succumb to necessity’s Grace—Since metamorphosis is a dissolving of the former self, there are times when the individual will be in total meltdown

such as in the die-offs. Thus the necessity to surrender into the process.

Meltdown in this sense is essential, for its what is happening and one can’t fight it anyway, for even ones fight-faculties are melting.

9. empty to receive—dissolution is only “half” of the equation. Self-dissolving is addictive and you can do it for lifetimes for there is great pleasure of the blasting of the tower of Babel. However in order to be fully human, and responding to the true call of evolution, you need to do the building and action...that is the CREATIVE side of the equation as well. The dissolving is only there to provide space for the NEW to manifest.

loneliness anD cellUlar Panic

Two University of Chicago psychologists, Louise Hawkley and John Cacioppo, have been exploring the relationship between social isolation, loneliness, and the physical deterioration and diseases of aging, right down to the cellular level.

Hawkley and Cacioppo took urine samples from both lonely and more contented volunteers, and found that the lonely ones had more epinephrine hormone flowing in their bodies. Epinephrine is one of the body’s “fight-or-flight” chemicals, and high levels indicate that lonely people go through life in a heightened state of arousal. As with blood pressure, this physiological toll of inner tension becomes more apparent with aging. Since the body’s stress hormones are intricately involved in fighting inflammation and infection, it appears that loneliness contributes to the wear and tear of aging through this pathway as well. Loneliness was found to affect around 209 genes involved in the basic immune response to tissue damage and the production of antibodies. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/0708171 30107.htm

Research will have to be undertaken to see whether genuine alchemical dark night experiences and the consequent acceptance of fundamental aloneness, reduces the overproduction of epinephrine and the chronic state of sympathetic arousal (unconscious panic) that is normally associated with a lonely life. This subliminal fear that has always been with us even in the womb, so that we do not even register we are in fear...call it neurosis, stress, narcissism or whatever. Society in the West and war torn areas is generally in permanent state of unconscious panic. This spiritual loneliness cannot really be resolved by others, for if you are already in permanent unconscious panic, the company of others is just another terrible stress. It begins in the womb and reflects the cellular memory of the spiritual separation, anxiety and disharmony, not only of the mother and the primary relationship of the parents, but it reflects the general “quality” of spiritual integration of the community, the times and humanity as a whole. Because it has always been with us, you only get to perceive this fundamental cellular anxiety and spiritual separation from Cosmos when it stops. In the absence of the cellular fear, you realize you have been living in a vice. For no other reason than we are collectively programming ourselves in this way, and it takes shamanic drugs, falling in love, kundalini awakening or samadhi experiences in order to realize that there is another way of being we have not explored yet...in fact there are infinite ways of being yet to be explored.

Like a good self flagellating puritan, I personally feel more matured by my dark night experiences, than my ecstatic peaks and revelations. I used to be plagued by incredible loneliness from the moment I came into this world. Now I treasure my aloneness almost more than life itself. But I am sure I would not have lost the continual organic loneliness, if it wasn’t for the absolute joy of encounter with dark nights and Die-offs. Knowing that life doesn’t really get worse than this, and this down cycle is the most thrilling enjoyable ride into “depths” I could possibly imagine. Because it is the “conscious” experience of that which was being repressed from consciousness. Thus in a way identical to an inner-conjunction a dark night is an ultimate homecoming. Because it is the “conscious” experience

of that which was being repressed from consciousness. Thus in a way identical to an inner-conjunction, a dark night is an ultimate homecoming. We are in the end only really lonely for our Self.

The Die-offs/dark nights are a “biochemical process” which secondarily brings about the dissolution of the operational personality structure for “a period of time”. The brain is undergoing such a catastrophic neurological meltdown and renewal, that the ego personality and functionality is temporarily completely non operational. Depending on ones inner resources at the time and whether one is essentially imbued with a biological faith or has a tendency to fear, depression and self-hatred—this will determine whether the incapacitation is navigated positively or simply adds to the burden of an already difficult life. The psychological-emotional story one gives to interpret this autogenic “biological” event, is secondary to the chemistry, and yet is absolutely key to whether one can use the down cycles to further ones spiritual growth, or simply cause an escalation of our primary suffering.

