How to find out if your Kundalini rises April 3, 2013

The energy of  Kundalini  is quite present in the modern life, today more than ever before. The signs of a 3,5 coiled energy became a popular image in marketing, for it’s a beautiful design element and it echoes in our collective consciousness. Although it is being so widely used I doubt that people really know its meaning and power.

Wikipedia gives some information about Kundalini but most of it HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SUBJECT. It looks like some people tried to awaken this sacred energy being not authorized for it, and they got very strange, if not terrifying results.  I am puzzled how practitioners of so-called Kundalini yoga describe the sensations they get calling it rising Kundalini this way:

(and belive me this is NOT what Kundalini feels like)

• Involuntary jerks, tremors, shaking, itching, tingling, and crawling sensations, especially in the arms and legs
• Energy rushes or feelings of electricity circulating the body
• Intense heat (sweating) or cold, especially as energy is experienced passing through the chakras
• Headache, migraine, or pressure inside the skull
• Increased blood pressure and irregular heartbeat
• Emotional numbness
• Antisocial tendencies
• Mood swings with periods of depression or mania
• Pains in different areas of the body, especially back and neck
• Sensitivity to light, sound, and touch
• Trance-like and altered states of consciousness
• Disrupted sleep pattern (periods of insomnia or oversleeping)
• Loss of appetite or overeating

I mean are they all masochist?!? Why practice something which gives you such horrid discomfort and suffering? I believe a truly spiritual practice must give one the enlightenment and bliss and not horror.

Luckily there have been wonderful saints and prophets all over the world, in different religions and spiritual practices who have given the exact description of Kundalini as of a cool breeze. Even some musicians and artists have referred to this cooling sensation.

Since my Kundalini was awakened 17 year back, and I have felt and have been “working” with this amazing energy for such a long time, I feel authorized enough to give a list of REAL KUNDALINI RISING sensations. This list can be confirmed by many millions of people who have experienced the same (unfortunately they are all too shy or to self-sufficient to post about it).

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOUR KUNDALINI IS RISING?

1. If you sit with the rounded back, slowly or suddenly your back will get straight, you may even not notice that. The upright position is possible even for people with spine cord problems when their Kundalini rises.
2. Your nose will breathe much “lighter”, even without any special exercises – this is the sign that Kundalini has passed the Hamsa chakra (between the eyebrows).
3. You may feel the cooling energy rising upwards your spinal cord, mostly on the back, although some people can feel it within, inside the body.
4. You will feel cool breeze in your hands, and interestingly – when the breeze gets stronger your hand will open up on their own.
5. After meditation with well risen Kundalini you may feel the need to “wash off” your face with your hands. You eyes will glow and your face will shine with peace and beauty!
6. Tickling and warm sensation in different parts of the body can be a sign of Kundalini rising and doing it’s clearing work. Ultimately and ideally this must end up in getting the cool breeze on top of head and in the hands
7. The cool breeze pouring down your head or even all over the body gives the feeling of the absolute bliss and dissolution, feels like Nirvana and cannot be mistaken for anything else! This is the ultimate goal of any yoga and it is the easiest to reach by the sahaja yoga practice.

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, founder of Sahaja Yoga

LOVE, axinia

Some amazing quotes on love by a Sufi master June 1, 2012

image by Vera Subkus

 

The word love is derived from the Sanskrit word Lobh, which means desire, wish; the same word is used in the Russian language, Liubov. Love may be called in other words the desire to be conscious of the object of love.

***

It is for this reason that we admire all those whom we love, and are blind to the good qualities of those whom we do not love. It is not always that these deserve our neglect, but our eyes, without love, cannot see their goodness. Those whom we love may have bad points too, but as love sees beauty, so we see that alone in them.

***

 As love is the source of creation and the real sustenance of all beings, so, if man knows how to give it to the world around him as sympathy, as kindness, as service, he supplies to all the food for which every soul hungers. If man knew this secret of life he would win the whole world, without any doubt.

***

A heart burning in love’s fire has a tendency to melt every heart with which it comes in contact.

***

    Love is inherent in every soul. All the occupations of life, however important or unimportant, in some way or other tend towards love; therefore no one in the world can be called entirely loveless.

