How to pick up the pieces after an extremely negative kundalini experience?

S M L, modified 8 Years ago at 10/12/15 7:36 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 10/12/15 7:36 PM

How to pick up the pieces after an extremely negative kundalini experience?

Posts: 2 Join Date: 12/4/14 Recent Posts
Hello everyone,

This is my first post on this site. Here is my story up until now.

I meditated all throughout my early childhood. I had no idea what I was doing, I just knew that something very positive was happening with it. I advanced very far, perhaps too far for my age. I started having all of these psychedelic experiences while sitting on my bed and it sort of freaked me out. I tried talking to people about it and everyone just thought I was crazy. I was 8 or 9 at the time. I realized I didn't want to become a nutjob so I quit meditating entirely. The quality of my life started gradually going downhill and by the time I started college I was at a pretty low point.

It was only then that I rediscovered meditation and made the correlation between the quality of my life and mind and the quality of my meditations. I returned with a fervent passion and had many incredible experiences over a brief 3 month period. I was very surprised it all came back so quickly. I experienced the first jhana once in this 3 month period, ego death twice and another jhana experience that took me all the way to the fourth jhana. My intuition was at a very high point and so after reading a description of kundalini once (and after conserving sexual energy for a little while) I had an absolutely incredible, very very positive kundalini experience. I felt as if I was at the height of my powers. 

Being in college during this 3 month time period I spent almost no time in class. My entire focus was on learning to be happy, focusing on meditation, etc. I succeed at these two things, but my grades suffered horribly. And so to make up for it I took an EXTREMELY heavy courseload the following semester with the mindset of "as long as I have meditation, I can do anything, I can get all A's this next semester and make up for my grade deficit". Well it didn't work out like that. I took double the normal courseload while working a job 20 hours a week. It ended terribly. I was EXTREMELY stressed all the time and this severely impacted the quality of my meditations. There came a point in the semester where I needed to make a hail-mary type of move. So, under a lot of pressure, I decided to re-enter kundalini. I had the mindset of "Oh i've done this before, it'll be no problem at all let's just do it". It was the most terrifying experience of my life. It's hard to write about it. I felt like I had completely fried my brain. I lost touch with my sanity and i'm still struggling to recover from it. At one point in the experience I couldn't bear the weight and had to let go. I got up from my pillow and looked into the mirror. I felt possesed. What was looking back at me wasn't "me". Some strange voice said "I AM IN CONTROL NOW". It sounded like mine, but at the same time, it really didn't. I cried my self to sleep. 

I don't remember anything about the next month that followed. I was just trying to go about my day pretending to be normal so no one had any reason to put me in a looney bin. I succeeded at that somehow, despite feeling entirely dead inside. Well, it's been about a year and a half since then and I've recovered quite a bit. None of my friends or family know. My dad just thought I was really sad about something. I took a long break from meditating and have recently begun trying to get back into it in a healthy and sustainable way. I still don't feel satisfied with my progress. I'm not very happy. Things seem to stress me out very easily. I can't seem to meditate more than 15 minutes. I'm very desperately seeking advice on how to best recover from a failed kundalini experience. Anything and everything is welcome. Reading things like on wikipedia warn about the downsides of kundalini/possible bad experiences, but I can't seem to find anything about how to recover from them after you've been through it. I'm really struggling to find a balance right now. This past april I started something of an informal e-commerce business and its had its ups and downs. It could be pretty successful/self-sustainable in about 6 months I'm pretty sure. I want to be fully self-employed so I can take more time taking care of myself and reforming my brain/improving my meditations, etc. I go through periods where I have laser-like focus on what I need to do and i'm extremely successful, and then weeks at a time where I don't feel like lifting a finger at all and all hope is lost, very negative attitude, etc. I feel as if having one very positive kundalini experience and then one very negative kundalini experience has made me bipolar, just like my dad. I really don't want to be bi-polar. I just want to go back to how good things were before.

If you think you can help me, please, I need it more than anything else right now. I don't know where else I can go/who I can talk to.
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SeTyR ZeN, modified 8 Years ago at 10/12/15 7:55 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 10/12/15 7:55 PM

RE: How to pick up the pieces after an extremely negative kundalini experie

Posts: 113 Join Date: 9/9/14 Recent Posts
Hi SML

You story resonnates with mine .

