Video Transcription:
Really quickly, although there’s lots that can be said about Kundalini, and there’s many different sort of definitions, Kundalini is a Sanskrit term for a universal human experience that not every person has in the course of their lifetime, but every person certainly can have.
It is the awakening of inertial energies that are used to maintain habitual structures and patterns in the body into a kinetic streaming format that streams from the bottom of the body, typically upwards through the body, which may be accompanied by, preceded by, or followed by a more fluid, cooling, nourishing experience of hormones descending from the brain, often associated with the descent of the dove in Christianity, the descent of amrit or nectar in Eastern traditions.
So these two flows are interconnected in their experiences and they’re mutually beneficial to each other. And this practice, Dr. Morris’s set of practices, does work with both of those flows as well as the outward expression of those two experiences.
It should be understood that Kundalini, which is often referred to metaphorically within the Eastern traditions as the slumbering sort of serpent power, or slumbering energy at the base of the spine or in the pelvic floor, which then awakens and starts to stream through the body lighting up and opening up different experiences of consciousness and then unifying them.
That same kinetic energy as it matures and opens out becomes contemplative presence, meditative presence, that feeling of fully experiencing the entirety of the body experience and beyond as consciousness. Self reflexive awareness really occupying and moving beyond space, recognizing that it is aware without attaching to any particular feelings or phenomena of consciousness as being innately the sense of self.
So this same energy which normally is habituated in the body’s structures, and the personality structures, the identification as a father, or a mother, or a child, or a lawyer, or a carpenter, all of the sense of “I” begins to become kinetic when it experiences certain conditions.
That streaming energy will continue to stream until it streams right through the very core of the body. If it’s going up the sides, or the back, or the front, it will lead to some experiences, but it won’t necessarily lead to a maturation and integration of consciousness.
But if it’s streaming up through the very core, it starts to link together regions along both the spinal and vagus nerves, and along the central meridian pathways of the body, and the central capillary structures of the body that move hormones, so that all of those physiologically and energetically begin to integrate into a continuum of experiences that normally as human beings we feel discreetly.
We might at one part of our life be profoundly in love, at another part we might be deeply shut down, or we might be deeply driven by our desire to leave an imprint, an impact upon the world. But, very frequently, we aren’t experiencing all of these different experiences: compassion, love, drive, groundedness, profound feelings of transcendence beyond the body.
It’s very rare that we experience all those things at once in the normal scale of human experience. What Kundalini does is gradually open up all of those different regions of consciousness within the brain and body and beyond so that you can simultaneously experience them.
So that you can be having transpersonal experiences where you’re feeling the connective consciousness and connective — collective empathy, which some of you already do, while feeling personally grounded and feeling your individual personality, and likes and dislikes, while also experiencing that aspect of your consciousness which is beyond the beyond. Meaning which is not identified with your body, but is identified with the totality of all.
All of these are possible from various aspects of the physical and subtle body structures, and it’s possible to even go beyond them into the inherent suchness of being. Kundalini is one of the easiest, meaning the rising of Kundalini and its integration through the core of the body, is one of the easiest ways to do that.
And by ease I don’t mean it doesn’t take some awareness, effort, good luck, etc., less luck with this particularity methodology because it really does work.
That said, it works faster than doing contemplation for long periods of time, because you’re integrating energetic movement, breath work, bodily awareness, emotional awareness, mental awareness, intuitive awareness, into a practice that begins to actually create a more rapid internal change.
Really an internal alchemy. Bringing particular factors together and experiencing them fully as they mix and create new releases of energy and experience. So it’s very much like cooking.
And like cooking, the process requires both balance, and getting to know the various flavors and how they come together. Getting to understand the principles of fire and water, meaning how we heat things, and how they change as we cook them. That we could overcook something, as well as cook it to a perfect delicate juicy tenderness, which is really what we’re looking for here.
We’re looking for something that enhances human experience while also allowing you to go beyond human experience.
We’re not trying to cut off the ego, so much as recognize it and be able to go outside of its boundaries while also balancing the egoistic tendencies in whatever way we see fit. And by “we”, I mean you. This is very much a self-actuated practice that is assisted by the wisdom and understanding of the various instructors and practitioners who have gone before you etc.
Continuing with the aspects of Kundalini, as Kundalini matures past its kinetic stage, although the body begins to understand how to regulate Kundalini’s flow the same way that we can regulate breathing, which happens subconsciously normally, but of course we can slow our breath, deepen our breath, make it shallower, whatever we choose to do with it.
You begin to also have the same ability to control Kundalini flow not in the sense of restricting it, but managing it the same way that you manage your breath.
As it opens and matures, while you can still turn it into kinetic energy it also begins to move into its third stage which is a more self illuminated presence, dynamically equipoised experience of opening and spreading of consciousness in and beyond the body, which is experienced naturally by someone doing a contemplative tradition over many years with proper guidance.
Meaning, if you’re doing Chan or Zen or any of these kinds of practices (Advaita Vedanta), gradually presence tends to dawn and increase. The advantage of also doing energy work, a Kundalini practice, an embodied practice is that it tends to integrate more quickly, more fully in the body if one recognizes that one is a bridge to the other.
Many times people experience Kundalini rising spontaneously and may not even really know what it is. They just know that it tends to give them particular sensations or experiences depending on how it’s rising in the body. They may get fixated on particular experiences that they’re having without ever getting that central integration of the energy.
It may be going up one side or the other side, or through several parts of the body but not through the central experience. And it is the central experience that gives us access to that feeling and experience of primordial consciousness. Suchness. Beingness. Sat-chit-ananda It has many different names in different traditions.
— Transcription by Spencer Stevens
