When people speak about spontaneous kundalini awakening, they often refer to transpersonal experiences that are not deliberately sought and are triggered by factors that have nothing to do with spiritual practices or meditation. One such factor is intense romantic love.
I know several people whose panic attacks were triggered after they fell deeply in love with another person. After I published my last article about the seven categories of phenomena accompanying spontaneous kundalini awakening, as described by Bonnie Greenwell, I now know one more such case. Her experiences of awakened kundalini differ from the symptoms of panic attacks, which makes it even clearer that this is a spiritual experience, triggered spontaneously and unintentionally by an external event. In this case, that event was love.
Love truly is a transformative force of Spirit—but usually not in the way we imagine it to be.
That was the reason I suggested that she share her experience on my website, and to my joy she agreed. Below you will find her story, shared under the pseudonym Flower.
“In order for habits to be disturbed, unexpected circumstances are created. The only way to face a new situation is through deep self-inquiry with that total sincerity which alone can change the quality of human feeling. Then the body, in turn, is required to gather the entire energy of its attention, to attune itself to an order it is meant to serve. After that, the experience may proceed on its own toward another level.”
— Gurdjieff
I do not know what circumstances Gurdjieff was referring to, but for me this applies fully to the awakening of Kundalini. Mine awakened four years ago—with the appearance of a man, my soul twin.
We met online. We shared common interests in the spiritual field. For about a year I had already been interested in the “invisible world.”
We connected on Skype for a more detailed conversation. We had read many of the same books and were excited that we could discuss what we had read. We wrote to each other for two or three hours, and that was all. Throughout the entire next day, I kept thinking about him. I felt him very close to me and was happy to have met a kindred soul. The following day we exchanged a few sentences again and each went on with our responsibilities.
But what happened to me shortly after exceeded any idea I had of close relationships.
While I was sitting and thinking about personal matters, I began to see, in my aura, my silhouette and his. The silhouettes were embracing and kissing in the air, while simultaneously spinning in a circle. I intuitively knew it was him, even though I had never seen him and had no idea what he looked like. I began to feel lighter and warmer; my breathing became heavy. This state lasted about five minutes, perhaps—because the concept of time had no meaning there. The most fitting word for it might be ecstasy.
I began to wonder what was happening to me. I had been married for ten years, and like many women I lacked romance and tenderness in my family life, but imagining such things with a stranger seemed abnormal to me. I paced around the computer, afraid to turn on Skype.
The next day I wrote him a greeting—he did not respond. The tension of not knowing what was happening grew. I had to understand.
Later I wrote again, saying I wanted to have an important conversation. This time he came online and wrote that he was waiting. I was not afraid to speak openly; I am an open person, and I assumed he would understand, since he too was one of the “strange” people. Not only did he accept it calmly, but he admitted that he had felt it as well and described it as a merging of souls.
We began exchanging information—what each of us knew on the subject—and reached a definite conclusion: we were soul twins. We recognized each other intuitively, and the state we both entered confirmed it. We did not yet know, however, that Kundalini energy had decided to awaken in both of us after we connected.
The initial warmth turned into heat; my entire body burned. I trembled all over, and the most curious thing was that no one around me could see it. My chakras began pulsing with enormous force. Sexual desire surged powerfully within me. In my consciousness I saw myself as a predator, ready to tear through everything in its path, determined to satisfy animal passions—and they were directed only toward him, the One. We were like two magnets irresistibly drawn to each other.
In the center of my chest a portal of warmth opened—so soft and soothing. The desire and longing for closeness between us were so intense that both of us, frightened that we might lose our sanity, cut off all contact.
Perhaps for the first time in my life, I experienced such fear. My brain turned to jelly; I could not think; I was losing my sanity. At one moment I felt timelessness and peace; the next I was paralyzed by panic and anxiety. I had intrusive thoughts that pushed me toward actions I would never consider in a normal mental state. I thought about murder, about suicide. Then I reproached myself for being capable of thinking such things. Sometimes these thoughts disappeared quickly; other times they lingered.
I could not sleep. I could not eat. I had no desire to shower or brush my teeth—basic daily things. I was here and not here. My soul had left my body. I was like a ghost. I felt as if I were in a prison I could not escape. The most painful part was that my six-year-old child somehow sensed my condition. In his sleep he murmured: “Mom, I love you! Mom, I love you!” And I would wake up and answer him: “I’m here, my love, and I love you too.”
I saw him in my aura—looking at me and saying: “Don’t forget me! Don’t abandon me!”
I had always been deeply attached to my child. He was the meaning of my life. And now my soul had left me; I did not feel him as my child, but as a stranger, as a child I did not know and did not understand why he was with me. Nothing was said aloud, neither by me nor by him—but our souls knew.
Several weeks passed before I began to return to myself. No ordinary logic can explain this.
It turned out that cutting off contact with one’s soul counterpart simply because it is convenient does not work before the Universe.
After a few days I reached out to him again—and for the first time I hit a wall. He told me that nothing could exist between us except friendship and that I should accept it, because that was best for both of us. And it was. We lived at opposite ends of the country. We were both bound to families we did not want to destroy. We had built lives without love but arranged according to society’s mold. Moreover, we viewed life through very different lenses. He wanted one thing; I wanted another. A relationship between us would have destroyed us—we had almost nothing in common.
If anyone had ever told me that I would beg for someone’s attention and love, I would have laughed for a long time. But it happened. He was the drug I needed, the air I needed to breathe. He never left my consciousness. For a long time I sought him, wanted to know how he was, and each time I hit a wall. He had withdrawn into his own shell.