I'd suggest first to start mitigiating  your postive and negative energy bursts and periods.
Take the 'middle way', litterally.   When ever you spot that you are bursting in positive.. try dampening to more neutral, cool down, and don't let you mind run wild;
if you spot going negative, same thing, start GENTLY uplifting yourself like a mother with her child. no selfpitying, objective uplifting. being honest to yourself (same for cooling the positive)

With time and effort, you will do it "automatically", leading to a nice balanced mood torought days, weeks , months and a usefull psycological tool.

Sleep a little bit more , but not too much

As of mediation .. i don't know, but when i feel overloaded with any metaphysical toughs, i just switch to "lets just pause a minute and just stay here, feel my body, its heaviness, how the earth is supporting me, and just enjoy

Hope this can help!
S M L, modified 8 Years ago at 10/12/15 9:33 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 10/12/15 9:33 PM

RE: How to pick up the pieces after an extremely negative kundalini experie

Posts: 2 Join Date: 12/4/14 Recent Posts
Hello Setyr Zen,
Thanks for the response.

I think this is a good strategy, though i'll admit i'm a bit reluctant to tell myself to calm down/become netural when i'm having a really great time. What you say makes sense though. I'm going to try it out.

Thanks emoticon
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svmonk, modified 8 Years ago at 10/12/15 10:49 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 10/12/15 10:47 PM

RE: How to pick up the pieces after an extremely negative kundalini experie

Posts: 400 Join Date: 8/23/14 Recent Posts
Hi S M L,

I went through a period from 1996-2001 where I had lots of kundalini. I literally could not sit in the meditation posture because of pain in my abdomen, and had to do retreats lying down. This was a bit inconvenient because I was at the time practicing as an ordained lay Zen monk with a Zen teacher, and Zen, particularly Soto which was the branch I was practicing in, has a lot of baggage about the sitting posture. Also, at times I had shooting "energy" like lightening going up my spine (if you want to read more about it, check my practice e-memoir, Silicon Valley Monk, on Amazon or Apple iStore).

But by 2001 it had settled down, and while it does recur when I do retreats, it really doesn't bother me in my daily life. I attribute the settling down to basically having a pretty settled life. So in addition to what SeTyR ZeN recommended, I'd recommend trying to have a life with plenty of daily routines, like regular meals, meeting with friends, getting 6-8 hours of sleep a night, work (your e-commerce company sounds promising), and so forth. Also, take vacation now and then to some place nice that you can afford.

For myself, this amounted to being married for (at that time) over 20 years (now 36), eating regular meals (breakfast and dinner) with my wife, working at a 9-5 job, going out on the weekends and bicycling or hiking, and (yes) taking a nice vacation a couple times a year. Physical exercise and eating meat are said to be one way to cause kundalini to settle, and since I do some amount of both, though not extreme, I think that helped. If the kundalini becomes really strong, it will definitely go away if you stop sitting for 3-6 months. Also, avoid heavily caffinated drinks because they tend to make it worse. I stopped drinking coffee for about a year, especially at retreats.

After it's settled a bit, you can slowly get back into practice. I'd suggest however, trying to practice with a teacher for a bit, since it can provide more of a grounding and structure which is sometimes useful. Most Buddhist teachers aren't much help when it comes to kundalini though because the texts don't say much about it, with the possible exception of the Tibetan texts (about which I know little).

Anyway good luck and be sure to report back here now and then about your progress.
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 10/13/15 12:04 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 10/13/15 12:04 AM

RE: How to pick up the pieces after an extremely negative kundalini experie

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
IMO, kundalini is a giant amplifier.  As more energy goes through you, all aspect of you, both good and bad, balanced and unbalanced, get amplified.  If moving fast, it can make for a wild bipolar ride that I personally feel corresponds to what meditators call A&P and the dark night.  Dark night brings out all the little stuff that was hiding inside you and was not dealt with, every imbalance and issue comes out.  Before, those little things without much energy probably mostly flew under the radar but with more energy behind them, they seem very large and intimidating. 

