Firstly, spontaneous human combustion (SHC). Several decades ago, when I was starting my serious training on this, I was told that some cases of SHC were due to people either accidentally or deliberately raising the kundalini when they were not spiritually ready: hence, their chakras were, in a sense, "blocked" - unable to transmit the powerful energies of a truly raised kundalini (many people think they have raised the kundalini, when in truth all they have done is stimulate a certain amount of chakric energy), and the blockage led to the energy going elsewhere, rather than up the channels it is meant to, and a consequence could be SHC.
"Fortunately" for most people who raise the kundalini before they are ready, they simply have mental health problems ... As you evolve spiritually, your chakras become more efficient (which many people describe as "opening": they are ALWAYS open, or active, to some extent - if they weren't, you would have major problems; "opening" and "closing" really means sensitising and desensitising), and thus are able to cope with the energies of the kundalini - which will raise of its own accord when you are ready.
Next, an analogy for thinking of your life: compare it to the structure of a building.
Let's begin by considering laying one plank of wood across another, and then nailing the two of them together. If you now try to slide the top plank across and off the bottom plank, the nail resists this shear force quite well: the metal of the nail resists the force. If you try to lever the top plank off the bottom, the nail will resist this also and, so long as the moment exerted is not too strong, the two pieces of timber will stay together. However, if the force applied (either way) is strong enough, it will cause the timber to deform slightly (technically, the weaker timber has "yielded"): over time, this eventually leads to the nail becoming loose, and thus less useful. Approaches to ensure the joint lasts include designing it with a factor of safety, redundancy (multiple nails), possibly glue (new glues are better in terms of having a long enough life - buildings such as houses are generally supposed to last at least 50 to 75 years in Australia, and until recently this wasn't possible with glues that were available), providing a brace to convert the moment to an axial load in the strut, using a material which was not as different in strength as the nail to the timber (such as wooden pegs - some people build houses without any nails), or making a gradual transition (a bit like using an arch instead of a post and beam construction).
In terms of your life, you may use, say ... meditation to help cope with life's stresses. If, however, the performance of this is something which is rigidly separated from other aspects of your life, it may eventually become a point of contention with others who are close to you. maybe a better way of having meditation in your life is to make the transition from normal life to meditation less abrupt - spend time, for example, emphasising how much you love those close to you before you go off to meditate, and focus on them when you come out of meditation.
Or ... if you exercise, maybe encourage your partner(s) to either also exercise or do something that they wish to that you don't have an interest in while you do that. Maybe you can include meditative aspects at work (e.g., a "30 second holiday" - close your eyes, relax and contemplate something pleasant at the start of your coffee break) or have something on your desk (if you work at a desk!) which reminds you of spiritual matters (without upsetting your colleagues).
These are the best analogies I can come up with at the moment on this. Now, life stages.
I've posted on this previously [1], by the way.
I've always been different to what society said I should be. I was never into parties, and as a teenager I didn't feel a desperate need to be in a relationship. Later in life, however, the desire to be in a relationship grew (although my interest in parties was so fleeting it was over almost before it began - as was my interest in drinking [why do so many Aussies think they haven't had a good time unless they've been so drunk or drug affected they can't remember what happened, or are drug affected afterwards? Possibly the fear of being rejected, so they take something to lower their inhibitions and hope the results of being obnoxious or "not themselves" will somehow attract someone to them ... ), but that didn't happen until I had resolved my major personal issues AND I had actually given up expecting a relationship.
As a teenager, many tend to think it must all happen now, or one's life will be tragically ruined for forever - you know, the tragic (hand across forehead as one swoons) "no-one will EVER love me 'cos no-one had sex with my in Grade Nine". It's not true - and it's easy to know that as one grows, but the truth still remains that it is not true. (I have to admit to being impatient to get out and start living my own life as a teenager. ... I'm also glad that I no longer choose to spend significant amounts of each day attending to physical appearance [make up etc] - there's too much of greater importance to do :) ... I also think people PLAN to make housework harder than it needs to be: for instance, keep everyuthing [e.g., fridges, washing machines] off the floor by around 150mm and then you (a) can get things out from underneath it, and (b) you don't have to waste massive amounts of energy doing a big production just to clear that part of the floor occasionally)
The same error (and it IS an error) can happen in spiritual matters.