The rejection of my love led me into deep depression. I cried whenever I could allow myself to. I have probably never shed so many tears in my life. That was when I understood that a person can die of love. I, who did not believe in love and judged the impulsive actions of people in love, was now dying of love.
My chakras seemed to have calmed; the heat diminished, but the trembling remained. Not constantly, but at times I thought I might have Parkinson’s disease.
The friend who had introduced me to the Path stood by me. Without her support and the possibility of communicating with her, I do not know how I would have survived.
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully at the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.”
— Alexander Bell
My unfulfilled love transformed into something else. I began to read, to search for answers to what had happened to me. I wondered whether I was insane, punished, cursed—or blessed. Later I understood that it was all of these at once. After years of searching.
The suffering I experienced over months and years transformed into love and acceptance of everything and everyone. I did not succeed in accepting the whole world, but I no longer judge anyone. I found something good in every person, and because of that goodness I had a reason to love them or accept them as they are.
Before this suffering, I expected others to act as I would in a given situation. After it, I accepted that they act as they can and as their level of development allows. I recognized my own imperfection.
Over the next two years, Kundalini awakened in full force within me two more times, and several times in a weaker form. This time the object was different—a man with whom I worked. There was a reaction in him as well; I sensed it. He avoided me, and if we happened to come close, he fled. I understood him—it was probably happening to him for the first time.
But whether it happens for the first, second, or third time is not particularly important. Sexual desire tears one apart; the brain does not function normally; one loses a sense of right and wrong. Interestingly, circumstances do not allow sexual contact. It was not allowed the first time, nor the next two times with the other man. And a month before my first Kundalini awakening, my husband lost his potency. Sex became a mirage for me.
What a relief it was to meet, “by unknowable divine paths,” a friend—a man of thirty-two—who told me about his experiences. At fourteen he saw a girl at school and fell in love. She fell in love as well, but the only thing they did was look at each other in the school corridors. Kundalini awakened in him; he trembled all over; he burned. He crackled with energy he did not know how to use. He only knew that he was in love.
From the impossibility of sharing his love, from longing, he fell into the same depression I had experienced. He was dying, and no one could help him. Eventually a psychologist managed to bring him back—to life—after seven years.
Eighteen years after that encounter, he still dreams of her, and she never leaves his consciousness. He told me: “I have always thought of women this way—Her, and the others. She has always been first.” He told me about a time when he was ill with a high fever. He met her; she smiled at him—and he recovered.
For him, Kundalini is still active, as it is for me. It manifests as powerful sexual attraction to a specific object, as it does for me. But for both of us, these states pass after a few days and then seem as if they never happened. Since neither of us is the type of person for whom casual sex is normal, due to our upbringing in strict morality, perhaps this is what protected us from “wasting the energy.”
Perhaps for our cases, mine and my friend’s, the most fitting explanation is that of Beinsa Douno:
“These two kindred souls are the two poles where life is born. Only when you find a kindred soul that constitutes the opposite pole of your life, only then will growth occur and true evolution begin.”
The relief I felt upon meeting him was knowing that I am not alone in this world carrying such a burden. I write this article for others who carry the same, so that they may know they are not alone.
Author of the article: Flower
P.S. Below are some of my comments following this article, which were later closed.
As the saying goes, those who seek, find. Quite by chance, I came across an answer concerning the connection between kundalini awakening and sexuality, given by Ganga-Puri Kaliuttamananda-Giri (commonly referred to as Guru Swami G). She is a woman— a spiritual teacher with a very pleasant presence and a sense of humor—who has attained self-realization through following several spiritual paths. One of them is Kundalini (i.e., receiving shaktipat), and another is Tantra.
When asked what should be done when kundalini manifests at the level of the sexual chakra, her answer is: nothing should be done. Attention should be directed toward the higher chakras, where the heart chakra—the chakra of love—is located. She then adds that in our world there is so much repressed energy and so many taboos at this level that it is entirely normal for awakening kundalini to initially manifest as a powerful sexual impulse. However, it would be a major mistake to focus on it, because the goal of yoga—self-realization—is connected with liberation from mental conditioning and the evolution of consciousness. In this sense, focusing on sexual gratification only strengthens fixation on the body instead of freeing one from it.
In short, the location where awakened spiritual energy manifests should not be confused with the ultimate goal of its awakening. This is in harmony with what Scott Kiloby writes about the awakening of the body:
“I relaxed, looked, and allowed myself to feel in that area. I saw images, sometimes words came and went, all of which seemed to be connected to that area.”
There is also another important piece of knowledge from Guru Swami G regarding how to work with awakened kundalini in the lower chakras. It concerns Tantra as a philosophy—one that is completely misunderstood by the modern person because it has been taken out of its context. And that context is the attainment of self-realization, where everything connected to the world is used as a means of traveling toward the Divine. Or, as she puts it: “Tantra is not about sex; tantra is beyond sex.”
She speaks about the caste of Brahmins who practice tantra with a partner who is neither their wife nor their lover, but the Untouchable—a woman they are not allowed to touch. The purpose of this practice is to work with the conditioning of the mind in order to move beyond it. Sexual desire contains many conditionings—many samskaras—that arise from the unconscious in order to be dissolved through the light of consciousness.
In the story shared by Flower, and later by Kalatea, there is a recurring motif: the object of desire is Unattainable. Life itself pushes a person onto the path of self-realization by offering them conditions similar to those of the highest priestly caste in India—communion with the Unattainable Beloved. When the object of our feelings and desires is Inaccessible, space opens for the alchemization of sexual energy into the energy of love.
Everything above is my own summary of what Guru Swami G says in this YouTube clip.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