The only way to fix it is to deal with those issues, you will have to figure out how to integrate your tangles and imbalances if you want to go further.  Many of the popular psychological techniques can help you, most people would benefit from such help, too bad that people feel they must be 'crazy' and desparate before they go.  Plus there's various self help techniques.  HOwever you choose though, I think that things are either dealt with or continue to fester and cause problems long term so the choice is yours.  Meanwhile, I agree that taking it at a moderate pace is the way to go, the good times might be addictive but there may be blowback.  Every time your energy goes up, more undealt with issues will tend to be uncovered until you've pretty much finally dealt with all the major ones.  So it's not really that kundalini does anything to you that isn't already there.  It's just that those things that it shows you tend to fly more hidden and under the radar in many people.
-Eva
MangaDesuYo, modified 8 Years ago at 10/13/15 10:35 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 10/13/15 8:25 AM

RE: How to pick up the pieces after an extremely negative kundalini experie

Posts: 69 Join Date: 9/23/13 Recent Posts
Sorry, but everyone uses Kundalini and defining their own meaning to it...

As long as one didn't feel a strong energy travel upward very fast from around the perineum to the third eye or crown (kundalini can also travel upward from the front body, and also stop somewhere in the middle of the body not completing it's travel to the third eye or crown)...

If this is not experienced in this energy content, than %100 it wasn't a kundalini experience, there isn't really such a thing as kundalini awakening... you either raise it or you don't.

Every day I read people blaming kundalini for their own mental illness or stuff that goes wrong in their life... have enough of this.

PS: nor is kundalini A&P like described here.
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tom moylan, modified 8 Years ago at 10/13/15 9:05 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 10/13/15 9:05 AM

RE: How to pick up the pieces after an extremely negative kundalini experie

Posts: 896 Join Date: 3/7/11 Recent Posts
howdy sml,
sorry to hear about your ups and downs but that is what life is.  i've read some of the other comments and would like to bring the conversation back a little bit to how your experience relates to this forum and its perspective.

in MTCB daniel points out that "kundalini" is a hindu / vedic description of the stage of practice / experience that is most often referred to here as the A&P or the arising and passing away stage along the "progress of insight".  but that's just a label difference. 

there is a table / spreadsheet somewhere on the site which describes these stages in terms of qualities like clarity, Stability, intensity..etc.  in the classic burmese description of the stages of insight it is the period after the A&P (or Kundalini experience if you like) which causes some people trouble due to its unstable nature and inability to comfortably process and accept this new level of being.  there is a large portion of both this site and daniel's book dedicated to both warnings and descriptions of this stage as well as how to get through it.

when life is suffering under the added stresses these inevitable stages cause it is often suggested to back off of insight practices until your life situation allows you to deal with them.  the downside to this method is that once you are in these stages (the dark night stages) you will remain in them intil you really accept them FULLY and push past them to the final goal.

so hanging out in them, while no picnic, can be ok if one backs off on insight practices, perhaps focus on more physical activities for a while, be outdoors , tend toward things which are pleasant etc.

for my money, taking a longer view of things helped me when in the middle of the maelstrom of these stages and taking some of my own self-imposed pressure also helped.

good luck and keep posting.

tom
dionisia jail2 agalio, modified 4 Years ago at 4/14/19 1:22 AM
Created 4 Years ago at 4/14/19 1:22 AM

RE: How to pick up the pieces after an extremely negative kundalini experie

Post: 1 Join Date: 4/14/19 Recent Posts
Hey !!

slayer.015@hotmail.com

This is my email . send me message at it and I give you the absolute solution. I did it the same with you and now I am healthy. Please send me message to help you absolutely ... In the message write KUNDALINI S M L to remember you. emoticon
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Stickman2, modified 4 Years ago at 4/14/19 7:39 PM
Created 4 Years ago at 4/14/19 7:36 PM

RE: How to pick up the pieces after an extremely negative kundalini experie

Posts: 375 Join Date: 7/24/17 Recent Posts
Stanislav Grof's wife had Kundalini trouble years ago, and there's a book called The Stormy Search for the Self about it, and about the network they set up to help people. The people of this forum are better placed to offer counsel on this stuff than me, but it's a possible resource.
http://www.spiritualemergence.org/
http://www.spiritualemergencenetwork.org/

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