyond strength, resilience and enduring capacity to be with other people, is generosity. The generosity she has seeded and birthed does not belong to me but has anchored itself in me. It shines as a source of gratitude for what is possible when we allow ourselves to awaken, for what is possible when we take the crazy risks that make no sense when backdropped by the rest of the everyday world.

I write this to those of you in moments of uncertainty of loss and struggle who are battling difficult things or for whom Covid has taken what seems like everything.

For those of you in awakening or kundalini processes that ask of you the transformation of great pain, I want you to know that I have been there too. Keep going, keep trusting yourself and know that even in the dark moments, it is very, very much worth it. Our wounds become doorways, through which our Divine ally and the sacred light beyond us shine through. 

Even at this moment, I am with you, whispering to you.

My hands are still warm with memories of the bonfire. And even recently, I find myself feeding the bonfire elements of my current life, all over again.

And I am better for it, truly, I am.

Where are you in the Kundalini Awakening process right now?

Or in life?

What are you pulled to surrender on that sacred bonfire, or what insights shine through?

Please share below. I would love to hear from you.