We are basically an eternal soul: what does it matter if we have to wait a couple of decades while children grow and leave home before pursuing our spiritual interests, for example? Maybe they will have to wait until we retire. That delay may well be frustrating, but really, there is time - there is eternity. (The exceptions would be things such as if one had to complete a task at a particular stage of evolution of the planet one was on.) Levels of manifestation. I've recently read, as I've mentioned, Alexandra David-Neel's book "Magic & Mystery in Tibet" (Souvenir Press, ISBN 9 78025 637924). In this, an episode is described where two monks are watching a flag flutter in a wind, and debate which is moving - the flag, or the wind? The answer is neither: the mind moves. Now, that is true, but it requires some explanation for the everyday person to understand it.
First off, there are lots of levels of reality - the physical, the etheric, several astral levels, the mental level, the soul, etc, etc, etc. Most people talk of seven levels, but there are more. What we generally conceive of as mind is associated with the function of the physical brain. In an esoteric sense, it is probably part of the astral body's activity. There is a higher, personal level which is described as the "mental" level, which is a level of reality where, in effect, one lives in and explores/experiences certain concepts (Alice Bailey's work is good to read an understand on this topic). Above that is the level of our Overself, or Atman - our "soul", in a sense, which is where our parallels and ourself become united. This is the level that most Buddhists mean when they refer to "mind".
Now, the physical reality we exist in has been created: generally this is considered to be by the souls incarnated on it, but I suspect it may actually be at a level higher than that, higher than our individual Overselves. It is at either that level, or at least the level of our Overself, that the mind moves, and thereby creates the "illusion" of a flag moving in the wind. (This is also an interesting topic in terms of "miracles": when someone does something which most Westerners would consider miraculous, such as ... levitating, is it an application of unknown laws, as David-Neel and Lobsang Rampa say Tibetans think, or is it one soul deciding "to hell with it, I'm going to break the agreed manifestation of reality and do something different. ... I'm inclined towards the former, but I still wonder about it ... :) )
Now, in reading David-Neel's book, I was struck by how the Tibetan gurus teaching their disciples were very often what I would consider tricksters. For instance, one exercise involves withdrawing from the world, and then concentrating on a certain set of exercises to acheive a (to a Westerner) miraculous manifestation. This does not result in the desired spiritual result for the disciple, though, so - for those who persist - the exercise is repeated, several times, until the disciple has a break through comprehension on the nature of reality. I'm currently planning a post on this book which may go into this a bit more, but my initial thoughts include that these gurus are working along the lines of Loki or the shamanistic power animal coyote (who is one of my power animals :) ).
On that book, it was good to read a description of how a withdrawal or spiritual retreat is not a time for bludging or taking things easy, one will be flat doing various exercises - breathing, meditation, rituals, etc.
That reminds me of my last point: not using breathing. I think I have posted on this previously, in the context of Rampa's alternate nostril breathing exercise, where I found a visualisation to use in lieu of this. I generally use breathing to increase the power of the visualisation. That's all well and good, but when I no longer have a physical body, I won't be able to breathe in the same way - I can still absorb positive energy, and then direct it as per my visualisation, but I won't have the physical trigger. So I have recently started occasionally doing my chakra exercises without connecting them to my breathing (which I should mention is something I am only able to do effectively because of many years of doing these with breathing) to help me when I eventually pass over.
Anyway, that will have to do for now. Time to go back and starting supporting my partner through the wonderful set of revealed problems we call " a death in the family" (I so prefer our family-of-choice, or friends ... although it can be nice when family members are also part of our family-of-choice).
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear") Notes:
- See here, for instance (although I have a better post somewhere ...)
This post's photo is yet to be posted.
Tags: kundalini, spontaneous human combustion, analogy, life, contemplation, review, reflection, planes of existence, Lobsang Rampa, David-Neel, guru, teaching, visualisation, breathing,
First published: Sunnudagr, 17th April, 2011
Last edited: Wednesday 20th April, 2011