Down cycles are an opportunity to “stop” and experience our depths. The more we can quit our secondary meaning-making and turn toward our suffering, the faster it transforms. As the wound of inchoate is filled with the energy of Spirit, the more Presence we can bring to all our life—the more we learn from our descent and the faster we rise to the up-side of life again, having gained remarkable new understanding from our journey into the cave. In an audio on Michael Brown’s website he said that everything that was wrong with his life was due to the fact that he was “not here.” In 1987 he developed an acutely painful neurological condition called Horton’s Syndrome and to deal with the pain of his condition he developed a method of increasing Presence to overcome pain. His book that describes this practice is The Presence Process: A healing Journey Into Present Moment Awareness.

He is especially fabulous on audio: A Walk Through the Presence Process.

www.thepresenceportal.com/—Michael Brown, Dark Night of the Soul by Jason Augustus Newcomb.

It is absolutely amazing that the most primitive functions in the body turn themselves into the service of the highest biological faculty of transmutation.

DePression

As kundalini moves through the miasmas (repressed, damaged, latent) areas in the brain, we might feel the emotions connected with each developmental arrest.

The miasmas were created in stress and in stress they are transmuted. For every up there is a down, so it is understandable that depression might result after the over-stimulation of the brain’s pleasure centers and increase in endorphins, during the bliss of kundalini. Depression could also result as the left-brain loses its normal adaptive function during the first few years of the major cycle. Loss of left-brain prefrontal lobe function could lead to paranoia, frustration, self-pity and other negative emotions.

There tends to be a psychological let down when the tide turns down into the valley as the influx of spirit abates, and consciousness plunges deeply into matter.

This feels like a loss of Grace after the heady heights of the influx, but the valleys are just as important as the mountain tops in the transformational process. Once the kundalini storm is kindled eventually the body runs out of neurotransmitters and their precursors and so the bodymind falls into depression. A normal diet would not supply adequate nutrients to overcome the deficiency, let alone a SAD diet. Thus relief from depression would occur after enough time has passed after the kundalini peak. A more rapid relief from kundalini created depression could be assured by first making sure one’s diet is well supplied with nerve nutrients, and by taking supplements during and after the awakening. (See Five Formulas For Kundalini).

With the increase in immune activity, higher metabolism and nerve function during metamorphosis, one can assume that there is a greater free radical production. This is probably half the reason why we feel “fried” after the influx.

The other major contributor to the down cycle is that the body’s resources for making neurotransmitters and hormones becomes exhausted during the peak activity of the influx stage. Plus all the metabolites that were created in the firestorm need time to be converted and disposed of. In our cooked, demineralized bodies this radical swinging of metamorphic cycles is inevitable. With knowledge of the requirements of the process however, we can build the kind of integrity and reserves into our bodyminds that will help to facilitate evolution. By avoiding wasting so much time and energy in the down cycles, our spiritual birth will incur less abortion and labor.

“There are many undergoing this process who at times feel quite insane. When they behave well and keep silent they may avoid being called schizophrenic, or being hospitalized, or sedated. Nevertheless their isolation and sense of separation from others may cause them such suffering. We must reach such people, their families, and society, with information to help them recognize their condition as a blessing, not a curse.

Certainly we must no longer subject people, who might be in the midst of this rebirth process, to drugs or shock therapies, approaches which are at opposite poles to creative self-development.” P.60, Lee Sannella, M.D. Kundalini, Psychosis or Transcendence?

I think it imperative to not treat kundalini-depression with antidepressants.

Herbs and supplements for depression are generally fine if you know what you are

doing. I don’t generally recommend “pharmaceutical” antidepressants, but would like to see a more nutritional approach to fixing what is obviously a metabolic problem that is many generations in the making. I suspect that tranquilizers and antidepressants will increase repression and prevent necessary tension and the flow of consciousness-energy that transforms blockages (miasmas). The Guru Rawa sensed that the nerves of a woman who had taken 6 types of tranquilizers and antidepressants to be “burned.” If we detoxify, adopt a raw diet and do those things that open us up to the flow of kundalini, then we establish a solid self of deep peace, joy and equanimity usually within several years. This sense of coming home to ourSelf is something that drugs, cooked food, and “therapies” can never give us. Kundalini restructures us to a higher order, enabling us to live a spiritual life in the material world. The Die-off’s in particular should be regarded with awe and gratitude as very good news. They don’t last long and we do not transform without them. The old must die for the new to be reborn. So the highs and lows of the kundalini cycle should be celebrated equally.

