Night Of The Cat
My relationship with Kundalini began long before I was conscious of yoga, alchemy, and assorted other traditions that have been associated with it. At the age of 15, I had an experience which at the time I felt was "supernatural," but in retrospect I recognize as the beginning of unusual Kundalini movement within me.I wouldn't say it was "spontaneous." I am sure I brought it upon myself. I was unwittingly practicing yoga. I won't describe the things I was doing, as I do not want anyone to emulate it as a practical "technique." Suffice it to say, things came to a head when one evening, just after turning off the lights, I lay in bed staring into the darkness. My room was pitch black with the lights out, so the darkness I was staring into was complete. The bedroom door was closed, and everything was silent. I was wide-awake. Suddenly, I felt a pressure on the bed, as of a cat hopping up and walking the distance from my feet toward my head. Only problem was, there were no cats in the house, and certainly not in my room. Rather frightened, I began to reach out to turn on a lamp, when the "cat" leaped onto my chest. Or into it, rather. I felt as if I'd been struck by lightning in my solar plexus.
I scrambled to reach the lamp and lit up the room. Looked all over, under the furniture, in the closet: no cat. My heart was racing, and my body still felt electrified. This "cat" had been stalking me for almost a year before this night. At first in dreams (many dreams) then in waking consciousness, when it would appear walking toward me, then fade. I never saw the cat again after the night "it" reached me.
Since then, I became sensitive to the occult, or mystical, side of human experience. It was not some kind of immature craving for power. It was just a craving to know where the illusion ends and reality begins. I wanted to straddle that line. And I think I did. People who sensed what I was doing came to me to be taught, and in my foolishness I tried. I regret the harm I've done.
In my early 20s, I was approached by a yoga teacher who wanted to give me lessons. I started lessons, and began reading books about yoga and eastern philosophy, which I hadn't previously given much attention to. It was then I saw explanations of Kundalini (why had that word always given me chills?) and told my teacher I wanted to make a goal of working with that side of yoga. He indicated that I was unwise to consider messing with that sort of thing.
Well, I did anyway. Using exercises from books alongside the meditation and asanas I was learning from the teacher, and my own fasting and dietary regimen, I attempted to force the energy into my head. Perhaps because of my previous experience, it wasn't to hard to cut this thing loose. Well, some have said that messing with Kundalini is like playing with fire. I think it's more like playing Blind Man's Bluff in a minefield.
I really opened up. My charisma and sexual prowess improved dramatically, people were doing doing things for me unbidden. In restaurants, stores, at the laundromat, I was getting VIP service without expecting it. I suppose I enjoyed it, but it had me bewildered. What was different? While I felt a certain amount of elation, I did not feel somehow special or different. Opportunities just kept falling in my lap, then...
Suddenly, it all changed. I had a bout of illness having many of the symptoms of meningitis. I never saw a doctor, just lay in bed delirious with fever for a week. Once it cleared I went, seemingly overnight, from being a healthy, peaceful and loving vegetarian, to being a meat-eating, hard-drinking, leather-wearing bitter recluse. A complete personality transplant. I was sick a lot, got headaches and digestive troubles, alienated my friends, and even started considering suicide. I had to keep telling myself that it was temporary, that it was some weird manifestation of the Kundalini. I didn't feel insane. I just felt wretched. The things I did must have arisen from some intuitive sense that alcohol, drugs, meat, etc would ground me and quench the spiritual fire raging within me. And it did, but too slowly. Five years it took me to pull out of that pit.
As I was recovering myself, I regained some of my friends, some of my charisma, and some of my health (I did get cancer eventually). People were now treating me as a wise person. My nickname at a medical office I worked in was "the 200 year old man." Another thing that I did during this period was to return to college to get a degree in religion and anthropology. I felt compelled to, as if the thing at work within me was pushing me in a certain direction.
But the dark clouds didn't start to really clear, as I mentioned, until about five years after the personality crisis. During this period, I stayed away from yoga and meditation, and eschewed any mystical practices, preferring instead to study those of other people. This has been a good education, and lately I've been getting signals from within to resume Kundalini-oriented practices, though tentatively. I've recently stopped consuming drugs, alcohol, meat, cigarettes, etc, and already I feel the process resuming. I also feel I have no choice but to continue the process. I have more clarity of mind and discipline than I had years ago, and I'm in no hurry to force things.
I can't say where this is all going. I don't know. Something bad could happen again, or something very good. I do not consider Kundalini an "evolutionary" process, as Gopi Krishna does. As I understand it, it's a latent function in all people, and possibly all animals, and does not point to something better, or higher. It's just a potential that is triggered in some people, that they might use it in some way to benefit their community or society. Healers, great leaders, prophets, artists and inventors appear to be moved by Kundalini.
© Copyright C.P. McDill 2006