The spiritual path....happens in cycles....

Many years ago after I had been following a Buddhist path for many years I was in my flat one Saturday morning and I remember feeling so disillusioned about this path. I had returned from a trip to India where I had tracked the life of the Buddha and I felt lost and didn't know where to go next. Then I heard either my own thoughts or a voice that said just three words. These were 'give it up'. I couldn't believe it. The pursuit of the spiritual was something that had become a part of me and wasn't something that I did and so to have this thought of giving everything up was shocking for me. Yet I listened and gave up reading any spiritual books, writing or going to workshops/talks. I can still remember the emptiness I felt.

Then I had what to most people is a normal common everyday experience where an emotional situation triggered a reaction in me in a normal everyday setting of a work situation. Weeks later I accidentally grabbed a book from my bookshelf to take to read on a bus journey that I was making. My heart sank when I saw that it was a spiritual book that I had promised to give up months ago but still I opened the book. As my eyes glided over the sentences I realized that I had a different ease of understanding that definitely hadn't been there before. I was so engrossed in reading that I completely missed my stop.

Now why am I writing this in the blog when it has been written in my book? I have seen in myself that events that happened years ago are happening again which is why I say that this path happens in cycles. A while ago I went to see the film 'Eat, Pray, Love' and I really enjoyed it. I was particularly interested in the experiences of the ashram that were shown. Then a woman who I work with asked me if I had read the book and I said 'no' and she said 'I will lend it to you'. She was true to her word and on Monday she produced the book for me.

Last night on the bus going home reading it, I missed my stop to get off. Why did I get so absorbed in what I was reading? The reason is because to my absolute astonishment I read the closest account I have read about the energy that lies at the base of the spine and what happens when it rises. The film was the ideal opportunity to bring this information to the world and it didn't happen..why? Why didn't the film bring this information to the world. It could have been done in a dialogue between two of the actors in the ashram. To me this was such a golden opportunity and it would have shifted how people saw the spiritual. This energy at the base of the spine is common to all therefore it's not purely a spiritual energy. It is a human energy which when it is experienced gives the realization that we are spiritual beings having human experiences.

As I was reading it I realized with a jolt that I had experienced what is called the 'blue eye' in meditation. The closest I can relate this to is the view from a kaleidoscope where the eye suddenly opens up and 'something' is seen. I vaguely remember this happening but because I was so against 'seeing' anything in meditation I didn't give what I saw any importance. This is unlike my yoga teacher who told us that when he experienced this eye that when it parted there was a big spider there. As he was terrified of spiders this broke his meditation. So at every stage of this path there are challenges to overcome.

The writer of Eat, Pray, Love has a Guru and all I can think of is that when she was involved in the making of the film that she consulted the guru who advised her not to mention the powerful kundalini experience she had while meditating. I don't have a guru which is why I'm more objective/scientific about the whole thing. I think that this is such a shame as to have had the kind of conversation about it that she has written in the book would have profoundly shifted the spiritual path from one which is thought just for certain people to a path that everyone has a right to and indeed what is at the root of the profound emptiness that is so often found in the west.

She writes on page 142 'I fall asleep for a while (in meditation. When I awake I can feel the soft blue electrical energy pulsing through my body in waves (the 'waves' is exactly the same experience as I had'. It's a bit alarming but also amazing. I don't know what to do, so I just speak internally to this energy. I say to it 'I believe in you' and it magnifies, volumizes in response. It's frighteningly powerful now, like a kidnapping of the senses. It's humming up from the base of my spine'. There is more but this is the most important part. Over the next pages to page 146 she investigates kundalini but nowhere in the film is there a discussion about any of this and this just amazes me. I was so absorbed in this part of the book that for the second time in my life I missed my stop on the bus. What is also familiar is the process of letting go which came before.

Yesterday I declared that I would let go my story about the right brain and spirituality. I don't know though how I have shifted by reading this book. All I am left with is a huge frustration that knowledge and information that could have been brought to the world wasn't. A couple of my friends who read the book before seeing the film expressed a disappointment in the film but couldn't say why. Maybe deep down they also feel there was......a golden opportunity lost.....