“Prescription psychoactive drugs (antidepressants and antipsychotics) can arrest or completely abort a transformational process. This may sound desirable to those who are having a hard time of it, but these drugs do not return one to normal;

instead, they tend to freeze the process in its present state. Worse, antidepressants can trigger psychosis for those in a delicate psychospiritual state, and the neuroleptics (antipsychotics) can cause tardive dyskinesia, a persistent and in many cases

irreversible pathological syndrome which resembles kriyas! Even so, some people are so prone to severe depression or debilitating psychosis in the heightened states that they cannot function without the temporary aid of these drugs.” El Collie, elcollie.com

Instead of suppression and medication I suggest that the initiate get a daily dose of nature, exercise, water therapy (eg: baths), bodywork, stretching, breathing, toning and music etc... A long list of coping techniques are listed further on in Kundalini Skills List. It is imperative that one adopts a diet that does not clog the liver, or weigh down the digestive system or challenge the immune system. The body already has more than enough to metabolize from the alchemy of transmutation itself, so we should be very careful not to overburden it with even more work. Nutritional supplementation should be given to the nervous system to feed neurotransmitters, hormones and to balance and soothe the nerves. Adaptogens like ginseng, ashitaba, neem, gotu kola, olive leaf and ginkgo are probably the most important herbs to take for achieving a higher homeostasis of the nervous system and recovering from depression and anhedonia (numbness). I recommend that both women and men nightly massage their breasts before sleep to help maintain hormone levels and prevent a slide into depression and numbness. This might even positively affect growth hormone production.

Rehabilitation of the brain after an awakening takes physical activity and novel environmental stimulation to encourage dendritic branching, neurotrophic growth factors and increase plasticity i.e. where remaining cells take over from dead cells to improve functional recovery. Exercise and movement therapy increases brain vascularization, birth of new cells and synaptogenesis to establish new connections.

Note that anti-convulsant drugs can increase functional depression, and that if antidepressants are used, instead of proactive healthy interventions such as new activities and exercise, post awakening depression will be radically deepened and extended. For establishing new growth in the substantiation phase we need an appropriately enriched environment. That means people who care, and activities one enjoys. Remember—spiritual acceleration necessitates conscious incarnation, for if the awakening process does not become increasingly conscious negative outcomes will occur.

Depression often sets in through an internal/external conflict that remains unresolved for an extended period of time. No matter what the original cause of the conflict, it eventually affects our decisions and every part of our life. Endurance in the face of a stressor eventually leads to depression because no positive action has been taken to change our attitude or circumstances. Consequently our chemistry then mirrors the adverse conditions through the raising norepinephrine and dopamine and lowering of serotonin. When low serotonin is maintained overtime, we have the biochemical basis for chronic depression.

Depression and chronic anxiety are conditions appear more often in women than in men. Research with PET scans show that women have a greater number of the most common serotonin receptors than men. They also show that women have lower levels of serotonin transporter (SERT), the monoamine transporter protein that transports serotonin back into the nerve cells that secrete it. It is this protein that common antidepressants (SSRIs) block. Also it was found that in women with serious premenstrual mental symptoms their serotonin doesn’t respond as flexibly to the hormone swings of the menstrual cycle as that of symptom-free women.

It doesn’t matter what age you live in, there is always going to be some contemporary lion at your door. These days it just wears a different face than it did 20 or 2000 years ago. The trick is to allow the lion to wake us up, rather than make us numb or asleep. As soon as we define one lion and deal with that, there will be another lion around. The thing to stay focused on to help us remain open and not dissociated is our contribution. To keep on defining and refining what it is we are here for, might be the major panacea of all ages. Apparently it is greater connection and Presence that wins the fight against depression, as stated here by John Horgan: “The researches reported in the April 1998 American Journal of Psychiatry that “intrinsic religiosity” was the best predictor of recovery from depression in both the treated and untreated groups. There is no evidence of significant benefits from psychotherapy, drugs, or a combination of therapy.” 121 The Undiscovered Mind.