***

   Love is above law, and law is beneath love. There is no comparison between them; one is from heaven and the other from earth. Where love dies law begins. Therefore law can never find a place for love, nor can love ever limit itself within law, one being limited, the other being as unlimited as life. The lover can give no reason why he loves a certain one, for there is a reason for everything except love.

The true human rights July 8, 2010

The absolute value of individuals lies in the fact that they share with God an innate capacity for creative work and love.

The relative value of individuals depends on the level they have reached in their spiritual ascent, on the sum of efforts—both their own and Providence’s—spent on the attainment of that level, and on the degree to which they manifest in their lives those gifts for divine creative work and love…

The older religions judged the relative value of individuals by the degree to which they obeyed the prescriptions of a given religious-moral code. Religions with ascetic leanings believed the highest stage to be sainthood, defining it as either pure monastic service or as martyrdom for one’s faith. In so doing they relegated love to the background. A monk’s or martyr’s self-denial were performed not out of love for humanity or for all living beings but out of a yearning to merge with God and to avoid the torments of hell. I am, of course, referring here to the predominant tendency, the prevalent attitude, and not to such astonishing individual apostles of love as St. Francis of Assisi, Ramajuna, or Milarepa.
Monstrous though it may seem to us, even the eternal suffering of sinners in hell did not arouse in the majority of adepts of those religions the desire to enlighten the world’s laws, including the law of retribution, or karma. Eternal punishment for temporal sins appeared to them a just act of God or in any case (as in Brahmanism) an unalterable and absolutely immutable law. Buddha burned like a torch with the flame of compassion, but he, too, taught only how to free oneself from the wheel of iron laws and not how to enlighten and transform those laws. As for creative work, its intrinsic nature was not recognized at all—such a concept did not even exist—while little importance was attached to concrete forms of creative work accessible to ordinary people, with the exception of religious works in the narrow sense of the word: acts of charity, theology, missionary service, church architecture, and religious service.
Other religions that are not given to asceticism, such as Islam and Protestantism, modified the ideal of sanctity, broadening it and, at the same time, lowering it, making it more accessible, more popular, even going so far as to require the observance of commandments vis-a-vis God, the state, one’s neighbor, one’s family, and, lastly, oneself. It should be emphasized that neither one nor the other group of religions set themselves the task of transforming society, let alone nature.

It was only natural that such tasks were finally advocated by secular teachings, though in an extremely simplistic form.

How much all religions have in common? June 13, 2010

It was always clear to me that all religions and spiritual practices are of the same nature, origin and logic.

Speaking to representatives of any of them it was almost impossible to explain what I mean, this was such a subtle logic… But now I know!

I suddenly realised that all of them talk the same thing:

1.there are microcosm and macrocosm

2.there are an individual should and the collective(world) soul

3.and these two shall become one.

Isn’t it that obvious?… The form and the way of expression can be different, be the essence is just the same…Then why people fight?

LOVE, axinia

Albert Einstein “The Merging of Spirit and Science” May 15, 2010

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical.

It is the sower of all true science.

He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists,

manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our

dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms

– this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness.

Albert Einstein “The Merging of Spirit and Science”

The ultimate happening May 8, 2010

It is interesting to note that each religion gives a different name to this event. The Koran calls it Resurrection and the reward takes the form of “gardens watered by running streams“. The goal of Hinduism is “self-realisation” and that of Buddhism “nirvana”, where the being feels a rain of bliss upon him. Christians call it “baptism” or “entry into the kingdom of God”. There too, the symbolic gesture of John the Baptist uses the element of water on Christ’s fontanel. In the same way the Pentecostal wind which descended upon the heads of the disciples marked their entry into a new dimension, the enlightenment of their awareness through the perception of vibrations, an experience which is in every way similar to the awakening of the Kundalini today.

Are not streams, rain and wind the metaphors used by the different traditions to refer to the event of self-realization? Hindus, Jews, Christians and Muslims experience their union in the light of the same source, that of Allah.

