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I am a 46 year old Argentine. My family has both Catholic and Spiritist (Some claim to see the dead and talk to the spirits, supposedly is passed through generations.) I am more drawn to grab the best of any religion and use it in my quest for spiritual enlightenment but lately I have been using a lot Hindu yoga and meditation.
I have a confusion and I want to know if you can help me with this. I was raised in a catholic environment in my childhood. During my teens I experimented with hardcore drugs and that let me to Narcotic Anonymous (clean now for 22 years). Lately I have been feeling this spiritual hunger that the Catholic Church couldn’t satisfy (in my personal situation). So as NA preaches I started to contact my higher power directly through prayer and meditation. I have been very drawn to Buddhism and Hinduism and I have been doing the best I can to get more knowledge of it through the internet. Last year went to a very difficult time, my marriage almost fell apart, and my financial health went to ruins, coming from a very lucrative way of lifestyle, my father got blood cancer and my business almost disintegrated. Some how I managed to crawl out of that bottomless pit and regain my strength. When things got stable I realized that I needed to pay more attention to my spirituality and feed my soul with positive energy and wisdom, so I started to do meditation. Just did it once (watched a lot of you tube videos) and I really concentrated and fell in a deep state. It was soooo helpful that ignorantly I thought that this was going to be my thing that was going to put me back on track as soon as fell of. But as the weeks passed I realized that if I did this every day I was going to be awesome all the time. My second time I did the same as the first. I lay down in the bed and started to get to that same deep state of conciseness as the first time. Pass the first 5 minutes of concentrating in my breath I started to have this out of nowhere thoughts the same as the one everybody feels right in that moment you get as sleep. So I thought I was getting asleep but I kept concentrated with the breathing technique. Suddenly out of nowhere I felt really heavy pulsating electricity in my brain and also each time the electricity fired I saw a red flash. First I thought it was crazy what was happening but I enjoy it. My heart started beating really fast, I felt this tremendous heat as if my body was emanating it and then I got scared and stopped. I was so confused that I thought I was doing it wrong (as if that wasn’t supposed to happened). I started to google meditation, electricity and heat. That’s how I end up in your website and herd for the first time the word and concept of kundalini. If you can help me in any way and help me understand what happened it will be very appreciated. Blessings...
Christiana (Name changed), Argentina |
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Good to know your interest in prayer and meditation (dhyana) and your self-efforts to connect with the Divine through meditation and dhyana.
First, about your personal life - looks like you and your family have gone thru some challenging times and I hope better days are ahead of you and most of your problems are already behind you.
Material life and spiritual life both are important for human progress
In my personal view, any individual can make real progress in spirituality only after material life is balanced and stabilized. (the difficult times may provide the spark though) Therefore, in addition to spirituality I believe material progress and stability of life is equally important. Therefore, I have stressed in many of my pages that every person needs to understand how human life works and with that knowledge, make an effort to bring stability and calmness in the life (obviously this is a very long term process…may be of decades rather then years)
According to Hinduism life is consequence of past karmas
According to Hinduism, life and every event in life is considered as consequence of our past actions or karma. I know it is difficult to adopt to this concept (since you come from Christianity where events are considered as God’s will) but while you study Hinduism you may want to study how Karma and events in our life are interconnected.
I strongly believe - Clearly understanding how human life works and removing all doubts and misunderstandings about the Life and the God (Sat-Chit-Ananda or the Ultimate Bliss) from the mind (that gives absolute clarity of the path towards the God) will help you a big way in both material as well as spiritual life.
Seeking knowledge is essential to attain Bliss
Secondly you mentioned: “I’ve been doing the best I can to get more knowledge of it through the internet” – this is absolutely great. Doubts in mind work like blockades in our path that stop us from progressing. Therefore, gaining more knowledge about the God and life is the best way to resolve questions and doubts. In my view this is an eternal process until we attain the Bliss (I personally like to get logical answers rather than blindly believing in something.)
True spiritual progress can occur only with the help of efforts and gaining knowledge. In reality, the path to the God is lit with millions of lights (I mean, that is how one can see the path clearly when all doubts are removed from the mind.) At the same time, the struggles of (material) life still continue until the bliss is attained.
Kundalini kriyas: heavy pulsating, electricity, tremendous heat and red flash
About your experience: “Suddenly out of nowhere I felt really heavy pulsating electricity in my brain and also each time the electricity fired I saw a red flash. First I thought it was crazy what was happening but I enjoy it. My heart started beating really fast, I felt this tremendous heat as if my body was emanating it and then I got scared and stopped”
I would suggest you to give some more time (may be month or two) continue your meditation (dhyana) and see if this and events like this continue. If they do then I would like you to review these in the light of Kundalini awakening. As of now I do NOT think it is Kundalini awakening (unless such experience continue consistently and vary in type, degree and intensity over longer period of time.)
You also can observe, if this and such experiences (called Pranik kriyas) bring you a temporary state of joy, happiness or peace (even for few minutes is fine) then it is a possibility of Kundalini awakening or a progress in that direction.
You may want to read Brendan’s experiences and my two replies to him (that will cover some of the questions you may have)
Trigunas (Sattva, Raja, Tama) and Five Kasha
Here are the topics that will help you understand and peruse the God in a better way (that will provide clarity of mind in your spiritual efforts).
1) The composition of Trigunas (Sattva, Raja, Tama). "Sattva" leads us to peace, happiness and ultimately to the God...So every effort in life should be focused on raising Sattva Guna
2) These are the various layers (kosha) where we as human being live. Objective is to move from annamay kosh to anandmaya kasha. (this is same as moving away from Tamo gun towards sattva gun)
3) Gunas are the driver behind Karma. Sattva leads to Good Karma and (Good) Karma leads to the happiness, peace and ultimately the God (bliss.) Therefore, understanding and applying karma laws to our life is extremely important.
4) Then comes the meditation (dhyana) and spiritual practice and real application to our life. Understanding of #1, #2 & #3 will give you tremendous strength and stability in performing #4.
With my long reply you may feel that I have deviated a lot but actually I tried to cover all the bases (of life and spirituality) that I feel are necessary for material and spiritual progress.
I hope my reply will help you and if you feel some of material on my site is not clear enough, I would be happy to explain more.
Thank you.
Mahendra Joshi
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