Drugs like Ecstasy might be good once or twice in our youth to give us a sense of expanded perception beyond this facade we living in. Our culture can be so miserable, people use drugs to “get out of it” not “into it.” Therefore the chances of the drugs contributing to enlightenment are very slim unless the individual already has a disciplined sense of their shamanic soul. Those people that try the drug option would be better off to first use raw food and fasting as a means to alter their condition, for fasting is a sure fire way to tune “in” and not “out.” Fasting

is the most “successful” way of eliminating pain and dis-ease on all levels and to promote greater communion with Self and God. Fasting itself is still not enough however, for unless the rawfood component of the diet is increased, the biology is so agitated that the soul cannot become coherent, and this physical disharmony shows up as mental and emotional suffering...hence the desire for drugs to “get out of it.” Drugs, by themselves, will never ever bring that which is incoherent into the harmonious sympathetic resonance that constitutes the unified, integral, enlightening human being. See: The Fasting Path, The Way to Spiritual, Physical, and Emotional Enlightenment, Stephen Harrod Buhner.

nerVe reGeneration

Recovering from depression, exhaustion or damage to the nervous system involves a multiple pronged nutritional approach. Dr. Robert J. Marshall points out that nearly all neurodegeneration occurs through excitotoxicity and the immune systems use of free radicals, leading to inflammation and chronic infection.

Neurodegeneration can escalate when nutritional reserves are inadequate to rapidly reduce infection, which then results in DNA and nerve damage, as the immune system generates free radicals as it tries to eliminate infected cells. We are familiar with the idea of damage to nerves by free radicals, excitotoxicity and inflammation.

But we are not as conversant with the effects of infection (viral/bacterial/fungal/

yeast) on the nerves via the immune response. This will be an area of great interest to kundalini researchers and those with chronic K-symptoms, such as depression, anhedonia, pain, fatigue or prolonged exhaustion phase.

Dr. Marshall has developed a neutraceutical protocol for preventing neurodegeneration that includes 5 steps to health: First balance the pH, Balance hormones, detoxification of heavy metals etc..., the resolution of inflammation, infection and autoimmune decline of nerve tissue, and the regeneration of nerves and bodytotal.

infection: Any phytonutrient that has anti-viral properties is capable of DNA repair, because viruses hijack the DNA of living cells and reprogram it to replicate itself. Viral/bacterial overload and autoimmune damage to nervous system can be reduced with antivirals such as: Echinacea, Pacific Yew, Hyssop, Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentate), Olive leaf, Licorice, Lomatium, Osha root (Ligusticum), Astragalus, Elderberry, Huzhang [Polygonum cuspidatum], Isatis root, Wild barley, Sutherlandia, St. John’s Wort, and the Ayurvedic herb Soma latha. Also medicinal mushrooms including Coriolus versicolor, Reishi, Krestin, Cordyceps, Maitake, Ganoderma Lucidum, Shiitake. These antivirals have a direct antimutagen, anticancer effect through reducing DNA damage, anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, act as an immune stimulants, decreases anxiety and

infection: Any phytonutrient that has anti-viral properties is capable of DNA repair, because viruses hijack the DNA of living cells and reprogram it to replicate itself. Viral/bacterial overload and autoimmune damage to nervous system can be reduced with antivirals such as: Echinacea, Pacific Yew, Hyssop, Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentate), Olive leaf, Licorice, Lomatium, Osha root (Ligusticum), Astragalus, Elderberry, Huzhang [Polygonum cuspidatum], Isatis root, Wild barley, Sutherlandia, St. John’s Wort, and the Ayurvedic herb Soma latha. Also medicinal mushrooms including Coriolus versicolor, Reishi, Krestin, Cordyceps, Maitake, Ganoderma Lucidum, Shiitake. These antivirals have a direct antimutagen, anticancer effect through reducing DNA damage, anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, act as an immune stimulants, decreases anxiety and