The Hindu has no choice but to acknowledge the cool showers of bliss descending on his brain devoid of thoughts, drenched in the absolute silence of the Eternal. The Jew enjoyed the same well-being  and feels the burning bush which was revealed to Moses vibrating within him:

The phenomenon of Russian spirituality and Seraphim of Sarov April 19, 2010

Russians are proud to be spiritual people, spirituality is a popular word in there and is being often misused even by politicians. After the communism-era, which I believe itself was in a way very spiritual (because people were motivated by high ideals), the traditional Russian values are back with even more power. Spirituality has been obviously a mass phenomenon in Russia unlike in many other parts of the world. 

Despite this fact, I find it highly interesting that Russia is not famous for its spiritual leaders, the more so there has been not a single world-famous spiritual leader in Russia (let’s say of a great caliber of Zarathustra, Lao Tse, Moses, Mohammad). Apparently there have been several quite powerful saints, but none of them had a nation-wide impact. I wonder where od the roots of Russian spirituality are emerging from? What makes people so desperately seeking for the highest, go beyond materialism, being ready to sacrifice a lot for the truth?… 

Whatever the reason is, Russia gave birth to quite a number of saints that are not well known but yet have been an enlightening example of spirituality. One of the most famous and loved one is Seraphim of Sarov. 

 

 Saint Seraphim of Sarov (Russian: Серафим Саровский) (1759 – 1833),  is one of the most renowned Russian monks and mystics in the Orthodox Church. He is generally considered the greatest of the 19th century startsy (elders) and, arguably, the first. He is remembered for extending the monastic teachings of contemplation, theoria and self-denial to the layperson, and taught that the purpose of the Christian life was to acquire the Holy Spirit.  

Seraphim (born Moshnin) was born in 1759 to a merchant family in Kursk. At the age of 10, he became seriously ill. During the course of his illness, he saw the Mother of God in his sleep, who promised to heal him. Several days later there was a religious procession in Kursk with the locally revered miracle-working icon of the Mother of God. Due to bad weather, the procession took an abbreviated route past the house of the Moshnin family. After his mother put Seraphim up to the miracle-working image, he recovered rapidly. While at a young age, he needed to help his parents with their shop, but business had little appeal for him. Young Seraphim loved to read the lives of the saints, to attend church and to withdraw into seclusion for prayer.

At the age of 18, Seraphim firmly decided to become a monk. His mother blessed him with a large copper crucifix, which he wore over his clothing all his life. After this, he entered the Sarov monastery as a novice. From day one in the monastery, exceptional abstinence from food and slumber were the distinguishing features of his life. He ate once a day, and little. On Wednesdays and Fridays he ate nothing. After asking the blessing of his starets (i.e., a spiritual elder), he began to withdraw often into the forest for prayer and religious contemplation. He became severely ill again soon after, and was forced to spend most of the course of the next three years lying down.

St. Seraphim was once again healed by the Most Holy Virgin Mary, Who appeared to him accompanied by several saints. Pointing to the venerable Seraphim, The Holy Virgin said to the apostle John the Theologian: “He is of our lineage.” Then, by touching his side with Her staff, She healed him. 

I am Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and atheist – all at once April 15, 2010

We are becoming “multi-religious”, at least what has been observed in Europe. Disappointed in Christianity, people try to create their “own” religion, a mix of all existing religions. For instance, about 30 percent of the Austrians may be classified as “religious composers”: They put together their world-view of various elements such as Christian positions, humanistic, naturalistic, and Far Eastern thought. This is how “Kathpress” reports out in the new long-term study of religion in the lives of Austrians 1970-2000 “. Interesting, isn’t it?

The idea of mixing religions is not unusual to me, the more so I see it absolutely natural, since I could never understand how one can accept only one religion, because they all have such beautiful and deep messages!.. However I am fascinated by the fact how rapidly the society is also growing in its world understanding and  ultimately – in spiritual development.

As for me, being a realised person, I not only know that all religions are one and the same, but I actually feel it and “use” all of them in my daily life. Let me give you several simple examples (of cause it is all more complex and inter-connected, but it would take pages and pages to explain):

– If I happened to have a headache, I say the Christ Lord’ s prayer (“Our Father..”) and the headache is gone.

– If I address Ganesha (Hindu Deity with an elephant head and child’s body), I can easily manage children, and even all the adults around me start acting more innocently, it seems like a child gets awakened within them (since Ganesha is very powerful archetype of childhood and innocence).

An Amazing speech by a female Aboriginal elder April 6, 2010

It is a beautiful  speech by a female Aboriginal elder by the name of Bilawara Lee, about the powers of women, their place in society and the changes that are happening in the world today.  The speech was made in Darwin (Australia), march this year.  It is very insightful, and worth a read.

“Today we are facing a new Era.  The ancient Mayan culture speaks of this change, the ending of their old calendar in 2012, and the beginning of a new age.  They, along with many other Indigenous cultures, also speak that these times as one of a more feminine nature, based in the heart and unconditional love.

But women in our modern world have a problem.  We have begun to become financially and professionally empowered.  Yet the most important need, for spiritual empowerment, is often neglected or ignored. 

Our world is already in the time of transition and it will be a difficult time until the new era blossoms into an age of peace and understanding.  If our world is to survive, spiritually empowered women must take their place in helping.  It’s time for us to step up and step out.  The time of hiding is over.  

Most “aware” people know that it is necessary to heal our Mother Earth if we are to survive.  However, it is equally as imperative to also heal ourselves and each other through unconditional love, compassion and respect.   Moreover, women also need to help our men and boys develop their own feminine aspects of gentleness and sensitivity, compassion, nurturing, and kindness.  We need to help our male counterparts learn to work from the heart.

It won’t be easy but if we don’t do all of this, we can’t help our planet and humanity risks extinction.

Women you are powerful – truly powerful, with unique gifts that are far-reaching.  That is why we are considered a threat by so many male-dominated modern cultures and religious hierarchies.  Women are especially tuned to walk in both the spiritual world and the everyday world.  I have been taught that we are born spiritual; men have to strive hard to attain that state.

We are particularly adept at creating energy and change.  Our great capacity for bonding has made us especially empathic and gifted at understanding and seeing past surface levels.  Ultimately, our roles as caretakers and nurturers have opened our hearts and awareness to many levels of the universe.  Our spiritual gifts are profound.

Unfortunately, women today have begun to lose that understanding of their gifts as they have grappled to survive in the callous male dominated societies of today.  Many live tentative, cold, and fragmented lives as victims of violence, victims of unspeakable offenses against honour.  Too often, their hearts and spirit have become uncertain and lost, awash in grief and fear.  They have forgotten who they are.  They have forgotten their original instructions as human beings and as women.

Human beings are programed by evolution to believe in some super being March 19, 2010

Human beings are programed by evolution to believe in some super being, because it gives them a better chance at survival, researchers have claimed. This conclusion was arrived at by Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University after an extensive study as quoted by the Times.

An unusual experiment, conducted by Bruce Hood, Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Bristol, demonstrating that even the most rational people behave in irrational ways, became one of the star features at this year’s British Association Festival of Science. Professor Hood conducted the experiment to argue that scientists’ efforts to combat ‘irrational’ beliefs are ultimately futile.

To demonstrate his theory, Professor Hood asked members of the festival audience, if they were prepared to try on an old fashioned blue cardigan in return for a £10 reward. After receiving no shortage of volunteers, he then told the volunteers that the cardigan used to belong to Fred West, the mass murderer. On hearing this most of the volunteers put their hands down. Though a few did try it on, others moved away from them. In fact, the cardigan had not belonged to Fred West. The experiment demonstrated that the belief that it had, made even the most rational of people feel uncomfortable.Professor Hood said: “It is as if evil, a moral stance defined by culture, has become physically manifest inside the clothing.”

“Similar beliefs, which are held even among the most sceptical scientists, explain why few people would agree to swap their wedding rings for identical replicas. The difference between attaching significance to sentimental objects and believing in religion, magic or the paranormal is only one of degree. These tendencies are almost certainly a product of evolution. The human mind is adapted to reason intuitively, so that it can generate theories about how the world works even when mechanisms cannot be seen or easily deduced….Because we operate intuitively, it is pointless to get people to abandon their belief systems because they operate at such a fundamental level that no amount of rational evidence or counter-evidence is going to be taken on board to get people to abandon these ideas.”